Why Military Economy is always better than Civilian Economy when it's not supposed to?

[LeanLeaf]

As far as I know civilian economy is focused on building, trade (and yes consumer goods) while military economy is focused on military production.

In real life, this is a trade-off.

In Hearts of Iron 4 Military Economy is completely superior to the point where as any nation your goal is to get to Military Economy/Total Mobilization ASAP.

This feels a bit unrealistic to me. A bit is an understatement.

Wouldn't it make more sense if there was a trade-off like in real life? The real life trade off would be the quality of life due to consumer goods (but since low consumer goods that has no negative effect there are other things it can be worked on)

Civilian Economy
- Faster construction time for civillian buildings.
- Better fuel gain per oil (it's much better and easier to do this in peace time, and offsets less consumer goods nicely; Germany had a war economy since 1933 which hindered the oil trade)
- Increased stability.
- Decreased war support.
- Better trade deals (whatever; we already have Trade Laws for that but giving you a multiplier to exported resources would be a nice representation of that)

Military Economy
- Faster construction time for military buildings.
- Faster dockyard construction speed (since it's exclusively military in game)
- Better production of military equipment.
- Less consumer goods (this needs an offset in Civilian Economy, we already have increased stability but that's a counterpart to war support not this one; got it, better fuel gain per oil)
- Increased war support.
- Worse trade deals (maybe, instead of a bonus for Civilian Economy, you could have something like -25% exported resources for trade, those resources are not used by your own country [even though in theory they are] for balance reasons)

Early Mobilization & Partial Mobilization are a mix between the 2. With early predominantly civillian but still a bit military. While partial being a mix between the 2.

While Total Mobilization
- Faster construction time for civillian buildings.
- Faster construction time for military buildings.
- Faster dockyard construction speed (since it's exclusively military in game)
- Better production of military equipment.
- Less consumer goods (so far you have all the best sides from Civillian & War Economy)
- Continous decreased stability. (since you basically push people to work to the extreme)
- No change to war support. (how this would change depends a lot on the nation and the circumstances so a rule that will increase/decrease it can't be made)
- Worse trade deals (Total Mobilization still gets the lower end of the stick in that department)

What do you think?

 

[Cavalry]

The in game trade off is 150 PP. In real life they don't cost PP.

 

[LeanLeaf]

I believe there is a substantial difference between the cost of some fictional PP (that didn't exist in real life & is easy to acquire) and the benefits of the Military Economy you get in Hearts of Iron 4 as opposed to Civillian Economy. Did you ever prefer using Civillian Economy over the Military one?

 

[blahmaster6k]

I think most of these are good ideas, many have been seen in conversion mods before, but there are problems with a few of them.

1. On fuel gain per oil: the fuel resource we see in-game is fuel devoted to military use. Fuel gain per oil going down on civilian economy makes sense, as more of the fuel production is going to civilians driving around in cars etc. In a war economy civilian fuel use is rationed or banned, and the vast majority of a nation's fuel supply goes to the military.
2. War support being affected by economy law. This is a problem because one of the requirements to change economy laws is a war support threshold. If civilian economy itself reduced war support it would make switching to partial or even early mobilization extremely difficult for the Allies, and the USSR would likely have to waste an extra 150 PP going through early or partial mobilization to get to war economy to get the required 50 war support target.

One last thing, the increased civilian factory construction speed for civ eco would have to be substantial, or else it's still better speed-wise to go to early/partial mobilization for the reduced consumer goods factories. A bunch of extra factories building at 100% speed is almost always better than no extra factories building at 110% speed or whatever hypothetical small modifier is added.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

U need war support to get out of civilian economy, so make civilian economy reduce war support is a dead lock.

The game already have many dead locks, at point they introduce "fancy" decisions to increase it, otherwise minors are permantly locked out of total mobilization.

Civilizan economy is pointless because theres nothing to do with.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

"Civilian economy" and anything like that, only will make sense, if they bring money back to the game.

With money u can buy/import military equipment, easy diplomatic/spy missions, import resources;....

 

[Herennius]

I have the feeling that this might see a rework in future - I remember that items related to "being under mobilization" (and I count a serious war economy among that) getting a price tag are on the roadmap list.

It maybe a good idea to formalize the great ideas here into a proper suggestion in part of the forums dedicated to those.

