Hello, long time EU4 player, new Vic2 player here...

[Kirikano]

High tariffs and taxes are not necessary for every nation at game start. Still most of the time as an unciv wishing to push education, admin and military conquests you'll need a lot more income than if you just sit there.
Traditionnaly tariffs are an easier way for states to get income, especially since it's complicated to get an efficient tax system going on, that's why even if you push taxes to 100%, your effective tax rate is 20%. As the game goes taxes become a more versatile tool.
The amount of RP you get only depends of your own reforms and you should target countries with high pop and provinces, Luang Prabang or Cambodia are terrible places to conquer for research.
Panjab, Dai Nam and Korea should be almost enough to reach westernization by 1862. Korea should be invaded when you have the four military reforms granting RP, then it yields 14k-16k. Since Infamy can be a problem it's also possible to get the last thousands points from a japanese state. The southernmost one is great because you can cut it from the rest and thus not have to fight the whole japanese army.

UK and Russia can be a problem but Spain is very easy to defeat since they don't have a land route, as long as you've switched to regulars you should be able to overwhelm their landing stacks. Spain is no tech powerhouse so they won't have a very advanced army and you'll have massive numbers on them.

Are you sure that the amount of RP you get is solely based on your own reforms and how large your target is? Several places on the wiki states that its affected by the number of military reforms your target has. So just taking a state works and you don't have to use conquest to grab a whole country right? Would have been nice to know, as I didn't manage to grab Siam because they were too large for conquest until after the British chewed them up and sphered them.

Anyways, I finished my run today. Learned a lot of things. Last 30 years or so was really fun and full of great wars this time around. Two things in particular I learned:

1) Don't go crazy building lumber factories. Making China produce so much wood and tea seems to be a purposeful design to gimp their economy or something, forcing them to import most of what they need. Those lumber factories cost upwards of 2000 in subsidies to maintain in the end even though they were so profitable early game. I was forced to close most of them down when it became too much to sustain, leading to massive unemployment at the end because there was already no way I could upgrade factories fast enough to keep up with pop growth. Same deal with factories that use rubber. Even though I had a ton of rubber provinces, it just wasn't enough for all the factories that needed it. Really wish there was an option to replace a factory with an equal level factor in its place even if it costs a ton because constantly upgrading just wasn't fast enough.
2) Plan political reforms and the party in power carefully, sometimes giving in to rebels. I tried to pick the liberal party every chance I could because I thought it was a modern day Anglo-American type thing before I learned how each ideology works today.

Got a final few questions for you guys:

1) Does this generic culture union thing I saw on the wiki work? Say I could sphere all of Korea and Japan and retake my cores from Russia and I would become the East Asian culture union and gain all those cultures as accepted? I know I saw some people talking about Germany accepting Ashkenazi so I really wanted to at least accept Nanfanren cause I felt bad.
2) How do I get more clerks? I spent more than half the game with all NF on clerks and I don't think I even managed to get past 2%
3) What's a good fun country to play where I don't need to worry about having a navy. I hate managing a navy for some reason which is why I didn't pick Japan. UK is obviously right out, and probably Spain, Belgium, and The Netherlands. I didn't research past 10 naval tech in any game. (Also, I think transports should carry more than 1 brigade per transport or something, cause watching the USA attempt to invade Europe was just sad, they almost because Communist in the aftermath, and France was left alone in a Great War with Germany and the UK, and ended up occupied for so many years she lost all industry.)

EDIT - Oh and is there any particular reason why my alliances keep breaking? I noticed this happened several times because an longtime ally would suddenly offer me an alliance and then I check and like half of my alliances are gone for no reason. I know its not rebels enforcing demands or anything.

 

[PanH]

For RP conquest, it seems to be linked with
1) Your amount of military reforms (the one with +RP conquest, obvisouly)
2) The numbers of reforms of the other nation (or their literacy maybe)
3) Difference in pop size. Conquering 1M or 10M will yields different RP points, and even more so if you have different POP size yourself. Can't say for sure though, but this is what the game has led me to believe.

Lumber factories => This is true to pretty much anyone. Lumber factories aren't really profitable in the long term. I think only Russia can do with having more than 1 or 2.
Rubber => Rubber is a bottleneck resource, meaning there'll never be enough. Sphere nations that produce them, and even with all the Rubber of the world, you'll probably need more (especially as China).

