Dharma Colonial Province Development

[SClark92]

So, I recently got Dharma, and it allows you to put colonists in your owned provinces with a chance to boost development in them. Now this would seem a nice use for the colonist you get from the explore ideas before you get the next idea which boosts colonial range enough to reach America.

My question is, do development points gained this way contribute to institution spread in the same way as if I spent monarch points?

[pmpdadypenguinmn]

As far as I know it doesn't but even if it did you wouldn't get really anything from it. It's only worth it putting on your smallest provinces, ideally a 1-1-1 because the bigger the province is the less likely it is to gain development. Only do this while waiting for colonial range to actually colonize because it's really not worth it. Once you are done colonizing towards the mid-late game make sure you dump the idea group and get something else

In all honestly I don't really think it's worth doing at all. That's 2 ducats a month in the early game that would be much better spent on temples and workshops

[SClark92]

Originally posted by pmpdadypenguinmn:

As far as I know it doesn't but even if it did you wouldn't get really anything from it. It's only worth it putting on your smallest provinces, ideally a 1-1-1 because the bigger the province is the less likely it is to gain development. Only do this while waiting for colonial range to actually colonize because it's really not worth it. Once you are done colonizing towards the mid-late game make sure you dump the idea group and get something else

In all honestly I don't really think it's worth doing at all. That's 2 ducats a month in the early game that would be much better spent on temples and workshops

Thanks for this. Yeah, a bit of misreading on my part, I had put the colonist on a dev 8 province and thought the text said 24% chance a month to raise dev, but it was 24% a year. As you say sacrificing 24 ducats for a 24% chance of raising one province's dev by 1 doesn't seem worth it.

[bri]

Actually the chances aren't bad at all for most provinces and the worst it gets seems to be 5%/year. As long as you avoid double cost hits like arctic or arid+bad terrain types it will be in the 20+% range up to around 10 dev. The more you stack modifiers that decrease dev cost, the more effective it is.

[Rabob]

Originally posted by SClark92:

Originally posted by pmpdadypenguinmn:

As far as I know it doesn't but even if it did you wouldn't get really anything from it. It's only worth it putting on your smallest provinces, ideally a 1-1-1 because the bigger the province is the less likely it is to gain development. Only do this while waiting for colonial range to actually colonize because it's really not worth it. Once you are done colonizing towards the mid-late game make sure you dump the idea group and get something else

In all honestly I don't really think it's worth doing at all. That's 2 ducats a month in the early game that would be much better spent on temples and workshops

Thanks for this. Yeah, a bit of misreading on my part, I had put the colonist on a dev 8 province and thought the text said 24% chance a month to raise dev, but it was 24% a year. As you say sacrificing 24 ducats for a 24% chance of raising one province's dev by 1 doesn't seem worth it.

Roughly on average that would mean 1 development per 100 ducats, which is not a bad tradeoff imo. If you get tax, that would mean 1 ducat of income per year (Without modifiers). If you build a church on it, it will be even more. 1 base tax is about the same as 1 temple on a 3 tax dev province.

That being said, it can be cheaper sometimes to just hire an advisor and raise the dev manually. Because in 4 years they give 48 monarch power as well which is about the cost of 1 dev usually.

I have also seen that sometimes you get over a 50% chance for development (as Ethiopia), so that's really worth it. (this might have been when development costs was still bugged)

Furthermore, don't forget that every province development also adds trade power, sailors and some other stuff. Higher development also helps with institutions spread and having more building slots.
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Development