Rubber...an Asian affair?

[dukeLeopold]

Hi all,

Let's talk about a wildy (mildly?) fascinating subject...rubber...and where to find it on the map! ;-)

Browsing the http://www.hoi4wiki.com/List_of_states , I noticed that almost all rubber can be found in Asia, in states like Singapore, Sumatra, Java...and also in Brazil. Almost no rubber can be found in Africa (except for very small quantities in Uganda, Liberia and Ethiopia).

However, after large parts of Asia fell to the Japanese, the Belgian Congo became a strategic supplier of rubber to the Allies. In HOI IV, the rubber production in the Belgian Congo (Léopoldville, Stanleyville and Central Congo) equals zero. Maybe this could be adjusted?

 

[JerkyJerry]

That's what mods can do.
I'm sure someone will address this

 

[rutger9]

Well it's a pretty important strategic asset and theres not much of an argument to be made against adding it to the game while there's many for adding it.
This isn't really a subjective thing, its objectively provable that the rubber production in belgian congo was on a scale large enough to be represented in the game.

 

[Orlunu]

Hi all,

Let's talk about a wildy (mildly?) fascinating subjet...rubber...and where to find it on the map! ;-)

Browsing the http://www.hoi4wiki.com/List_of_states , I noticed that almost all rubber can be found in Asia, in states like Singapore, Sumatra, Java...and also in Brazil. Almost no rubber can be found in Africa (except for very small quantities in Uganda, Liberia and Ethiopia).

However, after large parts of Asia fell to the Japanese, the Belgian Congo became a strategic supplier of rubber to the Allies. In HOI IV, the rubber production in the Belgian Congo (Léopoldville, Stanleyville and Central Congo) equals zero. Maybe this could be adjusted?

Edit: skip to 8mins 30, the forum decided that it doesn't like not destroying what I post.

It's a low enough proportion in the Belgian Congo that you'd either have to completely change the scale of resource use, or screw up the world distribution even worse.

 

[rutger9]

It's a low enough proportion in the Belgian Congo that you'd either have to completely change the scale of resource use, or screw up the world distribution even worse.

The video says 97%, i just took all the rubber stated in the wiki page as a total 100% (excluding the 6 rubber in africa)
you get a sum of 1996 rubber.
This means that the other 3% would be roughly 61 rubber.
61 rubber is an amount of resources that while not war winning would be way more then insignificant.

 

[Orlunu]

The video says 97%, i just took all the rubber stated in the wiki page as a total 100% (excluding the 6 rubber in africa)
you get a sum of 1996 rubber.
This means that the other 3% would be roughly 61 rubber.
61 rubber is an amount of resources that while not war winning would be way more then insignificant.

Isn't a seriously significant chunk of that in South America, though? If not, I'll admit I was wrong.

Also, out of interest, where did you find those numbers? Looking at the distributions of various things would be nice.

 

[billcorr]

Wow ! Great research.

Edit: skip to 8mins 30, the forum decided that it doesn't like not destroying what I post.

And the riposte by Rutger9 makes sense. 3% (61 rubber) may not be a game changer, but it could help.

 

[rutger9]

Isn't a seriously significant chunk of that in South America, though? If not, I'll admit I was wrong.

Also, out of interest, where did you find those numbers? Looking at the distributions of various things would be nice.

http://www.hoi4wiki.com/List_of_states
You can sort by resource, specifically rubber.
Then if you did that sorting you will see the states that have rubber.
Now I did make a mistake at second look, i included brazil in my total calculation and they own 30 rubber this would make the decrease the total asian number a bit leading to probably 50 or something rubber that is needing to be put in either africa or south america if we keep strictly to the american propaganda videos statistics, but in my opinion the argument still stands.

EDIT: Also to take into account that portions of the rubber production in asia listed weren't conquered by japan.
I think the 97% might not be entirely accurate in general.

EDITEDIT: as I am currently procrastinating from homework I redid the calculations and it appears I was wrong anyways, heres what im pretty sure is right going off of current info.
in the game it can be said that 1818 of a total of 2002 rubber is controlled by the axis at max japanese extent
this is a total of 90,8%
of the remaining 10%, so 200 something rubber, 30 rubber belongs to the neutral brazil although they do join later on
The majority of allied controlled rubber is in the india region.
This means that to reach thye 97% indian rubber would need to be nerfed, otherwise we can look at a large number of sources showing how rubber growth in belgian congo increased very rapidly as the war went on to cope for the allied needs.

 

[Haydar]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_rubber#World_War_II This should be in the game as a research option to convert a ratio of oil supplies to diminsh the need of natural rubber (if it is not there already).

It is amazing how wars push technological researchs to conclusion so fast.

 

[Orlunu]

Now I did make a mistake at second look, i included brazil in my total calculation and they own 30 rubber this would make the decrease the total asian number a bit leading to probably 50 or something rubber that is needing to be put in either africa or south america if we keep strictly to the american propaganda videos statistics, but in my opinion the argument still stands.

