Food is something that everybody needs to survive so an argument can be made that agriculture was pretty important during WWII period.
In vanilla HOI4, food is abstracted and the player doesn't have to think much of it. Because of lack of food in the game, it loses one strategic component.
For example, a strategy to defeat the British is to sink food convoys. As it stands, a naval blockade of Great Britain is an annoyance, which negatively impacts your industrial production, but you are still pretty safe on that island with 200 divisions of defenders you can raise relatively quickly. In reality, a successfull blockade of Britain would force it to seek peace, because the island cannot produce enough food to sustain itself. Japan has the same problem.
It has also been recorded that certain military planners deliberately waited or avoided taking population centres(or other areas with high 'concentration' of people) simply because their logistics and supply wouldn't be able to feed the newly occupied population centre.
It would also add weight to choosing some historical decisions ingame, like prioritizing conquest of fertile Ukraine.
Also, nations with developed agricultural technology/land would have more manpower for factories and military.
Now that it is established how adding food would add depth and accuracy to the game, let's discuss HOW would the food mechanic work.
Generally, lack of food effects need to be abstracted so they do not resemble anything not allowed to discuss on the forums. Lack of food would increase dissent, reduce recruitable manpower, increase train time and decrease unit experience, and also reducing industrial production by a percentage(assuming there isn't enough people to work both factories and farms).
I would suggest that food production be 'global' for your empire. Every region produces food(at different productivity ofcourse), which is then put in a 'global' storage for your empire. Every city consumes food from the global storage, unless it gets surrounded on all sides including sea, then after a period of (arbitrary)3 months, the city starts losing its ability to supply its troops, as well as reducing their urban combat defender bonus.
If your nation produces less food than it consumes, and you cannot buy from the world market, you gain manpower and industry malus. This would make it even more historical, as USA giving food to the Soviets would play a factor, if minor, in their performance in the war.
Of course, fighting damages production so Operation Barbarossa would decrease worlds food supply...
About industry.
In this game, any nation can decide to start building heavy tanks, airplanes and aircraft carriers if they want to. However, this was not the case historically. The reason is this;
To make rifles and ammunition, you don't NEED factories, you need workshops. It's 'easy' to produce tons of rifles, even as relatively backwater nations like Persia. Therefore I would argue that your ability to produce infantry equipment is a function of population, not heavy industry.
However, tanks and aircraft carriers cannot be made without heavy industry, so smaller countries like Greece could not make and maintain any number of tanks on their own.
I want to propose this : Divide production into factories and workshops. Factories have capacity(say, 1 factory employs 5000 people). Factories need to be built using technology and resources. Workshops however, are much cheaper, and require less time and resources to build(if any).
The difference would be in their effectiveness in producing different items. For example
Building a medium tank-assigned a full factory gives 1 production point per day, while assigned a full workshop(same number of people) gives 0.1 point a day. Therefore producing tanks with the same amount of manpower in workshops is 10 times less efficient for tanks, prohibitively so for nations without heavy industry.
However, producing support equipment in factories gives a *2 modifier, but producing it in workshops has no bonuses nor maluses. Therefore workshop is 2 times less efficient per manpower for support equipment. This would make you have to use workshops for 'simple' items while your factories are busy making more complex items.
This would add depth to the industrial part of the game, since for example China would not be limited in their ability to produce infantry weapons, but would be SEVERELY limited in their ability to produce armor.
Basically, it would split industry into 'light industry' and 'heavy industry' with varying ability to produce different goods.
Vanilla HOI4 allows you to set your conscription law, where more extensive conscription gives you a flat % penalty to industrial production. This is a simple, but inferior solution i believe.
If you change your conscription law to all adults serve, but then do not enlist those men in the army, leaving them in their agriculture/industry/commerce jobs, it should not really affect your production. Instead, it gives you the ability to take people away from agriculture/industry and put them into uniform, thus incurring a penalty in empty workshop slots(if you get to that point). There is also an opportunity to add some 'flavor' decisions as massively employing women in factories and agriculture therefore letting you enlist more men without losing industrial ability...
Take this with a grain of salt, this is just a suggestion for a future DLC, since i believe these changes would add enough depth, value and change to the game to 'deserve' their DLC, if the community here wants an industrial centered DLC.
