Your proposal for improving HoI Economy

[Alexander 'The Grape']

Realism aside, I don't think the 'exponential growth' of civs is a big issue.

Civs are a risky investment for many nations. For some its optimal not to build any!

Most nations should only build civs up until around early 1937 if they want to maximise overall output.

Civ spam may look impressive, but it's nowhere near as strong as it feels.

Most growth in civ count comes form conquests, focuses, and trade. Civs don't really grow exponentially. The first civ you build likely won't even produce a whole civ's worth of output by the time you switch to mills.

This video explains it in more detail:

 

[Andreu]

And it would be interesting to copy any idea from the mod World Ablaze, like the Ministry of Business?

 

[pro.gamer.69]

The root of problems is the manpower spam meta "oh i will pick up massassault to win".

even if this were the meta, how would that be the case? spamming inf and planes isn't really "more" or "less" resrouce/eco intensive than tanks

Historical germany is already too restricted, in a optimal run hardly have 300 mils on june 1941.

Why is everyone spamming divisions in 1945+?

let me guess: everyone with mass assault multiplayer game, the solution: lets punish end game germany lol.

what servers are you playing in where mass assault Germany is common lmao

I know I'm repetitive in blaming the MP meta, but I've seen this same discussion in every game and even in MMPORG's that have multiplayer competitive(pvp), and it ends in the same: the perfectly balanced MP game is a blank soccer field, without geographic characteristics.... and in hoi4 some ppl already are noticed that are mods virtually "removing" minor nations.

removing minors has nothing to do with making the field more similar for both sides, it's so the game can run faster and with fewer players.

 

[Captain Palmtree]

Caps are honestly a really bad idea and needing them is proof that the current system is broken. I'll repeat my proposal again for this thread:

1. Significantly increase the cost of building new factories. New factories represent economic growth which should not occur at the ridiculous rates it does in the game.
2. Reduce the cost of factory conversion. Most wartime production occurs by sacrificing "butter" for "guns". There is somewhat of a tradeoff.
3. adjust the factory costs, economic laws, and the initial factory counts to achieve an optimal mix between balance and history (perhaps give the player a slider to decide between a balanced start and a historical start for factory count).

This solves the problem of ridiculous exponential growth by slowing down total factory count (preventing the need for building slot caps) but allows for rapid militarization under the correct economic laws (by converting civ factories to mils).

I agree with your point on caps that is why I almost exclusively play with the 50 construction slots mod on. The AI doesn't tend to snowball too much even with the larger possible factory count but it allows for smaller European and even the American states to be useful even till the end of the game.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

what servers are you playing in where mass assault Germany is common lmao

not for germany but for others, mass assault, its the only way others can extrapolate manpower.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

Caps are honestly a really bad idea and needing them is proof that the current system is broken. I'll repeat my proposal again for this thread:

1. Significantly increase the cost of building new factories. New factories represent economic growth which should not occur at the ridiculous rates it does in the game.

This solves the problem of ridiculous exponential growth by slowing down total factory count (preventing the need for building slot caps) but allows for rapid militarization under the correct economic laws (by converting civ factories to mils).

This make non-sense, if countries grows, economy should grow.

Actually would be better if USA DOUBLE its buildings slot availiable at home, so inst become a industrial joke that actually is.

Also outside europe theres no relevant availiable building slot, most countries are already capped.

U are discussing how to make a slugish game restricted to 1939-1942, thats really not have fun, must back to Hoi3 so.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

not for germany but for others, mass assault, its the only way others can extrapolate manpower.

manpower is a restricting factor for like 3 countries in MP (Finland, Australia, NZ, maybe Hungary/Canada if you extrapolate hard). that really isn't the case, the "meta" leans massively in favor of quality > quantity, and the exceptions are purely defensive countries like Raj, sometime the UK/USSR who go mass mob for the reinforcement, not the manpower.

 

[benis1996]

This make non-sense, if countries grows, economy should grow.

Actually would be better if USA DOUBLE its buildings slot availiable at home, so inst become a industrial joke that actually is.

Also outside europe theres no relevant availiable building slot, most countries are already capped.

