HOI4 Dev Diary - Acclimatization and Special Forces

[Forster]

I'm a little disappointed in the limitation. If you make 6 battalion divisions, you will have 4 divisions. If you want to give them a little staying power and go 9 battalions, you get 2 2/3 divisions. Not even a corps. This will cause most to only make one type. Trying to have mountain and paratroop will be impossible to accomplish, never mind adding marines for a country like Germany.

 

[Random Savage]

Great content! Maybe you could allow for expanding Special Forces limit by using army xp?

 

[Idle America]

I calculated a long time ago that it was not possible for Germany to get all its historical research completed by the end of the war. It took the addition of more starting techs and a 5th starting tech slot to get there. With the addition of more techs that shortfall is likely to be even greater. Just to be clear, I wasn't allowing for Germany to research all techs, but a reasonable estimate based on 25 years of wargaming and studying WW2. There's still plenty of choices about priorities.

I always found it odd how the United States doesn't understand basic machine tools in 1936, or basic construction techniques despite the New Deal and the last few decades of architectural breakthroughs.
It's sort of like how The Great Depression is little more than a modifier, that I often forget is even there; gameplay-wise, it's basically swept under the rug and never actually addressed. I hope we'll get a stronger focus on politics and economics in the future, so that we actually feel like we're steering a country with people in it. The Stability and War Support mechanics are definitely steps in the right direction!

 

[Idle America]

Great content! Maybe you could allow for expanding Special Forces limit by using army xp?

That wouldn't be too far from the reality, either. As I recall, the Marine Corps saw considerable expansion throughout the '40s, as did the Airborne. Maybe we could unlock expanded Special Forces by using Army XP and Command Points?

 

[bERt0r]

I don't like the special forces change. When you can only build a few of them, those advanced special forces technologies look really weak. You'll have to buff the base stats of special forces a lot to make them worthwhile.

 

[Secret Master]

Yeah, I thought this too.

Of course, if you move too many assets to Norway to prepare them for the Russian Winter, the Soviets will attack you instead (or at least have the division count to break the NAP early).

 

[Kadanz]

I'm a little disappointed in the limitation. If you make 6 battalion divisions, you will have 4 divisions. If you want to give them a little staying power and go 9 battalions, you get 2 2/3 divisions. Not even a corps. This will cause most to only make one type. Trying to have mountain and paratroop will be impossible to accomplish, never mind adding marines for a country like Germany.

If I understood podcat right you have the option to raise the limit of the special forces through research as opposed to further improving them. And If I read the DD correct, granted I'm heavily deprived of caffeine atm, the amount of special forces you can deploy depends on the amount of divisions you have in the field so 24 + percentage of your total division count.

Edit: No, I am wrong. It's not 24 + 5% of your regular battallion amount. The limit only starts increasing once you have more than 480 regular battallions.

 

[Nodfor]

Not everyone is qualified to become a paratrooper, marine or mountaineer.

Between not everyone and 5%, there is a 95% difference. Do you really think that only 5% of those who served as infantrymen in WW2 would be able to sucessfully complete one of the relevant training programs?

 

[EltharionDrax]

Yay for Acclimatization and yay for caps on SF! Boo for lack of rangers/ski troops and boo for the low (? Work in progress so I'll leave final judgment until I have the DLC in my hand) cap on SF! All in all these are changes in the right direction and hope that the SF cap is modified to suit the nations nature or geography via National Spirits, for instance.

