That would definitely help, but it won't take that much time off. Consider something simple. A town with an excellent blacksmith gets detailed blueprints to a steam engine. It will take some trial and error to machine the piston and cylinder. They do not have the practiced skill set to pull it off efficiently. In fact, their first attempt may be a much more manual and slower process, or time will be consumed prototyping and building some simple machines to make those parts.


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another thing that the Economics section could take into consideration is infant mortality, life expectancy, illness.

Tech levels H - D out to have difficulty raising children to adults, adults should have lower median ages (18 century apprentices were 12 years old, and Journeymen at 16). Child birth should be damn near fatal. With a good chance a village has suffered a viral outbreak of some sort taking a big chunk of the population to the grave.