The case against Rubber

[Mithel]

Valisk, I've been considering purchasing Bairoch's book "Economics and World History" but I didn't know if it would turn out to be a good source of this data or not.

Angus Maddison seems to be another major author that has compiled a ton of this sort of data but the one book I have of his is very poorly organized - great data, just terrible to wade through.

Mark Harrison draws from Maddison's data and certainly Maddison has read Bairoch.

- Mithel

 

[valisk]

Mithel,

That is certainley a problem, the book itself has had quite a few good reviews particularly from academics, which might not be a good thing as they are used to reading through disorganised books.

Still as it's out in paperback now it hopefully wouldn't be too expensive a waste of time if it turns out to be wothless.

 

[valisk]

I've put the 1936 Data here for you to download, this particular spreadsheet contains only non agricultural data, as at present we have no need for that, but once I've got the whole lot done, I'll revisit the agricultural stuff

 

[Mithel]

Very nicely done Valisk! Thanks!

Question: are the "zero" values a lack of data or no production? It would be good to distinguish between the two (perhaps put -1 for no data).

I would very much like agricultural data. Even if we don't have a good way to represent it in HoI it is valuable to know the relative amount of agricultural production to other production.

One thing I'd like to see is a nice summary of each nation's economy in the four basic categories: agricultural, industrial, mining and services.

From that we know a nation with a high percentage of mining should be relatively rich in raw materials. A nation with high industry should be fairly effective at waging war.

- Mithel

 

[valisk]

Mithel, the 0s refer to 0 production except in certain specific cases, China's gold production for example.

One thing I'd like to see is a nice summary of each nation's economy in the four basic categories: agricultural, industrial, mining and services.

I'll look at doing that over the next few days, as I'll have to get the agricultural data done for '36

 

[Mithel]

A breakdown like this is really nice to have, thanks again Valisk!

It's interesting to notice Bulgaria doesn't show any crude petroleum yet shows the results of refining. From the information I've previously been provided this is accurate. And it brings up the question again of what do we represent in HoI? Is oil (resource points) crude or refined? Bulgaria refined crude Romanian oil so should Bulgaria get some oil or not? I'm inclined to give the refiners access to some of the oil they are refining but we do want to avoid too much "double counting" of oil.

- Mithel

 

[valisk]

Mithel, I meant to point out actually that I've double listed Natural gas, in cubic meters and in tons.

But yes the issue with oil is tricky as obviously only refined oil is going to be useful for military purposes, but it has to come from somewhere to be refined, I'd side with you on this one though for simplicities sake.

 

[unmerged(19545)]

Math Guy would probably be gratified at the way traffic on all threads has dried up, while he's on vacation.

However, I find it kind of a bummer.

Earlier on we had MG vs Mithel vs Steel, on what the various abstractions represented. Since then, Mithel and I have demonstrated fairly decisively that without coding changes, the only way to achieve the goals that all have agreed on is by adding rubber to most economies.

Having established that, we should probably expend our energies rationalizing what we need to do, rather than justifying what won't actually work, however historically satisfying it might be.

I suggest, and I'm not the first, but it's fun to hear myself typing, that Coal be considered raw natural resources, including mostly coal by weight, Steel be considered the output of heavy industry, steel, concrete and aluminum included, that Rubber be considered those products that can be produced without any particular infrastructure in place. That would mostly be agriculture, fisheries, timber, ivory, guano and the like.
Oil of course, is refined petrochemicals.

Not very sophisticated I agree, but fairly easy to agree on who had what. And pretty subject to disection.

And when will Math Guy be back on line. I'm actually playing the game again.

 

[valisk]

I do see where your coming from DC, and I think that it is a practical solution.
I would add a general reduction of the non-industrialised worlds IC is also in order, which hopefully once I've finished my 1936 agricultural production spreadsheet we can examine it together with the industrial production and work out the correct amounts of IC.

 

[unmerged(19545)]

I certainly agree with reducing non-industrial IC. Though such a country might have a sound economy, and a good standard of living, it would be severely limited in its ability to wage semi-modern war. And that is what IC is, in our game.

