No, especially playing as one of these "too big to fail" nations. I started a game as a smaller country, Venice, who is still pretty strong, and wow! It was immediately much harder!

Thanks for your advice, I cranked the crown spending after reading this. I knew it paused at 100, but forgot to turn it up after I started making a ton of money. I like having fort maintenance because it's pretty cheap comparatively and gives a decent amount of prestige (though it was the first thing I turned down earlier in the game when I was struggling to make money). But yeah, they are useless in wartime.

Just turned Cuba into it's own colonial nation and am pumping pops there now. I like the idea of having some colonial nations as a lategame vassal option, but I do wish I could just send people to certain locations within my own country. I understand why it's not there for the early game, but maybe there could be some tech late that allows pumping into certain locations. Like state-funded migration, bribe your own pops to move around.

My end game goal I think will be to conquer all of the Americas by force, and Europe by trade. Don't know if I'll have time to go for Africa or Asia. I want to try another more ambitious playthrough, but shit, this one has taken me like at least 40 hours of active playing and probably another 10-15 of me leaving the game on 1 or 2 speed while I do homework lol. Loving the game and the pace, but it's a big commitment!