Why is German industry so much more powerful than allied industry?

[Kovax]

Not really - Germany didn't just vapourise. West and East Germany were created and began producing stuff.

Not to venture too far into forbidden territory, but post-war GER was severely gutted of anything even resembling industry, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It wasn't until a few years after the war that rebuilding efforts began, as the West started to view the Soviets as a far bigger threat than what little was left of Germany.

 

[TheRomanRuler]

Not really - Germany didn't just vapourise. West and East Germany were created and began producing stuff.

West Germany was not created until 1949... Approximetly at that point US dominance in that chart begins to drop.

 

[Sharp163]

It is hard to judge much from that, since when Germany surrendered, Germany went out of existance as nation. And Italy was fighting civil war. French nation was shattered. Soviets occuppied a lot of Europe.
So naturally USA, being safe in American continent, would temporaly have bigger part of world GDB.

Look at the chart. Even in 1939, before the war had started, US controlled 35% of the global economy. They had been on an increase for a long while.

 

[No idea]

Is the suppoused big advantage Daniel has in factories allowing him to build far more "heavy" equipment (tanks and everything motorized) than the allies?

I ask because the biggest chunk of worlds crude and refined products (fuel) production came from America (not just the USA, but America). If fuel is used to make motorized equipment, Daniel shouldnt be able to make as many as the allies (and that without taking into account that crude in itself meant nothing. It had to be refined)

 

[Secret Master]

View attachment 161822 If this game is accurate, the US should control nearly half of the global economy.

Yes, and it can do that in HOI3 at least.

But in fairness to the rest of the world, bombings and occupations and disruption of trade and casualties from the fighting and the strangulation of Japan's economy thanks to the effective elimination of her merchant marine all contribute to a drop in effective GDP from countries that normally contribute a sizable amount of economic activity to that total.

 

[Axe99]

There's a couple of issues here - both the underlying balance of factories (the US and UK combined dockyard count should be multiples of Germany's unless Da9l went all-in on building dockyards - which his other factory figures suggest he didn't) but also of occupation policies and colonies and the like. For example, the Raj is split off from the UK, so the UK doesn't have access to its factories and manpower potential, and this makes a lot of sense - but it also makes a lot of sense for there to be limits to what Germany (or anyone else) can get from occupation (including immediately post-annexation), and it looks like in this build it may have been a tad easy to snowball once Da9l got rolling. We'll see once it launches, it's likely all subject to balancing and the like at the moment.

Here are the starting figures for the UK from the last DD: 19 dock, 34 civ, 14 military = 67 total.

Here are the minimum estimates in 1944, from what Adam posted: 49 dock, 101 civ, 211 military = 361 total.

So I was wrong in the above post. It wasn't a 200% increase, it was a 440% increase in overall industrial potential, plus whatever per factory bonuses apply.

Does this not strike anyone as rather a lot? Factories are too cheap and easy to come by.

With HoI3, there was virtually no expansion in industry once the war got going, which was also not historically on-point - but there's a chance they may have over-compensated for that in HoI4.

 

[Sharp163]

Yes, and it can do that in HOI3 at least.

But in fairness to the rest of the world, bombings and occupations and disruption of trade and casualties from the fighting and the strangulation of Japan's economy thanks to the effective elimination of her merchant marine all contribute to a drop in effective GDP from countries that normally contribute a sizable amount of economic activity to that total.

I see. So, you're saying that the US takes up a larger percentage than the rest of the world, because the occupation and bombing of industry does not effect them as much, and furthermore the rest of the world's economic output takes a hit (making the US a larger share of the pie).

A valid point, but I will respond in the same way I did last time:

Look at the chart. Even in 1939, before the war had started, US controlled 35% of the global economy. They had been on an increase for a long while.

