Help for someone struggling with trade and research

[ohdear]

Slowly getting to grips with Victoria but still struggling with two big issues:

Playing as Brazil to get into the game. I cannot buy any machine parts from the world market therefore am completely unable to build any factories. Is there something I am doing wrong or is this right? If it is right then how can I build any industry?

Also have no apparant infrastructure at all in any of my provinces. While I can believe this is true it seems impossible for me to research basic railroads to build anything. Am I only able to research the five options I am given on teh main technology screen? Is there anyway to research something else?

 

[Faulty]

Firstly, the world market has a very limited amount of machine parts at the start of the game (i think there is only a single factory in the UK for them) and countries are given preference based on their prestige. The solution is to wait for them to become more available or raise your prestige so you get first dibs.

Secondly, the options available to research rotate between the 5 subcategories of the 5 categories. This happens predictably - if the option was "clean coal" [metallurgy subcategory] the first time, it will be "experimental railroad" [infrastructure subcategory] after you finish a project. This page is a good explanation: http://www.paradoxian.org/vickywiki/index.php/How_research_options_are_selected

 

[ohdear]

Thank you.

 

[Orm]

Also have no apparant infrastructure at all in any of my provinces. While I can believe this is true it seems impossible for me to research basic railroads to build anything. Am I only able to research the five options I am given on teh main technology screen? Is there anyway to research something else?

You can trade for the railroad tech from someone who has it. But beware that this will cost you research points (the same amount you would have to spend researching it) and if you go into the negative you won't be able to do any research of your own until you reach 0 RP again.

 

[Raph]

Slowly getting to grips with Victoria but still struggling with two big issues:

Playing as Brazil to get into the game. I cannot buy any machine parts from the world market therefore am completely unable to build any factories. Is there something I am doing wrong or is this right? If it is right then how can I build any industry?

Also have no apparant infrastructure at all in any of my provinces. While I can believe this is true it seems impossible for me to research basic railroads to build anything. Am I only able to research the five options I am given on teh main technology screen? Is there anyway to research something else?

Also, some of the industry techs give you machine parts when you've researched them, IIRC Publishing Industry and Interchangable parts in vanilla (might be mechanical production also or instead of Publishing Industry.).

To speed up research, you'll want to have as big proportion of your population as educated POPs (mainly clerks and clergy) as possible, since this is what determines RP generation. Since you don't have many factories, you'll probably not want to make clerks since they might emigrate if they're unemployed, so clergy is probably preferrable early on. Buy the goods needed to convert and convert some of your biggest POPs in poor RGOs like grain into clergy.

Also, remember to always fund education at 100%. Ditch other things like crime fighting and possible defence spending and/or army maintenance if you can't afford education early on. Education together with educated POP ratio determines your RP generation as well as increases literacy, which in turn is a major factor in production efficiency.

 

[lizardo]

Research requires RPs and time. Make sure you trade only after a tech has received all its RPs, or the research clock stops. Once you're generating enough RPs that you can fill the tech and have it on 'free time' your trades will start saving you time.

Choose a tech trade partner who is near or your level and build up your relationship with increments of $100 trades. get within 15 points of 200 and have 2 diplo points ready.

first of the month save your game, use a diplo point to bring the relationship to 200 and seven days later trade one tech for multiple techs. If the trade fails reboot. Be reasonable about that.

Second strategy is with war satellite a nation and grab a lot of core provinces. sell them back for tech and money. Make an evil cackle each time.

 

[Raph]

Research requires RPs and time. Make sure you trade only after a tech has received all its RPs, or the research clock stops. Once you're generating enough RPs that you can fill the tech and have it on 'free time' your trades will start saving you time.

Choose a tech trade partner who is near or your level and build up your relationship with increments of $100 trades. get within 15 points of 200 and have 2 diplo points ready.

first of the month save your game, use a diplo point to bring the relationship to 200 and seven days later trade one tech for multiple techs. If the trade fails reboot. Be reasonable about that.

Second strategy is with war satellite a nation and grab a lot of core provinces. sell them back for tech and money. Make an evil cackle each time.

Those, however, are what we usually call exploits. Or, well, you could see the second one as war reparations but I'm not really sure about that.

 

[fbaker4]

Yah, those are cheety and lame.

But the pointer about the education spending is the AI itself - all education increases all literacy which increases tech-advancement-speed. IRL, it might not really work that way, but in game, it's the only way to go. A few techs increase the rate of Education/Iteracy increase as well, and those are key.

Legit trades, back and forth with a few countries around your level are very important to gaining tech in a pinch, but typically what you'll want to do is get some capitalists to build your factories for you; it doesn't have to be a large-size POP, a 1,000-5,000 size unit works just fine.

They will slowly accumulate $, and then they'll build without ceasing.

 

[unmerged(37660)]

You can trade for the railroad tech from someone who has it. But beware that this will cost you research points (the same amount you would have to spend researching it)

This is not true. It will cost you what the GIVING country had to pay in rp to research the tech. So if you are after military techs - trade with a country that has order. If you want commece/industry techs then trade with a liberty country.

Hammer

 

[Orm]

This is not true. It will cost you what the GIVING country had to pay in rp to research the tech. So if you are after military techs - trade with a country that has order. If you want commece/industry techs then trade with a liberty country.

Hammer

To clarify, you're talking about national values. Firstly, I just thought it was unnecessary to complicate the explanation by bringing it up. Secondly, the number of countries that have more advanced techs than you tends to decrease with time, making the question about picking one with the right national value to trade with moot.

 

[unmerged(37660)]

No problem my friend! Just trying to be precise on a few points of the game I have discovered. What it can amount to is an "extra" freebie tech every 9-10 years if a player is careful about the target country to tech trade with. So over the course of a GC that can amount to quite a few.

Hammer

 

[fbaker4]

Good call Hammer. I learn something new today...a good day!