This is based on a thread that happened in the final week of the previous forum.
It was a thread on how it was kind of ridiculous how occupations worked in previous HOI's both that they were too cheap in terms of men, but that the whack a mole problem was also super annoying. I made a suggestion that was halfway thought out and the military police thread made put it in to an actual proposal. (with color coding!)
Outline: A) The problem of occupation
B) The Solution: Revolt risk, suppression and garrisons
A) The problem of occupation. In the previous thread, someone mentioned how it was ridiculous that you could conquer an entire country, leave three division on some airports, and then just leave the place alone. Taking more territory than you had forces to administer was never an issue in HOI3 (or HOI2 or HOI1). Germany had hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in the Balkans, France, Greece, Poland etc. Japan kept 300,000-500,000 troops (of 600,000 to 1.2 million) in China on "Pacification duties" at all times. Taking large swathes of territory generally entailed a significant commitment of troops to hold it. I'm not talking about industrial exploitation, merely holding the infrastructure required a significant commitment.
B) The Solution: The way to solve this uses the Battle plan system and it actually reduces the player's need to micromanage the game. It's a system that requires a new mission in the Battle Planner called "garrison" as well as two mechanics that are there already.
C) You may have noticed that the above looked very calculation intensive. Luckily, we play this on a computer and we have Battleplans. One of the battleplans should be just "garrison." You select a commander, you select a group of troops, you select an area (much as one highlights a front) and then select any "priority provinces" that you want the computer to make sure you have troops on. Click the button and then the troops distribute themselves over the area to maximize the reduction in local resistance... you could even further prioritize them to garrison for infrastructure protection, resource protection, or IC protection. The mission would also show a guess about how much Local resistance would be suppressed with the forces assigned.
Thanks to Axe99 for saving the earlier posts and sending them to me.
It was a thread on how it was kind of ridiculous how occupations worked in previous HOI's both that they were too cheap in terms of men, but that the whack a mole problem was also super annoying. I made a suggestion that was halfway thought out and the military police thread made put it in to an actual proposal. (with color coding!)
Outline: A) The problem of occupation
1) Occupation is too cheap
2) Whack a mole is annoying as all hell
3) Occupation never seems to resemble the historical situation.
4) Partisan suppression and invasion defence are separated when they really weren't.
2) Whack a mole is annoying as all hell
3) Occupation never seems to resemble the historical situation.
4) Partisan suppression and invasion defence are separated when they really weren't.
B) The Solution: Revolt risk, suppression and garrisons
1) A base revolt risk for the province based on local MP and NU.
2) A division occupying a province would have a "suppression value"
3) Suppression and revolt risk can both spread into other provinces but how they spread is different.
4) An example to illustrate.
C) "Garrison" instead of being a troop type, is just a mission that you put an army group under using the battleplan system. 2) A division occupying a province would have a "suppression value"
3) Suppression and revolt risk can both spread into other provinces but how they spread is different.
4) An example to illustrate.
1) Give orders
2) We don't have to fiddle with "garrison" divisions.
D) The Goal2) We don't have to fiddle with "garrison" divisions.
A) The problem of occupation. In the previous thread, someone mentioned how it was ridiculous that you could conquer an entire country, leave three division on some airports, and then just leave the place alone. Taking more territory than you had forces to administer was never an issue in HOI3 (or HOI2 or HOI1). Germany had hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in the Balkans, France, Greece, Poland etc. Japan kept 300,000-500,000 troops (of 600,000 to 1.2 million) in China on "Pacification duties" at all times. Taking large swathes of territory generally entailed a significant commitment of troops to hold it. I'm not talking about industrial exploitation, merely holding the infrastructure required a significant commitment.
1) In the current system, occupation doesn't cost much. There are eventual downsides and the risk of revolt, but mostly the area behind the lines can be managed with few troops.
2) In every conversation about partisans and occupation, everyone hates whackamole, both because they are annoying to deal with, and because partisan forces rarely ever rose up in division sized formations enabling the occupier to crush them.
3) Furthermore, even when there were massive partisan armies, (Yugoslavia, China) they generally confined themselves to the areas of low infrastructure. The high mountains, the remote forests, the Pripyat marshes... they weren't rising up in the middle of Kiev to be crushed by the German army. Unfortunately, that's what happens to often in HOI3. The game never figured out how to deal with the fact that it was historically the least populated areas that the most effective partisans appeared.
4) When organizing the occupation of taken territory, the player has to very clearly demarcate between "garrison" divisions and the divisions they want to use to hold off the Allied invasion of France/Yugoslavia/Norway etc. That demarcation didn't exist. The divisions in France were doing garrison duties and then moved to a more defensive posture when they feared the Allied invasion, but it wasn't like the second line units weren't going to be used for defense, nor was it that the first line units weren't involved in partisan suppression. Instead, it was a posture that they changed as needed.
