How would you rate countries and territories considering realism in big WWII maps.
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Germans had better generals, tactics, and trained army, more devoted population,they were better at exerting total war economy even they were be able to increase their gdp during wwii despite constant allies bombings.
You are really talking about some very different, and to a certain degree abstract things here. Either you are going to evaluate the economic position via the statistics to attribute it to regions... or you are going to start to interpret less tangible factors and try to incorporate it into the economic data. Once you decide you want to lump things like fanaticism (Germany) verses resilience (Britain) you get into a really murky area where you have to arbitrarily attribute a value to a purely intangible and immeasurable concept.
If anything... you should segregate the data into groups... then use those groups to compare how you have evaluated each nation....
ie...
- Economics for every country
- Attitude of the country
- Modernization of the country
- Military capability and training
etc.
This will allow you to create comparative values for every country in each category... then examine the individual values to one another in order to decide whether or not you are over estimating or underestimating.
If you use a uniform scale across countries....
ie...
Economic Data accounts for 60% of the overall weighted scale.
Attitude accounts for 15% of the overall weighted scale.
Modernization accounts for 15% of the...
Military Capability and training accounts for 10% of the...(edit I just made these percentages up for example purposes)
It will make your challenge much more manageable.
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I think just considering production capacities,resources and man power do not reflect countrys' real powers. We have to take into account another factors that I have listed. I agree thay are less tangible but definitely we should take into account all these factort before determing the real power of countries.
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@schulz I agree. It was just meant to give you a guide as to how to break the work up into manageable groups. The criteria is simply what you feel are (the most) important factors.
The other big question is how you represent it in the game. If you are planning to run a game with a single resource (PU) then the value of doing an in-depth analysis may be lost since there is no way to distinguish between lots of resources or lots of fanaticism.
So then just because you give say... Germany a boost for being overly zealous and add 3 PU to Berlin. Would it make sense that they can build extra Tanks even though we know access to steel (as well as other resources like oil) was a hugely limiting factor for them.
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@schulz Actually the German war economy was terribly run. Here is some figures from World War II: A statistical Survey by John Ellis
In 1941, the Germans built 3,790 tanks. The British built 4,841 tanks. The Soviets built 6,590 tanks.
Artillery Germans-11,200, British-16,700, Soviets 42,300
Military Aircraft- Germans-11,776, British 20,994, Soviets-15,735
This is despite the fact German had the larger economy. The disparities got worse after 1941.
The cause of the failures of the German war economy were varied. The refusal to employ women in factories, the holocaust, the failure to setup a war production board (until Speer's reforms), emphasis on sophistication rather than mass production hurt the German war effort.
As for Cernel's comments on the Correlates of War, I agree that figures are confusing and inaccurate. They were assembled by political scientists who were interested in why wars occur, not in what happens during wars. Take a look at this wikipedia article to see the odd things they are doing with the statistics. However, it is still the only public database I know of that covers historical military capability.
I am working with the newest version of the Maddison Project database. I will present something soon (but I have a game convention this weekend). The economists of the Maddison project are mostly interested in economic growth and standard of living, but the figures implicitly measure GDP. The quality of the Maddison work is much better.
The Germans did have a considerably more effective army (about 20% better in 1944 according to Dupuy). So poor production planning and greater military effectiveness largely cancelled each other out.
An interesting point is the US production was large but not overwhelming. In 1944 the Soviets & Germans made more tanks. The key advantage of the US was mechanical reliability. In 1944, the use built 96,000 planes, by comparison the Japanese build 26,000. (The US planes were larger however).
If someone has access to research library, the Statesman's Yearbook is full of useful historical military & economic information.
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@rogercooper said in How would you rate countries and territories considering realism in big WWII maps.:
This is despite the fact German had the larger economy.
