Innovations were teased in the "Everything we know so far" Reddit post (May 2021) to have both spread from outside and through internal innovation. Of course a lot has changed since but the basic gist seems to be this:
The real drivers of science and ideology therefore are countries that have both a high rate of literature and a healthy amount of Academics of their own, and their high rate of literature will presumably also help them learn of foreign innovations fairly quickly.
- Technology spreads from outside AND can be researched from "Innovation points" as well
- Innovation points are created in Universities by Academics, and can be spent on researching a particular tech
- Literacy speeds up spread to your country
- Low literacy can limit the amount of Innovation points one can spend but overflow Innovation points are added to inbound tech spread
The real drivers of science and ideology therefore are countries that have both a high rate of literature and a healthy amount of Academics of their own, and their high rate of literature will presumably also help them learn of foreign innovations fairly quickly.
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