it takes me a very long time to build up tech points. i was just wondering if there is any other way of receiving tech points other than making my people research all of the time. i know i can buy the technology thingy, but is there anything that i can do get tech points faster?

oh yeah, and how often, in general, to island events occur? since i have started playing i have only gotten 2.

Watch your researchers. When they have earned the points they will give a little kick. This happens quite a few seconds before they start again if you leave them. You can pick them up after they do this and drop them at the table again. This should make the points go up much faster. The downside is you have to be watching THEM all the time to do this.

Depending on what level and spped your playing some say by exiting the game and wait a hour or two and you might be better off then say letting it run. Others will disagree with that statement.

Island Events Besides the first two in the first hour they are random after that I have gone days without Island events after the first two...

I put about 15 little people on researching but you also get tech points from other things like puzzles, farming, Building, Breeding. but not washing clothes. A thing I do is get my 15 little people to research before going to bed on 1/2 time. when I wake up in the morning .. I have a ton of tech points. hopefully that helps.

i dont think you get tech points for anything but researching. Skills will increase from other activities but not your tech points.

Well other then speical events, what VM says is true. There are several speical events that will give you tech points. :O

I like letting it run, but I haven't (yet) done the research to compare how much work the villagers do that way vs. quitting the game for a while. (Though I will quit if they just finished harvesting the field and it is XX minutes until there are new crops... I don't want them getting too distracted/tempted by watering the crops.

I also found that running the game on 1/2 speed will earn points faster per villager "year" than on normal or 2x speed. But you need to have the patience for the nursing/harvesting cycles in order to take advantage of that.

Its not necessarily tech points but one special event did give me tech that would have cost 250000 if I had purchased it.