C.O.R.E. Resources

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by McNaughton
Unless you want a tank made out of gold...

Saw that on Batman once - the crooks (the Penguin & "Marsha Queen of Hearts, IIRC) broke into a gold vault, built a tank out of gold, used it to shoot their way through the police lines to escape

 

[unmerged(16832)]

IMO capitals should have a rubber production of 10 for every country. Not enough to really help majors much, but plenty for minors.

 

[JRaup]

Originally posted by McNaughton
I agree with you that definitions should be increased, but I don't know if this will solve the resource disparity problem, since most of these territories are controlled by resource rich nations anyway (notably the UK).

I could see things like copper, being closely related to steel (moreso then coal, oil or rubber), but what would diamonds or gold be like? You can't actually build anything out of them, but you can buy the things you need with them. Unless you want a tank made out of gold...

----------------------

Steel = things you use to physically build things out of, on the metal side of things.

- Could be Steel (primarily), Iron, Copper (some nations still used copper barreled artillery)

Rubber = similar to steel, this is a thing you build things out of, on the plastic side of things.

- Well, just Rubber as far as I know...

Coal = things you use to power the factories you build things out of.

- Coal, and possibly even hydro-electric plants. (problem is, how can you 'trade' or 'move' hydro-electricity to the same extent you can with coal?)

Oil = things you use to power the things that you build.

- Well, oil (natural gas was not quite as exploitable then, but was known)

Supplies = things you need to survive and fight

- food, ammunition, small arms, uniforms, etc...

I really cannot see a place for adding things like gold, uranium, diamonds, etc. that other than for their purchasing power, add nothing to military and industrial production.

I see where you are with this. I don't fully agree or disagree with it. It's the conceptual ideas behind the original thinking that has me going around in circles with this. but here's some further ideas, based on what has already been done, and where I think we should go:

1. Rubber. The King of resources in HoI. In already scripted events, this has been used to represent "rare materials," such as tungsten, and other rare metals. To better reflect this, we would have to scale back rubber production in places like Indochina and Brazil, and put some in places like S.Africa, and the Urals. I would include Uranium in this category.

2. Coal. The poor nations oil and rubber resource. It is, as you said, the industrial power source of the period. It was being phased out at this point, as oil was becoming king. This should be used to represent the commonest of materials, and is usually the cheapest to acquire.

3. Steel. (shhhh! he's listening!) This is the middle availability product. It's iron ore, refined steel, aluminum, copper, and other industrial metals of a more common sort. we should probably reduce steel in some provinces, mainly in UK, and move them to places like Salisbury and Elizabethville. This should keep some of the BeNeLux stocks lower.

4. Oil. well, it's all things petroleum. Of course, only crude production is represented in HoI, and not refining capabilities. But that's neither here nor there.

5. Supplies. the ultimate catch all in HoI terms. the draw back is that it's handled as a single national production, and not province dependant. It also make modelling the economies of minors very frustrating. Like Egypt, whose main export was cotton, and a very profitable one at that. but, can't truly be handled in the confines of the engine.

6. diamond, gold, etc. the "cash crops" of resources. I thought about this some more, and I think that provinces with noted production levels of these should get the following: 1. 1 IC indutsry; 2. VPs, to encourage countries to go after them. this makes going after central and southern africa more appealing, and even necesary. Also, diamonds are very important for industry, they are needed for things like hardened drill bits and saws to cut those tough metals needed for silly things like nukes.

 

[Zerli]

Ugh...

It seems I've bitten into more then I can chew through. Using the aforementioned world resource production table, I've calculated new resource values for major countries and world totals.

I've used a number of assumptions, and extended material lists (so that rubber covers most of strategic rare metals). I've also assumed that same quantities of different materials within a category are equivalent.

The problem lies in the fact that I ended up with something like just enough total resources to power a daily IC total of 1322. Even after using coal as a basis for calculation and multiplying steel and rubber production by 6 and 7 to maintain HoI ratios (2:1:1/2). Even worse, only US and USSR can hope to maintain operating near their peak IC potential given their resource production. Everybody else can basically give up and suffer a total collapse as soon as initial stockpiles run out.

