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McNaughton

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I am starting a new thread about the distribution of resources, and notably the problem of rubber. Shortages of rubber lead to shortages of all other types of resources. When rubber runs dry, in the world market and nationally, oil is converted to make up for rubber shortages. This requires a lot of oil. Steel/Coal is traded away (in large numbers) to get this oil which in turn is used to fuel fleets and make rubber. This is very inefficient, and will lead to coal/steel shortages as it tries to eliminate the active rubber deficit.

Example: To get 50 rubber, the following process must be followed (this is also an optimistic caluculation), just to meet industrial requirements. Most nations have access to coal/steel, fewer have access to oil, but oil is not as rare a resource as rubber (it is much better distributed, as it is in large amounts in more than just 4 nations).

300 Coal is traded on the world market for 100 Oil (3:1)
100 Oil is converted to 50 Rubber (if rubber is converted at 2:1)

This results in the waste of 300 Coal per day, just to get 50 rubber. This also does not take into account domestic oil use. if a nation needs both oil and rubber, then Coal/Steel trades will have to be even higher then what I stated above. If there is a large military drain on oil, this factor of Coal/steel loss will be even greater, and will result in the collapse of the economies of many nations, and ships without oil to take part in missions.

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Looking through the economies of the two biggest rubber barons (Netherlands produces 700 rubber a day, England produces 1100 rubber a day), I came across some interesting conculsions.

#1. Neither of the two nations ship half of their rubber home. Netherlands ships about 350 rubber home/day, while England ships about 300 rubber home/day (leaving 1150 rubber growing and adding to British and Dutch colonies per day). The problem is convoy size. It would take a British convoy of over 400 ships to carry all of the rubber from Malaya to England each day (the territories with the most rubber production). England gets enough rubber to sustain itself, and the Commonwealth nations, along with a significant growth, but it would be better (for possible rubber events) if England would ship more than 1/3 or 1/4 of the rubber production home.

#2. Only the Netherlands starts the game trading AWAY rubber (about 200/day). England trades away coal, not rubber.

#3. Nations only start trading on the world market when they have run out of resources in the pool and have negative growth. The Dutch and British will not set up any more trades on the world market unless THEY need a resource. They sit there, with oodles of rubber, but won't trade it because they don't need anything. Since the Netherlands has a small economy, what resources it is getting in 1936 (either through domestic production or existing 1936 world market trades) are sufficient. England is large enough, with access to enough resources, that they don't have to worry about trading on the world market.

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Here are the 4 major rubber producers

England
1091 Rubber Produced/day
480 is Shipped to England/day
100 is used domestically/day
0 is traded/day
(510 is added to pools in the colonies/day, while 380 gets added to the home pool/day)

Netherlands
677 Rubber Produced/day
380 is Shipped to Holand/day
18 is used domestically/day
200 is traded/day
(300 is added to pools in the colonies/day, while 150 gets added to the home pool/day)

France
218 Rubber Pruduced/day
218 is Shipped to France/day
70 is used domestically/day
0 is traded/day
(France is the only nation that ships all of their rubber home, while 120 gets added to the home pool/day)

Belgium
134 Rubber Produced/day
88 is Shipped to Belgium/day
16 is used domestically/day
15 is traded/day
(50 is added to pools in the colonies/day, while 50 gets added to the home pool/day)

Total of the big 4
2020 Rubber Produced/day
1166 is Shipped to Europe/day
204 is used domestically/day
255 is traded/day
(900 is added to pools in the colonies/day, while 650 gets added to the home pools/day)

So, we can see problem #1 about 95% of all rubber production is in the hands of 4 nations, #2 about 50% of all rubber production remains in the colonies, problem #3 about 1/5 of shipped rubber is used by these nations, and only about 1/5 of shipped rubber is traded away leaving 3/5 of all shipped rubber, and 7/10 of all rubber unused. These nations face such rampant surplus' at home that they can easily afford to leave large amounts of their resources back in the colonies (when they are desperately needed elsewhere). After about a year, these 4 nations will have rubber surplus' of about 99 999 (even by shipping only about 50% of their total rubber resources home).