 

[joeenochs]

Hi Podcat,
I really don´t like this acclimatization thing one bit and start to be worried about Cornflakes. For one it seems like wasting ressources on some unimportant feature for lovers of absolute micromanagement. If I as a ruler of the country shift troops from one theater to another, then because I need it. How is this new feature adding any interesting decision? This acclimatization just adds a little more waiting time, and we have already organization to reflect this. Second, as others pointed out. the feature seems easily exploitable by "parking" troups in Norway as Germany, when you need them in the Russian winter later. This also shows that this feature isn´t even realistic, because good winter cloths or sun cream is a matter of logistics. The human body itself does not need much time to adjust to a new climate. When the 6th army was dying in Stalingrad, it was not, because their summer holiday in Italy was only three weeks ago. Strip an escimo from his cloths and equipment and put him out at minus 40 degrees, and see him dying like any other German or Russian guy. The problem really is more, if the leaders of your country, your engineers and your soldiers have experience with some climate situation or not. The Russians would not unlearn their experience to deal with harsh winters, if one winter is unusually warm. And if you have a colony in Africa, then you know, how to equip the soldiers you are sending there. So I would model this effect as a country modifier, which you can alter by focuses.
Finally it is pretty clear, that based on experience the AI will never be able to handle this properly, let alone on release. I am not even sure what the AI should be programmed to do about this in an ideal world. All in all I think, you are starting to perform the same mistake as with the HOI3 expansions, which is adding layers of rather random features on top of each other, which may look cool in the feature description, but really not add to the game (or even make it worse).

 

[Jorlem]

It should depend on cores only. The only problem would be stuffs like Hungary with Transylvanian Romanians who would be less than happy to join the mighty Magyar army
I want my Gurkhas!

That was my initial idea, but if the mechanic is using percentages, then it can't be restricted to the cores. If it was, countries that are mostly one type, like Switzerland, could field huge armies of special units if they are able to expand. What I'm suggesting is that manpower would basically have the subtype caps @podcat described in the dev diary, but primarily defined by how much manpower you are drawing from provinces of certain terrain types, instead of as a generic percentage of your total battalions. That way, if you start with a lot of mountain provinces, you'd have a high mountaineer cap, but if you expand into flat land, your total manpower would increase but your mountaineer cap would not dramatically increase.

Also, it would be relatively easy to include flat modifiers to ensure that everyone can train at least a few mountaineers even if they have no mountains, or to have proportional modifiers based on source terrain. As an example of the latter, every 1000 manpower from a mountain province could provide +1 Mountaineer battalion cap, while every 5000 manpower from a plains province would also provide +1 Mountaineer battalion cap. (Please note, I don't think that these should be the actual numbers, they are just to demonstrate the idea.)

 

[Lukevan16]

Hi Podcat,
I really don´t like this acclimatization thing at bit and start to be worried about Cornflakes. For one it seems like wasting ressources on some unimportant feature for lovers of absolute micromanagement. If I as a ruler of the country shift troops from one theater to another, then because I need it. How is this new feature adding any interesting decision? This acclimatization just adds a little more waiting time, and we have already organization to reflect this. Second, as others pointed out. the feature seems easily exploitable by "parking" troups in Norway as Germany, when you need them in the Russian winter later. This also shows that this feature isn´t even realistic, because good winter cloths or sun cream is a matter of logistics. The human body itself does not need much time to adjust to a new climate. When the 6th army was dying in Stalingrad, it was not, because their summer holiday in Italy was only three weeks ago. Finally it is pretty clear, that based on experience the AI will never be able to handle this properly, let alone on release. I am not even sure what the AI should be programmed to do about this in an ideal world. All in all I think, you are starting to perform the same mistake as with the HOI3 expansions, which is adding layers of rather random features on top of each other, which may look cool in the feature description, but really not add to the game (or even make it worse).

Rulers of countries were certainly concerned with acclimatization. A notable example of this is when Churchill requested that the experienced Desert Troops of the Australian army stay in North Africa instead of going back to defend the Australian home front, causing some strain with the government in Canberra.

 

[grandad1982]

This looks good but how does the A.I. handle acclimatization.

We'll see but I won't be suprised if troop shuffling does them no favours in regards to acclimatisation.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

Between not everyone and 5%, there is a 95% difference. Do you really think that only 5% of those who served as infantrymen in WW2 would be able to sucessfully complete one of the relevant training programs?

Generally speaking, not everyone who wanted to join was accepted. And of those accepted, not everyone was able to complete the training program. If someone wants to spend the time, create another thread and list out the major nations normal battalions and special forces battalions and see what the percentage is. After the debates on what should and shouldn't be counted as normal or special forces we'd have a consensus starting point.

