This is a simple suggestion, but it might have a huge impact on the game. At the moment written documents are limited to a line or two per painstakingly produced page. But what about books? Two wooden disks plus a pile of paper and some string could make a book which players would flick through. This would allow us to make more elaborate social structures, such as laws and customs written down for future generations. Perhaps a high-tech means of making paper would be handy too. For example, a bowl of wood shavings plus a firing Newcomen hammer makes a bowl of pulp?
Yeah, we need another way to make paper.