 

[Simon_9732495]

In Hearts of Iron 4 Military Economy is completely superior to the point where as any nation your goal is to get to Military Economy/Total Mobilization ASAP.

I'm fine with that.
It's ok for gameplay that you have a state that is better then another. Not everything has to be balanced (stupid example: It's fine that Guns2 are better than Guns1)

Everyone starts with the Toaster (civilian economy) except Germany, Italy, Japan and Communist China which start with partial mobilization.

So you start with a state that is not optimal in the context of the game and play to reach the better states. (Again like going from Guns1 to Guns2)
I'm fine with it...


An improvement might be to weaken Total Mobilization a bit. In my opinion this is best the best economy law by a good margin and maybe it shouldn't be that good.
MAYBE an idea could be to have something country specific there. So total mob for Japan is fine, but total mob for the Netherlands has serious disadvantages.
But maybe that would be complexity for not much benefit... Not sure...

 

[Mattias88]

One solution could be to add ticking costs to the better laws. Like a ticking cost of pp, stability and/or war support the higher up you go. That way you could not stay at such laws forever.

 

[Terracos]

The problem is how to balance some things, but in general, there should be two trade offs:

Mobilisation should reduce stability. To make your people suffer for a cause, you have to give them one or they will rebel: So the higher your mobilisation, the lower your stability.
Second, mobilisation should not increase CIV factory built speed, it should reduce it, substantially. It does not make sense to speed up factory construction speed for CIVs. Civilian economy should have no penalty to build CIVS, War economy should reduce CIV built speed by 35%, Total Mob by 50%. On the other hand, higher mobilisation should increase factory and dockyard output.
A war economy does not grow by increasing civilian output, it trades civilian output for military output, like transforming car factories into tank factories.

There is also one big thing that is really bothering me: It is hardly ever worth to swap CIVs into MILs when this was the core mechanic of all nations during WWII to increase military production.

 

[Alexander 'The Grape']

A lot of the economic logic of the game is there to prevent the Allies massive economic superiority from meaning they have an overwhelming advantage.


The game is balanced around the Axis having an economic advantage early due to more starting mills and faster mobilisation, and the Allies having the ability to catch up later due to their superior overall economies/resources.

The main means by which this happens is the World Tension/War Support/Economic Law system. Axis have to be careful not to provide too much War Support to the Allies early, and so have to take their aggressive actions very carefully.

If Civilian Economy was superior to War Economy in the early game, or even comparable, then the entire war support/world tensions system becomes unviable, and allies get a massive economic advantage.



It's important to distuinguish between "Common Sense" and actual good design.

 

[Alexander 'The Grape']

There is also one big thing that is really bothering me: It is hardly ever worth to swap CIVs into MILs when this was the core mechanic of all nations during WWII to increase military production.

What's the reasoning behind this assertion? For plenty of nations it absolutely is worth swapping CIVs for MILs, especially if you overbuild CIVs early and need to correct an earlier mistake.

 

[Sbrubbles]

There are some mods with systems of economic fatigue like World Ablaze where the more mobilized you are the faster your economy starts getting into trouble and you start losing war support. In these mods you will still want to mobilize quickly (winning the war is all that matters in a historical playthrough, of course), but at least you will be able to see the "point" of lower levels of mobilization.

So yeah, look to mods.

 

[Harin]

Having economic tiers, a tower if you will, makes sense to me from a gaming standpoint. It is intuitive game play. Moving up is good. Moving down is bad.

To define what is good or bad, we should probably remember this is a grand strategy war game with a short time span. Our goal is to build up our militaries, so if the effects of moving up the tower is all about improving our military systems, then that is focused game design to me. As it is now, the civilian side of the economy is abstracted down to an invisible appendage/parasite/catheter/etc... that drains military power. Going up the tower reduces the drain.

If changes are made, it would be difficult to be more focused and intuitive than it is now. The OP's suggestions, though useful, probably should not be part of the economic tower. The tower is caveman simple. The effects a long war can have on the economy probably need to happen outside the economic tower. These effects probably should have a separate path, so not to contaminate the economic tower's path. One immediate (not suggesting it is the best or only) path comes to mind. Use manpower (and tech?) to man the factories. Maybe use manpower to man other buildings, even all buildings, if necessary. It is a new path. It can be simple and intuitive. A manpower path can introduce all kinds of economic details into the game, without contaminating the simple and focused economic tower.

