Looking through the information about research concepts I saw that there is no summary for different concepts together with exact formulas. As a few things were still unclear to me I decided to make such a summary myself. Although I made testing alone I partly based on existing info so a credit here for the whole community.
The research in Victoria
Research is conducted by your national culture pops but you can guide it. There are five fields of science: army, navy, commerce, culture and industry. Each field is divided into five subfields with five technologies in each. There are 125 technologies in total. Most countries start with at least few techs already researched but the system doesn't allow to research all remaining ones alone as the timespan of the game is only 85 years and basicly you cannot research more than one tech each year. You can trade techs however. Most of the techs can be researched right from the beginning if all it's prequisites are met. But there are some in military branch that can be chosen only after a certain date. Also techs of the fourth and fifth circle in each field are available from 1879 and 1898 respectively, but some techs can have this dates different.
As a general rule techs have some inventions associated with them. Inventions will trigger randomly if all conditions are met. Due to their nature it may be hard to plan your developement. Every invention has two dates: one that unlocks it and one that makes it very possible, usually ten years after the first one. For the complete list of all techs and inventions go to the Victorian Techtionary. It is still not updated for 1.04 though. Prestige is the main factor deciding how fast you can trigger inventions. I don't know if it's relative to other countries or is high prestige alone enough but it is definintely an issue. When you are at negative prestige inventions may be queued for years but when you get a big prestige boost (by cheating or otherwise) you may get quite a few inventions in a period of a week or a month.
Which fields are the most important? There is no simple answer. Everything depends on your playing style. But if you are planning to invest hard in military while forgoing "peace" techs you are going to make a big mistake. Unless you are planning massive warring all the time army techs give no big enough benefits to justify condensing all efforts there. Also new ship types are expensive so to support a constant warfare you need a strong economy. And that is where the other fields are useful. Commerce techs should solve most of your problems with money. Culture techs are extremely important both to put you high in bidding chain (prestige is important) and due to meaningful choices to be made. This field should be considered to take early, all the more that you cannot trade culture techs. Industry techs and inventions develope your nation even further if you devote yourself in industrialization, they improve the effectiveness of your factories thus making your economy stronger.
There are a few academy types that decide what techs can be chosen at a given time. The most balanced is traditional academic circle. It allows you to pick one tech from every field. Once you make a choice and finish researching usually techs from the next subfield in each field are presented. So if you don't research a tech you wanted you have to wait a full cycle to do so. The other academic circles are concentrated in one field so you can use them to catch up in research in the given field. Changing your academic circle costs 10 prestige and puts a new one randomly. Propably if you start with traditional academic you should stay with it.
Research Points
RP, or Research Point, is a representation of you nation's effort in research. Each tech basicly costs 10RP to research and takes 360 days (one year) to do so. Techs of the fourth circle cost 12.5RP and take 390 days (one year and one month) to research. Techs of the fifth circle cost 15RP and take 450 days (1.25 year) to reseach. If you have order or liberty national values you get techs for 90% cost in both RP and time for army and navy or commerce, culture and industry fields respectively. If you trade you pay the full RP price but get the tech already researched. If some other country trades a tech to you you get it for free (no RP, the only cost is what you pay for it in the trade deal proposed). So liberty gives a substancial bonus to research but it may be hard to get it cheaply without cheating if you don't start with it.
So how fast are RPs generated? Here is the formula for monthly RP gain:
<civilized modifier> is 1 for civilized nations and 0.1 for uncivilized ones
<education modifier> starts at 1 and two techs: Positivism (4202) and Functionalism (4203) give a bonus of 0.1 each after they are researched. Thus the education_modifier, as it is named in the savefile, can range from 1 to 1.2.
If you want to squeeze the maximum out of your researchers you need to fund education at 100%. This increases research in the short-run as well as in the long-run (overfunding education increases literacy).
If you are unsatisfied with your research at max funding and current literacy rate you need to promote some of your pops to different ones, better suited for research. The formula for base RP gain is:
or if you want:
<%pop type> is a percentage of national culture pop type population in total national culture population.
Note that pop size is something different than population. Population = total pops size * 4.
<pop type modifier> is as follows:
0 - slaves
1 - farmers, labourers, soldiers, craftsmen
2 - aristocrats
3 - capitalists, officers, clergy after Darwinism
4 - clerks and clergy before Darwinism
5 - clerks after Darwinism
With those two techs researched and a nation full of clerks it's possible to have 3.6RP a month and after Darwinism 4.5RP a month. In normal conditions it should be doable to exceed 1RP a month by promoting big national pops to clerks and small nationals and/or minorities to craftsmen. Clergy is useful for underindustrialized nations (they don't work so there is no need to have factory slots to avoid migration/emigration) and government types that suffer from high plurality like absolute monarchies (due to consciousness reducing effect) but after Darwinism they are less useful. Slaves, if you happen to have any national culture ones, are terrible for research. Should be gotten rid of ASAP, abolishing slavery is best of course.
If your population consists of farmers only you get 0.75RP a month at max literacy and max spending. To keep researching one tech each year you need 0.83RP a month (0.96RP/month for techs of the fourth circle and 1RP/month for techs of the fifth circle). Everything above it can be used to trade techs or if the surplus is minimal it may be stored for the future.
