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I am trying to understand the relationship, if any, between the Oil Resources available on map and the actual oil production of each country as it was in 1939.

For example, according to the League of Nations statistical reports for 1939, Romania produced 6239 Million metric tons of Crude ... and it has a 40 Oil marker in Ploesti, which would indicate that each Oil RP equals ~156 million metric tons.

However, Russia, which produced 29530 million metric tons has Oil RP worth 85, which on the same basis only equals 13258 million metric tons, a shortfall of more than 50% of actual production.

As far as I can see, using Romanian production as a baseline, NO other country has an accurate representation of actual Oil RP.

So, either Romanian production is grossly overegged in the game, or the production of the other countries is grossly underrepresented.

I guess there are two possibilities here ...

1) You've made the oil cost of oil consuming elements in the game too high for the amount of such that Germany actually produced and, therefore, have given Germany access to far more oil than she actually had access to.

or

2) There is no connect between Oil RP and actual production, which would seem strange in a game that supposedly tries to represent actual real world logistics to a greater degree than others.

Or, I suppose, a third possible reason ...

3) ?????

I'd be interested to hear what the design rationale was!

Phil McGregor

In general gameplay comes first to a degree of precisely matching math to production models.

There are many factors in determining oil production including transportation and refining. As stated above there is also game play balance.

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa
\There are many factors in determining oil production including transportation and refining. As stated above there is also game play balance.

Ah, so there is no equivalence ...

I am trying to do a 'historical' setup with as close to historical constraints as possible ...

* I have rejigged the map where there are notable errors (for example, I have changed the Gibraltar border with Spain to one hexside rather than the two on the original map, and turned the Iraqi RR line east of the rivers into a road, as there was only one RR line historically, the western one, a road along the Turkish Black Sea coast to represent the highway that ran there amongst many other changes)

* I have used Niehorster OOBs for various national forces and their deployments (where given), which generally (almost always) gives the sides involved far more forces than the game does (including the Germans) ... the bigger Polish Army falls in 2 turns to the bigger (and more mechanised) German Army, something that I have found almost impossible to do withe the stock OOB.

I will need to look at the resources available, I suspect that the Steel and Other Resources are probably as out of whack with reality as the Oil is ... which probably means that I will need to fiddle with the RP cost to build and Oil cost to maintain for the various units, maybe differentiating (if possible) between the leaner mechanised elements of the Wehrmacht compared to the oil rich allies and their mech units.

I think Logistics & Shipyard capacity, Stored Oil (and Depot stockpiles) and other logistic and production related things will need a lot of attention as well.

Warplan is the first WW2 game I've come across that seems closer to being easy to mod to an actual historical situation than any other I have played over the years ... and, while I like a good 'game' I would also prefer to have one where the various players/sides have to operate under something closer to real world constraints ...

My attitude has always been that victory doesn't (and shouldn't) come with German and Japan conquering the entire world (which was completely, totally and utterly impossible), but with seeing how much better (or worse) they (and the Allies, for that matter) do than the historical outcomes ... that is, the Germans and the Japanese will be defeated, no matter how well they are played, with realistic rules, but may last for a different amount of time.

Yeah, I know. Not everyone's cup of tea!

Phil McGregor

Currently Poland can fall in 2 turns. France it 4. If you know what your doing and how to use the tools of the game properly.

I am a historical war gamer, started playing war games in 1976.

My favorite board war games of all time are SPI War in Europe, GDW/GRD Europa Series and AH/MMP Advanced Squad Leader (ASL).

My favorite digital war games of all time are Decision Games Computer War in Europe 2 (CWIE2), Shrapnel's Steel Panthers World War 2 (SPWW2), TalonSoft/Matrix's The Operational Art of War (TOAW IV), Gary Grigsby's War in the East (WitE) and Al's WarPlan (WP).

Alvaro has done it right with WP.

