How would you rate countries and territories considering realism in big WWII maps.

Cernel

@Schulz But, don't get me wrong. I do believe those values are still better than the ones of most TripleA WW2 maps in repository. Just I strongly doubt there is any kind of research behind them.

Schulz

The game is Hearts of Iron 4 and they are starting factories per country. One of the developer had admitted that as far as I remember Italy was buffed in 1936 scenario but he has very good reasons;

https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Countries

Italy would have saved more war resources if Italy had not intervened Spanish Civil War and invaded Ethiopia.
Italy could have prepared more to WWII.
Italy is more populated than France.
Italy was politically more stable.

Its ok for me depicting Italy as strong as France.

Romania actually isn't almost half as strong as France. There is 3 type factory and most valuable factory type is civilian one. They can be converted into military factories, you can trade resources with civilian factories also your construction speed is based on how many civilian factoryies do you have.

For examle if a country has only one civilian fac, the country will be able to construct 1 military fac per months but having 2 civilian fac will provide constructing 2 military fac per months. In the game civilian factory is 1.5 fold more valuable than military factory.

Dockyard=1
Military fac=1.25
Civilian=1.6875

Romania=7 military, 2 dockyard, 13 civilian factory total 22 fac but real value becomes 8.75+2+21.9375=32.6875

France=6 mil, 8 dockyard, 35 civilian factory total 49 fac but real value becomes 7.5+8+59.0625=74.5625.

Also dockyards output is 2.5 (per day) while military factories is 5 (per day) it is up to you you can doubled dockyard base value but would it be realistic since wars are won with ground units but lets doublind dockard base balue to 2

Romania becomes=34.6875
France=82.5625

Schulz

I have calculated them with such a similiar method giving coefficients to each factory types;

military=1
civilian=1.5
dockyars=1.78

In 1936 border;

USA 241.16 (No Philippines)
USSR 109.68
UK 96.5 (Also Newfounland+All African, American and Middle Eastern posessions except South Africa)
Germany 93.8 (1936 borders)
Jap 82.7 (+Korea but not Manchukuo and Mengkukuo)
France 72.74 (Include all French posessions)
Italy 68.58 (Include all Italian posessions)
Netherlands 25.84 (Excluding Dutch East Indies).

Well only Netherlands looks problematic to me.

Cernel

One of the things that is shared amongst all TripleA maps having Italy (be it v3, World At War or Total World War, etc.) is the tendency to make Italy unrealistically way over-productive, actually by several times. This is surprising to me, especially considering the Italian performance during WW2; I would rather guess people would tend to undervalue it!

But, really, going back to those HoI4 values, there is no way that, if Germany is 70, Italy can be 50, or Romania 22. Those are really either nonsense or the developers wanted to maybe allow for the game to go in some some directions, giving more options, to do something ahistorical for fun, when playing the less fortunate. If you consider that (data from my period atlas) Romania was 19.646 millions in January 1938 and Germany was 79.730 millions in May 1939 (with Austria, Sudetenland and Memel, but without Bohemia-Moravia and Danzig), that would go down to 69.777 millions, if you cut Austria and Sudetenland out (as per 1936), those HoI4 values would imply that a Romanian person was individually more productive/valuable/militarily capable than a German person, that is obviously unacceptable.

I really don't think that those values (HoI4) are defensible under any perspective. Still, in my personally opinion, they are better than what you see in most TripleA maps; so not saying they are worthless of consideration.

EDIT: Unless those values are representing the armed forces in 1936, that in TripleA terms would be the TUV (not the production). Then, in that case, it may be fine, since Germany started almost from 0 (still I'm not buying Romania). I'm really not understanding if this is the case or not. Are we talking about "production" or "total unit value" for those HoI4 numbers?

Schulz

Italian performance during wwii is not considered because Italy could have performed better.

Italy had also bigger surface fleet than Germany and it directly affect Italian power so if you look only manpower UK should be weaker than Italy since UK had very small army compared to other major combatants.

Schulz

These factories are related to production not TUV. I have no idea too why some of them is very unhistorical especially Dutch East Indies and India. But Dutch East indies is represented very rich in terms of raw materials since I had ignored it.

RogerCooper

Looking at the population figures from the Maddison database (which are more reliable than the GDP figures) it seems that the HOI designer was using approximately 1 million people equals 1 point of capacity for European nations. That is a reasonable approach to assigning capability. Then you can ask how much should colonies and impoverished nations be discounted.

Schulz

Colonies (not dominions) are generally very undervalued in the game but they provide enormous natural resources and huge manpower to their masters and its historical too. Japan Invaded Dutch colonies for resources not getting factories/industries.

Since resources are not represented in Triplea, there is nothing wrong to give more value to these colonies.

Giving coefficients to each factory types; 1936 values look something like this. Some of them are unacceptable for me too...

