Can we talk about the completely ahistorical capabilities of resistance forces

[Tuna Cat]

Now I understand the point of these mechanics to a degree right, but I really can't see any historical precedent for just how overwhelmingly capable and effective resistance forces are especially when it comes to inflicting damage upon garrisons particularly without external support and with a large amount of oversight from their invaders

From what I can tell the most effective resistance movements during this period were probably Greece resistance foremost, chinese (Particularly communist led ones) and Poland/france.

From what I can tell resistance mechanics most parallel the resistance movements in poland and france, although they are ridiculously more effective and powerful, requiring honestly ludicrous amounts of garrison manpower, equipment and incurring an overwhelming amount of equipment losses in quite frankly a minimum amount of time, to the point that it's very easy for the losses to amount to what would logically have to be some kind of massive rebel war occurring in the french lands. (which disappears entirely if you simply just put a random puppet goverment in place, despite the fact that semi independent or not conquered lands generally had a puppet government anyway, but this game doesn't really handle puppeted vs conquered very accurately anyway)


Truth is as far as I can tell resistance movements were largely ineffective for most of WW2 and only managed to accomplish much when given lots of external support and while their opponents were distracted and occupied heavily,(see as an example the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Resistance ) and even then those accomplishments pale in comparison to the pace and scope of the damage resistance movements can accomplish in Hearts of iron 4.

Greek resistance - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This would appear to be the most capable resistance movement in europe in WW2
Notice however that resistance of this scale is much much more akin to an outright civil war with the numbers and sort of warfare, and even then I would argue that this is much less effective then in game resistance which can incur 10x these losses in a tenth of the time.


Now I can admit I might have the wrong reading here, and if it can be provided I would not mind seeing resistance mechanics as is, justified, but I have trouble seeing how. Unless we're talking in terms of pure gameplay mechanics/balance.

 

[davidc929]

I think you are entirely correct. Occupation laws should determine the size of the garrison, with larger garrisons allowing access to more industrial capacity and resources. Effective garrisons should require large amounts of manpower But casualties should be pretty low.

As the UK you can have had tens of thousands of casualties before the war just by garrisoning the existing Empire. That certainly didn't happen.

On the other side of that all Germany has to do is create puppets out if the different conquered nations and it suddenly gets access to more if, more resources and more manpower without requiring a single garrison. It's a terrible exploit.

 

[Fargel Linellar]

Resistance activity yield ahistorical amount of losses when you use an occupation law that is ahistorical.

If you select Civilian Oversight or Local Police Force and let resistance climb 50+% of course it will results in massive resistance activity.

While resistance during WW2 were mostly ineffective, the amount of garrison the axis forced actually used is way bigger than the game request.
If you look at how many troups were stationned in occupied territory compared to how much you need to do the same (Martial law or similar occupation law) you will require less.

Of course the biggest difference is that those garrisons served a double purpose. Both deal with the occupation of the local population and serve as a reserve in case of local enemy invasion (Naval or air).
Just have a look at how many axis troop surrendered in some country like Norway after the German capitulation to get an idea.

If you are losing more than 100k manpower due to resistance activity, you have most probably use an occupation law that is way too lenient and allowed the resistance to build up.

The game work on the same principle than what happend during WW2.
If you keep the resistance in check, it won't do much (like what happend).
If you let the local organized a resistance for too long, they will assemble enough strength to do some damage.

 

[Gort11]

The Yugoslavian partisans were an enormous force late-war. 650,000 men and 52 divisions is nothing to sniff at.

I've noticed in test games that the AI just runs "Civilian Oversight" at all times, which gives them 50% or higher resistance, which is something that needs to be fixed quite badly.

 

[damnt512]

Funny how you didn't mention the Yugoslav resistance. They literally liberated themselves, and the Germans were forced to station 12 divisions permanently in yugoslavia just to deal with the resistance there.

 

[Vlad123]

I remember that until 41 there were no partisans. Before they were "all" (more or less) collaborationists. From 42 when it became clear that the plank could be beaten, they began. I remember that the French Maquis were financed by the British and a good help was given by the sten mk: very easy to produce and used the same ammunition as the MP40. I don't know much about the Yugoslav resistance even if I read that it is a "myth" in the sense that they started after the invasion of the USSR and managed to take control of the country after the liberation of belgrade, plus it must be said that from that what I read, for the hoi4 laws the occupation law was "brutal oppression" and therefore the partisans found ample support, vice versa in the areas where the occupation was soft (civilian sigth,local police or secret police) the resistance was weak ... because don't found much support. Because if occupation are soft, u not note it much...
addendum: (from wikipedia) Amid the relative chaos that ensued, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia moved to organize and unite anti-fascist factions and political forces into a nationwide uprising. The party, led by Josip Broz Tito, was banned after its significant success in the post-World War I Yugoslav elections and operated underground since. Tito, however, could not act openly without the backing of the USSR, and as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was still in force, he was compelled to wait.

