Military vs. Civilian Factories: What's a Good Ratio?

[Baldwin XI]

Hi there everyone,

Hearts of Iron IV will be my first entry into the franchise, and as such there are a lot of game concepts that escape me. The most glaring one for me is the relationship between civilian and military factories, and their relative usefulness.

Each nation, it seems, has a limited number of factories that it can build in its territory. The military factories produce important things for the war effort. But civilian factories, from what I gathered, are mainly to repair damage that your factories might take from bombing and the like, as well as possibly increase infrastructure, allowing you to build more factories (I think). From what I can see, it seems that military factories are much more important than civilian ones. Am I missing something as to the importance of civilian factories?

Also, for the experienced HoI players: what's your preferred ratio for military and civilian factories, especially in the pre-war years of building up your military?

Thanks for the help and perspective!

 

[Schorsch30]

I didnt know HOI IV is out and there are already expirienced players in it that can tell you this :O

 

[tom_jones]

Am I missing something as to the importance of civilian factories?

Civilian factories also generate goods which are required/consumed by your country population; additionally the factories are used as 'currency' in resource trade deals with other nations.

 

[LordOfWar16]

You HAVE to have an specific ratio of civilian factories compared to your military factories and dockyards anyway, since depending on your mobilization laws and numbers of factories an specific numbers of civ factories always has to work on civilian goods and cant be used for anything else. Aside that it is not a bad idea to invest into some civilian factories at the start of the game, even tho germany might want to focus on military a bit earlier.

Since you can convert civilian factories to military ones later on there is little to no reason to build an decent number of them early game, especially because they greatly speed up your future build up. Atleast for germany you most likely will start to conquer some factories pretty early on from austria and czechoslovakia and then from poland and france.

Aside from building up your factories or any kind of provincial improvement (infrastructure, forts etc), civilian factories are of course your currency for trading for resources aswell. Trading away basicly most of your civilian capacity is an bad idea of course and what do you get from having hundreds of military factories but lacking most of the resources drasticly reducing their output.

 

[Clarkyy]

The civilian vs. military factory dynamic of HoI4 is new. I only started reading the dev diaries for HoI4 earlier this year, and then shortly after booted up HoI3 which was in my Steam library but never played, because of how excited I was for it. In HoI3 however there were no civilian & military factories or docks - instead there was a single number representing your industrial capacity, IC for short. This functions by and large the same, except that HoI3 is much less about individual equipment production, and instead everything is produced at the division level (and sometimes brigade) in terms of land forces. Your IC can be distributed however you like, whether that's building air wings, land divisions, naval flotillas or increasing your IC or provincial infrastructure.

EDIT: I forgot where I was going with the above wall of text - experienced players of the HoI franchise have had no exposure to the civilian/military/naval factory trichotomy, so unfortunately there's no way to answer that question.

To answer your original question (and I'll probably be repeating what others have said here), the purpose of civilian factories is to:

• Build other factories of any kind
• Develop Infrastructure

This may not seem like much (and it's very possible I'm forgetting something or there's something we don't know about yet), but civilian factories are going to be worth their weight in gold early game because they are the sole method of allowing you to build up your economy and industry. I imagine the first thing most people will be doing in a game of HoI4 is to massively increase their civilian factory numbers so that they can more efficiently build up their military and naval industries.

Of course civilian factories can be converted to military factories and maybe naval factories in sea-provinces (not sure on the the naval factories), so all that civilian industry will be useful for the military industry in another way.

 

[Gort11]

Yeah, you need enough civilian factories to:

• Build new factories
• Repair damage to your existing factories
• Trade for resources you need

And then it's a case of having as many military factories as possible.

So it's less a case of "I want 40% civilian factories and 60% military factories" and more a case of "I need 10 civilian factories for building new stuff, 10 for repairs since I'm going to get bombed, and 20 for trading for oil, then everything else can be military", I guess.

And yeah, early game I'm just going to spam a million civilian factories and then convert some to military factories once I hit the cap.

 

[Aodhan_]

Wonder is there a penalty to the amount of civilian, military factories that you can have.

 

[Gort11]

Wonder is there a penalty to the amount of civilian, military factories that you can have.

