In the game Sweden starts out with an alright amount of factories for a minor but nothing special and lots of research tech already researched, but in 1940 they balloon up into a industrial giant somehow. How does that work?
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Is Swedens big industry historical?
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It is not a problem with Sweden per-se, every major in the game experiences a completely absurd increase in CIC/MIL count. Furthermore Sweden has many resources to export which lets it gain CIC to expand its industry.
I think at the very least everyone should start with more CIC/MIL (maybe with a lower starting efficiency to keep the equipment production count right) but construction of new ones should take a lot longer, and CIC construction should go faster in a peaceful economic law, not the opposite as now happens.
Also construction of non-cic/mil items should be separated so that they don't slow industrial expansion like it does now. It's not like not building a Fort or Road gives you resources to build more factories. They are completely unrelated, one is using cement and bricks, the other requires creating complex machine tools.
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I'm currently playing as Sweden (vanilla HOI4 witb all dlc except LR), it's early 1940 and I invested heavily in my civil industry. It is quite big with 22 civilian and 7 military factories or so. There is a distinct cap of the number of industries per state however, and most of my states are maxed out by now. National Focus tree (generic one, sadly) almost complete in the industry/science section.
Going the fascist/Axis way with invasions of Denmark and Norway imminent. The massive amounts of steel and decent amounts of chromium allowed me to buil-up a strong navy and an airforce that can dominate Scandinavia.
But the one limiting factor for Sweden is definitely manpower, so you can't transfer all that industrial power into a large army that easily. More like a small to medium-sized but technologically up-to-date or even advanced army. It's my first (and probably only) look at a minor with the generic National Focus-tree, which I find rather bland.
Going the fascist/Axis way with invasions of Denmark and Norway imminent. The massive amounts of steel and decent amounts of chromium allowed me to buil-up a strong navy and an airforce that can dominate Scandinavia.
But the one limiting factor for Sweden is definitely manpower, so you can't transfer all that industrial power into a large army that easily. More like a small to medium-sized but technologically up-to-date or even advanced army. It's my first (and probably only) look at a minor with the generic National Focus-tree, which I find rather bland.
It's likely because Sweden is getting free trade Civs from the Axis as it was one of their main suppliers of steel that let it build up.
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Here is a list of Sweden's exports in real life:
Foreign Commerce Yearbook - Google Play
Here is how HoI4 depicts Sweden's resources:
Paradox's depiction of Sweden's resources is different from the historical record.
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Sweden made some money on wood pulp; surprised there are any trees left.
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Luxembourg would also be a powerhouse if it is a Luxembourg company-based game.
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Part of it is the generic focus tree which gives a lot of factories. They also have a lot of space to put more factories so they have are capable of growing tall. They also have a lot of resources that the axis need and Sweden is one of the few countries safe for the axis to trade with. So they have quite a bit going for them.
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Before civs from trade Sweden starts with 3 mils and 10 civs. Imo, this is appropriate for a nation that was industrialised enough to be able to design and produce it's own tanks among other weapon systems.
Most of what's allowing a quick snowball on that sort of basis is the civs that comes from exporting raw materials as soon as you unpause the game, since this game substitutes money with CIC in international trade.
Most of what's allowing a quick snowball on that sort of basis is the civs that comes from exporting raw materials as soon as you unpause the game, since this game substitutes money with CIC in international trade.
The only real thing Sweden did during WW2 was support the German industry with iron ore. Which is not modeled at all.
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Uh, no. Sweden also supplied the Britain and the allies with several thousand tonnes of much needed ball- and roller bearings (which were transported both on ships and on unarmed Mosquito's and without which Britain wouldn't have been able to manufacture warplanes as the American ball bearings were incompatible. In fact, more than 30% of the ball bearings came from Sweden.) and steel. In fact, the sale of ball bearings to Britain started as the same time Sweden started selling iron ore (though the sale of timber was larger) to Germany (in December 1939). The export to the warring parties was a quid pro quo. By selling to both parties, Sweden ensured that it still could import some vital goods and was in line with Swedish neutrality.
If Sweden had refused, it would probably had been occupied by Germany which would have led to more human tragedy. The allies were also intent on occupying the north of Sweden and devised a plan to do so during the Winter War in 1940 when, as a ruse, they asked Sweden to allow the transfer of 50 000 troops to Finland to fight the Soviet Union. Sweden refused.
Also, almost all of Denmark's Jews managed to escape to Sweden in 1943 after a German diplomat, Duckwitz (who had also informed the Swedish government), leaked to the Danish resistance that the Germans were about to round up the Jewish population for deportation (out of 7,800 Jews in Denmark, 7,220 managed to escape to Sweden transported on fishing and rowboats across Öresund).