The US is quite often nerfed in paradox games. I hope that in this incarnation of the series, we will be able to experience the raw power of the sleeping giant

 

[Secret Master]

The US is quite often nerfed in paradox games. I hope that in this incarnation of the series, we will be able to experience the raw power of the sleeping giant

Well, then I see your sleeping giant, and raise you this:

This is the United States of Planned Economies!

Introduction

The question posed by this thread is whether the United States can outproduce the world. In order to undertake this experiment, I took control of the USA and followed a few simple rules.

1) No CGM
2) Capital ships in the build queue will be finished before the war starts (but not necessarily right away).
3) I will not raise threat on anyone to get laws early.
4) I will not game factions to join the war early.
5) I will trade with the world via autotrade (no starving the Axis).
6) I will not occupy IC or resources (turned out to be moot; see below).
7) I will buy or sell supplies as needed (turned out to be moot; see below).
8) No manipulation of dissent to change politics or engage the "Prepare for War" decision.

This is a production test, so the US will only defend its shores. It will not fight at all except to protect convoys (turned out to be moot; see below) or defend its currently held bases. Per other production tests I've done, occupying enemy territory and resources, even a little, can throw off results.

Also, since we are not trying to test whether or not the US can reach specific military production targets, I will just build IC, supplies, or anything else I deem necessary.

Short version:

I achieved this level of production before resources were exhausted:

Moot Points:

Before going any further, we need to talk about what IC investment to the tune of 1505 effective IC does to the game. First, it turns the US into a net importer of raw materials. This severely hurts the Allies, as it cuts them off from their usual supply of rares, energy, and steel. Britain found itself losing to the Axis in the Med and India even before Japan declared war.

But even more important, if the US is a net importer, Japan won't declare war because the US ends up importing resources from even Japan and Germany. In this game, thanks to the insatiable desire of US IC for resources, the US is desperately trading with everyone it can. And since US flagged convoys are moving German and Japanese coal to US shores, the blockade against the Axis powers is only halfway ineffective. Hitler's war ends up being partially financed by US dollars.

The result of this is that I had to manually declare war on Japan using the noneutrality cheat on January 2nd, 1942, just to see what US IC looks like under maximum laws. I didn't even have enough threat to DOW without noneutrality thanks to how the war was turning out.

Building IC

Aside from the initial ships in the queue at game start, I purely built IC the entire time. It is a very boring way to play. That being said, it takes a long time to get construction practicals up. Normally, I might cook some other stuff that I need to get initial practicals in place, but since IC is the only thing I care about, that's all I built. I eventually reached a 71% cost and time reduction in construction practicals, but most of that reduction didn't kick in until 39.

The reason is because the New Deal sucks out a ton of IC into consumer goods. I used a consumer goods reducing minister until 39 to cut this cost, and then switched to a resource minister and started monitoring my trades heavily (keeping resources up). The US does not have an IC minister you can appoint under FDR's government, and I wasn't going to manipulate my politics using dissent. (There is a spare IC minister somewhere; a vice president I think.)

The lack of threat throughout this particular game (and I'm not raising it myself) makes it harder to get better production in place even after the New Deal is removed. A lot of US IC is tied up in bad laws; but once the floodgates open in late 1939, you can produce tons of IC.

One further problem with US laws is consumer goods orientation; while it has advantages, once you get past 600 IC or so, the boost you could hypothetically get from heavy industry emphasis outweighs the extra consumer goods. But since I can't turn communist, it's a moot point.

Resources

As you can see in the above picture, the US is 24 hours away from a national crisis of coal. While there is plenty of coal (and in HOI3, energy more or less means coal, since you can't trade hydroelectricity or nuclear power to other countries that are across oceans in 1936), most of the world's coal is either tied up in the war or consumed by other countries. I reached 1505 IC, but it is not sustainable.

But resource numbers in January of 1942 only tell part of the story. It turns out that sucking all the world's resources towards the United States screws, well, everyone. Part of the problem is that the US ends up importing everything. Rares are the first thing she needs to import, but good relations with the Soviets and Britain can help cover some of that. But eventually, coal takes the lead. And the US sucks up all the free coal in the world, even from the Axis, as time goes on.

