Buildings and development strategy for tall play

[rob_mtl]

So I've been experimenting with different strategies for buildings, playing as England, one of the richest countries with a variety of goods and terrain at the 1444 start.

For the sake of simplifying the experiment and focusing primarily on development and buildings, I sold/returned all the French provinces except Calais and diplo annexed Ireland and Scotland by admin tech 10.

There are plenty of posts about years to return on investment for buildings, which are certainly useful, but none that I have seen put buildings in relation to development, which increases over the course of the game. I haven't crunched any numbers for these tests so this is partly guesswork, and I welcome any corrections.

So my tests are based around these principals:
1) it's better to use monarch points to increase dev in provinces that have buildings
2) it's better to build buildings in provinces that are high dev and especially that you are planning to develop.

The second point is key. Many players sort provinces by income increase when constructing buildings and sort by tax/production/manpower increase when developing. At the start of the game, this is not necessarily the best approach. England, for example (excluding French provinces in this case), starts with very few provinces with 10 or more development. If the player builds churches, barracks and workshop according to the income gain indicated in the building interface, a few provinces will end up getting the best yields in the development interface--even though these are not necessarily good provinces to develop. Higher potential provinces get neglected and end up missing building slots because of their low 1444 development.

In most runs, I've found that you're more likely to have money for buildings before you have excess monarch points for development. Early game money should be spent on embracing the renaissance, choosing a naval doctrine (these are cheap at the start and only get more expensive as the game progresses) and building any land/naval units you might need early game before constructing buildings.

So where should we build our first buildings?

I have found the best approach is to use terrain, rather than starting development. Accepted/primary culture is also important, although you can simply spend diplo points to get a culture accepted as needed later (do this as early as possible). Cloth provinces on grassland should also get buildings early and coastal/COTs/capitals should also get priority. Marketplaces go on COTs and estuaries, but every farmland province gets a barracks, church, and workshop, regardless of starting dev or trade good. If you have extra monarch points (likely after the War of the Roses for England), use the encourage development edict on those provinces, then sort by income/manpower increase in the dev interface. Remove encourage development edict when your monarch points are low and replace with Protect Trade (if profitable) or Advancement Effort (if waiting on an institution). Obviously, if you're short on farmland, grassland is the second best choice.

So in order of priority:

1. Farmland with cloth/COT/coastal
2. Farmland without cloth/COT/coastal
3. Grassland with cloth/COT/coastal
4. Grassland without cloth/COT/coastal but high value trade goods
5. Grassland without cloth/COT/coastal and low value trade goods
6. Other terrain with cloth/COT/coastal
7. Other terrain with high value trade goods/COT/coastal
8. Other provinces.

In terms of "other terrain", it should be prioritized in this order

1. Drylands
2. Woods/Coastline/Savannah
3. Forest/Highlands/Steppes
4. Hills/Marsh
5. Mountain/Jungle/Coastal Desert
6. Glacial/Desert

Which building should we build first?

While churches probably have the best ROI in the game based on the calculations I've seen in other posts, the choice of first building (between church, workshop and barracks), should also be guided by which idea trees you take first and second. When you are spending monarch points on ideas, you won't have excess for that type of development. In my case, I took Exploration and Expansion, so for the first 75-100 years, I mostly had excess military points (once I got a decent monarch/. Getting barracks online ASAP meant that the excess points invested in development yielded higher returns. Obviously a high starting dev provinces like London should get a church/marketplace early because of the fast ROI. If you're choosing, for example, a military idea followed by a diplo idea, churches in all farmland provinces would be a better investment.

What about the other buildings?

The other two buildings (out of church, workshop, or barracks) should be built in farmland provinces shortly after the first building, because otherwise your development will become capped by having too much of one type (e.g. 3 ADM, 3 DIP, 6 MIL). While high value trade goods provinces should have the highest diplo development, your tax/manpower provinces may also need some diplo points to avoid getting capped. If you're going to invest diplo points in a grain or fish province to allow for more MIL/ADM development, it might as well have a workshop to get the highest value possible.

