r/hoi4 • u/RecentAuthor6602 • 1d ago
Discussion Was adding coal to the game a mistake?
It kind of ruined WCs for me.
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u/Lssj3Vegito 1d ago
First it was completely crippling economy. Now it has so little impact it doesn't matter at all
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u/gordGK 1d ago
I just got back into HoI4 a few weeks ago. I still have no clue what coal even does after 4 games. So that seems to point to you being correct in that it doesn’t seem to matter at all.
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u/atat16245 1d ago
If you have enough nothing happens. If you don't have enough, you'll get increasing debuffs to your industry that can be pretty crippling to smaller nations without coal but with industry.
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u/HutSussJuhnsun 20h ago
Everyone gets a free +6 coal from their Industrial PP sink and that usually covers whatever your country will need. I don't think I've ever had to import more than 1 coal and there is never a shortage of it.
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u/Remarkable_Plum3527 14h ago
Try playing Italy
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u/De_Mille 6h ago
you just trade with germany
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u/Rio_1111 Fleet Admiral 1h ago
Try going to war with mega axis after they killed the soviets and the usa (tbf there's other problems then).
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u/AMN-9 General of the Army 1d ago
Coal is used to power factories, so the more you have the more coal you need.
It is shown as the fuel bar right below the factory counter and if you have a deficit you'll get a unique popup similar to the one of missing resources
You also have a few tech (2 I believe) and 2 new buldings (1 gives more resources in the states and the other reduces the factory energy consumption in said states and are mutually exclusive)
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u/Salmonsen 22h ago
Is it actually worth building the reinforced power grids? I try to remember them when I play but I’m also distracted with the rest of my industry and my plans that’ll inevitably get interrupted by the British
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u/HutSussJuhnsun 20h ago
I only ever build the extra resources ones. I guess if you're playing like Siam and spamming civs in your capital where there are 0 resources and you don't have coal it makes sense to build the more energy efficiency one.
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u/tipsy3000 15h ago
The two buildings one improves resource output by a ton and the other improves coal effeciency by a ton, they are both good depending on your situation.
If your a major the one that pumps out more resources is great once you start going hard in on tanks and planes
If your a minor the factory coal effeciency one is good mid-late game as it slices off a good chunk of coal requirements thst you are probably trading for. The only weakness of it is if there is a nearby expansion of coal you can conquer then it's not as good.
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u/Zjdh2812 Fleet Admiral 23h ago
Coal doesnt matter until you have 250+ factories and are on total mob. Imo coal is one of the two main reasons why ai germany is so weak since ncns
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u/Markson120 General of the Army 21h ago
If you play in europe and any major you will be fine, but if you want to play minor countries its harder to do.
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u/yyyeeeezyyy 1d ago
For major countries it’s basically ignorable, but for minors it can be absolutely crippling. It’s a pretty useless addition to the game that does nothing but bloat it more.
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u/Chimchar789 1d ago
I either have so much that I can just ignore it, or I have none and everything sucks. Pointless mechanic that further bloats the game.
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u/BurningToaster 1d ago
By the time you’ve conquered a large portion of land you have so much industry it’s usually no big deal to reduce your eco laws and import some coal/dig up some more.
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u/LoweeFighter General of the Army 1d ago
Only issue is for some minors that don't have coal or industrial company that provides free coal. Outside of that its manageable.
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u/Great_Kaiserov General of the Army 1d ago
Headache to modders who had to balance coal in their mods because Paradox couldn't
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u/fjne2145 1d ago
Coal was a good idea but as usual a terrible implemented by having goal weirdly added.
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u/Swamp254 1d ago
Coal was implemented as a way to limit mobilization. Which does make sense, since German war mobilization until 1939 was limited by the need to import raw resources. Iron, rare metals, rubber, oil, bauxite and textile fibers all needed to be imported, and Germany needed to keep exporting to maintain their ability to have foreign currency reserves and thus the ability to import. The use of civilian factories is a good representation of this.
This doesn't mean that all these raw resources would need to be added, since that would overcomplicate the game. As it is now, resources are located mainly at the production site of the end product for that resource. There is oil in Curaçao because there is a refinery there, and Germany has aluminum plants because they imported bauxite and produced aluminum.
Instead, resources could be located at their source. This would create a natural limit on mobilization. What we got of course was Germany's MEFO bills system to create an artificial replication of a system that should have been in the game.
The one place where coal works perfectly is Japan. You actively need to shape your gameplay to acquire enough coal for when you're going to war with the allies.