USA 241.16
USSR 109.68
UK 96.5
Germany 93.8
Jap 82.7
China 80.78
France 72.74
Italy 68.58
Poland 36.28
Brazil 33.56
Czechoslovakia 33
Romania 30.06
Canada 26.28
Netherlands 25.84
Yugoslavia 25.78
India 24.78
Australia 24.06
Belgium 24.00
Hungary 21.00
Bulgaria 18.00
Greece 17.78
Denmark 16.06
Austria 16.5
Finland 15.28
Mexico 15
South Africa 14.5
Norway 12.78
Latvia 8.78
Philippines 8.5
Thaiand 8.5
Manchukuo 7.5
Iran 7
Lithuania 7
New Zealand 7
Cuba 5.5
Dominican Republic 5.5
Estonia 5.5
Luxembourg 5.5
Mongolia 5.5
Ethiopia 5
Dutch East Indies 4.78
Albania 4
Costa Rica 4
El Salvador 4
Guatemala 4
Haiti 4
Honduras 4
Iraq 4
Nicaragua 4
Panama 4
Liberia 2.5
Oman 2.5
Tannu Tuva 2.5
British Malaya 1.5

USSR, India, Iran, Dutch East Indies, Britis Malaya should be more values whereas Brazil, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Netherlands, Belgium, Yugoslavia should be slighly less valuable.

Cernel

@Schulz Yeah, Dutch East Indies is still crap, the Italians are still more productive/valuable (per capita) than the Germans, Brazil is still stronger than Canada and such. Sorry, I really don't feel like those are very good referring values to start with.

Schulz

We have no obligation to stick all values. If you decrease Italian power drastically,she becomes unplayable and making Italy separate country would make it unplayable. In this scenario Italy could be represented as part of Germany only.

Germany will capture all occupied territories income without penalty (which is unrealistic) in Triplea maps. When France and Western Europe fall, German/Italian ratio becomes closer to more realistic.

It is actually better to compare 1941 Germany vs 1941 Italy rather than early dates.

Schulz

We have to count foreign aids as domestis production (power) regardless of country and for example there is really nothing wrong in depicting Italy stronger than she was because Germany had deployed 15 divisons and hundred of planes, armours, trucks etc in North Africa.

Cernel

@Schulz Any particular reasons why, in a map with Germans and Italians, you would want those German units and assets being represented by Italian production, units or assets, instead?

Schulz

Because not counting German assets, supplies, helps etc... as Italian would make impossible to take Egypy for Axis since the Germans and Italians would be unable to attack together the British units. That does not really make sense.

I don't know did the Germans supply Italians in terms of resources? Sure they should all take into account as Italian domestic productions.

Also US lend lease should be represented as British-Soviet domestic productions.

Hepps

@Schulz It is an over simplification to say that some measure of a countries wealth (eg. PU) gained by support from an Ally is inherently contained within the production of a territory without factoring that into the production value of the "parent" state(s). More over this idea assumes a constant, consistant and stable supply of resources or manpower every turn. Finally, what happens when the territory is lost? Does the enemy gain the bonus PU each turn? Is this to say the Germans would continue to send men and equipment to Southern Italy and simply hand it over to the Allies? Because if you add PU to Italian territories with this in mind... then theoretically that is what you are saying is happening.

Cernel

@Schulz If simply abstracting such things, I would rather suggest having triggers removing/adding income, under the condition of both capitals being free (or something), rather than screwing up actual production values. Italy had virtually no iron, no copper, no coal, no oil, etc. (like, France had over 20 times the iron extraction of Italy and Germany had almost 200 times the carbon production of Italy); so it had to import all from Germany controlled territories, but I don't know how much Italy paid back (also in terms of sending workforce (temporary emigrants) in the German mines, etc., that happened also before the war).

Schulz

@Hepps said in How would you rate countries and territories considering realism in big WWII maps.:

@Schulz It is an over simplification to say that some measure of a countries wealth (eg. PU) gained by support from an Ally is inherently contained within the production of a territory without factoring that into the production value of the "parent" state(s). More over this idea assumes a constant, consistant and stable supply of resources or manpower every turn. Finally, what happens when the territory is lost? Does the enemy gain the bonus PU each turn? Is this to say the Germans would continue to send men and equipment to Southern Italy and simply hand it over to the Allies? Because if you add PU to Italian territories with this in mind... then theoretically that is what you are saying is happening.

If German helps should not be considered as Italian then this rule should be applied to Commonwealth nations too. Canadian and British troops should not be able to attack Germany together for example.

I think the best solution is calculating the exact German helps to the Italians then adding this extra Pus value to Northern Italy. (Or spreading all Italian territories) But if people want to make North African campaign more important then this extra values can be added to Tunisia. It would be also historical too.

Schulz

Also I don't think capital cities would represent realism. Soviets wouldn't have collapsed without Moscow.

Making Rome as captal of Italy does not make sense. Northern Italy or Sicily would be better. But I would still prefer removing capitals in a realistic scenario.

Schulz

I've found another methot to calculate the relatiive values of countries; Just want to share some countries. In this time I have taken into account resources and Indonesia emerged more valuable what do you think?

1939

USA: 370.352
Germany; 187.63
Slovakia: 4.67
Hungary: 31.24
Indonesia: 25.58

Schulz

I'm so sad this thread is seems like abandoned.

RogerCooper

@Schulz I have been cleaning up the new version of the Correlates of War database, which has some interesting data.