I'm not sure if anyone would know, or have an idea, but my question is as follows:

In regards to business/residential technology(and all techs really), the amount of tech needed to increase the tech % increases as your technology % increases. For example, the technology needed to make business tech go from 120% to 140%, is not merely double the tech at a given land, but requires more than double. When you get around 167%-170%, I notice it's taking a lot of money/tech to just budge the tech % up slowly. I also noticed under a non-technology impacted government, the max tech ordinarily would be 180%. So my question is...what really is the optimal tech % for these 2 technologies, considering that the amount of money necessary to achieve 175%-180% would be incredible. For example, sure I could invest a lot of money achieving 175-180% tech and say 'hey i make more per turn now'. But the amount of money needed to get that, would it be offset by the new income for the remainder of turns left in the set? I suppose that's a variable, but let's be reasonable. Is it better to maintain around 167%-170% and in the end you'll have more money to put towards networth, or what is the optimal tech %? Thanks for any thoughts/insights/comments/compliments on my paragraph structure.

do batch explores and after building up buy def, bushels and techs with excess money or just do tech start and tech techs like busi and resi you need to ~175-180% and then convert to casher.

I usually use this:
http://www.eestats.com/techcalc
and play around with the numbers.

Well Marshal, I don't know how your answer applied to my question, but thanks anyway.

Zulu, thanks for the link to the site, helped a lot. But here's some interesting analysis...
Based on about 11k land(little less), here's the tech amounts and %'s for Bus/res.

138,000 = 167.34%
150,000 = 169.21%
170,000 = 171.74%
200,000 = 174.47%
250,000 = 177.16%
400,000 = 179.62%

Now..is it worth buying 112,000 more tech for a 10% increase/ Keep in mind that would only be either bus or res too, or else it's 224,000 more tech. 112,000* $2,400/tech = about $268mil. I don't think 10% in either would raise that much over the life of the set. Even just buying 12k to go up 2% is like 30 mil. I'd need to use about 300 turns based on a 2% increase just to get my investment back. So it's hard to tell what the optimal % is. The more land you have the greater difference a % or 2 does I suppose. However more tech is needed too. Oh well, thanks for listening everyone. I just don't see the point of having a 180% max if you just can't really ever get to it. Or even trying to just hurts you unless you're a techer who's selling lol.

10% increase on tech% helps in longterm not much in shortterm.

also use enter next time bit more to make your post easier to read.

10% in a very very long term session might. Let's see. Say my income is $5mil. And land is 11k so the necessary tech jump from 167% to 177% has already been calculated above.

10% increase is $500k.

$268mil/$500k = 536 turns

Depending on server varies the amount of time needed for 536 turns. Even at 3 turns an hour, that's about 179 hours, which is over a week, just to break even. Meanwhile, a 268 mil investment is money not used in defense(become more vulnerable) as well has money not spent towards expanding. I wonder how much land I'd be able to get with 268mil, thus increasing my money too.

Would I really want to Cash 50 turns just to buy tech to increase my income 500k?? I think there are better alternatives, but Idk. Both have advantages and time is a key variable.

Sorry for lack of enters, I didn't think it was necessary due to the content and flow of it.

All in all, it's an interesting topic. And thanks for participating!

like i said earlier do batchexplore and after building up and buying more def and bushels spend rest money on techs.

One thing you can try is to let the market dictate to some extent your tech purchases. In other words if a certain tech is going for a good price snatch it up, if not wait it out. I don't have specific advice for cashers, I don't have much experience with that strat.

yea standing orders help getting cheap techs only problem is that others use those too.

Around 177-178% tends to be the highest a casher should get to (or 185-186% as demo and 149-150% as theo). A farmer or indy should only get to about 160-165%. And these numbers are only for stockpiling.

For growth as a casher, I tend to stay in the 160-165% range in primary/express early on and 165-170% later on in the set, but on FFA/Alliance, I usually start around 165-170% and spend most of the set at 170-175% while still growing.

My experience in Express is extremely limited, but the only casher I ever played there never got its bus/res techs over 170% (it ended the set with 168.5% each). I don't think its techs ever fell below 157-158%. It never stockpiled or even cashed any turns.

If you're not stockpiling, you don't need to go over 170%. If you're stockpiling, depending on how long you stockpile, you would need to go to 174-175% (in express with its short length) or 177-178% on longer servers.

One advantage of tech is a higher Networth without the higher expences.

How that works into the equation? Beats me, I'm not Steven Hawkins.

But it is a real benefit.

There are typically two different tech levels you would like to obtain in a set:

(1) Mid-level tech during growth
(2) High-level tech during stockpiling

The general concepts are (as you noticed) for

(1) the higher amount of tech you have, the harder it is to increase the tech %, thus the money spent should be balanced between land growth, defense, and tech. (Each turn you can get away with more tech without loss in land growth or defense maximizes your production efficiency)

(2) you want the highest amount of tech you can get, such that at the end of your stockpile period, you make more than had you not bought the tech.

For example, assume your stockpile period is 500 turns using your example (5mil income, 167% bus/res on 11k acres). 10% increase in bus/res is equivalent to about 1mil extra per turn (5*1.1*1.1). Let each tech point cost $2k.

Then not buying tech points, you would obtain a total income of
5*500 = 2500mil

Buying 112k (x2) tech points, you would obtain a total income of
6*500 - 448 = 2552mil

To be more exact, you could include food costs and the gain in income from reselling the bought tech at the end for $1k. In our toy example, buying more tech is the better choice.

Note, another key benefit is avoiding increased expenses esp when you start going over 2bil stockpiled. Stockpiling tech may boost your income and net you more income (if tech is super cheap and you are not near maxed) compared to stockpiling food.

Hope that helps.

i had the same question. Thanks for the help.

wondeful info, thanks