Trade Laws

[vector1]

TL;DR: Free trade may be OP because of net 0 civilian factory cost trades between allies in multiplayer up to individual country resource limits.

I read the updated wiki with interest, and I'm already spotting potential exploits/strategies for multiplayer. Apologies for already trying to find OP ideas before game release but this is too good to miss.

Free trade has a huge penalty to locally available resources of -80% but gives 15% factory output, construction speed and research speed. You need to go to closed economy to give 0% across the board.

http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Ideas#Trade_laws

The counter-intuitive part of these laws means resource limited countries like Germany have every incentive to remain on free trade while resource rich countries have every incentive to go full closed economy. Here's why.

If you're limited in resources, losing 80% of a small amount of strategic resources could be less than using the extra 15% civilian factory output to buy the same amount, not to mention the other benefits. In MP, the synergy of having pre-defined teams (for some semblance of historical progression but not entirely compulsory) means that each faction just needs to buy up the excess resources from member countries first to prevent wastage.

If there's no inherent inefficiency in trade given 1 civilian factory = 8 resources, and the exporter can use those civilian factories to buy more resources all this means is that each faction is able to completely buy to the limit of available civilian factories round robin style while keeping the 15% bonus. For example, GER buys 8 steel from ITA, who flips and buys 8 steel from GER, who flips the civilian factory to buy 8 steel from JAP... and the chain goes on. It means there can be potentially no wastage in resources with some ahead of time planning to divide up the pie.

The net effect is that there's no real need to close the economy when in MP you can simply buy from allies pre-war, effectively giving free resources and negating the point of free trade. Germany buying 32 steel from ITA and ITA buying 32 steel from Germany means both countries are gaining 32 steel for effectively no cost to civilian factories, while retaining benefits of free trade, negating possibly a large amount of the 80% resource lost. This will be only limited by the smallest country exported resource limit. For example if GER exports 100 steel, ITA exports 32, both can get free 32 steel before GER has to find someone else to trade with. Even so, more synergy comes from having more allies in MP since GER can easily buy from typical members JAP/HUN/YUG/ROM/SWE as well with many other possible resource trades. Similar strategies have been executed in HOI3 to maximize resource usage within factions and I don't see any real change here.

During war convoys will be an issue, but again it remains to be seen how effective convoy raiding is and this doesn't prevent Europe based trade strategies for Axis.

For resource rich countries, the concept is to deny any possible resources to the enemy as early as possible, especially with the benefit of foresight (hindsight in history?). As such USA/USSR can and should got to closed as soon as possible to prevent Germany invading with tanks built off Soviet steel.

What do you all think of this?

 

[Denkt]

Germany have a good amount of steel and aluminium.

While free trade is good, to do the exchange strategy (which is a valid strategy in my opinion) you are likely forced to rely on convoys in some amount which can be a significant weakness as the enemy could exploit that weakness. Closed economy is safer but not as strong. It can be compared to the choice between concentrated and dispersed industry.

 

[vector1]

But with the increased production, construction speed and research speed it feels a little overpowered in my opinion, and encourages a style of rather ahistorical play in MP. The part that's most concerning is that there can be a net zero civilian factory cost exchange for free resources right from the start of the game. I'm guessing most players will choose to keep free trade and work within the limits of this "free" resources while building military factories up.

 

[Denkt]

I think that strategy will only really work for nations with strong navies such as UK and USA, it is going to be really hard to do the same as German and Italy due to lack of the needed resources and to few civilian factories.

 

[vector1]

It's entirely possible it won't work at all without some testing, but given that at the very least, GER can afford to buy up all of ITA surplus steel for effectively 0 cost means small nations have no incentive to go to closed economy ever. There's no wastage involved since large faction members can afford to buy up all their surplus and the smaller members can return the factories. The number of factories or total amount of resources has no impact on this since regardless GER will still buy what they need from the world market after making these free trades.

 

[Denkt]

There is a limit on how many resources you can purchase from each nation which is known as trade influence.

 

[potski]

Did any country IRL deliberately cut-off trade with their own allies?

 

[vector1]

There is a limit on how many resources you can purchase from each nation which is known as trade influence.

That is an excellent point, we'll see how balanced this is if players decide to maximize internal faction trade by doing all the things (increasing relations, moving divisions to common borders etc). Would you mind explaining how this trade influence thing works? I don't quite understand if it's a fixed percentage of maximum resources you can buy, or whether it applies only when countries are competing for the same resources.

Either way, it's a pretty cheap way of maximizing factory output in the first few years or so when you don't have enough military factories to utilize all the resources anyway, and eventually during war when trade influence shoots to 0 for all enemies, your only viable trade partners should be able to purchase an even larger portion of the resources you have on sale.

 

[Denkt]

Did any country IRL deliberately cut-off trade with their own allies?

Did not the allies purchase alot of resources from countries near germany to deny Germany those resources?

Would you mind explaining how this trade influence thing works?

I don't know how it works but you can read about it here: http://www.hoi4wiki.com/Trade

 

[vector1]

Well, as I read it, trade influence only comes into play when two parties are competing for the same resources from the same country. In that situation I'd imagine that if both have 150 trade influence, both can import up to half the resources if both try to max out their trade, and it may change proportionally with influence.

If this is the case, it's safe to say that USA/USSR/UK will never buy steel from ITA/JAP in MP given their natural abundance so I'm guessing that Axis should be free to buy up all the available excess resources on the market from their members, and vice versa for the Allies/Comintern for free resources.