I was playing with random unciv nations and decided to calculate how much it would cost to become civilized in the long term taking into account a few things here and there and whether a nation could achieve civ status before the end of the game, given a certain amount of profit per day.
This is with Ricky 2.01, hotfix 4.
So this is the basic break down so far:
ARMY COST:
To get 25 army score, you need to have produced 200 native divisions, or same amount of man-o-wars. It's much cheaper to produce native divisions, but not everyone can afford the manpower. It's also much more benefitial to produce them without any attachments, so assuming you'll be producing just natives, the cost in total is approximately 254 000$
that's about 1270$ per division.
3756$ manowar
You'll also need to convert a lot of pops into soldiers to get there and assuming you'll only convert 75000+ pops, it'll cost you 30 000$ more so that's 284 000$ to produce the simplest and cheapest military score of 25.
If you get lucky and get the extra division events, or you have started playing with a certain score already, subtract 11360 per military point from this total.
If you choose to produce manowars, they cost about 3700$ per vessel.
But they only require 0.5 manpower as well, so in total you need 100 manpower only. The total cost is around 740 000$ (almost 3x as much)
1200$ for manpower conversion, though I think you don't even need to do that normally, so this is quite trivial.
INDUSTRY COST
Now this part is a bit tricky because depending on what technology you have researched, factories will give different total score. If you have absolutely nothing researched, you get 1/2 point per factory and that means you need 100 factories to get a score of 50 (minus whatever industry score you get from RGOs)
I think only smaller countries like Panjab start that way, so you'll need TONS of factories for them to get enough score. Other countries are different. I think Korea needs only about 10 factories to get more than enough score.
In any case, the cheapest and most productive factories I found for the first few decades are cement factories.
They only cost 870$ (more or less) per factory + 3450$ per clerk + 1635 per craftsman (assuming you convert clerks and craftsmen that are 75000+ in size and then break them down to fill empty spaces in the factory)
so the total of 6000$ per factory.
In case of Korea, you'll only spend about 60-70000, I think all other countries are much worse of, so expect this to go much higher.
So the total cost so far, for making the necessary military+industries assuming you only have to make about 10 factories is:
284 000 for the army
60 000 for the industry
344 000 in total.
Now if you keep building your army as you go along and then deploy it as soon as it is produced, your overall income will slowly decrease which means you'll achieve the total necessary amount of money a little later, so it's probably best so simply keep the constructed divisions in your deploymet bank without deploying them unless absolutely necessary.
Now theoretically, if your goal is to get civilized before the end of the game, you have 100 years (Ricky) to get this amount, but for the sakes of actually playing as civ nation for a while, let's assume you want to get civilized by 1900.
That gives you 65 years to make that amount, which means your absolute minimum profit per day must be 14.4$. No nation except for China starts with that amount, meaning that you need to make sure you eventually have higher than 14.4$ per day to catch up with the needed amount. This can be done either through conquest of neighbors or build up of industries.
Cement, steel and booze are probably the most profitable resoruces to produce in factories for an unciv nation. If you manage to make one of each in every province, you can theoretically have at least 30$/day (I had that as Korea by 1880), which would give you a good amount of profit and a big chance for getting the needed amount of money by 1900.
Finally, if your profit is continuously below 9.4$/day you will not get civlized by the end of the game.
Obviously, if you produce manowars, you need to have 3x as much profit and that's a booming 43.2$/day (to get civ by 1900), which makes the idea of producing navy as an unciv a bit pointless
PRESTIGE
There's also the whole prestige thing and this is probably the most pain for Korea because it cannot actively get any prestige and can only wait for events. The only actual way for Korea to get extra prestige is to wait until China gets into -100 and then DOW them taking as much territory as possible and then either wait for them to offer peace or do white peace that gives you prestige bonus. other than that, it's all about lucky event triggers.
Other countries usually have unciv neighbors that you can DOW and conquer for extra prestige. E.g. as Siam, dowing Annam (or vice versa) costs about 20 prestige, but annexing the whole thing gives you about 50 or so, so in the end you get 30 extra.
As Egypt, if you manage to hold off Ottomans, you can always go into Arabian peninsula and Tripoli and that'll give you 100+ in the end
As Punjab, assuming you survive the Brittish onslaught or somehow manage to not get attacked, there's tons of opportunities in the North, in the East and in the West. you'll end up with +20 from Tibet, +20 from Afghanistan and there's about 6 nations that go banrkupt there too, so thats +8-10 per nation annexed.
