I guess I should make a headstart here.

1. If you have money, expend.
2. If not, rob.

0: If you are on the western edge of Europe skip to step 2
1: Invade Spain, France or England
2: Take over the new world
3: Profit
4: Take Hong Kong as you wait for Victoria 3

1.construct buildings.
2.construct buildings.
3.construct buildings.
∞.construct buildings.

After playing this a few times on a few different locations, I have a few questions about strategies on this.

Note that I mostly play nations that are not super powers but have good potential (via missions, ideas and such).

How do you increase manpower or develop your nation at all when playing on a poor start position? Reclaim wasteland and the improve province things appear to not always be available, what ends up happening is that even though I can get really big I just end up with a lot of poor provinces, unless I capture rich ones, money is not that much of a problem since there are always other ways of getting it, but manpower is especially troublesome on some starts, such as the new world or Africa (I played Aztecs and Ethiopia respectivelly (that had this problem, other places in the world can sorta work it out) I did well, but still, I feel like it was more of a struggle than it should have been because I can`t figure out how exactly development works in this mod).

Even stacking -development time doesn`t really seem to do too much, even after several decades.

As a practical example, on my current game (as Ethiopia) I have 896 development, 128 provinces, 3 colonial subjects, and my max manpower is 30K, which means that I can`t really stand up on land against any of the main powers, technically I can`t stand for too long on the sea either because of sailor shortage, but the reason for both problems is the same. And this is with the apropriate building built on all possible provinces (barracks/docks).

Originally posted by Anubis:

After playing this a few times on a few different locations, I have a few questions about strategies on this.

Note that I mostly play nations that are not super powers but have good potential (via missions, ideas and such).

How do you increase manpower or develop your nation at all when playing on a poor start position? Reclaim wasteland and the improve province things appear to not always be available, what ends up happening is that even though I can get really big I just end up with a lot of poor provinces, unless I capture rich ones, money is not that much of a problem since there are always other ways of getting it, but manpower is especially troublesome on some starts, such as the new world or Africa (I played Aztecs and Ethiopia respectivelly (that had this problem, other places in the world can sorta work it out) I did well, but still, I feel like it was more of a struggle than it should have been because I can`t figure out how exactly development works in this mod).

Even stacking -development time doesn`t really seem to do too much, even after several decades.

As a practical example, on my current game (as Ethiopia) I have 896 development, 128 provinces, 3 colonial subjects, and my max manpower is 30K, which means that I can`t really stand up on land against any of the main powers, technically I can`t stand for too long on the sea either because of sailor shortage, but the reason for both problems is the same. And this is with the apropriate building built on all possible provinces (barracks/docks).

Urbanization is the key to develop poor provinces. It converts agriculture to commerce/production and thus make space for agriculture growth. As for manpower, consider switching your Conscription Law to advanced ones and pick idea groups like Aristocratic, Logistic or Militarist ideas.

The issue there is that it is not quite clear as to when it is even possible to increase urbanization, unless I`m missing something, provinces can`t get ~improve sanitation~ all that often.

Still, maybe this is something that will improve with the ~cabinet system~, but as it stands I don`t think the development system in this mod is working very well, even stacking -development time doesn`t seem to do too much.

A tooltip to show why specific things can`t be currently improved (like sanitation or reclaim wasteland) would also be very positive.

-Save money and MP
-Spend the money on buildings and edicts
-Invest the profits on building and edicts
-Invest the profits on building and edicts
-Invest the prof...
-Invest the p...
-Invest...
-Wealthiest country on earth
-Keep expanding
-Don't expand, corruption and GC.

Did overextension get nerfed on this mod? It's been awhile since I played vanilla.

Once I became an empire, I decided to blob all the way up until 202% OE, and I had no problem at all. Then again, they were all on my primary culture group.

- Unite your people under one flag.

Originally posted by Scottcok:

Did overextension get nerfed on this mod? It's been awhile since I played vanilla.

Once I became an empire, I decided to blob all the way up until 202% OE, and I had no problem at all. Then again, they were all on my primary culture group.

- Unite your people under one flag.:AOEKnight:

Most of internal impacts of overextension has been removed. We have better ways to limit expansion

I have a hard time figuring out how exactly cultural assimilation speed is working, I went full nationalism/fanaticism on my policy as Yemen and find it pretty hard to make decent income or be able to convert provinces to my culture. Converting religion is fine but i wanted to make Yemeni empire. What are your experiences on culture swapping in CU? And do you recommend trying to change culture or go full tolerant?

Originally posted by dupol_11:

I have a hard time figuring out how exactly cultural assimilation speed is working, I went full nationalism/fanaticism on my policy as Yemen and find it pretty hard to make decent income or be able to convert provinces to my culture. Converting religion is fine but i wanted to make Yemeni empire. What are your experiences on culture swapping in CU? And do you recommend trying to change culture or go full tolerant?

Both ways are fine and they are not multi-exclusive. Cultural Assimilation requires 100% Cultural Acceptance and there are many ways to achieve that. For Yemen, I think a good combination might be Constitutional Ideas + Religious Ideas + Expansion Ideas + Fanaticism + Pluralism.

Ive been going a bit crazy tryimg to figure out how to change those conscription laws you mention? hate the moral loss from the feudal conscription

I would not recommend ever trying to get enough militarization to be able to change conscription laws since you would lose 0.5 to 5 ducats a year per province by not having economic buildings there and the boni from improving your conscription arent that good.
But i would like having the option to change conscription law without a militarization requirement, but far later or at higher average literacy. Would be useful to represent not very militarized but highly advanced countries like GB or the Netherlands since they didnt use feudal conscription in early 19th century (I assume), but would've also been not militarized enough to be able to change conscription law in Common Universalis.

p.s.
wrong discussion, i know, but i didnt want to make 2 seperate comments :)