Obviously, something is wrong with either my assumptions and/or my knowledge of the way world industrial output was turned into HoI production figures. I still think my resource ratios are good. What I can do at this point is find out total IC potential in vanilla HoI, and use this figure to correct my numbers, so that my calculated world daily total supportable IC is equal to actual HoI one. I could then add 50% more world resources, just to be on the safe side.

Here is my work so far:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
World strategic materials production for HoI C.O.R.E.

Note: This "little" note started as a simple attempt to summarize some kind of expected production figures for HoI basic resources. How it grew into this complex monster is beyond me...

Figures taken from:
http://members.tripod.com/~Sturmvogel/resources.html

Definitions of resources in C.O.R.E.:

1. Strategic Non-Oil Fuels ("coal") = Coal, wood, charcoal.

2. Industrial Metals ("steel") = Steel, iron, copper, aluminum.

3. Petroleum-based Fuels ("oil") = Oil, natural gas.

4. Strategic Materials ("rubber") = Rubber, tungsten, molybdenum, cobalt, chrome lead, tin, zinc, nickel, manganese, sulphur, pyrites, phosphates, potash, magnesite.

5. Supplies ("supplies") = Ammunition, food, agricultural products, clothes, precious metals, precious gems, other tradable goods.

All metal resources refer to ore production numbers. Processing facilities, like steel mills, should more properly be counted as IC.

Food includes the following: wheat, rice, maize, cane sugar, beet sugar, and meat.

Precious metals and gems include the following: gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, rubies, and saphires.

Supplies should also be expected to include any other resource that does not fit under the other 4 categories. This resource should be portable, have universal market value, and be tradable for money.

The CORE unit values were derived with the assumption that 1000 tons equals one CORE unit. All values were also rounded to the nearest number. Totals will not match computed figures due to rounding effect. Also, final values were multiplied with correctional factors to produce same resource ratios produced as those found in HoI.

Methodology

Even though the source figures are for 1937, it seems safe enough to assume 1936 figures would not be significantly different. This model also assumes that all resources and materials within the same category are equally valuable and essentially interchangeable. While this certainly was not true in real life it should suffice for our level of simulation.

Last category guess, supplies, takes into account food production figures. This number should be taken as a guideline for setting up trades of supplies for resources and technology. Supplies are not given in daily production totals because this makes little sense. Initial supply pools should be guessed using supply consumption of a fully mobilized national army and estimated time that current war materials would last. So, if country X said it had enough supplies to keep its army stocked for 120 days, and it had Y divisions, it should be easy enough to calculate initial supply total.

Production figures are per year. To get daily CORE production in units, I chose to divide the numbers by 360 (number of days in HoI year). Daily production figures are in parenthesis just after the yearly totals.

HoI uses the following usage ratios for IC production and resources:

2 "coal", 1 "steel", 1/2 "rubber" needed for 1 IC.

I assume our goal here is to have resource ratios match those in HoI. Assuming we are keeping coal as the constant, the following ratios are derived from raw world figures:

14 "coal", 1.25 "steel", 1/2 "rubber" needed for 1 IC.

Still using coal as the relevant figure, we need to multiply "steel" production figures by 6 and "rubber" production figures by 7 to come up with the same ratios as in HoI. Since CORE will likely use exact (or as close as we can get to) historical fuel consumption figures, there is no need to adjust "oil" production totals.

However, oil-to-rubber conversion ratios need to be carefully considered. Adjusted world "rubber" production total comes up to 861, compared to "oil" total of 756. Since initially oil converts to rubber at 2:1 ratio, and since some oil will be spent on military units, there won't be much left for conversion to rubber. Of course, the world market auto-adds certain amounts of "phantom" production to the market every day, so this might not be a real problem.

The final adjusted daily production figures are set in square brackets, just after unadjusted daily production figures.

Results

World Production Totals (in millions of tons, unadjusted):
COAL = 1247 (3464) [3464]
STEEL = 104.3 (290) [1764]
OIL = 272 (756) [756]
RUBBER = 44.2 (123) [861]

Without hard-coded world market adjustments, world resources can support 1322 IC daily. The number with adjustments and ideal trading is not much bigger.