Long term planning/Other points

• Make sure your farmlands provinces have enough buildings slots for church, barracks, workshop and manufactories (plus marketplace for COTs and estuaries). It may be worth spending a few extra monarch points to this end.
• It may also be worthwhile to leave the Protect Trade edict on when not developing for certain COTs. In these case it may be worthwhile to build courthouses.
• Upgrade COTs in provinces with good terrain ASAP. This will reduce development cost even further. If the province/state has farmland/grassland, go to level 3. If the province has poor terrain, but the rest of the state has good terrain, go to level 3. If the province and state have bad terrain, don't upgrade.
• Forts should not be built in farmlands (except perhaps the capital). There are circumstances where ramparts are strategically worthwhile to slow down the enemy, such as the mountain passes in the Alps or Gibraltar.
• I can't think of a use case for coastal defenses. Build a bigger and stronger navy instead. They might be slightly worthwhile if you have few coastal provinces and/or a limited naval forcelimit.
• Large naval/colonial powers may hit a sailor bottleneck mid to late game. High dev coastal fish provinces are the best place for docks, and it may also be worthwhile to stack impressment offices on these. I would only build docks/impressment offices if and when a bottleneck is hit.
• Regimental camps and shipyards should only be built in low development provinces. I find forcelimit is rarely a problem, depending on which idea trees you pick and how many colonies you have. The faster ship construction time may make it worthwhile to build heavies in provinces with shipyards. Very tall play may make these buildings more worthwhile.
• If you feel like you need more manpower, high dev farmland provinces with wine, grain or livestock could have soldier's households instead of farm estates. Save fish for sailors.
• It's probably more worthwhile to build trade company investments overseas than church/workshop/barracks in low dev/bad terrain provinces midgame. An extra merchant and higher trade income will pay off very quickly.
• Workshop and manufactory are worthwhile in low dev/poor terrain provinces with high value trade goods mid-game.
• It's worth it to build marketplaces in colonial nations/trade company provinces if you don't conquer the whole node.
• Build universities in your high dev/farmland/cloth provinces ASAP.
• Building upgrades (trade depot, training fields, counting house, town hall) should be built very selectively, and only once you've built trade company investments and manufactories.
• State Houses are only useful for very wide play. If you must build state houses, pick poor terrain/poor trade goods/low dev provinces in high dev states. You could also pick paper/glass/gems provinces but you'll be giving up a lot of manufactory income. I've rarely ever hit a governing points bottleneck as colonial British Empire, for example. Wide Austria is another matter...

Playing Wide

If you're doing a WC or going on a rabid killing spree you can probably ignore just about everything above and only build what you need to support a large army. Many players say that it isn't worthwhile investing in marketplaces or upgrading COTs, for example. This is only true if you're going to rapidly conquer your entire trade node. Otherwise, every day spent with lower trade power in your home node increases the value and ROI of marketplaces/COT upgrades.


The above strategy is just my most recent theories, which as I mentioned haven't been exhaustively checked with math (sorry, too lazy). Please tell me where I'm wrong!

 

[Darth.]

If you feel like you need more manpower, high dev farmland provinces with wine, grain or livestock could have soldier's households instead of farm estates. Save fish for sailors.

Soldier's households + barracks in appropriate provinces is insane manpower. More when you get training fields. You can easily get 10-15k manpower from a single province. Thus all grain provinces should have soldier's households not manufactories. Grain is a very cheap good and diplo mana should be spent on devving production of high value trade goods instead.

Use tax + mil mana for your manpower provinces and add training fields + households followed by temples/cathedrals.

Mil + diplo mana for your manufactory provinces and add a training fields/barracks on them too after the manufactory+workshop combo.

Speaking from experience, you can get easily a manpower reserve of a million men from 30 provinces like this. Less if you dev your mil in provinces more than I did which was 9-10 (as a minimum).

Build universities in your high dev/farmland/cloth provinces ASAP.

If you're playing tall, universities go everywhere.

State Houses are only useful for very wide play. If you must build state houses, pick poor terrain/poor trade goods/low dev provinces in high dev states. You could also pick paper/glass/gems provinces but you'll be giving up a lot of manufactory income.

Courthouses and townhall go in every province. State houses don't need to be in every state, but they should be built on a province with a bad trade good. Like wool or naval supplies. Or wine. Grain is a "good" trade good because of manpower. Even a tall Prussia will need State houses as you keep devving provinces.

Regimental camps and shipyards should only be built in low development provinces.

You never really need regimental camps since you're almost certainly going quantity+economic if playing tall.

Also forts should never be on terrain where the defender doesn't get bonuses. The capital can be an exception. Woods/hills/mountain forts only as much as possible. Also maintain overlapping zones of control to ensure quick devastation reduction ticks and splendor maintenance.