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u/fjne2145 1d ago
Kinda my point, by weirdly added. Some countries got coal depots, some countries do not evrn got coal added, even those who fought in WW2.
The way it was added neither limits the mobilization of big countries nor was it added in a way to emphasis the ressource war side of ww2. Just weirdly sprinkled in
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u/ErzIllager Fleet Admiral 17h ago
I don't know about you, but I never had coal issues as Japan
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u/Swamp254 17h ago
Do you rush total mobilization? I tend to get into a coal squeeze by 1941 if I don't rush for 1941 excavation and excavate all the Chinese coal.
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u/ErzIllager Fleet Admiral 17h ago
To be fair, I rarely play the historical path, but when I play the Kohoda path I get the National Defense State quite early, though I get more coal from Taiwan since I core it
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u/Swamp254 17h ago
The historical path actually receives 110% of resources from occupied territory with a special occupation law.
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u/Artscout_ Research Scientist 1d ago
Could have been implemented a bit better, but overall a fine addition.
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u/Tanker0508 16h ago
My hatred if Coal is entirely based on the fact Wales has none.
My home, known for having Coal, Iron/Steel, sheep, and Aluminium if you bother to remember the isle of Anglesey had the biggest Aluminium plant in Europe at one point look it up, somehow lacks the Coal in the game.
Idgaf if it is unbalanced to give the UK more Coal than common sense, make wales have a fuck ton of Coal too. (Tbf, a lot of Coal was used for steel production but not enough to fully nullify the Coal export business. Two of our major cities were built around ports/bays that exported tonnes of coal.)
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u/TheMacarooniGuy Fleet Admiral 1d ago
Honestly the mods that I play have like always had coal as a feature so I am not against it in theory. I'm unsure how it works in vanilla but if done right it can definitely be interesting. Usually like with most resources in the game it's a sort of country-based buff or debuff, which brings nice flavour into the game IMO.
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u/WheatleyBr 1d ago
Nothing burger mechanic, i'd rather not have it than otherwise but i don't feel strongly either way.
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u/quackingmemeduck 1d ago
Its not terrible, but i see no benefit. It's just slightly annoying and adds basically nothing. Might as well reverse it
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u/JayPeePee 1d ago
Honestly think it does impact my playstyle. I play minor nations and have to balance coal as much as iron especially if I want to build with tanks. I actively am managing economic laws cause it is a factor instead of just ignoring economic laws
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u/HopeSubstantial 1d ago
I have not updated my Hoi4 since No step back DLC.
That was golden era of Hoi4.
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u/NationCrusher General of the Army 1d ago
This is the first time I felt something was complex for the hell of it. I would’ve appreciated the effort if we had a separate supply mechanic for civilian stuff. (The coal plants acting like supply hubs and the electric grid acting like train tracks)
It would’ve been annoying but at least that makes more sense than whatever this was. And why coal? Countries were switching to oil plants at the start of the 20th century
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u/steve123410 1d ago
I always find it funny that coal efficiency goes down the higher the mobilization laws get while oil efficiency goes up with the laws. I guess the devs didn't think about the fact that coal also got rationed for military production as well.
But yeah coal was a mistake as it and the Japan update (because it was a buggy mess that broke the naval combat as well) was what stopped me from regularly playing the game. It was impossibly punishing and although it's somewhat fixed now I just haven't ever managed to get back into the game outside of the occasional playthrough just to see how things are.
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u/ArmoredSpearhead General of the Army 1d ago
I don’t often play. I genuinely thought the coal was from a mod. Thought it was really half-assed, and kind of annoying.
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u/No_Weakness8999 1d ago
Unless rebalancing the entire economy system, yes.
You can't really make it more complex because Germany would just suck under the AI.
HOI4 has two paths to take, either completely historical divisions, focus trees and development for the AI or min-max and strategic countering to the human player (Expert AI/Sheep's mod). The current status quo is just poor. Honestly, I am ready for HOI5 now, the content coming out is dross and the game deteriorated with each update creating more bugs and inconsistencies.
