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I've been checking on oil production during the HOI period. On fact is that the oil production in HOI is very inaccurate.

1) Kuwait never produced oil during or before the end of WWII. Oil was discovered in '38 and several wells were drilled but due to the war there was no material available to commence production (steel for pipelines, harbor facilities, etc.). In '45 commercial production started.

2) Iraqi oil production is way too high compared to others and the only oil produced in Iraq was in Kirkuk. Commercial oil production started in '38. Iranian oil production is too low in comparison. See info below.

MIDDLE EAST CRUDE PETROLEUM - 1943 PRODUCTION AND OWNERSHIP
[Barrels]

Ownership
Country and company Production American British Other
Iraq: Iraq Petroleum 25,270,000 6, 002, 000 13, 267, 000 6, 001, 000
Bahrein: Bahrein Petroleum 6, 561, 000 6, 561, 000 - - - - - -
Arabia: Cal. Arabian Standard 4, 866, 000 4, 866, 000 - - - - - -
Egypt: Anglo-Egyptian 8, 953, 000 - - - 8, 953, 000 - - -
Iran: Anglo-Iranian 75,323,000 - - - 75,323,000 - - -
Total (barrels) 120,973,000 17, 429, 000 97,543,000 6, 001, 000
Percent 100 14. 41 80.63 4.96

3) Commercial oil production in Saudi didn't start untill '39. However according to table above there was oil produced in Egypt.

4) Before the British takeover of the Iranian oil fields in '41 production in Iran was approx. 50 million barrels/year. Total Iraqi production was about 1/2 the total Iranian production in the early war years. As can be seen from the table, fro '41 oil prod. in Iran increased by 50% (due to American Lend-Lease support: piping, drilling rigs etc.), Iraqi production stayed relatively the same.

5) There is no oil in the Kuban province (SU). Before German capture of this province, the oilfields there (Krasnodar, Maikop) produced approx. 2.2 million tons (approx. 17 million barrels) of oil per year (1/10 of oil production in Baku, which was approx. 22.2 million tons/year in 1940 (dropped to 11 million tons/year in '45 due to labor shortage and lack of well drilling). Oil production in Grozny area (Kirovsbad + Grozny province in HOI) was approx. 50 million barrels/year in 1940 (7 million tons/year). Was there actually oil produced in Tashkent? Oil from Kazachstan was produced in Emba region and oil from Turkmenistan from western trukmenistan (Caspian sea province). in 41 approx. 70% of SU oil was produced in Baku (23.5 million tons/year)

6) Texan oil production in '35 (was lower in '36 to approx '41 due to recession and oil blockades) was approx. 160 million barrels/year (approx. 21-22 million tons/year)

7) Mexico didn't produce oil from mid '36 to 'march '38 due to a national oil worker strike. After nationalisation oil production in Mexico was lower than before the strike (I haven't found sources)

8) Trinidad oil refining capacity was 10 million barrels/year in pre-war years. Refined oil included Venezuelan oil, however not all trinidad oil may have been refined in Trinidad (would be logical though).

I haven't been able to ffind production figures for Indonesian, Venezuelan and Argentinian oil. Nor figures for oil production in romania, germany, Austria, Poland
 
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Holy sh*t. I sure do hope Paradox can integrate all this community work into HoI 2, somehow. I'm sure you guys wouldn't mind giving them the right to use the data.

Of course, in the end it's about making a game fun to play, and not an exact historical simulation. It sure would be nice if we could have both though.
 
Correct Sir... This is how it is intended. AFAIK, Paradox has always listened to good user-input (see EU II user patches). This could be of the same category.
 
Some good thoughts here. There have been at least 2 other long threads on this topic. Much of this information has been developed B4, especially 1936 oil production data. A key point not mentioned yet in this thread:

national energy shift from coal to oil.

One of the key economic outcomes of WWII era was the shift from coal based to oil based economies. This was key as it lead [beginning in the US] to much higher developed an utilized infrastructure in terms of transportation. Prior to this, economic might was [had to be] concentrated within tight areas. With the switch to oil, distributed economic might became viable possible. Within much of europe this was not a huge impact, but for large land area countries like the US, tremendous impact on total GNP. Given HOI's province approach, this impact would naturally fall out of hte model. Countires with lots of provinces would see more benfit compared to countries with few provines.

I bring this up as it is a great complicating factor. My modeling suggestion for HOI2 would be that each economy [province/national level?] be assigned an economic level of advancement modified by infrastructure. As these levels increase overall IC would increease as well, BUT total energy consumption per unit of IC would increase with a proportionate shift from coal to oil as the requirement. Current energy requirement is 2C/IC. So my suggestion is that the equation change to something like:

IC = xCoal + yOil

where the x and y factors are inversely related and dependent upon economic level [major effect] and infrastructure level [minor effect]. play tsting and balancing will no doubt complicate this equation, but it would be a starting point.

{PS: If you wanted to expand applicability of this equation, go ahead and add wood to it. This could then represent the industrial age change when the europeans went to coal based exonomies in the 1800's or when Germany was forced to go back to wood due to oil/coal shortages in the war.}

Anyway, I think that most of HOI oil decisions since v1.0 have been made to game balance criteria than anything else. And the game balance target is not the VH/F players, but rather the N/N players. Given that, you will lose some of the historical relevance of the energy inssues that dominated the war strategically. Suggestion: at higher levels of difficulty, cut back the total world oil supply, and make it player based for SP, across the board for MP. In fact, you could just apply this to all of the resources. Cut them back 10% or so for each level of difficulty above Normal. That will really put some challenge into the game. Exactly historical? No. But in terms of 'feel' it will get much closer. Resources were a key strategic issue for national GNP growth for almost every player in the HOI era.