Quantity + economic for tall also means you should eventually go for trade as your 4th or 5th idea at latest to take advantage of the 20% goods produced policy it has with economic as well as the trade efficiency policies and bonuses. As well as the merchants.

 

[rob_mtl]

Lots of interesting points in your reply. Much appreciated!

Grain is a "good" trade good because of manpower.

I am a big fan of foregoing manufacturies in grain provinces for manpower definitely. If you're short on grain provinces, it may be worth "sacrificing" a few wine/livestock provinces as well in exchange for manpower. In the case of England, there are so many cloth, iron/copper provinces to generate production income that Farm Estates seem pretty pointless.

you're almost certainly going quantity+economic if playing tall.

I avoided discussing national ideas in the above strategy because there are a number of considerations depending on what country you're playing. As naval England, for example, I have found taking Exploration and Expansion early (2nd and 3rd if not 1st and 2nd), combined with a navigator advisor can guarantee control of the Ivory Coast, Cape, Delaware Bay and partial control of the Mediterranean by 1550 or so, followed by an early invasion of India. Most of this can be done without bloodshed or warfare. Last playthruogh I fought about 2-3 wars only between uniting the British Isles and invading India, and my trade income was surpassing production and taxes.

An ideas strategy for a "tall" colonizer (if you can call a globe-spanning trade empire tall) might go something like this: Exploration, Expansion, Economic, Quantity, Trade, where you could possibly shift the first two later. You might argue that Expansion is unnecessary--I really like the cheaper COT upgrades, trade boost and extra colonists to speed things up.

Strictly speaking though, colonies can be grabbed in wars if you open with Economic and Quantity. I probably take the colonial ideas first because I like to chill out and SimCity when I play tall England or Holland.

 

[Siddy00]

Thanks for the interesting read! I generally like to play at least somewhat tall, and I'm definitely one of the players who 'sort provinces by income increase when constructing buildings and sort by tax/production/manpower increase when developing', to put it in your words; this post is an incentive to put some more thought into it next time

Upgrade COTs in provinces with good terrain ASAP. This will reduce development cost even further. If the province/state has farmland/grassland, go to level 3. If the province has poor terrain, but the rest of the state has good terrain, go to level 3. If the province and state have bad terrain, don't upgrade.

Just a quick thought: I tend to prioritise large states for level 3 COTs to benefit more from the statewide additional building slot. I'm not sure how that balances out against terrain and such, but then again, so far I haven't paid much attention to that in the first place

 

[rob_mtl]

Just a quick thought: I tend to prioritise large states for level 3 COTs to benefit more from the statewide additional building slot. I'm not sure how that balances out against terrain and such, but then again, so far I haven't paid much attention to that in the first place

Large states for Level 3 COTs is certainly a good idea for the building slots, but also for the development cost reduction, which applies to all provinces in the state. Keep in mind, you can only have as many lvl 3 COTs as you have merchants, so you want to choose which ones to expand carefully. In addition to the number of provinces in the state, you should also consider the terrain of those states and their resources. Prioritize states with lots of cloth, farmland and grassland provinces. It's also worth considering the COT province itself, its potential tax, production, manpower and sailors in the long term. Coastal COTs are probably more worthwhile than landlocked ones in most cases.

One thing I didn't mention, specifically for England, is that seats of parliament should be given out to provinces with the most development potential, rather than the provinces with the highest starting development.

 

[Less2]

Important note: Devving provinces gives crown land. There is huge synergy between driving your dev cost down to 4 mana apiece, selling 10% crownland, deving 100 times to get the crownland back immediately and then building a ton of buildings with the several thousand ducats that just poofed into your treasury from nowhere. It's totally fine to keep crownland around the 20s/30s even if you want absolutism because you can get to max crownland very easily through one or two rounds of devving without selling crown land beforehand. Getting crown land through devving rather than seizing also ensures your estates are always very happy with you and powerful, giving their maximum bonuses (including -10% dev cost) and leaving you able to easily revoke privileges if/when needed.

