Resources are a very important part of most grand strategy games. Without them, you will likely end up weaker than your neighbors, and without the production output all your rivals have.
In Hearts of Iron 4, resources are needed to produce equipment for your armies, planes, tanks, and boats that will help you win the upcoming World War.
Recommended Read: How to Install Mods in Hearts of Iron 4
Some countries have a lot of resources, while others have close to none. When you have a lot of resources, you can choose to export them in exchange for Civilian Factories to use for national constructions.
Unfortunately, there is no way to manually export resources in HOI4. All you can do is select the Trade Law, which will decide the percentage of natural resources you are exporting to other countries.
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How to Export Resources in HOI4
There is no way to manually select which resources you want to export and what percentage of them you want to give out.
The closest thing you can get to controlling the amount of resources you export is to change your Trade Law.
The Trade Law in HOI4 decides the amount of resources your country will export to other countries, ranging from 80% to 0%.
Unfortunately, you can’t select which countries will import the resources from you. Depending on your relationship with everyone, they will have a bigger claim over your resources.
However, the amount of resources you don’t have access to is the same, even if you are directly exporting them or not.
In HOI4, countries get to choose if they want to import resources from various countries in exchange for Civilian Factories. There is no way to influence their import source decision. The country that exports also has no choice over who they give resources to.
Even if no countries are actually importing resources from you, your country still won’t have access to a large percentage of your resources, as decided by your Trade Law.
Those are just lost, waiting for someone to take them and give you Civilian Factories.
Though exporting resources is a great way to gain Civilian Factories and get some bonuses, you will likely end up with a chaotic amount of extra Civilian Factories that will keep fluctuating.
Since you also don’t have any control over who you export resources to in HOI4, you don’t really know if the loss of resources is worth the Civilian Factories.
All Trade Laws
Here are all the potential Trade Laws you can choose from in HOI4, along with their advantages and disadvantages:
- Free Trade – Resources to Market +80%, Factory and Dockyard Output, and Construction Speed +15%, Research Speed +10%
- Export Focus – Resources to Market +50%, Factory and Dockyard Output, and Construction Speed +10%, Research Speed +5%
- Limited Exports – Resources to Market +25%, Factory and Dockyard Output, and Construction Speed +5%, Research Speed +1%
- Closed Economy – Resources to Market +0%,
- Embargoed Economy – Resources to Market +25%
That’s everything you need to know about how to export resources in Hearts of Iron 4!
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