 

[Mithel]

I'd be curious if any of you disagree with the IC figures in my Province.csv file that I've released. (I'm still tuning Central and South America and haven't released that yet) I do have more tuning to do (particularly in need of review is Asia).

I really do need to get around to wrapping up some of my other major changes and releasing a full "mod" release. (Perhaps I can do that this weekend - dang life sure has been BUSY).

Once I've integrated three major databases that I've recently obtained I'll probably review the entire raw resource situation again.

- Mithel

 

[saintsup]

Speaking of non-industrial IC, any idea to solve this 'paradox'

Let's take a tiny island somewhere in the Pacific:
- it has 0 IC: you can not build any fortification
or
- it has 1 IC: building any kind of fortification is costless (whereas in fact it should be far more costly to build something in some 'desert' where there is few raw material and manpower available)
or
- it has lots of ICs: well that's stupid

 

[Mithel]

Saintsup, I think there are several of us that don't like this issue. The "improvements" really should cost a fixed amount rather than being related to the IC amount of THAT province.

Unfortunately I believe only Paradox can solve this for us. I can't think of any fix myself.

- Mithel

 

[saintsup]

Originally posted by Mithel
The "improvements" really should cost a fixed amount rather than being related to the IC amount of THAT province.

Fully agree !!

Should cost a fixed amount of ressource and/or supply too.

Well, just an other 'design issue solved, implementation waiting for HOI2' then

 

[unmerged(13601)]

On oil and gas

Vasilk, a nice source of dat that leugue of nations data. Just remember it is far from complete (Oil for Europe & South America are OK, but US data disagrees with US Bureau of Mines data and China is missing, soviet data is just a guess). Anyway, I had no good sources on some of those south american countries and roumania, so it is quite helpful. Furthermore, add oil from shale to the crude oil production, as shale oil was at that time used as bunker fuel for ships mainly. On natural gas, well that figure can be neglected. Conversion of cubic feet to metric tonnes is about 775 ccf to 1 metric ton. The US, by far the largest user of natural gas, produced about 78.000 ccf which would just be 100 metric tons. With average US crude production figures of 190-210 million metric tons, 100 metric tons more or less are peanuts.

On oil in HOI, I think you can consider oil in HOI as oil used for military transportation purposes, which in war at that time would probably imply 30% of crude oil production (conservative estimate). During the HOI period, world crude production averaged about 300 million metric tons. This would equal 90 million tons of HOI oil in a year. Divide by 360 gives 0.25 million ton HOI oil a day. With 100 tons = 1 HOI oil (according to MathGuy), HOI daily oil production should be around 2500 oil points. Of course, if military use of oil was higher than the 30%, the daily oil figure will rise.

Regarding crude production versus refined products. Many countries did not have crude oil production, but did refine the stuff and vice versa. Where will you locate the oil production in HOI? Personally I believe the producer of the crude should get the oil, while the refining location gets ICs to represent the refining industry there. As a refinery cannot run without the crude, but crude can be produced without refineries present (some crudes hardly needed refining to be suitable for fuel purposes, for instance some Borneo crudes and Maikop crude). So in the cse of Romanian oil being refined in Bulgaria, give romania the production, but have a small convoy of oil from romania to bulgaria to represent that oil flow.

 

[Gwalcmai]

Has anyone tested a 0.00 conversion rate? Does it just gobble up resources without producing anything, or does it in effect disable the conversion?

 

[valisk]

I'd be curious if any of you disagree with the IC figures in my Province.csv file that I've released. (I'm still tuning Central and South America and haven't released that yet) I do have more tuning to do (particularly in need of review is Asia).

Well Mithel, I've been running your .csv along with my interpretation of math guys basic mod for an AAR and it is coming along quite nicely, despite investing in extra IC early on I am reaching a point where the UK cannot continue to fund a growing allied comitment against the axis, which by 1940 had also happened to Chamberlain and Churchill and says to me that we are on the right track with it.

