It's very simple, just follow this simple process (IT ALWAYS WORKS!!!)

1. Keep your taxation to medium as setting it to high or very high will result in radicals, which unless you have the radicals reduced modifier from institutions like guaranteed freedoms and dedicated police force, you will get tax evaders and revolutions that will cause a ton of problems. Also because it counteracts the taxes with construction speed modifiers that lower your effective construction speed in those states with turmoil.

This will give you a ton of weekly income you can use to build construction sector and to build things, since the main difference between an industrialized and non industrialized country is the lack of peasants and subsistence agriculture in an industrialized one, we need to build as many buildings as possible (which ones? ill tell you)


2. Focus predominantly on producing buildings involving woodcutting, tools, and natural resources like coal (especially coal) there is a resource triangle around coal, iron, tools, and construction sectors. early game before steel framed construction.

These are the most profitable buildings in the game, especially wood as its buildings are half the cost of other resource buildings and a 1/3 or a 1/4 of factory type buildings.

They are also useful for nations where they have large peasant majorities, peasants only consume 1/10th of the resources as any other pop type, meaning consumer goods are less viable for producing, and its better to stick to goods that rely on buildings, unless you plan to trade these of course, which is always a viable option.

Early on you want to spam iron mines as they are the most costly input into construction sectors, you will need high MAPI (MARKET ACCESS PRICE IMPACT) in order for this to work well, however iron mines with atmospheric engine+ are still efficient enough to run 20% prices and below

Then work on the other inputs and the inputs of those inputs, ie coal explosives, tools, etc

However watch out when changing production methods as you may not have the goods to supply the change (changing the construction sector P.M is big aswell)

The most important goods as of patch 1.7.3 are wood - iron - tools - AND MOST IMPORTANTLY CLOTHING, the needs for clothing are so high and productive that you make like 1k margin per level of the building, which of course you can always export aswell. (However the construction cost doesn't make up for it early game so its better to spam iron & tools to get more production.

3. If you have mercantilism you can get a market liberal petite bourgeois agitator, which you can get by getting grain prices >25% by subventioning & tariffing grain (this was nerfed from being put on the landowners not the PB in 1.9).

Following this the corn laws journal entry will begin, then some time later you will get an event called "A Modern Conservative" which gives you the agitator, upon getting the agitator grant him leadership by right clicking on him, AND BOOM! you have a market liberal landowner. (If it says the landowners aren't pressured then just wait until the movement gets over 10% popularity, around there they will be pressured.

This will help with industrialization as now you can either switch off of traditionalism, or from interventionism to laissez faire, along with switching to free trade to build a larger economy. . (Agrarianism, interventionism, and laissez faire are all better then traditionalism)

4. Privatize your buildings!!!: If you privatize your buildings you can get like $50000 - 100k per building which then can allow you to spend even more money on construction sectors to then build more buildings. HOWEVER, if you have a mutual investment agreement (or a one sided one where they can buy your buildings), there is a good chance your buildings will be bought out by foreign investors and the profit will go to them, especially if the country is larger then you in investment pool income, however this can allow your capitalists to also buy in their country as well, which can be nice, this is also required to have industrialists since they will only spawn if buildings are being allowed to be privatized. Otherwise the building's income will go nowhere other then back to investment pool and not to the industrialist ig.

5. Trade: if you don't trade, then you are missing out on a lot of income, especially if your economy doesn't have certain good like coal, or oil. Free trade increases the trade advantage allowing you to import & export more with nations.
6.Build Ports: You need to build ports if you want to import and export, this will build merchant marines which will lower the input costs for trade centers, aka improve profit & productivity.

7. Use Decrees and Encourage Immigration: Immigration is one of the most powerful elements of the game since when it comes to production, population/labor is responsible for the majority of output, from a simple production function AF(K^0.3, L^0.7), L being labor, and K being input goods, labor is worth more then the input, and is traditionally in economics, getting a larger labor force that doesn't need to be trained in order to work whatever jobs are available is essentially an infinite money glitch as they skyrocket your GDP, strength, income, and everything else. Greener grass campaigns are literally the most pro growth policy you can enact on your states (that are eligible for mass immigration if you hover over the migration indicator in the the state)

8. PROFIT!

Now after some time you should have tons of newly built factories to steal as many people as possible from the landowners and clergy IG, and towards the industrialists.

