I didn't particularly like the way the RGO system worked. The ability to expand just how much you like doesn't give much sense. Unemployment was a big issue, as was starvation. Even if the money is supposed to represent new technology, I believe it's way too abstracted.
Fertilizers, both guano and later artificial, helped increase food output. Technology helped expand mines and stuff like that. Railroads, canals and ports decided how much of what you produced could be shipped away from the place of production.
What I want is RGOs that says how much you can produce each day/month/whatever and how much each farmer/worker can produce. Say each farmercan produce ten units of grain and you have 500 workers working in that RGO. The maximum production value of grain in that RGO is 3000. That means that each worker only produce 6 units each. Now, this doesn't mean that those farmers can't live of what they produce, it just means that you pretty much have 200 people doing you no good.
Now, introduce guano. It doubles the effectiveness of the farmers, and how much the RGO produce. Suddenly, you have 500 farmers producing 12 units of grain each. Once again, you get farmers who are capable of surviving on what they produce, but you still have 200 farmers doing squat. Bring in population growth, and before you know it, the farmers are living below the line of poverty, leading to emigration.
Now, what I have at length tried to explain here is that not all technological break-troughs meant that more jobs became available. Some break-troughs should expand the maximum output, some the effectiveness of the workers and some both. The ability to plough by machine didn't mean more jobs became available, it meant that less people were able to do the same job. Guano increased the output that each square mile got. And I suppose irrigation-systems actually made hitherto infertile land fertile, thus actually increasing the number of jobs available.
So, what I want to see is that over-all during the industrialization, more and more stuff being produced or extracted by less and less people. opening up for peopleto get jobs at factories, become soldiers, etc, without decline in the food and resource production. If you guys can represent this better then you did in Victoria I, that in itself would be enough to sell the game to me.
Also, I'd like to see food beind produced in almost every province, in addition to another RGO. Just because some regions didn't export much food, doesn't mean they weren't able to produce all or most of the food they consumed. Forcing those regions to import
all the food they consume is ahistorical.