U are discussing how to make a slugish game restricted to 1939-1942, thats really not have fun, must back to Hoi3 so.

What are you even trying to say?

 

[libaithewhite]

Modify how exported resources are handled, If no nation is buying my raw materials they should be either available for internal use or paid in civs, not getting either feels like a robbery.

Either the goods are sold to civilian markets, in which case the economy should benefit from it (civs), or they are just hanging around in warehouses because of no demand, in which case they should be available for internal use.

yes, also, i would like to see a difference between production and stock. if it gets sold i get paid in civs, if it doesn't i get it stored for my future needs. these are not perishable resources, so it would make complete sense. With the exception of oil.

 

[libaithewhite]

i would like to see a difference between resource production and stock. if a resource gets sold abroad i should get paid in civs, if it doesn't, i should be able to get it stored for my future needs. since these are not perishable resources it would make complete sense and be way more realistic, maybe with the exception of oil, that could distinguish between unrefined and refined oil. In the game, many times you can't take full advantage of your country's gdp, because you can't use or sell all your resources. Also, there should be some fluctuation in demand and offer, to reflect prices. When the war breaks, countries with oil to sell should see a biding spree for their oil, resources shouldn't have a fixed price but there should be price variations depending on demand and offer. For every resource to be worth 8 per civ from 1936 to 1950 is utterly unrealistic, there should be a biding market instead, inspired by historical price trends, and determined by the demand of each game.

 

[Captain Palmtree]

i would like to see a difference between resource production and stock. if a resource gets sold abroad i should get paid in civs, if it doesn't, i should be able to get it stored for my future needs. since these are not perishable resources it would make complete sense and be way more realistic, maybe with the exception of oil, that could distinguish between unrefined and refined oil. In the game, many times you can't take full advantage of your country's gdp, because you can't use or sell all your resources. Also, there should be some fluctuation in demand and offer, to reflect prices. When the war breaks, countries with oil to sell should see a biding spree for their oil, resources shouldn't have a fixed price but there should be price variations depending on demand and offer. For every resource to be worth 8 per civ from 1936 to 1950 is utterly unrealistic, there should be a biding market instead, inspired by historical price trends, and determined by the demand of each game.

That sounds a lot more like Vic 2 or 3 and may be too complex a trade system for this game although a watered down version may be possible without drawing too much time or computing power for the user.

 

[geneticsjms]

I'd like to see it done away with. My idea and I had this when game first came out. Is to make it be based on historical factories which are assigned production and of course can be targeted by bombers.

Like Germany starts with the open factory in berlin which historically made almost all their trucks. So if the poles or bomber hit it. Bam Germany loses all truck production until its repaired. Now there could be a generic version and a company specific version. Maybe the opel factory has a +5% output or something vs if Greece builds one. Furthermore each factory can be developed. More production lines, warehouses, worker housing, amenities like in real life. And of course any verboten topics can be ignored entirely. For the allies the Boeing factory in Washington could have a bonus to bomber production. The factories ran the war and that way economy shifts to how can I make my homeland factories more efficient versus I'm gonna drop 50+ MICs into occupied Ukraine for cheese which never happened. Germany bare had any production outside of its borders, rather it plundered and stole resources and equipment to ship back home.

As for civs you could have a basic civilian factory which translates to war support, happiness, and how many military ones you can support. It can be limited from getting to huge by 1) each state has 1-3 build slots and output ratio by railway level. 2) late game bombers, will cripple production as it did in real life.

It adds a whole new realm to focus on and be deeper in all game stages rather than just ohh queue up 5 civs and 35 mils.

 

[geneticsjms]

I'd like to see it done away with. My idea and I had this when game first came out. Is to make it be based on historical factories which are assigned production and of course can be targeted by bombers.

Like Germany starts with the open factory in berlin which historically made almost all their trucks. So if the poles or bomber hit it. Bam Germany loses all truck production until its repaired. Now there could be a generic version and a company specific version. Maybe the opel factory has a +5% output or something vs if Greece builds one. Furthermore each factory can be developed. More production lines, warehouses, worker housing, amenities like in real life. And of course any verboten topics can be ignored entirely. For the allies the Boeing factory in Washington could have a bonus to bomber production. The factories ran the war and that way economy shifts to how can I make my homeland factories more efficient versus I'm gonna drop 50+ MICs into occupied Ukraine for cheese which never happened. Germany bare had any production outside of its borders, rather it plundered and stole resources and equipment to ship back home.

