I still remember the big plan we were trying for in Path of Industrialisation before it died. Namely that we were making very close allies with Khemetri, the Not-India Empire that the Black Sheep evolved into I believe and the Hung. Which basically meant that when combined with how we were a merged Russia and Ymaryn absent the Thunder Plateau, that we basically had the great majority of the world's breadbasket regions and population.
When you factor in that we were making friends with the Native American nation that had recently managed to form that had won their war with the Not!USA to control the Great Plains, Mississippi and maybe the Great Lakes... Well, most of our members might have only been technologically competitive thanks to help from us. But when you have such a hold on the world food supply, you can counter the soft and hard power that technological difference fairly easily. So long as you be careful because you do NOT want to push hard enough that the citizens of the more technological nations start to starve. As that way lies a world war.
Would be interesting if we manage to pull off something similar to that in this quest. We've started by making friends in India, Russia and the Hung at least recognise we're probably an almost equal. Just need to get some influence over in the New World whenever that happens, because we definitely aren't getting major colonies there any time soon. Khemetri will be difficult though the fact we do have that long legacy of being friendly rivals to a degree should help.
Of course, all this is VERY long term planning because the conditions needed for that sort of control over the food supply to be really useful are still centuries off. Except for our own lands and probably the Hung.