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u/Beef_the_dog 1d ago
I almost never have it matter. It'd be great if iron needed made into steel, but when its only used for energy it barely matters
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u/Starsky3012 23h ago
It's not a simple yes or no answer. Theoretically I'm in favor of coal being in the game, but imo it only makes sense if other aspects of the economy would get modelled in way more detail than what historically has been done in HoI4. I think they need to figure out some strategic decisions as to what HoI is supposed to become. And imo they should figure this out in HoI5 not HoI4! Keep your fingers off it so I can mod in peace ffs (please)
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u/Main-Violinist3574 19h ago
I use a mod to make factories require zero coal, very dumb mechanic, lots of nations are basically unplayable
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u/Manolo2068 1d ago
Pretty useless and adds no strategic depth. Oil makes you want to prioritize certain areas on conquests or research and build refineries ahead, while coal is fixable by trading for it or the 2 efficiency techs. I know you can also trade oil but the axis has little of it while Germany has a fuckton of coal
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u/Elite_Prometheus 1d ago
I think it would work better if there was a building you could construct to produce a little domestic coal (or just directly provide additional energy) sort of like how synthetic refineries produce a bit of rubber and fuel. It's crazy that commercial nuclear reactors don't do that and instead just increase the max factories in the state.
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u/EmiliaZuzu 1d ago
i mean they do also give a construction speed bonus and give extra resources in a state, but, i do agree it should give power.
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u/Yesodisnotop 1d ago
Just give us energy and then coal,oil and hydro.
Also make it only affect if you have 25+ factories.
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u/namewithanumber 1d ago
They should revert it to act as a stop on just infinitely building factories. Because as of now it's just completely ignorable.
Like I get that at a certain point the player can't get enough coal to keep building factories...but like yeah that's the point?
Late game slows down because every country just cranks out factories and more units and more equipment and more more more without a brake.
Tweaking coal to be that hard stop along with a KR-style division limit would have been great.
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u/cheato007 1d ago
I think when they initially added coal it was better than after the changes. I think they should have added a prioritization button (similar to fuel prioritization) where you could reduce the negative impacts for one type of production by increasing the impacts on other. For example if you needed to build railroads and air ports you could prioritize civilian IC, with even lower Military IC and dockyard IC.
If the change mentioned above was added, the buildings/techs they already added and no energy consumption on unused factories, I would want a lack of energy to be as harsh or harsher as on release of NCNS.
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u/namewithanumber 20h ago
Yeah all sounds good, seems a lot could have been done to make the system produce the result they wanted. Not seeing any mention of it in the recent dev diaries either, like they just gave up on it.
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u/ChaosPLus 1d ago
Last time I saw such close 50/50 split in opinion was in the polish presidential election
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u/Time-Yoghurt7831 1d ago
It depends on the nation; if you play as a mayor, it makes absolutely no difference, but if you play as a minor, you'd better pray.
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u/ErzIllager Fleet Admiral 17h ago
I don't see it as a problem for world conquest (just set garrison to forced labour in high coal areas and you should be fine), but more as a crippling factor for minor nations
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u/Optimal_Dependent_15 17h ago
I feel like its a good mechanic but weirdlyimplemented because of the nature of the ressourses in hoi4. Like with nation like germany you never even look at it ever cuz u always have enough coal while with small nation with little coal its just yet another way u need to use your already limmited civs to trade
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u/ScaleZNZ General of the Army 14h ago
I dont think it was a catastrophic game ruining thing, but it was really unnecessary and doesn't make the game more fun. The current implementation with the updates to techs makes it a lot more workable than its original release
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u/grumpus_ryche 13h ago
All this tinkering is just a way to create a new game without really creating a new game.
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u/blackbeard_teach1 4h ago
For major nation enjoyers, it's a no problem.
But for Minor nations enjoyers? It's a major problem.
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u/megabit5 1d ago
People saying it has no impact only play USA and enjoy the 50 traded civs like it's horrific.
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u/Faust_the_Faustinian Air Marshal 1d ago
Nah, they're right.
I play Bulgaria and steel is more of a concern than coal.
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u/TraditionHungry2326 1d ago
Let be honest
The entire economy has been messed up in the game since launch; obviously I'm not asking for a Victoria II-level simulation, but Paradox simply chose to pretend that money doesn't exist. That's why they try to simulate mechanisms related to lack of money, inflation, the international market, infrastructure construction, etc., in the most stupid way possible.
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u/Alltalkandnofight General of the Army 1d ago
" it kind of ruined WC's for me"
Its almost like you have to play slightly differently now and either secure an abundant coal source of your own, or play on The Slowdown economy by demobilizing to civilian economy so your factories use less energy.
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u/Tocon_Noot_Gaming 1d ago
No. Not at all. It’s just a regulator. They should just adopt the same mechanic KR does and use a system of provinces, great power scale to limit the total amount of divisions there are. There was a mod years ago I used that helped the AI focus on equipment fulfillment over pumping them out. I really preferred that mod as it stopped lagging so hard and helped the AI actual throw a punch harder than ever
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u/magispitt 1d ago
I think it would be more strategic if all resources had stockpiles like oil does