Help Understanding Economy

[Teutonic Joe]

Can someone explain how the economy works. I feel like the game is not even trying to explain how to get Energy, Materials, etc. Can some please just give me a full economic tutorial?

[Tankfriend]

The economy works through provinces. Each province produces a certain amount of certain ressources and those produced ressources are added to your country's storage. The infrastructure level of a province has an influence on ressource production, I think - lower infrastructure means less ressources reach your stores and vice-versa (the same is true for your industrial capacity). Apart from the pure province production values, oil is also produced through converting energy once you have 2x the amount of energy in store compared to oil and you then receive 1/10th of your IC as oil production. Also read that up here:
http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi2wiki/i...Oil_Conversion
It's also important to note that each unit of industrial capacity uses a certain amount of ressources, so that's usually where your deficit comes from. Without the needed ressources, your IC will be lowered so far as to have the needs met again.

If you're playing Arsenal of Democracy (I don't know about HoI3), you can build oil conversion and rare material plants where you have a closer control over the respective production values. Even so, you have to research a few techs to actually make it relatively efficient. Another thing added in AoD's very late game is a nuclear power plant to increase your energy production. That's usually restricted to the most powerful nations (techs take a long time to research) and not always worth the costs, though.

If you cannot produce something yourself in the right amount, you have to trade for ressources with other nations, preferably your allies.

[empr guy]

i have a question, for HoI II there is a slider in the top right corner that says IC, but no matter what the numbers or what its color i cant seem to find its affect. (or how to affect it even)

[Tankfriend]

I guess you mean this one?


This counter simply tells you (from right to left) how many points of physical industrial capacity you have available (i.e. factories), how many you actually have available after all effects have been applied, and how many points you are currently wasting (using more points on something than needed).
If the counter is coloured green, your IC is used at maximum efficiency. If it is red, you are wasting IC.
If you hover your mouse over the counter, the tooltip will give you the exact details of what currently has an effect on your IC.

There are several ways to influence your IC:
- Build factories: Each factory uses up 5 IC for one year until constructed and will then provide 1 additional point of base IC.
- Appoint the right ministers. Some ministers have a negative, others a positive effect on your actual IC output.
- Adjust your national policies. A maximized planned economy receives a bonus of 25% to IC.
- Go to war with someone. As long as you are at peace, you will suffer from a negative peacetime modifier to your IC (and you have to produce more consumer goods than if at war, but that does not actively change your IC).
- Capture new provinces. Foreign provinces will only add 1 IC to your pool, however, regardless of the number of factories present. Some ministers can have an effect on this value.
- Change the difficulty of the game. The lower the difficulty, the higher your bonus to IC. If you raise the difficulty, you will get a penalty to IC.
- Research technologies that increase your IC output. You can get an overall bonus of 15% if you research the three machine tool techs in the industry section.
- Improve the infrastructure in factory-rich provinces, make sure that there are no partisans around and keep your national dissent as low as possible. All these factors can have a negative impact on the IC output of the respective province.
- Make sure that you have all the ressources in store that are needed. One point of IC uses up 2 units of energy, 1 unit of metal and 1/2 a unit of rare materials each day, as the tooltip tells you.

[empr guy]

thanks, that explains it.