May be add some fantasy content?

Considering most Philippines runs in the game are able to get independence fairly early around 1845-1850, I think you should lean on the immigration aspect as the opening to World Trade of the Philippines in 1834 was what lead to many of the transformative years to come in the country. One of those Johannes Zobel's success after migrating in 1832 to Manila which eventually led to the Ayala Family Business. Anything else from there is Fantasy.

There should also be a JE for whether you choose to prosper under Spanish Rule or Seek to Take the Reigns. Seeking to stay under spanish rule, you can safely follow to create JEs & events from the historical path while going for Independence leads to a more ahistorical future. Possibly leading to a "Nusantran Unification" akin to Maphilindo.

P.S. I wish the title for independence could've been "Punitin ang Cedula!" but that act was only introduced in 1854. Sadly there is little material to go by unless if we pull inspiration from the events the Philippines was relevant in the `Medieval Age` to the `Age of Discovery`. I imagine Sulu & Maguindanao should be able to fill that bubble. There's a lot of ways you can go about this.

Note: One way you can flavour the Philippines seeking independence is "continuing the Latin American Wars for Independence" which ended in 1833.

@Jaune Thanks for the input. I'll try to look into making content regarding staying within Spain's orbit. But currently it's focused on attaining Independence. There is currently some flavor regarding the opening of Manila due to the 1834 Royal Decree in my current development build that I'll release soon.

Illustrado Reforms should be locked behind Nationalism. If you want to do a Tanzimat in the 1830's, you can rename the current reforms to "Spanish Reforms" and change the description into making the Philippines into a profitable and self-reliant colony. You might wanna tier the reforms so "Spanish reform" should only focus on making the country "richer", then the "Illustrado reform" should only focus on granting some rights to the elite and middle class Filipinos and maybe some social reform like public schooling, and then another mass movement reform which should grant rights to every class.

Remove Filipino as accepted culture, and rename "Filipino" into Indio. You can change the starting citizenship law to "Cultural Exclusion" and it would fit the situation Filipinos found themselves in the 1800s. If you are worried about the game only generating Spanish characters for IG group leaders, you can copy how the EIC generates Indian leaders for most of its IG.

Change the Philippines into a Dominion or give it events where it can declare a conquest war against the Moro states

Add oil as a discoverable resource in Mindanao

Maybe you can copy the JE journal for immigration in the Americas, but make it target East Asians, particularly Fujian, Guangdong, and Ryukyu Islands, to mirror the mass migration that historically happened.

Change the army model back to Professional Army. This is more in line with how the colonial military worked. The Spanish did not rely on peasant levies.

Add Colonialist to the Principalia and Simbahan. You can quickly get rid of the starting economic laws because Industralists are too weak.

I think you should make the "Fight for Independence" something like Fragile Unity. I feel like it would be a better fit since there are three major revolts that happened before the revolution.

Add a journal entry for the creation of the Guardia Civil, which requires the player to pass National Guard.

Give West Micronesia to the Philippines. The outposts were under the jurisdiction of the Central Government in Manila.

@cheemie These are some Great Points.

Though I don't agree on the Philippines being a Dominion as it never had self-rule autonomy like that of Canada and Australia. Though removing Filipino would work out and possibly if you become a Dominion, Filipino becomes the Primary Culture. That works.

Indio while a cool naming scheme, doesn't really add anything, though I'm thinking of something like the Brazilian Culture content if its not too laggy. Its way down the priority list atm.

I don't agree either for Professional Army as the Spanish, while professional, had too small of a military to even count as one. This is essentially copied from the Dutch and the British Indies, both had Royal Armies of Professional Standards but are put as peasant armies for both balance and how the natives were treated as.

Regarding immigration, I'm currently working on something like that as an event rather than a JE. I also forgot about West Micronesia, I'll put that in the next update I plan to ship.