 

[Jays298]

It's an issue. The casualties tend to be off the charts high. And it misses the biggest tactical / strategic impacts.

Plus I think the different occupations laws may be difficult to understand what they really do. It's a little too mathematical.

 

[davidc929]

Resistance activity yield ahistorical amount of losses when you use an occupation law that is ahistorical.

If you select Civilian Oversight or Local Police Force and let resistance climb 50+% of course it will results in massive resistance activity.

While resistance during WW2 were mostly ineffective, the amount of garrison the axis forced actually used is way bigger than the game request.
If you look at how many troups were stationned in occupied territory compared to how much you need to do the same (Martial law or similar occupation law) you will require less.

Of course the biggest difference is that those garrisons served a double purpose. Both deal with the occupation of the local population and serve as a reserve in case of local enemy invasion (Naval or air).
Just have a look at how many axis troop surrendered in some country like Norway after the German capitulation to get an idea.

If you are losing more than 100k manpower due to resistance activity, you have most probably use an occupation law that is way too lenient and allowed the resistance to build up.

The game work on the same principle than what happend during WW2.
If you keep the resistance in check, it won't do much (like what happend).
If you let the local organized a resistance for too long, they will assemble enough strength to do some damage.

I think that was one of the mistakes with moving garrisons offmap. Now you need a garrison for resistance activity and one for defending the territories from attack. Often it would be the same force. But not here.

 

[Tuna Cat]

Funny how you didn't mention the Yugoslav resistance. They literally liberated themselves, and the Germans were forced to station 12 divisions permanently in yugoslavia just to deal with the resistance there.

Here's the thing, like the greeks it's not hard to realize that there were only so effective because they'd essentially gone from a 'resistance' to an outright civil war, required lots of external assistance to reach such levels of capabilities and more importantly it took a long time, and escalated only when germany had started to become stretched thin and some sort of liberation is actually possible, as it stands in the game, resistance forces will escalate what should be an impossible suicidal battle in say a heavily administrated and policed country but still be immensely effective and damaging.

Resistance activity yield ahistorical amount of losses when you use an occupation law that is ahistorical.

If you select Civilian Oversight or Local Police Force and let resistance climb 50+% of course it will results in massive resistance activity.

While resistance during WW2 were mostly ineffective, the amount of garrison the axis forced actually used is way bigger than the game request.
If you look at how many troups were stationned in occupied territory compared to how much you need to do the same (Martial law or similar occupation law) you will require less.

Of course the biggest difference is that those garrisons served a double purpose. Both deal with the occupation of the local population and serve as a reserve in case of local enemy invasion (Naval or air).
Just have a look at how many axis troop surrendered in some country like Norway after the German capitulation to get an idea.

If you are losing more than 100k manpower due to resistance activity, you have most probably use an occupation law that is way too lenient and allowed the resistance to build up.

The game work on the same principle than what happend during WW2.
If you keep the resistance in check, it won't do much (like what happend).
If you let the local organized a resistance for too long, they will assemble enough strength to do some damage.

This is something I can admit was true, but are you totally aware of the scope of required equipment and particularly the best equipment to use for the job? To give you an idea, the optimal policing force for some reason is roving bands of 10s of thousands of soldiers, occupying one/two man tanks. I am not insisting that countries should just be fine when conquered, but quite frankly they require an absolutely massive amount of manpower and equipment now, unless you gamify the system by creating the Dalek gestapo and give every man there personal tankette. If you don't do this, you'll incur ridiculous levels of garrison damage immediately quickly

On top of that as far as I know each of the garrison systems require the same numbers of people, and at the very least incur the same amount of damage! If I am just leaving france to manage themselves, how come I even have garrisons to be damaged! And if there's so many garrisons there, how is that just letting them manage it. Like if the whole country is being managed by civilians or local police forces, how the heck did I lose 100k garrison!



EDIT: And look! If you want to approach this from a gamey perspective, a balance perspective I think that's where this has the most overtly terrible effect, the current garrison system heavily favours puppeting, which by all accounts is an action that massively benefits majors as opposed to minors.

Someone like germany has no real need to annex much land unless it's super useful, they benefit from puppeting, if you're a minor country, annexing land can be super important to boost your economy but annexing even a bit of land can entirely hamstrung you for most of a game, and easily escalate into a manpower/equipment sink that just absorbs 70% of your force or something.

 

[Harin]

Plus I think the different occupations laws may be difficult to understand what they really do. It's a little too mathematical.