Major countries

USA

1. Coal = 426474 (1185) [1185]
2. Steel = 37240 + 736 + 440 = 38416 (107) [642]
3. Oil = 163200 (453) [453]
4. Rubber = 425 + 581.4 + 2.2 + 0.021 + 17.6 + 1.2 + 186 + 2788 + 616 + 4500 + 259.2 + 198 = 9575 (27) [189]
5. Supplies = 25050 + 3589 + 64350 + 3060 + 1552 + 7200 = 104801

USSR

1. Coal = 115971 (322) [322]
2. Steel = 14014 + 92 + 248 = 14354 (40) [240]
3. Oil = 29920 (83) [83]
4. Rubber = 56.1 + 72.2 + 19.8 + 1230 + 14 + 90 + 638 + 3750 + 233.6 + 486 = 6590 (18) [126]
5. Supplies = 45090 + 2256 + 2808 + 2231 + 4500 = 56885

UK

1. Coal = 231942 (644) [644]
2. Steel = 4312 (12) [72]
3. Oil = 0 (0) [0]
4. Rubber = 27.2 + 2.6 + 7.6 + 0.8 = 38 (0.1) [1]
5. Supplies = 2004 + 291 + 1350 = 3644

British Empire (Can, SA, Aus, NZ included)

1. Coal = 62350 (173) [173]
2. Steel = 5782 + 575 + 400 = 6757 (19) [113]
3. Oil = 5440 (15) [15]
4. Rubber = 578 + 78 + 530.1 + 1001 + 1110 + 44 + 246 + 0.4 + 1012 + 1305 + 19.2 + 108 + 468 = 6500 (18) [126]
5. Supplies = 28390 + 48880 + 4095 + 5440 + 126.1 + 2640 = 89571
Regional areas:
1. Canada - Steel = 235 (1) [4], Rubber = 185.3 + 172.9 + 984.5 = 1343 (4) [26], Supplies = 9519 + 750 = 10269
2. North Rhodesia - Steel = 244 (1) [4]
3. Australia - Rubber = 249.9 + 210.9 + 55.8 = 517 (1) [10], Supplies = 765 + 960 = 1725
4. Malay - Rubber = 55.6 + 370.8 = 426 (1) [8]
5. British Guyana - Steel = 364 (1) [6]
6. India - Rubber = 537 (1) [10], Supplies = 11022 + 40890 + 3179 = 55091
7. Guadalcanal - Rubber = 282 (1) [5]
8. South Africa - Rubber = 270 + 76.8 = 347 (1) [7]
9. Burma - Rubber = 31 (0) [1]
10. South Rhodesia - Rubber = 137 (0) [3]
11. Cyprus - Rubber = 803 (2) [16]
12. Pacific Islands - Rubber = 1305 (4) [25]

France

1. Coal = 42398 (118) [118]
2. Steel = 11466 + 680 = 12146 (34) [202]
3. Oil = 0 (0) [0]
4. Rubber = 5.1 + 3 + 154 + 105 + 512 = 779.1 (2) [15]
5. Supplies = 9352 + 468 + 795.4 + 1440 = 12055

French Empire

1. Coal = 42398 (118) [118]
2. Steel = 1764 + 8 = 1772 (5) [30]
3. Oil = 0 (0) [0]
4. Rubber = 34 + 2.2 + 17.1 + 48.4 + 9 + 3.6 + 24.6 + 1.2 + 44 + 4200 + 60.3 = 4444 (12) [86]
5. Supplies = 2672 + 7332 + 1287 + 238 + 240 = 11769
Regional areas:
1. North Caledonia - Rubber = 47.3 + 24.6 = 72 (0) [1]
2. French Morocco / Tunisia - Rubber = 3375 (9) [66]
3. French Indo-China - Rubber = 58 (0) [1], Supplies = 6298

Greater Germany (including Austria and Czechoslovakia)

1. Coal = 190791 (530) [530]
2. Steel = 4018 + 29.9 + 92 = 4140 (12) [72]
3. Oil = 544 (2) [2]
4. Rubber = 91.8 + 0.2 + 178.6 + 252 + 462 + 1984 + 504 = 3473 (10) [68]
5. Supplies = 7849 + 702 + 2425 + 4200 = 15176

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comments?