Literacy
Literacy is a representation of how educated your country is. It's affected only by education spending so colonizing a 10 milion african colony as a 1 milion country doesn't decrease your literacy rate. The formula for monthly literacy increase/loss is:
<maximum literacy increase> a month is (0.125 - <literacy>/10)%
<maximum literacy loss> a month is 0.0375%
At 50% education spending there is neither over- nor underfunding. At 100% spending there is 100% overfunding and at 0% spending there is 100% underfunding.
As you can see if you cannot affors full spending all the time it may be profitable to fund education at 100% one month and 0% at the second one alternately instead of funding 50% on both months, because RP gain will be the same, costs will be the same but the literacy will increase instead of staying the same. This is true only for literacy levels below 87.5%. Literacy loss can be easily restored, esp. at low literacy levels. It's not wise to skimp on education though as in 1.04 literacy gain rate is half of what it used to be before so it will take longer to make up for the lost time. You should consider going into debt if you cannot fund education for a short period.
Literacy also affects efficiency of factory workers. For craftsmen it's 0.5 + <literacy>/2 and for clerks it's 1 + <literacy>/2. In 1.04 literacy affects also efficiency of RGO workers as follows: 0.5 + <literacy>/2.
Education costs
Researching techs costs money. Although RPs come only from national population the money for education is paid for the whole population. The formula for education costs is:
The <pop type modifier> is taken from db\economy\pops.txt and is:
7.5 for capitalists
4.0 for aristocrats
2.5 for officers
4.5 for clerks
2.0 for clergy
2.5 for craftsmen
0.7 for soldiers
0.6 for farmers and labourers
0.0 for slaves
<relative pop size> = <pop size> / 100000
<colony modifier> is 1 for pops in states and 0.25 for pops in colonies
<account efficiency> is taken from the savefile account_eff for education. It varies at the start of the GC between countries and can change through researching techs and/or triggering inventions.
So which pop types are the most cost-efficient in terms of research?
Craftsmen are expensive to educate and don't pay back properly in RPs. So you should really keep the amount of clerk population higher than craftsmen population. You are limited to 2:3 per factory level ratio or 1:1 if you overexpand but try to put the maximum of your population in clerk pops. Capitalist pops aren't great too but they at least provide factory efficiency bonus that compensates high education costs. High cost-efficiency of educating clergy, esp. before Darwinism invention, is the only point at which clergy is better than clerks in researching, which makes clergy good for poor countries that cannot afford industry anyway but don't want to lag in research.
The research in Victoria
Research is conducted by your national culture pops but you can guide it. There are five fields of science: army, navy, commerce, culture and industry. Each field is divided into five subfields with five technologies in each. There are 125 technologies in total. Most countries start with at least few techs already researched but the system doesn't allow to research all remaining ones alone as the timespan of the game is only 85 years and basicly you cannot research more than one tech each year. You can trade techs however. Most of the techs can be researched right from the beginning if all it's prequisites are met. But there are some in military branch that can be chosen only after a certain date. Also techs of the fourth and fifth circle in each field are available from 1879 and 1898 respectively, but some techs can have this dates different.
As a general rule techs have some inventions associated with them. Inventions will trigger randomly if all conditions are met. Due to their nature it may be hard to plan your developement. Every invention has two dates: one that unlocks it and one that makes it very possible, usually ten years after the first one. For the complete list of all techs and inventions go to the Victorian Techtionary. It is still not updated for 1.04 though. Prestige is the main factor deciding how fast you can trigger inventions. I don't know if it's relative to other countries or is high prestige alone enough but it is definintely an issue. When you are at negative prestige inventions may be queued for years but when you get a big prestige boost (by cheating or otherwise) you may get quite a few inventions in a period of a week or a month.
Which fields are the most important? There is no simple answer. Everything depends on your playing style. But if you are planning to invest hard in military while forgoing "peace" techs you are going to make a big mistake. Unless you are planning massive warring all the time army techs give no big enough benefits to justify condensing all efforts there. Also new ship types are expensive so to support a constant warfare you need a strong economy. And that is where the other fields are useful. Commerce techs should solve most of your problems with money. Culture techs are extremely important both to put you high in bidding chain (prestige is important) and due to meaningful choices to be made. This field should be considered to take early, all the more that you cannot trade culture techs. Industry techs and inventions develope your nation even further if you devote yourself in industrialization, they improve the effectiveness of your factories thus making your economy stronger.
There are a few academy types that decide what techs can be chosen at a given time. The most balanced is traditional academic circle. It allows you to pick one tech from every field. Once you make a choice and finish researching usually techs from the next subfield in each field are presented. So if you don't research a tech you wanted you have to wait a full cycle to do so. The other academic circles are concentrated in one field so you can use them to catch up in research in the given field. Changing your academic circle costs 10 prestige and puts a new one randomly. Propably if you start with traditional academic you should stay with it.
