Russia strangeness

Surgünoglu said:

"State capitalism" is seen by orthodox Marxists as a rightwing tradition.

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Pretty much everything other than orthodox Marxism is seen by orthodox Marxists as a right wing tradition

Surgünoglu said:

And there is certainly a healthy history of state-run industry in both rightist and leftist governments.

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Oh certainly, I don't dispute that at all. But reaction self-evidently opposes industrialisation of any kind - a reactionary government would thus oppose anyone building factories, let alone themselves. This is especially true of the Slavophiles who opposed western influences and wanted a return to the soil. As state capitalism is very effective in-game at industrialising, it is necessary that the Slavophiles lose state capitalism.

Surgünoglu said:

Meiji Japan comes to mind when it leaned more toward Prussian central control.

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Whether the leaders of the Meiji Restoration could be called be reactionary is doubtful, but I have to restrain myself from commenting further on this tantalising off-topic subject (My views are all contained in Marius Jansen's The Making of Modern Japan - a cracking read, go find it now)

Surgünoglu said:

Besides--reactionaries historically loved socialism, so long as it was run by them and not the people.

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I think if a reactionary was running something he called socialism, its probably no longer socialism. Besides, such ideas didn't exist in 1836, although they certainly did from 1922 onwards...

There is nothing antithetical between rightwing government and state control, and that's why Paradox has set things up the way they have.

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It seems to me like Paradox have set up reactionaries with state capitalism because it means it doesn't just apply to some of the socialist parties, rather than being based on historical fact/gameplay intentions. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, but that's the way it looks to me.

Naselus said:

It's been in PDM since about 4 days after the game was first released. Russia actually starts industrializing around 1880ish, which means by 1936 it can manage to be the biggest industry, but it's hard work. It also means it has numberless hordes of men, which is utterly appropriate.

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Huh, I've been playing PDM, and I did notice that Russia hasn't really industrialised at all, although I'm only now just at 1882 in my Italy game. I guess we don't need to do any experiments then!

China, with it's lit level of 4%, does NOT industrialize faster than Russia with the lit change Japan does, however, due to it's 50% starting level, but given that it takes it til about 1860 to civ up it doesn't get that big a drop on Russia - an industrial-minded human Tsar can still push industry forward early.

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How early, have you noticed? That's the biggest worry on my mind, as I'm afraid that the player will be shunted towards the educated countries due to 50 years of boredom.

'reactionary' is, to my mind' rule by decree'. So SC is entirely appropriate - the ruler decrees a factory shall be built, and lo, a factory is built.

Phalanxia said:

Huh, I've been playing PDM, and I did notice that Russia hasn't really industrialised at all, although I'm only now just at 1882 in my Italy game. I guess we don't need to do any experiments then!

How early, have you noticed? That's the biggest worry on my mind, as I'm afraid that the player will be shunted towards the educated countries due to 50 years of boredom.

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NFs ignore promotion tables, so the player can industrialize manually. But it's slower that the automatic capi surge which is how AI Russia and Austria super-industrialize. The player therefore actually has more to do industrializing these countries with the LIT penalty, so boredom doesn't come into it

Naselus said:

'reactionary' is, to my mind' rule by decree'. So SC is entirely appropriate - the ruler decrees a factory shall be built, and lo, a factory is built.

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That's not really reactionary, just an absolute dictatorship. Reactionaries are (ignoring the Marxist definition as it isn't relevant), guys who are more concerned about keeping the political order autocratic, and most recognise that industrialisation spurs change that threatens that order.

Naselus said:

NFs ignore promotion tables, so the player can industrialize manually. But it's slower that the automatic capi surge which is how AI Russia and Austria super-industrialize. The player therefore actually has more to do industrializing these countries with the LIT penalty, so boredom doesn't come into it

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I noticed I had quite a bit to do in my Sardinia game :]

the reactionaries want autocratic rule; the autocrat is effectively the only one who's opinion counts. Whether his supporters think it's a good or bad idea for him to industrialize is pretty much moot, as their entire political outlook is that the monarch/president is supposed to rule by decree They can get pissed off and kill him, but they're still basically surrendering their right to set economic policy and handing it directly to the player.

Is it possible for reactionaries to industrialize? Did they always fear that industrialization led to social change--a Western view, to be sure, though one I share--or did they often seek to use Western means, including factories, to bolster their rule? Both the Tokugawa and the Qing tried this kind of limited Westernization, seeking to reconcile political reaction and industrial revolution.

Furthermore, it is my opinion that Russia must be nerfed.

