First off, yes the construction is so simple that ironically its counter-intuitive for all us veterans of the TW series who love to scour over our settlements and tweak them just right.
Your buildings apply to the entire province. So no need to have two melee fighting buildings or two upgrade stations for skirmisher units as they don't stack - meaning you can't produce 6 units, or get a 30% bonus to missile troops because you have two buildings of the same type.
But with many buildings like Shrines, or Farms or Commercial buildings after the Tier 1 upgrade they branch off according to your tech tree that was researched.
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Population is much easier to boost now as compared to Shogun 2 because you can build multiple farms and decide if it should boost food count (for another building placement) or for monetary purposes and a slight gain in food.
Basically if you're looking at a higher tier building like your Goverment building which will consume food, build the monetary boosting Farm, otherwise build the food boosting farm to acquire the ability to produce another building.
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Taxes are a bit frustrating because of the sliding scale it means you tax ALL provinces accordingly or tax none of your provinces (which is why I have yet to see a purpose to razing or destroying a settlement yet.)
Population works much better now that I understand it. Instead of the random chance of rebellions a la Rome 1 when at 65% or lower, you now get a timer telling you how many turns until you reach 100 instability to take preventative measures.
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Agents are now critical I'm finding to be placed in armies especially dignitaries, as they can help sway the population over as much as 12% at level 4 and they get upgraded simply by remaining within the army and boosting stats they are with.
[This message has been edited by Teh_Diplomat (edited 09-05-2013 @ 04:38 PM).]