Over-industrializing

[unmerged(17791)]

I'm playing my first game (as Germany - aiming to pwn, the first time out) and the one thing that strikes me about this game is how you're able to grow your industry in the first half of the game. Right now it's late July '39 and I'm making my final organizational preparations for the start of the war, and my effective IC is around 380. And I've been taking it relatively easy, building Flak like crazy, quite a few BB Bismarck ships, and a bunch of other extra stuff that the Allies won't be expecting. Though I could have gone all out - and no telling what the IC would be.

Eventually I realized I needed to cut back, as I wasn't sure what kind of resources I'd be looking at in the future. But the thing is, if you build enough factories early on, soon enough they pay for themselves... and you can use all that extra IC to build even MORE IC, plus all the other improvements and war machines you would have been able to, if you'd just kept the default number of factories... provided of course, you can always feed the beast. Right now, I've built an IC base that I feel is a happy medium between "holy s$^#, the whole world can't even feed this beast", and "well, that's nice and conservative"... since I don't know if I'll be able to get enough resources if I go all out.

But anyway, I take a look at the USSR, and they seem to be the most extreme case - as far as being able to build a MASSIVE amount of factories. Look at all those little provinces. And in this game, you can build factories almost anywhere (even if there's none to start with). All you have to do, is get that momentum going early on, where the new factories start building paying for themselves by building even more factories, and next thing you know you're out of control... provided you can feed the beast (via conquest & savvy dealings of course).

Seems like you can get to this point much earlier and easier than you could in HoI1. Main difference being, in HoI(1) you always wanted to put as much IC into research as possible, so you had to balance that w/ your future IC expansion... just go with the practical approach that would give you the most gain, at the proper time down the road. But now, heck - research is just a few bucks! Thus the industry expansion can be "left to it's own devices". Why is it though, that when you load other (than 1936) scenarios, plus keep an eye on the AI, it seems no one bothered with this? Seems like any human player can just over-industrialize, go conquer for more resources, and no one can stop him.

I thought about not demanding Danzig, and just keep going like crazy... I've been doing well w/ my extortions... er, trades, and could have just post-poned the war by a year or two, then unleashed the mammoth. But, I guess I'm supposed to be 'challenged', so...

 

[kucing]

Yep, why not?

The only limitation is the amount of resource produced by all provinces in the game.

 

[unmerged(17791)]

So, long-term it would appear to me that the USSR in the hands of an human player (acquiring a plethora of resources via trade & conquest) is pretty much unstoppable.

Also, a side note: central Asia ain't that big. It's obvious the map is skewed/stretched laterally. Just look at the USA. It's freakin' wide, like a stretch-limo. But especially central Asia. I'm thinkin' the designers did that just to make the USSR just... that much more difficult to take out. Judging by the "Oh, GOD - help me, I'm losing on the eastern front!" threads around here, they seem to have succeeded.

Central Asia is like the size of the Pacific, man. In reality, the Pacific covers nearly half the globe. But hey... that's cool.

 

[unmerged(88870)]

I've never really found actually building my own factories all that useful - I mean, espedially with Germany, there's all these nise neighbours that I've got that seem to have nothing better to do than produce my future factories and an army for my troops to train with. Germany's insane.

The point I'm making is that conguering your factories is usually less trouble than building them - and besides, while a factory may be useful in producing another one, so is a soldier that captures a province with IC, which can then make MORE units.

 

[sbr]

I've never really found actually building my own factories all that useful - I mean, espedially with Germany, there's all these nise neighbours that I've got that seem to have nothing better to do than produce my future factories and an army for my troops to train with. Germany's insane.

The point I'm making is that conguering your factories is usually less trouble than building them - and besides, while a factory may be useful in producing another one, so is a soldier that captures a province with IC, which can then make MORE units.

Except that a conquered factory only gives you 20% of an IC(35% if you have a Prince of Terror in office). What do you build in the beginning of the game? Obsolete troops that need to be upgraded in a couple of years and eat supplies? The other very important point for Germany is TC. If you are going to invade the Soviet Union you are going to need loads and loads of TC, and the only way to get TC is IC.

 

[Ivegottheskill]

In the games I played as Germany (after I first got HoI), I never purchased IC. I only got into the habit when playing with smaller countries like Australia to unlock the 3rd (or 4th or 5th) tech slot.

For Germany it seems unnecessary because the IC it has plus all the bonuses gives a nice effective amount. Plus factories take a long time to build. Can put out 4 or 5 divisions of INF in same time for slightly less IC.

 

[Drewby]

In the games I played as Germany (after I first got HoI), I never purchased IC. I only got into the habit when playing with smaller countries like Australia to unlock the 3rd (or 4th or 5th) tech slot.

For Germany it seems unnecessary because the IC it has plus all the bonuses gives a nice effective amount. Plus factories take a long time to build. Can put out 4 or 5 divisions of INF in same time for slightly less IC.

it isnt "necessary", but it can make germany very powerful. I used to not build it and I could knock out uk and ussr by late 42/43. When I run 2 years at 18-20 IC builds, I can have uk out by 39, and Ussr out by the end of 40. It gives you the IC base to built lots of current tech troops in 39 so your army is big w/o having to upgrade.

 

[unmerged(67641)]

Now don't factories gobble up manpower as well?

 

[sbr]

Now don't factories gobble up manpower as well?

Maybe in DD, not HOI2 vanilla.

 

[unmerged(88870)]

Now don't factories gobble up manpower as well?

I don't think they do in Armageddon, aither.

 

[Ericus1]

In DD and Arm, each factory cost 1 MP. Not really all the significant unless you're building LARGE numbers of factories.

A standard German build up would maybe be 75 IC over three which isn't too hard of a MP hit.

 

[GLENN]

You have to watch resource consumption.

When you build up IC it is easy to run out of resources.

Make sure you capture resource territories.

 

[Count Drew]

I took Italy from it's '36 hoi22 DD around 70something ICs to about 250 in '43

I stayed at war the whole time as I hired a psycho minister rape the Balkans of all their ICs and kept Austria-Hungary between me and my opponent. Then in '42 I broke out and captured all of Germany's ICs in a Blitzkrieg fashion and some superteched Divisions. After their capitulation I invaded the USSR and quit because I knew I would burn him to the ground. Italy had 3 or 4 Modern Aircraft Carriers-150 Modern Divisions, state of the art in fact With 15 Armored Divisions. Plus an Awesome Sturmovik style Airforce, tens of thousands of CAS to eat the vast Soviet Union. I predicted by '45 Il Duce would create a New World Order and the UK-France-USA were neutral toward me the whole time. I released the DDR and still was having lots of fun... And went from Fascist to Autocrat. ICs are a gamemaker or gamebreaker