Development

[fatedkoga]

I recently payed a game going for the Industrial Evolution achievement so I spent a lot more of my points into developing my provinces then normal. For those of you who do develop their provinces how many times would you say you do it? If anyone at paradox keeps track of it I would be curious to know the average times people develop their land.

During my game I noticed that despite losing land Ming had gained nearly 500 development from game start. Its probably an extreme example with all the free points they get but if that's common for them I'd like to know.

 

[PhoenixG]

Most of the case, when you have MP to spare that you have anything you want to spend on. Like you almost hit the cap, but don't want to tech yet due being ahead in time.
The only time I'll will dev is when I want to force spawn an institution (when you play in asia/africa) and very rare just because I want an extra building slot.

 

[Atilla 'The Hun']

Developing your land is an alternative for expanding, if you don't want to start any wars for a period of time or just play tall.

What I personally do when I'm out of manpower or the core of my land is true garbage. I collect points, stack -dev cost reduction modifiers and develop each province based on their purpose. What I mean with purpose is basically that I put more taxation (adm) in clergy and dhimmi estate provinces, put more production (dip) in burgers provinces, put more manpower (man) in nobility/cossack/tribe provinces. Same counts for the specific buildings. I try to be as efficient as possible and make the most profit out of my core lands.

This strategy can make you really powerful if you put enough focus in it.

 

[Incompetent]

Developing gold mines in states/TCs is usually a good use of points, at least while the amount of production development on the province is in single figures. (You don't want to push it too high as there is a risk of depletion.)

Colonial Nations can be a relatively efficient use of development if you do it right. At high enough tariff levels, you get more money from their provinces than you do from your own (due to global tariff bonuses), and developing their land solves all your liberty desire problems if you're dedicated enough. It's important to concentrate on one or two CNs rather than spreading it around though, or the rate of decay on the modifier becomes a problem. It decays at 1% per year I think, and each point of development adds 5% to the modifier, so once you've built up the modifier to an adequate level, you need to develop once every 5 years per CN you are using this on, plus the occasional extra development to counter increases in LD due to size, admin efficiency and so on. Even better is if you get a second-hand CN by annexing the overlord, and find the overlord has already built up the modifier for you.