I'm the NGF from the original post & a few things:
1) the war was France vs NGF, Austria, USA, Russia, Italy, OE. It was originally a crisis war over an African colony.
2) The big problem early in the war was that China produced maybe 50% of the world's canned goods. France as the #2 prestige was able to buy them before anyone else on the other side. So French troops received 80-100% of their goods, NGF was in the 30% range by comparison.
3) The war was literally a stale-mate for 4 years, with every French colony occupied, but we could make no progress against France itself. During that time NGF & I think Austria built a canned goods factory in every state. For NGF, canned food production tripled from 50 units a day to 150+. That really helped as NGF was able to surpass China as the primary producer & produce more than China & France combined.
4) The production efficiency hits really affected military supplies. Early in the war, the NGF would have needed 53% of the world's canned goods solely for standing army/mobilization. Prior to the war, NGF & Austria were the #1/2 producer of every other military good, but we couldn't do anything without canned goods. So we'd put the effort into our military industry, just mis-allocated it to small arms etc.
5) For MP games especially, its invaluable for lower prestige countries to control their own military production and push Chinese artisans out of the market if possible. If Chinese artisans are big players in these goods, countries with higher prestige will rule over lower prestige. (assuming no sphering is taking place)
6) As someone asked, the UK was neutral, it had joined France in a previous war, which was a disaster for the German side. Presumably because of supply shortage. This was the third of these wars, where in every one the NGF side had the technology/brigade advantage, but it took us a few tries to lock down on the canned food issue.
Try it with the 3.02 patch before you make changes. I seem to recall us rebalancing iron and coal production.
- Did any of the non french side grab iron provinces in sweden etc, does germany have the rheinland etc do you have your iron techs up?
- I can see how it can be a problem now that China isnt sphereable so you cant gang up and kick france out of the sphere there. If none of the above works I'd play around with relocating the huge Iron RGO in china to be spread out among the smaller substates where it can be competed over.
but the problem might be much less in 3.02, so it would be cool if you let me know next time you have a huge MP war
Sweden is/was a player so its untouched, I believe Russia gave up Finland out of kindness. Germany has all lands associated with the NGF (not including Luxembourg). Baden, Wurtenburg, & Bavaria exist as normal, and are NGF sphered.
As for China, we opened up Machuria to be taken (since it has lower pop totals) so China/Guanxi are only about 7% of the worlds iron currently (Austria is 14%). Austria, Russia, Japan (Korea/Manchuria), Spain, & USA are the top iron producers. Spain is now an AI, but the other 4 are all pretty much maxed technology as far as improving iron production are concerned.
Also note, we've been playing on the SPKR checksum and all of these numbers are me checking now on whatever the new checksum is. If anyone would like saves uploaded, I can provide them.
