Yeah its probably that small difference, and for the rest we played pretty similar i guess. I actually was withought any depbt up to late 1860's, but the AI started stop building at times and if i didnt kept the building up my GDP would have tanked heh. Again was completely out of peasents like you, and already utilizing automation too, i guess we played with too few a poppulation to really test it further.
I didnt like the stealing of the Transvaal gold i have to say, the minting was excessive and well above my tariffs income. I mean your main criticism regarded a matter of optimal play, by that metric one would have reason to hit Trasvaal in pretty much every game and that would be very Meta then but also that might spoil my fun. With all that gold we both had reason to perhpas push the SOL of people a bit trough lower taxaction to get more internal consumption of those many plantation goods. Obviously in my first game where i was playing Portugal as a "trading nation" i hadnt taken Transvaal and that made a difference too indeed in that game i only had 10 million people whereas you had 14.6 million people for your counterexample which is almost 50% more population.
That is a good write up. Take in mind that most of my strats are typically "temporary meant", i too will often start in agrarianism and end in Laisse-faire for a good reason, though i wouldnt say there is nessecary a Meta on that as some put, from my perspective laisse faire typically requires either having enacted graduate taxation for its dividend tax or tax the rich high via consumption tax law to get the most out of it. Because asside of the extra company, the only advantage of LF is that less money is wasted but not that more contribution is given, so yes your improving the economy but your foremost making the rich a lot wealthier that doesnt necessarily directly translate to a benifit to the state though afcourse there are many ways in which it could that would be hard to quantify.
Yeah thats a factor, otoh Russia has non integrated states upon which it can put colonial exploitation and those poles are educated people usually. Russia can do some funky stuff with colonial exploitation in Siberia, including running highly profitable state owned railways lol, i mean for a change. Well for me what it regards to is the sheer profit that can be pulled out of a single industry with colonial exploitation, obviously there is a ratio to which government owned buildings reinvest and then there is a base profit to that ratio, high base profit means that the government has to buy and own relativly few to jack up the reinvestment rate and i'm sure you can see that matters too. Besides, it tends to turn a far higher ROI to be buying up forrestries and cotton plantations as they are relatively cheap for the sheer profit they would make under colonial exploitation, and then you also consider that Russia just has that much forrests and there are so many that got troughput bonus to them.
France starts prety prepped to go all in on the coal and the iron, and those are going to be more costly to purchase and will have less ROi to them even if i jack their price high plus its hard to get a high volume of iron and tools trough trade at game start. it's easier to work with wood and cloth than the combination oif iron, tools, wood and cloth especially when you arnt doing steel tools yet, as with iron tool you have to be able to sufficienly jack up the price of the tools so that they can still work profitably while buying expensive iron, a matter that can be mitigated with steel tools and steel if coal is kept affordable enough and/or when said steel mill is in a province that has a local oversupply of iron.
And besides starting at a higher GDP will result in less of a multiplier. I dont think thats a final detriment to the strategy nessecarily, but otoh it should be obvious even from your posted link that state ownership works great when that multiplier exists and is very much a valid strat, which i believe also makes my strat of importing lots of wood and cloth at a tariff valid since i'm doing it with a dis proportionally buffed reinvestment rate, with other words i would never get to such a high reinvestment rate faster if i didnt use the tariffs and it makes me accumulate state ownership and dividend income faster, but thats again something that is easier on a small nation Like Portugal which can feed much of its construction sector with imported wood and cloth whereas for Russia or France that construction sector will be much bigger. So as with many strats in Victoria 3, its all m matter to knowing when and where they apply most and best and should be used, not to be regarded as a strt thay apply to all situations equally good or throughout the game.
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