717 million russian popmaxxing
Decided to try out what is possible with this game. Demographics have always fascinated me, so I was curious to see what a nation with a starting population of 55.9 million and a lot of potential is capable of. My principle was to not rely on immigration at all and see what pure birth rates can do. My motto of the game was "be fruitful and multiply". And fruitful my pops were
To maximize growth, I boosted my Devout group as much as possible by becoming a theocracy and made them loyal, it gave me +5% fertility bonus.
Of course, I have kept legal guardianship, it's meta
I wasn't taking ANY schooling laws, so that literacy won't tank birth rates.
Created a religious power bloc taking +5% more birth rates. Food power bloc principle gave -10% mortality, but later on I downgraded it to lower SoL a bt because it became a problem
Rushed state health insurance and health techs as much as I could without too bad research speed penalties.
+A product company gave me 5% more.
Early on, boosted SoL to make peasants breed. Than I took poor laws so that unemployed would also breed.
To keep up with such immense growth without too much unemployment, laissez-faire was necessary to take.
Also tried to homogenize a country as much as possible.
And these are the results. Had some fun larping as theocracy along the way. Was surprised to see starting population increase more than x10 times in a 100 years
Beat my record if you want to!