But that means a ton of smaller minors are more or less starved for energy. And eventually, even majors like Britain start to feel the hurt as they mobilize their economies.

The problem is acute. When I totaled up the IC of various powers, I thought some countries seemed to be a bit low (Australia, New Zealand). It turned out that several Dominions and other minors had low IC because they couldn't fuel anything. The world of HOI3 really depends on trade (good), but when the US just buys every damn thing and never exports a single unit of raw materials, the system crashes. Canada and Hungary and Romania were fine, but some minors had less effective IC than base IC even at full economic mobilization.

This actually helped me achieve my goal, as it lowered the IC bar a tad.

World IC

Calculating world IC was kind of a pain in the arse (I'm not doing it again, either). Part of the difficulty, aside from tag switching to every damn country, is that it's always in a bit of flux. Between occupations, resource starvation, and ministers, in a month it can swing back and forth considerably.

By my count, the world had a total of 1476 IC. But this figure is derived from Japan occupying most of India, a stalemate in Barbarossa that stopped well short of Leningrad, a UK that is starving for resources (both lost convoys and lack of resources), and a Soviet Union that has just had its special decisions expire. Some specific numbers:

GER 350
SOV 288
ITA 123
Japan 207
ENG 150
Sweden 35
Canada 56
Romania 57
Hungary 47
Switzerland 21

I would like to point out another little detail. The Soviet Union had a hard time enacting better laws this time when the war started. Barbarossa started significantly later than usual for some damn reason, and even after it started, the Soviets didn't have enough money to get their laws into gear when it started. I'm not entirely sure why the Soviets had so little money even after the shooting started, but someone might argue that economic problems nerfed Soviet IC to lower levels than it should be. But in reviewing other save games, SOV IC seems roughly on par with what it should be.

I do wonder what the weird threat levels have done to the IC of other countries, though.

Conclusion

The game's economy is not really designed to handle the kind of economies of scale that come into play under these circumstances. We've seen how the game's edges fray when I've run other production tests, but I think this test shows just how interdependent the world economy is in HOI3.

Given resource limitations, a more reasonable sustainable amount of IC would probably be around 1000 effective IC, depending on how effectively you can stockpile rares and energy. (After the energy crash on January 4th, the effective IC of the USA in the above game is 992, with a continued deficit of 136 rares per day even at the level.)

I do think that, despite the relatively short-lived nature of the IC production peak, that this test demonstrates that in HOI3, the USA can outproduce the entire rest of the world for a very brief amount of time. To say that the USA in HOI3 can outproduce the rest of the world is not an insane statement to make, even if the strategy that leads you to a point where the US can outproduce the world is not optimum for winning the game.

Someone said I was insane for thinking the US could outproduce the world in a Paradox game. I proved them wrong.

For a serious test of the US reaching its historical production goals, look here:

A Build Plan for the USA III: The Practicals Strike Back

As stated above, my goal was to hit the most realistic production targets, under the most realistic laws, based on suggestions from my more knowledgeable colleagues.

The Production Targets by 15 August 1945 (as set by misterbean, Cybvep and TheBromgrev):

Army (from Cybvep and misterbean):

12 MAR
90 ENG
100 MOT
35 ARM
35 TD
50 SPART
20 GAR
10 ART
16 PARA
4 Ranger
10 MP

The navy (from TheBromgrev's data):

9CVE
23CV
9BB
17CA
41CL
88DD
27 SS

The airforce (misterbean's conversion of the historical OOB)

97 strat
16 tac
8 cas
68 M/R
1 int
29 transports

Misc:
1500 convoys will be built.
500 escorts will be built. (Both based on numbers pulled out of a very dark place by Cybvep)
All ports in the continental US should have level 10 airfields, ports, and RADAR (simplification of US constructions during the war per Cybvep)
I should have at least 2 nuclear bombs available in time for V-J Day (my and Cybvep's goals)
The Allies will receive 25 LL/day until I enter the war. I will then give them 50 IC/day. (Cybvep's interpretation of historical LL values).


