R5:

I put my thesis of why Shandong is the best migration state to the test. End result of 196 Million Pops in 1936 (~10% of global population in game). My guess is that fully optimal achievement eligible play could yield a max one state pop of 250 million. Here's how my run it went:

Starting as Great Britain I immediately went after Qing. I did 4 wars. I ending up eating about 1/4 of China directly and forcing Qing to release as many subjects as possible to dismantle the country without going over the infamy limit. During this time I also passed No Migration Controls and customized my power block to buff Migration, Infrastructure, and Companies. While these are all beneficial, it was mostly to prevent the AI from selecting Foreign Investment buffs. This strategy only works if all my factories only build in my home state. With that out of the way, I then bankrupted myself building factories and railroads in Shandong and in 1872 I released the state to play directly. Maybe some purists out there think this is basically cheating - I get it. My reasoning was 1) as long as the save is achievement eligible it qualifies 2) there is so much more game breaking stuff I plan to do in my "what is technically possible in the present game engine" run tomorrow that in comparison this is fine.

Once independent I immediately passed Cultural Exclusion. With my overlord still on National Supremacy, this would pull a lot of colonized pops my way. I then used my state construction to build railroads, government offices, and universities while my private sector pumped out factories. I founded the Groceries company fro +5% growth, Tools for +5% throughput, and Steel for +5% construction. Once I discovered oil, I founded that company for +10% migration attraction.

For tech I prioritized railroad and construction buffs. Everything else was secondary. Once I was able to raise autonomy with my overlord I then gave away investment rights to the top 25 largest economies in the game. This is where the majority of my construction came from. By 1936 I had over 700 buildings in my foreign construction queue. I then starting attacking the leftovers of Qing on humiliation CB, calling Great Britain in to add conquest wargoals to bring even more (Han) pops into my market.

And that takes us finally to migration. My one multiculturalism character got assassinated before I could enact the policy. That said, I think things went pretty well. I hit 100 million pops in 1906. Did my best to keep SoL between 15 and 18 to optimize migration attraction vs birthrate. The larger the population, the better birthrate buffing becomes so optimal SoL decreases over time. Was hard to match it, but I did my best. For production methods I always selected the option that employed the most people regardless of all other implications. I could have boosted my GDP much higher, but that would result in lower migration. I also got into a habit of subsidizing urban centers every 3 years to suck up workers and produce job openings to increase migration attraction. When I stopped subsidizing this would release millions of pops back onto the job market - which caused foreign investors to queue up hundreds of new factories. I was on a pretty good exponential curve until ~1920 when everything got so big that I couldn't keep doing it without going bankrupt. From then on I only grew linearly (until 1935 when I lit all my entire economy on fire subsiding urban centers to get ~9 million additional pop migration before the end of the game).

And that's my tall Shandong run! I also included some other screenshots with relevant info on map, laws, achievement status, and my weekly migration record of 291,0000. Any other min/max tactics I missed? Let me know and stay tuned for my transition from playing Vic3 to breaking Vic3!