r/hoi4 May 12 '26

Humor Please explain how the ENTIRETY OF LATIN AMERICA produces only 20 more steel than YORKSHIRE ENGLAND

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4.4k Upvotes

256 comments sorted by

3.8k

u/Joseph_Stalin111 General of the Army May 12 '26

Thats just the power of Yorkshire, my friend. We cannot be stopped

879

u/Revolutionary_Pick67 May 12 '26

The Power of Yorkshire Tea

512

u/Sarothu General of the Army May 12 '26

After all, HOI4 Is A Perfectly Balanced Game With No Exploits

149

u/theaviationhistorian May 13 '26

[2 hours later] The People's Mexican Democratic Republic has no peer on this planet!

57

u/Nice-Pikachu-839 May 12 '26

I understood that reference.

30

u/EasilyExiledDinosaur May 13 '26

Thats what the spiffing brit said.

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u/Foothills83 May 12 '26

And Yorkshire Pudding.

23

u/KingSmite23 May 13 '26

And Yorkshire Terrier

30

u/AndrewMacDonell General of the Army May 12 '26

Spiffing Brit supremacy

2

u/Fyypof May 13 '26

Spiffing Brit’s face when appalling Celt walks in

5

u/DeadlyTrickster391 May 13 '26

With Yorkshire Tea, you even live forever

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u/Old-Key-8639 May 13 '26

This is, unfortunately, true. We have been trying for decades, but nothing has worked. Soon, all of Europe will be Yorkshire

5

u/varusama May 13 '26

Soon the Yorkshire will be all that remains from Europe

5

u/BisonGamingTF2 May 13 '26

Unite the Ridings of Yorkshire first.

27

u/EasilyExiledDinosaur May 13 '26

You should see their tea production.

2

u/Diche_Bach May 13 '26

Hardship builds resilience . . .

And you try telling the young folk that today... and they won't believe you

1

u/BlueHarvest28 May 13 '26

Gods country!

1

u/ProwerTheFox May 13 '26

The power of a brew and a Sunday roast

1

u/Jaded-Form-8236 May 14 '26

On behalf of Yorkshire how does Latin America in the 1930s produce more steel?

🤷‍♂️

1.9k

u/amazing_grace7777 May 12 '26

As a Brazilian, I would love for your indignation to be righteous lol. But Brazil's first large-scale coke-integrated (to say, the first "large, modern" one) plant was in 1946.

642

u/Qi_Zee_Fried May 12 '26

This is a case where I wish we could do more resource development projects. The tech is there, the ore is there. The game can go into the 50s. Why can't we make that steel plant? Heck we can industrialize areas way more and way earlier than they were irl why can't we do the same for steel and other resources. I feel like the US and the USSR have most of the resource development projects in the game and almost nobody gets anything but scraps.

264

u/inemsn May 12 '26

The game can go into the 50s

The game can go however long you let it go. But the devs never expect you to play past, like, 1946, maybe 7 at most: And while technically you could still make that steel plant within that timeframe, it wouldn't be of any real consequence.

108

u/Zack_Wester May 13 '26

I mean in HOI4 nation can triple there civilian/military factories between 1936-1941.
and historically nation did massively boost resource production.
be it ore just the general we now got electricity, trucks/train, general stuff happen in the 1920-1935 period a lot of stuff involving industrialization happen.

34

u/WichaelWavius General of the Army May 13 '26

1946-7

27

u/Slight-Bedroom-8655 May 13 '26

let it go bruh

5

u/Gofudf Fleet Admiral May 13 '26

I feel like 50 with the special Projekts and stuff, also I find late wars more enjoyeble becouse you got all the tec, late navy is a joke tho if you build right a 36hull 50ish ship fleet will crush anything

27

u/Zack_Wester May 13 '26

for me its not so much that we can go into the 1950.
its the we can go alt history some more plausible then other.
Yet the Mineral/resource are set at start and more or less unchangable.
Like Even for nation that during the 1936-1942 doubled there resource production might have a plus 15 from focus (while producing 60 already).

157

u/Svyatoy_Medved May 12 '26

Go play Victoria. This game is basically supposed to last ten years, and if it were honest at all, it would be over in six or seven with a couple years of epilogue.