As for civs you could have a basic civilian factory which translates to war support, happiness, and how many military ones you can support. It can be limited from getting to huge by 1) each state has 1-3 build slots and output ratio by railway level. 2) late game bombers, will cripple production as it did in real life.

It adds a whole new realm to focus on and be deeper in all game stages rather than just ohh queue up 5 civs and 35 mils.

And to further expand you could have naval, aircraft, heavy, light, and civilian lines.

These could switch easily I'm real life and you shouldn't be able to build bombers in the Porsche factory. It's gamebreaking to be able to switch from mass building panzers to maximum fighter production in a couple months. That's so unreal.

Aircraft - all airplanes
Heavy - medium/heavy tanks, tier 2/3 artillery/guns, railway guns
Light - all infantry weapons, light tanks, scout cars, tier 1 - artillery, trucks etc.
Naval - single factory but different add ons needed. Like a large drydock for carriers, submarine workshops etc.

Get rid of industry advisors and instead have those be the factories.

Could also add in ability to build up steel plants in certain states like Japan did in Manchuria. Same with synthetic plants. Same to develop resources if possible ilduring game years. This can easily replace the develop resources option.

Just a thought and would make the game unbelievably awesome.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

my proposal to improve hoi 4 econ is to not do it for now, because it mostly functions while numerous alternative things either don't work well or not at all.

 

[The_Tim]

Here's my following Suggestions:

Tiers of Production buildings, ranging from Proper Factories to Workshops, the former would be specialized into rough fields(say small arms, artillery, motorized, and tiers of Tank Factories for mils, and various sorts of civvy ones like Food Industries, Tractor, and civilian Automotive Industries), would be very IC for Slot efficient, but would be extremely expensive, and have the civvy ones give various buffs to your nation(this would additionally be an incentive to use the conversion feature as well) these would, however, have the downside of being permanently visible regardless of intel level and be relatively easy to bomb. This would also allow us to differenciate the effects between foci, for instance Greece deciding to make more Tobacco rn is about as impactful as kdf-Wagon, which was a key part of the building of the German Auto Industry that supplied the Wehrmacht during the war, and small "Workshops" representing smaller industry which would be cheap, but slot-ineffiecent, these would be hidden by intel but would be much lighter duty, though able to make the basics(See: Trucks, the basics in form of Infantry Equipment, Support Equipment, and Artillery, AA, and AT), there would be a IC Cost Cap for production of Armor and Aircraft(representing how though early armor and planes were decently simple enough to make while the heavier armor got and the better the planes got exponentially more complex, for instance) though these should still be plenty viable enough to convert and upgrade aircraft and armor. And preferably, something like triple or more the base armor capture rate, but have Armor become "Damaged" from battle and capture, requiring repair by some form of industry to become operational again, or able to just go strait to the conversions. Similarly I'd like to see planes be able to be damaged and incur a industry cost to repair, say when a plane gets hit but survives due to Air Defense, depending on the ratio of air attack to air defense, there'd be a chance that the plane returns damaged. This would also double to buff Speed and Agility to help it match with Air Defense

Apart from that, I'd like to see some capability to stockpile Resources, say for instance you can stockpile Steel or Rubber so that once the war starts, and you are prospectively cut off from significant additional sources of vital materials you can keep on running for a good amount of time, hopefully until you can secure a new source of the precious resources. Naturally you'd have to buy the resources to stockpile them, giving reason to increase the amount of resources bought in the early to mid game

And Finally the ability to adjust your Export Laws. Have the base forced Resource Export be reduced by half across the board, but have the potential buffs doubled or tripled, but be tied to the amount of resources exported. Have the basic buffs of the base forced exports, and then give the player the ability to either reduce exports of a resource, at the cost of reducing the buffs given from the law and potentially Civvy industry cost. Meanwhile exporting more than you need, say for instance YUG exporting more of its Chromium than it needs, or nearly all of it in other words. would increase the buff

 

[Hoi Neuling]

Yeah, the Devs have to rework the Economy too on the Geoscape and the R & D-Part. There I give you all right.