Since the economic game is abstracted so much, there is plenty of room to introduce more details. We probably just want to be careful not to mess with the bits that are working well, from a get-the-war-started point of view.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

This is not a sim city game, where you are permantly at trouble.

In sim city you have unpopularity to deal, and a city to grow.

To grow the city you have to lower the taxes, people start to come to the city, it's grow, but with lower taxes u can't build anything, then your unpopularity grow because without public services the city become a big slum.

If you rise the taxes, and build things, people start to leave, and your unpopularity grow because of high taxes and public services increase property values.


In hoi4 we should't have to deal with "civil issues", we aren't a major of a city.

Like @Harin said the political system is here almost to balance Allies VS Axis.

War's aren't permanent, but wars ending because of civil unrest are exception not the rule.

 

[KubiG37]

I absolutely agree that it doesn't make sense that Civ economy is the worst at everything.

BUT - after giving it some thought, I started taking it as an abstraction of many things mixed together. There is no money in the game, so there are no debts either. No unhappy civilians demanding a democracy and free trade, no literacy, workforce etc....

To me - Starting economy laws only represent the amount of political and economical "dedication" of the nation towards war. Since there is no money, you don't need loans to pay for your tanks. And with the limited gametime (~10 years), I think it's safe to say that it doesn't matter. After the war breaks out, everything becomes regulated and controlled by the state (even in a democracy) and "traditional money" becomes useless, until the war is either lost or won. (And the game ends then, so no need to pay loans, reparations etc...)

So, democracies start out weaker with a civilian economy, because they enjoy the peace and don't want a war (yet).

 

[PorkchopSandwiches247]

I made a thread about this a while back, the overall consensus was more or less that the game takes place in such a specific and relatively short point of time that the benefits of a (real life) Civilian Economy wouldnt really be able to apply to the total war type production of this period. This kind of makes sense, since so many aspects of this game are abstractions for the sake of gameplay and simplicity.

That said, I still feel like there should be SOMETHING negative to switching up to a higher economy, even if its not drastic (excluding the PP cost). Stability makes the most sense to me. Ie normal everyday Civilian Economy would provide people with the same routine lifestyle, so itd be a Stability boost (or at least unaffected). Meanwhile, switching over to a War Economy overnight just might disrupt peoples' normal everyday lives, so youd think there would be a hit to stability when that happens (even if it was just temporary).

 

[marcelo r. r.]

Just a remind the people of 40's wasn't "pacifist" like today, so we fall into the error of anachronism.

People today are more bothered by war, because there are so many options for entertainment.

Less "consumer goods" for the masses of the time, were less cigarettes and drink .. and not video games or cell phones, or even TV.

And there were economic crisis as a precedent for dissatisfaction with peace, the world in 20's 30's was a complete mess everywhere.

 

[Joshua Happytree]

The real life trade off would be the quality of life due to consumer goods

Not so long ago in times of "business as usual" military spending of EU countries were about 1.5% of GDP. US military now burn 3.3% of GDP. In WWII the share of military expenditures were from 42 to 50% of GDP. What quality of life to speak of if the military expenses grow 15 to 33 TIMES?

In Hearts of Iron 4 Military Economy is completely superior to the point where as any nation your goal is to get to Military Economy/Total Mobilization ASAP. This feels a bit unrealistic to me. A bit is an understatement.

Because when a country is in a major protracted war then military economy is not only better than a civilian one it's absolutely necessary. Read about what Speer did in Germany. When countries are in war the measure of economic success is not how rich and happy their populace is but how many tanks, fighters and rifles they're able to produce without letting the nation die of hunger or freezing.

 

[Joshua Happytree]

"Civilian economy" and anything like that, only will make sense, if they bring money back to the game. With money u can buy/import military equipment, easy diplomatic/spy missions, import resources;....

There's little "real" use of money in times of World Wars, it's predominantly barter trade both inside countries and between them. Like US gets Soviet roubles for military exports to the SU. What to do with them? Money won't buy anything from the Soviet Union. As much economy of the Soviet Union as possible is producing military stuff that the Soviet Union needs to win the war, it's not for exports. Everything of value for other countries is not left to free trade as well. Soviets can exchange it for more tank parts, armour steel, high octane gasoline etc.