I decided to check out the (hopefully) soon-to-be Axis nations of Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. To begin with their research is totally crazy. Hungary is using both slots to research new ship models, and Bulgarians use their single slot for this as well. That's not what bothers me the most though.
None of these nations have enough rare materials to keep their industry running. For Romania it's realy sad, they eat up their stockpile of rares in less than a month, after that they are down to maybe 1/3 of their maximum output. As a result their TC drops horribly low. I find all of this very disturbing, and it basically means that Germany will have to supply them with rares, and of course the other stuff, since most of them lack EVERYTHING.
Slovakia is probably the biggest joke of all: they have 15 base IC with +25% from tech etc, but only 2 rares, so they can run 4 out of their 19 IC, or about 20%. They also lack both steel and energy.
So Germany can basically do one of 2 things:
1) Not supplying these nations with the stuff they need, in which case they will build basically no new troops, have sever TC penalties, and thus the troops they have will suck in combat. They will also most likely run out of supplies.
2) Feed them with rares and steel, in which case they will build new units, not suffer from lack of TC and will produce their own supplies.
But if you choose option 2 and have Germany supply all of these 4 nations with enough resources to supply their industries at 100% effect, it would cost Germany a netto sum of 80 energy, 25 steel and 25 rares! For this the Germans will only get the Romanian oil, but this can as usual be traded for quite cheaply with some simple energy (which Germany has loads of). 25 rares per day is no small sum to the Germans, who are already desperate in this area. Also 25 steel is quite a lot for Germany. Keep in mind that Germany is already supplying the Italians with both energy and steel.
Basically both options suck, and I seriously doubt any German player is willing to give up 25 rares for these minor nations. This leads to them being more or less worthless, with their infantry being stuck at 1918 levels throughout the game, and suffering from gigantic TC penalties. Basically it prevents these nations from playing any kind of role in the long run.
To fix this I suggest giving them free rares in the same way the other Axis are currently getting them. For balancing reasons I also think that they should get free steel as well. I suggest the following:
Slovakia: 7 rares 15 steel
Hungary: 5 rares
Romania: 9 rares 5 steel
Bulgaria: 1 rares 5 steel
With this setup all of them will have enough rares on their own, but they will all lack energy and Romania will still lack quite a bit of steel (but Hungary has a surplus that the Germans can trade for, and then "give" to the Romanians so the Germans break even). I am willing to edit the save game to do this, as well as the DEG scenario for future use (for the Slovaks I think they should start with 30 MP instead of 10 as well). I also think that the UK player should check out the CW minors to see if they have similar problems.
I honestly don't think that all of these nations should be running so low on basically all resources, forcing them to either be crippled or bleed the Germans dry on resources. There should actually be some sort of benefit to having allies....
What do the rest of you think of my suggestion?
