Before the Southern Corvus War broke out in 1908, Cetus was a mostly agricultural peacefull nation. The nation was mostly made up of flat plains and aome hilly terrain. This made it great for agriculture and development of cities (but most major cities were near the coastline in the west) This made the mpire lack natural resources to properly industrialize. Which is why in the 1880s they invaded South Corvus and took it, to be able to industrialize

With the desperately neded resources secured, Cetus rapidly industrialized. But, due to Cetus wanting to explore the Ianis ocean badly, the spend most of their resources into macking ships. This resulted in Cetus using 85% of their factories for naval production and half of what little they had left for army production. This made the population level to slowly increase and made it the nation eith the highest tax rates in the world
(Considering the fact that they had to make goods to 80 million people with few factories was a major factor for the high tax rates and pricess)

Life in pre war Cetus was mostly nice (if you were able to afford everything)