Slitherine

I do not understand why Russia and France start out with zero (0) rail transport capacity.

Serbia has rail capacity.

Romania has rail capacity.

The Ottoman Empire has rail capacity.

One of the major elements that shaped German war planning was their fear of Russia's growing rail capacity, a capability that reduced the time it took for Russia to mobilize.

Russia and France certainly trailed Germany in railroads, but they didn't trail the Ottoman Empire.

Don't know about Russia but in the case of France it's for technical reasons - to prevent the French from reinforcing Belgium on the first turn of the war, wrecking the whole Schlieffen thing before it even gets started. The first rail step is cheap and they can buy it right away if they like.

It's basically a gameplay balancing act. Note that both France and Russia have railways to start with, it's just that you need to spend some PPs to unlock them for military use.

As avoran said, with starting railway capacity, it is very easy for France to rail infantry to Brussels in the opening turn of play, which makes the Schlieffen plan virtually impossible. In our initial balancing work, we gave France rail capacity, but as a result the only way to make the Schlieffen plan viable was to make it possible for Germany to take Brussels in a single turn, which was no fun either.

I modded the file and discovered that, yes, giving the French railcap on turn 1 totally unbalances the play.