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The Literacy Hole

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Victoria 2 17560 After Action Reports (AAR)
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82 % of the adult world population can read today. And today it is the year 2010, not 1936. So the rate with which literacy rises in the game is actually a bit higher than in reality.

And believe it or not, but it is actually harder to raise literacy in a country where no one can read to begin with :). Teachers who can´t read won´t do a good job teaching others how to read. Looking at Africa today it is their backwardness that makes them stay backward. Like in Victoria II it becomes a bad spiral. It was only after 1950 that some backward countries started to catch up, with the exception of Japan that started its westernization a bit earlier. Most Asian and African nations that are doing well today, have had some help from western nations. That help was not available until after WWII and definitely not during the age of imperialism. During the game period the gap between the industrialized world and the uncivil world was actually getting bigger by the minute.

I am all for alternative history in games. But there has to be some limitations to keep the game somewhat realistic.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy
 
Rather than quote everyone, I'll respond with bullets. (The best way!)

1.) NapoleonI: Play as OE. Trust me, unless you spend a LOT of effort on literacy (to the exclusion of darn near everything else), you will have illiterate peasants throughout most of the game.

2.) To those that think NF Clergy is no good at low literacy: the +10% NF promotion chance will overpowers almost every other negative modifier (even stacked) for any pop type. And since 1.2 makes it harder for an NF poptype to promote out of the pop, you can easily get lots of clergy...over time.

The problem isn't that NF clergy may not do the job (I haven't had time to try), it's that if you're spending all your time with clergy NF and education-related techs, your industry will stagnate (not to mention your army). Does having a paper-thin army and an anemic industry next to hyper-industrializing Russia work out?

3.) Dewirix: Maybe. Not any time soon - I'm still getting a hang on the game, and RL is still busy as can be. I just now finally found time to log into the forums for a few minutes a day. :p
 
Forgiven: Hmm, perhaps that would work. But what about the AI? They won't use all those tricks, so illiterate AI controlled nations get fucked. I really think they should make clergygain as easy as it was in 1.1...

Dewrix: Kudos! I'l check out ur save mate.
 
naggy said:
Rather than quote everyone, I'll respond with bullets. (The best way!)

1.) NapoleonI: Play as OE. Trust me, unless you spend a LOT of effort on literacy (to the exclusion of darn near everything else), you will have illiterate peasants throughout most of the game.

2.) To those that think NF Clergy is no good at low literacy: the +10% NF promotion chance will overpowers almost every other negative modifier (even stacked) for any pop type. And since 1.2 makes it harder for an NF poptype to promote out of the pop, you can easily get lots of clergy...over time.

The problem isn't that NF clergy may not do the job (I haven't had time to try), it's that if you're spending all your time with clergy NF and education-related techs, your industry will stagnate (not to mention your army). Does having a paper-thin army and an anemic industry next to hyper-industrializing Russia work out?

3.) Dewirix: Maybe. Not any time soon - I'm still getting a hang on the game, and RL is still busy as can be. I just now finally found time to log into the forums for a few minutes a day. :p
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Mate, I had NF'ed clergy as Russia for 50 years. It does nothing, trust me.
 
NapoleonI said:
82 % of the adult world population can read today. And today it is the year 2010, not 1936. So the rate with which literacy rises in the game is actually a bit higher than in reality.

And believe it or not, but it is actually harder to raise literacy in a country where no one can read to begin with :). Teachers who can´t read won´t do a good job teaching others how to read. Looking at Africa today it is their backwardness that makes them stay backward. Like in Victoria II it becomes a bad spiral. It was only after 1950 that some backward countries started to catch up, with the exception of Japan that started its westernization a bit earlier. Most Asian and African nations that are doing well today, have had some help from western nations. That help was not available until after WWII and definitely not during the age of imperialism. During the game period the gap between the industrialized world and the uncivil world was actually getting bigger by the minute.

I am all for alternative history in games. But there has to be some limitations to keep the game somewhat realistic.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy
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Don't post rubbish, please. During this era literacy sometimes rose 30% in 13 years with some nations. In this game it is impossible to even RECRUIT teachers, even when teachers live in luxury compared to the rest of the population (well, unless you turn off tax for poor and turn them up for middle).

I really don't see how the world-wide literacy rate is relevant.
 
Russia has soooo many states getting few of them clergyed hardly can do anything, that's true...
 
Nope. I had NF'ed 4 of my largest regions (population wise) for the entire game: in none of them the population makeup rose to above 1%-2% clergy.

I think one of the main reasons is lack of unenployment, (and the harsh literacy requirements since 1.2). Even the literate pops mostly choose to "promote" from farmers to craftsmen, when they could have gone to clergy.

Edit: i just go an idea. What if I close all the factories in my most industrialized state, while turning off all military/beurocrat spending and putting NF clergy on it? It may work, but the AI would never do this, thus it will remain backwards 4ever, even if it could avoid it.
 
