Running out of oil sandbox 1936 germany. Ticket 24379.

[rlame]

Hello!

Ticket 24379.

Everytime I try to conquer world in 1936 sandbox I run to problem that I don't get enough oil and production stops.
Would it be possible to deny oil access from civilians or priorize military/production?
Runnin out of oil basically stops whole game since you need oil for industrial goods which leads to no military goods and no consumer goods.
Setting +200% oil consumer price does no difference so more drastic measures are needed. Thanks!


Example savegame (frest start, latest version - no cheats, no trainers)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TuDHx ... h7yadHcn5t

[evildari]

Same Here,

If you are in a slight shortage situation, without reserves.
just because the civilians wont do their patriotic duty and save a puny 320 Barrels a day for their military out of their almost 11Million Barrel consumption, i cant move anything.
Same with the industries, they need just a small fraction of the civ demands to run at full capacity.
But they dont get it all to run at 100%
No wonder that after some time all production expect the lucky few breaks down.

Screenshot from a non-modded 1936 game - now in 1969 and will have this issue again after my current stockpile runs out. But this time i have no funds to buy from other regions (if they have any petrol even available)
As already proposed it would be good to change priorities:
1. Military
2. Industrial goods production
3. Consumer goods production
4. Any other industry else that may use petrol as input
5. Civilian petrol use (just because it is so large compared to everything else)
6. Just remove the hardcoded petrol-based "civilian" city-power production - there are already powerplants in the game for this.

[Balthagor]

@rlame - thanks for sending this savegame. I actually had a lot of fun playing it, troubleshooting how I would do things differently. I'm not convinced that the problem is nearly as serious as our post (or evildari's) implies.

Your savegame starts in May of '42,. By Dec of '42 I had things "playable" were petrol was not holding me back. I made sure to keep some notes on what I did so I could share;
- I scrapped LOTS of units. every deployed unit that's sitting there is a full tank of gas.
- I stopped letting the AI control the units (AI initiative off). It's moving them around too much, wasting gas. I also ordered EVERY unit to stop moving so I could prioritize what units got the gas.
- I started construction on about 50 more oil facilities, letting the minister decide locations so it would fill up industrial complexes with unused space.
- I turned on the Minister priority for "Conserve Petroleum". I locked Consumer Goods and Military Goods production at 2% of capacity, (I don't like total shut down of an industry) since these both draw on oil. I don't care about CGs and I could buy the MGs I needed (see unit production further down)
- I set a large petrol "bulk purchase" amount. I knew it would take a while to get it all, but it helps be "first in line" at the start of the day.
- Next I started pulling your troops back from Moscow. Your pushing beyond your supply lines in the south while the Russians are about to break through in the north below Leningrad. And making MG takes oil, don't start a push until you've got a reserve of resources.
- I also shut down ALL unit production. You don't have enough gas to move around the units you already have, building more is just making your situation worse. Your military rating is already about 4x greater than the Soviets, you don't need more troops. Particularly lots of subs and tanks with big need for fuel.
- And while I was at it, I cancelled a bunch of your unit research. Your in such a strong position, you are better off looking for technology and industry improvements. (power grid)
- The next thing I did was scrap lots of unnecessary facilities to recover industrial and military goods. Along the coast from France to Leningrad you have more than 30 piers/ports. Half those could go.

With all these changes, I became an oil exporter around Dec of '43 thanks to a massive reduction in unnecessary troops and buildings. But I was having fun, so by March of '44 I started increasing CG and MG production again (slowly). I also played with "liberate as colony" for some areas that I didn't care about so that their goods demand wasn't an immediate concern.

And then, disaster... I was testing in a development version of the game and when I tried to reload I discovered that it had been corrupting my savegames. It was actually a really nasty bug in the game. We got it fixed, but I couldn't recover any of the saves I made after receiving your file.

So I started again!

restart - May 25th
- Stop all units, pull back all the unsupported leg units heading towards Moscow. Goal; create a line and hold it before moving on (classic German mistake. Kiev to Leningrad because Leningrad under threat of breakthrough, need to deal with that.
- Scrap half the airforce (based on low quality red dot)
- Scrap half of the air/land/sea production facilities
- Scrap half of the research centres
- Empty the research queue (too many unit designs), add Power Grid
- Scrap all oil power plants and small coal plants
- Shut down unit production, goods production, cancel construction
- Scrap all small/mid CG/MG facilities
- Scrap excess sea piers, military complexes, barracks
- start building oil, all minister suggested locations (batches of 40-50 at a time)
- June 1st oil situation 500k capacity vs 850k demand, 100+days sustainable IG
- Reduce the size of your land forces, less armor. use your leg inf and towed artillery.
- Use air transports (supply drops) to get critical units moving (artillery to Leningrad)
- Increase infrastructure spending, decrease family, culture
- Aug 1st, line from Leningrad to Novgorod secure, incursion wiped out. Treasury stable at 11B
- Clipped police spending too much, rebels problem.
- Oct 31st, oil at 880 vs. 850 so can start IG production again.