USA 182.657 Mt
USSR 29.700 Mt
Venezuela 27.443 Mt
Iran 10.426 Mt
Indonesia 7.939 Mt
Mexico 6.721 Mt
Romania 5.764 Mt
Columbia 3.636 Mt
Iraq 3.438 Mt
Argentina 2.871 Mt
Trinidad 2.844 Mt
Peru 1.776 Mt
Burma 1.088 Mt
Canada 1.082 Mt
Egypt 0.929 Mt
Oil production 1940 in the world...its fascinating as they now say if Germany had the fuel Russia would have fallen.

Interessting discussion.
But if you consider the following data and the Allied would start the strategic bombing based on this, the war would come to an halt earlier. Maybe...
But we have theses insights now, but not the Allied in 1939.
So, Alvaros use of a simpler models has a justification.

Nevertheless, a try to build on more real 1939 data is interessting. Good luck.

Something about the importance of the plants for synthetic fuels:

Dietrich Eichholtz: Geschichte der Deutschen Kriegswirtschaft. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1985, Band 2, S. 354.

Mineral oil in Germany (in 1000 t):
Year / total, estimate / synthetic

1939 / 8.200 / 2.200 (27%)
1940 / 7.600 / 3.348 (44%)
1941 / 10.000 / 4.116 (41%)
1942 / 9.500 / 4.920 (52%)
1943 / 11.300 / 5.748 (51%)
1944 / 6.830 / 3.830 (56%)


At the beginning of the war in 1939, seven hydrogenation plants were in production (the largest in Leuna),
three were shortly before the start of production, and two were under construction.

In 1943 there were twelve producing hydrogenation plants.
The hydrogenation plants covered most of the Wehrmacht's fuel requirements and were the sole source of
aviation fuel for the Luftwaffe. In the spring of 1944, the number of plants had risen to 15.

ORIGINAL: aspqrz02
My attitude has always been that victory doesn't (and shouldn't) come with German and Japan conquering the entire world (which was completely, totally and utterly impossible), but with seeing how much better (or worse) they (and the Allies, for that matter) do than the historical outcomes ... that is, the Germans and the Japanese will be defeated, no matter how well they are played, with realistic rules, but may last for a different amount of time.

Phil McGregor

That's why I have this experimental victory system. In WIF a player can easily Sitzkrieg the whole game even if they had a crappy start. I had a WIF game recently like that as Germany. If I wanted to win I could have Sitzed it. But instead I choose a Late Barbarossa starting in the winter of 1941. The game went to the last turn, last impulse, and literally last roll of the die. It was so close that whoever won the initiative would generally win the game. Axis lost and almost still won.

So WarPlan the more you take, the longer you hold, the more points you accrue. Still needs adjustment though.

Germany also had imported oil from the USSR until June 22nd of 1941. I also don't see a reason why other countries wouldn't have smuggled in oil resources into Germany at a premium and since Germany had pillaged the banks of many nations there was likely a lucrative black market going on. As we know the at one point Ball Bearings were provided via such a method.

Axis got stockpiles from the occupied nations, besides synthetic petrol there was also some small scale production within Germany, Austria and occupied Poland.Besides USSR transports till June 1941 under Molotov-Ribbentrop pact arrangements for which they paid with Machinery.

ORIGINAL: shri

Axis got stockpiles from the occupied nations, besides synthetic petrol there was also some small scale production within Germany, Austria and occupied Poland.Besides USSR transports till June 1941 under Molotov-Ribbentrop pact arrangements for which they paid with Machinery.

Indeed. On my historical map mod I have placed a 5 OIL resource in Hungary (177, 50) on the rail line between Poland and Hungary as, based on 40 Oil in Ploesti equalling historical 1939 Romanian production the combined Polish-Slovak production comes to ~5 total, not each.

* I've also added another 5 OIL (IIRC on the Linz-Vienna rail line junction) to Germany representing an underestimation of German non-synthetic oil production, a 5 Oil in Egypt north of Asyut.

