u/AppearanceLimp4801

I've been playing a lot lately, and I've been kind of lost on market size and location. I've watched some videos, read some threads, etc. and the consensus was that small markets are much more efficient. That being said, how big should I make my markets province wise? Obviously some markets at the start of the game are super bloated (London, Paris, Constantinople, etc.) and I'm struggling to figure out how many new markets to make. Can I get a ballpark estimate on the amount of provinces/areas that I should aim for my markets? I'm not overly worried about lack of resources because it just increases demand from my other markets, so I can make it work, I just need some help figuring out the best sizes. Thanks in advance

I recently bought eu5 and played about 100 hours before the 1.3 update, but despite doing a lot of research on the new economic meta, (bog iron economic spiral, a ton of Jadamsan videos, etc.) conquering anything almost immediately crushes my income. I even tried testing it out to see if it was something I was doing wrong, by playing the Ottomans and within a year declared war on the Candarids, and after winning the war and annexing their territory, my income went from +25ish ducats to +9. I also tried deleting useless buildings in those territories to lower my economic base, while not affecting my tax income, but it barely did anything. Over time it gets better, but it is still much worse than before, and comes at the cost of a lot of missed income that is especially important in the early game. Not to mention that is only when annexing 1 country, and if I take more land before major economic stabilization, my income essentially drops to 0 (or close enough to where it doesn't really matter, and my game is basically over due to loss of momentum)

I can only think of a few potential solutions, the first being playing super tall early on, stacking lots of money, and when expanding there is enough wealth/tax base ratio to survive the crash, but I'm not a huge fan of that simply because it's immersion breaking, I don't want to be forced to rely on 20-50 years of playing tall in order to still have a strong economy when annexing my neighbor. The other solution is to play something like Holland, where I can get 80+ control and a massive tax base on everything, and only taking small amounts of land (like 1-2 provinces) and developing them akin to the other provinces, but I don't like this either because it really isn't viable when playing any country larger than 1-3 provinces.

I know that RGOs are probably the big problem, but I'd rather not delete any because of how insanely expensive they are to build now. Control is obviously super important but how do I increase it to a high enough point to where it doesn't destroy my economy, within a reasonable amount of time? I've tested a bit and so far local governors are mostly out of the question (lack of roads, and the actual building being super expensive as well as valuable, and limited) and bailiffs aren't doing enough to justify the cost and maintenance.

So other than just playing tall and conquering very little (which kind of defeats the point of the Ottomans, Muscovy, etc.) if at all, how can I conquer decent amounts of land while maintaining a strong economy?

So I've played something like 100 hours in the new DLC, and honestly I still can't figure out how to balance navies and keep them modern. Even when playing as the UK I can't keep my navy as modern as other countries, I still focus on mainly production techs, but still grab the important society and military ones, so how early should I aim for the major navy techs?

Additionally, what are the best general setups for each important navy role? I typically go 5-1 screens per capital ship, I know that's generally the best for standard fleets, but after researching more complicated ships I don't know what to do. So generically speaking, what setups should I use for each era of ship, and any specific ones to use for certain missions (interception, piracy, troop transport, etc.)

Finally, how do I force naval battles vs smaller enemy fleets? I use interception, protect supply lines, etc. but I almost never get into fleet battles, and I can't tell if I'm doing something wrong or if the game is just insanely buggy.

I'd love to get some help on this, thanks in advance