I keep running out of rubber

[HalfOrc]

Hi, I'm a really new player and playing my first game as Germany. It's December 1939 and I've taken Poland and about to invade Belgium and Netherlands. But I'm out of rubber and will probably run out of oil soon. I've tried to trade on the world market but it seems to gain me little.

Is this normal for Germany or am I maybe missing something? I've built several tank and mech inf divisions but not a significant amount
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Gorkian]

It´s ok! As Germany you dont have any Rubber producing provinces.
So you cant produce rubber. What you do is transform Oil to rubber.

And if you dont have enough Oil (which I guess you dont as Germany) Coal will be tranformed to Oil.

As Germany you ahve a large Coal production in your provinces. So for you to get all the Oil and Rubber you need. Simply transform the coal to oil then to rubber.

How do you do that you may ask? Well it happens automatically. What you do want to check is that your Coal stockpile dont decrease. But it will do taht anyway. As Germany you need to capture land from your enemies to keep your industry going.
I usually conquer Sweden since they have a large Steel production.

One more important thing. In the research tree, you have an Industry tree. if you look through that you will see you can upgrade your industry to convert Coal to oil and Oil to rubber more effiently.

I think taht from the start you convert 10Coal to 5Oil.
and thoose 5Oil becomes around 2rubber.

Bah, its not as hard as it seems.

Check the ledger and see what your missing and how many converts youre doing.

remember that when youre at war all world market gains go down horribly.

If you say have a trade at 200Coal for 100Rubber before the war then taht will only be 200Coal for 10-15Rubber when youre at war with anyone.
I suggest you cancel ALL your world market trades. Atleast thats what I usually do.

Good luck.

 

[HalfOrc]

Thanks for your help. I just found the tech that converts oil to rubber more effiently. I'll see how I go trying to crush France!

This is a great game, so complex but so very addictive. I can see myself taking quite a few sick days from work!

 

[LordScod]

Or you could hit F12, then type rubber.

 

[unmerged(33615)]

1st. rule if you start war: close every trade offers from your side. Otherwise you will waste tremendous amounts of coal strongly needed for converting purposes.

BTW: you con also do another kind of "exploit" to strengthen your trade while at war: build 40 convois from a german harbour to another german harbour. Only convois with neither transports nor DD`s. This will boost your trade capabilities up to 40% of the pre-war-situation.

But normally if you follow rule no.1 your situation should be ok up to 1940 at least.

 

[unmerged(3221)]

You should also be trading before war in the 1936 scenario for steel, rubber, and oil. In 1.06 you should be able to build up large stockpiles of all resources before war starts over Danzig. If you annex Austria and Czech (1939 split with Hungary) you get their stockpiles.

You should be able to trade for all resources that you lack at 1:1 ratios at intervals. Rubber is abundant until summer 1936 and you should have a complete stockpile by then if you trade only at 1:1 (cancel the beginning 450 coal for rubber trade). Rubber then becomes scarce but sometimes comes back on the market and 1:1 trades become possible again for brief periods. Oil and steel are sometimes scarce but then become abundant and can be traded at 1:1 ratios.

After you have a complete coal stockpile of 99999 in Berlin, you can start trading any excess coal for rubber or steel at higher ratios since any resource stockpiled past 99k is wasted. And always research the industrial techs to get better coal for oil and rubber conversion ratios.

You can also look at the resources FAQs for more details. While you are there dowload the undocumented features FAQ and the invaluable leader effects FAQ. Any new player should review the FAQ subforum and the updated manual (sticky in this forum) for some excellent advice.

 

[unmerged(33694)]

Or simply ban chewing gums, thus making a major savings in this scarce resource

 

[unmerged(29126)]

Or simply ban chewing gums, thus making a major savings in this scarce resource

I have another suggestion where you could save rubber ... would also help out with the manpower-shortage in the long run ...

this is a bit gamey: you might also want to keep Luxemburg independant as long as possible, then in case that you run out of coal you can demand their territory (around 1943 me thinks) and you'll get their accumulated coal and steel ... this is only a short term-sollution however ... like john heidle said ... conversion techs and coal-rich conquests are the way to go ...

 

[Sirveri]

You can also save Rubber, and more importantly Steel (as you will soon find out) by 'under running' your industries.

Basically what this mean is throw excess production into military units, then don't build any, the excess production won't be used and the factories won't draw resources. This tactic will allow you to make short term over drives of your industries and show you what your true sustainable industrial potential is.

Also, when you hit max in any resource(99999), trade as much of it as you can on the world market for rubber and/or oil, or possibly Steel if you've hit that snag. You can't gain more than max resources and they'll just get thrown out anyways, so might as well get something out of them. though on the World Market you'll get screwed if you're in a war. I forget the exact number of imports, but it has to do with the number of ports you have, it generally doesn't even get to 10% of your trade request though, and you still lose all the resources you trade away.