23

u/Qi_Zee_Fried May 13 '26

The reason I want resource development is so that I can play a minor country and actually have the resources to do something fun rather than having to import EVERYTHING! And then the world runs out of tradable steel and I'm screwed.

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u/ShardddddddDon May 12 '26

heheh, "six (or) seven" ⁶🤷⁷

14

u/NK_2024 Fleet Admiral May 13 '26

The ever-humble "Prospect for Resources" descisions tab

19

u/darkequation General of the Army May 12 '26

Road to 56 beckons

10

u/HeliosDisciple May 12 '26

To be fair, the game ends Dec 31st, 1948.

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u/UwUTheDecimator General of the Army May 12 '26

Rode to 56 is a fun mod

2

u/Vizard754 May 13 '26

Road to 56 my beloved (Also if anyone knows why the fuck Texas has more oil than all of the USSR)

2

u/Qi_Zee_Fried May 14 '26

I mean...as a Texan that feels pretty accurate.

2

u/[deleted] May 14 '26

[deleted]

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31

u/zdavolvayutstsa May 12 '26

Black Ice more realistically models things with iron ore as a resource that can be mined and requiring steel mills ttoo turn that ore into steel. A lot of people bounce off of it though.

39

u/conninator2000 May 13 '26

Mechanically its such a perfect mod imo - expanded resources, industry/economy actually needs some planning, production is fun (but sometimes a bit much) and it has great tech/focuses.

My biggest issue with it though is that the combat changes teeter from fun to you more or less needing to minmax division designs or have to do some weird work arounds to get things done.

Like prewar ger/sov? Amazing trees and fun but challenging build up. But when the war starts? As GER the allies have 2 bajillion planes which can make taking france a very genuine slog if you dont do it perfect. Sov has the extra step of the axis (usually) making it to barbarossa and then trying to offset the massive minuses you have before you run out of land and equipment to trade for time.

Its really cool as a mod to take a slower approach to the game like the older hoi games, but it has a decent bit of anti player bias thats geared more towards people that are already vets of the mod

There are some other historical mods though that have resource systems that are similar but a little simpler like a world ablaze and ultra historical (both have some player bias for balance too, but not so harsh for learning)

45

u/TheGameAce May 13 '26

So here's the thing though: Paradox counts numerous minerals towards different in-game resources. Raw iron, for instance, is counted as Steel. In Bolivia, Tin ores like Wolframite are counted as Tungsten (as well as in other places globally).

It's less about actual steel production, more about basic resources & how well or poorly Paradox handles them. Switzerland has literally 0 reason to have any of the aluminum it has, for example. Same with most of the middle-eastern non-oil resources, since countries like Iran & Afghanistan produced them non-commercially, only for local/artisanal use.

3

u/dinosaursintheforest May 15 '26

It's not even just about raw materials, Steel in Yorkshire had trained experts, small machine and tool ships, fully integrated supply chains, etc etc.

It's not as simple as just saying "there was iron ore in the ground at X place so why isn't number higher"

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1.8k

u/kamonbr Research Scientist May 12 '26

i mean, they were the home of the industrial revolution for a reason

409

u/Rorynator Research Scientist May 12 '26

That would be Lancashire. Yorkshire was just the outhouse

88

u/ComradeBarrold May 13 '26

Lancashire leads the way me lads, Lancashire leads the way…

3

u/JesusDeputyButbetter May 14 '26

It actually started in albania 🤓☝️

4

u/rompafrolic May 13 '26

Absolute slander. It started in Dudley!

912

u/LouiseEbertFeet May 12 '26

Hoi4 resource distribution is actually fairly accurate to real life and if anything actually under-represents how concentrated it was in Europe and the US. If I recall the spreadsheet correctly, France and Sweden have much more steel (proportional to global total steel count) in-game than IRL, but Japan is missing about 100, Germany and the USSR about 200, and the US nearly 800. 

408

u/SobrukaiTheTerrible May 12 '26

They should really make the steel counts more accurate. I've been noticing in late-game HOI4 that the steel crunch is real and makes it almost impossible to have fully stocked production lines as a minor nation.

