Realism suggestion: Improve railroad building

Van Diemen · Feb 12, 2011

Currently the game simplifies railroad construction too much and allows spamming of railroads all throughout historically low infrastructure countries like Russia. I understand that lots of people want to include maintenance costs for railroads, forts and naval bases and I would agree on that also. However, one thing I haven't heard anyone talk about is the current construction costs, which is: 10 timber, 10 steel and 10 cement (only to be multipied by economic policy), and construction time that is the same for every province regardless of terrain or province size.

Atm only technology and capitalist income seems to limit railroads, therefore I would like to propose two new factors that should determine the amount of construction time and especially construction materials required.

Calculate construction costs and build time depending on:
A) Province size
B) Province terrain

An example: take a province X
It has 30,000 working pops out of a total RGO pop size of 120,000
It has forrest as terrain (for example 2 as a modifier)
It is sized to 3 (3 x 40,000 = 120,000)

Though the modifiers for terrain are open for debate this at least illustrates the idea. Maybe splitting up the calculatoin into two seperate formulas would be best:

Code:

Railroad construction costs = province size x terrain modifier

Railroad construction time = (maximum RGO labour pool size/current RGO labour occupation) x terrain modifier

For the example of province X that would mean:

Railroad construction costs = 3 x 2 = 6
Railroad construction time = (120,000/ 30,000) x 2 = 8

So for province X this would mean that building a railroad here would require 6 times more resources and 8 times more completion time (due to relatively low amount of local labour force).
Instead of the local RGO occupation the formula could also use current province population or a RGO occupation state average.

While this of course will not totally prevent infrastructural improvements it will possibly at the very least delay the massive spamming of railroads all across countries like Russia. I do would like to hear other people's opinion on this and also some support for this suggestion.

makotech222 · Feb 12, 2011

The only cost you can add is through products. If its pure money, you will get a money hole, where money goes in, and never comes out.

TekcoR · Feb 12, 2011

I agree with you Van Diemen, while we are at the realism debate.

Why not make constructing forts, railroads and naval ports at the same time possible?

Van Diemen · Feb 12, 2011

TekcoR said:
I agree with you Van Diemen, while we are at the realism debate.

Why not make constructing forts, railroads and naval ports at the same time possible?

Yes, I would agree with that as well. Though it would mean that we should view forts and naval bases as being spread throughout the province. Especially for naval bases this might be a bit conflicting.

Either way these suggestions would be simple to add by PI, though it would require some hardcoded tweaking, which they need to do anyway for the upcoming patch.

unmerged(84406) · Feb 12, 2011

This is a good idea.

Additionally if should be effected by climate - one of the constraints on building in much of Russia was that it was freezing cold for half the year. While this is partly covered by terrain (Arctic, Desert, Jungle) there is still a lot of forest.

It would also be nice if different terrain added different costs - so mountain adds lots of explosives and cement, while forest might reduce the amount of timber (due to felling lots of trees), and swamp might add more cement and machine parts.

Van Diemen · Feb 12, 2011

I don't know whether climates will add anything. Atm we don't even have a weather system, so we actually don't have the freezing winters and cold of Russia to cope with. Maybe that's better as the AI wouldn't probably handle it very well.

I agree on even more realism by having seperate requirements depending on terrain, however it would probably take a bit too much micromanagement. So, just having a more realistic calculation based on province size and terrain would statisfy for me.

Talq · Feb 12, 2011

Another problem is that province size in game frequently doesnt represent actual physical size, but rather historical population (and so in part proxies productivity/fertility). So for example milan is size 11.

fanisx · Feb 12, 2011

I totally agree.It is ridiculous how easy it is to go building railroads EVERYWHERE.No matter if it is in mountains, in jungles, artic, desert...
You can't just take Brazil and build railroads all over Amazonian forest, it is almost IMPOSSIBLE, even if you are VERY RICH.Even today, infrastructure in amazonia is pretty low, of course, there is political issues, ambientalism, and so on, but most of all, it is hard to build any roads in a jungle, especially if you're talking about railroads.And we are talking about amazonian forest: trees taller than buildings, rivers everywhere, wild and almost unknown environment.In 19th and beggining of 20th century, little was known about amazonian forest, and I am pretty sure it was impossible to build any railroads there in that time.And I believe that this is valid for almost all jungles, and many mountains/desert places.
I'm not suggesting that railroad building in jungles/mountains/deserts should be impossible, but a LOT LOT harder.The way it is now is totally unrealistic (I'm not one of those who want a 100% historical game, but in Victoria 2 it is possible to build roads in places that I think it wouldn't be possible at that time not even with the help of ultra-advanced aliens) and rather ridiculous.

Van Diemen · Feb 12, 2011

Talq said:
Another problem is that province size in game frequently doesnt represent actual physical size, but rather historical population (and so in part proxies productivity/fertility). So for example milan is size 11.

True, maybe it would be better if the calculation of railroad construction costs would be based on the following:

railroad construction costs/time = (maximum RGO labour pool size/current RGO labour occupation) x province size x terrain modifier

(BTW: I slightly revised the calculation to split it into both a seperate time and resources formula, which can now be seen in the first post.)

This way the time and material requirement will be dependent on the ratio of how occupied the province is, province size and the terrain modifier. I added the RGO occupation (or alternatively total provincial population) as a modifier to simulate the difficulty of building railroads in places which lack locals, so building in the Sahara, Siberia and the Amazones should be a lot more expansive and requires a lot more time to complete.

The sad thing though is that this is all very nice here on the forum, but I have some serious doubts whether PI will ever implement this. We can always hope though, and if more people express their support any improvement either with a patch or an expansion will become more likely.

unmerged(109908) · Feb 12, 2011

I'd prefer Paradox work on issues that exist with the game that detract from the fun rather then making me pay another 2000 pounds because I felt like building a railroad in a jungle because I felt like it.

