Okay, I’m not gonna pretend to be an all-knowing historian but the difference between the resources in the imperial core and the resources everywhere else is so baffling to me. One could argue that the imperial core has all those resources because of the colonies, but the colonies in the game barely have anything. the UK could lose all of their colonies in Africa and still produce a metric ton of steel.
Take a look at Germany:
As you can see Germany has a shit ton of steel and aluminum, two very important resources, and a little bit of oil and chromium.
Now let’s check Africa:
This is only one part of Africa since resource icons don’t appear when you are very far away, but you get the point; Africa barely has resources except for some isolated cases such as the chromium in the southern part and some steel in the north-west.
Maybe I’m wrong, and please tell me if I am, but wasn’t the reason the imperial powers colonized half the world to steal their natural resources?
And even gameplay-wise it would make sense to move resources to Africa, since in my opinion Africa is barely worth fighting for. You lose a shit ton of manpower and equipment to attrition in an offensive because there is no supply anywhere, and what do you get? 12 rubber?
I calculated all of the base resources in both Africa and Germany.
Africa has 66 steel, 0 aluminum, 250 chromium, 36 rubber and 1 oil.
Germany has 247 steel, 83 aluminum, 3 chromium, 0 rubber and 2 oil.
Apart of chromium and rubber the difference is abysmal. And remember we are comparing 1 (one) country to an entire continent.
What are your thoughts?
Granted, of all the examples used, steel in England probably isn’t the best one. England has throughout recent history almost always had an immensely powerful steel industry since the start of the Industrial Revolution with the invention of the Bessemer Process. Plus, the vast majority of the iron ore used in production came from domestic mines, supplanted with imports from Sweden, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and Brazil.
However… British resources of chromium, aluminum, rubber, and tungsten are extremely suspicious. As all of these resources were largely taken from the Imperial colonies, or from subjugated countries such as Turkey. With for example almost all of the bauxite used in aluminum production coming from Jamaica, West Africa, and the South American colonies.
I agree that simply consolidating all the resources is boring for gameplay, and damaging to historical accuracy, since it almost entirely erases the vital role of African, Middle Eastern, South American, and Southeast Asian resources in the Allied war effort. Most of which was done by force.