well, at least now you get a feeling how it can happen that some countries flourish while other decline. It is just about good or bad governance.
Let's see, you managed to turn the leading nation of the world into a mere runner-up economically, which is most probably spending too much money on military, while still losing battles left and right.
Your country suffers from huge social imbalances, where the rich get richer and the poor have three choices : to get clubbed dead while rioting, get shot dead in some unimportant African wasteland or starve and work themselves to dead in merry old England.
Good food is probably rotting in your warehouses (trade stockpiles) while your people can't afford it due to high taxes and high tariffs.
Instead of helping your people you are spending your time fantasizing about some super-weapons which will turn a totally lost war into a certain victory and you are philosophising that democracy is a very bad governmental system as you are giving it ALL to the people , who are still moaning ... naturally this is totally unreasonable as they should be happy living in their slums , seeing their children die in young age and earn barely enough to afford some cheap liquor to forget about their sorrows ...
Welcome to reality ...
Lets start with the basics.
A tax rate of under 33 % will slowly reduce militancy. Slowly means that if you are having around 10 militancy among your poor pops it will take around 10 years at a tax rate of 0% to calm down your people and to prevent them from constant rioting.
This will also allow you to conquer vast lands but controlling them only with a small military, in this case having more troops to take on the real dangerous opponents, like normally the Germans.
A full funding of crime fighting will halve the revolting risk as well, so does keeping troops in highly populated areas like London or Liverpool (thats how the Prussians ensured their power during the liberal revolution)
Moreover recruiting from natives will cost you only 10% to maintain your army. In this case you can build up a large standing army about 150+ divisions but still ensuring a fiscally sound statehood. 150+ divisions even allow you cover all England with divisions which will significantly speed up the reduction of militancy (along with low taxes)
If you are concerned about not being able to introduce social policies then simply give universal suffrage to the people. Poor farmers normally normally vote for the Conservatives and poor unhappy factory workers for the Socialists (after 1890). Both will will have at least Interventionist views on the market. Nevertheless social policies are veeery expensive and hence I normally introduce only best healthcare, because of the positive population growths modifier.
In general you should always tax the Middle Class highest (best at 33%, maximum at 49%) while reducing tax for the poor (riots) and rich (capitalist building activities). This is what they do in EACH developed country of the world.
It also might be an interesting option at the beginning of a game to tax the rich at 100% in order to exterminate the Aristocracy. After all the old rich people are impoverished and disappeared (turned into farmers) then I fund a new venture capitalist class in specific undeveloped areas. I like to do that when I play a South American or an Asian nation, but it also works wonders in Russia. This part of the revolution the Soviets got right, but they failed at the second part.
Regarding badboy ... well, you obviously managed to become a real hated warmonger and you know how the Americans are when they don't like you. An old trick is to release colonies to reduce your badboy score and then to reconquer them in two steps (first demand all lands, but the capital, then later conquer the capital and then again release the colony). Each province which was liberated in that way reduces your bad boy score by 1.
My favorites are Siam (Thailand) and this desert state that you can release in Lybia. Both have many provinces.
Last but not least, factories.
First, please note that your "stupid" capitalist are same ones (AI engine) as the ones, which turned the USA into the leading nation. Economically every nation develops as per the indvidual decisions of its key participants, which are decided by the same AI that lets your capitalist build railroads and factories, or not.
So what are these "individual" capitalists looking for? Well, first they look for returns on their investments! Every railroad significantly boosts production and hence profits in a province or a state at no further variable costs but just capital expenditure.
Hence capitalist first build railroads.
Second, capitalist first and foremost aim to turn the cheap raw material of your country into more valuable goods. It is a risky and an expensive decision for them to build a factory that depends on imports only. Especially when they have to pay tariffs.
So let's imagine there is a country which has lots of coal. What can you do with coal? You can turn it into glass. (basically you can reach the necessary temperatures to make glass) Ok, lets build a glassfactory ..
Now the same country has lots of cheap wheat. Glass and wheat makes liquor. That sounds profitable.
But could you imagine a country where almost all wheat farmers have taken up jobs in the industries and hence most wheat is imported. Besides the World Market is oversupplied with glass, which can hence be cheaper imported than produced?
Well, in these cases it might be more profitable to turn to goods like furniture or cloths or artillery or ships ... if there are enough local suppliers for steel and lumber and fabric.
So how can you encourage your capitalists to build weapons factories ? Just make sure that they build up value chains.
If you want them to produce furniture, then at first make sure that your wood cutters are working hard and then wait until a lumbermill springs up and then soon the first furniture factory will open gates.
If you want to speed up processes then create important factories yourself (like steel an chemicals) or better make sure that the existing supplying industries (steel, chemicals, fabric, lumber and explosives) work on maximum productivity.
How can you do that ?
Either you support people in attaining better qualifications (provide money and free books to farmers or factory workers so they can get a degree and take up clerk jobs) and make sure that big clerk pops are working in the most important factories (best >25k or even >75k).
Or you boost productivity of all industries in a region by investing into better infrastructure (railroads).
Or , if your export are high, you provide more people with cheap venture capital so that clerks will become entrepreneurs (capitalists) themselves. These new entrepreneurs will then found new companies (build factories) often in markets which are still undersupplied.
This is what I always liked most about Victoria. Whatever you do (positive measure) makes actually perfect sense.
It is possible to turn even Korea (which is scripted to be colonized by Japan) into a First-World nation, just given some time and using the right policies ..
(as an example : You are the strong man in a Constitutional Monarchy in order to be able to change the ruling party as per your needs. Most of the time you follow ultra-liberal policies, but occasionally you use state planned initiatives to boost certain key industries. I decided for steel as I had lot of coal and iron and lots of labour in the grain provinces. I also funded some big capitalist groups in Seoul and the Southern provinces.They moved quickly from steel into steamer building , which is one of the most profitable goods in Victoria. In this way the country double its exports every 10 years and this allowed to fund education for the people, army, navy etc. Later I read about the recent history of South Korea ... economics is no random game !
