Railroads employment

[Shaddarhim]

Idk if im doing something wrong but my railroads randomly go into unemployment and my whole economy crashes. then I subsidise them they hire my economy goes back to normal and then I need to stop giving them money because it costs like 200k and the cycle repeats. Is there a ways to prevent this or is this just a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanic you have to deal with?

[VoiD]

gotta subside those or make them very profitable.

Which means using a lot of transports on your farms and not using the cargo focus production mode.

But yeah, it's hard to keep them profitable, specially in industrialized nations which need a ton of infrastructure and don't really use a lot of transportation, so you can't raise the prices enough to make railroads profitable on their own.

[Shaddarhim]

Well that sucks. I have mine on electric trains and steel passenger wagons but I guess I dont have enough agriculture then. Is there a way to partly subsudize them? because I dont need to have them fully employed (which costs a lot of money) just to the point my infrastructure doesnt collapse.

[TangoHotelCharlie]

Hey mate,
I face the same problem from time to time. Frist things first: railroads produce transport and infrastructure. Thats not the same. Transport is used by multiple production methods i.e. in your coal mines, in the city centers and by your pops. On the other hand, infrastructure is needed for market access, which is important for prices and so productivity (thats your problem).

You can increase infrastructure by cutting transport. To do so, avoiding the use of wagons, using better new train methods or building new railroads. So the railroad get more profitable.

If you still got to much transport, increase the use of transport in your city centers, in your coal and iron mines and so on. In my case, I still need to subsidise the railroad but now the industry makes much more money then the subsidises.

[Jerry]

Originally posted by Shaddarhim:

Well that sucks. I have mine on electric trains and steel passenger wagons but I guess I dont have enough agriculture then. Is there a way to partly subsudize them? because I dont need to have them fully employed (which costs a lot of money) just to the point my infrastructure doesnt collapse.

Check if having them on Steel Passenger wagons isnt inflating your Transport prices and rendering them super unprofitable.

Having cheap transport is fine, but Infrastructure is always more important, and as far as I know putting railroads off Industrial use only will reduce infrastructure. I can't be 100 % sure but I would bet your economy does not need the transportation gained by using your railways as passenger lanes, but from the sounds of it, it does need the infrastructure.

If you are playing a nation with coasts, use ports for some infrastructure if needed, they should be easier to subsidise if I remember right.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Jerry:

Originally posted by Shaddarhim:

Well that sucks. I have mine on electric trains and steel passenger wagons but I guess I dont have enough agriculture then. Is there a way to partly subsudize them? because I dont need to have them fully employed (which costs a lot of money) just to the point my infrastructure doesnt collapse.

Check if having them on Steel Passenger wagons isnt inflating your Transport prices and rendering them super unprofitable.

Having cheap transport is fine, but Infrastructure is always more important, and as far as I know putting railroads off Industrial use only will reduce infrastructure. I can't be 100 % sure but I would bet your economy does not need the transportation gained by using your railways as passenger lanes, but from the sounds of it, it does need the infrastructure.

If you are playing a nation with coasts, use ports for some infrastructure if needed, they should be easier to subsidise if I remember right.

That's one way, less railroads working as industrial railroads can be cheaper to maintain.

But since they generate a lot less transportation they are inherently less profitable, unless transportation isn't worth anything in your country right now ofc.

But the other modes also use more raw materials, and if those are too expensive, you're going to have to pay the difference, so having steel wagons can work if steel is cheap in your country.

Also, something else you can do is use steel wagons in your main developed areas as you'll employ people from your accepted culture and religion, then use industrial on conquered territories you don't plan to incorporate, you can't tax their proffits anyway, so they will make less transportation, which should raise the proffits from your mainland's railroads by reducing supply, and also, wages on unincorporated states are often lower, so it should be cheaper overall. If you have some discrimination that would make this strategy even better as I've seen some people working in asian countries with colonial exploitation+discrimination working for less than $1, so you can subside those np.

But yeah, if you have too many railroads, consider deleting them as well.