I agree, the occupation laws are a bit much to understand at first glance. To keep it simple for my games, I focus on the resistance target. Compliance is terribly important, but second to resistance target, in many of my games. I tend to play countries that cannot afford to lose 100,000 manpower to resistance.

1. First, understand that resistance needs to be checked often, especially if you are taking tiles.
2. Second, have a goal. My goal is to keep resistance under 50%, because that is where garrison losses double.
3. Third, understand that the resistance target is where resistance is headed. It must be checked often, because many provinces will see it drop quickly after first being conquered, others will stubbornly hold at 70+%.
4. To find the resistance target, open the window that shows the occupied countries.
5. Use the drop down button to reveal all the provinces that are occupied inside each of the countries. Here is where I see the individual resistance bars and that very helpful red line that shows the resistance target. Hovering the mouse over the resistance bar also brings up the tooltip. The only thing I am looking for is the resistance target.
6. Choose an occupation law that will immediately bring that resistance target to under 50%. Thankfully, the occupation law tells us exactly how much it will reduce the resistance target. We just have to subtract the occupation law reduction from the resistance target. You can choose an occupation law per province, or for the entire country. I recommend choosing by the province, as some countries have one or two provinces that will have much a higher resistance target than the others.
7. Choose a default occupation law that will keep the resistance targets of newly conquered tiles below 50%. Local Police is a solid choice, but since I can sometimes forget to check resistance for a long time, I use Martial Law, because with its -60 to the resistance target, I do not have to worry about losing a lot of manpower. It is overkill to compensate for my absentmindedness. In most cases, Local Police would actually work better, if I could only remember to check more often. Newly conquered tiles can have 70% to over 80% resistance targets. They will cause manpower losses to spike, if not checked often. Once I remember to check and see that the Local Police -15 to resistance target is sufficient, I will change to Local Police for those provinces.
8. Keep checking resistance targets. They can go up and down. Countries have focuses that can increases resistance in your occupied countries and exiled governments can increase resistance. It can be a surprise, if not checked often.

 

[Fargel Linellar]

1. Choose an occupation law that will immediately bring that resistance target to under 50%. Thankfully, the occupation law tells us exactly how much it will reduce the resistance target. We just have to subtract the occupation law reduction from the resistance target. You can choose an occupation law per province, or for the entire country. I recommend choosing by the province, as some countries have one or two provinces that will have much a higher resistance target than the others.
2. [...] In most cases, Local Police would actually work better,[...]

From an in-game perspective, I disagree with those points in your process (although the overall process is correct)

Less than 50% is way too high for a target resistance. You should aim it to be as low as possible (10% is the minimum without compliance, so generally aim for it).
This is mostly because resistance cut twice. Each % of resistance increase both the chance of attack and the required garrison for the state.
As each attack will kill a % of the local garrison, the bigger the garrison and more frequent attack are, the more damage you will have.

For example, a 20% resistance will have 4x the damage of a 10%. A 40% would have 16 time what a 10% would.

By aiming for a resistance between 10% and 20% you would see garrison requirements and losses 4-16 time lower than aiming for 20-49%.

Local Police Force will almost never be the best option.
Generally, it will be between Secret Police and Martial law (including Harsh quotas/labor)
I can provide you with some details example of the math behind it, but there are so few cases where Local Police is better that I prefer for people to know how to choose which law.

Of course making sure you don't cross the 50% threshold is vital. As you can imagine adding +100% to resistance damage will be very bad (imagine when losses become 32 time bigger than what you should be aiming at).

 

[Gort11]

Keep checking resistance targets. They can go up and down. Countries have focuses that can increases resistance in your occupied countries and exiled governments can increase resistance. It can be a surprise, if not checked often.

This is my problem with the current resistance system. My approach is to use the most lenient law that keeps resistance under 10%, but in order to do that I'd have to keep checking the resistance mapmode or occupation screen. It would be good if there was a way to automate the setting of occupation laws - that way I wouldn't have to check, and the AI could use such a system too.

That's the other problem - the AI just uses Civilian Oversight everywhere, even when resistance is through the roof. It takes completely avoidable losses as a result.

 

[Federkiel]

Resistance activity yield ahistorical amount of losses when you use an occupation law that is ahistorical.

If you select Civilian Oversight or Local Police Force and let resistance climb 50+% of course it will results in massive resistance activity.

While resistance during WW2 were mostly ineffective, the amount of garrison the axis forced actually used is way bigger than the game request.
If you look at how many troups were stationned in occupied territory compared to how much you need to do the same (Martial law or similar occupation law) you will require less.

Of course the biggest difference is that those garrisons served a double purpose. Both deal with the occupation of the local population and serve as a reserve in case of local enemy invasion (Naval or air).
Just have a look at how many axis troop surrendered in some country like Norway after the German capitulation to get an idea.

