My Empire is falling behind on Innovations. Someone please help?

[jpinard]

I'm not sure what to do to try and catch up with the rest of the world's Innovations. I started in the earliest game slot in SW Africa, and though I've taken over a large swath, I'm so far behind the curve in 945, I'm wondering what I can do to catch up or keep pace with the AI.

Would diverging my culture help?
Are there some kinds of foci or events that can help?

[BaCaz]

Easiest way to catch up would be to hybridize your culture with a powerful one, easiest way to get in front would be to focus on learning education and perks or other modifiers that impact county development and cultural fascination progress (such as powerful historical buildings and so on).

[teron]

High learning ruler with scholarship focus and traits into the tree. Specifically the Scientific trait which increases cultural Cultural Fascination Progress.
Also increase your cultures average development score which will increase the tech growth on all techs.

Also there are techs that increase the development cap, grab those since it reduces the penalty for existing development.

[Sir_Poroto]

Also there is a little penalty in technological advancements for cultures that are far spreaded out. A culture that is concentrated on a small kingdom/duchy wil have it easier to innovate.
Maybe this was a way to balance op empires against little kingdoms, so in every gameplay you are presented to choose either to play wide or tall.

[Rialm]

Having Learning as your secondary skill is really useful. specially now that it gives you bonus with others cultures.
How do I get innovation? well I always marry the character with good Learning. Specially because I hate Confederate Partition and I want to get it read as fast as possible.

And observation: I hybridize my culture with another one, you don't lose your progress but be aware that in my case, the Succession Law returned to be Confederate partition and I lost High Crown Authority.

[snuggleform]

There's a small built-in mechanic that helps you catch up which is the "exposure" mechanic you'll notice that if you share a religion or border with other cultures you get extra progress towards it, it's not new to royal court or anything .

Other than hybridizing, one cheeky maneuver I've used is called "if you can't beat em, join em."

Send your young kid to study under a foreign guardian with tech you like and have him convert to that culture. There's no money cost to this. True when you come into power your vassals won't like you, but that is the price of progress and that can be managed.

[jpinard]

Wow, you guys are amazing! Thanks for the advice. This is a dumb question, but can you hybridize twice?

[snuggleform]

you can hybridize as many times as you like - but there is a 50 year cooldown (specifically your culture has to be at least 50 years old)

[Crim]

There's a place near central africa that has extremely high development, conquer that, make a new exclusive culture, make only the high development areas your culture and nothing else

Watch and Laugh as you're far more advanced than France within a few centuries

[jpinard]

Originally posted by Talamare:

There's a place near central africa that has extremely high development, conquer that, make a new exclusive culture, make only the high development areas your culture and nothing else

Watch and Laugh as you're far more advanced than France within a few centuries

What do you mean by "Make only the high development areas your culture and nothing else"? I'm not exactly sure how I'd do that but I can't wait to try!

[teron]

Originally posted by jpinard:

Originally posted by Talamare:

There's a place near central africa that has extremely high development, conquer that, make a new exclusive culture, make only the high development areas your culture and nothing else

Watch and Laugh as you're far more advanced than France within a few centuries

What do you mean by "Make only the high development areas your culture and nothing else"? I'm not exactly sure how I'd do that but I can't wait to try!

It is because average cultural province Development is part of the innovation formula. So the higher the average the better.

The wiki [ck3.paradoxwikis.com] has the following line as part of the formula:
Amount of advancement gained = 0.3 + (average cultural province Development * 0.02) + 0.2 if ahead in era.

[jpinard]

Wow that's amazing. So when I jump out of the gates to glob a ton f territories and make a large Kingdom, I'm actually slowing down my rate of innovation?

[High Lord Denix]

Originally posted by jpinard:

Wow that's amazing. So when I jump out of the gates to glob a ton f territories and make a large Kingdom, I'm actually slowing down my rate of innovation?

Only if you convert the culture

[D34DLY]

Solution 1: switch your culture to one with more innovations.

Solution 2: In ruler designer pick a culture with lots of innovations already completed, and in a region with high development, e.g. Tamil.

Solution 3: (what i do) In ruler designer, select your culture to be Norwegian (867 start). Since this culture doesn't exist yet, you will be the culture leader. Have steward convert your capital to Norwegian culture. Only have this one county be Norwegian. Have your steward pump up the development level of this one county. also, take a county or two with a different culture that has innovations you don't have, this will give you Cultural Exposure to learn more innovations faster. Profit.

[RawCode]

play tribal
raid any advanced nation
recruit prisoner
make prisoner teach your heir that culture
w8 for heir
convert your holdings to get benefits of advanced culture

you will get bonuses and advancements of that culture ever with zero development in your capital, everything magically delivered to you

convert more contriest to eventually take over cultural head

since you have zero development you will slowdown culture this way.

[jpinard]

Originally posted by D34DLY:

Solution 1: switch your culture to one with more innovations.

Solution 2: In ruler designer pick a culture with lots of innovations already completed, and in a region with high development, e.g. Tamil.

Solution 3: (what i do) In ruler designer, select your culture to be Norwegian (867 start). Since this culture doesn't exist yet, you will be the culture leader. Have steward convert your capital to Norwegian culture. Only have this one county be Norwegian. Have your steward pump up the development level of this one county. also, take a county or two with a different culture that has innovations you don't have, this will give you Cultural Exposure to learn more innovations faster. Profit.

Down in Africa, I was Manding. I decided to use the Czech culture since it had all the traits I wanted. But for something reason I have ZERO cultural acceptance with anyone anywhere, even after maxing out the Scholar lifestyle tree. Why did that happen to me, but in your example #2 it is doable?