On the first, POP needs quantities are tied to the number of industrial and commercial techs you research, whereas before you had the POPs having full demand from the start. So it is easier earlier in game to deal with POP needs, especially important now if you want capitalists to build things for you, as they have to be able to fill all their needs (to the limit of availablity on the market) before they start saving reserves for building things. As you reserach commerce and industry techs, the quantities of needs do increase, so the important thing is to be expanding your export income as fast as, or faster than, the increase in quantity of needs due to tech research.
On the second, electoral system is more important as policies of parties can impact what you can do with your society
capis build on their own best under laissez-faire, but you lose all control. Interventionist governmnets allow the state to build rail and expand factories while capis do their thing, giving players more control, state capitalism gives control to the state while making it very expensive for capis to build things, and command economy only the state builds things.
Anti-military governments can not promote POPs to soldiers in peacetime, while jingoist governments can not demobilize soldiers to other uses.
Moralist governments can not convert clergy pops to other uses.
non-national POPs can not be converted from what they start out with unless you have a full-citizenship party in power. If you have full citizenship, you can convert non-national pops in States to other kinds of workforces, while in colonies you can convert the POPs to anything but soldiers.
So politics does play a role moreso than in pre-Revolutions Victoria, and it means thinking alot about where you want to take your society. POPs have default ideologies, so if you want to retain economic control over development to at least some degree, it means not creating lots of liberal POPs, and slowly evolving your industrialization rather than trying to rush to be top industrial power from the get-go - otherwise you end up likely stuck with liberal laissez-faire governments that limit your ability to influence the economy.
Revolutions definitely brings new content to Victoria, and it takes a little getting used to some of the differences, but it is a definite improvement on the original Victoria IMHO.
