rare and oil problems in multiplayer

my approach are those late war techs which give a boost in total IC. i changed that from total IC to a plus in supplies production to prevent collapsing nations. on the other hand you can also mod the map and add rares there.

improving the plants is what i did as well.

mcganyol said:

On the other hand, even if countries make fuel-heavy units to the limits of their TC there is still plenty of oil reserves for everyone, in our last game 6 majors were having over 1million oil AFTER the war! and axis showed no sign of running out of oil at all [ger 220k, jap 100k, ita 70k]

I propose to increase synthetic rare plants effectiveness considerably. That would make rares less of an issue after agressive industrialization and at the same time would make oil a much more precisious resource. We can argue about the numbers but imo the current 0.1, 0.15, 0.17 and 0.19 should be increased to 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5 respectively.

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http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?572200-How-do-oil-and-synthetic-plants-work

In a strange way you seem to mix up efficiency with effectivity. Increasing the efficiency as you suggest would not increase rare production but only decrease oil consumption a lot. Lets for a moment assume that both efficiency as effectivity stay as they are. Lets further assume that those 1000 k oil are consumed over a period of 5 years = 1800 days. Than it is on average 555 oil per day available for conversion. At 1943 tech level this will give you 141 rares at the price of 185 metal. At an average province effectivity of 1.43(10 factories at 200% infra) you would need to build 21 rare plants which costs 21 manpower and 11340 icd before sliders discounts apply. That seems rather affordable and you get up to 282 effective ic and ~550 tc in return. I conclude that effectivity of synthetic rare plants is not too low. Effeciency is somewhat low but i always thought it to be supposed that low.

PS: As the resource input of synthetic plants does stay almost constant the amount of plants per available input does not change. This might be one reason for the confusion of efficiency with effectivity.

mcganyol said:

In a multiplayer '36 scen [more or less the only playable scenario] every major building up IC as crazy, and rushing for +IC sliders, ministers, ideas, techs... etc. The result is sudden boom of IC around the world and rare materials very soon become VERY rare. We made house rules that allies should accept fully funded trades with axis as long as they have surplus. but once su is on 450ic just as ger, ita on 140, jap on 280, usa on 170 and uk on 260 in early '39 everyone having rare issues. the rare values on the map were simply not designed for this, and neither axis not building up ic nor running out of rares in '40 spring could be considered an interesting scenario for multiplayer imo.

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This agressive ic build up somewhat exploits the surplus rule into an absurd situation. I would suggest to limit the factories built at once to ~6. Accelerated production would still be allowed. That way effective ic and resource consumption would rise slower. Concentration bonus and more infra would mean higher resource production. Since less icd are likely invested into factories and infra together more icd would be invested into military, thus more oil will be consumed early. In the mid run oil consumption will not be higher due to tc. But in the long run effective ic and tc would be higher than in the scenario you describe. So oil production will be a major bottleneck because synthetic rares are so expensive in terms of consumed oil.

In a way synthetic efficiency is the bottleneck. Only synthetic oil fueled with synthetic energy out of nuclear plants can eliminate that bottleneck in a very very expensive manner.

bestmajor said:

my approach are those late war techs which give a boost in total IC. i changed that from total IC to a plus in supplies production to prevent collapsing nations.

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This makes no sense at all. It is not supplies production, that is an limit. It is tc due to effective ic due to resource production. Those ic techs however increase resource production. In total this industrial efficiency is more important than resource output modifier from ministers and ideas:

Resource production = base value x (1 + industrial efficency) x (1 + resource output modifier) x (0.7 + 0.3 x Infra) x (1 + 0.01 x factories)

Pang said:

This makes no sense at all. It is not supplies production, that is an limit. It is tc due to effective ic due to resource production. Those ic techs however increase resource production. In total this industrial efficiency is more important than resource output modifier from ministers and ideas:

Resource production = base value x (1 + industrial efficency) x (1 + resource output modifier) x (0.7 + 0.3 x Infra) x (1 + 0.01 x factories)

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does that mean it does not help at all?
you see i do not like short games and all the economies crashing after a while, so i thought it's a good idea?

i mean i like longer games but dislike crahing economies, how can i achieve this in your opinion?