Zerli

s

 

[Generalisimo]

Zerli, did you get my PM?

 

[Szun]

Question:
USSR has resources to support about 650 IC
Is that historical for that huge country?
If so AI will run dry with pariotic war event on.
As SU I went over 700 in 1940 and noticed i need to expand or build unneeded crap (infra/ coastal forts etc) in order to have resources left.
Is it posible to add some events or techs that increase resource output a bit? maybe in 1943+ when the most IC building is done and Industry tech is maxed.
SU isnt greatly expanding unless into europe.

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by Szun
Question:
USSR has resources to support about 650 IC
Is that historical for that huge country?
If so AI will run dry with pariotic war event on.
As SU I went over 700 in 1940 and noticed i need to expand or build unneeded crap (infra/ coastal forts etc) in order to have resources left.
Is it posible to add some events or techs that increase resource output a bit? maybe in 1943+ when the most IC building is done and Industry tech is maxed.
SU isnt greatly expanding unless into europe.

The problem has been discussed before and in response there was some changes to USSR resources in the Urals area. There is also an event to discontinue the Patriotic War effect.

 

[Hogar]

I admit I don't know enough about this at all, but I want to ask a question(s)? Historically, is it correct at all to have stockpiles of any materials? This especially goes for minors. If e.g. Hungary doesn't produces the 'rubber', whatever that might be, then how did they build up the stockpile in the first place? How one can say exactly what is the stored amount of rubber Hungary or Romania have at start of the game? It's completely arbitrary...
I think we should really have model that will allow almost every country to produce some 'rubber' no matter how un-historical that is. This way we can decrease the dependency on the stockpiles that really have no merit at all.

Cheers.

 

[Gwalcmai]

I think the whole thing feels really flawed. Especially on the lower difficulty levels, some countries just have no way to maintain their IC. Take Portugal on Easy. 30 IC, 35 coal, 15 steel, 15 rubber. No amount of successful trading can keep those 30 IC working. Just enough rubber, 25 daily coal shortage, 15 daily steel shortage. How the hell are you supposed to keep the industry working? The only thing to do is tie up most of the IC in improvements (and, of course, don't improve IC). Either that or use your initial stockpiles to create enough troops to go conquering some small country outside everyone's sphere of influence.

It's silly, why would a country have a certain level of industry capacity if there is no way to keep it all working?

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by Gwalcmai
It's silly, why would a country have a certain level of industry capacity if there is no way to keep it all working?

Shall we cut Portugal's IC by 50% then?

One of the most famous examples of countries having major slack in their industry was Germany. They proved very resistant to strategic bombing and part of the reason for this was the amazing inefficiencies they had. If you blew away one factory they could always do the job somewhere else where they had overcapacity.

IMHO there is no nothing that say industry must run at 100% at all time, indeed there's a game feature (over-assign IC to unit production) that idles industry to save resources. Of course there's issues about how the AI handles this.

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by McNaughton
Also, Italy usually takes Albania in 1939, after the damage has been done and most resource pools depleted.

(cross-post response from Naval Mod thread)

I'm not seeing it. I ran 12 hours of hands-off testing yesterday and reloading in 1939 Italy still had industry running at 100% and good resource stocks. There was certainly a problem in 1.05b but the market dynamics have changed somewhat now.

Note: the resources do not come from capturing the Albanian capital.


I'll look at the Romanian oil for Italy now, that should help ensure that their stocks are further improved when the war begins.

 

[Gwalcmai]

Originally posted by Steel
Shall we cut Portugal's IC by 50% then?

One of the most famous examples of countries having major slack in their industry was Germany. They proved very resistant to strategic bombing and part of the reason for this was the amazing inefficiencies they had. If you blew away one factory they could always do the job somewhere else where they had overcapacity.

IMHO there is no nothing that say industry must run at 100% at all time, indeed there's a game feature (over-assign IC to unit production) that idles industry to save resources. Of course there's issues about how the AI handles this.