You will now be able to pass pretty much any reforms you want (especially if you have secret police as no one can rebel under it)

Additionally you can now launch wars without losing any money as you have the largest economy in the world by far and won't have to go into debt. You can also build a larger army aswell.

HOWEVER communists the trade union IG will come up a couple decades earlier due to your early industrialization, essentially speeding up the time frame for X country you're playing as.

9. Again, just build

To easily see if your scaling, just check if you have 200+ construction, and it is consistently increasing throughout the game, and if not then remedy it.

A military, how else would I defend myself against Britain??

1. Professional, Militia, or Mass Mobilization?

Depends on your needs, but preferably not Militia since units take so long to mobilize and cost so much, that you might as well take the 1% hit to conscription in favor of Mass Mob. or running a full professional military that gets double the bonus to experience gain, which will increase offense & defense.

Mass Mobilization doubles your training rate, which is extremely useful since manpower is so important, and a nation can just attrition you to death until they have a massive manpower advantage and start winning battles all across the front.

So Mass Mobilization > Professional > Militia.

2. COMPANIES!!!

This is an underlooked feature but in 1.9.6 and 1.9 companies that produce prestige goods like Krupp guns, and Colt revolvers, upon consumption give massive attack defense, and recovery rate modifiers.

Also build artillery, you have no idea how annoying it is to have a stagnant front because you don't have artillery.


3. "We have technology" then proceeds to smash computer against desk.

Prioritize research like General Staff, Percussion Cap, and Breech-Loading Artillery.

There are other techs down the line, but you won't get those until pretty late game, however know that you will need a lot of ammunition, small arms, artillery, radios, rubber, and eventually oil and tanks.

If you have line infantry and the enemy has skirmish, you are surely to lose period.

4. No Shortages at ANY cost

Any type of good shortage for your units will result in their stats lowering and organization for the unit decreasing, make sure you have adequate goods, or are able to subvention them from nearby countries.

5. The Navy!

Blockading and intercepting enemy convoys can devastate the enemy, especially if they are reliant on the world market, and since the world market is important since the player nor the ai can control whether they trade or not, slowing crippling someones economy, or crippling their ability to support colonies, or to stop their imports of foreign weapons like guns!

Depends on your goals, but for the Central Identity Pillar

Trade League > Sovereign Empire >>Religious Convocation >> Military Treaty >>>> Ideological Union

Here's why I ranked these this way

• Countries are much more likely to join a trade league then sovereign empire
  
• A trade league gives a whopping 25% bonus of trade capacity and a very good principle external trade
  
• Sovereign Empire can subjugate countries for no infamy
  
• Gets a decent required principle that gives free authority and money from subjects
  
• Religious convocation is very interesting as it gives a free 5% birth rate modifier which when tested gave me a .2% increase in population % growth in 1850s Germany, which can scale very well as you urbanize and lower your birth rate.
  
• On top of public healthcare and catholics getting a birth rate bonus (5% with powerful catholic church) PLUS generic food company (5%) you can get a whopping 20% birth rate bonus, which is VERY important for long term geopolitical strength. You can also impose state religious for free on bloc members.
  
• Additionally it has a required principle that increases the clergy power to help you do this, and overall clergy usually has ok bonus's, and can be a decent path to take.
  
• Military Treaty is more situational and its starting principles are kind of awful if you are playing multiplayer, but even in single player, could be useful if you aren't a large nation that needs allies to join wars.
  
• However you do get a really nice 20% free training rate that will make it easier to win wars
  
• Ideological Union sucks, it has a bad required principle since once you get your laws it becomes useless, and only gives you a mechanic to impose regime change for free.

Here's a tier list personally of what I think the best principles are (from S -> D left to right), if you want a better explanation on this, watch Dairuka's video on this.


Preferably use S - Upper B tier, and remember this based off of universicality, sometimes military industry or foreign investment would be much better, or if you plan on no immigration then Freedom of Movement is obviously bad.

1.1
How to deal with radicals?

• Lower taxes by one tick, or pass guaranteed liberties and increase the institution to max level, depending on your circumstances, pass state religion and national supremacy. Additionally in 1.5 you can also pass healthcare to directly increase SOL for your pops.

