My Japan is going nowhere fast.
Sorry this is so long, but I believe I have some very relevant questions.
Although I've been playing Paradox games for a while, I never really got off the ground with V1, so POP's, RGO's etc. are all new to me. I do read the manual and strategy guide and search their contents for answers. I did review the "necromancy" rule, and I'm pretty sure this meets the criteria. Plus it's only been a few days.
I started a Japan game last night before I discovered this fine AAR. I never came close to the pop tax revenue numbers that Singleton shows on his first screens and was pretty much reduced to drastically lowering expenses to keep my budget from exploding.
I am playing with a post-release registered version of the game. I'm also playing a slower game, trying to reign in my budget problems before moving forward to go for Civilized status.
At this point I'm in mid-July 1837, so I could be so early that the problems I'm outlining will straighten out. I haven't discovered Gold.
My budget is running a deficit of about 15-20 a day. I have 3335 in funds. Currently, in July of 1837 my tax revenue from the Poor is 32 (Singleton's is 61) from the Middle 1.3 (Singleton's is 5.3) and from the Rich 5.8 (Singleton's is 18.31). My taxes for the same three groups (post switch to Liberal) are 50%, 19%, and 29% respectively (Singleton's are 50%, 50%, 50%). As mentioned above, I didn't get any "Gold discovery" event, but I'm betting that had to do with how laborer POP's evolved. I'll put a NF on them when I replay.
I switched to Liberal to give some tax relief because my artisans were not getting anywhere close to their needs met and I was afraid I was going to lose them all to demotion. Even before, with the Shogunate party, where I couldn't go below 50% I don't think I saw numbers approaching Singleton's.
Then, I noticed another very curious thing: my product needs for the pops were through the roof. Plus, I was exporting lots of these very needed Living Needs resources. I tried to set up some manual trades to alleviate some of the pressure (setting the "buy from stockpile option to on) but that didn't seem to do much good either. Besides, it blew up my budget even when I set the max stockpile very low for those specific goods.
So the low revenue and the POPs not getting even their Living needs met are my two biggest problems. I can post some screenshots for critique by the thread, but I didn't think that was probably appropriate.
I'd love the thread followers' reaction to some of the challenges I've outlined above. It'll help me and others as well. After reading this AAR, I plan to replay Japan because I too think it's a great learning experience.