In this reddit post about victoria 3, should you or should you not build mines? and additionally, reformat the messy guide form this redditor

R5 : previously you had to construct the usual iron tools steel lead glass ... loop . But now with MAPI nerfed and the new diplomacy system you can get trade previleges , investment rights , early. Stop building iron mines once you get your construction off the ground , keep in mind for this strategy : YOU NEVER BUILD COAL / SULFUR / LEAD ( only exception is if you have a shit ton of peaseants like QING ) but you just do low /mid subventions for COAL , once your economy starts rolling and you control a certain market ( in this run I started by controlling the tools market) you expand to another market and so on, using subventions for extracted ressources.

Your first company must be the tools one so the subventions dont hurt you that much , you utilize economy of scale and the decree + company bonus to get BANANAS level throughtput bonus.

After you control the tools market and getting your iron + coal company ( as your second company) you start building Iron ( WITH TRADE CENTERS ) somewhere in the good provinces in france prussia , japan and Qing ( Japan and Qing to depesentify them so their pops start having more demand as a result they start interracting more with the world market )

Why build mines elsewhere ? POPs are king in this game, you not only get your minerals for cheaper from the world market , Those buildings that you build ( with their respective trade centers ) become giga profitable so your company starts buying them ( look at the minerals company profit on top LOL )

A big reason why this works is that when you build mines elsewhere the tools price will go up so your first tools company will be giga profitable and as a result expand faster than other world companies . The " transfer goods" diplo interraction is good for this cuz these countries will have a huge deficit of tools clothes explosives.... So your industry goes to the moon

All in all to keep it short you just try to transform other countries's economies to be your OWN mines : ( bonus point if they go for free trade. ) . --> while other countries are being shaped into " ressource extraction economies " your economy becomes an absolute manifacturing behemoth

PS: Dont be afraid to juggle between subvention policies as the game goes on to suit your current needs and how much the world market has to offer for a set amount. ( We are patiently waiting for the spreadsheet legend to do the math for us ! hehe )

Also I probably could have went for a bigger GDP but this was a chill run where I tried to figure this out in practice.

+ I only gave trade privilèges to the rubber company but for some reason it didnt do well even though it was my 3rd company that I got fairly early . not sure if giving them trade rights had something to do with this.

+ I got that bengali provinces fairly late into the game (after GB lost the RAJ as in everygame) ( year 1900 I think ) but after thinking more about it even for an RP run getting some treaty ports in japan china india...

Thank you !

EDIT : Overseas GDP ownership : 59 % of my own GDP which means 600 M of GDP is overseas -