Hearts of Iron IV

Hearts of Iron IV

Total War Mod
Nosliw 17 Dec, 2020 @ 8:29am
Industry/Resource Balancing
Hi everyone,

I've recently started playing a number of campaigns and trying out some well polished mods. Two of the mods I tried are World Ablaze and HOI4 Ultra, which both have worked together to attempt to create a reasonably accurate distribution of IC and resource production around the world, based on historical books, research, and papers. However, I find that these mods are lacking in much of the production and research aspect, one which I feel BICE and Total War excel in.

That said, I booted up Total War recently because I've heard it's in a really good place and was surprised to see just how little resources you start with as Germany: not even enough steel to use my initial starting factories. Compared with the "industry/resource" realism mods, in which Germany boasts healthy production of steel (enough to support the growing industry at least until 1939-1940), the German research situation in Total War has me importing steel from January 1, 1936 onward.

My question then is, how "realistic" or "balanced" is Germany's starting position in this mod? With such stark differences between this mod and other mods (with respect to IC distribution and resources), is the industry/resources in this game based on anything historical, or has it been arbitrarily constructed to create a "balanced" or "challenging" campaign, dismissing historical accuracy?

Thanks
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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments
AnonyMoose 16 Jan, 2021 @ 5:36pm 
IRL Germany massively lacked raw resources and relied heavily on imports of iron ore from Sweden (which was the main reason for invading Norway). HoI doesn't differentiate between raw resources and refined resources, so it's kind of up to mod creators on how to interpret this. Vanilla HoI uses "tungsten" as a stand-in, whereas Total War seems to use a hybrid approach (using the steel refinery as a building to boost steel production, but also having natural steel deposits that seem to roughly correspond to iron deposits).
pepe the frog 21 Jan, 2021 @ 9:11am 
I would say the germany starting option is pretty balanced, and while yes you do lack a lot of resources at the start, through correct industry management and the pure amount of civilian factories this is a pretty easy obstacle to overcome . All you really have to do is keep in mind that you have to start producing rubber and oil refineries early enough to sustain plane production and meet fuel demand as soon as you enter war with the allies as importing especially rubber will become impossible.

This mod as far as i understand it places a very specific emphasis on the natural scarcity of a lot of resources and their importance which I find makes for a realistic game scenario. For example a major goal of barbarossa was the capturing of the caucasus oil fields and as @Aleks S. I said correctly Germany massively relied on the import of iron ore (and other metals as well) from sweden and therefore the capture of norway was also driven mainly by the need for securing said trade routes.
sethgaines 21 Jan, 2021 @ 4:56pm 
Industry is very weak, if you aren't a massive industrial power. They take ages to build, and produce almost nothing. Really penalizes smaller countries. There is no possible way that three factories would really be producing just under 6 rifles a day. If you're Germany or the US, it doesn't matter that it takes 20 factories to make 2-3 tanks, because you can just churn them out.
keklolgloat 11 Feb, 2021 @ 3:01pm 
Perfect balance between it being historic and balancing germany to have to worry more about resources. Cant just spam synthetic + mils and close your eyes
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