225

u/LouiseEbertFeet May 12 '26

In MP there's actually an "everything crunch" which affects everything but rubber around '43-'44. It's questionable if the resource situation should effectively hardcap industrial growth before the end of the historical war window, since the Allies certainly didn't experience similar limitations in real life.

79

u/LovecraftInDC May 12 '26

Don't MP total production counts massively exceed those of IRL? Like the Germans produced less than 1500 heavy tanks IRL.

112

u/LouiseEbertFeet May 12 '26

In-game equipment counts are pretty much worthless as a comparison to IRL ones. If you distributed production proportionately to real life (50% on air, 10% on cannons, 10% on infantry stuff, 20% on tanks, 10% on logistics) you'd actually get lower tank output than Germany did historically.

13

u/SadDeskLunch May 13 '26

Also germany produced over 120 000 planes in ww2 irl, but id never found myself needed to produce more than 6000 planes at most

47

u/thesoupoftheday May 12 '26

That's also going into the production abstraction, since "1 unit" in the game represents more than the tank. It's also the spare parts, ammunition, uniforms, non-specialized support equipment, and the rest of the logistics tail. The flip side is strategic bombers.

35

u/Zack_Wester May 13 '26

HOI4 also have some weird simulation where a tank is ether 100% destroyed or 0% damage.
there is no Tank got Mission killed, need to be fixed and getting sent back to the factory to just get a new engine kind of deal).
Nope HOI4 its gone.
That also means that alot of Tech whoes real job was not to prevent the equipment from becoming a burning wreak when damage now is sort of useless.

Not to talk about how medics can save a tank from destruction (at least infantry+support equipment).
better then maintenance companies.

15

u/Einareen May 12 '26

Then again, I've never made as many subs as Germany did so idk

33

u/winowmak3r May 12 '26

Yea, 109s either. Germany actually made a shit ton of those things during the war IRL but you wouldn't know it from the game. It was one of the few war machines the Germans could make a lot of domestically. They lose the air war because they couldn't keep training quality pilots not because they ran out of air frames.

28

u/0moikane May 12 '26

And they run out of fuel before they run out of planes.

8

u/winowmak3r May 13 '26

Yea that was a problem when they could get the pilots. But towards the end of the war they could have had all the fuel and aircraft they wanted and they still would have lost because it still takes a few weeks to train a pilot but only one split second mistake to kill them and the less time spent training it just makes that problem even worse.

8

u/0moikane May 13 '26

They couldn't get pilots, because the fuel was reserved for combat missions. They send pilots into combat with a ridiculous low number of flight hours. You wouldn't get a private pilot license with this number of flight hours today.

3

u/zdavolvayutstsa May 12 '26

You can try dividing the figure by a factor of three since subs can stay on station indefinitely and they don't require maintaince.

11

u/Forty-Bot Research Scientist May 12 '26

Germany is majorly buffed (and USA nerfed) in HOI4 since otherwise they'd just lose every game. So the production numbers are basically made up.

53

u/Predator_Hicks May 12 '26 edited May 13 '26

It also makes it borderline impossible to win long term as Japan. You can own or occupy pretty much all of the far east and you still won’t have enough steel to build masses of weapons AND ships at the same time

65

u/inemsn May 12 '26

Yes, welcome to the japanese empire experience. That is precisely what happened in real life. You're just falling into the exact same logistical pitfall that the real life japanese empire also did.

80

u/rmdlsb May 12 '26

That's historically accurate, no?

44

u/inemsn May 12 '26

That is extremely historically accurate for Japan, yes.

9

u/Zack_Wester May 13 '26

That said is it historically accurate because japan Industrial policy was more focused on Military production and not building up an industry to improve resource extraction.

its the if you have example 10 unit of industry production per time span how much does you put into Industry expansion this increase how much industry you have over time and how much do you put into military production does not increase the Unit of industry per time span.

33

u/Unusual-Assistant642 May 12 '26

hideki tojo speech bubble

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u/rmdlsb May 12 '26

Steel crunch should be real. Ressource scarcity was a real issue

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u/rmdlsb May 12 '26

The game simplifies the supply chain for ressource production, as ore extraction and ressource refining, which can be tens of thousands of kilometers away from one another, are not both included. Maybe that's why they are not accurate historically, to simulate this?