Well, regions have a limit to your total number of civilian, military and naval factories, so there's less a penalty and more of a hard cap to how many your country can have.

They talk about it in this dev diary. In short, London can have 12 factories total, while Aberdeen can have 4, and the Amazon can't have any.

 

[Aodhan_]

Lol the way you said about spamming a million factories at the get go I thought they changed it. My apologies for taking you too literally Gort .

 

[Himliano]

Well, regions have a limit to your total number of civilian, military and naval factories, so there's less a penalty and more of a hard cap to how many your country can have.

They talk about it in this dev diary. In short, London can have 12 factories total, while Aberdeen can have 4, and the Amazon can't have any.

I really hope every region can be upgraded to the top region through investment or building infrastructure. If not, I think it's a huge mistake.

 

[Gort11]

I really hope every region can be upgraded to the top region through investment or building infrastructure. If not, I think it's a huge mistake.

Why? You should not be able to put the same number of factories in Gibraltar that you can put in London. Keep in mind that this game is a simulation of twelve years of history, not hundreds of years of industrial revolution, population growth and technical advancement.

 

[Aodhan_]

I actually like the way they are handling factory limits but I suppose time will really answer this Himliano.

 

[agentgb]

I really hope every region can be upgraded to the top region through investment or building infrastructure. If not, I think it's a huge mistake.

Heres a snip from this dev diary
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ary-4th-of-september-2015-1-day-early.880097/

First of all, each state has maximum capacity of factories it can have, depending on its population and infrastructure. There are some focuses or events that may extend that cap, but this is the limit you have to plan about.

One difference from Hearts of Iron 3 is that damaged industry needs to be repaired using your own industry instead of being free repairs over time. As well as being more realistic it also make the impact of strategic bombing matter a lot more.

Here's a screenshot of New York which has 2 military factories, 9 civilian factories and 3 naval dockyards. They have the capacity to build 2 more factories with current infrastructure, and if that is improved they reach the maximum of 20 buildings, due to their high population. As a compaison South Carolina only have population for 11 factories, Corsica for 2 and Gotland for 0!

 

[Gort11]

That dev diary is out of date, they've changed the factory system since then - it's no longer dependent on population.

 

[Denkt]

Ideally you want as few civilian factories as possible as civilian factories produce most secondary stuff (stuff that not directly help you win the war).

Realistically: An ideal ratio to maximize the amount of equipment at a specific time from the start of the game can be calculated.

Generally: You wan't enough civilian factories so that you can fill all your factory slots at a reasonable time frame and quickly repair damaged infrastructure you also wan't enough civilian factories so you can make all your needed trades. But otherwise you should go with military factories and dockyards as they produce the stuff that win the war.

 

[Himliano]

Why? You should not be able to put the same number of factories in Gibraltar that you can put in London. Keep in mind that this game is a simulation of twelve years of history, not hundreds of years of industrial revolution, population growth and technical advancement.

Yes, but aside from size limitations like in Gibraltar, why should a country being stopped of build what they want where they want?
If I have space for it, I should be able to turn a desert into the biggest industrial complex ever if I throw enough money and infrastructure at it.

 

[Bryartuck]

Yes, but aside from size limitations like in Gibraltar, why should a country being stopped of build what they want where they want?
If I have space for it, I should be able to turn a desert into the biggest industrial complex ever if I throw enough money and infrastructure at it.

Time.

The time frame of the game is only 12 years. That is not enough time to turn a desert into a major industrial complex. It's not as simple as throwing money at it. Who's going to work in those factories? Due to the relatively short time span of the game, populations are static, and there are no mechanics for population migrations.

 

[Himliano]

Time.

The time frame of the game is only 12 years. That is not enough time to turn a desert into a major industrial complex. It's not as simple as throwing money at it. Who's going to work in those factories? Due to the relatively short time span of the game, populations are static, and there are no mechanics for population migrations.

Just 12 years of game?? No no-time-limit patch possible? :S

 

[Heruure]

You have unlimited time, the game have no ending.
It shows a score screen after 12 years but you can continue on into infinity after you click away the score screen.

 

[Bryartuck]

Yes, you can continue longer... But the game is only designed to run from 1936-48.