And despite the fact that the Soviet economy in 1941 suffered greatly from the loss of at least 1/3 of its economic power and the need to redesign a lot of its production network. At the end of that same year, the Germans had about 4 times the steel production of the Soviet Union, counting all controlled territories (since they got also France, Belgium, etc.).
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@rogercooper said in How would you rate countries and territories considering realism in big WWII maps.:
As for Cernel's comments on the Correlates of War, I agree that figures are confusing and inaccurate.
The energy consumption ones seem really good enough for a linear mono-resource production representation, except only that thing of missing India (not a terrible obstacle, but annoying; plus I really don't understand why it is missing before 1947, if it is, since there a a lot of less important countries). Mainly, the matter, in case, would be finding something else having energy consumption, since steel production is really a limited index, and the GDP on its own is not really that good.
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@rogercooper I see that, in the Maddison Project database, China has economic values for the years 1929 to 1938, but it is (understandably) missing them all for the years 1939 to 1949 (I'm actually surprised there is the 1938). Anyways, that would be fine with me, as, for a WW2 game, I would suggest using the 1937 data anyways for everyone (as I said).
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@rogercooper said in How would you rate countries and territories considering realism in big WWII maps.:
I am working with the newest version of the Maddison Project database. I will present something soon (but I have a game convention this weekend). The economists of the Maddison project are mostly interested in economic growth and standard of living, but the figures implicitly measure GDP. The quality of the Maddison work is much better.
So, I took a look at the Maddison database. As I said/assumed, if that is only about the GDP (is it?), you just cannot use that, as it is at least, since the GDP is a very bad index to be turned into PUs production. For example, from what I see, both India and China would have a higher GDP than the United Kingdom (as I was expecting), and that is really something you don't want to turn into production, as for PUs production India should be surely less than 10% of United Kingdom.
It may be usable, maybe, if you or somebody can find a subsistence per capita value in 2011US$, so to, then, get the GDP above subsistence, from those data. Basically that would need to be the per capita income level needed to simply survive on long term (mainly meeting the minimum daily caloric intake with the cheapest food available), and it is probably something a little above 500 US$ per year (do the United States of America have this published somewhere?). -
1941 data's actually does not really show that German war economy was terribly run because;
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Until the defeat of Stalingrad, the Germans had not exerted war economy unlike the Soviets which had exerted war economy in the initial stages of operation barbarossa.
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Germany didn't have plenty of oil and other natural resources if they had they could have produced more armours, artilleries ets...
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Germany increased its GDP during wwii in spite of constant allies bombings, and they have produced much more armours in 1943 and 1944
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@cernel said in How would you rate countries and territories considering realism in big WWII maps.:
The energy consumption ones seem really good enough for a linear mono-resource production representation, except only that thing of missing India (not a terrible obstacle, but annoying; plus I really don't understand why it is missing before 1947
The energy comsumptions is not good enough, the Soviets were even stronger than the British Empire let alone the United Kingdom.
India is missing because it wasn't independent country.
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@cernel Ok, I found what appears to be a fairly reliable reference (Princeton University, New Jersey):
https://irs.princeton.edu/sites/irs/files/Rebasing Maddison_May_2017.pdf
An important implication of using different relative price levels is that the poverty level may change. With the 1990 price levels, the subsistence level income was estimated at between 350 and 400 international dollars per year (Maddison, 2003). The poverty line was equal to around $ 1 per day, and was based on the first international poverty line which was set at $1.01 per day using 1985 PPP’s, which was later updated to $ 1.08 per day using the 1993 PPP’s (Ravallion, Datt and van de Walle, 1991; Chen and Ravallion, 2001). This made the interpretation of historical income series very intuitive. By using other relative prices, this subsistence level of income changes. The price level (in US dollars, the standard used in these calculations) increased by 59% between 1990 and 2011, bringing the poverty line to 636 dollars of 2011. Moreover, The World Bank slightly raised the absolute poverty line to 1,90 US dollars a day or 694 dollars per year, expressed in 2011 prices.694 United Statesian dollars looks about what I had in mind; so, in this case, the approach that I suggest you using is to calculate what I would call the "GDP Above Subsistence" (practically, the "usable" GDP), by the equation (assuming using 2011US$):
GDPAS = (cgdppc - 694$) ⋅ pop
Still, India is going to be overvalued, since it was a country with a lot of people and that was somewhat decently productive (surely in a better shape than China), but that, at the end, contributed relatively little to the war effort of the British Empire (and had some major famines, as well), at least economically.
