Better Mechanics : Civilian Factory Resources
Hello there.
Have you ever wondered why civilian factories don’t consume any resources for their endeavors, despite being the backbone of your entire economy? Do you want to softcap further civilian factory growth and spam, especially in the late game? Maybe you’d like to have nations trade more with one another and simulate real supply lines across continents. Or maybe you’re a masochistic player like me who just wants an added layer of realism and difficulty.
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, this mod is for you. If not, well — try it still. You’re gonna love the pain.
Introducing Better Mechanics: Civilian Factory Resources — an enhanced and refined version of this wonderful mod by 1230James. All credit to the original concept. We just took it further.
Civilian factories now consume Steel, Chromium, and Oil to keep operating. Demand scales with your total civ count through a bracketed system — the first 15 factories are free, but as your industrial base grows, so does its appetite. Each resource follows its own curve: steel scales hard and fast, chromium starts slow and steepens at high industrialization, oil rises steadily and becomes the dominant input by the late war period.
Why Steel?
Steel is the skeleton of industrial civilization. Every factory, warehouse, bridge, and building requires structural steel to be built and maintained. Machinery, conveyor systems, tools, girders — it all comes from the same pool. Without a steady supply of steel, your civilian industrial base simply cannot sustain itself, let alone expand.
Why Chromium?
Chromium is the backbone of precision manufacturing. Stainless steel, high-grade tooling, industrial cutting equipment, consumer appliances — none of it exists without chromium. As an economy industrializes and starts producing more sophisticated goods, its chromium dependency grows sharply. A pre-war rural economy barely notices a chromium shortage. A fully industrialized great power feels it everywhere.
Why Oil?
By the 1930s, oil had already become the lifeblood of the modern economy — and its importance only grew throughout the war period. Trucks, machinery, factory heating, chemical processes, plastics, synthetic materials — civilian industry runs on oil just as much as the military does. By the 1950s, oil is no longer a military luxury. It is the foundation of everyday civilian life.
Running out of each resource hits differently, because they matter for different reasons.
- Steel shortage → Construction and repair speed, up to -100%. Without steel you cannot physically build or maintain structures. No raw material, no construction. There is no workaround. This is the most direct and brutal shortage in the mod — if you run completely dry, your civilian industrial expansion grinds to a complete halt.
- Chromium shortage → Consumer goods factor, up to +20%. When precision manufacturing degrades, your economy becomes less efficient at producing finished goods. More factory output gets absorbed by the overhead of keeping the civilian economy running, leaving less capacity for everything else. Think Great Depression-era supply chain breakdown — goods become scarcer, costlier, and harder to produce.
- Oil shortage → Construction speed (-40%), political power drain (-30%) and weekly stability bleed (-0.5%/week at full deficit). Oil shortages are insidious. Construction slows because machinery can’t run without lubrication and fuel. Political power drains because governance becomes harder when the economy sputters. And crucially, stability bleeds every week — because cold homes, stalled transport, and shortages on shelves breed popular discontent that doesn’t evaporate the moment oil flows again. Fix the shortage, but you’ll still feel the political hangover.
Each penalty scales independently with its own supplied/demanded ratio, so partial shortages give partial pain. You won’t just hit a wall — you’ll feel it coming.
Not all factories are equal. Light industry — factories allocated to consumer goods, trade, and special projects — demands fewer resources than heavy construction, with different discount rates per resource reflecting how each material is actually used. A factory producing consumer goods needs far less structural steel than one building a railway, but still needs chromium for tooling and oil for power and logistics. Researching Construction technologies further reduces input requirements, with differentiated rates per resource: steel benefits the most from fabrication efficiency gains, oil the least since it is a continuous operational overhead regardless of how well you build.
Everything is surfaced in the decision category panel. At a glance you can see your current demand per resource, how many factories are on light duty and what discount they get, your active construction tech savings, and exactly which resources you’re short on and by how much.
The AI understands the new constraints. It will halt civilian factory construction when any tracked resource goes into deficit. The mod is also optimized for performance — AI countries update weekly, keeping the impact on simulation speed minimal.
Pretty lightweight — no map changes, no new technologies, no focus tree edits. Should be compatible with virtually everything in theory. If you find a conflict, drop it in the comments or hit us up on Discord.
I’m centralizing everything for my mod collection on a new Discord server. I’ll rarely respond to comments, bug reports, or suggestions here. Please use the Discord Server[discord.gg] for all future requests.
[tiptopjar.com]
Revisions:
Old revisions of this mod are available below. Click the link to download.
