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[ndkid]

I've been googling this question today, and didn't find any answers, so I figured I'd consult the wisdom of the crowds that is the Bay12 Other Games subforum.

To my tastes, the best thing about HOI4 is the way production lines are implemented. In particular, I appreciate that it provides a sense of verisimilitude by givi fng your economy inertia... you can switch from producing one thing to another, but that loses you efficiency, so immediately switching all of your production from ye olde Tank 1 to whiz-bang Tank 2 often isn't the best choice if you're in the middle of a war. Similarly, if your strategy calls for overwhelming air superiority, you need to start building those planes well before war is declared.

I've been pondering whether any other game has implemented production lines in a similar way. The only game that comes to mind is War in the Pacific where, playing as the Japanese side (but not when playing as the US), you manage both plane and engine manufacturing allocation... this leads to interesting decisions around using inferior plane designs because they use an engine you have existing production for, because you can't always afford the efficiency hit (and/or resource cost) of retooling the engine factory.

WitP:AW was released in 2004... HoI4 in 2016. Are those the only two strategy games of the past 20 years that have nuanced production of this sort? (Even Aurora, which is often rated as the most complex space 4x, doesn't have production economies of scale like this, though it has some similar notions elsewhere.)

[Stench Guzman]

Possibly Capitalism/Capitalism Plus but that's a business sim and not a wargame.

[axiomsofdominion]

Axioms has a city-builder esque production system with actual resources of a vast variety, with an SWG style randomized selection with specific values like being good for enchanting or strong light wood for boats. So you are producing equipment for your armies and you actually have to make them. So you have to have a province with crafting structures, move actual resources there, and go through the "processes" to arrive finally at an item. Which you must get to the troops.

But typically no games really have citybuilder or tycoon style production and transportation. I can't think of any great examples, especially outside of a WW2 or Cold War context.

Imperialism sorta? But not really.

[feelotraveller]

Not quite what you are asking (or really interested in, I suspect) but Master of Orion 2 (1996) had a mechanic where some time after you designed a ship it became cheaper.  Construction was entirely abstracted to labour unitis of production though.

I also have a nagging feeling that one of the early railway games had a 'prototype' system where the first train of a particular type was more expensive, though designs were fixed in advance.  Can't quite put my finger on which though.  But again this is from the era of less granular game design where mechanics were tightly bounded by memory constraints.

[ndkid]

Not quite what you are asking (or really interested in, I suspect) but Master of Orion 2 (1996) had a mechanic where some time after you designed a ship it became cheaper.  Construction was entirely abstracted to labour unitis of production though.

I also have a nagging feeling that one of the early railway games had a 'prototype' system where the first train of a particular type was more expensive, though designs were fixed in advance.  Can't quite put my finger on which though.  But again this is from the era of less granular game design where mechanics were tightly bounded by memory constraints.

Now that you mention it, I think either MOO1 or MOO2 had a system where previous ship components got smaller as your tech increased, so you could fit more of the old stuff onto the same hull over time. Not quite as good, but at least a nod in that direction.

[feelotraveller]

Yeah, some of the weapon modifications were not available until tech had advanced by a certain number of levels over the base weapon tech on that branch either.  So for example it was pretty common to use out-of-date beam weapons as point defence since they could be modified (and miniturised) the hell out of.

[Sharp]

(Even Aurora, which is often rated as the most complex space 4x, doesn't have production economies of scale like this, though it has some similar notions elsewhere.)

Haven't played Aurora for a while but I thought it did, shipyards need to be retooled to build different ships, I think component level it's pretty quick to build a different component or missile though.

It definitely has the never really fighting with latest tech feeling and needing to build solutions to todays problems yesterday.

[ndkid]

(Even Aurora, which is often rated as the most complex space 4x, doesn't have production economies of scale like this, though it has some similar notions elsewhere.)

Haven't played Aurora for a while but I thought it did, shipyards need to be retooled to build different ships, I think component level it's pretty quick to build a different component or missile though.

It definitely has the never really fighting with latest tech feeling and needing to build solutions to todays problems yesterday.

You have to retool, but there's no efficiency gain to producing the same class for a long time. There is the retooling time discount if your new class is similar to the old class. But, as you allude to, I often found that the ability to build the components on-planet and thus greatly reduce the construction time of ships often makes the production speed of the shipyards themselves of secondary importance.

[sambojin]

Not really what you're looking for, but M.U.L.E had an early implementation of economies of scale, where the more of a thing you produced, the more each tile would produce of it. Alongside clustering of production tiles for efficiency as well, and bonuses for production on certain types of tiles (mountains for smithore, etc).

Changing track half way through a match could leave you lagging behind, although sometimes it was the best thing to do, depending on how the market was going and recent events.

Way before it's time, M.U.L.E was.