Research Points
RP, or Research Point, is a representation of you nation's effort in research. Each tech basicly costs 10RP to research and takes 360 days (one year) to do so. Techs of the fourth circle cost 12.5RP and take 390 days (one year and one month) to research. Techs of the fifth circle cost 15RP and take 450 days (1.25 year) to reseach. If you have order or liberty national values you get techs for 90% cost in both RP and time for army and navy or commerce, culture and industry fields respectively. If you trade you pay the full RP price but get the tech already researched. If some other country trades a tech to you you get it for free (no RP, the only cost is what you pay for it in the trade deal proposed). So liberty gives a substancial bonus to research but it may be hard to get it cheaply without cheating if you don't start with it.
So how fast are RPs generated? Here is the formula for monthly RP gain:
Code:
<RP gain> = <base RP gain> * (0.5 + <literacy>/2) * <education spending> * <civilized modifier> * <education modifier>
<education modifier> starts at 1 and two techs: Positivism (4202) and Functionalism (4203) give a bonus of 0.1 each after they are researched. Thus the education_modifier, as it is named in the savefile, can range from 1 to 1.2.
If you want to squeeze the maximum out of your researchers you need to fund education at 100%. This increases research in the short-run as well as in the long-run (overfunding education increases literacy).
If you are unsatisfied with your research at max funding and current literacy rate you need to promote some of your pops to different ones, better suited for research. The formula for base RP gain is:
Code:
<base RP gain> = (sum of <pop type size> * <pop type modifier>) / <total size of national pops> * 0.75
Code:
<base RP gain> = (sum of <%pop type> * <pop type modifier>) * 0.75
Note that pop size is something different than population. Population = total pops size * 4.
<pop type modifier> is as follows:
0 - slaves
1 - farmers, labourers, soldiers, craftsmen
2 - aristocrats
3 - capitalists, officers, clergy after Darwinism
4 - clerks and clergy before Darwinism
5 - clerks after Darwinism
With those two techs researched and a nation full of clerks it's possible to have 3.6RP a month and after Darwinism 4.5RP a month. In normal conditions it should be doable to exceed 1RP a month by promoting big national pops to clerks and small nationals and/or minorities to craftsmen. Clergy is useful for underindustrialized nations (they don't work so there is no need to have factory slots to avoid migration/emigration) and government types that suffer from high plurality like absolute monarchies (due to consciousness reducing effect) but after Darwinism they are less useful. Slaves, if you happen to have any national culture ones, are terrible for research. Should be gotten rid of ASAP, abolishing slavery is best of course.
If your population consists of farmers only you get 0.75RP a month at max literacy and max spending. To keep researching one tech each year you need 0.83RP a month (0.96RP/month for techs of the fourth circle and 1RP/month for techs of the fifth circle). Everything above it can be used to trade techs or if the surplus is minimal it may be stored for the future.
Literacy
Literacy is a representation of how educated your country is. It's affected only by education spending so colonizing a 10 milion african colony as a 1 milion country doesn't decrease your literacy rate. The formula for monthly literacy increase/loss is:
Code:
<literacy change> = <maximum literacy increase/loss> * <%over-/underfunding>
<maximum literacy loss> a month is 0.0375%
At 50% education spending there is neither over- nor underfunding. At 100% spending there is 100% overfunding and at 0% spending there is 100% underfunding.
As you can see if you cannot affors full spending all the time it may be profitable to fund education at 100% one month and 0% at the second one alternately instead of funding 50% on both months, because RP gain will be the same, costs will be the same but the literacy will increase instead of staying the same. This is true only for literacy levels below 87.5%. Literacy loss can be easily restored, esp. at low literacy levels. It's not wise to skimp on education though as in 1.04 literacy gain rate is half of what it used to be before so it will take longer to make up for the lost time. You should consider going into debt if you cannot fund education for a short period.
Literacy also affects efficiency of factory workers. For craftsmen it's 0.5 + <literacy>/2 and for clerks it's 1 + <literacy>/2. In 1.04 literacy affects also efficiency of RGO workers as follows: 0.5 + <literacy>/2.
Education costs
Researching techs costs money. Although RPs come only from national population the money for education is paid for the whole population. The formula for education costs is:
Code:
<maximum education spendings> = sum of <pop type modifier> * <relative pop size> * <colony modifier> * <account efficiency>
7.5 for capitalists
4.0 for aristocrats
2.5 for officers
4.5 for clerks
2.0 for clergy
2.5 for craftsmen
0.7 for soldiers
0.6 for farmers and labourers
0.0 for slaves
<relative pop size> = <pop size> / 100000
<colony modifier> is 1 for pops in states and 0.25 for pops in colonies
<account efficiency> is taken from the savefile account_eff for education. It varies at the start of the GC between countries and can change through researching techs and/or triggering inventions.
So which pop types are the most cost-efficient in terms of research?
Code:
[COLOR=DeepSkyBlue][U]pop type research/costs[/U][/COLOR]
capitalists 0.4
aristocrats 0.5
officers 1.2
pre-Darwinism clerks 0.89
post-Darwinism clerks 1.11
pre-Darwinism clergy 2
post-Darwinism clergy 1.5
craftsmen 0.4
farmers, labourers 1.67
soldiers 1.43
slaves don't conribute to research but don't cost either
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