In TEM #19, Mark Pitcavage presented an excellent discussion of some of the problems that will occur in the development of Grand Europa. Rather than raising still more questions, this article presents an outline of one possible approach to just one section of Grand Europa, which Mark describes as the biggest problem-economics. I'd like to take a more positive note and argue that economics should be one of the easier problems to deal with.

A war economy consists of three things: raw material, industry, and output. Each of these components must be broken down into several (but not many) subcategories. These subcategories are necessary to show the details that affect the military campaigns that Europa simulates.

Above all else, Europa is a simulation of military events. Instead of worrying about the enormous complexity of an economy, we should concentrate only on those items that would affect decisions during the military aspect of play. We can, and indeed must, handle everything else abstractly. We need a level of abstractness not only for playability, but to blind players' 20/20 hindsight.

The following is my broadbrush vision for a comprehensive Grand Europa economic system.

Raw Materials

Any economy is dependent on raw materials. We can define four basic groups of materials necessary for a 1940s military economy to function:

Coal
Strategic materials (chromium, tungsten, rubber, heavy water, etc.)
Basic materials (primarily iron and other metals)
Crude petroleum

Coal. We can safely ignore coal in Europa. All the important economies of the region were self sufficient in this commodity and a coal industry would be difficult to destroy or even seriously degrade by direct air attack.

Strategic Materials. Although it might be interesting to look in-depth at what shortages of various materials might do to certain economies, we can probably safely ignore this category, also. Given a shortage of a particular specific material, a nation can develop substitutes or re-engineer end products to do without the scarce material. The best example of this might be the American development of synthetic rubber to replace the natural rubber sources lost when the Japanese captured Malaya. One exception might be fissionable elements and other materials necessary for an atomic bomb, but this raises a whole host of other questions that we will leave for later.

Basic Materials (iron). Unlike strategic materials, an economy cannot function without basic materials. In Europa this would be primarily iron. Iron supplies form the basis for almost all military production. A prime reason for the entire Norwegian campaign was iron ore supplies. For simplicity, we can probably include sources of strategic materials in this category with few ill effects.

Crude Oil. Unlike coal, no European economy was self-sufficient in oil. Unlike many of the strategic materials mentioned above, everybody recognized the importance of crude oil. The entire Battle of Stalingrad was a result of the German drive for the Caucasus oil fields. The German economy went to enormous expense during the 1930s to develop and use synthetic petroleum. We can't ignore oil, or casually lump it into another category. Europa titles such as The Urals already recognize this.

Oil sources by themselves are not particularly useful, however. Crude petroleum's use is only as a raw material for the manufacture of refined petroleum.

In raw materials, therefore, we should need to track only two things. First, a nation needs access to basic resources such as iron ore. Second, they must have a source of crude oil.

Labor

Another constraint on an economy is population, or specifically, labor. In the United States, the economic bottleneck was not materials, but the size of the labor force. By 1945, any increase in troop strength was going to come at the direct expense of industrial production.

Addressing population and labor can quickly become complex. The detailed route might assign "Population Points," that a nation would then apportion between industry and the military. My guess is that this might not be worth the effort.

The easiest way to handle labor, aside from ignoring it entirely, might be simply to put an absolute ceiling on basic industry production for each country (see "Basic Industry," below). This ceiling would rise for the Axis powers when they conquered a country to account for "impressed" labor.

One way or another, though, raw materials will arrive at the factory, staffed with presumably willing workers.

Industry Types

There are five categories of industry:

Basic industry
Automotives
Aircraft
Shipping
Petroleum refining

The middle three of these form what we're calling here the "Armaments Industry," but it is easier to consider them separately. We'll take a brief look at each category.

Basic Industry

In this model, basic industry provides four outputs: subsistence to the population, raw materials to the various armament industries, basic war materials, and an increase in the capacity of industry in a bootstrapping manner. Basic industry includes food, electricity, construction materials, ball bearings, transportation systems, chemicals-the list is endless. In game terms we could call this production Basic Industry Production Points (or BIPPs?).

Most of the crucial bottlenecks of an economy lie hidden in the incredible complexity of basic industry. Here we can address Mark Pitcavage's question of how to simulate the possibility of crippling German industry by eliminating a single critical industry such as electricity generation or ball bearings. Allied planners, even with their immense resources, were unable to pinpoint the electricity and ball bearing industries as crucial to the German economy. Any Europa player, however, would be able to look at the list of potential targets, calculate their effect, and begin systematic destruction of a single bottleneck industry. That cannot be allowed. The Allied strategic air commanders did not have the memoirs of Albert Speer to read. Grouping all these dozens, or even hundreds, of individual industries saves us from the problem of Allied omniscience.

