>>17235931tech levels are simple, you need each of the three monarch points to level it up, being ahead of time on some tech, and not embracing the newest institutions gives you a penalty cost, after they added the strata (burgeoise/nobility/clergy), you can use that menu to get one monarch point per month from each strata at the cost of influence and crown land(crown land is the land you control directly, too much gives benefits, too little gives penalties), there are also some other possible benefits from this, for example when you get too much loans you can get low interest loans from the burgeoise, then you pay the high interest loans you stacked and this will cut a bunch of expenses with interest, you can increase manpower capacity with nobility and some other stuff
beware when some strata gets too much influence and low loyalty some shit event may happen, like revolts
