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macscarfe

First Lieutenant
70 Badges
Feb 3, 2007
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Hi, i'm planning on totally re-balancing the economic and industrial aspects of IC (specifically for DH) for my own gratification.

Personally i find you can happily ignore the economic aspect of IC and suffer little, if no consequences. For example even if i turn off auto trading, as Germany i may only have to make or accept 5 trades through out the entire game to keep all resources positive and very very healthy and i find this less than challenging.

The aim is to rebalance the economic and industrial aspects of Iron Cross (Over Darkest Hour) such as to more accurately reflect the realities of the early 1930's while not detracting too much from the playability of the game.

Players should expect, in the first few years, to have to make choices between research, espionage and diplomacy. As the world gradually grinds its way towards world war defense spending increase and the player will have to make fewer choices and have more options.

This alpha is presented so that people can experience rather than read about the rebalancing and, hopefully, send feedback and suggestions.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1RSs86GUBxZaGkyZ3RwMUVucFk/edit?usp=sharing

Change Log

1) Altered Energy to Oil rates down by a factor of 10, you will now need less energy to make oil
2) Stockpiles introduced, note stockpiles are small during peacetime, tech will help (war increases tock levels by 50% (needs to be removed before new system in place))
3) Industry Tech Tree all free resources and money replaced with scaled (based on IC) equivalents, but amounts given based on daily production levels not fixed amounts.
4) Hawk/Dove Slider altered to represent military budget, full Dove gives -90% money from consumer goods, full Hawk gives -0% money from consumer goods (this is a quick and nasty temporary fix)
5) All provincial resources reduced by 25%
6) Starting resources are being reduced (on-going)

To-do list

1) Events are being altered to be scaled by IC where appropriate, errors corrected, free resources halved.
2) Decision based chain to represent war production to be introduced in place of economic techs. Countries will go from Peacetime Economy -- Gearing up for War -- War Economy -- Total War (and back again) and effects of the decisions will be dependent on free market/central planning slider. There will be a long delay between being able to change decision and any change will result in a large dissent hit.
3) balancing and polish

Any comments from more experienced IC modders would be very gratefully received.
 
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Okay so the pre-war economy seems not to have crashed but i need to do further testing to ensure that when the war pushes the armies industry into overdrive there not all starving for resources.

But having said that i think i can safely think about that next, possible ideas are

1) There's way too much money floating about, need to find sinks.
1a) Need to go through the events, many event cost the player 3 to 5% of ONE days money income and this needs to be changed to either 3 to 5 days of income, or fixed amounts
2) Might not have been harsh enough on rare materials also, so might knock world production of these down by a further 10%
3) The frequency of random events needs to be toned down a little, for MY personal preference
4) Need to look at the trading values of resources and possibly rebalance, making metal, rare's and supplies more expensive
5) Might steal a concept from CORE and introduce negative energy consumption in provinces with high IC and/or manpower
5a) Might need to increase energy output to compensate
6) I hate the economic techs in the industry tree, thinking about replacing all of these with a decision chain
7) Hate the free market/central planning slider, again thinking about how to replace using a decision chain
8) Implement modifers via tech to stockpile levels

So not much to do then ..... if this works i might actually release it as a mod, who knows.
 
Okay after a long break, it's back (hopefully with a fresh perspective) to try and work on this again.

1) There's way too much money floating about, need to find sinks.
4) Need to look at the trading values of resources and possibly rebalance, making metal, rare's and supplies more expensive
Hrm, seem to be different sides of the same coin, gonna go for a quick and easy fix and make money less valuable.
3) The frequency of random events needs to be toned down a little, for MY personal preference
Erm my personal preference and rebalancing the economy have nothing to do with each other, so scraping that idea
5) Might steal a concept from CORE and introduce negative energy consumption in provinces with high IC and/or manpower
5a) Might need to increase energy output to compensate
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Basically HOI games are supposed to simulate 4 different areas, Intelligence, Military, Foreign Policy and the Military industrial complex and this idea (while perfect for CORE) isn't suitable for this
6) I hate the economic techs in the industry tree, thinking about replacing all of these with a decision chain
7) Hate the free market/central planning slider, again thinking about how to replace using a decision chain
This is going to be the main meat of my attempt to rebalance the economy and make it an actual factor within the game.

