Europa Universalis IV

Europa Universalis IV

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I need help understanding how Africa beat Europe to flintlocks
Okay, the title is a bit of an exaggeration, but the idea's there
I've been getting into EU4 for a few days now, and it's a great step away from Victoria 2, I love the depth, and this mod only makes it all better !
However, one slight issue I'm having is how historically ''uncivilized'' nations are able to technologically keep up with Europe. By 1666, China, the Ottomans, the Nogai Horde, Timurids, Shogunate Japan and many more small nations all over the world have the top tech levels, while Great Britain, Spain, Denmark, Lithuania and Portugal are lagging at least one level behind in one, if not two techs. How can Europe, where 99% of Institutions spawn, be technologically beaten by Asia, America and Africa ?
Coming from Vic2, where I got used to wiping 30k unciv stacks with barely 8k of Western troops, it's a bit of a shock as you can guess, since now keeping your colonies together is even harder, as small garrisons aren't good enough
Is this normal ? I've read something about that issue a few years ago, and apparently it had been fixed
Thank you if you ever come across this post and reply, I hope I'll finally get to understand what's going on
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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
RoxyWodka 18 Nov, 2021 @ 5:06pm 
In my experience it's a side effect of institutions. Since non-embraced institutions give a penalty to tech cost, and since a penalty to tech cost increases the maximum mana you can hold, and since the increase in mana cap is more than the increased cost to research, it actually makes it easier for institutionally backwards countries to stay ahead in tech if the backward country has a full mana pool.

So playing early start dates, ages which start after a certain tech is reached will often start decades early when american tags get the required tech, while old world, and especially civilized old world tags cannot afford the tech.
qweytr  [developer] 19 Nov, 2021 @ 2:06pm 
I think it was because the initial release of the mod after Origins lacked all institution penalties. That is fixed now, so tech differences between different regions should now be closer to expected.
LeHandsomeGeth 24 Nov, 2021 @ 3:33pm 
Oh, okay ! I knew about the tech cost penalty, but I had no idea it also increased your nation's maximum points. Thanks to you both, I'll look forward to my next try then !
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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
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