Yes, I'm quite aware of the IC disabling feature, thank you. But my point was that countries have a certain level of IC, and are unable to use it. IC points are supposed to follow the country's GDP values for the time (or so I heard). And if the value assigned to a country reflects it's capacity of production, that country should be able to, under normal circumstances at least maintain it's level of output. I figure the level of inefficiency the country shows is naturally factored into this, as it is what the country managed to do, not some far-fetched "measure of potential". While the war doesn't kick in and seriously hurt resource trading, that is. No country should inevitably collapse when the initial stockpiles finish.

 

[MateDow]

Lithuania

I was playing a game as Lithuania, and was completely unable to run an effective economy. It was as if they expected the country to be gone by 1940, so why give them resources. I was able to keep things from completely collapsing by not having any military other than the starting OOB and making small trades on the world market (1:1). Even then, it isn't really possible. The economy only had 2 excess steel and 4 excess coal. In order to have my economy run effectively, I require 6 rubber a day. I don't produce any. Did I mention no oil either? By 1940, you have run through all of your rubber, oil, and coal even with trades. I had built up a stock of about 2000 supply by that point. When the Soviets declared war at the beginning of 1941, I was down to 900 supply. You can imagine how quickly my economy went down the toilet then because I was effectively cut off from the world market which had just been barely been keeping me afloat.

There needs to be a way to make these small economies work. I think that I am fairly good at working the economic side of things, but I couldn't really make this one work. I am sure that there are a lot of these countries that are there, but not really viable. As it stands now, there aren't enough resources in country to make it a nice target for conquest.

Thus ends my rant. MDow

 

[Generalisimo]

Re: Lithuania

Originally posted by MateDow
I was playing a game as Lithuania, and was completely unable to run an effective economy. It was as if they expected the country to be gone by 1940, so why give them resources. I was able to keep things from completely collapsing by not having any military other than the starting OOB and making small trades on the world market (1:1). Even then, it isn't really possible. The economy only had 2 excess steel and 4 excess coal. In order to have my economy run effectively, I require 6 rubber a day. I don't produce any. Did I mention no oil either? By 1940, you have run through all of your rubber, oil, and coal even with trades. I had built up a stock of about 2000 supply by that point. When the Soviets declared war at the beginning of 1941, I was down to 900 supply. You can imagine how quickly my economy went down the toilet then because I was effectively cut off from the world market which had just been barely been keeping me afloat.

There needs to be a way to make these small economies work. I think that I am fairly good at working the economic side of things, but I couldn't really make this one work. I am sure that there are a lot of these countries that are there, but not really viable. As it stands now, there aren't enough resources in country to make it a nice target for conquest.

Thus ends my rant. MDow

i totally agree with this... i have suffered this with Hungary, Portugal, Switzerland, etc... there are a lot of countries suffering that...

 

[McNaughton]

One problem is that a lot of nations traded things, that aren't in HoI, for critical resources. An example of this is food (can be fishing, agriculture, livestock). Many nations that are resource poor in HoI actually have resources, but are not modeled in HoI (nor do they have a place in the current set of resources).

I remember reading that Italy traded military weapons with Romania in order to get oil, while other nations supplied food for resources.

Either:

These nations got these resources somehow, without crippling their economies.

or:

These nations did not actually need these resources like HoI has them.

I have a feeling that rubber is overestimated in importance in HoI. You can run an indusry without it, although it is not quite as efficient/modern as one that has rubber. I worked in a grist mill heritage village, and this thing ran well into the 1930's, without the use (or heavy use) of rubber. Although it was designed to grind grain, the technology within it was very similar to that of cottage factories (which made up a lot of the armaments industry in minor, and even some major nations).

If Estonia's GDP says it can run a 10 IC economy, then it must have been doing so beforehand, and must have been able to be sustainable, otherwize why would anyone set up a factory that is doomed to fail?

