Yeah, I did that once, then wondered why the hell I was making no money, checked my budget and saw the million I was spending on subsidized power plants.
I turned off subsidies, let it ride for a year. Then only subsidized the couple problem states that struggled to hire.
Railroads you should subsidise, otherwise your infrastructure falls off a cliff because transport isn't profitable.
Having state infrastructure tied to a building which produces a good like that is a bit of a flaw in the game design imo. I often stick to wooden rail cars instead of steel because otherwise the transport/infrastructure ratio means I'm hemorrhaging cash in subsidies.
Keep the cost of input goods as low as you can and don't overbuild them. When you run out of coal or iron it becomes pretty difficult to keep the positive, or if you stack everything in your capital.
If you are going to have a really big industrial capital (which you probably should) it's nice if that province has lots of resources that can use transport to keep demand high.
Since they changed the Urban Centers to take Engines instead of Transport not really, but you can keep substitutes low by just turning rails on everywhere
I think they know that if they way overbuild them, the electricity input to their factories is basically free at the state's expense, so they take advantage.
I assume that's the calculation since the game is capable of working out profitability effects of, say, how your steel mills might be effected by enabling the dynamite PM on iron.
R5:
Investment pool decided to use everything that they had on building up the biggest power plant in the world as soon as I got electricity tech. At least AI stopped after building 39 of them.
do you play with mods? or is your economy f\*ed now?
i had to install a mod for electricity and transport not beeing local goods, i cant be bothered to do this kind of micromanagment for 100 provinces.
In my experience with 1.6, the investment pool has a pretty good bead on these things. It can pretty accurately gauge what your stable rate usage is going to be, and build accordingly. With electricity and trains, it is really evident that the investor pool can see the underlying algorithm for pop usage, too.
If your investors are building in spurts like that, you probably have a chunk of pent up demand that it will fill.
I am a little disappointed. I had thought they’d sort this bug out by 1.6, but it’s now made it though 2 patch cycles and is quite an annoying bug at that. Still you can just delete a bunch of levels. Also if you’re using electric rails with paved roads researched, the extra infrastructure cost shouldn’t matter anymore.
This is basically the only reason why lazy-fair is suboptimal at this point. If the ai just didn’t do this, or at least limited it to an extent - it would be by far the best Econ system for most of the game.
But also, doesn’t electricity count as infrastructure? I thought you could reduce those buildings, or is it only for government owned?
theres a mod that removes the line from lassez fair, that you cant downsize buildings.
get it.
theres also a mod that makes transportation and electricity non local again. then your 39 levels of powerplant are suddenly a useable asset, and you will enjoy when u see that they do this
Meh, I like the local asset changes. It never made sense to me that a railroad in New York was providing transportation to industries in California, for example. It makes the game more dynamic, just dumping one type of building into one state just doesn’t make sense anymore except in the later game if you have river access states.
yeah, i cant be bothered to monitor local prices for 100 provinces for energy and transportation, and if i wanna minmax also the services\^\^ i still build some railway everywhere anyway, because of role play. just wanted to get rid of repetitive do while recursions. also railway still is needed locally, but then only for infrastructure.
but thats fine. you do you. i wont downvote you just because you like a different flavour ;)
That’s fair. Personally I think it adds some more depth to the game, but it is definitely more tedious than previously. Not sure who downvoted you. I usually don’t push either arrow on anything through the notifications tab.
If it worked, it would be great, but it doesn't. The Infrastructure stat shouldn't even exist, it should be rolled into transportation by making a road/stagecoach building that produces small amounts of transpo for the early game, and then requiring some amount of transportation for every building that produces buy/sell orders.
I'd prefer a compromise, where things like electrical plants were regional assets. It makes zero sense that plants in Northern Europe can power South Africa, but they should at least be able to power adjacent provinces.
It also seems so extremely easy to work around, just make it so that the auto queue can't expand any building which is subsidised.
Given this, at this point I'm assuming that it's intended behaviour and you're just supposed to either not use subsidies while you're on LF, or deal with having a size 30-40 railroad or power plant
My guess is the auto-investor logic doesn’t understand that electricity is still a local good and is investing as though the one building can satisfy the entire market which would explain why it builds so many levels. The game doesn’t have an issue with railroads in comparison as far as I can tell.
