idea 1:
development should be treated like stability. you invest mana to increase your development from -3 to +3, while events make it fall back. high development means faster/more/better development in your lands
idea 2:
seperate the development into tiers and price them differently (and do it separately for each individual mana type)
T1 development less or equal 3-3-3 - cheap development that costs only gold, slowly and randomly occurs over time
T2 development less or equal 5-5-5 - cost a small amount of mana (say, 10 per click)
T3 dev less or equal 7-7-7 - costs a larger amount of mana (say, 25 per click)
T4 dev less or equal 9-9-9 - costs a large amount of mana (say, 50 per click +1% per dev point)
etc
if a province is 4-2-2 then that means developing its admin costs like T2 while developing its production and military are T1 in costs.
higher tiers can cost both mana AND gold
Max development allowed = tech level. that is, if your nation has admin tech 8, military 9, and diplo 5, then your max dev is 8-5-9. that means the biggest city possible is 32-32-32
discounts/penalties to dev should be significantly smaller (eg, university gives -5% or -10%, mountains give +5 or +10%).
development efficiency (from tech) should shift the tiers by a fixed number rather than giving a % bonus/malus (eg, T1 becomes 4-4-4, then 5-5-5)
