36 USSR observational AAR

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way2co0l
Brigadier Gen.
Posts: 687
Joined: Nov 29 2010
Human: Yes

36 USSR observational AAR

Post by way2co0l »

This one is mostly to help test the new WW2 economic updates and track my observations and as such I won't be putting the effort into it that I do my others.

The first things I notice are that worldwide production of electricity has been increased by quite a lot. I don't see anyone being short from a cursory glance so no one should have a problem meeting their demand if things go as expected. I don't see any significant changes for production of anything else.

Another thing I've noticed is that the Maginot line has 3 cities (Mulhouse, Strassberg, and Thionville) which each have a tourist attraction building and are lacking the emplacements you find along the rest of the line. I assume that this is in error.

I will be playing a particularly oppressive Soviet regime with high taxes at 58%, corporate at 52%, business at 48%, and low income at 42% with a sales tax of 45%. Be grateful you don't have to live in my Soviet Russia. lol. Combined with this are 200% markups for consumer goods, 180% on petrol, 160% on electricity, 100% on Timber, 80% on coal, and 60% on agriculture. Not a single one of my social spending sliders are actually at recommended values. Infrastructure is the closest being just a notch below(28m with 30m recommended), followed by healthcare(10m of 14m recommended), family planning(10m of 16m recommended), and law enforcement which got a very modest boost(1m of 3m recommended). My people are not going to like me. I'm also setting production to be under demand on most everything, but especially for oil and industrial goods as I will be relying on current reserves to meet demand. Military spending will be decreased slightly, more so for training than salaries, though research spending will increase primarily because of the 2 year+ research times for the power grid and improved medical research techs.

These decisions primarily aimed at allowing me to start up an aggressive 5 year plan towards industrialization that won't overheat my economy overly much. Ultimately I have a daily budget surplus of 125m which will likely be reduced to less than 100m as tax incomes decrease and the increased spending in social areas takes its effect which gives me a lot of room to cover construction costs. A supply hub will be first, followed by industrial goods and then military goods. Consumer goods really are of very little concern for the foreseeable future.

I will perhaps post an update every few months or perhaps once a year, not really concerning the combat or similar events but mostly focusing on economic observations based on my playstyle.
way2co0l
Brigadier Gen.
Posts: 687
Joined: Nov 29 2010
Human: Yes

Re: 36 USSR observational AAR

Post by way2co0l »

Alright, up to June 9th and already observing some oddities. First, electricity doesn't appear to be playing by the rules set by the production output slider. I've set mine to 102% of demand and yet I am producing 181k for 133k demand early in the game. I do not have any colonies so the excess cannot be coming from them. Changing the slider to produce at 50% of demand is now actually producing almost exactly what my current demand is. With it set to produce for 50% of demand, several months after my previous figures, I am now producing 139k to 140 demand. Those numbers are rounded. It's actually closer to 500 units difference. Setting it to 0% of capacity does however 0 it out. Additionally, the fact that most of the world is overproducing is driving the price of electricity down. I do play with the starting setting of abundant resources, but that only effects starting resources and obviously doesn't really apply for electricity. By May, my production costs are 11 while the world market price is 10 so I am producing at a loss. A point that should be considered is that I do play with energy sales on. I know it's not exactly realistic, but I prefer the benefit to gameplay where a nation won't just break itself by not having enough power and not doing what it needs to in order to fix it. So for me it's gameplay over realism in this regard.

Commercial goods appears to be fine so far. My policies do a good job crushing demand of course, but even still, with the problems people had been describing, I'd think I'd begin to notice some kind of increase but it's settling at a nice constant level for me. There is some price growth but nothing drastic. I feel it's pretty standard for a game still in the early months and the economy balancing out.

Rubber is still doing just fine in my games as well. In fact, several powers are sitting on pretty massive stockpiles. To be fair, this probably has a lot to do with my abundant resource start. But with demand for consumer goods staying at a reasonable level, rubber use is staying under control as well. One observation is that it doesn't look like England is exporting the stocks of rubber they're getting from Maylasia. This might not actually be true and just my flawed perception, but every indication I can find points to it. To break it down, at game start, America has rubber stockpiles of 400k+, while England had 33k. From March to my current game time in June, England now has comparable stocks to America. This obviously isn't a problem at this point because the world doesn't need those stocks, but if we were still experiencing the issue from before then having all of that rubber go only to England and never actually leaving the isles only magnifies those problems. England needs to be exporting colonial excesses and from this example it doesn't appear that she is doing so.

And the last point for tonight is industrial goods. Again I mention that I start with abundant resources specifically for this point. It floods the market with large stockpiles ensuring that the AI doesn't put itself into an early bind where it can't build what it needs. However, it does provide a very clear example of what I was talking about in my other thread about production. This excess of industrial goods is driving the price for industrial goods down as you'd expect, and it is also reducing the production capacity for every industrial goods facility. This is the problem. I wanted to try to build a hub of industrial facilities just to ensure that even if the world were to run out, I'd still be self sufficient enough to do what I'd need to do. However, when looking at the maximum output from one of these industrial facilities, and then dividing to find its output per day, it should be producing 50 per day for each additional facility. However every new facility that comes online is only producing 30 while in a 98% supply hex. That means I have to build more buildings, and spend more money, just because all production is being lowered. As I'd said in my other thread. The market price has already been reduced, production doesn't need to be decreased as well.
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