* Iranian oil is now 30 OIL in Bandar Shapur and 30 OIL on the Karun river where the rail line crosses it 2 hexes north of the BS oil.

* Iraqi oil is now 10 OIL in Kurdistan, 10 OIL between Kurdistan and the 5 OIL at the junction of the Tigris and ... whatever ... river NE of Baghdad.

* Soviet Caucasus Oil is now 5 OIL in Maikop, 5 OIL in Grozny, deleted the oil near the Sulak river and Baku now has 2 x 25 OIL, one NW and one SW. This tries to represent the complete incapacity of the Germans to get the Baku oil (historically) to even 1 OIL plus the 2 points of repair per fortnight allowed (evidently hard coded) in the game. The Germans now have to work much harder to get any oil from the Caucasus (and I am considering making the 2 x 25 OIL 2 x 5, or even 1 x 5, OIL to further represent this)

* Other Soviet Oil ... Astrakhan, 5 OIL (as part of the attempt to represent making it more historically hard for the Germans to get more than minimal oil. 25 OIL at Ufa, 4 x 40 OIL around Siberia, partly to represent Siberian oil, mostly to represent US oil coming via Vladivostok as the claim that taking the Caucasus oil would have crippled the Soviet army which would have had to rely on finite stockpiles simply doesn't reflect reality.

* 5 OIL in the UK between Manchester and Leeds, representing small historical production of real and coal oil.

* 24 x 40 OIL in the USA (including what is there in the base game).

* 5 x 40 OIL in an expanded Central and South American Resource area.

* Bahrain Port (222, 1) with a 10 Oil NW.

The US and American oil is based on assuming equivalency of Ploesti = 40 OIL ... of course, the problem will be getting it to the UK and elsewhere!

Similar changes have been made to other Raw materials.

* Portugal now has fourRARE METALS ... one SE of Porto and one on the Lisbon-Spain rail line, in the river forest hex one two hexes SE of Lisbon and one 4 hexes SW ditto,

* Reduction of Spanish Steel to 5 STEEL. Added Spanish RARE METALS NW of Madrid.

* More COAL in the UK. 2 COAL in the Midlands. 1 COAL (NW of Glasgow, 1 COAL North of Cardiff.

* RARE METALS SE of Carlisle.

* BAUXITE NE of Glasgow.

* The USA now has 4 BAUXITE, 3 RARE METALS and 5 COAL.

* Canada now has 5 OIL (down from 10, iirc) and 5 STEEL.

* Germany has additional COAL, 2 (iirc) in the forest hes NW of Cologne and one adjacent, above the junction of the Cologne-Cassel RR line.

* Norway has 5 STEEL north of Oslo.

* Sweden has 1 x COAL at 162, 74, 1 RARE METALS at 164, 78 and the 30 STEEL on the Narvik-Lulea RR line.

* There is now a 5 OIL (Synthetic) NE of Talinn, representing Shale Oil production.

* Turkey has 1 x BAUXITE 2 hexes East of Ankara and 1 x RARE METALS at 201, 28.

* 1 x RARE METALS at 175, 28 in Greece.

* Yugoslavia has 3 x BAUXITE, one SW of Zagreb, one SW of Belgrade and one at 174, 37.

* Hungary has 4 x BAUXITE, one NW of Kapsovar, one S of Budapest, one on the Danaube-Arad RR line where it crosses the river and one NW of Debrecen.

* Italy has 3 x BAUXITE, N, NW and two hexes NW of Milan, 5 STEEL SW of Bologna

These are all based on 1939 data issued by the League of Nations (available online!).

Of course, having much more in the way of resources will probably require rejigging of unit costs etc. ... but that will require playtesting and I haven't got to that point yet!

Phil McGregor

This is interesting because I did nearly the exact same with one of my own mods. I also used Ploesti as a sort of anchor in determining values. So, your math is coming out roughly similar to mine....very similar, in fact, exact in several instances.