Just to add a bit of perspective on OE and literacy:

The OE had 2-6% literacy in 1800 and ended the century with only 15%. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#Language

The main reason being that the written language (Ottoman turkish) was incomprehensible and hard to learn. In 1928 it was reformed along with major school reforms, and by 1940 male literacy had reached the 70's. However, total literacy is still only 86% in Turkey today - mainly because many elder women can't read or write.

So it would seem that "natural" growth of literacy is really slow IRL (and in game), but that most nations solved this by compulsory schooling.

A proposed solution: "School" as a social reform. Enourmous boosts to literacy if fully funded, but expensive as hell. Oh, and you need socialists/militancy.
 
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Well, at least they should make gaining clergy much easier... Anyone know how?

OR:

What they should do in my opinion:
A. Make a tech cost like 1/3 of what they cost now.
B. Make inventions only happen once per year, instead of per month. Make likelyhood of an invetion firing be increased/decreased by INTERNAL POLICIES, LITERACY, PLURALITY, WEALTH and so on.
C. Turn off tech point accumulation.
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Iwin123 said:
Mate, I had NF'ed clergy as Russia for 50 years. It does nothing, trust me.
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It does, trust me. In some states, that is. :p
There must be peasant pops willing and able to pomote in the state in the first place. I, too experimented with NF'ing the most populous Russian states over decades. In some it worked quite well, I got them close to 4% over (a long) time. In others, it did indeed absolutely nothing.
In order to predict where it will work you'd have to spend an hour analyzing pops before setting each NF though, which is kinda impractical.
 
lama said:
Just to add a bit of perspective on OE and literacy:

The OE had 2-6% literacy in 1800 and ended the century with only 15%. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#Language

The main reason being that the written language (Ottoman turkish) was incomprehensible and hard to learn. In 1928 it was reformed along with major school reforms, and by 1940 male literacy had reached the 70's. However, total literacy is still only 86% in Turkey today - mainly because many elder women can't read or write.

So it would seem that "natural" growth of literacy is really slow IRL (and in game), but that most nations solved this by compulsory schooling.

A proposed solution: "School" as a social reform. Enourmous boosts to literacy if fully funded, but expensive as hell. Oh, and you need socialists/militancy.
Click to expand...

Interesting idea, but wouldn't be useful for large backward(ish) countries, like Russia, OE, China... By the time you're able to enact social reforms with those countries, it is very late in the game. To try to pass a social reform somewhat earlier, let's say mid-game, you'd really have to crank up your militancy, which means a lot of rebellions and microing which equals not fun in my opinion.
 
HMM... After studying the files, I see that clergy gets a "-5 factor" if there are 4% officers... But less or more? So if there are less than 4% officers in a province, pops get a -5 factor for conversion? Or is it if there are MORE than 4% officers in a province?

Completely illogical. They probably meant a factor of -0.5!
 
Iwin123 said:
HMM... After studying the files, I see that clergy gets a "-5 factor" if there are 4% officers... But less or more? So if there are less than 4% officers in a province, pops get a -5 factor for conversion? Or is it if there are MORE than 4% officers in a province?

Completely illogical. They probably meant a factor of -0.5!
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It is bug. Go to the POP files and replace officers with clergymen :)
 
I am playing a game with Spain, and I can't get over 1 % clergymen so my literacy is still at 20 %. And in some provinces I have 4 % officers, is this a bug? how could I fix it?
 
Sarmatian said:
Interesting idea, but wouldn't be useful for large backward(ish) countries, like Russia, OE, China... By the time you're able to enact social reforms with those countries, it is very late in the game. To try to pass a social reform somewhat earlier, let's say mid-game, you'd really have to crank up your militancy, which means a lot of rebellions and microing which equals not fun in my opinion.
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Isn't that more or less how it worked, though?

Also: This would end the need for silly "Folkskolan" events to simulate literacy increases in countries which did enact school reforms in the period.
 
Still, even school system, assuming it'd school whole 'born this year', which I suppose was rather rare at the time, would only be less than 2% increase per year, call it reasonably 1%, which, well, maybe that's not possible currently?

As I was asking this, I decided to test it...
Ottoman Empire:
Year ; Literacy; Clergy
1846 ; 8,9% ; 0,99%
1856 ; 11,0% ; 1,23%
1866 ; 14,8% ; 1,42%
This does not look so great, I grant you that, but even with these numbers, it's now 0,0468% monthly literacy gain aka 0,5616% a year, which I actually consider 'high enough', especially as that would still rise towards the end of the game...
Now, I did my best to get most clergymen I could, but I actually had period at start (first 4 years?) when the amount went down, after this I raised military spending from 34% to 59% on theory that it's give more officers that could promote to clergy than I'd lose with this, I'm not sure if that was the cause but the number started to rise after that. I still maintain that raising literacy should never be primary goal or really even a goal at all for anyone, the literacy effect on research is insignificant enough, that it's better to research other techs than education efficiency, I don't believe they'll ever pay themselves back, I could be wrong but I won't believe it =)
 
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