Victoria 3

[Threviel]

Yeah, but that didn't happen in a strategical scale during the war. No one had gigantic warehouses chock full of resources just lying around.

The closest approximation would be some kind of lag representing the resources way to the final product, but that would be a two-egged thing since it would take months and months for some newly conquered resources to show up in the system.

I think the current way is an acceptable compromise.

[grumbler]

Yeah, but that didn't happen in a strategical scale during the war. No one had gigantic warehouses chock full of resources just lying around.

The closest approximation would be some kind of lag representing the resources way to the final product, but that would be a two-egged thing since it would take months and months for some newly conquered resources to show up in the system.

I think the current way is an acceptable compromise.

Actually, Japan did exactly what you say no countries did, especially with oil, aluminum, scrap steel, and high-octane aircraft fuels.  In the case of oil, it was over a year's worth of stockpile (though planned at two years' worth, consumption was much higher than anticipated).

I think that a better system than the current one would have no explicit stockpiles, but a more gradual decline in manufacturing if resources are lower than needed.

What HOI is missing is any kind of civilian economy, and a link between it and stability.  Shifting resources to military production should have stability implications that get worse if the country isn't at war or world tensions are not high.  The concept of stability is greatly under-utilized.

[Threviel]

Actually, Japan did exactly what you say no countries did, especially with oil, aluminum, scrap steel, and high-octane aircraft fuels.  In the case of oil, it was over a year's worth of stockpile (though planned at two years' worth, consumption was much higher than anticipated).

Yeah, I don't think I mentioned fuel since HoI4 has a stockpile system for that and every state presumably had reserves.

Interesting with Japan, thanks for that. How did that work? What was the cost for them to do that? Did they even have much of an internal production of steel and aluminium?

My guess is that they had been at war for a long time and they planned on staying at war for a year or so at least, so they had a lot of time to plan and prepare. Knowing that they lacked resources they had no choice but to buy and store raw resources. But that is an uneducated guess.

[grumbler]

Actually, Japan did exactly what you say no countries did, especially with oil, aluminum, scrap steel, and high-octane aircraft fuels.  In the case of oil, it was over a year's worth of stockpile (though planned at two years' worth, consumption was much higher than anticipated).

Yeah, I don't think I mentioned fuel since HoI4 has a stockpile system for that and every state presumably had reserves.

Interesting with Japan, thanks for that. How did that work? What was the cost for them to do that? Did they even have much of an internal production of steel and aluminium?

My guess is that they had been at war for a long time and they planned on staying at war for a year or so at least, so they had a lot of time to plan and prepare. Knowing that they lacked resources they had no choice but to buy and store raw resources. But that is an uneducated guess.

No state in the HOI4 world has two years' worth of wartime fuel reserves.  Japan stockpiled because she lacked the internal production of those materials and needed a buffer to cover the time between going to war and capturing those assets.  The cost was moderately high because of the infrastructure needed to store nd move the stockpile, but it was a cost they had to pay in order to avoid playing HOI4 Japan.

Speaking of Japan and aluminum, the A6M2 Zero used the most advanced aluminum in the world at the time to achieve its remarkable combination of firepower, weight, and agility.

[jimmy olsen]

You can stockpile equipment and fuel, but nothing else.  You can't stockpile civilian production (which means you can't buy/sell equipment, hence the need for events that give you extra civ factories for a period in exchange for 25 bombers), and you can't stockpile resources.  The moment you lose access to steel, the ship and tank production grinds to a halt the very next day.

If I remember HoI3 correctly you could stockpile vast amounts of resources, enough to last a good part of the war and that seems to me even more unrealistic.

For example Germany relied on Swedish iron ore, without it tank and ship production would have ground to a halt. Sure they had reserves, but not years worth of reserves. And the same with everything really, no one had gigantic warehouses filled with aluminium for use in case of war.

I think the HoI4 system all in all works better, perhaps there should be a time lag based on distance to resource or something, but that seems overly advanced without much gain. It's a game after all, not a logistics simulator.

Didn't the Germans seize 6-12 months worth of nitrates in Belgium in WWI which made a huge difference in their war effort?

[garbon]

The new system of war/diplomacy as outlined in the latest dev diary sounds interesting.

[The Minsky Moment]

Didn't the Germans seize 6-12 months worth of nitrates in Belgium in WWI which made a huge difference in their war effort?

Germany did stockpile nitrates pre-war and they did seize nitrate stockpiles at Antwerp  - that said, those would not have been sufficient to fight out the war had it not been for the synthesis of nitrates by the German chemical industry.

As a more general matter, despite the long preparations for war by the great powers, it is a notorious fact that the combatant powers suffered from munitions shortages by a few months into WW1.

Given the choice between a system that permits a player to exploit by stockpiling vast stores of military supplies and a system with no stockpiles, I'd prefer the latter.

[Tamas]

The new system of war/diplomacy as outlined in the latest dev diary sounds interesting.

Yep. Let's hope they can balance it reasonably.

[Habbaku]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-22-the-concept-of-war.1496459/

I'm so excited about this.

[Tamas]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-22-the-concept-of-war.1496459/

I'm so excited about this.

The second pillar, War is Strategic, is exactly what it sounds like. In Victoria 3, all decisions you make regarding warfare are on the strategic level, not the tactical. What this means is that you do not move units directly on the map, or make decisions about which exact units should be initiating battle where. Instead of being unit-in-province-based, warfare in Victoria 3 is focused on supplying and allocating troops to frontlines between you and your enemies. The decisions you make during war are about matters such as what front you send your generals to and what overall strategy they should be following there. If this sounds like a radical departure from the norm in Paradox GSGs, that's because it is, and I'll be talking more about the rationale at the end of this dev diary.

It's VERY cool they have the guts to move away from standard Paradox stack chasing like that. I hope the crying on their forum won't be too much for leadership to make them revert.

[crazy canuck]

Ohhh, I just got a lot more interested in this game.

[Barrister]

Cool idea, but you still have to make it fun.  Sometimes if you abstract things too much you lose the fun.

[Josquius]

Sounds nice in theory but didn't the most recent HOI try something like that? And it was quite the unplayable mess....

[Habbaku]

Sounds nice in theory but didn't the most recent HOI try something like that? And it was quite the unplayable mess....

No? HOI 4 has tons of micro.

[Tamas]

Sounds nice in theory but didn't the most recent HOI try something like that? And it was quite the unplayable mess....

I think what you mean is that in HOI4 you can put formations under AI control by giving instructions. I liked it because otherwise the AI was trivially easy to micro-manage around. In Vicky 3 they are planning to go away with all the unit micro. Which is great.