How do countries learn technology so fast?

[Eat3n]

I usually keep 1 college and stick all my gentlemen in it to learn technology faster. As Austria i have 1 college and 6 guys in side. And yet other countries are just blowing by me with technology. Prussia is like eons ahead of me. How is this possible?

[Insaniac]

Either the AI is stealing tech from other countries, or it's just cheating.

[Tabbs]

You want max 3 in each school either build another school for the others or send them out to steal technology

[traveller]

As Tabbs said only a max of three gentlemen per school. The extra three guys in your school are doing nothing.

[Vilab]

the school buldings gives you a lot of technological points by themself, gentlemen are great bonuses, but only bonuses

[Xcorps]

You need more than 1 school. 2 minimum, 3 is best. You should only finish researching a tech with a school that has gentlemen, as finishing a tech gives them a chance for a trait.

[Eat3n]

Originally posted by traveller:

As Tabbs said only a max of three gentlemen per school. The extra three guys in your school are doing nothing.

Not doubting you, but is that a fact from TW that only 3 gentlemen do anything?

[traveller]

Yes

[Xcorps]

Originally posted by -EAT3N-:

Originally posted by traveller:

As Tabbs said only a max of three gentlemen per school. The extra three guys in your school are doing nothing.

Not doubting you, but is that a fact from TW that only 3 gentlemen do anything?

The research points generated by each gent is reduced as you add more gents, like trade ships. We don't have any actual in game feedback for what the numbers are, but the player consensus is the contribution of each gent after the third is so neglible that it has no effect on your rate of gaining new tech's. Unlike trade routes, your gent's don't generate more research over time to the base rate. The only way to gain more research is to pick up a trait. The only way to gain traits is to complete research. Since the time between start and finish of each tech is relatively low, the reduced research for gents 4-6 is wasted because it doesn't reduce the number of turns to complete the tech, or if it does it's not nearly as robust an effect if gents 4-6 were on another school.

This especially compounded by the research bonuses you can gain from social tech tree. If you are spending all your gent bonus on an industrial tech for 7 turns while it would only take 3 turns to gain 10% you have really paid quite a lot for that industrial tech, a lot more than merely 7 turns of research. Savvy?

if you are considering stealing research, I'm comfortable saying that you'll be succesful about 3 in 15 attempts. That makes tech stealing extremely expensive at first, and viable later. However, by the time you would actually save more than a couple of turns stealing a tech that you could research you should be the tech leader anyway. It's much easier and more reliable to trade/buy than it is to steal. It may look like an outrageous deal, but it does't really matter. The sooner you can cap out the social/industrial trees the better off you are and the fastest way to do it while not wasting a town's worth of income is to have 3 schools with 2 gents each. If Maratha, you can have as many as 6, I like 5. If you are proceeding well with the colonies, build/upgrade more schools. Put the schools without gents on the techs that take the longest and focus your gent's on the social/industry trees.As you gain research speed, you'll spend some time shifting the research focus a lot so don't look at a 37 turn completion and think it's a waste of research. Research points are not lost if you stop research. You'll adjust as your gents clear the earlier techs.

Get cannister and FBR (and possible carbines if you need some dragoon love) and don't worry too much about the rest of the military tree until your economy is rock solid. In the meantime, spam the AI at the beginning of each turn and hunt for tech's to buy and trade for. Don't waste too much effort getting the second and third tier branches from the farming tree, they don't really have much of an impact. If your empire is mostly cotton, focus on that. If you mostly have ironworks, focus on that. Push social as hard as you can, first on the left side of the tree for research speed and then the right side of the tree for Enlightment. The benefits to your economy from the Entlightment technologies far outweigh the survivablity benfits from the military tree. The naval tree will save you money if you are playing a naval empire and can have a large impact on the survivability of your ships of the line if that's what you want to use. If you are staying with a 5th and 6th rate naval force, get the speed upgrades and then wait until you decide to transition to SOL's for the rest of the naval tree.

[operating1]

Also keep in mind the added research percentage from good Lords of the army and navy.

[Eat3n]

Originally posted by Xcorps:

Originally posted by -EAT3N-:

Not doubting you, but is that a fact from TW that only 3 gentlemen do anything?

The research points generated by each gent is reduced as you add more gents, like trade ships. We don't have any actual in game feedback for what the numbers are, but the player consensus is the contribution of each gent after the third is so neglible that it has no effect on your rate of gaining new tech's.

1) That makes sense.
2) Wait, trade ships too? There's a limit to number of trade ships per node? What's the number? As far as i've seen the amount of trade has gone up each time i've added ships...

[Insaniac]

Yeah, trade ships get diminishing returns.

[Xcorps]

Originally posted by -EAT3N-:

Originally posted by Xcorps:

The research points generated by each gent is reduced as you add more gents, like trade ships. We don't have any actual in game feedback for what the numbers are, but the player consensus is the contribution of each gent after the third is so neglible that it has no effect on your rate of gaining new tech's.

1) That makes sense.
2) Wait, trade ships too? There's a limit to number of trade ships per node? What's the number? As far as i've seen the amount of trade has gone up each time i've added ships...

There is a hard limit, the number of ships you can have in a fleet. But the normalization hit can be quantified by checking the trade route with each ship you add. You can't do that with gents.

[Ragnar]

If you have decent relations with a lot of factions, you can do well simply by trading tech from one to the other and so on and generally they all have gaps. Occasionally, a bit of coin helps to. I think the AI trades a lot of tech with each other.

[nubface113]

Originally posted by pjcoia:

If you have decent relations with a lot of factions, you can do well simply by trading tech from one to the other and so on and generally they all have gaps. Occasionally, a bit of coin helps to. I think the AI trades a lot of tech with each other.

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[operating1]

Many times I get techs just by making peace proposals. Example: Seige a nations' capital, lay waste to it's posessions defeat it's armies, sink their fleets, all the while keep an eye on their "weariness to war". Sure enough they will concede anything to get out of a mess after awhile, even offer to become a protectorate and pay you to be so, which might contain money, techs or even regions, if crafted right, all of the above...