In vanilla HOI4, food is abstracted and the player doesn't have to think much of it. Because of lack of food in the game, it loses one strategic component.
For example, a strategy to defeat the British is to sink food convoys. As it stands, a naval blockade of Great Britain is an annoyance, which negatively impacts your industrial production, but you are still pretty safe on that island with 200 divisions of defenders you can raise relatively quickly. In reality, a successfull blockade of Britain would force it to seek peace, because the island cannot produce enough food to sustain itself. Japan has the same problem.
It has also been recorded that certain military planners deliberately waited or avoided taking population centres(or other areas with high 'concentration' of people) simply because their logistics and supply wouldn't be able to feed the newly occupied population centre.
It would also add weight to choosing some historical decisions ingame, like prioritizing conquest of fertile Ukraine.
Also, nations with developed agricultural technology/land would have more manpower for factories and military.
Now that it is established how adding food would add depth and accuracy to the game, let's discuss HOW would the food mechanic work.
Generally, lack of food effects need to be abstracted so they do not resemble anything not allowed to discuss on the forums. Lack of food would increase dissent, reduce recruitable manpower, increase train time and decrease unit experience, and also reducing industrial production by a percentage(assuming there isn't enough people to work both factories and farms).
I would suggest that food production be 'global' for your empire. Every region produces food(at different productivity ofcourse), which is then put in a 'global' storage for your empire. Every city consumes food from the global storage, unless it gets surrounded on all sides including sea, then after a period of (arbitrary)3 months, the city starts losing its ability to supply its troops, as well as reducing their urban combat defender bonus.
If your nation produces less food than it consumes, and you cannot buy from the world market, you gain manpower and industry malus. This would make it even more historical, as USA giving food to the Soviets would play a factor, if minor, in their performance in the war.
Of course, fighting damages production so Operation Barbarossa would decrease worlds food supply...
About industry.
In this game, any nation can decide to start building heavy tanks, airplanes and aircraft carriers if they want to. However, this was not the case historically. The reason is this;
To make rifles and ammunition, you don't NEED factories, you need workshops. It's 'easy' to produce tons of rifles, even as relatively backwater nations like Persia. Therefore I would argue that your ability to produce infantry equipment is a function of population, not heavy industry.
However, tanks and aircraft carriers cannot be made without heavy industry, so smaller countries like Greece could not make and maintain any number of tanks on their own.
I want to propose this : Divide production into factories and workshops. Factories have capacity(say, 1 factory employs 5000 people). Factories need to be built using technology and resources. Workshops however, are much cheaper, and require less time and resources to build(if any).
The difference would be in their effectiveness in producing different items. For example
Building a medium tank-assigned a full factory gives 1 production point per day, while assigned a full workshop(same number of people) gives 0.1 point a day. Therefore producing tanks with the same amount of manpower in workshops is 10 times less efficient for tanks, prohibitively so for nations without heavy industry.
However, producing support equipment in factories gives a *2 modifier, but producing it in workshops has no bonuses nor maluses. Therefore workshop is 2 times less efficient per manpower for support equipment. This would make you have to use workshops for 'simple' items while your factories are busy making more complex items.
This would add depth to the industrial part of the game, since for example China would not be limited in their ability to produce infantry weapons, but would be SEVERELY limited in their ability to produce armor.
Basically, it would split industry into 'light industry' and 'heavy industry' with varying ability to produce different goods.
Vanilla HOI4 allows you to set your conscription law, where more extensive conscription gives you a flat % penalty to industrial production. This is a simple, but inferior solution i believe.
If you change your conscription law to all adults serve, but then do not enlist those men in the army, leaving them in their agriculture/industry/commerce jobs, it should not really affect your production. Instead, it gives you the ability to take people away from agriculture/industry and put them into uniform, thus incurring a penalty in empty workshop slots(if you get to that point). There is also an opportunity to add some 'flavor' decisions as massively employing women in factories and agriculture therefore letting you enlist more men without losing industrial ability...
Take this with a grain of salt, this is just a suggestion for a future DLC, since i believe these changes would add enough depth, value and change to the game to 'deserve' their DLC, if the community here wants an industrial centered DLC.
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