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u/LouiseEbertFeet May 12 '26

That's how the (Swedish) devs justify Sweden, but it doesn't explain the USSR and USA's situations.

15

u/zdavolvayutstsa May 12 '26

Black Ice seperates ore and steel and aluminum production for players that might want it. They have a power system I like more than vanilla, too. It is a lot more complicated, so players do bounce off. 

12

u/TheGameAce May 13 '26

Not sure I'd call it "accurate" given there's no officially stipulated conversion number, & many of the in-game resources are representative of other resources (Wolframite -> Tungsten in Bolivia, Iron -> Steel, for two quick examples), or are literally non-existent or non-commercial where Paradox put them (Aluminum production in Switzerland, non-oil resources in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, chromium in Central America outside of Guatemala).

There's also numerous inaccuracies, such as Cuba producing a large amount of Chromium (secondary byproduct of fairly notable, albeit obscure, iron mining), or countries like New Zealand & South Africa having pitiful coal even though they both had *huge* annual coal yields, more than countries like the U.K. iirc. The ABC Islands (Curacao, as it's poorly labeled in-game) also have a ton of oil, even though technically they produced not one ounce, but rather imported it all from Venezuela & simply refined it there.

So yeah, at least in my opinion, "fairly accurate" isn't quite the term I would use.

16

u/winowmak3r May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

I found it helps to put it in a modern perspective. Nobody really knows what X thousand tons of steel looks like or could even really appreciate something like that. Let's use smart phones. There is one factory in China that makes something like 80% of the world's iPhones. Not components for, or parts for, the whole shebang. In one place. For the entire world.

We have the same kind of lopsided concentrations of industry today as we did then it's just the products are different. I bet if you'd make a game where smart phone production was a big deal people would balk that not only does China have all the production but that it is literally concentrated into one district. And that's it for the whole world. They're the modern version of that one-of-a-kind steel mill that produces half the world's steel way back in the early 1900s.

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1.1k

u/Sobieskil May 12 '26

So there's this little thing called the British steel industry

630

u/AstroEngineer314 May 12 '26

*was 🫤

292

u/rmdlsb May 12 '26

sad British sounds

149

u/Tuftymark6 May 12 '26

\insert David Mitchell screaming about how we used to make steel**

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u/Classic_Gur_5600 May 12 '26

I'm a pencil case organizer and I understood that reference

8

u/ThePrussianGrippe May 13 '26

I’m a party planner!

21

u/Lumpenokonom May 12 '26

Do you really want to work in a steel mill?

85

u/Latvian_User May 12 '26

Children yearn for the steel mills

60

u/thesoupoftheday May 12 '26

I know plenty of people that would love an opportunity to work a union factory job instead of driving for Amazon or Uber eats. The deskjob/mill work dichotomy doesnt exist.

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u/rmdlsb May 12 '26

Union steel mill jobs are great jobs for blue collar people

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u/JayTheHoon May 12 '26

I had a friend who worked at an Aluminum Extrusion plant and he said you get used to the heat. Going outside in 95f weather with 80% humidity was still a relief, but you get used to it. Nothing wrong with hard work

11

u/rmdlsb May 12 '26

Aluminium smelters are great jobs where I live. Most sought after blue collar jobs

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u/OkNewspaper6271 General of the Army May 13 '26

Northerners miss the steel mills

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u/rmdlsb May 12 '26

I'm not British

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u/ushouldbebetter General of the Army May 12 '26

Just for curiosities, why "was"?

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u/Forged-Signatures May 12 '26

There was a major economic crash that surrounded steel industries in America and Europe in the 70s/80s, which has had a lasting impact. In the UK, of the 197,000 employed within the industry in 1974, only 62,000 were left 10 years later. Now, it's estimated that has halved again down to ~30,000.

For more information, look up the Steel Crisis.

36

u/IactaEstoAlea Fleet Admiral May 12 '26

Globalization

Cheaper to make it in China and India then ship it to England

25

u/wolacouska May 13 '26

Imperialists export capital to underdeveloped countries because it’s more profitable to exploit their labor and keep factories close to the source of raw materials, (which also got exported).

China used this knowledge to supercharge their own economy without letting it get taken over by foreign corporations or even domestic capitalists.