Well, the Russian Empire did industrialize somewhat under reactionary rule. It wasn't just a giant empty wasteland when WW1 broke out. Their industry was roughly as larger and powerful in 1914 as it was by 1935, but the First World War, the revolutions, the civil war and the loss of the most industrialized territories reduced it dreadfully - I think the figure is that in 1922 Russia's industry was 12% of what it had been in 1914.

While Russia should be nerfed, it makes little sense to rely on the 'broken' economic policies of interventionism or L-F to do so. That's just using a game flaw that will probably be fixed to balance them. No, Russia's industrialization should be held back by features that are actually part of Russia's set up, and the low LIT rating is the most obvious choice - after all, the countries that industrialized slowly in real life were the ones that have low LIT in V2. Yes, it means the Ottomans won't industrialize, but they didn't. Austria will be slowed down too - which they should be, especially as the German areas will be able to modernize properly and the backward, low-lit hinterlands of the Empire won't. Same with Italy - northern Italy will industrialize unaided, southern Italy won't. India will not be capable of supporting factories, even if it's turned into states by the UK. South America will have to develop itself, rather than getting carte blanche to turn Brazil into an industrial megapower in the most unrealistic way imaginable.

Most importantly, China will not civilize and become the biggest industrial zone in the world, and taking lumps of China will not provide a limitless craftsman workforce just begging to be put to work in factories straight away.

The downsides to lit-based industry requirements are just one, and that one is 'If I play a low-lit country, I might lose'. It's more of a challenge, and it requires you to actually interact with your country using NFs to get things done, rather than hordes of people just lining up at the factory door the moment you start building it. But tbh, that's not even a real problem either - it doesn't hold you back as much as you might think.

I've played the game with and without the lit-based industry thing, and quite frankly I'd never go back to playing it without now. It fits together so perfectly with the game model and the existing literacy spread that I'm suprised paradox didn't put it in themselves.

Naselus said:

the reactionaries want autocratic rule; the autocrat is effectively the only one who's opinion counts. Whether his supporters think it's a good or bad idea for him to industrialize is pretty much moot, as their entire political outlook is that the monarch/president is supposed to rule by decree They can get pissed off and kill him, but they're still basically surrendering their right to set economic policy and handing it directly to the player.

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Reactionaries don't love the king because he's the king, but because he's and the political order he personifies are seen by the reactionaries as the best and strongest defender of their interests - if suddenly said king said "Right chaps, how about we become a constitutional monarchy?", the reactionary faction, who might be best represented as the court would freak out and hinder liberalization every step of the way, even though it came from the king.

Surgünoglu said:

Is it possible for reactionaries to industrialize? Did they always fear that industrialization led to social change--a Western view, to be sure, though one I share--or did they often seek to use Western means, including factories, to bolster their rule? Both the Tokugawa and the Qing tried this kind of limited Westernization, seeking to reconcile political reaction and industrial revolution.

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And look what happened to them! The Tokugawa attempted industrialisation in order to strengthen so as to be able to fend off Western countries, but the Shogunate had already lost the confidence of the Daimyo by the time they started experimenting. Likewise, the Qing's attempts at industrialisation were also "too little, too late", which aptly sums up the reactionary view to industrialisation - the desperate last resort.

Naselus said:

While Russia should be nerfed, it makes little sense to rely on the 'broken' economic policies of interventionism or L-F to do so. That's just using a game flaw that will probably be fixed to balance them. No, Russia's industrialization should be held back by features that are actually part of Russia's set up, and the low LIT rating is the most obvious choice - after all, the countries that industrialized slowly in real life were the ones that have low LIT in V2. Yes, it means the Ottomans won't industrialize, but they didn't. Austria will be slowed down too - which they should be, especially as the German areas will be able to modernize properly and the backward, low-lit hinterlands of the Empire won't. Same with Italy - northern Italy will industrialize unaided, southern Italy won't. India will not be capable of supporting factories, even if it's turned into states by the UK. South America will have to develop itself, rather than getting carte blanche to turn Brazil into an industrial megapower in the most unrealistic way imaginable.

Most importantly, China will not civilize and become the biggest industrial zone in the world, and taking lumps of China will not provide a limitless craftsman workforce just begging to be put to work in factories straight away.

The downsides to lit-based industry requirements are just one, and that one is 'If I play a low-lit country, I might lose'. It's more of a challenge, and it requires you to actually interact with your country using NFs to get things done, rather than hordes of people just lining up at the factory door the moment you start building it. But tbh, that's not even a real problem either - it doesn't hold you back as much as you might think.

I've played the game with and without the lit-based industry thing, and quite frankly I'd never go back to playing it without now. It fits together so perfectly with the game model and the existing literacy spread that I'm suprised paradox didn't put it in themselves.