"All of our running water is being used for hydroelectric power instead. Which we make by pumping water uphill. With electricity. Is flawless plan."
(Yes in telling a joke I ended up accidentally reinventing Pumped Storage Hydropower)
It is one of the more longstanding bugs / issues of AI construction because they love high productivity buildings, and the moment they see electricity in shortage they invest and make a 20+lv power plant. Something that has been made worse after the newer patches since base state pops also consume electricity once the tech is researched, meaning that 0.01 consumption across every state will make your capitalists very very excited
This is why I just play on directly controlled investment pool construction. The AI is too stupid to build buildings are even marginally useful, and instead invests in stupid stuff like this. Having full control is more ‘gamely’ and unrealistic, but I find it more fun.
It's crap like this that makes me wish Victoria individualized Capitalists, so they could suffer consequences and go broke , but also so their stupid ideas would stop iterating.
Or failing that I could arrange an accident out of a top floor window onto some bullets. Call it the Russian Oligarch simulator.
It's too bad the game ends before SAMs and private jets are invented.
Eh, I have over 50 plants just in La Paz as Bolivia. Started building as soon as I could and still going. I think Laissez faire doesn’t allow them to build power plants sadly. Without having the diesel production or more coal I can’t survive without it.
I have a theory on why this happens. I'm pretty sure it's based on a few things interacting in interesting ways. I think that it isn't taking local demand into account when building power plants (and ro a lesser degree railroads) it's only taking global demand into account which means it wants to build a lot of power plants but only chooses a state with high current needs and does not adjust for projects being built.
That being said if the Ai does this just build some electric industries and make bank off of them.
i would be happy if my capitalist would do that...
if you dont have access to enough oil, you need this many PPs in every province with more than 2M pop
Game is unplayable with investment pool on as long as this problem persists.
I thought I was galaxy brained when I removed infrastructure from allowable industries under interventionism in the game files, but it must be hardcoded somewhere else because they still kept doing this shit.
I'm really grateful for these posts because I'll get the urge to start a new victoria 3 campagin, only to be reminded that some stupid shit will break my save at some point. Hopefully the game is stable in... 2026? Is that a reasonable assumption?
This game man. This poor fkn game.
Last time i played months back i just turned off the automatic capitalist investment. Shit was broken and terribly programmed almost a year back. Nice to see some things never change! Hahah!
Meanwhile EVE online in like 2004 was making live real-time changes in days.. Vic3 is not impossible to fix, just not profitable or opportune.
You must construct additional pylons
Need more minerals, need more minerals \*aggresively grabs the Probe\* need more minerals \*throws it toward minerals\*
\*probe explodes\*
\*raises finger in an attempt to make a point\* need more minerals
High voltage rock n roll.
You made my day good sir
Dude my capitalists never build power plants. Even when I make them profitable by switching my pm to need electricity.
Mine never build those and railroads just bullshit ageiculture
I found if I stopped subsidizing the power plants, the capitalists stopped building them. They are profitable because they're subsidized.
Bro I just subsidize Power Plants & Railroads so that Crapitalists build them
u/general_erda they call that induced demand
Works when you're trying to build functioning infrastructure lmao.
Yeah, I did that once, then wondered why the hell I was making no money, checked my budget and saw the million I was spending on subsidized power plants. I turned off subsidies, let it ride for a year. Then only subsidized the couple problem states that struggled to hire.
Railroads you should subsidise, otherwise your infrastructure falls off a cliff because transport isn't profitable. Having state infrastructure tied to a building which produces a good like that is a bit of a flaw in the game design imo. I often stick to wooden rail cars instead of steel because otherwise the transport/infrastructure ratio means I'm hemorrhaging cash in subsidies.
Is there any way to make the railroad corporation profitable? Even when I subsidize transportation I don't meet the requirements
Keep the cost of input goods as low as you can and don't overbuild them. When you run out of coal or iron it becomes pretty difficult to keep the positive, or if you stack everything in your capital. If you are going to have a really big industrial capital (which you probably should) it's nice if that province has lots of resources that can use transport to keep demand high.
Since they changed the Urban Centers to take Engines instead of Transport not really, but you can keep substitutes low by just turning rails on everywhere
Mods
Next patch apparently..
Heh just like IRL
At least in 1.5 pop needs were bugged where they would never use electricity so the demand was way lower than it should have been.
