Now, I have finally worked out how I want the basic economy to work and here's the rough system. I decided to go with the merger of two ideas. Economic Points have always failed in that they do not properly recognize the strengths of resource-based economies as opposed to industrial ones. Therefore with a bit of a nod to crezth, Industrial Capacity will act as a secondary stat to economic points. Industrial Capacity can be used to buy units for cheaper than they would be with economic points. For example, if an Infantry Division costs 10 EP to build, it may only cost 1 IC to build instead. This is to reflect the ease that industrial economies have to produce things in mass. To further develop things and to prevent anomalies such as Sardinia's massive navy in Capto Iugulum, ships, planes, and advanced army units such as armor can only be built using IC. However, such units can be traded to less industrial economies if they can not produce them on their own. Infantry Divisions will of course be able to be produced solely with EP. Now, EP can be banked and exchanged between factions, but IC cannot be banked, and must be used each turn or it will be lost.
I like it a lot. BTW, is there a way of using one's industrial capacity to support internal demand for basic goods? Maybe by converting some of the IC into stability or something else? Not sure how to balance this, but just bouncing this idea off to you.
In addition to EP and IC, I have decided on keeping only two of the resources from the Hearts of Iron games: Supplies and Fuel. Each military unit you possess will consume 3 Supplies each turn and 1 Fuel if it is a unit that consumes fuel. Supplies can be stockpiled and produced using EP and/or IC. Fuel is a resource that is generated dependent on your nation's production of oil. Both can be stockpiled and sold at your leisure. This will allow for Lend-Lease style scenarios, allowing support of another power without using any of your EP or IC used for national purposes. As with units, supplies can be produced more cheaply with IC than with EP.
Also a good system, although I really have no idea how the whole fuel thing will play out. But it's worth a try, since it opens up some pretty interesting inter-player dynamics.
Hoarding supply so far seems the best way to spend IC during peacetime for the countries that have already reached their manpower cap. Again, it's hard to balance until we start the game.
Speaking of supplies and fuel, I have finally figured out a way to make Mobilization mechanics feasible! Rather than creating spontaneous new divisions in large amounts, Mobilization instead makes units use less supplies each turn. Also, units will become cheaper to produce, allowing for rapid buildup and deployment in wartime. An infantry division which in peacetime consumes 3 Supplies will instead consume 1 Supply each turn when you are fully Mobilized for war. On the flip side of this, your Mobilization will be announced to the thread as soon as I received your orders that say you are Mobilizing. This will alert other players if you're planning a surprise mobilization and attack, and help recreate some of the circumstances that led to the actual First World War. Mobilization is not something that can be easily hidden, and if you see a neighbor mobilizing for war, it is rarely a good thing. Therefore, players will be forced to choose between whether they are willing to sacrifice total mobilization for the element of strategic surprise.
This is much more interesting than before. Is there gonna be a negative effect from mobilization on the economy or stability? Similar how enlisting your country's skilled labor force into the army/navy affects the productivity at home?
As for the notification in the thread, I think Shadowbound has a very good idea of accepting mobilization orders only 48 hours before deadline, so that you don't have to infinitely extend the deadline or rewrite entries due to revised orders.
That's all I have time for now, but I have also decided that Army Doctrines will still be appearing in this game, but will work in a very different manner than they did in Capto Iugulum. I'm eager to hear any comments or ideas ya'll have on the rules proposed above.
Are you going to overhaul or even, maybe, simplify the old armor- and aircraft-building mechanics? In Capto Iugulum it allowed two or three countries to design vehicles that were literally decades ahead of their time, even though those countries hardly had any experience of modern warfare? Historically, even the most revolutionary designs prove to be flawed until they are battle-tested, which explains why it took jet fighters fifteen years (out of which six were WW2) to move from first prototypes to effective combat aircraft. For the same reason the US armored force was so technically inferior to German panzers during the battle of Kasserine Pass in 1943, despite the huge industrial and scientific superiority of the American economy. Or why British battlecruisers were so vulnerable and gunnery so unimpressive during the battle of Jutland in 1916 after seemingly a century of clear naval supremacy and huge naval investments (basically, they hadn't had to fight anyone at sea for so long that they lost a way to tell which of their developments were effective and which were not). After all, to build good tanks and warplanes one has to not just build tanks and warplanes, but also test them in real conditions.
I'm not sure how to implement it in the game. I may suggest making separate experience stats for the five military branches: infantry, armor, air force, light navy, heavy navy, with experience for those branches decaying rapidly when they're not in practical use. These experience points could later be used to improve the designs that players created. You wouldn't need to check those parameters too often, and many countries would only use two or three of them, so I don't think it's too much work for you. However, it's also just a suggestion.
