Tech lead

[heliostellar]

So, I've been playing Victoria for a while now and am very familiar with most concepts of the game. I've played Vanilla, Ricky, and VIP, but there's one thing that continues to elude me: how to build a tech lead. Regardless of the difficulty level I play or even the country that I play I always seem to be very, very far behind the other major powers in the tech race (10 or more techs). I'm well aware of the effects of literacy and maxing out the Education slider. I'm also aware of the consequences of trading to gain techs (lose of RPs). I also try to get as many Clerks as possible to maximize RP production. I just don't get how the AI is able to gain such a significant lead.

What else am I missing? Does the AI cheat with tech trades?

 

[Orm]

So, I've been playing Victoria for a while now and am very familiar with most concepts of the game. I've played Vanilla, Ricky, and VIP, but there's one thing that continues to elude me: how to build a tech lead. Regardless of the difficulty level I play or even the country that I play I always seem to be very, very far behind the other major powers in the tech race (10 or more techs). I'm well aware of the effects of literacy and maxing out the Education slider. I'm also aware of the consequences of trading to gain techs (lose of RPs). I also try to get as many Clerks as possible to maximize RP production. I just don't get how the AI is able to gain such a significant lead.

What else am I missing? Does the AI cheat with tech trades?

It doesn't cheat per se, the AI's often trade techs to each other and you only lose RP when you initiate a tech trade yourself, not when you are offered a tech from someone else.

 

[erthul]

I'm also aware of the consequences of trading to gain techs (lose of RPs)

You don't 'lose' RP's when you trade but 'borrow' and pay them back at the normal rate of RP growth (hence the negative RP number that gradually shrinks to zero). Doing so means that you can't research or trade new tech until your RP total is positive again but in the meantime you have the benefit of the traded tech immediately instead of waiting a few years for it. I recommend developing +200 relations with a tech leader or two and then trading 5 techs from them per deal (the maximum amount that you can take at a time). Eventually you'll catch up with and/or surpass most of the AI nations. A newly created satellite can also be a good source of tech trade.

 

[henryjai]

Research mostly cultural techs/important naval techs/machine guns, and try to trade for the other techs, using this trick you should be easily get the required tech lead as well as prestige lead.

having good relations with a few guys that tech well is important, oh, have I mentioned that if you want to weaken Germany try to trade more tech with Austria so Austria would beat the crap out of Prussia?

 

[heliostellar]

Thanks all -- some good tips here. I'm trying to get back into Victoria while they figure out how to plug the holes in V2. I'll try what you suggested on trading lots of techs at once and see how that goes.

 

[doublezero]

Try to make Functionalism and Positivism among the first techs you research. They both give you a 10% boost in research. You already know to promote some of your largest POPs to clerks - it's better if you actually have factories for them to work in, but if you don't, you can still promote them.

Once you get up to .75% RP, you'll start collecting surplus RP. Build up enough of a surplus and you can trade for techs without your RP going into negative territory. Don't trade for tech unless you have enough RP surplus so that you already have enough to discover the tech you're currently researching. You don't want any dead time where you're not researching a tech.

 

[unmerged(42174)]

Some nations will get HUGE RP production.

That's because the research points come from national culture pops only. So when you promote clerks, only promote those from accepted cultures. Oranje, for example, can easily get more than 2.5 RP per month by promoting the dutch pops. That combined with wise tech trading could lead to an early tech lead.