Thanks for that praise. I've been meaning to update this thread for a while, but, as usual, everything else happened instead. I plan to get back to writing these tips in the next few weeks.

Kaelin's right, by the way, about population density. I think the situation regarding the growth of the British, French and Spanish empires is a bit more complicated, though. In Britain, for example, the admiralty was only one component of the nation's rise; politics, economics, technology, and even religion had a part to play, as well as wider historical events.