Can any country into space?

[DDRJake]

Yes, any nation can get to lv.72 in everything, provided you start in 1399 or even before 1500.

You can limit your minting by locking it while you have less than +3 stability, but if you unlock it when you regain +3 stability it will be stuck at 100% minting. You'd then need to lose some stability to relock your treasury slider.

 

[DDRJake]

How? Even Native nations in the Americas?

If you lock your minting slider, where does all the money go then?

Ever the fan of leading by example...

I'm a hair away from hitting 72s here through trade and high value provinces.

And the money just vanishes, as far as I could tell.

 

[DDRJake]

Just wondering, what religion do you have?

Reformed for the +10% TE bonus. I'm too small for spamming trade buildings to be of much help so I went Lv6 land buildings in all my provinces as I recall. I'm still at about 150 - 200% forcelimit in preperation for world war.

How exactly does the neighbor bonus work?

Take the tech group that you are in. If there is another country in your tech group with higher tech than you in any field, you will get a bonus investment in that field. The amount you get depends on how far behind you are and (possibly) how many nations are ahead of you. This bonus investment is anything between 0 and 100 ducats. It cannot be more than 100.

A freshly westernised country can expect to gain a tech level every month for several months. Your tech will slowly normalise within a few years to a decade, maybe a couple decades or more if you are a huge/poor country. Since the amount of tech required for a new level depends on your number of provinces and the neighbour bonus is a static value, it is good to stay small so that the +100 ducats is a larger proportion of the required tech investment. Once you have caught up with your other western friends the playing field is even (you really will want to modernise your military too though)

Your size and government type also effect how quickly you can make slider movements. A very small administrative republic can make them as quickly as once every ~10 years whereas a world spanning horde/tribe can take up to 80 years per slider change.

 

[DDRJake]

So the "neighbor" bonus doesn't actually require those countries to be neighbors?

correct: they only need to be in the same tech group as you.

Your large Spain probably cannot into space, but another large Spain could. If you took all of Iberia, or took a lot of America and moved your capital to the New World you couple into space as a very large Spain if:

1) You dominated trade, either through free trade everywhere or throug monopolised local trade (of tobacco, coffee, cotton, sugar...)
2) You built up your provinces with marketplaces, town halls etc to make them worth more money. Try to make sure your provinces are your culture or an accepted culture too.

Getting into space is easy as an OPM through trading. It's far more difficult as a larger power but not impossible. It's made harder in the 5.2 beta because your trade efficiency and value bonuses are capped at 200%.