Well... theres many many things to suggest. The first thing I will start with is the population system. I personally love the pops, and think that if anything, they can use more detail. However, the amount of control you can have over them is ridiculous. I essentially think that all pop promotion and migration should be automated, although influenced by your policies, literacy, wealth, and urbanization. The latter is a concept lacking in Vicky, but very important to add to Vicky 2 I think.
POPs should be split in two categories. Urban POPs and Countryside POPs. On the country-side, you would have:
Slaves, Serfs - Farmers - Aristocrats
Clergymen
Soldiers - Officers.
On the Urban Side you would have:
Slaves - Laborers - Foremen - Merchants - Capitalists (Entrepreneurs)
Clergymen, Bureaucrats
Soldiers - Officers.
Slaves sometimes become serfs or laborers, but mostly stay slaves, unless slavery is abolished. Slaves have no unemployment, and are not affected by that therefore.
Serfs generally remain serfs as long as they are employed, although they may sometimes slowly become farmers. When unemployed, serfs massively leave the countryside to become laborers in the city.
Farmers are a very big group in undeveloped provinces. If the province develops, as long as employed, some farmers will slowly promote to Aristocrats. When farmers loose employment, they will generally urbanize and mostly become Laborers. Some Farmers will however become Merchants.
Aristocrats are very very rare in undeveloped regions. In more developed regions they exist more, and they are very valuable as they greatly increase the efficiency of the output of the land. This does however come at a cost: The more aristocrats your land employs, the less farmers and serfs it will have room for... at a far greater rate then the increase in aristocrats. Therefore, development of the countryside will lead to unemployed farmers and serfs, which in turn will lead to increasing urbanization, and, at the same time, social unrest. Successful Aristocrats will slowly promote to Capitalists as well.
Laborers are the basic unit of the cities. Development of the countryside will generally lead to massive influxes of laborer pops. Laborers have very low income and can earn you a lot of money, but they are also very susceptible to social unrest and migration when unemployed for too long. Unemployed laborers will stay laborers though. Employed laborers slowly tend to get promoted to foremen, sometimes also to merchants.
Foremen greatly increase the efficiency of your factories. However, foremen only can be employed in a ratio to your employed laborers, and are limited by that (though technological advances may influence the ratio). Unemployed foremen will soon demote to laborers. Employed foremen may over time become merchants. (If they manage to build up cash reserves.)
Merchants symbolize the arising 'middleclass' in growing population centers. Bakers, Butchers, and all kinds of other shops and services. Merchants are not dependent on 'employment/unemployment' and can therefore grow significantly large. Merchants tend to buy higher quality goods then laborers and people from the countryside, and can therefore be a backbone in your local economy. However, Merchants are dependent on the success of your overall economy. If your economy goes down and merchants can no longer make sufficient money, they may degenerate to laborers, or emigrate. On the other hand, successful merchants may promote to Capitalists.
Capitalists are a absolute necessity if you want your state to industrialize without direct investment from the government. To become a capitalist a pop needs to have considerable cash reserves for initial investments, although policies and technological advances may decrease these requirements later on. Unlike in Vicky, Capitalists now build up their own 'enterprises' which specialize in specific branches of the economy. The enterprise of a capitalist is shown in his information of course. Which enterprise a capitalist chooses to become his branch is largely dependent on locally available resources, infrastructure, colonies, and the world market, in that order. Early in the game, and in less developed regions, most likely enterprises for capitalists would be food (in regions with lots of agriculture and low industrial development) and 'heavy industries' (in regions with lots of mining and low industrial development). Capitalists will focus on building factories in their own province initially, but then expand to their state and even further as they get more powerful. When they start to expand their own industries outside their province, they also start to develop infrastructure if necessary, to support it. If a certain capitalist's industry is not bringing in profit, the expansions coming from that capitalist will stagnate, and eventually the capitalist might even bankrupt, which removes his factories entirely and turns the pop back into merchants. To avoid this, states can choose to support industries and capitalists directly (financial support) and indirectly by creating attractive circumstances. Of course, if desired, states can also bankrupt capitalists on purpose to make room for new ventures of another kind.
Clergymen are important to keep pops happy, especially in times of unemployment. They are automatically pulled from your Aristocrats, Merchants, and Capitalists, at a rate dependent on mainly your states policies. Their religions depend on the pop they are pulled from. They will also slowly convert pops to whatever religion they are part of, which can help migration. In times of economic downturn, the rate at which clergymen come up is increased from the base that depends on policies.
Bureaucrats are important to keep the state running efficiently in many ways. Greater social interventions from the state require more bureaucrats. Bureaucrats receive their wages directly from the state. As such, they can be another boost for a countries internal market, like merchants, but at the same time, they will also be a drain on the coffers of the state. Bureaucrats are promoted from foremen, merchants, and aristocrats, at rates dependent on your policies and their employment (which also depends on your policies). Unemployed bureaucrats tend to become laborers.
Soldiers are necessary to generate manpower to feed your states military. They, like Bureaucrats are fed directly from the states coffers. Soldiers are a population group that is fairly easy to influence for statesmen. Simple increases and decreases in their wage will decide the rate at which they are recruited. Soldiers are recruited from serfs, farmers and laborers.
Officers are necessary to generate leadership which in turn is needed to find appropriate generals to lead your military. The mechanism behind them is as it is for soldiers, but instead they are drawn from Aristocrats, Foremen, and Merchants, and as those groups are more limited in size generally, they will still be harder to grow.
Each of these population types also has its own effects on literacy rates. There are four categories, which indicate how hard or easy it is to educate a group. Slaves and Serfs are in the low group. Farmers, Laborers, Foremen, and Soldiers, are in the middle-low group. Aristocrats, Clergymen, Merchants, and Bureaucrats are in the middle-high group. Officers and Capitalists are in the high group. On top of these, Clergymen give a bonus to education of pops of their own religion. Bureaucrats give a bonus to education of pops of all religions.
This system would have considerable depth, yet require very little from the players, as the players wouldnt manage it directly but only influence it with their policies and decisions. An exception to that would (to some degree) be communism, which will knock out all capitalists entirely, and both require and allow the player to take total control of industrialization themselves.
This is a first post with a suggestion. Far more from me will follow Im sure.
