Technology - falling waaaay behind

[thebull0425]

Maybe someone can help me out. I am playing In Nomine, the Ottoman Empire, I have most of Turkey, and the Balkans to Serbia and across and my technology is soooooooo behind everyone else. I look at some, they have Land and Naval of 16 to my 9 and 7 (don't care about naval). They have like 4 ideas, I am just getting to three. I know the West was ahead, but the Ottoman Empire early on was the match for the West.

I don't really care about the difference between the West and Ottomans and I am not saying anything about game biases, but how the hell do they get so far ahead of me, when they are dealing with the same type of economies and so on and so forth. What gives???????

Mecklenburg, that military powerhouse has a 14 land???????????? Like wtf. Anybody help understand this or tell me what I am doing wrong.

[ajm317]

Size isn't necessarily an asset when it comes to tech. It's entirely possible for 2 province Mecklenburg to out tech the mighty Ottomans.

First of all, the Turks are in the Eastern tech group, instead of the Western. This means they have a tech modifier of (I think) .9. In other words you only gain techs at 90% the speed countries like England do (could be a lot worse, I think the Chinese tech group is 50% or something.)

Second of all, every province you add makes your tech costs more expensive. The bigger you are, the more expensive your techs are. If the province you conquer is a wealthy one it can be worth it, but if you're adding a bunch of poor provinces things are going to get harder and harder for you.

Then there's inflation. It raises tech costs. What's your inflation? There's also the fact that if you mint, that's money you're not spending on tech, so minting hits you twice. Minting can still be worth it if you're buying things like workshops or conquering rich provinces with your money (people who don't mint at all are missing out in my opinion) but it's something else to think about.

Then there's trade. Countries like Mecklenburg tend to be big into trade. Since trade doesn't add to your tech costs like conquest does, tiny countries with huge trade revenues can shoot way ahead in tech.

Then there's advisors. Since tech advisors don't scale with empire size, they can have a bigger impact on small countries than large ones. If a tech is a 100 ducats a guy who adds +10 to research per month is a big deal. If it's a 1000 ducats, not as much.

So the lessons are:

1. Target rich provinces. Ignore poor ones, or release them as vassals.
2. TRADE!
3. Concentrate on tech advisors early, but later on guys who provide a fixed percentage increase to income (like a guy that raises production efficiency for example) can be better.
4. Try to control your minting and only mint if you can invest that money to gain returns. Supporting an army to conquer a lucrative province, purchasing merchants, building workshops, or adding a manufactory would be examples.
5. Westernize! Westernization is a national decision. Once you meet the requirements you join the Western (Latin) tech group. Not only does this remove your .9 modifier, but it gives you Western tech group neighbor bonuses (mentioned below) which can really help you catch up.

I often fall behind in tech early. It's not such a big deal. Pick a couple areas to remain competitive in (usually land, government, and one of either trade or production) and leave the others alone. If you're way behind the other nations in your tech group in a tech (so for example, as the Ottomans, if Novgorod or Poland are way ahead of you in naval) you'll get a "neighbor bonus" to that techs research rate that represents cultural diffusion (you can see this by mousing over the tech slider in the budget screen.) This neighbor bonus can be quite large.

Later in the game, as my country starts to get wealthier I generally tend to catch up.

[thebull0425]

Thanks AJM, you gave me some good tips. I have tons of money, and I am investing a lot as well. I will keep in mind what you said. I didn't realize the bigger you are the more tech it costs. So as Ottomans, I will conquer less.

[Chuffy]

Thanks AJM, you gave me some good tips. I have tons of money, and I am investing a lot as well. I will keep in mind what you said. I didn't realize the bigger you are the more tech it costs. So as Ottomans, I will conquer less.

Remember if you're conquering wealthy provinces it isn't as big a problem.

England has the same problem in that they have quite a few provinces however the majority of them are relatively poor. I get pretty sick of being outteched by Scotland (who have hardly any provinces) and France (who have lots of RICH provinces).

[Celsius]

Yeah, Mecklenburg is a practically a bank. It's a big trade route.

[ajm317]

Generally speaking it's ok to add almost any provinces with your religion and in your culture group. Wrong religion provinces lose 30% of their tax income, and wrong culture group ones lose another 30%. Remember that tax income essentially pays off twice a year once you get core on the province, once monthly and once on Jan 1.

Wrong culture/wrong religion provinces are where you have to start thinking about whether or not you really need it. You can always convert the relgion, but culture you're stuck with.

[Ishoss]

Generally speaking it's ok to add almost any provinces with your religion and in your culture group. Wrong religion provinces lose 30% of their tax income, and wrong culture group ones lose another 30%. Remember that tax income essentially pays off twice a year once you get core on the province, once monthly and once on Jan 1.

Wrong culture/wrong religion provinces are where you have to start thinking about whether or not you really need it. You can always convert the relgion, but culture you're stuck with.

Many streams becomes a river!

You won't start racking up huge cash balances unless you keep onto provinces. For example having a vassal with poor areas which cuts a rich area off from your capital isn't good, then it's better to keep the poor areas. When you become rich you can pour as much money as you want into research anyways. Just remember to focus on one or two areas, so you can become demi-god in those. i find having a high(er) government and land tech is more useful than having the same gov, land, naval, trade and production as my enemies.

40 land tech > 30 land tech by a mile.