To add-on to @cheemie 's suggestion on the Illustrados Reforms. If you plan to remove "Filipino" as a Primary culture at game start, perhaps you can have it so following the JE of the [Illustrados Reforms] would allow an event where you decide to make Filipino a Primary Culture.
Making this a Philippine "Tanzimat" as they describe, I believe, is a smart move since you are effectively nerfing the better (arguably ahistorical) vanilla Philippines. However, making it out to be a "Tanzimat" like system would allow you to reward the player when they succeed after struggling through the pain.

One option is using the "Royal Society of Friends of the Country" 1780-1890s as an optional tie-in if there was a universe where Spain went really hard on increasing the Philippines' productivity. Though technically intelligentsia, it was hardly the case since it comprised of what was "regarded by society" as the intellectuals rather than who was actually intelligent. Maybe an event where we start allowing "Filipinos into the Society" which then steadily progresses to more liberal & industrial reforms.

Another suggestion, it would be interesting that if the player chose to side with Spain & you progress to complete more JEs tied to them - our Overlord rewards us with granting us autonomy like progressing to Dominion with the endgoal no longer being a colonial type but rather Protectorate status.

Are you also eventually aiming to fragment the Filipino culture, similar to what a previous mod has done? I think it can be further modeled similarly to the Brazilian situation, where regional cultures can be assimilated slowly into a Filipino culture. Though with the changes coming in the next update I think you can mechanically map that to the new fervour system.

On the topic of immigration, another mod has also made a distinct Lannang culture representing the Min migrants. I thought this was a good change as just adding Min to the primary culture list would bring the rest of China. Though as I understand, assimilation is finicky; the ideal situation would have been for Min pops to assimilate to Lannang instead of directly Filipino, but I don't think that's possible with the current mechanics yet.

@Jaune Well yes, currently in my build, if you become a dominion or complete reforms, you gain the chance to Filipino as Primary Culture through an event.

@Sparky42 Well currently, that is in the back burner for the mean time. Touching Culture in general is finicky especially with 1.10 around the corner. I'd love to replicate the situation like that of Brazil but I also don't want to add too many cultures that wouldn't really be useful gameplay wise, doesn't help that the Philippines only has 3 states, splitting it is also problematic in many scales (from gameplay to mod-compatibility). I guess its easier to abstract it out by doing it like Luzones, Bisaya, Lumad/Mindanao, otherwise not yet till I experience the update soon.

I'm also looking into somewhat trying to reflect the massive migration of Chinese peoples into the Philippines, possibly through checking for turmoil in China like the Taiping.

Eitherway, I'm working on overhauling the current Journal Entries, especially the Independence Question. Its basically going to encapsulate the Independence Movement which when the progress bar hits full, it forces an independence war. That's why you need to either do reforms to delay that, or you can worsen it to just force a war. It's still all experimental.

Played with the mod again.
If you'll hear me out, I would like to suggest that the JE for [Maharlika: Logistical Expansion] to only encompass "eligible states" (i.e. incorporated states) rather than all Philippines-owned states. This is because the JE effectively soft-locks the player by accident from an early expansion. To me, this feels like a detriment as the Philippines' main advantage from all of it's peers is the possibility of an early expansion before the European Great Powers start expanding; making it a race against time.

For Context, I played a game sticking with Spain so that the Illustrado Reforms could be completed & then progressed to gain Independence. I proceeded to complete every Maharlika Reform except for "Logistical Expansion". This is simply because the Logistical Expansion JE requires their conditions to be met in every state that is owned by the Philippines which includes any and all conquered territory regardless of being unincorporated. The JE asks of the player to have 3 ports & 5 railways in each state but it's hard to justify that when not every state is made equal w/ some states made specifically to only thrive when certain technologies & resources are discovered.

Now I am sure I can still complete this JE at some point in the game before 1936 however it would be at the point where my Philippines is or *needs to be* already strong enough to contend with Great Britain even w/o the Maharlika Reforms bonuses which is a shame but I am currently already in 1885.

Someone needs to make this compatible with Economics and Financial Mod. Would love to see the peso dominate the markets

Can you add a more Austronesian Route? an Austronesian empire sounds great