 

[rob_mtl]

Important note: Devving provinces gives crown land. There is huge synergy between driving your dev cost down to 4 mana apiece, selling 10% crownland, deving 100 times to get the crownland back immediately and then building a ton of buildings with the several thousand ducats that just poofed into your treasury from nowhere. It's totally fine to keep crownland around the 20s/30s even if you want absolutism because you can get to max crownland very easily through one or two rounds of devving without selling crown land beforehand. Getting crown land through devving rather than seizing also ensures your estates are always very happy with you and powerful, giving their maximum bonuses (including -10% dev cost) and leaving you able to easily revoke privileges if/when needed.

This is a super good point! I don't tend to min max to the point where my dev cost is 4 mana, but the general idea that selling crownland is not necessarily a bad thing is good to retain. In my England run, I found I was at 100% crownland by 1550, so lots of room to sell and build before absolutism.

 

[BalticM]

Principles that I follow

Take Economic idea as first if you want to maximize speed of progress towards tall country.
Before you start province developing spree - be sure to finish all Eco ideas first and use all other means that decrease developing costs - edicts, prosperity, burghers interaction and etc.
Develop the cheapest to develop provinces first - usually it's low dev good terrain provinces.

Use only Diplomatic and Military points for province development.
If there is excess of Admin points - use them on Wool or other low priced trade good provinces.
Production in the end gives far greater economy than Tax, and Manpower is never too much. While Admin points usually are more valuable elsewhere - coring new provinces, raising stability or filling up Admin group ideas which I find as best ones early on.

As first steps upgrade CoTs & build marketplaces there, build workshops, barracks and manufactories that give production everywhere. I build no more than 1 lvl3 CoT for same trade node.
As 4-5th building build courthouses.
And then final buildings depending on needs - shipyard, camp etc.
I tend not to build churches at all, unless it's specific provinces that didn't follow main pattern.
Some provinces may be reserved for Soldier's households or State house manufactory buildings when right tech level is reached, or in rare occasions to Ramparts in Fort provinces on strategical passes. But all in all I tend to build production manufactories mostly.

 

[Battlex]

Important note: Devving provinces gives crown land. There is huge synergy between driving your dev cost down to 4 mana apiece, selling 10% crownland, deving 100 times to get the crownland back immediately and then building a ton of buildings with the several thousand ducats that just poofed into your treasury from nowhere. It's totally fine to keep crownland around the 20s/30s even if you want absolutism because you can get to max crownland very easily through one or two rounds of devving without selling crown land beforehand. Getting crown land through devving rather than seizing also ensures your estates are always very happy with you and powerful, giving their maximum bonuses (including -10% dev cost) and leaving you able to easily revoke privileges if/when needed.

Do you not give privleiges that have 60% loyalty equilibrium?

So I've been experimenting with different strategies for buildings, playing as England, one of the richest countries with a variety of goods and terrain at the 1444 start.

For the sake of simplifying the experiment and focusing primarily on development and buildings, I sold/returned all the French provinces except Calais and diplo annexed Ireland and Scotland by admin tech 10.

There are plenty of posts about years to return on investment for buildings, which are certainly useful, but none that I have seen put buildings in relation to development, which increases over the course of the game. I haven't crunched any numbers for these tests so this is partly guesswork, and I welcome any corrections.

So my tests are based around these principals:
1) it's better to use monarch points to increase dev in provinces that have buildings
2) it's better to build buildings in provinces that are high dev and especially that you are planning to develop.

The second point is key. Many players sort provinces by income increase when constructing buildings and sort by tax/production/manpower increase when developing. At the start of the game, this is not necessarily the best approach. England, for example (excluding French provinces in this case), starts with very few provinces with 10 or more development. If the player builds churches, barracks and workshop according to the income gain indicated in the building interface, a few provinces will end up getting the best yields in the development interface--even though these are not necessarily good provinces to develop. Higher potential provinces get neglected and end up missing building slots because of their low 1444 development.

In most runs, I've found that you're more likely to have money for buildings before you have excess monarch points for development. Early game money should be spent on embracing the renaissance, choosing a naval doctrine (these are cheap at the start and only get more expensive as the game progresses) and building any land/naval units you might need early game before constructing buildings.

So where should we build our first buildings?

I have found the best approach is to use terrain, rather than starting development. Accepted/primary culture is also important, although you can simply spend diplo points to get a culture accepted as needed later (do this as early as possible). Cloth provinces on grassland should also get buildings early and coastal/COTs/capitals should also get priority. Marketplaces go on COTs and estuaries, but every farmland province gets a barracks, church, and workshop, regardless of starting dev or trade good. If you have extra monarch points (likely after the War of the Roses for England), use the encourage development edict on those provinces, then sort by income/manpower increase in the dev interface. Remove encourage development edict when your monarch points are low and replace with Protect Trade (if profitable) or Advancement Effort (if waiting on an institution). Obviously, if you're short on farmland, grassland is the second best choice.