We must either:

Give nations enough resources so they can run their nation's economies, in peacetime. When the war starts, then you can start having resource defecits, but before the war, there should be very few, if any, resource shortages. (either through events giving rubber from rubber rich nations to rubber poor nations in exchange for unrepresented resources such as food, or by adding rubber production to minor nation provinces, both can result in exploits)

or

Improve the ratio of oil:rubber conversion. Yet, this still does not help oil and rubber poor nations.

or

Find a way to limit the need for rubber in industry (then what is the point of rubber in the game?).

or

Change the meaning of rubber to something else that is more accessible.

 

[Steel]

A balanced approach

I've done a bit of thinking on this and although I still have serious doubts about breaking with Paradox province.csv I would propose the following approach.


For nations with 20+ IC in 1936:

- The balancing will be done on Normal/Normal. If the player uses a different difficulty setting they will have surplus IC or surplus resources, we don't worry about that.

- The primary design goal is that every country should be able to indefinitely run their 1936 economy (ie IC) at 100% assuming no upgrades, no tech advances and no war. This may be achieved by resource production, resource conversion, trade or IC reduction.

- The secondary design goal is to maintain the integrity of the world market and the tech tree, ie to avoid marginalising conversion techs by having ahistorical abundance of oil and rubber.


For nations with 1 to 19 IC in 1936:

- All points as above *except* that in cases where a country was primarily agrarian with limited light industry and no heavy industry we accept that oil and rubber was not required in their industry. Hence, they receive a tech, Agrarian Nation, which enables 1:2 conversion of coal to rubber and oil, disables all other conversion technologies and all the industrial efficiency techs. As conversion is only on-demand this excellent ratio cannot be used to flood the world market or be used by an invader.


Background reading
This is mandatory reading: The case against rubber. Generally I agree with the approach taken by Math Guy and the asymmetrical resource measurements, perhaps something along these lines:

1 point of coal = 10,000 tons to 100,000 tons of coal
1 point of steel = 1,000 tons of steel
1 point of oil = 100 tons to 200 tons of oil
1 point of rubber = 1 ton to 10 tons of rubber, tungsten and other strategic materials

Note that the values need to be elastic and I'm not particularly attached to any of them (especially steel). I'm currently not convinced of the merits of 1:1 or better conversion ratios for major countries as proposed by Math Guy (I see the logic but not necessarily a gameplay improvement in the idea).


Note on province.csv changes: integration and maintenance is not trivial and has in the past caused major issues. The input format for proposed changes should be:

province ID;ic;manpower;oil;steel;coal;rubber;

Example:
137;5;1;10;20;5;1;
138;1;4;1;2;25;10;


If we can get a consensus on this we can get to work. I'll drop a pm to Mithel and ask him to look at this as well since he's done significant work in this area.

 

[unmerged(13241)]

Maybe this could work: give all underdeveloped nations a tech called "agriculture" which will give them a positve coal to oil to rubber ratio. And give them a bit of coal .
The majors would still need a lot of rubber, while the minors wouldn't need it.

 

[MateDow]

Assuming that the information on that thread is correct and their testing is good, it looks as if we could include the conversion ratios for the next version of CORE. It sounds like that alone will help a majority of the nations without breaking the provence file and having to have a tech that artificially gives a country rubber. MDow

 

[JRaup]

I think we need to look at the pre-war global economy more closely before making any changes. I believe that we can simulate some of the worlds trades through the use of convoys, especially for the Uk and France. this will help reduce some of the ridiculous stockpiles that they can achieve, and keep many minors in business, with out limiting them with a specific tech. My problem with Steel's Agrarian economy tech, is that it disables the future industrial upgrades, which in effect, prevents those nations from industrializing, ever. Many of teh smaller nations used the war period, and some generous lend-lease grants, to build up their industrial base, and drive their economies higher.

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by JRaup
My problem with Steel's Agrarian economy tech, is that it disables the future industrial upgrades, which in effect, prevents those nations from industrializing, ever. Many of teh smaller nations used the war period, and some generous lend-lease grants, to build up their industrial base, and drive their economies higher.

They will still be able to build up their IC, it's just to prevent some potential exploits. I'll script it with those deactivate commands commented out and we can try with and without. It's the least intrusive fix I can think of...