Colleges and Observatories

[Kulgan]

Every technology has a ' cost ' for example the basic bayonet has a theoretical cost of 10. A school would research at 1 per turn thus taking 10 turns. A college however could generate 1.5 so it would take 7 turns with a college.

Having an observatory adds a general bonus. A college + observatory generates .5 + 4%.

Assigning a gentlemen to a college also adds to the points generated. For each gentlemen a diminishing bonus is added. Each gentlemen adds a different basic value ( indivdual research rating ) Gentlemen can also be better or worse at the 3 areas of research. Being farming,industry and warfare.

All the above numbers are fictional but they are a solid guess based on my ( limited ) experience.

I hope this 'research in a nutshell' answers your questions

[Miracle]

To expand on what Kulgan said:

You can find technology costs here. You will see that plug bayonets costs 30 RP while other early game techs (Common Land Enclosures, Empiricism, etc.) cost in the 31-37 RP range.

An observatory affects global research rate. Whether it is really 4% as the in-game help says or 10% as building_effects_junction says is presently unknown.

There is absolutely no evidence adding more Gentlemen yields diminishing returns in terms of RP/turn. A trait-less, ancillary-less 3-star Gentlemen will add 3 RP/turn to a particular college, period. They just appear to add diminishing returns because the majority of RP comes from universities.

Let's take Empiricism for example. It costs 31 RP. A 9 RP school will research it in ceil(31/9) = 4 turns. Adding a clean 3-star Gentleman will reduce that to ceil(31/(9+3)) = 3 turns. But to get it to two turns, you will need two more 3-Star Gentlemen: ceil(31/(9+3*2)) = 3 turns; ceil(31/(9+3*3)) = 2 turns. As you can see, while adding extra Gentlemen did not reduce their individual contributions, their effect on turns-to-completion diminished. But that is not to say adding extra Gentlemen necessarily yields diminishing returns; consider the next example:

Let's consider Social Contract, which costs 45 RP. With just a 9 RP school, it takes 5 turns to research. With 1 3-star Gentleman, 4 turns. With 2, 3 turns. With 3, 3 turns. As you can see, up until the 3rd Gentleman, adding more Gentlemen had a significant effect on turns-to-completion. In our Empiricism example, it was only up to the 2nd Gentleman.

This also means that traits such as "Scholar" have a minuscule effect on turns-to-completion in the mid/late game; Classical Economics for example costs 436 RP. It would be unlikely that 1 extra RP/turn will make much of a difference in terms of turns-to-completion in this case.

[FactionHeir]

Ah, Observatories are global? I thought they only affect the region itself, but boost gentleman spawning globally (though even that seems a bit wonky since I have ~25 something regions with observatories and/or colleges by mid game usually and no more than 12 gentlemen at any point)

[Miracle]

I believe so; I wrote this in another thread:

According to this, Empiricism increases research_rate_mod by 5, which means a 5% bonus to global research. According to this, Royal Observatories increase research_rate_mod by 10, which which means a 10% bonus to global research. However this is pre-1.2 information so we don't know whether CA corrected it to the proper 4%. But it nonetheless appears to be a global effect. This is good news for any faction capable of obtaining lots of 4/5 slot cities by the mid game.

As for your 15 Gentlemen, it appears that extra Gentlemen do not emerge right away after you build a new school/observatory. I believe the CharacterCreated event probability is much less than 100% for all non-military characters. If you stay at 25 schools/observatories and don't acquire or upgrade any more and still have only 15 Gentlemen after a long period of time, then this theory is false.

[FactionHeir]

I mean over a long period of time of course
Usually I end up with this amount by 1730 the very latest and then find no more gentlement/scholars will spawn. If one dies though, he gets replaced very quickly, but 12 seems to be a hard cap.

[Dead Guy]

Very informative posts!

