Thu Jun 04, 2015 10:34 pm
This game is very different from Victoria 2, both in layout and function.
In Victoria 2 you were told to disband your army to save money. In this game, there are 2 types of money: government money and private money. Government money builds armies and navies, invests in research, and performs actions such as bribing colonial chiefs and building sewers; private money builds industry. Disbanding the army makes you weaker and does not help you build.
In the economics screen, each black dash on one of the circles represents how many of that type of building you can build in that province. New RGO facilities (gold mines, cereal farms, etc.) reflect the economic principle of diminishing marginal returns: each successive farm/mine/ranch produces less than the one before (factories are immune to this). Specifically, "availability modifier" works like this:
100% + (built - maximum + 2) * 5%
So if you build your allotment in a province, each farm gets only 90% of total production. If you have 2 provinces that can build wheat structures and don't yet have any, build your first one in the province with a higher maximum. Provinces with existing structures get messy because you have to factor in the reduced output of existing structures. The icon disappearing may be a glitch; it should come back next turn.
Since Russia is so long, Jim's suggestion is smart. After that, yes, putting railroads in high-productivity regions to maximize economic effect is a good idea provided you have the money. Note by "high productivity" I mean "produces valuable goods" not "produces many goods". If you have a choice between putting a railroad in Ukraine to benefit 4 cereal farms versus in Siberia (or wherever) to benefit 1 gold mine, focus on the gold. If, however, that province in Ukraine also has some highly profitable industry such as manufactured goods (at some periods, anyway), you should probably build there because the gold is likely to be in mountains, which makes building everything, including railroads, (75%?) more expensive.
I can't help you regarding Vladivostok; I've never played as Russia, and since I'm used to reading Paradox's event code, AGEod's comes across as clunky and not very comprehensible.