I posted this over in a brother thread at Grogheads -- I doubt I'll ever play against anyone in this game, and if it helps any future allies in a teamup then great!
Here are the protocols I've developed over time, when it comes to region management.
Let me note, before I get into the principles, that sometimes other considerations in diplomacy and war will take some precedence; for example you may need to send everyone to make food for a while, at risk of bankruptcy or your properties falling apart, in order to feed your armed forces as they’re passing through and attacking your enemy nearby. (Your forces will take food from adjacent friendly areas if necessary, so you should make sure you’ve got a good springboard for invasion, and/or get the troops back home as soon as feasibly possible.)
Also note that these principles will work for managing provinces (a group of regions) too, but until they’re bootstrapped far up you may have to treat the whole province like one big region, focusing all your workers on infrastructure (generally) to finish one property at a time as soon as possible (so that your region and the whole province and your faction generally can benefit from its existence asap). On this theory, you could also occasionally work on multiple properties in a province -- as long as they can all be finished in one turn.
ASSESS YOUR NEEDS
Gather all your workgroups together in the bottom row (for culture) temporarily, to get an idea what you need to work on. (You can skip this step if you’re already working on a plan.) You need food to keep your workers alive, and to get more workers (especially more FRIENDLY workers to help with your local morale), and to feed your troops; but you need infrastructure to be able to make things more quickly and to keep properties from falling apart. Gold is important, too, but usually (not always) will take care of itself. Culture is important for advancement (and for winning the game technically), but if you’re bootstrapping up an undeveloped or badly developed area then you can’t afford to do culture for a while, so you’re going to suffer the natural results of that regardless.
Obviously, if you have negative food and/or infrastructure when nobody is working in those rows, then you should focus there first. But you should also aim for achieving three basic goals, with a focus each turn on one of those goals in sequence.
FUNDAMENTALS
Your infrastructure and your food production should EACH equal or surpass your total workgroups even without any workers in those rows.
Except in an absolute food emergency, you should focus on building infrastructure first -- UNLESS you can build food properties that don’t have an ongoing infrastructure cost: if you need the food and can do that, then do that first, and go back to infrastructure later. You can have negative food as long as you have reserves to work from (and/or if the province is balancing out food so that your net total is positive, although THIS WILL NOT COUNT MILITARY EATING! -- make sure your military is white or at least orange in the rollover tooltip, not red. Orange means they’re eating so much that you aren’t working on any new workgroups but everyone still has food.)
Once the baseline infrastructure generation is up to the total of your workgroups, or better -- or once you have to start putting workgroups on food production to keep from going in the hole (and thus starving your workers) -- you should start building food properties. As with infrastructure, your target is to have automatic food generations equal or more than your workgroup total.
Along the way if your new upkeep drops your basic infrastructure below your workgroup total, make more infrastructure.
Note that you could try reversing this priority: get food up to speed first, then infrastructure. I haven't tested this yet, but it will DEFINITELY take more time to do that because you'll be making properties more slowly all the time. Thus, this theory should be tested with an adjustment: build food until you're above 0 at normal production (with no workgroups), even if this tanks your normal infrastructure levels, and then focus back to getting your infrastructure up to speed; then return to getting your food fully up to speed. (This should work better in less populated regions come to think of it! -- note to try testing...)
Once you’ve met those two fundamental goals, you have one more third fundamental goal: your blue properties should be equal in number to your green properties. Why? -- because this boosts how effective your green properties will be in generating new workgroups. Without this boost, you’ll be generating new workgroups more and more slowly. (The health bonus also helps avoid plagues and reduces their effects, and can sometimes help if you’re besieged.)
Once you’ve met those three fundamental goals, you can focus on properties from the red, yellow, and purple slots. You should consider making such properties that take the least time (because you’ll get to benefit from their effects faster); but otherwise you should consider properties that give you the most benefit for the costs you’re paying (in infrastructure, cash, etc.) Sometimes those properties will generate infrastructure or food, so strongly consider those! In the final analysis, all other things being equal, take culture (purple) properties. If you’re at war with another faction, you should consider focusing on buffing up your red properties because their total number will give global bonuses to your military. ABSOLUTELY AVOID PROPERTIES THAT GENERATE DECADENCE! -- not until the very late game maybe.
FULL PROPERTY SLOTS
If you only have one slot remaining in a region, you should focus on green border properties, because those take up no slots (and a few even give slots back). This is likely to tank your infrastructure (at least) but you’ll get proportionately more benefits this way. Be aware that a few zero-slot properties still don’t have a green border! -- so click through your list to be sure. (This should be patched over time; there’s no reason any of the zero slot properties shouldn’t have a green border.)
Once you have full properties, where should you put your workers?
If you’re treating a province like one large region, building one property at a time (or multiples if they’re all able to be built in one turn), then keep them on infrastructure to help get other regions up to speed.
If any of your first two fundamentals are under strength (infrastructure and food), and maybe even the third (equal blue to green properties), put them on food to get new workgroups and thus new slots asap.
If your infrastructure and food are up to strength (maybe also health properties), put everyone into culture. You won’t get new workgroups as fast this way, but you need the culture boost to at least get out of culture penalties for your faction!
TWEAKING PRODUCTION AS YOU GO
You can maximize efficiency by checking just how many workgroups you need in infrastructure to be building your property the fastest. Any groups more than that, should be put on fixing negative net expenses elsewhere; or on food to get more workgroups faster (or to support feeding troops); or on culture.
Once you have the basic workflow down, you’ll learn and understand how and when to make adjustments for crisis situations.