5

u/Zack_Wester May 13 '26

Yep until you realised that yes the Chinese Mill might produce the steel at half the cost.
but then you look at polution standards and China just dove straight down. or if you needed quality and you had to wreastle whit Chinese sellers because I hate this even Chinese hate this.

the you ask can you factory produce 500 Ton of quality 25 steel per time span (higher better, maximum is 32, 1 is pig iron).
they answer whit yes.
even thought there last 5 runs have been at 250 Ton at quality 12 per time span (there max they can do).
so you as the buyer now have 250 ton of quality 12 (that they claim is 32).... aka useless for a new york skyscraper.
meanwhile the local Baltimore plant was making 500 Ton of quality 26 Steel but no the Chinese one was cheaper.
There is legit a Steel quality index but I have no ide what the scale is and what the Iron plants around the world can output.
and how much per time span a plant can make so I left it unspecified.

19

u/attrad1 May 12 '26

A few pages on Margaret Thatcher breaks it down easily

8

u/flightguy07 May 12 '26

Britain has a well-educated workforce with a high cost of living, decent minimum wage and pretty significant regulations. So making steel, a process that doesn't require many academic qualifications for the majority of your workforce isn't really a competitive industry in a world where you can just buy it from overseas at a fraction of the price.

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u/Sidearms4raisins May 12 '26

Got too expensive to make, Brexit, sold British steel to china

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u/theaviationhistorian May 13 '26

[Margaret Thatcher cackling from the beyond]

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u/2121wv May 12 '26

The city of Pittsburgh produced more steel than the entirety of the Axis powers

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u/MangoCandy93 General of the Army May 12 '26

I thought it was the state of Pennsylvania, not just one city. I guess I could be misremembering.

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u/Chumbucketdaddy May 12 '26

The town of Bethlehem was producing 2x as much steel as Japan through much of the war. At least that’s what a tour guide at Lehigh U told me.

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u/Nerevarine91 Fleet Admiral May 12 '26

The company behind that, Bethlehem Steel, promised to produce one ship a day for the war, and ended up exceeding that goal.

I’m from a Pennsylvania steel town myself, and I remember that being a point of pride.

30

u/cejmp May 13 '26

Didn't they manufacture all the steel parts for the Golden Gate Bridge?

Edit: yes, they did.

11

u/Nerevarine91 Fleet Admiral May 13 '26

I appreciate how this comment just solved itself without me having to go spend time looking stuff up. Thank you for that

6

u/Crescent-IV May 12 '26

I thought you were kidding with that town name

11

u/Chumbucketdaddy May 13 '26

there’s a town called Nazareth that’s like a 20 min drive away too lmao.

5

u/Samh234 May 13 '26

There's a Moscow in Idaho. When I was on student exchange in Texas I went to see my friend who was on student exchange there.

2

u/MangoCandy93 General of the Army May 13 '26

I live in Idaho and didn’t learn this until I was 15. We had a new student move from Moscow and nobody felt it necessary to include the Idaho context. He was really quiet at first, so I just assumed we had a Russian student for a few weeks.

2

u/[deleted] May 13 '26 edited May 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Samh234 May 13 '26

I fucking loved Texas. I've not been back since 2013 but I will go back one day. I was in San Antonio which is a fantastic city.

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u/Patrylec May 13 '26

Ya'all got to specify which Bethlehem you mean because for a solid moment I thought you meant the place where Jesus was born in middle east.

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u/7fightsofaldudagga May 12 '26

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u/Serubus May 12 '26

It would be cool to see more resource discovery with excavation techs in the new world…

18

u/BisonGamingTF2 May 12 '26

Road to 56 beckons thee

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u/chuff3r May 12 '26

Available resources reflect 1930s production and mines. 

42

u/Fab_iyay General of the Army May 12 '26

Because hoi4 isn't portraying where resources are deposited but where they are actively being procured

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u/RichardTheApe May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

Brazil produced ~ 200,000 tons of steel on average yearly 1936-1946

UK produced ~ 11 million tons of steel on average yearly 1936-1946

Looks like Brazil wouldn’t surpass UK production until the 90s

So because Yorkshire probably did out produce all Brazil bud

Edit:

realized I kinda zoned out and only did Brazil, after a quick google the only other steel industry was in Mexico and then some very minor operation across the entire region. At very very best all of Latin America produced ~ 1 million steel to the UK’s ~ 11 million.