You may ask what consumer goods have to do with a WWII economy. Failure to produce an adequate supply of consumer goods should adversely affect a somewhat intangible item that I will call National Morale.

Historians often point to the Nazis' failure to move Germany to a full wartime economy as instrumental in their long-term military failure. The fact was that the Nazis had solidified their power by providing the nation a stable economy, adequate consumer goods, and a higher standard of living. Failure to continue that policy would jeopardize their exclusive hold on power. Politically, the Nazis were always on shaky ground. A strategy of guns plus butter should be a prudent move for a Grand Europa Germany. How heartbreaking for the Axis team would it be to have a Grand Europa game end with a 1942 coup?

As an example, we need only look to World War I. That war ended not from total, definitive defeat on the battlefield, but from revolution in Germany.

The "Basic Industry" category also includes a nation's basic transportation network. Basic industry could provide a temporary increase in rail capacity for surge efforts. This would represent diverting rail resources from industry to the direct transportation of ground troops. The cost would be substantially less BIPPs for that time. The same would apply, in Germany at least, to naval transport capability. The Germans provided amphibious capability in the summer of 1940 by borrowing boats and barges from northern Germany, at a great expense to industry.

Including transportation nets as part of basic industry also allows players to indirectly attack an opponent's coal industry. Attacking rail lines is the only way to really hurt a coal industry.

There are also some Europa economic products that would be a direct product of basic industry. These basic war material items include such things as rail capacity, resource points, and general supply.

Armaments

The armaments industry produces guns, in the form of "Armament Points" (ArPs?). Armament points, possibly in combination with population points, can produce non-motorized ground units. They are also necessary to provide intermediate raw materials to all the more specialized military industries.

It quite possible, and probably even preferable, to remove armaments from the model, and include it within basic industry. This would simplify the system, at the expense of allowing players a slightly greater degree of flexibility than would be strictly realistic.

Automotives

The automotive industry uses production points from basic industry to produce all manner of motorized ground transport. In Europa terms this would include armored units, other combat-motorized units, truck units, and SMPs. Rail capacity could also be grouped into automotives if you prefer a broader definition of the category.

Another way to look at automotives would be to combine it with the armaments or basic industry classification. The advantage in separating it is that it limits the ability to rapidly create a slew of motorized units after concentrating on, say, infantry or submarines for years.

Aircraft

The aircraft industry has the function of producing "air units available." These must combine with trained aircrew in the form of Group Allowance to produce an active air unit on the board.

The aircraft industry is specialized and should not be combined with any other industry. Aircraft manufacturing capacity cannot readily be switched to other products. Once a player invests in increasing the capacity of his aircraft industry, the decision is irreversible. Also, aircraft plant locations were known, and the Allies specifically targeted them as part of a major effort (largely ineffective) to reduce the German aircraft manufacturing capability. The Germans also specifically targeted aircraft plants, as simulated by the four British aircraft factories in Their Finest Hour.

The aircraft industry will be a challenge in itself, since it requires decisions of producing bomber versus heavy bomber versus fighter types. Another decision would involve opting for continued production of older aircraft models against tooling up assembly lines for the production of new models with the attendant temporary drop-off in numbers.

Shipping

The shipping industry produces surface naval vessels, submarines, landing craft, and merchant shipping. It functions in much the same way as the aircraft industry. Within the shipping industry, capacity decisions must differentiate among the four types, as, again, tooling up a submarine industry does not give one the capability for building battleships.

Petroleum Refining

Oil was the one strategic material that both sides identified from the start of the war. Grand Europa cannot ignore oil.

The Germans intervened in the Balkans because of the threat to Ploesti from British bombers based in Greece. Axis navies stayed in port for lack of fuel oil. The last Axis offensive was the futile attempt to recapture the minuscule Hungarian oil fields in March 1945.

Crude oil is of no use without refinery capacity however, and refineries are a very specialized industry-- useful for nothing else and irreplaceable by other industries. Petroleum refineries are a bottleneck obvious to both sides and don't need to be hidden inside Basic Industry. There is no clear, realistic way to include oil without including both oil sources and oil refineries.

While it would require a slightly different approach, the German synthetic oil capability would be easy to handle. Simply drop the crude oil input requirement for synthetic "refineries," but post the BIPP cost for buying synthetic capacity sky high.

In Issue #39 of Breakout magazine, Stuart Lee described a way to model the German production of aviation fuel. He proposes breaking down refined petroleum output into subcategories of motor spirits, diesel, naval fuel oil, and aircraft fuel. It was all very interesting, but it seems like too much for me. I don't want to become an expert in hydrocarbon fractionation to play Europa. I'm willing to treat kerosene just like premium unleaded.