So in order of priority:

1. Farmland with cloth/COT/coastal
2. Farmland without cloth/COT/coastal
3. Grassland with cloth/COT/coastal
4. Grassland without cloth/COT/coastal but high value trade goods
5. Grassland without cloth/COT/coastal and low value trade goods
6. Other terrain with cloth/COT/coastal
7. Other terrain with high value trade goods/COT/coastal
8. Other provinces.

In terms of "other terrain", it should be prioritized in this order

1. Drylands
2. Woods/Coastline/Savannah
3. Forest/Highlands/Steppes
4. Hills/Marsh
5. Mountain/Jungle/Coastal Desert
6. Glacial/Desert

Which building should we build first?

While churches probably have the best ROI in the game based on the calculations I've seen in other posts, the choice of first building (between church, workshop and barracks), should also be guided by which idea trees you take first and second. When you are spending monarch points on ideas, you won't have excess for that type of development. In my case, I took Exploration and Expansion, so for the first 75-100 years, I mostly had excess military points (once I got a decent monarch/. Getting barracks online ASAP meant that the excess points invested in development yielded higher returns. Obviously a high starting dev provinces like London should get a church/marketplace early because of the fast ROI. If you're choosing, for example, a military idea followed by a diplo idea, churches in all farmland provinces would be a better investment.

What about the other buildings?

The other two buildings (out of church, workshop, or barracks) should be built in farmland provinces shortly after the first building, because otherwise your development will become capped by having too much of one type (e.g. 3 ADM, 3 DIP, 6 MIL). While high value trade goods provinces should have the highest diplo development, your tax/manpower provinces may also need some diplo points to avoid getting capped. If you're going to invest diplo points in a grain or fish province to allow for more MIL/ADM development, it might as well have a workshop to get the highest value possible.

Long term planning/Other points

• Make sure your farmlands provinces have enough buildings slots for church, barracks, workshop and manufactories (plus marketplace for COTs and estuaries). It may be worth spending a few extra monarch points to this end.
• It may also be worthwhile to leave the Protect Trade edict on when not developing for certain COTs. In these case it may be worthwhile to build courthouses.
• Upgrade COTs in provinces with good terrain ASAP. This will reduce development cost even further. If the province/state has farmland/grassland, go to level 3. If the province has poor terrain, but the rest of the state has good terrain, go to level 3. If the province and state have bad terrain, don't upgrade.
• Forts should not be built in farmlands (except perhaps the capital). There are circumstances where ramparts are strategically worthwhile to slow down the enemy, such as the mountain passes in the Alps or Gibraltar.
• I can't think of a use case for coastal defenses. Build a bigger and stronger navy instead. They might be slightly worthwhile if you have few coastal provinces and/or a limited naval forcelimit.
• Large naval/colonial powers may hit a sailor bottleneck mid to late game. High dev coastal fish provinces are the best place for docks, and it may also be worthwhile to stack impressment offices on these. I would only build docks/impressment offices if and when a bottleneck is hit.
• Regimental camps and shipyards should only be built in low development provinces. I find forcelimit is rarely a problem, depending on which idea trees you pick and how many colonies you have. The faster ship construction time may make it worthwhile to build heavies in provinces with shipyards. Very tall play may make these buildings more worthwhile.
• If you feel like you need more manpower, high dev farmland provinces with wine, grain or livestock could have soldier's households instead of farm estates. Save fish for sailors.
• It's probably more worthwhile to build trade company investments overseas than church/workshop/barracks in low dev/bad terrain provinces midgame. An extra merchant and higher trade income will pay off very quickly.
• Workshop and manufactory are worthwhile in low dev/poor terrain provinces with high value trade goods mid-game.
• It's worth it to build marketplaces in colonial nations/trade company provinces if you don't conquer the whole node.
• Build universities in your high dev/farmland/cloth provinces ASAP.
• Building upgrades (trade depot, training fields, counting house, town hall) should be built very selectively, and only once you've built trade company investments and manufactories.
• State Houses are only useful for very wide play. If you must build state houses, pick poor terrain/poor trade goods/low dev provinces in high dev states. You could also pick paper/glass/gems provinces but you'll be giving up a lot of manufactory income. I've rarely ever hit a governing points bottleneck as colonial British Empire, for example. Wide Austria is another matter...

