I've played on and off for the last months, and with the upcoming release of the new patch (and some very promising changes), I rushed the end of all my current runs (and my AAR save). I'm really not in the mood of doing map painting anymore, but I grabbed some nice achievements, had some unique games (especially one as Morocco where I went full naval and captured 3 flagships and sunk hundreds of ships over the World). The last one was probably the most enjoyable and relaxing, and something I had thought about for a while.
Getting Idea Guy as Manokwari, a small 1/1/1 province westernmost of Papua New Guinea. The idea is pretty simple, you conquer Ternate and Tidore asap, and you go from their starting position. The execution was trickier because they now actually get allies (forgive me, they did not around 2017) but I managed to conquer both of them, and went in a full peaceful and isolationist colonizing spree for over 100 years, and then I started expanding again to control trade.
A zoom on my glorious starting province, boosted to 10 dev but starting as 3. Its only asset is really that it borders 2 of the best provinces in the game.
Expanding was not part of the plan, but we still reached a decent development.
A comparison of the incomes. Most of ours is not trade, but production. Malacca allied to Spain, and I don't need to finish them to get the achievement, although that would obviously significantly boost my trade income. I'm still happy with what I have:
You'll notice that our income is a lot higher than all these uncivilized militarist nations,even if some of them are higher on the "Great Power" list. What defines a great power exactly if not your ability to drown in precious goods?
And indeed we produce precious goods. This is a typical 10 development 4 production province, but the amount of goods produced we have means it's actually as good as a 20 production province without any bonus.
And that's before getting Quantity as an idea group to add another 20% Goods Produced Policy, and way before coal appears.
So... What were the ideas you might ask? I actually only used about 500 points, some of them would be considered pretty subpar. I went for 50% Admin and 50% Diplo ideas, 0 military ones when I designed the nation. Here is a list of all the meaningful bonuses:
I started with a 6/6/6 ruler of 20 years old, which definitely helped in the early game. I was a Peasants Republic for some production efficiency and an early morale boost, and I literally always reelected. I used a lot of mil to strengthen government early on, but then I did not have to because of the Plutocratic-Economic policy, the final Government reform, and the finisher of my ideas.
I was Hindu and started with Tolerance of Heathens in traditions because all my early land was Animist, and also went for 0 native uprising as traditions. We actually land on all these Pacific islands to trade and be nice, that's not a joke, that's not a bait (I know it's hard to believe right). We integrate people peacefully in our prosperous trading egalitarian Republic, with extra native assimilation for more goods produced, development cost to boost every province to at least 10 dev, and economic boosts all around.
2 Colonists in idea too, this means I could colonize pretty much everything I wanted. I also went for a Parliament early on (I switched when Absolutism came) to have an extra colonist, so I had 4, and was running with 7 colonies most of the game. I locked every island in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean before the Europeans, and had started colonizing the North-West of America because I had ran out of things to do.
All idea groups are pretty obvious: I went influence because I used vassals to manage most of the land in Malacca and because Australia needs to be kept loyal (I developped them a lot, spammed manufactories in all their provinces, and they have 100% tariff so they're actually barely loyal and very strong).
Next idea group would have been Quantity for Quantity-Trade policy.
Because I was so focused on internal management and developpped, I could get that quite early:
After 1600 I changed reforms (had already passed them all because of constantly having near 100 RT and 0% autonomy) to get more admin capacity and max absolutism, I have 85 max absolutism iirc, so it really does not feel like a Republic.
A few final screenshots to showcase my production and trade domination:
First a list of the local value of the trade nodes (how much money they create).
My starting node of the Moluccas is first by far, Malacca is second and would be a lot richer if I owned all of it and waited for prosperity. Philippines place decently well for an usually bad node. Note that I only put manufactories in good trade goods, went for extra manpower in the fish/grain ones just in case I needed it. Those numbers could be higher.
And here is our control of the various goods:
If I played it longer it would probably lead to absurd numbers, but that would kill the enjoyment as it now very clearly points into a regular blobbing campaign if I want to gain more income. This is an achievement I wanted to get for a long time. It's not especially hard, but I love the numerous paths you can take.
My original plan with Manokwari actually started over 3 years ago, because they were in Oceania and could TC all of Asia. It was meant to be a One Tag abusing the TCs and only having one state to culture shift and abuse Nationalism CB, but then bbq (I think it was him) did the exact same thing before me so I buried the idea. Quite fun for me to see that I kept that love for Manowkari even if the campaign went in a completely different direction, with obviously completely different idea choices.