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What I think we can do.

#1. Increase the amount of rubber resources that these nations ship home (this requires massive convoys).

#2a. Increase the amount of rubber resources that these nations trade away on the world market. The problem is, will the AI keep these trades in existence if they are unfavourable? For example, if instead of 200 coal for 100 oil, we do 200 rubber for 100 oil (England starting world market trades), will this A) be enough to meet world market requirements, B) be guaranteed not to be cancelled by the British AI?

#2b. Create events that will give rubber directly to rubber deficient economies (during peacetime this won't be limited), in exchange for resources, tech or supplies (like existing oil, steel and coal events). Major nations that suffer in rubber (during peacetime), are the Germany, United States, Japan, Russia, China, Italy. If we just create events that give these countries their rubber requirements through peacetime trades, then the drain on the world market will not be as high. The US alone requires about 300 rubber/day, while the input into the rubber pool (mainly by the Netherlands) is only about 260. No wonder the world market dries out. This could be combined with #2a, resulting in minor nations gaining their rubber requirements from the world market, which would also be gaining a surplus.

Since these few large nations have over 50% of all world industry, if we take care of their rubber needs directly through events, this will ease the pressure on the world market, enough that hopefully minor nations will be able to get affordable rubber from the market, and with the market and national rubber pools both growing instead of shrinking to nothing (in combination with getting rubber producing nations to ship rubber home, and trade it away to the world market).
 
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Hopefully by the time that the war starts these nations would have developed some improved Oil:Rubber technology, the world market will have a hefty reserve of rubber, and these nations will have strong reserves themselves. The chance of this increases when nations are not facing industrial shutdowns from 1936-39 due to rubber shortages then (i.e., the more industry a nation has, the more can be devoted to research).

This will require some complicated events if we take route 2b.

If one of the nations that gets resources through events joins the axis, and the axis is at war with the allies, then Britian and France will stop rubber trades.

If Belgium and the Netherlands are neutral, they would still continue trading with axis nations (i.e., give rubber to them through events), unless/until they join the allies, then events giving rubber to axis nations will be ended.

Even after Italy, Japan and Germany are kicked out of the rubber events, the surplus in the world market, and their own national surplus' and oil conversion, should be high enough to keep their economies running at least at a basic level. Some nations may face historic shortages, but at least they won't face them when they are still neutral.
 
I'm the one who added the Dutch convoys and resource sales. It's rather tedious but certainly works (both markets and convoys). The major side effect is that each rubber unit put on the market can be cornered by the player (through aggressive trading), leaving the human player with a 99K rubber stockpile and the minor countries just as badly off as before.


Adding a large number of events to make the game easier for majors (by eliminating resource shortages) is IMHO not a good solution.


A third alternative that you did not bring up is arbitrary increases of minor country resource production using INC files. In most cases this can provide a pre-war economy boost that is lost when the country is invaded, however it has the unfortunate side effects of potentially making minors too powerful (when played by a human), allowing an enemy to capture large stockpiles and potentially allowing large resource income if a province is gained without becoming occupied.


On a side note, your analysis overlooks world market fudge factors.


Overall, I'm not really satisfied with the current state of the system but I don't want to make it easier for Germany to build a 99K stockpile...
 
Rubber Events

I am curious about the modification of minor countries INC files. Would this be to increase rubber production in some minor countries or other resources?

I am really interested in trying to fix the rubber problem, since it is so nasty to most nations. As a human player, I can already corner the rubber market, fairly easily, for any nation. I can get enough rubber to see me through peacetime, and build up a strong reserve for wartime. All that I need is a surplus of a specific type of resources, and can trade it away at 1:3 and remain in the top ten in resource priorities (thereby always get my resource).

