Prioritize buying tech or developing farming estates and mines?

[mackwolfe]

Question in title. Want to know what is the generally recommended strategy.

For background, this is my current situation:

I am doing a playthrough as Bosporan Kingdom on normal difficulty. I unified my home region and am waiting on manpower and AE to recover. I have a nice net positive cash balance of about +10 gold per month. Technologies cost about 65 gold each. while I rest and wait on assimilation / AE / manpower , what is best use of money:
1) buy tech while it is relatively cheap. I have a lot of Levels N,I and II to buy .
2) invest in buildings ( slave estates and mines ) to boost exports and economy long term.
3) build troops / hire mercs and continue to expand , although most nearby targets will be wrong culture / religion.

 

[Jays298]

I'm still a relative newbie myself, having only put about a month into this game.

If you don't tech now, you will regret it later when it is 500-1000 gold per tech. So you buy what you can now, trying to rely on your own manpower for troops.

My advice would be to build a few theatres and maybe temples, mostly in the capital, that should help the capital assimilate new residents from your wars. Maybe farming settlements if you don't already have them around your capital.

The wiki says Bosphoran Kingdom is Hellenic religion and Greek culture group. So you should have an easy time assimilating Greeks. And a terrible time with any wrong culture group until mid game (mainly if you have Celts, Germanics, or others settle nearby, maybe Persians to the east). So much so that I don't think it's worth conquering anything outside your own culture group unless you need the territories to link between other territories.

I don't know how well you'd fare versus the Greeks militarily but I think you would assimilate them very easily in the current patch, though I don't have my PC right now to see what territory you'd have to cut thru to get to Thracia, etc.

In my Current game as Rome I'm getting steppe horses from Bosphoran Kingdom. So that's another advantage - recruiting horse archers.

 

[mackwolfe]

If you don't tech now, you will regret it later when it is 500-1000 gold per tech. So you buy what you can now, trying to rely on your own manpower for troops.
I took your advice and now I have all the techs purchased . I made a habit of purchasing tech right before peace treaties when I knew I would not need dough for war right away and before annexing lots of land.

 

[Jiben]

depends on the invention. It's generally not worth it to get every invention. But generally you'd go inventions first since they scale in cost. In my mind theres some kind of order of importance: Important techs > important buildings (capital and maybe a few other important cities) > okay techs that you want but there not a priority at just this moment > buildings in general > inventions that are not usefull.

I'd say inventions first to a degree but dont buy meh techs while you have a undevelopped capital, or spend money on +tributary tax while you have no or have no intentions of getting tributaries while you have a bunch of unused building slots.

 

[Samitte]

Agree with Jiben, it depends on the invention. A naval invention when you're a landlocked power isn't very useful. And if you're not buying Religious Province Investments, why spend money making them cheaper? But % boosts to food, tax, output, happiness, military bonuses and such things, generally are an instant-buy for me. Try and see what will benefit you in the long term, especially when those % bonuses become more valuable the more territory you have.

Buildings generally are second in line for me, except in my larger cities.