 

[Dierpmis]

You should also be trading before war in the 1936 scenario for steel, rubber, and oil. In 1.06 you should be able to build up large stockpiles of all resources before war starts over Danzig.

All true and as usual John Heidle gives excellent advice in an excellent way and keep reminding us of the FAQ-section which we sometimes seems to forget.

I have a follow up question on the quoted part.

I always managed to have full stockpiles of everything in September 1939, except coal then, as Germany when playing vanilla 1.06x. Now in my first CORE 0.85-1.06c game as Japan I didn't get any 1:1 trades for rubber, or oil, though. I only traded until July 1937 as I started war with China then. As John Heidle said vanilla 1936 games always started with 1:1 for rubber until September, October, November 1936 something. Finally my question. Can one get 1:1 trades for either rubber, oil (or steel) in CORE during 1936-39?

 

[unmerged(29126)]

All true and as usual John Heidle gives excellent advice in an excellent way and keep reminding us of the FAQ-section which we sometimes seems to forget.

I have a follow up question on the quoted part.

I always managed to have full stockpiles of everything in September 1939, except coal then, as Germany when playing vanilla 1.06x. Now in my first CORE 0.85-1.06c game as Japan I didn't get any 1:1 trades for rubber, or oil, though. I only traded until July 1937 as I started war with China then. As John Heidle said vanilla 1936 games always started with 1:1 for rubber until September, October, November 1936 something. Finally my question. Can one get 1:1 trades for either rubber, oil (or steel) in CORE during 1936-39?

You can but only for short periods of time and at small volumes ... what you basically have to do is watch the WM every day and wait until oil or rubber accunulate. When playing Germany (on hard: less IC less resources required) with CORE I usually set up one 300:100 and one 210:70 deal on 1-1-36. That usually sees me through until beginning of hostilities on 1-9-39. When you fiddle your trades just right you can have a very modest resource increase of everything (like 20 coal, 50 steel, 20 oil, 10 rubber) each day and still run at full IC-potential ... by 1939 you should then have maxed out on steel and have about 40k each of oil and rubber ... that should be enough until the conversion techs kick in ... all you have to do now is conquer coal-rich regions ASAP ...

 

[unmerged(14096)]

Personally I don't make any trades unless it's at 1:1. I can usually get the stockpiles I need by following that strategy. The AI is foolish to trade at 3:1 when there is any surplus.

The one tip I would give is trade like mad when you can, and switch to other resources when they are available.

 

[unmerged(34329)]

I as well never touch Luxemburg unless I need coal/steel. It will put your reserves back to 99k for those 2. They fold easily under diplomatic pressure(demand territory), especially if you put lots of divisions on their border, and its not like you need the IC from them...

Just make sure to NOT waste oil. Keep ships at port when not being used (they use no oil), and strategically redeploy Motor/Mech/Armor if you dedice to wait until Spring for you next offensive (in the SR Pool, they use 0 oil, just sitting they use half their oil).

After France and the Balkins, I usually go for Africa(Gibraltar first!) to get to the Middle East. Then Oil/Rubber issues are usually solved, once you have taken over IRAQ.

Dan

 

[HalfOrc]

Thanks for the advice guys, you've given me heaps of hints.

One more thing kind of related. I notice that my supplies are dwindling rather fast and I can't seem to slow the rate of decline. I've tried increasing the supplies bar in the production screen but it doesn't seem to do much.

Any advice on how to slow the use of supplies down?

 

[talin]

There are two ministers that reduce the amount off supplies an army needs, use them to reduce the supply consumption. And put all your units in one or two stacks and put a Logistical Wizard commander in charge.

That and remember to produce enough supplies, keep the supply production above red and you will have enough supplies. But remember to build up a large stockpile of supplies before you go to war. Reinforcement costs a lot of supplies, so it is important so have a large stockpile

 

[FERT]

Or you could hit F12, then type rubber.

AHHHHHH a cheater hurry up to burn him before someone hears him!!!!!!11 :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

 

[unmerged(34329)]

Well, I have noticed it can take up to a week for economy changes like that(drastically increasing supplies, etc) to be implemented. The same goes for Minister changes. To "defend" the code, its realitistic that you can't tweak your economy on a daily basis. But, it would be "nice" to understand minute details like this, from the horse's mouth.

Dan

 

[unmerged(17617)]

Also don't forget to change screens after fiddling with the sliders. The changes will only take effect when you do that.

 

[HalfOrc]

Thanks guys I'll try those things. I must admit I changed the supplies slider and expected instantaneous results. I should have known Paradox would make the game more cunning and complex than that!