However, even if I managed to get 99 999 in my rubber reserve as Germany, this will be gone in less than 2 years when the war starts (due to the world market no longer becoming feasible), historically by early 1941 if Germany goes to war in September 1939. It will have to then produce rubber through the conversion process, which requires access to large amounts of oil.

While the World Market must fudge things, even if it gives the world more rubber than it should, it still does not give enough.

I figure, that since we have events that give oil, coal and steel to specific nations through events, then why not give rubber? Possibly my calculations were giving too much rubber to the major nations, but there is just too much rubber in the hands of too few nations.

Through all of my reading, very few nations experienced massive shortages of industrian necessities in the pre-war era. Nations who have rubber don't trade it sufficiently. This is because so much of it is in the hands of so few, and they do not have to trade away sufficient amounts to get what resources they need. If rubber was better distributed, like all other resources, there would be no world market rubber shortage.

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Basically, whatever system is in place can be abused by the player. I guess we have to find out which system will result in the least amount of possible abuse, but not result in a major world wide industrial shutdown like there is now.
 
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Just look at provinces.inc for examples of what we already did. It over-rides the value in province.csv at game start but then reverts to province.csv value if the province is occupied. Any solution based on the revert "feature" could be invalidated as this is technically a bug.
 
US Rubber Production

Assuming that rubber is representitive of miscellaneous strategic metals in addition to rubber, shouldn't the US have some rubber production without having to conquer Brazil? I think that the US is probably the large consumer of rubber on the world market, but overpaying with oil because it is cheaper than conversion. In my last few games I have yet to see oil, steel, and coal not maximized after about a year or so, but no rubber left. It makes sense to me that it points to an overabundance of those materials, but a shortage of rubber worldwide.

For 0.7 we could take a look at the distribution of stratigic metals throughout the world to give many of the countries that don't have rubber but do have other assets something that will take the pressure off the world market. Off the top of my head, I know that this would benefit the Soviet Union, United States, and Germany. Granted these countries don't need as much help, but I think that it will end up helping some of the minor countries as well. MDow
 
I am actually thinking that maybe rubber as a critical resource is over represented in the game. If so many nations have such a tough time getting it, but were actually able to exist without industrial chaos, then maybe it is too important in HoI?

Looking at the numbers, world rubber production does meet and vastly surpasses actual need.

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I see a dilemma here. We want to enable each nation to reach their required rubber levels without resulting in abuse of the system, thereby shortchanging minor AI nations. I am not sure how we cano do this without allowing for some sort of abuse.

The question that I have is, is it possible to fix industry without allowing for possible cheating?

Problems with #1. We are just adding ruber to the game (abliet temporarily). There is already enough rubber in the game for all nations to run at full efficiency, but it is just distributed 'unfairly'. This way would just solve minor nation rubber problems, but major nations will still not gain enough, as those that have rubber will still not trade it.

Problems with #2. Rubber events might not be fair (can we take away an equivalent amount of other resources/supplies for the rubber we are to give? For example, can the US ALWAYS afford to trade 50 000 of a particular resource every 6 months to get 50 000 rubber?), and will the UK always have a large rubber supply to send out?

Problems with #3. With every resource being plentiful in the world market, there is little strategy required. Yet, was there really such a high difficulty to gain necessities in wartime? The only problems that ocurred was when nations started being aggressive and trade embargos ocurred.

#3, IMO, is the more realistic and less problematic (i.e., less chance of abuse) of the choices I posted. Nations will still have to expend 2x the amount of a resource to get the rubber that they need, but at least they don't have to then buy oil and then face crippling conversion rates.

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A pattern that I see in the world market is that at the beginning of the game, there is a massive influx of coal (reaches max in a few months and stays there), substantial oil (so that it constantly remains at about 1500 and eventually climbs), enough rubber to last for a while, and a severe shortage of steel (which does eventually increase). However, when nations exhaust their rubber supplies (usually about 4-5 months into the game) there is a sudden and heavy drain on rubber in the world market, on the plus side, nations start trading in steel for rubber (which causes the steel pool to stabalize.

