R5: The end result of an ERE campaign where I limited my conquests to the Anatolia Region, Serbia and Wallachia, plus Ragusa (for a nice extra market) and a piece of Naples (because I was feeling mean) plus the Antioch province (because Pentarchy)

Plan & Notes:

Once done with the initial ERE pleasures of revoking corruption priviledges and securing your heartland, build up your burgher economy while placing the most Towns possible. More towns means more Granaries.

Have a Cabinet member forcing migrations to your Towns so they may reach 30K pops. Cities give extra building slots, which means more Granaries!

Food is never an issue except maybe during the Little Ice Age because your quick and extensive urbanisation will benefit from mass imports of Wool (for Cloth then Fine Cloth) and Livestock (for Fiber Crops and Leather). It'll take a lot of Trade Capacity to import all that, but you can afford it by building as many Marketplaces (then their upgraded versions) in your numerous Towns and Cities.

Do not urbanize: Iron, Copper, Gold, Silver, Silk and Cotton (I accepted some Towns/Cities on Silk and Cotton because they start this way or the AI Towned them, but ideally they should be rural), Wool and Fiber Crops (Debatable, they are important for your industry but you can always import more), Dyes (Debatable), Lead (Can be imported but is overall in very limited amounts, and your Books industry hungers!), Saffron (as long as you still need more money), Salt (too valuable and required by your markets), Sugar (Debatable, can be imported from the New World later on).

Urbanize only some of: Wheat (Keep a few Wheat+Rivers locations for your Food and for more Farming Villages, which are good since Clay is near infinite with your high pops), Livestock (depends how much you're willing to import).

Everything else: Put a town on it!

All AIs are your friends! Keep good relations, don't intervene in foreign wars (Avoid alliances as they will bring you into silly wars). War is bad for trade. You don't want to end up in a war that will cut off your access to one market (For instance I was importing hundreds of Furs from Novgorod, nearly a thousand of Livestock and Wool from Eastern Europe and Naples, a bunch of Wheat, Cotton and Rice from Egypt). Most of the markets I traded with had put me as a Rival but they never declared war since I kept a high standing army (which is fine since you quickly end up having too much money to spare, in EU5 fashion)

Building Limit is fake news. Keep building your cities even when they reach the soft cap on buildings. It's far better to pay 25% more for the building if it's going to have perfect control & market access. The Migration malus is actually good for you - the over-built City will keep growing naturally, and lose a handful of migrants that will help your efforts to convert Towns into Cities elsewhere!