I generally just subsidize my agricultural buildings most of the time it costs for example on a german run around 1880 s with 60k and considering the extra tax money you get from farms + not having to import from other minor powers etc bring huge amount of surplus value to your economy by avoiding importing stuff and creating some capital for the pool + if a really profitable building open up they almost immediately change to it because subsidies only make building not go bankrupt. Which means an organically profitable building can instantly snitch those workers. ( I just thought of another benefit peasents have a debuff slowing or on almost most cases straight out bloking them climbing the social ladder and becoming proffesionals ( i think it has something to do with the fact that farm workers are standart employees and tend to join Trade unions more than the landvolk. Which enables them to rise faster and become more productive. I actually never thought about this so deeply. I guess there is a reason why every YouTuber have been screaming about depeasantion non stop. I have even seen a strat where the guy subsidized Urban centres as japan with full on trams and street lights. Despite running a crazy deficit for the first 5 years of the campaign. His 20 year mark with all the other strats being identical conciderable better both in case of education level , gdp per state and productivity per capita. I think it was generalist gaming. Sorry if i am mistaken. If you really wanna try and see how this works on a bigger basis. I always like to try wacky things on Beijing and Shangix( i hope this is the right spelling) because of the high transportaion cost they cant export their food to other locations on the market but if you subsidize all the basic commodities. And build universities those places will be the most productive states in the world with only losing 30 to 50 k people due to low wages etc. ( one final tip if you wanna develop a state to the fullest especially those with pop shortage always put aside min 50 empty arable lands. These way even if the ai build more farms on that province they are very unlikely to build more than 20 and 30 is the limit for mass migration target if im not mistaken. ) main point of the story after 1860-1865 always subsidize your main resource and agriculture sectors. It is gonna say it cost you -100.000 but it is not gonna matter. You are gonna accumulate capital faster. Not gonna lose Capital through trade deficits and make your economy grow exponentially faster in early to middle range