Notes about the plan:

Before entering the war, the USA will utilize Specialist Training. After entering the war, the USA will downshift to Advanced Training. 24 months after joining the war, the USA will downshift again to Basic Training.


The results:













I got damn close to achieving success, but alas, I did not quite make it.

First, I included that map of the USA so you could see the RADAR impact off the coast. I obviously built plenty of infrastructure.

The production screen shows that I did not make the nuclear bomb quota; however, this requires an explanation later because it's not my fault. I could have built 20 reactors and I would never have hit the quota because of how civil nuclear research and nuclear bomb making interacted with the composition of the Allies this time.

The convoys and escorts do not reflect the number I produced; Japan and Germany sank every single escort I made and sank several hundred convoys, since I just based the entire USN at Washington DC and just watched the production screen while watching Best of the Worst on Red Letter Media because I didn't feel like hunting submarines, and I wasn't about to let the AI do it.

I missed the battleship quota by less than 90 days.

I overshot the STR and MR quota substantially.

I hit all army targets.

I hit all other naval targets, including tons of CAGs.

Thoughts:

Let's talk about nuclear bombs for a moment.

Under the current rules, it is almost impossible to get 2 nuclear bombs in place in time for the historical bombing of Japan because of how research works right now. The USA can't borrow Uranium or Heavy Water from the Allies until they join. If they do it on the historical date, they spend years researching nuclear physics and nuclear techs very slowly. This has a huge impact on getting bombs for two reasons. First, you can't even build a reactor until you hit Civil Nuclear Research 1. Second, bomb making practicals only speed up nuclear bomb making. It doesn't speed up Civil Nuclear Research, which must be at level 4 before you can research nuclear bomb making. So, while I had built 4 nuclear reactors (2 in DC and 2 in Chicago because why the hell not), they didn't help me research nukes until the middle of 1945. And by then, it was too late. I literally had both Nuke Theory and the unlocked nuclear techs always in the active portion of the research queue, no matter how ahead of time they were, and I was still unable to get bomb making started in a reasonable amount of time. Regardless, the lack of bombs had nothing to do with insufficient IC invested in the Manhattan Project.

Now, as for the build plan in general, I built 100 base IC before the war. I also built all the convoys and escorts before the war, along with ports, airfields, and RADAR. The ships that are in the queue at game start got delayed until the IC and infrastructure was completed.

Most units were completed in batches of 5, 10, 15, or 20. I built the TRA first to generate heavy aircraft practicals. I only built STR starting in 1942. The MRs were started in 1941, but I had already gained practicals from CAGs, so it wasn't as hard as I thought to get that quota done. I upgraded several INF to MAR and PARA, while adding some Rangers to generate infantry practical. That infantry practical was needed to help build all those ENG brigades. The armor, TDs, MOT, and SPART weren't that hard to build once the first runs were finished.

The battleships were a disappointment. I honestly think that if I had shuffled around some units in the queue, I could have hit that quota. The catch with battleships is their long build times. You have to put enough into the queue sooner rather than later. That means either doing more at one time, or starting them at an early point in time. Note that once I started on them in late 41, I never stopped working on them.

The downshift to Basic Training in 43 was absolutely vital to making it as far as I did. I also think that researching IC production and IC efficiency techs the entire time was a good move. Since I had such nice construction practicals, I was almost 4 years ahead of time in these techs, letting me squeeze just a bit more IC out of my industry. Furthermore, researching supply production ahead of time helped keep the supply impact on IC down. I was still hitting close to 100 IC/day in supply costs close to the end.