We'd also discover that not all the units we are thinking of as special forces are.

 

[Sourlol]

Completely agree with this.

However, when you squeeze the research slots too much it paradoxically creates less choice.

...

If tech was a little more generous. then playing as Germany I'd be more tempted to do some navy and also waste some production resources thinking I can rule the waves too. As it is so tight now, I can easily just ignore navy.

You ignore Navy as Germany because it doesnt matter if your Uboat force destroys 1 or 1000 UK Convoys. It doesnt matter if you invest early on in your Navy because it takes a ludicrously short amount of time to build one. Also historically, by comparison to the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht the Kreigsmarine was the redheaded step child.

Even Germany, USA, USSR, UK should be limited in their potential. No country should be able to have the best airforce, army and navy (unless they are the last man standing).

 

[joeenochs]

Rulers of countries were certainly concerned with acclimatization. A notable example of this is when Churchill requested that the experienced Desert Troops of the Australian army stay in North Africa instead of going back to defend the Australian home front, causing some strain with the government in Canberra.

Well, I am not familiar with this example. But there are others. Rommel was doing pretty well, until all his tanks were broken, no oil was left and he was bombed to hell by the British airforce. Still there is no desert in Germany. Yes, the Sowjet Union failed against Finland in the winter war, because they had no answer to the moti tactics. But here in fact the forest terrain played a role and not the climate alone. As another example, the Germans during Barbarossa weren´t expecting the Rasputitsa. When it got colder, in fact they were at first happy, because the tanks and cars had again some solid ground to drive on. When the Germans had no winter cloths at the end of 1941, either they weren´t availble or there was not enough train capacity to bring them to the front. So I think, what Paradox is trying to model with a generic feature, in reality is much more related to specific circumstances. I know that they have to abstract reality. I just think, that their abstraction is not capturing the essence of the situation.

 

[anihilato]

Might be a philosophical difference to how to design this stuff, but I feel having special forces be more limited in how their division structure is set would be a better approach. What i mean is that the bonus that you get from being whatever special forces you are is lost if you include any line battalions that are not that special force, in the same way as the thing that is special for paratroopers (being able to fit in planes) is lost if you include non-para line battalions. So if you have your army made of spec forces, you either forego the ability to include heavy guns, or you just use more resources on functionally identical infantry.

 

[Sourlol]

@joeenochs
Hitler literally forbade any discussion of outfitting forces on the Eastern Front in 1941 with cold weather gear as he thought that would be bad luck and lead him to repeating Napoleons mistakes...A lot of Germans died that winter as a result (to be fair, a lot of Russians died as they were cast out of their homes so Germans could stay warm).

The ground in the winter of the Eastern Front required giant bonfires to be lit...just so the troops could dig in. Engines of Tanks were consistently turned on overnight to keep oil from freezing. The planes of the lufwaffe stopped being able to fly it was so cold.

Meanwhile the Russians who had equipment designed for this weather and climate and terrain began to actually ATTACK during the winter.

By the second winter on the Eastern front, the Germans who were still alive and had lived through the first one were better prepared--for their own misery--high command was still on its' collective ass though.

To your terrain vs climate point, i think this needs to be expanded to Jungle. Jungle warfare is its own beast and fighting in the jungle is expressly difficult--especially as (generally speaking) imperialist forces (USA, UK, Jap...none of these peoples have inter generational predispositions to resistance to Jungle Diseases...as the defending who has lived there his entire life may).

 

[Farquarsen]

You forgot to account for the 10th Infantry (Mountain)... that's another three regiments or nine battalions!

I did not. 2 mountain divisions, the 10th and the 11th.

Well, game mechanics-wise, the US clearly went down the tech path to expand special forces.

@podcat Do the additional tech paths grant a higher percentage or do they buff current battalions? it looks like from the screen shots, the techs only buff current battalions and do not increase the number you can build.

 

[LordCybot]

@podcat Can we use the excercise function to increase acclimization?