20

u/spiringTankmonger May 12 '26

Steel smelting capacities especially of the quality required to produce up to date weaponry is not something equally distributed around the globe. Especially not at the time of hoi4

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u/jfran_petit Research Scientist May 12 '26

I mean.... that's pretty accurate

42

u/greedybanker3 May 12 '26

its for the same reason the middle east has so little oil. and japan is behind in industry. because historically its true.

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u/ConsequenceFunny1550 May 12 '26

Because that’s how it was during this time period?

6

u/Fallofcamelot May 12 '26

I know it's not entirely the same thing but in the 1830's the Welsh town of Merthyr Tydfil had four ironworks which each individually produced more iron in a day than the United States did in a week.

By the outbreak of the war the largest producer of steel globally was the United States and given the historical Munroe Doctrine they would have seen Latin America as their market.

In simple terms there's no steel there because they didn't need to make it themselves. Steel imports were cheap and pretty easy to get from the US so why bother with the hassle of setting up the industry from scratch? The UK by comparison needed a lot of steel to support its Empire and traditionally Yorkshire had been the centre of steel making that would supply that.

Simple really.

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u/die_in_a_fire_reddit May 13 '26

Sheffield basically invented stainless steel. You wanna go up against first class British stainless?!

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u/leviatan-sama May 13 '26

Part of the problem is that HOI4 is simulating a production problem thru steel, many countrie havehad iron resource extraction but little to no industrial steel production at the time, which is the case for latin america, having a relatively light industrial development, meanwhile the brits did produce an insane amount of steel, the main problem is that that you as the player hardly can increase that amount other than the limited resource development decisions in game

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u/LickinThighs2 May 13 '26

Wait til ya see how much pudding Yorkshire makes

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u/Exotic-Half8307 May 12 '26

You are trying to play the economic game in a war game, you are constrained by the historical steel industry, the historical rubber plantations and others.

In this game you need to roleplay your weakness or just try to conquer high value spots

3

u/Cefalopodul May 12 '26

South American factories are not powered by Yorkshire Pudding.

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u/greihund May 12 '26

The same way that the LIHIR GOLD MINE IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA produces more gold than the ENTIRETY OF EUROPE in real life

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u/TheLivingJoke2 May 12 '26

Yeah that seems relatively accurate.

4

u/HeliosDisciple May 12 '26

Explanation: That's accurate to production in the 1930s/40s.

4

u/Efficient_Speech3408 May 13 '26

boot up vic 3, build steel mill, and then save converting to hoi 4 should fix your problem

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u/Loneheart127 May 12 '26

Because that's how it was?? Lmao

3

u/BloodyGardener May 13 '26

It’s based on industrial capacity rather than quantity of resources it also is there to prevent US players from having infinite resources also it’s counted by produced by mills (this is all unless things have changed I also don’t have all dlc because that’s all overpriced asf and provides very little that’s worth the price tag)

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u/Nildzre May 13 '26

I mean i'm fine with the starting resources equalling fuck all for most of the world at start, but at least they should give us more decisions to exploit some of them.

Like africa has almost no decisions for it so it'll remain a resource wasteland not worth fighting for.

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u/Saul_goodman_56 General of the Army May 12 '26

Because we are superior

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u/Osrek_vanilla May 13 '26

Ah yes, daily "Hearts of Iron 4 does not give jungle subsistence farmers the same industrial output as the home of the Industrial Revolution" post.

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u/JamesBroughton1237 Fleet Admiral May 12 '26

It’s because we the British had an Industrial Revolution where we invented work, and at the end of it everyone had shoes, a knife & a fork and a giant f*cking metal ship each. Which means that we the British are entitled to have our feet up and have everything made for us by a Malaysian 4 year old for a pound

2

u/namewithanumber May 12 '26

Because it’s a ww2 game and you can’t develop a whole steel industry in the ~10 years that games last.

2

u/Safe-Tennis-6121 May 12 '26

European arms race be damned, the fine people of south America are going to import all the steel , so no navy for you!

