Supply problems

AngusM said:

In my current playthrough, I'm running into severe supply issues and I can't figure out what is going on.

I'm playing as Germany. It's 1943. I've defeated the Soviets and the U.K. In 1942 I invaded and either conquered or puppeted all of South America in preparation for an invasion of the U.S. As I went, I built up both land and port infrastructure. So far, so good.

However, for several months now none of my troops in South America are getting any supplies. Zero. I have 500+ free convoys, so that isn't the issue. I tried manually setting up some supply convoys to various South American ports to see if that helped. They are all running at full but carrying zero supplies. I tried deleting all supply convoys except those to a few key ports in Central and South America to see if that forced the issue. It still will not ship any supplies. As an experiment I went through and deleted all the Allied naval units in the Atlantic to see if Allied convoy raiding was the problem. I let it run for two months game time and still nothing going to South America in terms of supplies. Any ideas what is going on?

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What is the place of your stockpile in South America? And see how much it is.
Also, you are sure you build up infrastructure all the way and not just only a few provinces? Any bottlenecks somewhere? Just too many troops?

Just guessing.

The way you receive supply is divided in two factors: Supply throughput and cost: The level of infrastructure determines the amount that of supply can travel through that province. But for that supply to travel through every province comes at a cost and you lose a bit of supply. The latter represents local supply troops, guards, etc. Supply is produced by excess IC and when the amount of supplies produced is lower than what the supply system needs, you will see the amount of available supplies dropping every day.

What I think is going on:
You have units all over the world, Russia, Europe and South America (and maybe other parts of the world). All those units need supplies and it will cost quite a bit to supply them. Especially those units that use low infra provinces, like Russia, to get supplied, will cost quite a lot. But this is also true for units in other parts of the world. In short, I think the supply system has collapsed. There are too many units that need supply and it’s costing too much to supply them. It’s very likely that not even 50% of the supplies that leave your capitol arrive at the actual location. As a consequence your troops in South America don’t get supply at all!

What can you do:
Put all your troops in South America in lvl 10 ports if you haven’t already. This way you will decrease the supply cost.
Do the same for troops in other parts of the world you aren’t using in combat. Again, this way you will decrease the supply cost.
In preparation for the invasion of the USA withdraw most of your troops from South America and redeploy them closer to your capitol.
Check the amount of troops on PTS and GAR duty. Delete the ones you don’t need or you doubt you need (worldwide).
Retreat planes and ships, you don’t really need, as close to your capitol as possible.
Do the same for fuel consuming units like MOT, MECH and ARM.

I assume you are aware of the usual’s, like appointing the two minsters (supply consumption and production), highest skill lvl commander as Army Group commander, assigning logistics wizards as theatre commander. Just make sure you haven’t forgotten any of them.