I usually spam tech in the mid game, when I have captured a few regions with schools. I concentrate on the things I really need in a few classical universities with gentlemen, but don't bother to ship them around the world to my schools in india, which I also don't upgrade. I think I have about 8 schools (as in that line of buildings), any more would be useless since that's about as many techs you can work on simultaneously. My upgraded gentleman boosted colleges beeline for the stuff I really care about (the bayonet line that opens up new army buildings, the techs that gives you naval hospital, some enlightenment and the farm upgrades) while the backwater schools slowly get rid of stuff like threshing machine, carronades, top gallants etc.

[Fwapper]

In one of my early campaigns I had an Obama style massive investment in science with about 20 schools spread over America mostly. This was before I knew about the clamour for reform effect...

Still, got through the tech tree pretty quickly. :) Although if you have too many schools then some will be left with nothing to do - 4-6 seems a good number to have, and you can destroy one or two once you get near the top of the tech tree and start having less choice in what to research.

[Slaists]

Ah, Observatories are global? I thought they only affect the region itself, but boost gentleman spawning globally (though even that seems a bit wonky since I have ~25 something regions with observatories and/or colleges by mid game usually and no more than 15 gentlemen at any point)

I don't think the observatory effect is global. I have purposely destroyed a royal observatory in one of my provinces that did not have a school and it had absolutely no effect on my research times (for the expensive techs) in provinces with no observatories.

It is possible thought that the observatory global research boost does not stack: so, it does not make a difference whether you have one or two or more observatories. It does seem to make a difference in terms of gentlemen spawn rate though (more observatories seemingly results in more gentlemen and faster).

I was wondering how many Colleges and Observatories do you build, as cities expand and regions are conquered?

I'm currently in a campaign with the Spanish and have four colleges and about three observatories. As a result I have over six Gentlemen doing research in the Colleges.

I'm able to research rather quickly as a result at three of the colleges.

It seems that the turns to finish a technology is variable. I had the second or third tier bayonet (can't remember the exact name right now) take 15 turns in Cuba that had no Gentlemen there.

Cheers

Lately (post 1.2) I tend to minimize the number of colleges I build just for the gameplay's sake. In my latest game, playing as France on VH I built my second school in 1730 and my third in 1745... It actually allowed for some interesting gameplay in trading techs with the AI. I concentrated on the enlightenment side of the development tree early on and basically bought* everything else from the AI factions or traded enlightenment techs for military and economic ones. All in all, this seemed like a more natural progression than the usual 4-5 college rush (tearing down economic and church towns) in early game.

Note also, that if the early gentleman has high stars, it is quite beneficial to send him out somewhere in the middle of Europe to steal techs. The first level tech stealing success chance is high and the second level is not unreasonable either. That first gent/thief can effectively populate the first level of techs much faster than you'd be able to research at your own university with him sitting there.

* The AI was quite willing to sell 1st level techs for 5000 to 10000, 2nd level for 10000 to 20000 and 3rd level for 30000 and up... I know, it sounds expensive, but since my focus from early on in the game was trade, I was rolling in cash by 1720.

[anweRU]

I'm not sure if it is global or not, but the observatory bonus was reduced to 2% in patch 1.2.

[Slaists]

I'm not sure if it is global or not, but the observatory bonus was reduced to 2% in patch 1.2.

I'll check later: will destroy 10 observatories (20% boost in case the effect is global and stacks) and see if that affects my research rate for a 20 turn tech.

[Fisherking]

Usually I try to have five schools and as many observatories as I can build, but eight school is the optimal number. If you specialize it gives you three for military, three for industrial, and two for philosophy. More than this and you will have schools doing nothing. Also I try to put at least one 4 star researcher per school and if available another gentleman in each. As I run out of techs I close schools and move the gentlemen to the others.

If you have priority research in one field the 4 stars work best and if the schools are close you can shift them for a time.

The best regions for this are the Netherlands, Rhineland, Wurttemberg, and Bavaria. They are all close and have schools at start. Also Saxony and Brandenburg are near by if you like to shift them. You might call this the core area for research and all but two have the slot for observatories.