China is NOT the cultural union of East Asian cultures (in fact, there is none), so you can't get Japanese and such as accepted, nor they will petition to be annexed.

Clerks : if you don't manage to get a lot, it's probably because they prefer the other middle class jobs which maybe are paid too high.

Prussia is a good land country. Homogenous pop with high literacy, a few wars already planned, formation of the NGF and the German Empire, etc. You'll be involved in pretty much every game mechanics, so it's good. You won't need a navy unless you want colonies (colonies are always good, but if you don't want navy, you can skip them).
France is nice too, though you'll need to make overseas colonies and stuff.
Russia is a land country, though you have a very low starting literacy. Can be fun until you're drowned in Rebels.

 

[maxirage]

PanH is wrong about RPs. The only thing about your target that RP conquest cares about is their number of provinces. Do some testing and you'll see that it works out, no matter what the wiki says.

 

[PanH]

PanH is wrong about RPs. The only thing about your target that RP conquest cares about is their number of provinces. Do some testing and you'll see that it works out, no matter what the wiki says.

Just did the test for you.
China conquers Korea with only Imported Weapons reform (+25% rp when conquering) : it gets 10900 rpoints.
It has +2% from plurality
So that's 10680 base plus plurality bonus.

Japan conquers Korea with Imported Weapons reform (+25% rp when conquering) and Land Reform (irrelevant) : 25000 rpoints (or maybe more).
+32% rpoints from Meiji Reform and plurality
So that would be (if we imagine it's exactly 25k, which we don't know for sure) : 18900 base rpoints.

Both were done with justifications as soon as the game start, with Korea having enacted NO reforms. Province number is not the only important thing, since conquering a province of China or conquering a lightly populated OPM doesn't grant the same rpoints, and as seen, the base points aren't the same.

 

[maxirage]

Pan, your test and your conclusions don't follow. Try using the same country (say China) and conquer two different targets. Conquering a populous Asian state or some backwater Arab one DOES give the same RPs, as long as the number of provinces is the same.

 

[PanH]

Pan, your test and your conclusions don't follow. Try using the same country (say China) and conquer two different targets. Conquering a populous Asian state or some backwater Arab one DOES give the same RPs, as long as the number of provinces is the same.

You're right. More population isn't equal more rpoints. But provinces size still isn't it.
As Japan, I conquered Yemen (a 8 provinces region with 100k POP) and it gave me 9750. Conquering Zheijiang (8 provinces chinese region with 2.5M POP) gave me 9200.

Bedouin pop is more literate than Chinese one (not by that much) though, so that could be one of the reasons.
Even then, I am unsure of why Japan is able to get so much more rp by conquering Korea than China is when doing it. Province size can't be the only factor, even if it was relative to the size of the country you're playing.

 

[Will Steel]

The most decisive point in westernizing China (or India, if it rebels or gets released) is huge army. All westernization in any countries of this scale has to be done at sword point. Rebels will come no matter how much you can try to prevent them. It is most beneficial to invest in a military reform and build some real infantry units, they help a lot against rebels. After that, you can slowly proceed to reform the economy.

I am not sure about how the 'gain RP by conquest' thing works, since I never conquer anybody until I westernize, or sometimes I play a simply weak nation like Sokoto that actually cannot conquer anyone/has no one around to conquer. So I cannot offer help in this part.

 

[maxirage]

You're right. More population isn't equal more rpoints. But provinces size still isn't it.
As Japan, I conquered Yemen (a 8 provinces region with 100k POP) and it gave me 9750. Conquering Zheijiang (8 provinces chinese region with 2.5M POP) gave me 9200.

Bedouin pop is more literate than Chinese one (not by that much) though, so that could be one of the reasons.
Even then, I am unsure of why Japan is able to get so much more rp by conquering Korea than China is when doing it. Province size can't be the only factor, even if it was relative to the size of the country you're playing.

The populous states change your country's literacy, and thus RP per turn. I've seen a formula someone derived on reddit, and your country's research rate factors into it. It was I believe:

RESEARCH_POINTS_ON_CONQUER_MULT * (0.75 + Research Points on Conquest bonus) * no. of provinces conquered * your nation's daily research points after conquest = Awarded points