Quote Originally Posted by EdwinLi View Post
...but best guess is that...

Ul'dah wants to use it to advance Eorzea's Industrial side. Well this is basically Industrialisation.

Gridania wants to use it to advance the more Medical and Agriculture side. Good for improving farming, medical knowledge for finding non-magical cures for diseases, and prevent any agriculture issues or repair damages from old agriculture issues.

Limsa wants to use it to advance Military technology side. Better ships, weapons, and vehicles which are great for defending against possible invasion and being well equipped to travel into unknown lands.
I know this is just guesswork based on headcanon , but I'm curious why you think Ul'dah would be the first to industrialise.

Ul'dahn economy, for the most part, is based on trade and services, and its most valuable exports are luxury goods (mainly high-quality textiles and precious gems). Ul'dahn intelligentsia, from what I can tell, are mainly working as traders or merchants, or as the clergy of the Nald'Thal church. The alchemists of the city are the city's most likely entrepreneurs but, as a guild, they're part of the Monetarist faction, which is more inclined towards commerce than heavy industry.

Limsa Lominsa, more pertinently, is home to the realm's foremost metallurgical guilds, and given the extensive shipbuilding industry that already exists, Limsa blacksmiths and armourers are only a small step away from industrialisation. They just need to make the societal and technological leap to mass production and, voila, you'd have a modern industrial state akin to that of Garlemald. Given the presence of arcanists, who are by far the most scientifically driven of Eorzea's mage classes, I'd say that odds of Limsa making that technological leap are better than those of the other city-states.

As you noted, Lominsans are predisposed towards war. And nothing drives technological progress like warfare.