How to boost tech advances?

[Professor Von-Wulfen ]

Hello all.
I know that the researchers skill in the relevant tech gives a bonus, are there any other ways to boost them?

[Solitus]

The more citizens you have relative to the rest of your empire; the better your research rate.

However, you need to promote Freeman (Manpower) Tribesman (little bit of manpower, little bit of tax) or Slaves (Tax) to get Citizens (research) If you're not careful, you will either run out of Cash or Manpower.

Also, there some inventions that will increase tech rate as well.

TL;DR: Get bigger. Moar Mans means Moar everything.

[kesat]

Originally posted by Solitus:

The more citizens you have relative to the rest of your empire; the better your research rate.

However, you need to promote Freeman (Manpower) Tribesman (little bit of manpower, little bit of tax) or Slaves (Tax) to get Citizens (research) If you're not careful, you will either run out of Cash or Manpower.

Also, there some inventions that will increase tech rate as well.

TL;DR: Get bigger. Moar Mans means Moar everything.

No, that's wrong. And actually getting bigger is making it worse.

Science is all about research efficiency. Small empires are usually much more research efficient than large empires and able to progress faster because of that (e.g. small greek states).

There are two options to increase research efficiency:
a) Increase citizen population in relation to total population.
b) Increase happiness for your citizen population (most important aspects: culture, religions and civilization level).

Getting bigger and bigger, without paying attention to cititzen to pop relation and their happiness isn't going to help you at all.


Little example:
In my current game in 283 BC the small city state of Megara has tech levels 5/5/5/5. 9 out of 14 pops are citizens (75% happiness). The roman empire on the other hand is just at 1/1/1/1 - which is actually the same level as most tribes right now, despite a significant larger population.

[curtadamsCA]

The key is citizen happiness more than citizen number, at least if you're larger than a few provinces. You want citizens:
not from tribes not of your culture
of your culture
of your religion
in high civilization cities
in your capital province
in your capital city.

Each of those increases happiness by about 20%, which is about the happiness of a same-culture same-religion citizen in a frontier province. A citizen of a foreign tribal culture will often produce no research at all. The value of these changes is high enough that they're often worth doing the monarch point upgrades, at least if it's just one step (so while usually you want your governors to assimilate foreigners, you often want to go ahead and click-convert the citizens.) It's also often worth moving citizens in a city next to your capital province into your capital province, and moving to the capital *city* from adjacent cities (which are generally in the capital province, obviously).

There are also trade goods that boost citizen happiness.

[curtadamsCA]

To add on to what Kesat said, research is basically divided by your population so enlarging your empire will almost always slow down research, since if nothing else the new citizens won't be in your capital. If they're foreign culture or religion they will almost kill your research until you can get them assimilated. (e.g. if you double your population with foreign conquest you'll get almost no more research points, so half the research rate).

[Twelvefield]

This thread helps. I started getting "Inefficient Research" flags, but no real way of identifying the issue. Or maybe there is some way of figuring it out, but I don't know because surprise in real life I am definitely an inefficient researcher.

[Solitus]

Right, I keep forgetting not everyone is a weirdo like me playing only tribes haha.

In a tribe start, you need more people because you start off with so few; if you promote a bunch to citizens your economy will evaporate and you'll die. Best to conquer someone and grab their pops.

[Professor Von-Wulfen ]

Originally posted by kesat:

Originally posted by Solitus:

The more citizens you have relative to the rest of your empire; the better your research rate.

However, you need to promote Freeman (Manpower) Tribesman (little bit of manpower, little bit of tax) or Slaves (Tax) to get Citizens (research) If you're not careful, you will either run out of Cash or Manpower.

Also, there some inventions that will increase tech rate as well.

TL;DR: Get bigger. Moar Mans means Moar everything.

No, that's wrong. And actually getting bigger is making it worse.

Science is all about research efficiency. Small empires are usually much more research efficient than large empires and able to progress faster because of that (e.g. small greek states).

There are two options to increase research efficiency:
a) Increase citizen population in relation to total population.
b) Increase happiness for your citizen population (most important aspects: culture, religions and civilization level).

Getting bigger and bigger, without paying attention to cititzen to pop relation and their happiness isn't going to help you at all.


Little example:
In my current game in 283 BC the small city state of Megara has tech levels 5/5/5/5. 9 out of 14 pops are citizens (75% happiness). The roman empire on the other hand is just at 1/1/1/1 - which is actually the same level as most tribes right now, despite a significant larger population.

Originally posted by curtadamsCA:

The key is citizen happiness more than citizen number, at least if you're larger than a few provinces. You want citizens:
not from tribes not of your culture
of your culture
of your religion
in high civilization cities
in your capital province
in your capital city.

Each of those increases happiness by about 20%, which is about the happiness of a same-culture same-religion citizen in a frontier province. A citizen of a foreign tribal culture will often produce no research at all. The value of these changes is high enough that they're often worth doing the monarch point upgrades, at least if it's just one step (so while usually you want your governors to assimilate foreigners, you often want to go ahead and click-convert the citizens.) It's also often worth moving citizens in a city next to your capital province into your capital province, and moving to the capital *city* from adjacent cities (which are generally in the capital province, obviously).

There are also trade goods that boost citizen happiness.

Originally posted by curtadamsCA:

To add on to what Kesat said, research is basically divided by your population so enlarging your empire will almost always slow down research, since if nothing else the new citizens won't be in your capital. If they're foreign culture or religion they will almost kill your research until you can get them assimilated. (e.g. if you double your population with foreign conquest you'll get almost no more research points, so half the research rate).

Many many thanks chaps. It seems I am already doing a few things right, such as assimilating pops as I grow and increasing happiness across all provinces.

[kesat]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

This thread helps. I started getting "Inefficient Research" flags, but no real way of identifying the issue. Or maybe there is some way of figuring it out, but I don't know because surprise in real life I am definitely an inefficient researcher.

Depending on your nation there are some ways you can solve it.

Usually the easiest way is to assimilate or convert pops to your culture/religion, esp. in case for most civilized nations.

In case of the tribes it's a little bit more of a longterm problem. Because even if your citizens are already part of your culture and religion it's usually an issue based on the lack of civilization in your provinces. You need to improve the civilization level in your provinces first, before you can actually make use of any citizen - or relocate the citizens to your capital (or another province with a higher civilization level, e.g. due to markets).

Originally posted by Solitus:

Right, I keep forgetting not everyone is a weirdo like me playing only tribes haha.

In a tribe start, you need more people because you start off with so few; if you promote a bunch to citizens your economy will evaporate and you'll die. Best to conquer someone and grab their pops.

Playing as a (migrating) tribe myself too. But even then it's not so much about lots of citizens. A small tribe with 10 pops and 5 citizen is pretty much as efficient as a larger tribe of 100 pops and 50 citizens.

You don't need to grow bigger - you can just promote your slaves/tribesmen/free men to citizens and that's it.

[curtadamsCA]

Yeah, you can't just convert a bunch of your tribesmen into citizens starting as a barbarian tribe. What you want to do is conquer a bunch of territory, and quickly, before the original owners turn tribesmen into citizens, and then use that for money while you civilize and promote people in your capital.

After a couple of decades conquering other barbarians gets less useful because they come with all these wrong-culture citizens you have to assimilate and even after that they're kind of mediocre because the civilization value isn't good and they're not in your capital, and too far to move them there.