Agriculture in cold war sandbox

[way2co0l]

I'm experiencing something weird with agriculture right now. I'm playing as the USSR in the cold war sandbox and recently began producing a large number of agriculture buildings. My agriculture production has been set to 100% capacity without change for the last several years of game time. Over the last month or so of game time, about 20 of them have finished construction and yet, rather than production increasing like you'd expect, my production has actually decreased by 12,000 units of daily production.

I understand the role of supply and I haven't changed anything in that regard or anything else that I can think of that would effect it. Infrastructure spending was, and still is, at max spending and prior to my new construction I was producing 168,000 units of daily production consistently over several months of game time with only a little variation. It was at 162,000 units of daily production before my most recent construction, (Which I believe was a result of previous construction but I wasn't paying attention to the numbers at the time), and was down to 150,000 units of production following my most recent construction being completed.

I have absolutely no idea why my production capacity would actually be decreasing while constructing new buildings without me lowering it from 100% capacity or any major changes to infrastructure or supply. Any ideas?

[way2co0l]

Well, a month later and 18 more agriculture buildings have finished building. My daily production has increased as you would expect and is now at 164,000 units per day. I still can't account for the previous decrease though, or why my production is equal to what it was 2 months ago after producing nearly 40 new agriculture buildings. Again I understand the effect supply has on everything but I haven't changed anything and have only noticed gradual fluctuations in the past. Either way, whatever the reason for it, it's working correctly now.

[GIJoe597]

Just chalk it up to distribution issues. Sure the farms came online, but there is lag time till the crops grow, get collected, processed and shipped to the supermarket.

This is how I would think of it, as long as it seems to be in order now. Sure beats calling it FM.

[way2co0l]

Yeah, it's really not a big deal, I'm just confused why it happened in the first place is all. I can understand a delay (even if every evidence points to an immediate increase in production ), but my production actively decreased for every new agriculture building I built. It sat at a relatively steady production for the better part of a year with a variation of a couple thousand maybe. But the moment I started building to increase my production, it in fact went down and actually remains lower now than it was before I began building them at all. So I currently have over 100 additional facilities with less production than I had with none. This didn't happen to me building any other resources including me building over 100 new timber in the following months. My production for that increased by about 70,000 by the time they all came online. So yeah, it's just weird is all and I'm just trying to figure out why is all.

[GIJoe597]

Roger

[way2co0l]

My best guess at this point is that it's tied to the fact that agri and timber produce on red hexes, even if you don't have a facility present. At the start of the game, the USSR is the 4th largest producer of agriculture in the world, producing over 323,000 units of agriculture daily, and yet, it doesn't have a single agriculture facility within its territory. All of that production comes naturally from every single red hex within its borders.

I believe this might have been their way of simulating agrarian societies with actual agriculture buildings representing organized commercial farming. Looking at how much a low red agri hex provides without an agriculture building, it is putting out 35t per day on day one of my playthrough, compared to 15t per day at my current point. This makes me think that it's tied to GDP or inflation or some combination of the 2. The wealthier your nation, the less you rely on traditional agrarian ways of life, ect. Considering I was producing over 323,000 at game start, and am currently producing 181,000 with 100 additional facilities built, that makes sense as my GDP and inflation have both increased a lot compared to game start.

My agriculture production must have been decreasing without me even thinking about it before as my GDP grew. When I did notice it, I was actively trying to decrease inflation so kept GDP growth to a minimum which could explain why my agri production stayed the same for such a long period of time. And then when I attempted to build the large number of facilities to increase my production for export, it drove my GDP back up which reduced my natural production throughout the rest of the country. This would result in a net decrease in production early on as I'd only have a few actual agri buildings while every single natural red hex was losing production, but after a specific point, I'd have enough agriculture buildings going so that new production would exceed the decreasing production elsewhere.

So yeah, I'm not 100% positive about the causes of it, but it's looking like this is pretty much the gist of it.