I spent around half the game with a consumer goods cost reduction minister, and the other half with a supply production minister. The USA does not have an IC minister, although when you have tons of IC, consumer goods costs can creep up, making the consumer good cost reduction minister useful at key times.

Am I missing anything in my discussion? Did I leave something out you need to know?

For those interested, I do have some save games from a couple of points in the game.

 

[jackalope81]

Are these numbers really realistic? I mean, did the UK actually triple it's overall industrial capacity between 1936 and 1944? Or did it have a modest increase overall and mostly shift a lot of industrial capacity from civilian to military ends?

That's a difficult thing to judge. Straight military production definitely did in most big categories like tanks, planes, shipping, etc. While the game says civilian vs. military vs. resource reality is a bit more textured. I'd say in most cases luxury and civilian production and personnel got transitioned to military, sometimes that was painting the cars different colors, sometimes converting the factory to something else, sometimes ceasing production altogether.

My grandfather had a radio shop prewar. He bought parts and assembled radios and sold them. In 1940 or so his suppliers said no more parts, government buying all of them. A few months later they sent out a call for radio builders to enlist. No longer having a business he enlisted. He ended up running a top secret after factory radar installation and testing facility in the California desert.

It's the kind of transition that's hard to depict in GDP or factory numbers but I think the new system is better because it at least simulates the transition and the need to balance and get resources on a continuous basis.

 

[Praetonia]

Among other reasons, devs say they had to buff Germany to make game interesting. If you would play as allies with Germany being as strong as it was historically, there would be no challenge and you would only be racing on how quickly you can get to Berlin.
Germany (with allies) was fighting 6 years against the world. Not easiest thing to balance in any game.

That seems dubious to me.

The US had a much larger economy and so much larger potential production than any other country in WWII, but very low initial mobilisation which meant that that potential production took a long time to be realised.

In a simplistic game, that doesn't treat mobilisation very well, I would understand fudging a model of this by just assigning the US an ahistorically small economy. This will tend to overstate US production early war, and understate it late war, but possible average out to about right.

This game, however, seems to be implementing a complex economic model specifically designed to treat mobilisation. If this isn't sufficient to "balance" the US with its historical economy size, that suggests the mobilisation model doesn't work, probably for other countries as well.

 

[Kazansky22]

Germany literally took over half of Earth.... So I would except alot of production.

(if we are talking about the game we saw paradox play)

 

[Praetonia]

I haven't seen the game, but to put into context, the whole European continent minus the USSR had about 25% more economic output than the USA:

That includes Italy and places Germany didn't historically conquer like Sweden, and ignores war damage, the effects of resistance and the British blockade, and reduced productivity of uncooperative conquered work forces or slave labourers. It also ignores the fact that the UK and especially US had larger output gap than the Axis countries and the USSR, meaning their production grew faster during the war.

Even with pretty optimistic assumptions, an historic Germany at the height of its conquests should have about the same output as the US and about twice the output of the UK+dominions. The total US-British Empire alliance should have a 50-100% advantage.

 

[TheRomanRuler]

I haven't seen the game, but to put into context, the whole European continent minus the USSR had about 25% more economic output than the USA:

That includes Italy and places Germany didn't historically conquer like Sweden, and ignores war damage, the effects of resistance and the British blockade, and reduced productivity of uncooperative conquered work forces or slave labourers. It also ignores the fact that the UK and especially US had larger output gap than the Axis countries and the USSR, meaning their production grew faster during the war.

Even with pretty optimistic assumptions, an historic Germany at the height of its conquests should have about the same output as the US and about twice the output of the UK+dominions. The total US-British Empire alliance should have a 50-100% advantage.

But we must also remember that they are not working as one effective nation, but instead are divided among dozens of nations, reducing overall effectiveness.

 

[keynes2.0]

This IC thing reflects a long standing problem with paradox games where they dont model the limits of power projection.