If you are losing more than 100k manpower due to resistance activity, you have most probably use an occupation law that is way too lenient and allowed the resistance to build up.

The game work on the same principle than what happend during WW2.
If you keep the resistance in check, it won't do much (like what happend).
If you let the local organized a resistance for too long, they will assemble enough strength to do some damage.

I don't want to disagree in general but the Norway example isn't a good one, actually. Norway was crucial to the German war effort as it

1) has a 'lenghty and slim geography and thus consists of coast from north to south - vast stretches of coast to defend.

2) was a steptone into the Atlantic - from here it's just a small jump to sneak through the Denmark strait into the vastness of the Atlantic where raiders (and subs) can hardly be found. The reaction time for the British to deny this happening was minimal.

3) Norway was the shield to protect from Allied invasions into Sweden. Sweden was glady selling enormous amounts of valuable ores to Germany - elemental imports to feed the German war machine. The Allies potentially could - after an invasion - quickly advance to the border of and and into Sweden through just a slim stretch of Norwegian territory, cutting off the ore transportation lines. Actually, the Allies had considered this when USSR invaded Finland...

The mustached postcard-painter therefore was obsessed to protect Norway from invasion by deterring with a large defense force. While being a maniac, by strategic thinking this very idea was reasonable - and in effect successful. Only after D-Day it would have been sensible to reduce the occupation force by a serious margin to have reserves for where the action actually took place, but the painter remained obsessed with the idea of an invasion in this difficult to defend and air-cover overseas theatre.




Regarding the overall topic - what worries me the most with the resistance mechanic is the fact of immortality of resistance forces. Even if i had a large full tank army that was pivotal in destroying whole armies of a huge enemy power, being seasoned, awarded with medals and having cunning leadership- If it were sent to garrison duty, it would simply bleed out over time without any damage to the resistance at all...

IMHO Resistance should not only be reduced by sheer brutality but also by combat action / defeats that root them out / destroy cell(s) / capture their equipment stocks and leaders etc.

 

[Lord Demon 78]

Something I don't see mentioned much with the occupation laws is using agents to supplement them. I often can use lenient occupation laws to grow compliance with using agents to suppress resistance. Once I get compliance up to 40%, or at least 25%, I can then switch to laws to hold down the resistance and not worry about the compliance growth.

 

[Darth Howard]

Even "better", the best occupation "divisons" are just a single battalion of cav/armored cars. Bump up to six (I think thats the number) if you use MP.

 

[Secret Master]

Second, have a goal. My goal is to keep resistance under 50%, because that is where garrison losses double.

Choose a default occupation law that will keep the resistance targets of newly conquered tiles below 50%.

This is all solid advice that is easy to implement. For most occupations, you can figure out the ballpark setting and roll with that.

The only thing I will add is that with the balance changes in resistance, I am reconsidering how quickly I research and use MP support companies and ACs. I had an issue in my first BBA game where I ended up with runaway manpower and infantry kit shortages even after I set my policies properly. What started as a small player error that I corrected before Barbarossa quickly got out of hand resulting in partisans killing more Germans than France, Poland, and the Soviets combined.

 

[Tuna Cat]

One thing that kinda bugs me is that even if you look at the most extensive rebel activities in ww2 (Which really at their most damaging were more akin to outright civil war) We're talking casualties in the maybe low tens of thousands, Not the hundreds of thousands and nowhere near so quickly as it is in the game. I really don't see how this is defensible no matter what occupation law you use because no matter the law you're still physically garrisoning these lands with able bodies and equipped soldiers. And there's zero precedent for resistance movements being so effective at neutralizing that.

 

[Gort11]

Even "better", the best occupation "divisons" are just a single battalion of cav/armored cars. Bump up to six (I think thats the number) if you use MP.

If you use military police, you want the biggest garrison division possible, so like 25 battalions of cavalry plus the military police. This is because military police grant a modifier to the division's suppression rather than providing any suppression of their own, so you want the biggest division you can get.

 

[davidc929]

Something I don't see mentioned much with the occupation laws is using agents to supplement them. I often can use lenient occupation laws to grow compliance with using agents to suppress resistance. Once I get compliance up to 40%, or at least 25%, I can then switch to laws to hold down the resistance and not worry about the compliance growth.

The problem is you get so few agents it is very hard to use them at all the places you like to. Assuming you are going on a conquering spree you probably want to work towards collaboration to reduce how long an invasion will take and improve compliance after it. I find that ends up using most of my agents.

 

[Modious]

Seems like the issue is people ran occupations the same way they always did, and now that doesn’t work. That’s a good thing. Keeps the game fresh.