Or quickly industrialize (incorporated states only) to make actual use of the infrastructure.

[Talok]

The entire railroad mechanic needs to be revisited by the devs.

[kgkong]

When you first establish railroads, you probably should subsidize them. After you have an excess in the peasant pop pool for that state, you don't need to keep it subsidized.

If you have a lot of states in your nation, keep an eye on states as internal migration can pull those pops out, and eventually that state might start losing employment as they move to another state that has more demand for their job to be filled.

I often play small starts, so I almost never subsidize my railroads personally. But I also tend to always focus on overpopulating my states. There's enough arable land and cheap access to goods that I don't need to worry about those pops having low SoL as a result.

[RandyNewman]

Railroads sustain themselves financially by selling Transport services, not by providing market access. If you're setting production methods on your mines and farms to use Rail Transportation, then the railroads should be barely eating into your subsidies, even when there's something like an engine shortage driving up their expenses.

They're just not really a profitable service, but you've still got a little wiggle room to play with Transport supply/demand. As long as you're not *just* building railroads and you don't have long-term input good bottlenecks, it's usually not an issue.

Subsidizing the Arms Industry always costs me 10-20x more

[kgkong]

Originally posted by RandyNewman:

Railroads sustain themselves financially by selling Transport services, not by providing market access. If you're setting production methods on your mines and farms to use Rail Transportation, then the railroads should be barely eating into your subsidies, even when there's something like an engine shortage driving up their expenses.

They're just not really a profitable service, but you've still got a little wiggle room to play with Transport supply/demand. As long as you're not *just* building railroads and you don't have long-term input good bottlenecks, it's usually not an issue.

Subsidizing the Arms Industry always costs me 10-20x more

You can export or use transport in states or other nations that don't have their own railroads. As such, you can actually have a ridiculously profitable railroad industry, subsidized or not (though most profits when it isn't subsidized). I've had railroads earning 45-50 productivity, and adding a new railroad in any state would draw in 3.5k+ repeating profit at current supply-demand rates.

[RandyNewman]

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

Originally posted by RandyNewman:

Railroads sustain themselves financially by selling Transport services, not by providing market access. If you're setting production methods on your mines and farms to use Rail Transportation, then the railroads should be barely eating into your subsidies, even when there's something like an engine shortage driving up their expenses.

They're just not really a profitable service, but you've still got a little wiggle room to play with Transport supply/demand. As long as you're not *just* building railroads and you don't have long-term input good bottlenecks, it's usually not an issue.

Subsidizing the Arms Industry always costs me 10-20x more

You can export or use transport in states or other nations that don't have their own railroads. As such, you can actually have a ridiculously profitable railroad industry, subsidized or not (though most profits when it isn't subsidized). I've had railroads earning 45-50 productivity, and adding a new railroad in any state would draw in 3.5k+ repeating profit at current supply-demand rates.

Oh yeah, I forgot countries in your customs union can buy your services and transportation... but that only works because the AI doesn't believe in roads!

[kgkong]

Originally posted by RandyNewman:

Originally posted by KingGorillaKong:

You can export or use transport in states or other nations that don't have their own railroads. As such, you can actually have a ridiculously profitable railroad industry, subsidized or not (though most profits when it isn't subsidized). I've had railroads earning 45-50 productivity, and adding a new railroad in any state would draw in 3.5k+ repeating profit at current supply-demand rates.

Oh yeah, I forgot countries in your customs union can buy your services and transportation... but that only works because the AI doesn't believe in roads!

It's such an amazing way to play tall as a small nation. Hydro power plants, railroads, and then stock whatever the custom union runs short on or demands a lot of. Investment pool larger than most nations GDP, basically having an investment pool that if it was a part of the GDP would make you the highest GDP and GDP per capita. (Ooops lol)

[Palsada]

Can't believe this hasn't been said but...keep engine prices low.

[Dray Prescot]

You probably do not have to subsidize all the states that have RR. just those that have low pools of employees that you need to run your RR, Try attracting migrants to those States.