How to manage Development with viking age start?

[makaramus]

As emperor of russia my conquest is taking a huge break right now since I united my culture and its year 980. I need help with my technology and development. Any advice? I know bleeding development, currently Kiev is literally constantinapol of world but land of Russia is so large it becomes insignificant.

 

[Rackenhammer]

Honestly, the best you can do is

1. Keep focusing development in your capital duchy. You can move your steward around a bit to maximize development rate efficiencies once you hit the limits imposed by your tech level, but it's not really necessary, I think.

2. Look out for counties that are higher than your average Dev, and convert them.

3. Focus on Learning for your rulers.

While it may take a bit, it honestly won't be too much of an issue if you play long enough. Mean averages are outlier sensitive, so you can get to a decent tech rate with a few high-dev duchies. I've started with Sapmi culture (one of the lowest averages at the start of the game), and hit max tech before 1300.

 

[DamonIsa]

Make sure to build the right building in your vassal lands as well, not just your own holdings. If you end up with the likes of Tradeports and other Development Increasing buildings it can really change the growth rate. As in my last run as the Irish I ended in 1410 with about 80 development in Dublin without ever having set my steward to Increase development. It really does make that much a difference as focusing on the economic buildings I was getting quite an insane multiplier on it.

Similarly keep in mind the AI tends to do things roughly in the following priority (as far as I've noticed):

Gold less than X (usually about 1000ish I notice): Steward Collects Taxes no matter what as the AI proiritizes money. Particularly watch for Faction Revolts because the AI will never NOT stand up their entire army, which they almost assuredly can't afford to do and will tank into debt really fast while avoiding combat and dragging out the war.
Holding a territory of the Wrong Culture, and they haven't decided that they will embrace the local culture and/or have different culture vassals/lieges: Convert Culture in their direct holdings.

Only if both of those are true will a Vassal AI bother with the Increase Development Steward Task reliably. So spreading out the spoils of your conquest to make sure your court is unified in your culture (So your King/Dukes won't convert to local Count cultures), and that you are spreading the wealth of your realm around so everyone is flush with cash is very critical in getting them to bother to focus Development Growth.