It seems this rare material problem was deliberately designed by the makers of AoD, here is a quote from one of the developers in the game's dev diaries:

wyK1NG- said:

The other thing that is vastly different is resource production. You will notice that resource production is much lower in Arsenal of Democracy than Armageddon. The Soviet Union produces an incredible 550 less energy in Arsenal of Democracy. The old strategy of building nothing but IC for a few years no longer works in Arsenal of Democracy. You simply will not have the resources to support it.

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bestmajor said:

does that mean it does not help at all?
you see i do not like short games and all the economies crashing after a while, so i thought it's a good idea?

i mean i like longer games but dislike crahing economies, how can i achieve this in your opinion?

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The way i see it there is nothing wrong with the game itself, but only with unreasonable strategies. At techevel 1963, 200% infra and a good portion of concentration bonus the rares output of the national provinces of soviet union can exceed 450. In singleplayer resource shortness is hardly a problem. Only heavy overbuilding of factories like in multiplayer creates serios scarcity of resources. It is similar to overusage of wells. For a time the more water available will allow bigger harvests, but later on groundwater will be catastrophically low. The solution is to not overbuild factories in the first place. If you limit yourself to building factories in the five provinces with the most resources you will not have too much base ic early and later you will have more resources due to great concentration bonus.

Another good strategy can be to waste ic. Wasted ic uses only 25% resources. Instead of using 450 effective ic without wasting one could have 600 effective ic and waste 200 out of it. TC-wise this is wise.

The argument that oil is not very valuable in AoD might just mean it should be made a much rarer resource in the game. I do not think Germany, Japan, Italy and Hungary industrialised as much as they did in real life compared to our game. Obviously, neither did the UK or USA (USSR still had a five year plan spanning to 1941).

I don't think the game should accommodate for a worldwide industrialisation. I'd agree with making the synthetic plants more worthwhile if they were in real life. I know Germany was dependent on synthetic oil, but as for synthetic rare materials I am not so sure.

mcganyol said:

Your suggestion to not build IC as axis is clearly the ruin of the game because allies can industrialize as much as they want pre-war.

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Let me clarify: I suggested to limit the lines of factories built at once to ~6 for any country. The concrete limit may differ from country to country, it is a matter of houserules. Germany can build more than 2 factories per line per year. So by additional factories alone base ic would increase by nearly 100 till early 1941. Given proper Infra construction base ic from german national provinces would climb to over 360, with annexed nonnational territories it would be more than 400 base ic and more than 550 effective ic.

mcganyol said:

The fact that ger, ita and jap should already buy all surplus rares from allies already gives a good part of axis ic to allies pre-war. For example my japan with 280 effective IC trades money worth of 53 IC for raw materials. This amount is not only deducted from my "available IC" but it's also given into allies total available IC. [available ic = your effective ic minus the cg and supply demands]

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That is rather valid argument. I might differ on the concrete figures, though. It depends much on the choice between free markets and central planning. The later is good to utilize imported money while free markets are good for importing resources for money. Also axis has good chances to conquer resources. If Japan releases Indochina, Malaysia and Indonesia as puppets it has ample rares at its disposal.

mcganyol said:

Synthetic plants requires serious investment in research, ic and manpower already. If you are wiling to pay that cost trading oil for rares at 6:1 is very bad and no sane player would do that.

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10 rare plants costs 10 manpower and ~4320 icd, which is less than 4 interceptors cost. At 1943 tech level they give ~69 rares or ~137 effective ic. They will consume ~90 metal(which germany has in abundance in Metz) and ~271 oil a day. By houserules the later can be imported at 0.2$/oil, so that is 54 $ a day. In 1936 this is can be produced by using ~23.7 ic on consumer goods. I would think that using synthetic rare plants is reasonable as germany. Germany can coordinate with its axis partners so only germany has to use rare plants.

The conversion ratio of 1943 synthetic rares is equivalent to a trading ratio of 3.62 or 2.96 if the metal is considered free.

mcganyol said:

They simply run out of rares, lose IC and thus TC. No TC = end of the game.

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This can easily be prevented by wasting ic. This boost avaible tc by a factor of 4 at the cost of not utilizing the ic. So tc is not the kind of bottleneck you describe. It is a bit more ambivalent.