Currently 1969+6=1975 rubber on map. There is 30+6=36 outside Japan's expanded empire. Japan holds 1975-36=1939. Each percent of the world's total is 1939/97=20 rubber.

So, 60 rubber to be placed outside Greater Nihon, if we use what's inside as the yardstick. If Brazil has 30, that's 30 left to allocate to the rest of South America, the Congo, and anywhere else that produced it. So, yes, it sounds like the Congo provinces should have a few units each.


Very rough working, of course, but it gets us to an order of magnitude type answer.

 

[rutger9]

I'll point you to my edit edit, the percentages don't work out either way as far as I can see.

 

[Orlunu]

otherwise we can look at a large number of sources showing how rubber growth in belgian congo increased very rapidly as the war went on to cope for the allied needs.

Here lies the biggest problem. The game doesn't at all have a way of modelling the extraction infrastructure required for natural resources, so far as I can tell.


Anyway, I think it'd be completely fair to say that the contemporary opinion was that rubber extraction was very much "an asian affair", at least.

 

[potski]

You are calculating this wrong, if the video is accurate. And I think I would prefer a better source than the US newsreels, especially one entitled, "Know your enemy"

The calculations above are all concerning production of rubber. But the video says:

"Already [Japan's] invasion of South East Asia has given her complete mastery of 97% of the world's rubber growing areas."

You could have 3% of the areas (in Brazil, India and Congo) but which don't have the same conditions as exist in Malaya, Java and Borneo, or don't have the same density of mature trees because they are more recent plantations, or don't have the infrastructure in place to gather the same volume of rubber.

Rubber trees are native to Brazil, nowhere else, and the original cultivation outside of Brazil was difficult. But ironically:

"Efforts to cultivate the tree in South America (Amazon) were unsatisfactory because of blight. The blight, called South American leaf blight, is caused by the Ascomycota, Microcyclus ulei or Pseudocercospora ulei."

This didn't seem to exist in South East Asia, and once the trees were established they were more productive.

 

[Orlunu]

You could have 3% of the areas (in Brazil, India and Congo) but which don't have the same conditions as exist in Malaya, Java and Borneo, or don't have the same density of mature trees because they are more recent plantations, or don't have the infrastructure in place to gather the same volume of rubber..

Here lies the biggest problem. The game doesn't at all have a way of modelling the extraction infrastructure required for natural resources, so far as I can tell.


Anyway, I think it'd be completely fair to say that the contemporary opinion was that rubber extraction was very much "an asian affair", at least.

Calculations were rough, but good enough to show my main point, which was that the rubber potential was massively skewed towards SEA. The static resource numbers, requiring no human impact on the extraction rates, really screw things up beyond the point of trying to get it more accurate than that. I do hope that a "non-ridiculous resource system" dlc will come through at some point, but the system's awful enough that I feel fairly confident in guessing that it'll arrive quite early on.

 

[Kourgath223]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_rubber#World_War_II This should be in the game as a research option to convert a ratio of oil supplies to diminish the need of natural rubber (if it is not there already).

It is amazing how wars push technological research to conclusion so fast.

Their is a research fairly early on that give you the ability to construct a building that produces, I think it is 2 oil and 1 rubber (though it could be 1 oil and 2 rubber I don't remember which) from each building.

 

[Orlunu]

Their is a research fairly early on that give you the ability to construct a building that produces, I think it is 2 oil and 1 rubber (though it could be 1 oil and 2 rubber I don't remember which) from each building.

Which is a bad aspect of rubber production that needs addressing in its own right. They didn't use the same plants at all for these processes, and synthetic rubber production would be downright detrimental to oil production numbers, so having to build them in this fixed ratio probably ranks about fourth on my list of ways the resource system for the game is completely messed up.

 

[Kourgath223]

Which is a bad aspect of rubber production that needs addressing in its own right. They didn't use the same plants at all for these processes, and synthetic rubber production would be downright detrimental to oil production numbers, so having to build them in this fixed ratio probably ranks about fourth on my list of ways the resource system for the game is completely messed up.

Well I assume the way they try to treat it is that the synthetic rubber building when built not only builds the synthetic rubber production plant but any and all synthetic oil production plants that would be needed to maintain x amount of synthetic rubber production, with a few extra synthetic oil production plants to give you some net positive oil as well. Though I'm not sure how widespread synthetic oil production really was in WW 2 though I would imagine it was biggest in nations with limited access to natural oil.

 

[potski]

Calculations were rough, but good enough to show my main point

No, your quote from the video is wrong and therefore your calculations are wrong. 97% of the world's rubber production was not captured by Japan. 97% of the rubber producing areas were captured, and you have assumed that every area produces the same amount of rubber. They don't.

 

[OBRkenobi]

Most rubber was synthetically produced at the time.

 

[ssb]

Rubber...an Asian affair?

You should probably use a rubber for any kind of affair.