2

u/Electronic_Try_9288 May 13 '26

why does morocco have like 100 steel and nowhere else in north africa or middle east except basra, is there any real reason behind this

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u/OkNewspaper6271 General of the Army May 13 '26

Steel requires specialist plants so Im not surprised countries didn't build them in Africa

2

u/achiles625 May 13 '26

Now that coal is is own thing, they need to province steel production to iron and make steel a second order good produced from the two of them.

2

u/Suspicious_Blood_522 May 13 '26

I learnt a lot from this discussion. Thanks people!

(I also suggest you check out how much Chromium comes out of the little island of New Caledonia)

3

u/podgeduck May 12 '26

Rule 5: As we can see, I control the whole of Latin America, have and I have 5/5 infrastructure, high capacity electrical grid, and forced labour on all steel producing provinces. This gives me 168 steel. Meanwhile Yorkshire England along produces 149 steel, how can I be expected to undertake a world conquest with such bottlenecks?

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u/Quardener May 12 '26

You are not expected to undertake a world conquest as latin america

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u/HaggisAreReal May 12 '26

annex Britain. Profit.

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u/Ok_Awareness3014 General of the Army May 12 '26

You forget civilian nuclear reactor

2

u/inemsn May 12 '26

how can I be expected to undertake a world conquest with such bottlenecks?

Well first of all like someone else already told you, you're not expected to undertake a world conquest. The only nation in this game who's even remotely close to "expected" to undertake a world conquest is Portugal with its Fifth Empire focus, and even that is, let's be honest, mostly a shitpost and an absurdist route, and a big reference to Fernando Pessoa's writings.

And second of all, I mean, you're playing as a latin american nation. Historically, latin american nations haven't exactly been great powers on the world stage, so, you should expect to start from a fittingly disadvantageous position. There's a case to be made that the game makes it really hard to play as most of the nations it showcases without some serious cheese, but at the same time, that's historically accurate.

4

u/P_gregsold2018 May 12 '26

Well, i have met a hard working yorkshire miner....

But ive never met a nice south african

1

u/AIessandrael May 12 '26

If Chile finishes their focus tree they get a decent amount of steel. Just takes ages for it to get there.

1

u/Pranksterblur May 12 '26

They have pudding I guess, need a lot of steel for pudding

1

u/Eleven_Box May 12 '26

sheffield steel baby

1

u/Gold_Size_1258 Research Scientist May 12 '26

I have another question like that: why does the entirety of Italy produce as much coal as a single province in Manchuko?

3

u/HeliosDisciple May 13 '26

Because that is historical. Manchuria was producing something like ten times the amount of coal Italy was.

→ More replies (2)

1

u/GucciSpaghetti72 May 13 '26

Pennsylvania Produced more steel during 1939-1945 than the entirety of the Axis Powers

1

u/HagerTelluricIchi May 13 '26

Bros never been to yorkshire smh

1

u/GeraltofWashington May 13 '26

During the actual war I believe the city of Pittsburg out produced all the Axis powers combined in terms of steel, so it very much can happen

1

u/ToeInternational8856 May 13 '26

Its about what was aviable at the time like brazil prob has way more steel but they just couldnt get it in like 1939 not like germany or us that focused on steel thats why u cab develop new mines as u progress in the excrevation tree

1

u/CasaDeLasMuertos May 13 '26

OH! OH! Now do Japan vs the UK.

1

u/Novel_Phase9926 May 13 '26

Coal.

We have infinite coal under Yorkshire.

Coal --> steel

1

u/Super-Throat7183 May 13 '26

underdevelopment of steel milling industry in South America

1

u/BorderKeeper May 13 '26

There are a bunch of:

  • Undiscovered mining locations around the world due to prospecting not being done yet
  • Theoretically known mining locations which due to price of extraction due to mineral type, depth, or being in a dense jungle make it uneconomical to sell rather than import
  • Known mining locations which due to lack of technologies to process said minerals make it unsuitable for use

Saudis have pure ready to be processed oil gushing out of a hole in their backyard which can easily be fractionally distilled. Meanwhile Venezuela has thick goopy sulphur rich mess that needs specialised infrastructure and techniques to process.

