>had a relative who would go to pubs frequented by farmers
>would intentionally strike up conversation with the barman or others about how farmers are all rich cunts who whinge too much
>naturally he would eventually get the shit kicked out of him by said farmers
>would go to a different pub and do it again next week

>>2025718
Victoria 3 limits the player way too much, everything needs some build-up or prerequisite. The most blatant effect of this design approach is how you can't even break free from being a vassal anymore until your liberty gauge increases enough. You need to increase it by getting independence agreements from other countries, demanding stuff from the overlord that's going to be rejected, retaining economic independence, damaging relations and so on and it can take a lot of in-game years before you're in a position to break free.
It's very difficult to get your own country to not be backwards as fuck law-wise without a revolution if it starts off with most of its laws like that, passing laws against the dominant parties like the landowners will inevitably attract revolutions and might not even pass in the first place without some lucky character + party combo where a guy with desirable law views takes control of the major party and suddenly the landowners vote for commercialized agriculture. Some laws also have limited time windows based on how long the party pushing them will remain in power so if you don't get enough industrialists to vote for no migration controls then you can't really get it for the rest of the game since industrialists have a tendency to be usurped by trade unions. Revolutions are also risky since nearby superpowers that are also backwards will probably help the revolution because of ideological similarities and you might as well restart.
Good luck getting most of the techs in the game without a strong start country too, let alone all of them.