What do I do if i've reached a limit on either construction points, or available workers

• Lower taxes if you've got a situation when construction points aren't capping and are stagnating at a specific value (like 2000 perhaps) as you can't use this money for building, and you probably have some other issues like radicals that decrease construction efficiency
  
• If you need workers sign free trade agreements to outsource your labor change your citizenship law to multiculturalism or cultural exclusion, since with 1.2 intelligentsia are now based balanced. Additionally your "church and state" set of laws control which types of religions can migrate to your country, additionally use the greener grass edict along with getting the intelligentsia to like you (+10 opinion)
  
• Join a customs union or take Beijing and force them to migrate to your high SOL paradise
  
• If you want to catch up with tech build as many universities as possible (up to 200) this will allow you to catch up with majors and will give you a massive tech advantage which you will need for wars and further eco boosting.
  
• Get the bloc principle Free Movement and upgrade it to increase mass migration attraction, make sure you don't have migration restrictions or else only people of your primary cultures will migrate to you.

I hate these landowners and other igs, how do I get rid of them?

• Industrialize, since that takes away clout from landowners, (like I said earlier)
  
• Suppress them and hope you get the event to diminish their power
  
• Start civil wars that you know you'll win (check which land will secede and delete all barracks in those states)
  
• Tax them (consumption taxes, landowners being rich aristocrats)
  

https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/2449468069552638022/38FFC7FB985A4DA5C59F336E2F0C3FE91E7CB5A5/?imw=256&&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

You want these guys?^^^^^^^^

Great!

In the SOE patch political movements were revamped to better suit change by populations

How can you use this to your advantage?

Let me explain how it works!


1. Pressured Interest groups by movements are more likely to spawn certain characters with ideologies

The more popularity the movement has, the more movement pressure will be enacted on the interest groups!

So a landowner ig will be more likely to get a democrat ideology if they are being pressured by the liberal movement for instance.

This can be very useful for getting ideologies that suit your goals! (Like a market liberal or republican for instance)

2. Hiring an agitator starts political movements and boosts their popularity

This can be useful if you don't have a political movement that exists in your country that you really want. I.E the liberal movement, peasant movement or modernizer movements


What to do with this information?

You can bolster these movements with some authority and use the events you get from them to boost their popularity even more. If you are at max taxes there will be a ton of radicals coming from them, allowing you pass laws under even the worst of circumstances.

I recommend the liberal movement as its the only one that CAN have market liberal as a character ideology that can spawn market liberals on igs so you can pass laissez faire and free trade.

Actually I literally got market liberal it as apart of my liberal movement by 1840 as it doesn't exist apart of the movement at the start (but joins somewhat quickly after the movement is created)

Changes to companies is probably the most impactful change to 1.9. Since now your investment pool essentially goes haywire once you create some companies that buy everything.

How do companies work?

Companies buy out and build specific buildings that are listed that they can only build.

Whats special you say?, well companies give a throughput bonus and a construction bonus to building their building types,

AND what VERY important is that they can buy buildings owned by foreign owned financial districts and nationally owned buildings,

and they do this very effectively and quickly even if they have no money.

BUT THATS NOT ALL!!!

They then reuse the money that they receive from profits from buildings to buy more buildings, build more buildings from other countries, increasing their profits almost exponentially, your companies can become so strong that they have the ability to act like a hegemony that controls foreign nations buy buying up all their buildings with ridiculous amounts of profits.


This is how by 1855 I have companies rivalling Great Britain with an investment pool larger then them, IN A MULTIPLAYER GAME!

Now whats interesting is that this is all only possible if you have investment rights in their countries, which I did.

They ended up cancelling them, BUT if you have this


company mandate, then if you have a REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS, that uses the FOREIGN INVESTMENT POOL, to buy building for YOUR HQ, that will send ITS DIVIDENDS BACK TO YOUR INVESTMENT POOL!

BUT THAT ISNT THE CRAZIEST THING ABOUT THIS!!!

If you have a regional hq in their country, they CANNOT get rid of it, it will continue to use your investment pool to create buildings for itself to send back to the home country!!!

Patched in 1.9.7




So now Krupp has permanent access in the British market because of this, even though they cancelled investment rights with me!

THAT IS WHY COMPANIES ARE SO STRONG, take the society techs, go corporate state to get some more, AND go laissez faire for free charters, along with taking investment rights from your neighbors.

This creates a large investment pool to allow you to also deficit spend into oblivion as they will immediately buy up your buildings.