Vasilk, a nice source of dat that leugue of nations data. Just remember it is far from complete

Oh don't worry old chap I'm more than aware of it's downsides, and when better data arrives I intend on correcting the figures in the spreadsheet to show this.
It is also one of the reasons why I'm using the 1936 figures as shown in the 1944 Yearbook, making a general assumption that amended figures are provided where possible, and a casual examination of 1936 from the 1936/7 yearbook vs 1944 yearbook shows such amendments to be present.

On natural gas, well that figure can be neglected. Conversion of cubic feet to metric tonnes is about 775 ccf to 1 metric ton. The US, by far the largest user of natural gas, produced about 78.000 ccf which would just be 100 metric tons. With average US crude production figures of 190-210 million metric tons, 100 metric tons more or less are peanuts.

Write out a hundred times, I must read articles properly to gain a proper understanding . The natural gas figures are in Millions of cubic metres with the trailing 000,000s stripped away for simplicity. so the US produced 61,388,000,000 cubic metres or 81,308,609 tons of natural gas. Hardly insignificant.

Anyway, could you point to a cite for the US figures from the Bureau of Mines data you are refering to?
As the data provided in the yearbook is partly drawn from figures provided by the US Bureau of Mines.
That way I can cross check the data and make any needed updates.

 

[Mithel]

Gwalcmai, someone in another thread reported that they tested a "zero" conversion rate and indicated it stopped conversion. I've not checked this myself to see it for myself.

The main problem in my mind with conversion is trying to get coal to rubber conversion without messing up fuel - as far as I can tell that can't be done. Thus I feel the best "fix" is to dramatically reduce the need for conversion to rubber. (i.e. keep it a limiting factor but not as drastic as it currently is).

Valisk, I'll have a greatly enhanced Province.csv along with a first release of my Mod tomorrow. It's coming along nicely.

- Mithel

 

[unmerged(19545)]

Yes, even if you could prevent Coal to Oil altogether, by setting it at zero, then a country without indiginous oil, and bad luck on the World Market, would be in real trouble.

The ideal solution would be independant conversion processes, with Coal to Rubber, if the economy was the issue, and Coal to Oil if fuel was the issue. In a perfect world, the actual quantities produced could be set by slider, so that you could balance your coal/rubber, for as much economy as possible, and coal/oil, depending on whether it was more important to run the economy or the army at any given time.

I'm not betting on either happening, before the (purely theoretical) HoI2. So I am fully behind Mithel's notion of adding rubber to prevent economic meltdown. There is a great deal of work involved in finding what the actual final provincial values should be though. But Mithel is working on that too, with help from other luminaries like Valisk, Wineman, the late lamented Math Guy, and lots of others (you know who you are).

 

[unmerged(13601)]

Originally posted by valisk
Write out a hundred times, I must read articles properly to gain a proper understanding . The natural gas figures are in Millions of cubic metres with the trailing 000,000s stripped away for simplicity. so the US produced 61,388,000,000 cubic metres or 81,308,609 tons of natural gas. Hardly insignificant.

Anyway, could you point to a cite for the US figures from the Bureau of Mines data you are refering to?
As the data provided in the yearbook is partly drawn from figures provided by the US Bureau of Mines.
That way I can cross check the data and make any needed updates.

My mistake, oversaw the six 0's. But I checked conversion rates: 1 barrel of oil equivalent (boe) = 5568 cubic feet of gas. 1 metric ton of oil = 7.33 barrels of oil (on average, depends on crude composition). Thus 65005 million cf natural gas ('36 US production) equals 1.59 Mtons of crude, about 1% of US total crude production. For the US, insignificant, and the natural gas was mainly used for producing the energy needed by refineries and adjoining industrial plants. For conversion units see here

As to US and world production data I use this site and are for 1938-1947. I have total US prod figures for 1947 from US bureau of mines, compared with the data from this site there is a 2% error, due to conversion (one is in long tons, US BM data is in barrels, conversion is an approximation). To convert from long tons to metric tons multiply by 1.016.