So, if we increase the rubber pool through increasing shipments from England, France, Holland and Belgium, we have to also increase shipments of steel (because steel only increases when nations clamour for rubber and trade it for rubber). We would also need to create more dedicated convoys from rubber areas to home provinces so the world market will have access to more than just a possible 50% of avalible rubber.

I did a test, where trades between France, England and Belgium were all giving rubber for the item they were trading away(instead of most using coal). Watching the world market for a few months, it seems like most nations were getting their supplies of rubber (more than when it was just the Netherlands sending in rubber), but many were still not, and the pool remained very low (single digit). If we increase the shipments of rubber, and those of steel, to the world market I think that the rubber shortage should be mitigated, during peacetime.

As it is now, if I wanted to, as any major nation, I could get a large rubber surplus, while still maintaining my other resources (through creative trading strategies). Increasing the world market rubber pool will improve the AI more than my ability to cheat and steal resources, and even if I am creative in taking resources, the amount of rubber would, rather should, be so high that it would not matter to other nations. I am going to do some more tests, by increasing convoys and trades (i.e., instead of England trading 200 Rubber for 100 Oil, I will try 300-500 for 100 Oil, as well as increasing trades for other nations), see how long this lasts, wether or not major and minor nations are able to survive with increased rubber in the pool (possibly there will be steel shortages?).
 
Ok, adding rubber into the World Market does nothing.

I modified the convoys to send all rubber from the colonies to the home territory of the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. I sent a lot of their surplus (leaving a hefty surplus for them) to the world market. This was about 1300 Rubber/day sent total. Rubber usage in the world market was about 5-600/day. The rubber pool stayed at about 1300 for a few months, but by May 1936 dropped to zero and stayed there. Even though demand NEVER beat out supply of Rubber in the market, it did not raise back up over zero. I ran tests before I did my modifications to convoys and trading options, and the pattern was almost exactly the same, with rubber disappearing from the World Market by about the middle of 1936. It should have shot up to the levels that coal is at (after 1 month it maxes out), but it seems like supply does not affect the amount in the world market, or that the game has a fixed idea as to how the world market should run, irregardless of what you actually trade into it.

It is interesting that once the rubber pool dries up, the oil pool just skyrockets (from about 1500 to about 5000 in about a month)

Unless I doing something wrong.

Giving rubber (temporarily) through the Province.inc file will help the minor nations, but the biggest drain on rubber is from the US, USSR and Germany. Some major nations do not start with rubber in the world market, and they will lose out anyway (like Italy, Turkey, China, and Japan is on the low end). I am beginning to think that maybe events are the only way we can get at least the minimum requirements of rubber to these major nations.
 
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I'm once again going to harp about definitions. What exactly is covered by the 4 resources? There are plenty of resources that are not covered directly in the game, but are semi-represented through the "big 4." I think it would help greatly if we had solid definitions as to what exactly is covered by each resource. This would make it easier to define what resources should be available in each province, and tweak values in other provinces accordingly. Some areas are devoid of resources, when in fact they were very important areas to the war effort.

Example: In southern Africa, Rhodesia (salisbury), was a major source of copper for UK and CW. katanga (elizabethville in Belgian Congo), was another source of copper, as well as diamonds. same can be said for several RSA provinces which produced plenty of gold, diamonds, platinum, and later Uranium.
 
Originally posted by JRaup
I'm once again going to harp about definitions. What exactly is covered by the 4 resources? There are plenty of resources that are not covered directly in the game, but are semi-represented through the "big 4." I think it would help greatly if we had solid definitions as to what exactly is covered by each resource. This would make it easier to define what resources should be available in each province, and tweak values in other provinces accordingly. Some areas are devoid of resources, when in fact they were very important areas to the war effort.

Example: In southern Africa, Rhodesia (salisbury), was a major source of copper for UK and CW. katanga (elizabethville in Belgian Congo), was another source of copper, as well as diamonds. same can be said for several RSA provinces which produced plenty of gold, diamonds, platinum, and later Uranium.