The best you can do for economy is using 2 Modifications: Historical Industry and more Military-Industrial Entrerprises for the Base-Version incl. all DLCs.

The other Option is to use an big Mod, which changes the Economy (like integrating Coal etc.) incl. many other Gameparts.

 

[Treviranus]

I think the trade laws could get some tweaks. In almost all cases, free trade is by far the best trade law in the buildup stage considering the boost for research and building. Since you can't stockpile anything but oil, lacking ressources in 36 or 37 is not a big deal.

 

[geneticsjms]

Follow on thought. To spot late game IC capacity bloat. Each factory would be subject to massive penalties in conquered states like what happened in real life. This can then present the challenge of do you invest long term in getting conquered factories up to par in the state or say just loot them. Pack in crates and ship back to motherland. Which happened in france, and they tried to do to the soviets if they hadn't moved them first. Doing that would be a say keep 50% output forever vs 10% output if left alone climbing to 100% in say 5-6 years. Similar to the compliance metric but being more realistic as it can track active insurgency vs lethargic workers who arnt taking up arms but won't work hard.

It also makes more sense as to why Germany was so hellbent on acquiring Skodaworks and why they were flabbgasted when they found empty factories in Russia stripped of parts.

Also thought out a preliminary tech tree.

Factory-> production lines (each of these is a line for a single item, truck, tank, rifle, support)
-> worker housing (more IC output)
-> machines hops (more efficient output)
-> flak emplacement (to replace regional aa with factory specufic as in reality, increases defenses and resistance)
Possibly more for some additional flavor. Cap out each factory at 3 lines each, 3 worker housing each.

This way it plays out on realistic production numbers and forces strategic early game choices. Like if I want to win the BoBritain I need to invest in Aircraft factories otherwise I can't replace loses. Same with soviets. If they don't strategies on early tank factories they won't be able to turn the tide on Germany. For Japan it can form up the historic battle between army and navy politics. Also based on Ai logic it determines ai playstyle. So historic Russia focuses on tank capacity and hence build lots of t34 divisions. If it goes alt history maybe they do guns and arty and builds out max infantry divs.

Furthermore mines could get the same treatment. They were huge targets for both sides of the war. It could allow for resource extraction increases in line with the current prospecting decisions.

Seems to solve alot of issues around weird ai choices.

 

[IlPopa]

A button that automatically buys missing resources using as few convoys as possible.

 

[jpd]

This one has me torn.

On the one hand, there is something inherently unrealistic about free production. All CiC output is, essentially, free production (consumes no resources and doesn't compete with MiC/NiC production for anything except free building slots), as is the output of Synth plants.

On the other hand, to fix the above one has to expand the game with extra resources in order to make said competition viable. You can get away with existing resources for letting CiC churn out new buildings (like steel) so it does compete for resources with other production lines. But for synths, the only viable resource that makes sense as an input is coal. And that opens a can of worms. Adding coal by itself is not hard to do, but for coal to become a limiting factor for a nation it has to have more uses than an input for synth plants. For example as a new energy input to make all factories (including CiC's) operate.

This all adds to the complexity of the economic model. And here is my doubt. At it's core, hoi4 is about fighting a (world) war. It's not an economic simulator.

I've actually played a war game like that for years (Victory! The Battle for Europe). It has the coal, and the steel, and aluminium, and the oil, and the fuel we have in hoi4. It even has dedicated factories for churning out fuel, supplies and ammunition (FUEL, GEN and MUN plants). Oil not converted into fuel can be used as a substitute for coal as a source of energy to operate the factories. It has the NiC's, and the MiC's and the CiC's, and the (limited) amount of building slots. The main difference with hoi4 is that it's turn based, play by e-mail.

And you know what? When I, as a player, plan my moves for the next turn (and remember, as hoi4 it's a war game), I'm spending like 80% of my time managing my economy. Which is, frankly, a bit too much for a game that's supposed to be all about warfare.