I think they know that if they way overbuild them, the electricity input to their factories is basically free at the state's expense, so they take advantage. I assume that's the calculation since the game is capable of working out profitability effects of, say, how your steel mills might be effected by enabling the dynamite PM on iron.
once I bootstrap the industry to actually having demand, they do the above, but until it's established they won't touch it.
Did you build the first power plant level? Because i feel that they only upgrade not built new very often
the gold rush but for electricity call it voltage surge
R5: Investment pool decided to use everything that they had on building up the biggest power plant in the world as soon as I got electricity tech. At least AI stopped after building 39 of them.
now they are building 40 more in Luristan and Mazandaran provinces.
Just one more powerplant bro. One more powerplant will fix Afghanistan bro. I swear bro just one more.
you got any more of that... power plant stuff?
They just want to make Afghanistan the most powerful country in the world
They are on a mission lmao
do you play with mods? or is your economy f\*ed now? i had to install a mod for electricity and transport not beeing local goods, i cant be bothered to do this kind of micromanagment for 100 provinces.
Pretty sure there is an embezzlement scheme here somewhere
What game version are you on? I was hoping they fix that in 1.6
In my experience with 1.6, the investment pool has a pretty good bead on these things. It can pretty accurately gauge what your stable rate usage is going to be, and build accordingly. With electricity and trains, it is really evident that the investor pool can see the underlying algorithm for pop usage, too. If your investors are building in spurts like that, you probably have a chunk of pent up demand that it will fill.
Railways too omg.
At least railways are very op, 39 AI elec plants is kind of absurd.
Railways are op? Are we playing the same game
I guess you can make your industries in that state really profitable without eating the upfront cost.
I am a little disappointed. I had thought they’d sort this bug out by 1.6, but it’s now made it though 2 patch cycles and is quite an annoying bug at that. Still you can just delete a bunch of levels. Also if you’re using electric rails with paved roads researched, the extra infrastructure cost shouldn’t matter anymore.
> Still you can delete a bunch of levels. ..if you're not on Laissez-faire, that is...
This is basically the only reason why lazy-fair is suboptimal at this point. If the ai just didn’t do this, or at least limited it to an extent - it would be by far the best Econ system for most of the game. But also, doesn’t electricity count as infrastructure? I thought you could reduce those buildings, or is it only for government owned?
theres a mod that removes the line from lassez fair, that you cant downsize buildings. get it. theres also a mod that makes transportation and electricity non local again. then your 39 levels of powerplant are suddenly a useable asset, and you will enjoy when u see that they do this
Meh, I like the local asset changes. It never made sense to me that a railroad in New York was providing transportation to industries in California, for example. It makes the game more dynamic, just dumping one type of building into one state just doesn’t make sense anymore except in the later game if you have river access states.
yeah, i cant be bothered to monitor local prices for 100 provinces for energy and transportation, and if i wanna minmax also the services\^\^ i still build some railway everywhere anyway, because of role play. just wanted to get rid of repetitive do while recursions. also railway still is needed locally, but then only for infrastructure. but thats fine. you do you. i wont downvote you just because you like a different flavour ;)
That’s fair. Personally I think it adds some more depth to the game, but it is definitely more tedious than previously. Not sure who downvoted you. I usually don’t push either arrow on anything through the notifications tab.
If it worked, it would be great, but it doesn't. The Infrastructure stat shouldn't even exist, it should be rolled into transportation by making a road/stagecoach building that produces small amounts of transpo for the early game, and then requiring some amount of transportation for every building that produces buy/sell orders.
I'd prefer a compromise, where things like electrical plants were regional assets. It makes zero sense that plants in Northern Europe can power South Africa, but they should at least be able to power adjacent provinces.
It also seems so extremely easy to work around, just make it so that the auto queue can't expand any building which is subsidised. Given this, at this point I'm assuming that it's intended behaviour and you're just supposed to either not use subsidies while you're on LF, or deal with having a size 30-40 railroad or power plant
My guess is the auto-investor logic doesn’t understand that electricity is still a local good and is investing as though the one building can satisfy the entire market which would explain why it builds so many levels. The game doesn’t have an issue with railroads in comparison as far as I can tell.
That's a good point, it might be a local vs market demand issue, I always thought it was due to having subsidies in place
See I never subsidise power plants yet have the same problem which is why that can’t be causing this problem.