I also used the OKW analysis at the beginning of Barbarossa which estimated German fuel consumption to hit critical low levels by Dec '41. This did not quite occur, but the fear of running out of oil should drive at least some of the Axis player decisions in '42 in a similar fashion. For the most part this already occurs in Warplan--if not for a likely and aggressive Allied player bombing campaign.

A word of caution however, my total adjustment (prior to any Case Blue gains) was a net +20 to the ze Germans. In hindsight, it was actually too much. We found the Axis player to be swimming in oil. So, keep us posted on your outcomes.

The hard part is balancing it versus historical, given the fact that the Allied player is likely to start bombing oil right out the gate. An ahistorical result but not an ahistorical strategy.

Some players feel it's too easy for the Allied player to slam German oil. They are correct, sort of.

One of the things I think players misunderstand about the oil war is what they think they are bombing. They think they are bombing the oil fields when, in fact, the target of the air campaign is more focused on refinery capacity (and transportation) than oil derricks. In Ploesti's case and some others, they are co-located.

What goes unappreciated however, is that by unintentional design and just by the very nature of it's construction and normal operations, an oil refinery is a difficult target to hit. They are considered a hard target. (you want to see a precision strike on a refinery, there was one in Saudi Arabia a few weeks ago with drones...that's precise). In game terms a player is able to hit an oil target in 1939 with the same degree of accuracy as 1944. Without knowing the actual math and bombing table Warplan uses, we (the players) think that might be the case. It's a guess.

So, maybe giving the Germans the additional oil evens out?

Anyhow, I like what you're doing here Phil and hope you share the final result.

Sure, I will share when it is more complete ... like I noted elsewhere, I am currently writing the fourth book of a Kickstarter RPG supplemental series I successfully ran a couple of years ago, and that takes priority, so I fit in modding in spare moments here and there ...

Phil McGregor

Actually between '39 and '44 there were huge differences in bombing targetting systems and not just that.
Up to pratically late '41 UK bombers had -navigation- issues, and were dropping out of targets, not even the designated city. Pratically bombing open fields and country.

ORIGINAL: Cohen_slith

Actually between '39 and '44 there were huge differences in bombing targetting systems and not just that.
Up to pratically late '41 UK bombers had -navigation- issues, and were dropping out of targets, not even the designated city. Pratically bombing open fields and country.

The 'navigation' issues lasted pretty much through the war. IIRC the RAF expected to get 80% of their bombs within a 10 mile radius of the target and this didn't change much ... what *did* change was that they sent more and more bombers per mission, so the relatively small amount of bombs that fell close to the nominal target increased because of *that* and not because of better accuracy.

Likewise, USAAF claims about 'daylight precision bombing' and its super-wonderful Norden bombsight and, therefore, their bombing accuracy don't actually stack up ... its a dirty little secret that crap weather over European targets meant most of their bombing was done 'blind' and was no more accurate than the RAF's efforts.

Overy's various books on the air war in WW2 debunk these myths.

Interestingly, as far as the Oil campaign is concerned, what most people don't understand is that the Refineries were rarely, if ever, severely damaged since most bombs dropped way off target. Most of the damage was from near misses ... things like fractured pipes or busted seals ... and it was actually the *cumulative* damage to the refineries, increasing their overall vulnerability to increasingly distant 'near' misses that eventually had the most impact.

That and, at the end of the war, the Transportation campaign which basically shut down the German rail net.

Phil McGregor

ORIGINAL: Zovs
My favorite digital war games of all time are Decision Games Computer War in Europe 2 (CWIE2)...
Alvaro has done it right with WP.

Agreed about Alvaro's achievement with WP. I couldn't find Decision Games Computer War in Europe 2. Is this a community mod of their War in Europe PC game? https://shop.decisiongames.com/ProductD ... tCode=2100

Not even related. I do own the original DOS version of that game though.