Capacity

The specific capacity of different industries is a crucial element of a modern military economy that many production-based wargames ignore. In a well-rounded economic simulation, a nation could spend Basic Industry Points to increase the capacity of any of the industrial groups. The capacity of that industry would increase after a certain lead time. In real life for example, Germany expanded her aircraft industry output enormously in 1944, but most of the aircraft sat on the ground for lack of fuel.

Players would have to decide long in advance as to the type of industry on which to concentrate. Increasing the capacity of one industry must come at the indirect expense of not increasing another. Keeping these capacity decisions wholly or partially secret could add a certain amount of strategic suspense to Grand Europa.

Given sufficient raw materials, any industry can exceed its capacity for short periods of time. One way to work this would be to allow a nation to exceed capacity in exchange for a loss in "National Morale" or temporary damage to the industry just as if it had suffered an air attack.

The dispersal of industry is easy to handle. A player may disperse a certain number or percentage of industrial capacity points per turn. This dispersed capacity is immune from strategic air attack but is inefficient. Certain industries, shipbuilding and refining, for example, could not be dispersed.

Lead Times

Most strategic wargames that have ventured into the production area use a version of the SPI "Production Cycle." This is a "cash-up-front" system. You pay in production points this turn. You place the reinforcements you just bought ahead on the reinforcement track by a certain number of turns representing lead time. You receive the produced units in the future.

This isn't exactly right--anything could be cancelled in production and some of the production points recouped. As an example, think of the many warships that were broken up before completion. The traditional method, however, is simple and minimizes bookkeeping. It does get across the main element of having to plan production in advance. While more detailed models of lead time could be developed, I tentatively think a version of the traditional SPI system would suffice for GE.

One exception to the sufficiency of this traditional lead- time model may lie in certain types of shipbuilding. Only a finite number of slips were available to build large warships. For example, say a battleship costs 100 production points and has a lead time of 2 years, Under the typical production system, you must spend 100 points in one turn to place the ship on the reinforcement track 2 years out. With the capacity constraint model outlined above, you would have had to upgrade shipbuilding capacity to 100.

This would, unrealistically, allow you to start one battleship every month (assuming one production cycle per month). You could have up to 24 dreadnoughts as work-in- progress with the same capacity it takes to build just one. A "Capital Ships In-Progress" capacity could deal with this particular problem at the cost of some slight added complexity.

Strategic Air Attack

The Grand Europa strategic air system must integrate closely into the economic system. We'll not worry here about the mechanics of strategic bombing. We'll focus on the effect of bombing.

The outcomes of strategic air attacks on cities and factories would be to decrease absolute or effective capacity. Decreasing effective capacity would be something akin to an 'abort' result in air-to-air combat. Although the factory will not produce at present, it is repairable.

A decrease in absolute capacity would be more like a 'kill' result in air combat. It permanently reduces the capacity of that industry. For example, the British scored some "Kill" results on basic industry in the 1943 raids on Hamburg.

It should be possible to abstractly simulate most bombing efforts, particularly against basic industry, thus eliminating the tedious tracking of individual air units plodding toward their targets. Think about it: a British 1000- plane raid on the Ruhr would require moving 25 air units under the rules of operational Europa games, plus individual AA fire and bombing die rolls.

Putting It All Together

Putting all these concepts together sounds daunting, but some well-designed worksheets, possibly computerized, could make the job easier. A production phase could be run every month.

Here is a crude production phase Sequence of Play:

1) Collect crude oil and basic material points.
2) Bring newly constructed industrial capacity on line.
3) Assign crude oil points against refinery capacity and basic materials against basic industry. Storage capacity should be limited.
4) Collect basic industry production points (BIPPs) from previous production.
5) Assign BIPPs between consumer goods' capacity construction of any industry, and production for the three specific military industries.
6) For each of the aircraft, automotives and shipping industries:
Compare the production points assigned to that industry with the industry's capacity and assign production to 'buy' units equal to the lower of the two values. Note (or place) those units on the reinforcement track.

7) Repair ineffective capacity damaged from strategic air attack.

Take a long time? Maybe, but remember this is Grand Europa. What else are you going to do for hours while your opponent moves?

I believe that a system such as this is about the most detailed that could realistically work. Quite apart from complexity, more detailed models would start to run the risk of too much information being available to both players.

This is only one of an infinite number of approaches to Europa economics. My point is not to say that this is the economic model that Grand Europa should use, but to hopefully show that a reasonably accurate Europa economic system is not an insurmountable problem. To me, political systems, diplomatic interaction, national morale, and other systems will be much more difficult to accurately and playably implement.