In base HOIish games this is entirely controlled by the free market/central planning slider which doesn't do a very good job, there have been attempts to reform the slider effects but they still fail on the most basic level that a single slider cannot represent or even abstract this complex issue remotely well.

Now Iron Cross, does things differently from pretty much everyone else and for me this is it's strength. From the tech tree to the map, IC pushes the boundaries, sometimes times successfully and sometimes not, so that's what i'm going to attempt to do.

The plan here is this


a) wipe the effects from the FM/CP slider
This will now become an indication of the strength of political will to embrace this approach to arms creation. To turn a full centrally planned economy into a free market economy cannot be done it days but will takes years, no matter what the politicians claim​


b) wipe the economic techs completely.


c) Decision chain to go from peacetime economy to total war economy in a number of steps
The strength of these re focusing of the economy will be dependent on the FM/CP slider​


d) Random events based on player changes to FM/CP slider and Decision chain
So if you have a free market economy, you may receive events allowing you to invite local/foreign investment into resource production in province x for example. Businesses may go under so you'll lose IC. Centrally planned economies would have events to nationalize industry and resource gathering for example. Interventionist governments (i.e. middle of the FM/CP slider) would have watered down events from both sides, with a sprinkling of unique events as well.​


e) Peacetime economies will require lots of consumer goods and have reduced money production
Okay so here's the thing that always confuses me, during peacetime in HOI games you need to make more consumer goods ... okay but in doing so you make more money at a time when in RL defense budgets are slashed. I'm not 100% sure on this but i'm gonna give a whirl and see how it goes​


I doubt this is going to work, but hell it'll be fun trying.
 
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Are you sure this will not become a micromanagement hell?

That's not the aim of this, there are way better economic based games out there to go play so turning DH+IC into one, that isn't what i'm after.

But it's difficult to ignore the fact that this is the 1930's, a world recovering from a global depression, and that many of the major players were faced with serious problems, both in terms of money and resources.

The aim is that an average player who plays IC "out of the box" (by that I mean without auto-spying turned on and the automated trading options not altered) shouldn't have to manage anything except in the wake of major events such as "Plan Z" for example.

But gone are the days when as Germany you click Danzig or War with 100k+ energy and metal and 50+ rare materials and oil and 25k+ supplies and money. I don't play the HOI2 or AoD versions but for me this is a regular occurrence in the DH version.

At the start of the game you'll be left with some stark choices until the world gets dangerous, such as do you run 3 quality 8 or 9 research teams or 5 quality 4 or 5 teams. You'll not be running either an aggressive intelligence campaign or diplomatic campaign from the get go.

By 36 and 37, however, research should be at full speed and you should be able to engage in a normal intelligence campaign whilst conducting the necessary diplomatic moves, if not then I've messed this up.

Right now the main problem i'm facing is the automated trading, it works fine in DH but DH+IC it's just suicidal. Also I have to go through the entire event folder and alter the events that give off-screen resources, add/reduce a % of the days resource production and give free resources as a lump.

After that I intend to release an 1st beta (without the new economic mobilization system I propose) so people can tell me how very very badly I've done.

Current change log looks like this

  1. Increased Energy to Oil rates up by a factor of 10, no longer will your energy stockpile hit 0 before feb 33
  2. Stockpiles introduced, note stockpiles are small during peacetime, techs will help (war increases stock levels by 50% needs to be removed before new system in place)
  3. Industry Tech Tree, all free resources and money replaced with event driven version where possible.
  4. Hawk/Dove Slider altered to represent military budget under those political climates (inelegant solution, reduction of money from consumer goods, but does the job until I can find another way to deal with limitless money)
  5. All provincial resources reduced by 25%
 
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