Playing Wide

If you're doing a WC or going on a rabid killing spree you can probably ignore just about everything above and only build what you need to support a large army. Many players say that it isn't worthwhile investing in marketplaces or upgrading COTs, for example. This is only true if you're going to rapidly conquer your entire trade node. Otherwise, every day spent with lower trade power in your home node increases the value and ROI of marketplaces/COT upgrades.


The above strategy is just my most recent theories, which as I mentioned haven't been exhaustively checked with math (sorry, too lazy). Please tell me where I'm wrong!

At game start I'll always hire the discounted advisors if a tag has them, if not all lv1s, and if a minor a mil advisor only.
As buildings come on line, for churches and workshops I just build if they produce +0.10, and markets in CoT. Normally that can get me to continental hegemon by 1500 as England

 

[KaiserJohan]

Republic's are nice for playing tall. They tend to be in or near good terrains, often in HRE, lots of MP and naturally have high Burger loyalty and influence

 

[Elisha]

Large states for Level 3 COTs is certainly a good idea for the building slots, but also for the development cost reduction, which applies to all provinces in the state. Keep in mind, you can only have as many lvl 3 COTs as you have merchants, so you want to choose which ones to expand carefully. In addition to the number of provinces in the state, you should also consider the terrain of those states and their resources. Prioritize states with lots of cloth, farmland and grassland provinces. It's also worth considering the COT province itself, its potential tax, production, manpower and sailors in the long term. Coastal COTs are probably more worthwhile than landlocked ones in most cases.

One thing I didn't mention, specifically for England, is that seats of parliament should be given out to provinces with the most development potential, rather than the provinces with the highest starting development.

Since CoT can be downgraded, you should cycle them (once you have the money) to always have the 10% dev cost when possible. The mana saving is worth more than the 1000 ducats once you have a decent income.
And for multiplayer, which is where you usually play tall, inland CoT>>Coastal ones, since the manpower from lvl3 inland CoT is worth way more than the sailors from coastal ones.

 

[EarlKonrad]

Since CoT can be downgraded, you should cycle them (once you have the money) to always have the 10% dev cost when possible. The mana saving is worth more than the 1000 ducats once you have a decent income.
And for multiplayer, which is where you usually play tall, inland CoT>>Coastal ones, since the manpower from lvl3 inland CoT is worth way more than the sailors from coastal ones.

Well, Costal Cost also decreases Yearly Naval Decay by -0.2% per port, so hurray for more Naval Tradition...?

I'd say that even in SP inland ports are better than costal ones. I used to always go for costal ports lvl 3 so I wouldn't have to worry about sailors and Naval Tradition but nowadays I'm leaning more towards inland nodes, even though Manpower is much easier to come by now (never hurts having 15M manpower instead of 12M)

 

[rob_mtl]

I think the coastal COTs are probably better early game and the inland ones better in the late game (because of sailors and manpower respectively). Luckily, you can just expand the inland ones later once you have more merchants.

 

[rob_mtl]

Do you not give privleiges that have 60% loyalty equilibrium?

England has a bit of a weird situation with only 2 estates (clergy and burghers). I try to avoid the privileges that increase influence faster than loyalty because it becomes hard to revoke privileges mid-game. I usually take the monopolies until I unlock workshops, and I like to leave a slot open for cheaper loans from the burghers for example. I find I'm often switching back and forth over the course of the game, especially once crown land is at 100%.

 

[rob_mtl]

UPDATE: So I've now compared two different approaches to idea groups for playing tall as England (selling French provinces at the start).

Strategy #1: Exploration -> Expansion -> Economic -> (Military idea)

Strategy #2: Economic -> Quantity -> Exploration

Strategy #1:

By around 1570, strategy #1 completely dominates the Ivory Coast, Cape, Caribbean, Chesapeake Bay and Saint Lawrence trade nodes, generating nearly 100 ducats a month in trade alone. Even without taking quantity, force limit is over a hundred for both army and navy, just from subject nations.

Strategy #2:

By around 1570, strategy #2 is falling badly behind Spain and Portugal in terms of colonies. Land force limit is above 100, but trade income is half of Strategy #1 (production income doesn't make up for it. Spain has a huge army and has conquered part of France..