Hibernian · Feb 12, 2011

I totally agree with this idea. Railroads should definitely be much more difficult to build in bad terrain. Also each level of Railroads should become more expensive as the game progresses, it seems that a level 1 railroad costs the same in 1836 that a level 5 railroad does in 1936.

Terrain should mean a lot more in general than it currently does. There’s hardly any impact from terrain when fighting wars, the modifiers are just not meaningful enough. We need a more complex weather and terrain system like in HOI, but that would probably have to wait for an expansion.

Kalelovil · Feb 13, 2011

I agree with everything Van Diemen has said, it would be a great addition to the game but most of that is probably not possible through modding. Hopefully Paradox will take notice.
However, an even larger problem with railroads in my opinion is that they are simply something capitalists are programmed to build to no advantage to themselves rather than a proper investment giving the capitalists income.
We also have no way to script capitalist behaviour either. Increasing railroad costs at the moment will also slow down factory construction as capitalists like to blanket their entire nation in railroads before concentrating on factory construction.
If capitalists sought out building railroads as an investment giving them a return on the increase in factory throughput, we would likely see railroads being built in more logical locations. Again, this is unfortuantely not possible through modding.
To be true to reality, capitalists should only build railroads connecting important industrial centres and RGOs, leaving a hodge-podge network in vast countries such as Russia. Building a strategic railroad system such as the Trans-siberian or American Trans-continental should require the involvement of the state.

Van Diemen · Feb 13, 2011

Kalelovil said:
I agree with everything Van Diemen has said, it would be a great addition to the game but most of that is probably not possible through modding. Hopefully Paradox will take notice.
However, an even larger problem with railroads in my opinion is that they are simply something capitalists are programmed to build to no advantage to themselves rather than a proper investment giving the capitalists income.
We also have no way to script capitalist behaviour either. Increasing railroad costs at the moment will also slow down factory construction as capitalists like to blanket their entire nation in railroads before concentrating on factory construction.
If capitalists sought out building railroads as an investment giving them a return on the increase in factory throughput, we would likely see railroads being built in more logical locations. Again, this is unfortuantely not possible through modding.
To be true to reality, capitalists should only build railroads connecting important industrial centres and RGOs, leaving a hodge-podge network in vast countries such as Russia. Building a strategic railroad system such as the Trans-siberian or American Trans-continental should require the involvement of the state.

I agree with your observation that indeed capitalist now apply a go-as-you-please method of carpeting the nation with railroads. Also I noticed that many railroads are somehow being build involving 0 capitalists, which I always regarded a bit strange. I do think that these revisions are absolutely vital to the game (especially with an expansion) in order to make it more realistic and set serious confines for the military for both supply and movement. There were reasons why the ACW was fought in the eastern coastal areas and the along the Mississippi, but hardly in between. Also there are good reasons why Russia is so difficult to conquer and cannot be industrialised properly beyond the Urals.

BTW: I slightly revised the calculation to split it into both a seperate time and resources formula, which can now be seen in the first post.

Van Diemen · Feb 16, 2011

Is there nobody who has any further comments?

unmerged(262687) · Feb 16, 2011

As for the province size calculation, I think that there's something like this already. At least, my troops take a lot longer to cross large provinces in Egypt than small provinces in Greece, equal levels of railroads present. Perhaps there's something that you can get from a map file instead of having to calculate it?

=Mike= · Feb 16, 2011

I don't know about just increasing cost per level of infrastructure - as said, make it more expensive / less depending upon terrain - but an addition of potentially limiting the level based upon some factors - as in max level build. It cannot be said that even in modern countries the level of infrastructure in a mountainous region approaches that of plains!

Personally it would be nice if it wasn't just infrastructure, but that current infrastructure was 2 parts:
Level of infrastructure.
Train technology.

They are currently abstracted as one. However, separating out like this would mean you could create limits in provinces (such as mountains limits to lvl 2/3) to stop building everywhere crazy, whilst not removing a need to research further rail road tech (i.e. as levels increase in research, not build, more can be transported upon the same rail road without improvements to the rail road - reflecting better trains!)

As an aside, infrastructure is abstracted to rail roads, but should or could also include canals, roads etc.

Kalelovil · Feb 16, 2011

An idea (which has been discussed before):

Seperate infrastructure levels into 2 parts: 1. the spread of infrastructure throughout the province and 2. the technological level of that infrastructure.
It is silly that new infrastructure built in the 1920s has to be developed in stages from dirt tracks to early rail to modern rail etc.
If we want to achieve this only through modding we could abstract out the rennovating of infrastructure when new technology is developed. The level of infrastructure in a province could only refer to its spread, while higher technology levels would give bonuses to all levels of infrastructure and make infrastructure building cheaper.

Ethan194 · Mar 13, 2011

At the moment is there any way to make railroad construction more realistic because it anoys me so much when im playing and after one year playing as the uk from canada to austalia the infrastructue the highist possible for the period.

Van Diemen · Mar 13, 2011

Ethan194 said:
At the moment is there any way to make railroad construction more realistic because it anoys me so much when im playing and after one year playing as the uk from canada to austalia the infrastructue the highist possible for the period.

Well, I'm afraid there is nothing we (the modding community) can do about it. Hopefully by making PI a bit more aware of this we can hope that they will seek to make infrastructure a bit more realistic in the next expansion.

Ethan194 · Mar 13, 2011

Thanks its just i was playing the realism and rebalance mod and i noticed that railways didnt go crazy as quicly but without the mod they basicly get built instantly and all over the place so i was wondering if there was way to just edit railroad construction

Realism suggestion: Improve railroad building

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