I see, so sell what I make and buy the resources for the factories instead of the pops.
You understand perfectly.
What about wood? I have been struggling with raw materials and the world market hasn't been a steady supplier. I don't produce this myself, I think.
Are you talking about timber or lumber. Timber comes from an RGO, while you build a factory to produce lumber from timber. Anyway, getting to choose materials from the world market is given out by a nation's ranking. #1 ranked nations get first dibs at drawing what they need from the world market, then #2 gets a shot at what is left, and so on. So, if you are way down the pole, you will sometimes see difficulty in getting those materials you are in need of getting right away. About the only thing you can do is set you "need" to 1000 units (maxed) and hope for the best. Do this from day one and you may have a chance of getting some timber before the supply dries up from higher ranked nations taking it away. Seems I remember Brazil have a problem with timber in 1.04. It could be very frustrating.
And, I've haven't been able to increase my work force pops. As soon as I assign a worker they disappear. What factors influence their re-assignment/disappearance?
Small pops will merge if you are not careful. If you have two pops with the same culture/religion stats and both are below 10,000 in size, let's say one is a craftsman and the other is a laborer. You convert the laborer into a craftsman and *bang*, they merge and it looks as if one of the pops has disappeared.
My learning strategy is to concentrate on developing an economy before waging war or some such activity. I suspect that all of these actions are interdependent and I need to broaden my learning curve??
You are learning pretty much the way I learned. Patience is called for. You are learning an extremely complicated game that happens to possess the user interface from Hell. Just about the time you think you have a handle on it, the game will throw you a curve you were not expecting. Hang in there. It is worth the learning curve, in my opinion.
And, yes, if you do not have a successful economy, you can forget waging war as a successful strategy. Here on the outset, I would recommend aiming to get you nation into Great Power status and keeping it there until game's end. That will be your first successful game.
