My population was reduced by 75%, which I think was benefited by having hospitals in as many locations with over 120k population (the Yucatan is very dense) as possible. Which was like, seven. I could have maybe done more but you really need your cabinet developing the high pop provinces because they also need 20 development for a hospital
even then, hospitals in 90% of my high density locations only seemed to change it from 80-90% population loss to 75%. My first run I had like 5.3 million population, ended at 1.03 million, and in this run I had 1 million fewer to begin with and ended at 1.03ish as well
Perfidious Castile declared war, got spanked, refused to land even after The Great Deadening, so I white peaced and have focused on consolidating the Aztecs. The largest Aztec player, Tepanecapan, is my junior in a personal union. Pretty much everything that existed prior to colonization from the Yucatan to central mesoamerica is owned by a vassal (except for a tributary who I can't make into a vassal because they made that really hard for some reason)
so even severely weakened the high unity might be why Castile hasn't tried to fuck with me again despite having 110k levies to my Whole Situation's potential 29k
anyway GOT SOME TIN CAN'T WAIT TO BUILD A REAL BOAT!!
You have to turn off automated production methods and switch them to stone, turn off weaponsmiths (make a couple market villages to fill the need), and do whatever you can to expand stone production in your market
there's two provinces in Kowoj that can build stone mines, aside from that, because I don't know how to make trade work, I just expanded towards the neighboring 3 markets and destroyed them asap, then destroyed the aztec one once I could, so everything was a unified market (until Castile showed up and fucked it up by colonizing a fucking island right next to mexico that I didn't see but despite being a tiny fucking island has ripped half of Mesoamerica into it)
once I had a unified market stone wasn't a problem, I just kept building as many tool workshops as I could
You make a shitload of money so I just colonized aggressively. I realized too late that I could move towards Outwards which makes colonizing a lot faster. Colonizing the coast of Texas looks like it'll take forever but once you get that first location filled it speeds up to normal.
Yeah i'm having That Problem still despite doing all this fucking shit to try to deal with them. Part of the problem is my marriage union with the biggest Aztecs was going great until all of a sudden woops someone died (I've had multiple rulers die with no problem) and magically they were like yeah dude we're not in the union anymore. Despite it being almost fully integrated (I guess I fucked up not integrating them) so I had to waste some time dealing with that bullshit
but then as soon as I get all of Mesoamerica under my thumb again, Castile war decs, and it's always a fucking NO-CB (what the fuck is this shit?) or something where the war score is just Show Superiority and despite my army being bigger than what they send my dudes just suck and get their shit rocked. All I've managed to recruit professional army wise is 1000 footmen and 400 archers, and even after like 40 years my population is still just around 2 million
I have a save from a bit before they declared war so maybe I can figure it out but IDK. I had an alliance with Venice but they were like "nah we're not doing that" and broke it, fuckers.