Silver and other mineral RGOs

[Maximvs]

One thing that really bothers me about the game is how it handles the production of natural resources. For some reason, the production capacity of natural resources is tied to population. This makes very little sense beyond the obvious fact that a certain amount of labor is required to extract them. However, having the maximum lead output of a mine determined by how many people live in the surrounding town is simply illogical.

But what bothers me the most, and creates the greatest cognitive dissonance, is that silver production in South America consistently ends up being significantly lower than in Europe. This makes absolutely no historical sense, considering that South America accounted for roughly 50% of global silver production during the period covered by the game.

These mechanics are not only ahistorical but also deeply unimmersive. They fail to recreate the historical gold and silver rushes that shaped the colonial era. As a result, there is very little incentive to colonize these regions, since the economic value of their resources is nowhere near what it was historically.

Colonization has effectively become more of a sport than a genuinely profitable economic undertaking, even when it comes to obvious resources such as gold and silver. Historically, the prospect of exploiting these resources was one of the main driving forces behind European colonial expansion. In the game, however, even these regions often fail to offer a meaningful economic return.

One possible solution would be to tie non-renewable resources to a fixed regional cap, similar to the system used in Victoria 3, rather than making their production capacity dependent on population. Technologies could then gradually increase both extraction efficiency and the maximum production cap, allowing resource exploitation to evolve over time as it did historically.