American industry dwarfed German industry. They had twice the population, more efficient industry and way more natural resources. Germany had some conquests but the US had an extensive sphere of influence of it's own. However the US couldn't just squash Germany with it's greater resources because the US had to project power on the other side of the world. That's long supply chains with German submarines forcing you to protect those supply lines.

Paradox has removed all the costs of those supply lines. It's no more expensive to put American troops in Paris or Alexandria then it is to put them in Havanna. So as a result, the US gets a big old whack with the nerf bat so Germany doesn't get crushed. The game is balanced around the assumption that they are fighting in Europe so German supply lines aren't represented while American ones are.

The problem is that Germany is now overpowered and there's no limits of power projection to hold Germany back. The US received a 50% nerf to represent the 50% cost of projecting force to Europe but Germany has it's full force. So what happens if they fight in India or Japan? There Germany should have long supply lines too but instead Germany is fighting at full strength while the US remains nerfed. And what happens if they fight in North America? The US is nerfed to represent the difficulty fighting far from home even though it isn't. And Germany meanwhile has it's full strength.

 

[Cardus]

Aircraft production stats are pretty revealing in that the US pulled off double the number of total aircraft despite the USSR outproducing USA significantly in '39 and '40. And even then, the US produced 4x as many bombers of all types (i.e. larger / more production intensive aircraft had an even bigger gap). America outproduced it in light and medium AFVs, although the USSR took the #1 Heavy Tanks production spot easily. Then there were locomotives, trucks and so on. And naval production obviously dwarfed the USSR...

Then there was the fact that LL allowed the soviets to further specialise their production, with a third of the Red Army's truck strength being American shipped, and raw materials including petrochemical products being shipped in large volume to the USSR.

The Americans were beast mode, industrially. The USSR was also very large, but still had nothin' on America in raw industrial terms.

There was a very little difference between the 2 countries: one was invaded and lost land, raw material, manpower and about 20 million of people the other country didn't.

 

[Cardus]

Look here i have numbers: http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi2wiki/index.php/GDP_statistics
Its a comparison of wartime GDPs of some countries. If you look at 1941, you see that the US ($1094 billion) produces roughly as much as Germany, France, Italy, Austria and the USSR combined ($1074 billion). If you throw in scandinavia and the other countries Daniel's Germans have occupied it is perfectly logical for him to have more IC than the USA.

I like this approach but when I studied the matter I found out that the best approximation for IC is the steel production.
This because in GDP you count ALL, from milk to ball bearings, from making a car to take a nap on the office's chair. Instead IC means essentially producing stuff/things.

 

[Praetonia]

This IC thing reflects a long standing problem with paradox games where they dont model the limits of power projection.

American industry dwarfed German industry. They had twice the population, more efficient industry and way more natural resources. Germany had some conquests but the US had an extensive sphere of influence of it's own. However the US couldn't just squash Germany with it's greater resources because the US had to project power on the other side of the world. That's long supply chains with German submarines forcing you to protect those supply lines.

Paradox has removed all the costs of those supply lines. It's no more expensive to put American troops in Paris or Alexandria then it is to put them in Havanna. So as a result, the US gets a big old whack with the nerf bat so Germany doesn't get crushed. The game is balanced around the assumption that they are fighting in Europe so German supply lines aren't represented while American ones are.

The problem is that Germany is now overpowered and there's no limits of power projection to hold Germany back. The US received a 50% nerf to represent the 50% cost of projecting force to Europe but Germany has it's full force. So what happens if they fight in India or Japan? There Germany should have long supply lines too but instead Germany is fighting at full strength while the US remains nerfed. And what happens if they fight in North America? The US is nerfed to represent the difficulty fighting far from home even though it isn't. And Germany meanwhile has it's full strength.

I'm not sure I agree with the basic logic here. US to Europe was a long way, but sea lines of communication are extremely efficient. The cost/resource consumption of shipping materiel from Berlin to Ukraine can well have been greater than that of shipping materiel from New York to Cherbourg, Antwerp, or Tobruk.