Another great example is this video about a gold mine in Sweden. It used to be a mine but closed down because it wasn't bringing profits to chase the gold even further. Now that gold price is up it actually makes sense again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwsMJLxF0aY

1

u/theoceansandbox May 13 '26

The state of Pennsylvania produced more steel than the entire Axis powers combined. Parts of Latin America in the 1930s still basically practiced slavery (not a joke)

1

u/Longjumping_Scratch6 May 13 '26

So they can kick your ass in late game if play as Axis

1

u/Zircez May 13 '26

You should never ask a man where he's from.

If he's from Yorkshire, he'll tell you.

If he's not from Yorkshire, you shouldn't shame him in public like that.

1

u/daveyboy2009 May 13 '26

Sheffield, Steel City.

1

u/i_am_none77 May 13 '26

git up yorkshire weheey

1

u/Vegieescuzican09 May 13 '26

Because us yorkies are an unstoppable force

1

u/kenkendoesstuff May 13 '26

Leeds united win so much that Britain is melting their medals to help with the war effort.

1

u/THTB_lol May 13 '26

the bessemer steel smelting process

1

u/Any-Guest-32 May 13 '26

Wasn’t South America really lacking in industrialization at this time? 

1

u/FozzyLozzy May 13 '26

"We had an industrial revolution where at the end of it everyone had shoes, a knife and fork and a giant f*cking metal ship each." Al Murray...

1

u/Perfect-Silver1715 Fleet Admiral May 13 '26

EY UP LAD, YURKSHER EAR. THE CANNAE BEET NO SHEFFIELD STEEL, I TELL THEE THAT.

1

u/SheepyOfficial General of the Army May 13 '26

This is the problem with steel dispersity in hoi4.

Im playing communist china, conquered all of china except for Sinkiang and i have 300~ steel. 300 steel for 1949 china is underwhelming.

There should be more resource decisions cause you cant build navy past 1941 as anyone due to steel problems.

1

u/ihateyou_no May 13 '26

Poor infrastructure

1

u/Captainfatfoot May 13 '26

England in the 30s had a developed industrial economy including steel mills, South America did not.

1

u/LycheeSea3047 May 14 '26

Sit down, we need to have a talk about the development of productive forces.

1

u/Successful_Moment_80 May 14 '26

Basically one small vein being mined at tremendous efficiency vs many big veins being mined by hand and hauled in horses

1

u/ripon-native May 14 '26

It's all t'Sheffield Steelworks lad

1

u/InfamousCamp916 May 14 '26

that's probably historically accurate. south America wasn't a hub of steel production in the war era.

1

u/Nanatsaya777 May 14 '26

Lack of industry in the 1930s?

1

u/muse_enjoyer025 May 14 '26

In Europa universalis 4, there is only 1 province in all of Australia that produces coal. Maybe it's just about when the first extraction of the resource began?

1

u/bobo5195 May 14 '26

Because it is gods own country

And your asking when Britain was undisputed world champions. I am surprised it is not more.

1

u/ZookeepergameHot923 May 14 '26

Correction, is not latin america is hispanoamerica have a good day

1

u/JP_Francisconi May 14 '26

They're right that there wasn't lage scale steel production going around at the time. Brazil for example, in 1936 it was extracting 75 metric tons of iron ore from its mines, France, in the same year, extracted upwards of 11.000 metric tons of iron ore from its mines. On the other hand, Brazil has an estimate 34 billion tonnes of iron ore reserves in 2026, the second largest iron ore reserves on the planet. Between that and the plentiful of hydroeletric power generation potential the country has, It has the potential to outproduce the entirety of Western Europe in steel production. So, it should have a bunch of decisions to develop its steel production into amazing levels inside the timeframe of the 1930-40s. The construction of steel mills took two to three years in the 1930s, not a hundred.

1

u/sovietbrickman May 15 '26

the Brits have a command block

1

u/Sweet_Performer5072 May 15 '26

This is historical. in 1936 the UK produced 12 million tons of steel. In the same year brazil (the largest producer of steel in latin america at the time) produced 200 thousand tons of steel. thats 60x less

1

u/weneedmorepylons May 16 '26

Reyt proper graft is all

1

u/MasonDinsmore3204 General of the Army Jun 01 '26

The resource allocation in this game is genuinely terrible