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@rogercooper I see there is a major problem for South Africa. There is no population value for all years from 1914 to 1949!? How is it possible they give the GDP per capita but not the population!? South Africa is pretty important for WW2. How to get around this? I really don't understand how the population value can be missing in the moment you have to divide by that to get a per capita value. Getting the GDP for South Africa cannot be skipped for WW2.
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@cernel My period atlases give the following values for the Union of South Africa:
1936: 9,589,898
1937: 9,800,000
1941: 10,521,000
(but the 1937 and 1941 ones are merely estimates)
(only about 2 millions Europeans)
I'm sure better data can be easily obtained somewhere on the internet, if not in the Maddison database itself. -
Here are the 1938 values for GDP above subsistence ( I am using 700 as a base)
country Value
Argentina 19
Australia 16
Austria 5
Belgium 9
Brazil 4
Bulgaria 3
Canada 18
Chile 3
China 30
Colombia 4
Cuba 2
Denmark 6
Finland 3
France 46
Germany 95
Greece 5
Guatemala 1
Hungary 3
India 64
Indonesia 13
Ireland 2
Italy 22
Japan 41
Korea 2
Malaysia 2
Mexico 5
Myanmar 1
Netherlands 9
New Zealand 3
Norway 3
Peru 1
Philippines 4
Poland 14
Portugal 3
Spain 16
Sri Lanka 1
Sweden 8
Switzerland 5
Taiwan, Province of China 2
Thailand 1
Turkey 5
United Kingdom 82
United States 263
Uruguay 2
USSR 150
Venezuela 1
Yugoslavia 1I didn't work out the figures for the African colonies, but even South Africa would come to about 5.
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@rogercooper Please note that the Maddison figures generally use modern boundaries. This means that Manchuria is counted as Chinese rather than Japanese.
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@schulz said in How would you rate countries and territories considering realism in big WWII maps.:
1941 data's actually does not really show that German war economy was terribly run because;
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Until the defeat of Stalingrad, the Germans had not exerted war economy unlike the Soviets which had exerted war economy in the initial stages of operation barbarossa.
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Germany didn't have plenty of oil and other natural resources if they had they could have produced more armours, artilleries ets...
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Germany increased its GDP during wwii in spite of constant allies bombings, and they have produced much more armours in 1943 and 1944
Yes, Germany failed to mobilize properly until they had been at war for 2-1/2 years. That defines poor performance.
Oil was not a an important as you might think. Electricity was generated with coal (even now Germany produces 1/3 of its electricity from coal). Trains also ran with coal. Once, Germany got organized production increased, but it didn't matter. Victory was not possible after Summer of 1942.
For a thorough discussion of these issue, I suggest Ovitz, Why The Allies Won.
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Look very realistic to me. Where is Romania?
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Imho Axis had no chance to win wwii, Allies could have even defeated European Axis powers without USA.
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@rogercooper I'm actually thinking that this looks pretty good, and better than the energy consumption values, that were probably boosting heavily industrialized countries a little too much. Also, while not as rigged as the steel production, energy consumption favours countries that specialize in energy intensive products (for example, an aeroplane is more energy intensive but less steel intensive than a battleship).
China being some more powerful than Canada seems about right, as well as Italy being about twice as powerful as Poland, or Belgium, and half as powerful as Japan.