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... :)

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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.
 
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What happens if you add rubber to some provences, and remove steel and oil from them. Change the disparity in the haves and the have nots. Reduce the dependency on imported rubber and increase the dependency on imported steel and oil. If the system works as it should, that should make the trade system more realistic. From the sounds of it, the system is hardwired to have rubber shortages. Maybe we can get an opinion from Paradox on that (what you think Skyonurse?). MDow
 
Originally posted by MateDow
What happens if you add rubber to some provences, and remove steel and oil from them. Change the disparity in the haves and the have nots. Reduce the dependency on imported rubber and increase the dependency on imported steel and oil. If the system works as it should, that should make the trade system more realistic. From the sounds of it, the system is hardwired to have rubber shortages. Maybe we can get an opinion from Paradox on that (what you think Skyonurse?). MDow

I also noticed that Steel remained very low (oil and coal shot up to 9999 by 1937). Possibly steel rises up later in the game, but not in the first few years (oil sticks at around 1500, until rubber collapses then quickly shoots up to 9999). It would be probably better to remove coal instead of steel.
 
I also noticed that Steel

Stop talking about me, I'm getting paranoid ;)


I'm not convinced of any benefits in the reasoning that major countries should be getting free resources in order to reduce resource constraints for minor countries. Not only is this rather counter-intuitive, there's also been increasing calls for minors to be scaled back (Albania too powerful, Greece too powerful...).


Regarding resources I strongly recommend taking a look here since it has been mentioned repeatedly by moderators as a source.
 
It seems to me that resource shortages are a limiting factor for minor countries. AI is bad at trading and hoarding supplies, and most minor countries do not have balanced or sufficient resources to support their 1936 IC potential. What this leads to is the equivalent of economic collapse for most minors 1-2 years into the scenario.

This is not a good thing. If we are trying to depict historical circumstances, we should avoid economic collapses early in the scenario unless they were both historical and objectively very likely. The problem with minors getting too powerful can IMO be solved by changing their priorities in IC spending. Basically, prevent AI from building too many divisions by giving it something else to do, even if it is frivolous make-up work.

A good example of this is tying up a large portion of ICs available to U.S. with event-driven infrastructure increases across the country, using Works Public Administration as a cover. Here we achieve the goal of more historical U.S. IC development, prevent it from building a ton of ahistorical divisions, and get an interesting flavor event to boot.

Steel, I am looking at that table of 1937 strategic material production now and will use it to create an updated list of production by 4 HoI resources, by country, in HoI units. We can then divide the production within the country provinces. I will also try and update the resource list on WHAT IS CORE thread, and post the resource list here.

On the issue of hydroelectric power as a source of coal resource, I disagree. I feel it is more appropriate to equate hydroelectric power plants with IC, as in Hoover Dam event and other similar events (Dambusters, Damming the Dniepr river, etc). The other reason to do this is the fact that you can't move electric power from country A to country B without laying power cables between them. On the other hand, coal is fully tradable and portable. Hence, the use of IC, which can't be sold on world market and really doesn't move around that much... ;-)

Zerli
 
Originally posted by Zerli
On a side note, I am assuming 1 unit of HoI resource equals 1000 tons of the same thing IRL. Someone correct me if I am wrong... :)


Nah. One Paradox unit of coal will be higher by magnitudes (in tons) than one unit of rubber.
 
Originally posted by Steel
Stop talking about me, I'm getting paranoid ;)

Regarding resources I strongly recommend taking a look here since it has been mentioned repeatedly by moderators as a source.

The thing that jumped out at me was how little rubber was produced worldwide. Only 0.9mt! That was a very small amount for something that controls the economy of so many nations. I think it does show that the major countries still control most of the resources of the world, but I think that most of the countries still had working economies. So the conclusion has to be that there is something wrong with the model. MDow