So in 5 months I was able to totally reverse the problems. I think a lot of players having oil issues are trying to field a WWII army with way more "mechanized" forces than was used historically or is just much larger than needed.

Hope that helps!
24379

[evildari]

in my screenshot i managed to reduce my daily military petrol needs to 320 barrels a day (yes thats right just a 3 digit number)
- the issue is that my ungrateful population wont give them those few barrels after my stockpile runs out
(same with the industries wich consumes a few digit more, but still not even slightly near what the civilian demand use)

just to understand those numbers:
my military needs 320 barrels a day compared to civilians 10921821 barrels - and if shortage happens then civilians get the petrol first
and my total green army dont get even that puny 320 barrels then - army stands still after their fuel tank is empty.
Slightly larger numbers with industries 488529 / 10921821 this is rounded up 4,5% of civilian usage - would rather have this industry running at 100% and civ petrol usage at 95,5% than industry at 0% and civilian usage at 100% !

just changing distribution priorities would help with this issues a lot!

the crazy part is that to have at least a little oil left to keep industries running i have to drive the population into poverty - which is hard enough since i had to spam the middle east with oil fields

[Rosalis]

One question for the devs, how much of your advice is usefull for the AI? Ai doesnt like building leg infantry, doesnt know how to scrap and doesnt know it needs to stop move units arround useless. On top of that it likes to waist money on social policies instead of moving domestic demand to 200% because of shortages. I agree with your advice and thats how i easily conquered europe in my first and last 36 game 5 years ago, but yeah your basicly bullying a handicapped child.

[Balthagor]

The games we play do provide insight into how we can improve the AI, but applying rules broadly that address specific cases are not always easy. Could the AI be better? Yes. But it is neither easy nor is it quick to do.

[Rosalis]

I think population demand is so high to reflect world oil consumption during that time. Military demand is maybe to low, while population demand is too high. I just never reported it cause i guess you guys know this and its needed to balance the 36 economy. Or atleast tried too.

Google says:"
"
How much oil was used in WWII?
The Allies held a huge advantage over the Axis powers in the war. In all, Hilliard said, they used about 7 billion barrels of oil to win the war. Six billion came from the United States, he said.
"
If you look at other graphs the population consumption was just starting to take off in 35/36.

Anyway it shouldnt be too hard to improve oil consumption over the years if those events actually worked. When i tried to add raw resources to hexes i couldnt get it to work tho. And you also face issue that oil nations doesnt build facilities if they already produce more then they need, so you need to take them over or play the region for a bit. Another option could be tech(s) that improve gas fields, if you look hard enough there is prolly a reason to find that improve this process from WW2 to 2020, but i wouldnt be surprised if population demand actually drops if Germany take over USSR.

If prices in demand vs production was more honored instead of over production, dont devs think it will be fixed? Manpower and money should have more value, with focus of not hurting the ai. For manpower thats alot trickier, but yeah i dont see why prices doesnt have more influence and if they have it should be alot easier to help program the ai?

[SGTscuba]

Anyway it shouldnt be too hard to improve oil consumption over the years if those events actually worked. When i tried to add raw resources to hexes i couldnt get it to work tho. And you also face issue that oil nations doesnt build facilities if they already produce more then they need, so you need to take them over or play the region for a bit. Another option could be tech(s) that improve gas fields, if you look hard enough there is prolly a reason to find that improve this process from WW2 to 2020, but i wouldnt be surprised if population demand actually drops if Germany take over USSR.

If prices in demand vs production was more honored instead of over production, dont devs think it will be fixed? Manpower and money should have more value, with focus of not hurting the ai. For manpower thats alot trickier, but yeah i dont see why prices doesnt have more influence and if they have it should be alot easier to help program the ai?

If I recall from one of my conversations with George, there are artificial limits on how high and low prices of commodities can be through the different eras. I cannot remember if there was a way to mod these but I would like to have seen them disappear, as this would likely help the AI out more (and stop some of the oil countries going bump). At the moment, if there is a shortage, the price just tends towards the absolute limit and then sits there even if there is a continuing shortage (normally its oil, rubber, mil and industry goods in the '36 saves I play). We could almost call it Cap 2.0.

From my understanding of the economic model, if the price was to increase due to a shortage, the cost to civilians would increase, thus dropping the demand for that product, which, if left unchecked would mean that demand would fall to a point of equilibrium (where demand == supply) and then permit the military (and industry goods) to keep going again perhaps. Maybe the AI could be coded to build more oil in this case, especially if the price gets extremely high, thus solving the problem itself. I have no idea if such price swings would bankrupt the AI, it would need testing (if the limits are modable, then please tell me and i'll try it). Theoretically, if I understand the economic model correctly, the increasing prices could potentially lead to higher gdp's, which would increase tax revenue so the problem might solve itself.

Having extra techs to boost production would be ok, maybe some more techs to boost demand on certain products wouldn't go amiss. At the moment, the "boost" to supply and demand happens over a fixed period of time through the scenario's, and can be changed by some scenario files to adjust the limits (another system i'd like to see replaced by "curves", but that's another topic in itself).