Netherlands and Belgium being equal seems alright, while the energy consumption was giving a huge superiority to Belgium, since it has a lot more heavy industry (producing steel etc.).
Also the Soviet Union being almost as powerful as the whole British Empire seems alright, tho after Barbarossa (losing Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic Countries) the Soviet Union would go down a lot, then, being about 60% the power of the British Empire.
Of course, India gets valued very generously, since, when you go for the GDP, the population matters. I don't think India being more powerful than Japan and France and only a little less powerful than the United Kingdom is really what you would guess out of WW2 contributions, but the value is not strictly wrong, as they were a very populous country with some productive ability (surely economically stronger than China, and China held off against Japan alone for several years), and it may give some more chances to Axis, under the what-if scenario of Japan conquering India.
It's kinda weird to see Argentina more powerful than Canada, but back then Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world, and practically similar to Australia (just overproducing agricultural products a lot). Mapmakers may want to represent a small bonus income for being able to trade with Argentina, in some ways (historically a little important for the United Kingdom supplies).
I see Brazil is still weaker than Denmark here too (and a lot weaker than Argentina), and I don't have a problem with that, as having a lot of people living at subsistence level is not making you really stronger (really Brazil was equipped and maintained mostly by the United States of America, during WW2).
The main deviation, in statically representing WW2 PUs productions, I guess, is that the United States of America are undervalued. As I said, 1937 should be the pre WW2 year that undervalues USA the least, but whatever value before WW2 would have them consistently undervalued, as they had a lot of wasted potential, before WW2. However, 1938 is particularly bad a year, on this regard, as it is the worst year of the second great depression the USA had. For example, I see the United Kingdom income increases by 18% between 1938 and 1944, while the United States income increases by 67% during the same period (not surprised).
Are there values for the African countries? Sadly, what I see is that they are pretty much all missing for WW2. Nigeria shows up in 1950 and Congo as well. Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco have entries for 1913 but, then, nothing more until 1950. The biggest problem for the continent is the absurd lack of population data for South Africa until 1950. The second biggest problem is that Algeria is missing. With 1 million Europeans out of 8 millions population, Algeria was the South Africa of France, and it is quite bad lacking a production value to assign to it for WW2 (tho, of course, not as important as South Africa). The complete absence of WW2 data for all the North African countries, summed to the absence of WW2 population data for South Africa, as well as missing everything else in Africa, as well, is seriously degrading the usefulness of this Maddison database. Rather than totally missing them, I would rather suggest, then, somehow to interpolate the given 1913 and 1950 values (getting the 1913 one as a ratio of the 1913 word total; doing the same with the 1950 one; then getting the average, but weighted based on how the year is close to one and the other one references).
For South Africa, unless you want to get more reliable data, taking the 1938 value, using a base of 700$, and multiplying by 9.980.000 pop, I believe you would get 33,662 million dollars. Don't have the total, but I believe that if Greece is 5, then South Africa should be about 8 (if I'm correct, just divide 33,662 million $ by your total plus 33,662 million $).
There are data for Romania; I guess the list is simply missing it (better adding). An more important country missing I see is Czechoslovakia (half the population of Poland, but twice the income per person). On this point, I suggest adding Bolivia, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama too, since I see the data for these ones are available (tho, of course, Egypt, Algeria, etc. would be more important to have).
Is there somewhere an actual map that shows what territories the Maddison database is referring to? For example, do they consider the Baltic Countries as part of the Soviet Union or not? I believe the United States of America never recognized the Baltic Countries as part of the Soviet Union (almost sure).
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@cernel The Maddison database uses 1991 boundaries. Except when it doesn't. I will cleanup/interpolate the data to make it more usable for game designers.
I will give the data with pre-war boundaries except for the colonies where I will use contemporary boundaries.
Maddison has no information on the Baltic states from before 1973. There is lot of extrapolating to be done. I don't know if the Soviet Union figures include Baltic states before their conquest in 1940, but I suspect they do.
