There seem to be some confusion about how things work
1. you can't decide who is exactly buying your stuff (its a free market)
2. you can decide who you buy from, very important because
- trades over longer period of time become stronger and let you trade more (so like a relation boost)
- trading with people across the sea or who may not like you due to political and diplomatic happenings puts a lot of choices on player. Having to use convoys open you up to them being sunk or blockaded and you want to have long term partners.
A lot of design choices in HOI4 are there to combat hindsight. Stockpiles for example serve little purpose if you know for sure war is coming and then you cant really get the player to have to deal with the same issues as leaders did historically. Nobody stockpiled 10 years worth of oil in the real world. people built up their military from the start, not all in one go later when they had the resources. HOI4 ships you into stockpiling equipment isntead which is much more realistic compared to HOI3 and the choices put to the player much more similar to what historical leaders had to work with rather than being gamey (as I think a lot of hoi3 choices was).
By not having a generic precious metals rather than specifics like in HOI4 we can create interesting (and realistic) strategic gameplay where many areas become important to control, not just oil for example.
Why can't we embargo someone we don't like?
There are two answers. From a gameplay standpoint its because, well, why wouldnt everyone just not trade anything to germany at the start then? everyone has perfect hindsight and knows what will happen. Usually in HOI3 this forced house rules on you so it wouldnt be exploited.
From a realism standpoint this is not something a head of state has an easy time with, you need good reasons (if I recall my reading the US was still exporting fuel to japan in small quantities despite its embargo for example). Reasons are there through focus trees and relations. its just a scale now rather than binary for the most part if and how much someone can trade.
One question.
Can we add more resources?
yes its very moddable
It's maybe the first time I don't agree with the dev' :
1. Why using civilian factories to export resources ? I don't see the link...
2. I don't agree with the point that you can't chose who buy resources from you. So it's impossible to sell resources to another countries as long as he doesn't ask you for trade ? 3. If Britain is at full war with Germany, I can't propose them to sell/give them a lot of resources (if I play USA for example) as long as they don't ask ?
1. its an abstraction, they are treated as consumer goods or what have you being exported (basically non military stuff). Think of it like smaller nations giving up precious resources and in return they get factories they can use to build up their nations .
2. yea, its a more Victoria like market in that sense (some focuses let you set up trade treaties sort of though)
3. I'd imagine they would ask, but your primary job here would be producing different equipment and sending it to them as lend lease
I'm not sure I'm getting this. Could you give a concrete example?
Sure, Brazil has 10 rubber for sale. Both Germany and USA want to buy ALL of it
(reason/value)
Germany has good relations with Brazil: 200
Germany is fascist, Brazil is democratic: -50
Germany has been trading for a year already: +10
Total: 160
USA has ok relations with brazil: 100
USA is democratic, like brazil: +50
Brazil is under influence from monroe doctrine: +10
Total: 160
they have the same end value, so end up being allowed to buy 50% of the exports. if there was no competition and only one buyer they could buy 100%, but with this particular competition case they are guaranteed 50% at least.
Make sense? (also basically what Poh said above)