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Oh sure, by that point Russia should certainly have industrialised. The lit method of constraining sounds very convincing, and from my experience seems to be a sure way to go. I just think given how state capitalism works in-game (i.e. very successfully), it's inappropriate both on historical and game-play levels for reactionaries. Conservatives...maybe not so much. But when you see players give advice on the forums such as "Switch to a reactionary party, so you industrialise faster", it clear that reactionaries are slightly broken.

Phalanxia said:

Reactionaries don't love the king because he's the king, but because he's and the political order he personifies are seen by the reactionaries as the best and strongest defender of their interests - if suddenly said king said "Right chaps, how about we become a constitutional monarchy?", the reactionary faction, who might be best represented as the court would freak out and hinder liberalization every step of the way, even though it came from the king.

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But that's what happened when the imperial forces, who called to "expel the barbarians," won the war against the Tokugawa. Both sides were reactionary, though the Meiji oligarchy certainly had aspects of liberal thought. And both sides used modern military equipment. Hell, Saigo Takamori (is that his name) wore then-modern uniform during the frigging Satsuma Rebellion. Reactionaries promised a return to tradition and did so by promising technological progress on their terms. If reactionaries can't mix old order with new tech, then how do you explain Peter the Great?

Now it may be broken in-game, as you say. But I don't see the answer in neutering the old order, which had a historical tendency toward being as statist as they liked in terms of economy. They transcended modern notions of left and right, having preceded either, and must in-game.

Surgünoglu said:

If reactionaries can't mix old order with new tech, then how do you explain Peter the Great?

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And Alexander III and Nicholas II, for that matter - both believed staunchly in rolling back political freedoms, but were not anti-industrial. 'Reactionary' doesn't necessarily require you to reject industry, or education or even urbanisation. It just means you rejeect the political and social freedoms that usually come with those things. I think it should be fine for reactionaries to run a state-controlled economy, but they should have great problems if they do so due to their inability to reform properly. Maybe just a big bonus to Aristo reactionary-ness under a reactionary government, so that the UH goes more reactionary it becomes much, much harder to do reforms.

Exactly. In-game, reactionary is a purely political term, it says nothing about a party's views of industry. Not even all reactionary parties are SC.

Russia were using one or an other form of state capitalism from the time Of Peter The Great.
Peter simply give a huge chunks of land, with right to expoite them on condition of meeting iron/cooper production quota.

Biggest manufactories or factories were own by government in one form or an other and were dedicated to military production. Communists did not invent anything, they basically continue the same tradition.
Tzar Russia may be did not had mach of civilian production, but military production were big.

But again, I would abstain on puting any literacy restrictions, because it will make only few strategies valuable, it will reduce richness of possible strategies to allmost nothing.

Personally, I believe it is a few bugs and posible some assimilation rates in some condition imbalance which create problems.

Example, in my current game GB has 50000 industry score, when everyone else has 2-3000 max. Any overproduction in that situation is meaningless, because GB dictate industry to the whole word.

There is definitely a huge bug when population permitted to buy stuff from stockpile. If AI some way benefiting or hurt by that, it change all balance. There no point to discuss any kind of balance, before India assimilation rates fixes and stockpile bug fixed.
For god sake, My Ottoman empire has 5% Brits and I did not take anything form GB. Immigration give me 5% Brits already, which is creasy.

They'll have come from India, which will now be 40% British from assimilation. And it'll be covered in factories, which is where the 50k industry score comes from.tag switch and take a look - I'm willing to bet money there's a truly insane number of brits running around in India in your game now.

Surgünoglu said:

But that's what happened when the imperial forces, who called to "expel the barbarians," won the war against the Tokugawa. Both sides were reactionary, though the Meiji oligarchy certainly had aspects of liberal thought. And both sides used modern military equipment. Hell, Saigo Takamori (is that his name) wore then-modern uniform during the frigging Satsuma Rebellion

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I'd say that the Imperials were more conservatives than reactionary, since they wanted radical political change as they saw the necessity of it (As well as the potential for political gain). If anything, the defining character of the Imperials was their ultra-nationalism.

Surgünoglu said:

If reactionaries can't mix old order with new tech, then how do you explain Peter the Great?

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I doubt that proper reactionary thought, certainly in terms of what could even be said to exist at that point in time, since there was no idelogical alternative to absolute monarchy, outside of a few ivory towers.

Surgünoglu said:

Now it may be broken in-game, as you say. But I don't see the answer in neutering the old order, which had a historical tendency toward being as statist as they liked in terms of economy. They transcended modern notions of left and right, having preceded either, and must in-game.