Conclusion:

In both scenarios, GB has the income to invest in a larger army and eventually fight wars against other great powers , but in strategy #2, I had to send gifts to France until they would ally/join a war against Spain, and their alliances were still substantially stronger than mine. I'm not sure that rushing economic/quantity for faster development is worth it if early colonization is possible. In fact, as the main colonial nations (England, Portugal, Spain, Holland), I have found colonization to be more profitable than early game development in terms of both income, force limit, and general strategic position.

 

[Titanius Puffin]

No mention of innovative ideas.... that's another variation that works well for tall colonisers.

Innovative, Exploration, Expansion.
Excess mil points go towards innovativeness (50% bonus for each bonus), which coupled with lower tech costs and innovative-generating events becomes a virtuous circle where you have quite plentiful monarch points, and enjoy a military tech advantage semi-permanently.
You can actually earn innovativeness by rushing innovative ideas... the AI doesn't do it.

100% innovativeness is possible within a 140 years or so... at which point you take economic ideas and stack both the 10% inno score discount with the 20% econ discount. Add universities for another 20% if you can get the timing right.

At which point you drop stacks of monarch power on your cheap provinces.

That's a simplified plan, but I thought I'd offer it just for a kind of variety.
Usually the colonisation works out okay too.

 

[Darth.]

One thing I didn't mention, specifically for England, is that seats of parliament should be given out to provinces with the most development potential, rather than the provinces with the highest starting development.

Whenever I play with Parliament - not just as England - I always prioritize giving the seats to provinces with gold, latent coal, and my best trade goods for that production efficiency boost.

 

[rob_mtl]

Whenever I play with Parliament - not just as England - I always prioritize giving the seats to provinces with gold, latent coal, and my best trade goods for that production efficiency boost.

The coal comes online so late in the game I'm not sure if handing out Parliament seats to future coal provinces makes sense as England. There are grassland/cloth/COT provinces that will benefit from the seats for centuries before coal.

 

[rob_mtl]

REVISION/UPDATE (after more experimenting!)

In my initial guide I advised building barracks/church/workshop in all cloth/farmland/grassland/COT provinces. This is probably bad advice. Here is a simpler TLDR of the original post with some adjustments.

Build Marketplaces in COTs unless you have very high trade power everywhere. For tall play, I would upgrade all COTs to lvl 2 and your best ones to lvl 3 (not for the trade power, for the building slot and dev cost reduction).

Build Barracks/Soldier's Households in grain, fish, wine and livestock provinces, prioritizing those with cheaper development (farmland/grassland/parliament etc). Dev manpower as much as possible in these provinces. Dev tax if you have hit maximum manpower development. In your particularly high dev manpower provinces, you might as well build churches as to get extra tax.

Build Workshop/Manufactories in cloth, iron, copper, salt and other reasonably valuable trade goods (goods valued 3 or more IMO). Do this in COT/farmland/parliament/grassland and especially cloth provinces first. Dev production as much as possible in these provinces. Dev MIL if you hit a maximum with DIPLO development.

Churches are useful in the early game. I would build one in the capital and any provinces that start with a particularly high tax value, but once you've built those, I would prioritize barracks and workshop in almost any case except a tax income gain of .15 or more. Later on you might as well build more as building slots allow in provinces with this income gain value. While they will pay off in the long run, there's little advantage to stacking ADM dev points on particular provinces. ADM points should just prop up MIL points in your manpower provinces.

Build Shipyards in your best production provinces with high dev and lots of building slots. Recruitment time for ships is determined by DIPLO dev, and faster build times are worth it IMO. Obviously you should only do this if the building slots are not more useful for something more important.. London, for example, can usually fit a shipyard, once the marketplace, church, courthouse, workshop and textile manufactory are all built, but only then.

Build Docks in your highest development fish provinces only if you need more sailors, which you likely will if you are a large colonial nation. I have found it better to pick one (or maybe two) provinces with Docks and Impressment offices, rather than docks all over the place. Base sailors is modified by total development, so concentrating these buildings in one or two very high-dev fish provinces pays off more than spreading them around.

Courthouses are worth it when the income gain is .10 or more.

Regimental camp and state house (one per state, never in capital state) should go in wool or naval supplies provinces, as these goods are not good for manpower/production values. Only build as needed.