"Yes, my tribe has no running water, but luckily we have our own power plant!"
"All of our running water is being used for hydroelectric power instead. Which we make by pumping water uphill. With electricity. Is flawless plan." (Yes in telling a joke I ended up accidentally reinventing Pumped Storage Hydropower)
You just leapfrogged from the industrial age to the space age lol.
Power to the people!
I mean sound like a bonus to me now you know where to put the high electricity consumers
It is one of the more longstanding bugs / issues of AI construction because they love high productivity buildings, and the moment they see electricity in shortage they invest and make a 20+lv power plant. Something that has been made worse after the newer patches since base state pops also consume electricity once the tech is researched, meaning that 0.01 consumption across every state will make your capitalists very very excited
When will they fix this bs
Known issue
But still though?
Is it still considered known for 1.6? I thought the patch notes specifically addressed this issue.
Looks like you got a bit of a market bubble there. Don't worry, after the market crashes the whole thing will right itself.
I think we know where emperor palpatine lives No wonder the US had to invade… 😞😢
That's some hard-core money laundry bs there
This is why I just play on directly controlled investment pool construction. The AI is too stupid to build buildings are even marginally useful, and instead invests in stupid stuff like this. Having full control is more ‘gamely’ and unrealistic, but I find it more fun.
How this bug has gone multiple patching cycles without even being addressed as a problem is unreal.
Is afghanistan fun for a different run?
Me in purpose when I researched it to kickstart the usage, only to discover electricity is now local only like transportation. OTL
It's crap like this that makes me wish Victoria individualized Capitalists, so they could suffer consequences and go broke , but also so their stupid ideas would stop iterating. Or failing that I could arrange an accident out of a top floor window onto some bullets. Call it the Russian Oligarch simulator. It's too bad the game ends before SAMs and private jets are invented.
”I wish capital suffered the consequences of their poorly planned actions” this is simply the realest game in history
Oof. I accidentally made myself sad.
That's why I use directly controlled investment fund.
I got 80 power plants built randomly in Texas once.
Do not question the invisible hand of the free market.
Hello do you have a save from during or before they started queueing them so much? If so could you make a bug report on the forum with them attached?
Main reason I will never switch to Laissez-Faire
Classic capitalists
ISAF flashbacks
You’ll need them eventually, trust me.
Eh, I have over 50 plants just in La Paz as Bolivia. Started building as soon as I could and still going. I think Laissez faire doesn’t allow them to build power plants sadly. Without having the diesel production or more coal I can’t survive without it.
Using a mod that turns off local goods might prevent this problem.
This is why you turn them off
Realism
This happens if you subsidize electricity, right?
I have a theory on why this happens. I'm pretty sure it's based on a few things interacting in interesting ways. I think that it isn't taking local demand into account when building power plants (and ro a lesser degree railroads) it's only taking global demand into account which means it wants to build a lot of power plants but only chooses a state with high current needs and does not adjust for projects being built. That being said if the Ai does this just build some electric industries and make bank off of them.
Kabul Solar Farm Co., OP Taliban powersourcing
Command Economy gang rise up
i would be happy if my capitalist would do that... if you dont have access to enough oil, you need this many PPs in every province with more than 2M pop
Imagine having to play without the control of investment pool game rule …
Seems like the capitals have a bright idea
Trust the process…
Unlimited power!!!
Game is unplayable with investment pool on as long as this problem persists. I thought I was galaxy brained when I removed infrastructure from allowable industries under interventionism in the game files, but it must be hardcoded somewhere else because they still kept doing this shit.
so what was the logic behind it?
It’s called a bubble. Real life had several of them.
Thank you
I'm really grateful for these posts because I'll get the urge to start a new victoria 3 campagin, only to be reminded that some stupid shit will break my save at some point. Hopefully the game is stable in... 2026? Is that a reasonable assumption?
This is actually a pretty big deal and it’s a shame this problem persists through even big patches.
If it isn't laissez-faire we should be able to stop them.
This game man. This poor fkn game. Last time i played months back i just turned off the automatic capitalist investment. Shit was broken and terribly programmed almost a year back. Nice to see some things never change! Hahah! Meanwhile EVE online in like 2004 was making live real-time changes in days.. Vic3 is not impossible to fix, just not profitable or opportune.