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There's two different debates going on here, both whether Reactionaries can have S-C, and whether specifically the Slavophiles in Russia can have S-C. I do not think that, outside of Latin America, that the first one is true, at least in the Vicky time-frame. But even if you disagree, you must surely agree that the Slavophiles mustn't be S-C, for two reasons. The first is that S-C is very effective at industrialising in-game, and this is not the course of action a government which believed that only a wholesome return to the soil and agrarian lifestyle were the correct path for Russia would want to take. The second is that as S-C allows the government to build factories, why would such a faction voluntarily choose to build factories? It makes no sense

Naselus said:

And Alexander III and Nicholas II, for that matter - both believed staunchly in rolling back political freedoms, but were not anti-industrial. 'Reactionary' doesn't necessarily require you to reject industry, or education or even urbanisation. It just means you rejeect the political and social freedoms that usually come with those things. I think it should be fine for reactionaries to run a state-controlled economy, but they should have great problems if they do so due to their inability to reform properly. Maybe just a big bonus to Aristo reactionary-ness under a reactionary government, so that the UH goes more reactionary it becomes much, much harder to do reforms.

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Maybe it would be appropriate for a new Reactionary faction from 1870/1875 onwards (If Alex's reign begins in 1881, I'm giving some extra time foreager players) to form which has State Capitalism then. My main point of contention is that the Slavophiles have S-C more than anything else.

I do really like that idea about increasing reactionary-ness (There has to be a better word than that, right?) in the upper house though, as it would force the player to think twice about signing a Faustian Pact with any S-C Reactionaries.

RedRalphWiggum said:

Exactly. In-game, reactionary is a purely political term, it says nothing about a party's views of industry. Not even all reactionary parties are SC.

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Oh sure, I get that reactionaries are just militant conservatives. But I still think that there's broad trends which can be assumed about most reactionaries, in that they would not want to pursue the kid of economic policies pursued by socialists. My main beef is with the Slavophiles being S-C though.

Remember that tax isn't effective tax, so you can keep the taxes as high as you want during the early game.

Phalanxia said:

Oh sure, I get that reactionaries are just militant conservatives. But I still think that there's broad trends which can be assumed about most reactionaries, in that they would not want to pursue the kid of economic policies pursued by socialists. My main beef is with the Slavophiles being S-C though.

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You have to allow for some abstraction within the game, and the economic policies pursued by the slavophiles are not meant to be the same as the socialists of the era. Both allow the state to build industry, but in-game socialists will generally try to use the profits to fund social programs, whereas generally reactionaries won't.

RedRalphWiggum said:

You have to allow for some abstraction within the game, and the economic policies pursued by the slavophiles are not meant to be the same as the socialists of the era. Both allow the state to build industry, but in-game socialists will generally try to use the profits to fund social programs, whereas generally reactionaries won't.

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Exactly - hence why the socialists can enact reforms and the reactionaries can't The socialists have the option of ploughing those government funds back into social programs, while the reactionary government will basically keep the profits and probably dump it into the military.

The other thing is, that often Russia under the AI isn't using the reactionary SC government - more often than not, it's using the interventionist party, and it's a mixture of capitalists and expansion of factories which is causing the super-industrial effect. Taking away the SC party won't actually stop them.

But again, I would abstain on puting any literacy restrictions, because it will make only few strategies valuable, it will reduce richness of possible strategies to allmost nothing.

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I disagree; you'd still have the options to pursue other strategies. You can industrialize, it's just no longer auto-industrializing. Your ability to pursue a military strategy is more or less uneffected. Moreover, it actually opens up new choices - do you concentrate on building factories and NFing craftsmen, forcing you take take a totally hands-on approach to industry for longer, or do you instead NF clergy everywhere, leaving you less industrialized now, but more capable of wide-scale industrializing earlier?

We're only talking about barring cratsmen, capitalists and clerks with LIT, and always remember that the NF will be effective on these poptypes anyway regardless. Think of it more as having to use government intervention to train workers, rather than simply preventing industry altogether in low-lit nations. In testing, I've managed to get low-lit uncivs like Panjab into the top 5 industrial nations by 1870, so it's not leaving you completely incapable - it just forces you to pick your priorities more carefully.

Russia is a bit weird.

When game starts, you have to delete your entire navy. It isn't like you will use it, anyway. Then go Reactionary and build some factories while researching Freedom of Trade (followed by railroads, then whatever). Once you have built a couple of factories, go Liberal. The Capitalists will pump them out in ridiculous numbers, and most will be very profitable. Every once in a while, switch to Conservative to destroy/restart closed factories (my policy is to restart each factory once in case they were just unlucky, then destroy if they fail again).

Using this method, I industrialized like crazy without having to do anything.