I've mentioned this idea in a couple other threads but want to concentrate it fully here.
The primary crux of the idea is that individual populations also "own" technology. This is instead of the usual model of technology in Paradox games that have each tech owned by the state, maybe with some location-level diffusion. The point of this is that it means that technological development can be moved from being a primarily state-run enterprise, to something happening specifically at the buildings that would benefit from whatever technology is developed.
What I mean by that is that, improvements to mining happen at the mines; improvements to shipbuilding happen at the shipyard, and so on. The actual rate of technological development is a matter of literacy of the owning pops and just how large the building is in a given location (or rather more specifically, the number of owning pops; it goes up as the building size goes up). This means that if you happen to have a particularly abundant, say, glassblowing industry, you'd likely see more technological developments in glassblowing than you would some industry that you leave completely untouched.
Secondly, the technology is specifically given not to the location, but to the pops owning that building. Having a pop own a building where that pop also happens to have some sort of technology that would let you, say, change production methods or whatever else, lets you actually do such a thing. In other words, it's the pop with the technology that matters for making use of that technology. This technology then spreads from pop to pop, more likely to pops in the same location with a lower chance of pops in adjacent locations, with a rate depending on the literacy of the pop "learning" the technology and also what other technologies they know. This creates a diffusion model of technology, where technological developments will spread across the world over time.
However, people move faster than ideas. In the event that a pop with some technology that you don't have happens to migrate to your country, you can just... make use of that technology, wherever they happen to be located. Saxons develop advanced mining technology that you would like to benefit from? Invite them to migrate over and given them ownership of your mines (very much a real thing in Hungary and Serbia at the start date).
Now, since technology isn't a sort of linear step-ladder of progress, what actually decides the next innovation explored? For the sake of avoiding endless progress meters and the like, I would say that this would be something that the player decides the moment some new technology is researched. Or rather, the player gets to make the decision at that moment. You'd get your choice of which technology to pick from a selection presented given the technology currently known by the owners of the building, perhaps with some randomness also applied so that you can't simply always choose a path towards the "best" technologies. Ideally the selection also reflects some conditions that are broadly applicable to the market of the location; an abundance of a resource that could be used in an alternate, unresearched production method, for instance, would encourage researching that production method (assuming that other resource is cheaper than the current production method inputs). Same idea for alternate outputs, if there'd be more profit to be made. As for military, the context would be your history of military encounters in recent history (previous 20? 50? 100?). Things like terrain, the sort of forces you were up against, how often you're sieging and what sort of forts you're sieging... all of that stuff.
As for technologies regarding laws and the like, I would say that those would follow the same principle, except the building in question would be... whatever capital building exists, since we've been told that there'd be some number of buildings that only function or can be built or whatever else in the capital.
One more twist: universities work on a unique component of this system. They get to choose from a random selection of all available technologies every time their "technological development" meter/whatever else fills up. This helps alleviate being in a technological deficit in some building that you've not built up. The downside, of course, is that this knowledge is concentrated at the university.
The primary crux of the idea is that individual populations also "own" technology. This is instead of the usual model of technology in Paradox games that have each tech owned by the state, maybe with some location-level diffusion. The point of this is that it means that technological development can be moved from being a primarily state-run enterprise, to something happening specifically at the buildings that would benefit from whatever technology is developed.
What I mean by that is that, improvements to mining happen at the mines; improvements to shipbuilding happen at the shipyard, and so on. The actual rate of technological development is a matter of literacy of the owning pops and just how large the building is in a given location (or rather more specifically, the number of owning pops; it goes up as the building size goes up). This means that if you happen to have a particularly abundant, say, glassblowing industry, you'd likely see more technological developments in glassblowing than you would some industry that you leave completely untouched.
Secondly, the technology is specifically given not to the location, but to the pops owning that building. Having a pop own a building where that pop also happens to have some sort of technology that would let you, say, change production methods or whatever else, lets you actually do such a thing. In other words, it's the pop with the technology that matters for making use of that technology. This technology then spreads from pop to pop, more likely to pops in the same location with a lower chance of pops in adjacent locations, with a rate depending on the literacy of the pop "learning" the technology and also what other technologies they know. This creates a diffusion model of technology, where technological developments will spread across the world over time.
However, people move faster than ideas. In the event that a pop with some technology that you don't have happens to migrate to your country, you can just... make use of that technology, wherever they happen to be located. Saxons develop advanced mining technology that you would like to benefit from? Invite them to migrate over and given them ownership of your mines (very much a real thing in Hungary and Serbia at the start date).
Now, since technology isn't a sort of linear step-ladder of progress, what actually decides the next innovation explored? For the sake of avoiding endless progress meters and the like, I would say that this would be something that the player decides the moment some new technology is researched. Or rather, the player gets to make the decision at that moment. You'd get your choice of which technology to pick from a selection presented given the technology currently known by the owners of the building, perhaps with some randomness also applied so that you can't simply always choose a path towards the "best" technologies. Ideally the selection also reflects some conditions that are broadly applicable to the market of the location; an abundance of a resource that could be used in an alternate, unresearched production method, for instance, would encourage researching that production method (assuming that other resource is cheaper than the current production method inputs). Same idea for alternate outputs, if there'd be more profit to be made. As for military, the context would be your history of military encounters in recent history (previous 20? 50? 100?). Things like terrain, the sort of forces you were up against, how often you're sieging and what sort of forts you're sieging... all of that stuff.
As for technologies regarding laws and the like, I would say that those would follow the same principle, except the building in question would be... whatever capital building exists, since we've been told that there'd be some number of buildings that only function or can be built or whatever else in the capital.
One more twist: universities work on a unique component of this system. They get to choose from a random selection of all available technologies every time their "technological development" meter/whatever else fills up. This helps alleviate being in a technological deficit in some building that you've not built up. The downside, of course, is that this knowledge is concentrated at the university.
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