Also don't forget the enormous Swedish contribution to Finland (which had been part of Sweden proper for all of modern history up to 1809) with weapons (including fighters) and volunteers during the Winter War.
The latter can't of course be modeled in the game, but Sweden's role in WWII is a bit more complicated that one might think.
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They also gave transit rights to German troops. They were more axis-aligned than allies-aligned, all things considered.
Though to be fair, yes, they were helpful to Norwegians and other allied countries, too.
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More out of pragmatism in an attempt to avoid getting invaded, at that, than any axis alignment ideologically.
Those transits didn't start until the allies had already given up on keeping Norway out of German hands.
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The tungsten Sweden sells is quite clearly meant to model the higher quality iron ore that Sweden exported during the war. This differentiates Sweden's ores from other ones, so that Germany actually has a reason to trade with them.
It's an odd abstraction that makes sense in the context of the game.
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Paper for the German bureaucracy, iron for its typewriters.
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In 1936, other nations produced iron ore that had iron content equal to or greater than Sweden's.
Here is the estimated iron content of Swedish iron ore compared to other nations' iron ores in 1936:
Source: The Mineral Industry of the British Empire and Foreign Countries Statistical Summary (Production, Imports, and Exports) 1936 -1938, His Majesty's Stationery Office, London,
See spoiler below for a screen snip of the available data.
Here is the estimated iron content of Swedish iron ore compared to other nations' iron ores in 1936:
Source: The Mineral Industry of the British Empire and Foreign Countries Statistical Summary (Production, Imports, and Exports) 1936 -1938, His Majesty's Stationery Office, London,
See spoiler below for a screen snip of the available data.
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Perhaps a different mechanic other than transmutation could be implemented so that Germany has a reason to trade with Sweden.
E.g.
- "Costs" less to transport bulk ore by sea.
- Get more (16 instead of 8) if transporting by sea.
- Distance...shorter distances (like the distance between Stockholm to Kiel) are more beneficial ("costs" less)
- Adapt the Man-The-Guns Oil to Fuel game mechanic... iron ore gets transformed to steel.
Right. As your data shows, Germany had lower quality iron ore than Sweden. Useful for some things, but if you wanted the higher quality stuff (and you need the higher quality stuff for things like armor plates and whatnot), you needed something better than what Germany had.
It's only transmutation if you think steel is only one thing, tungsten is only one thing, chromium is only one thing, and crude oil is one thing in HOI4. But as we both know, each of the things I listed represents a spectrum of actual resources.
To give an example:
Crude oil is generally divided up into at least four categories based on a number of factors. These categories include Very Light, Light, Medium, and Heavy oils. You don't generally create the same kind of fuel or lubricants from Very Light and Heavy. In fact, if I understand the basics behind refining chemistry, you'd want the Very Light stuff in jet fuel or kerosene, while marine fuels would be made from the heavier stuff.
But in HOI4, oil is just... oil. You can refine it into fuel for planes, fuel for ships, fuel or tanks, turn it into lubricants, or lend-lease it to another country and they magically use it for whatever. Oil is abstracted into one thing in game terms, but it represents a lot of other stuff.
I see the metals the same way, except that they are broken down into jobs they can do, unlike oil. (And I understand that no one wants to play HOI4 if they have to spend time on a spreadsheet figuring out how much of each of 25 different fuels they need to lend-lease to the United Kingdom every month.) Tungsten isn't really just wolfram and whatnot. It's represents some of the higher quality and specific alloys used in certain things. You don't waste that on Thompson submachineguns, but you might need high quality alloys for AT gun ammunition and armor plates. For the Thompsons, just use low quality steel. Oh, you're building ships? Now we need other higher quality alloys that are different from the ones we are using for medium tanks. And while Britain did build a nice airplane from freaking wood of all things, if you want some light and sturdy materials for an air frame, you need aluminum alloys, not the same stuff we use to build Panthers.
The abstraction in HOI4 also kind of makes sense in another way. It does some of the ersatz work behind the scenes. Instead of having 25 different kinds of metal alloys, you have a limited number, and you can assume that your brilliant engineers can work around some limitations if they have access to a general assortment of metals. So, Sweden and Portugal both have tungsten to sell to Germany. They aren't really both tungsten exporters, but the game gives you a small mulligan and says that if you have access to enough "tungsten" you can make stuff. The engineers do the whole "let's see if we can use metals from Portugal as ersatz goods for the Swedish iron ore we are inexplicably cut off from due to some weird thing the player is doing this time" thing.
I understand it is confusing for some players, though, as it seems weird. But those with some knowledge about the war can see where the abstractions are and accept them (or not).
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