This is with Ricky 2.01, hotfix 4.
So this is the basic break down so far:
ARMY COST:
To get 25 army score, you need to have produced 200 native divisions, or same amount of man-o-wars. It's much cheaper to produce native divisions, but not everyone can afford the manpower. It's also much more benefitial to produce them without any attachments, so assuming you'll be producing just natives, the cost in total is approximately 254 000$
that's about 1270$ per division.
3756$ manowar
You'll also need to convert a lot of pops into soldiers to get there and assuming you'll only convert 75000+ pops, it'll cost you 30 000$ more so that's 284 000$ to produce the simplest and cheapest military score of 25.
If you get lucky and get the extra division events, or you have started playing with a certain score already, subtract 11360 per military point from this total.
If you choose to produce manowars, they cost about 3700$ per vessel.
But they only require 0.5 manpower as well, so in total you need 100 manpower only. The total cost is around 740 000$ (almost 3x as much)
1200$ for manpower conversion, though I think you don't even need to do that normally, so this is quite trivial.
INDUSTRY COST
Now this part is a bit tricky because depending on what technology you have researched, factories will give different total score. If you have absolutely nothing researched, you get 1/2 point per factory and that means you need 100 factories to get a score of 50 (minus whatever industry score you get from RGOs)
I think only smaller countries like Panjab start that way, so you'll need TONS of factories for them to get enough score. Other countries are different. I think Korea needs only about 10 factories to get more than enough score.
In any case, the cheapest and most productive factories I found for the first few decades are cement factories.
They only cost 870$ (more or less) per factory + 3450$ per clerk + 1635 per craftsman (assuming you convert clerks and craftsmen that are 75000+ in size and then break them down to fill empty spaces in the factory)
so the total of 6000$ per factory.
In case of Korea, you'll only spend about 60-70000, I think all other countries are much worse of, so expect this to go much higher.
So the total cost so far, for making the necessary military+industries assuming you only have to make about 10 factories is:
284 000 for the army
60 000 for the industry
344 000 in total.
Now if you keep building your army as you go along and then deploy it as soon as it is produced, your overall income will slowly decrease which means you'll achieve the total necessary amount of money a little later, so it's probably best so simply keep the constructed divisions in your deploymet bank without deploying them unless absolutely necessary.
Now theoretically, if your goal is to get civilized before the end of the game, you have 100 years (Ricky) to get this amount, but for the sakes of actually playing as civ nation for a while, let's assume you want to get civilized by 1900.
That gives you 65 years to make that amount, which means your absolute minimum profit per day must be 14.4$. No nation except for China starts with that amount, meaning that you need to make sure you eventually have higher than 14.4$ per day to catch up with the needed amount. This can be done either through conquest of neighbors or build up of industries.
Cement, steel and booze are probably the most profitable resoruces to produce in factories for an unciv nation. If you manage to make one of each in every province, you can theoretically have at least 30$/day (I had that as Korea by 1880), which would give you a good amount of profit and a big chance for getting the needed amount of money by 1900.
Finally, if your profit is continuously below 9.4$/day you will not get civlized by the end of the game.
Obviously, if you produce manowars, you need to have 3x as much profit and that's a booming 43.2$/day (to get civ by 1900), which makes the idea of producing navy as an unciv a bit pointless
PRESTIGE
There's also the whole prestige thing and this is probably the most pain for Korea because it cannot actively get any prestige and can only wait for events. The only actual way for Korea to get extra prestige is to wait until China gets into -100 and then DOW them taking as much territory as possible and then either wait for them to offer peace or do white peace that gives you prestige bonus. other than that, it's all about lucky event triggers.
Other countries usually have unciv neighbors that you can DOW and conquer for extra prestige. E.g. as Siam, dowing Annam (or vice versa) costs about 20 prestige, but annexing the whole thing gives you about 50 or so, so in the end you get 30 extra.
As Egypt, if you manage to hold off Ottomans, you can always go into Arabian peninsula and Tripoli and that'll give you 100+ in the end
As Punjab, assuming you survive the Brittish onslaught or somehow manage to not get attacked, there's tons of opportunities in the North, in the East and in the West. you'll end up with +20 from Tibet, +20 from Afghanistan and there's about 6 nations that go banrkupt there too, so thats +8-10 per nation annexed.