Finally: as summarized in the earlier threads: we can take the 2 or so man years to get the oil production levels in HOI nut on accurate across the board. But when you do, have you accomplished any progress twoards the main goal: will the game play [not the oil production] be more historically accurate? at what level of difficulty? It is not clear at all to me that simply adjusting the oil production levels and ingnoring the greater overall economic impact will have any measureable impact upon game play. If this is the case, to what end the effort?

Just my thoughts ...
 
Originally posted by Vulture
Good points PaxMondo, but I do think adapting oil levels could solve the oil shortage on the market somewhat
Click to expand...

In most of the SP games that i have recently played, the "oil shortage" is alleviated in 1937, and non-existent in 1938 and on. by '39 most of the world that needs oil is at war anyway, so trading is moot. Given other resources to trade, i have never been short of oil as anyone coming into the '39 war kick-off. has anyone?

In MP, again the point is moot as one of the key strategies for the allies is resource hogging. And you can't prevent that no matter how creative you get unless you really bend reality [Iraq or Persia is Nazi in '36]. Face it: that was the gripe. UK and her allies controlled all of the world's energy.

Wineman's points may well be accurate. But does UK have any oil shortage? only people who do are Italy/Germany.

Italy has no free resources to trade per se, so they are moot in this discussion. They can't trade for it, so either they do without or go to war and can't trade. either way, no trade. right?

Germany can trade coal all day 1:1 beginning in '37 for SP. MP, comments above.

save games available, but anyone should be able to confirm.

I reiterate: please read the previous threads on this. There has already been 100's of man-hours spent collecting and collating data to no end result.

Project was abandoned due to:
- conflicting data [guess what, everyone lied about oil production]
- establishing benchmarks: crude ain't crude everywhere. differences are real and huge [greater than 20%].
- discoveries that actually ocurred during the time period. large and serious impacts. Then think about discoveries that ocurred just after this time period, that easily could have happened a year or two earlier.
- under utilized oil in US/Venezuela: capacity greatly exceeded what was actualy lifted. what was actually lifted was polictically driven to a great extent. Thus, different policies could have lifted much more or much less ....
- Gas: Wineman's assertion is not challengeable [IMHO] in 1936, but by mid-40's sorry. The advent of alkylation [process to take light gases and combine them to octanes etc.] changed the refinery makeup considerably. H2SO4 alkylation plants were built like crazy in the late 30's early 40's to take advantage of the technology, then in the 50's these evolved into HF process. With the alkylation technology, refineries instead of simply flaring all gases [methanes to butanes], they were fed into this plant to make Av Gas. This is how they made the +120 octane Av Gas, a key ingredient to all the engines of the time. Remember those P-51's and Spits did not run JP4, they ran high octane Av Gas.

I go back to my previous summary: what game benefit is there? which countries? what is the real intended impact? If any of these become agreed upon, trust me, production data can be found to support almost any claim you wish. It really is that big of a can of worms.

Sorry if i am up on my pedastal again, but this has been chewed so much ...

Just my thoughts ....
 
Originally posted by Vulture
Yeah, Italy has a little too much problems with resources... They had them historically, but it's a bit exagerated now
Click to expand...

For the AI, I suspect this is true.

But you know, for SP play, Italy right now is my favorite for this exact reason: it comes closest to how desparate the non-UK group were for energy supplies. When you play Italy, you feel entirely justified in whatever despotic, nationalistic tact you take because your economy is literally starving and there is no hope for growth. You can't get bilateral trades with the UK, so screw [is that word ok on these boards? i hope so!] them. you won't trade, so i'll just take it ....

So, for players right now, italy is a great ride. Check the boards, i'm not the only one finding Italy to be a great play. All of the polls [that i have seen] have Italy easily in most everyone's top 3 for favorite play. i think that is saying something ....

Just my thiughts ....
 
Maybe a cheat event for AI Italy? Adding more resources in their country? Hmmm, this got me thinking, we could do that for AI Germany as well and take some stuff away per default... Interesting
 
Originally posted by Wineman
I don't mean adding more oil to the game, just taking away 90% of Venezuelan oil. But it is probably better to do this by making convoys of oil from venezuela to US, Trinidad and Aruba, with venezuelan ships (if the AI won't cancel them).
Click to expand...

This would be highly acceptable as it represents bilateral trading which was the form of trade in this era. There was no world market per se, everything was negotiated at cabinet/minister level between 2 parties.

AFAIK, these can be done as i know of one instance in particular: Norway steel to GER was a change made in v1.04 [i think] that works well. If we can find energy trade data from the mid-30's for countries like Italy, Germany, and any other energy starved countries and then implement convoys to create these, great.

Of course for HOI2, we really want to be able to instigate these as a player. ;)

Vulture: Question: does the AI kill convoys when they go to war with end point? i.e NOR convoy to GER, does that stop upon DoW of GER on NOR? or when NOR joins Allies?
 
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