Oil Bug

[bonetoke]

Hello everyone today I bought Supreme Ruler Ultimate, apparently all the countries have high oil stock. I mean Somalia has 90 million barrels of oil in reserve. How come? Is this a bug in the game.

[Nerei]

90MMB does indeed sound quite high for a country that has been engulfed in civil wars for a large part of the last 30 years. I would expect it to be only a few MMB if any at all as I doubt much of their petroleum storage have survived.
It is also good by European standards as most countries have significantly less. I only think Spain and Germany has larger petroleum storage capacity.

The PRC also have an insane 14000MMB of petroleum or just over 4 years worth in storage. From what I remember the PRC is aiming towards having close to 700MMB storage in 2020 or about 90 days of regular usage. Currently the PRC probably has something comparable to the Japanese storage of close to 600MMB. This is including the private sector that represents about 45% in the case of Japan and about 33% for the PRC.

India is even worse. They have over 9(!) years of oil in storage or close to 12000MMB when they (if memory serves me right) might have enough for 20 days worth if they ration it hard. I actually had to check and India has less petroleum storage than Finland! They barely have 37MMB according to Wikipedia. The largest strategic storage facilities in the US is about 3 times that size.

The largest storage capacity I know of is the US state that according to their own website has around 713MMB

I think it is for balance so the AI does not cripple its economy early game but I have not looked extensively at how the AI handles its stockpiles. I would assume countries like India would try to liquidate this massive stockpile.

Personally I would love for maximum petroleum storage to be tied to actual physical terminals on the map so in case of wars we both have to protect these while at the same time we can cripple the opponents economy and war machine by bombing his tank farms. I would go as far as to offer to make the models of these for BG if they implemented such a mechanic.

[YoMomma]

Im all for more realism, but the stocks in game deplete in days if for example India or China deploy their army for whatever reason. Those stocks are needed to effectively represent war, if those stocks didnt exist, all troops would be on a standstill. Just the way ai move their troops. More importantly, world economy wouldn't function since petrol is needed for electicity and consumer goods.

[way2co0l]

Yeah, it basically is meant to safeguard the AI early on while the economy is still adjusting itself. Without those reserves, the AI could get itself into some pretty big issues. It does make things fairly unrealistic in that sense for awhile, but they will eventually blow through them, even faster if you choose limited resource options at game start.

[Nerei]

It is not really a balanced safeguard though considering India can last 11 years despite her low SPR being one of her key weaknesses while the US, Japan and the RoK will last around 1 year.

Sure scale the stockpiles for gameplay and sure give India a bit more as they have a low stockpile from the start but it is completely absurd that India has a stockpile that is about 400% of that of the US and an incredible 1000% of Japan (The nations with the largest SPR). The PRC being able to outlast her neighbours by 3 years assuming nothing changes is to me not exactly ideal either.

Basically give India and the PRC a SPR that will last them about a year that would make it more even when compared to say the US.

[way2co0l]

The thing is, I don't think it's based on consumption. I believe it's based purely on population size. That means India and China, with their massive populations, get huge stockpiles. Combined with their low GDP means low consumption. All that together it means their stockpile will be lasting for very long periods of time.

I agree it could be done better, especially now that they've put work into scaling resource production mechanics to fix the old issues of worldwide product shortages. I don't think it's nearly as necessary as it used to be. Maybe they'll consider changing that for the new game. I'd add my +1 to that, and I don't think it would require much work for them to do. But what do I know? lol.

[Nerei]

Looking at a few other high population countries such as Brazil and Indonesia it definitely appears to be the case.
Both are sitting on a few billion barrels worth of petroleum but Indonesia has a bit more fitting with a slightly higher population.

For 2020GC at least it looks it is something along the lines of 1000MMB for 100M population