 

[Denkt]

USA have basiacally everything you can wish for (maybe not the initiative):

• Secure position
• Very large industry and well developed regions
• Very large population
• Massive amounts of resources

I think that is enough, if you make this country even more powerful, the game will be completely decided by USA alone.

 

[Kovax]

I think that is enough, if you make this country even more powerful, the game will be completely decided by USA alone.

Well, historically, the war was almost decided anyway by the time the US got more than peripherally involved. The long and painful struggle to finish the fight still took a few more years, and could have taken a lot longer, which the US certainly had a major effect on.

As keynes2.0 pointed out, nerfing the US to balance out the very significant cost of power projection from North America to Europe doesn't work at all if Germany invades the US, where Germany doesn't have to pay to project power across the Atlantic, but the US is still paying to project power even though it's using it at home. Streamlining and consolidating the costs and considerations for conducting operations on distant continents into a very basic system is fine to a degree (micromanaging individual transports and depots would be a nightmare), but removing that aspect of warfare entirely, or making it one-sided (such as by reducing the productivity of some countries and not others, regardless of circumstances), creates other serious problems.

 

[sandman2575]

While I'm very excited about HoI4's upcoming release, the WorldWarWednesdays already show that Germany is overpowered and unbalanced, and the idea that Germany becomes an industrial juggernaut that surpasses the USA is beyond ridiculous.

If HOI4 is going to resemble anything like actual history, its path to 'victory' cannot be by becoming the industrial arsenal of fascism. Germany didn't succeed in the early war because it outproduced its enemies. It succeeded, in a real sense, through shock and awe. It depended on spectacular, fast victories, on creating an aura of invincibility. The Wehrmacht was superior to other major European armies, like the French, not because it was bigger and better equipped, but because it was highly coordinated and organized, generally well led, and employed a new system of warfare based on shock and speed and combined arms that really did take France and other countries by surprise (since France and UK were essentially planning on fighting WW1 all over again). It demoralized its enemies. It didn't grind them into the dust. It succeeded beyond its expectations in Poland and especially in France -- where Manstein's plan was in many ways a highly risky gamble that, fortunately for the Germans, paid off in spades. Germany's conquest of France was by no means a sure thing. It could have gone very differently.

How different history might have been if Czechoslovakia (which possessed a capable army) had resisted German annexation in '38. Or if France had acted decisively to attack Germany in '39 or '40.

My point is, HOI4 should *not* be balanced in favor of Germany victory. It should *not* be a cakewalk for the German player. "World Conquest" should frankly be inconceivable for Germany - a complete impossibility. At no point was Germany capable of 'conquering the world' or even all of Europe. A German 'victory' in WW2, its best-case scenario, would look like essentially what did happen up to the Nazi invasion of Russia -- conquest of Western Europe and Poland, an armistice with Great Britain (whereby GB sues for peace after France's fall, ceding some colonial possessions -- that's the best case -- Germany was incapable of successfully invading and conquering the Home Isles). In USSR, the best case would probably have involved USSR ceding Ukraine and Baltic states to Germany (Stalin actually did consider this in the early weeks of the invasion), leading to a negotiated armistice between the two powers.

If the *assumption* of HOI4 is that Germany should be capable of 'conquering the world,' then the game is by definition unbalanced. The only reason anyone fantasizes that Germany could have done so is because Germany succeeded so spectacularly in '39 and '40. It took several *large* gambles and they all paid off handsomely. They looked like world beaters! Nothing stood in their way! Unfortunately for Germany, Hitler and his Nazi cronies succumbed to their own propaganda, and launched a spectacularly ill-conceived invasion of the Soviet Union -- and the rest, as they say, is history.

And so as a corollary, Germany should never possess more industrial capacity than the USA or USSR. That's just absurd.