B) The Solution: The way to solve this uses the Battle plan system and it actually reduces the player's need to micromanage the game. It's a system that requires a new mission in the Battle Planner called "garrison" as well as two mechanics that are there already.
1) The first mechanic: Revolt risk or what would be better termed "Local resistance." This would be a province specific value determined by NU (or whatever the new equivalent is) and local MP (as a rough proxy for population). A higher NU means more local resistance as does a higher MP. Since NU will drop for a nation that's actually defeated and annexed, this will make resistance stronger in occupied areas that belong to countries that have not been defeated yet. Local resistance would harm infra efficiency, IC efficiency, resource production etc.. but it wouldn't lead to actual armed revolt unless it got absurdly high.
2) The second mechanic is suppression. Every division has a suppression value that can reduce local resistance by a certain amount. So far, so standard.
3) How these two interact is the core of my idea. Both local resistance and suppression can spread across province borders but how they spread would be modified by different things. Suppression would be at full power in the province actually occupied and then spread further based on the adjoining terrain and infra, so a single division in a city in France, connected to wide open plains by good roads and rails can suppress a pretty large chunk of territory effectively. A Japanese division holding a rail junction in China next to rugged hills and dirt roads, is going to be less effective. The lower the infra, the worse the terrain, the worse the spread
4) Local Resistance would work similarly. But it would spread when it was suppressed. If the Germans can suppress a bunch of local resistance in Paris, that will increase local resistance in the adjoining areas, representing partisans moving away from suppression. This "bleed off" of Local Resistance would NOT be mediated by the infrastructure. This is important. In an area with good infrastructure, this spreading bleed off would be entirely offset by the spreading suppression value. However, in areas of bad infrastructure, the bleed off effect will be stronger than the suppression effect so the swamps and forests and high mountains will become hives of partisan activity. You could always send in troops up there to suppress, but then there's high attrition to worry about.
Let's say suppression value is a function of the division size and local MP.
Furthermore, let's say that suppression transmission from province A to province B = (Suppression value of division in province A) x (.5) x (the average of the infrastructure values of A and B)
Also, the "bleed off," the increase in Local Resistance of province B due to suppression in province A = (Amount Local Resistance suppressed in Province A) x (.3)
So an example of how this works. I am Germany. I have seized Eastern Poland and the area around the Pripyat marshes. I've captured Minsk and have a strong garrison there. (Assume for the sake of argument, that Minsk is just north of the marshes, it isn't but I just want to show what I mean.) The garrison has a suppression value of 21% and is suppressing the entire 15% local resistance in Minsk (also, values are just for illustration. The important thing is the relationship) Minsk has good infra as do the provinces to the East, North and West. (70% to the east North and west) so those provinces are affected by a .5 x 21 x 70% = a 7% increased suppression value as well. But in Pripyat, to the south, the infra is only at 10% so the suppression is 21 x .5 x 40% = 4.2%.
All of the adjoining provinces get bleed off from the 15% Local Resistance suppressed in Minsk. All of them get a .3 x 15% = 4.5% increase in Local Resistance. For the provinces to the North, East, and West, that 4.5% increase in local resistance is entirely overcome by the 7% increase suppression value. However, in Pripyat, the Local Resistance has increased by 4.5% while the suppression value has only gone up by 4.2%.
Thus the suppression in Minsk is actually raising the Local Resistance in Pripyat.
You'd have to fudge the numbers a bit, but the idea is that suppression will cause the revolt risk to collect in more out of the way areas even those these areas "base" local resistance is low due to small populations.
C) You may have noticed that the above looked very calculation intensive. Luckily, we play this on a computer and we have Battleplans. One of the battleplans should be just "garrison." You select a commander, you select a group of troops, you select an area (much as one highlights a front) and then select any "priority provinces" that you want the computer to make sure you have troops on. Click the button and then the troops distribute themselves over the area to maximize the reduction in local resistance... you could even further prioritize them to garrison for infrastructure protection, resource protection, or IC protection. The mission would also show a guess about how much Local resistance would be suppressed with the forces assigned.
1) Garrisoned units would get a bonus to their suppression values that would take some time to build up to full effectiveness, furthermore, their supply needs and priority would be reduced. They would also be "greyed out," remaining on the map, but wouldn't be selected when highlighting large boxes to select active forces. They can still be moved or reassigned, possibly moving slower, but they would remain on the map. However, a unit on garrison duty will suffer a malus if it meets regular forces.
2) Garrisoned units can go off garrison duty with a 1 or 2 week period to regain full combat effectiveness. That way, if the Allies start landing in Yugoslavia, your garrisons can join in the defence.
So the way this would work as fire and forget, just pick your 14 divisions to garrison the Balkans, select the area, prioritize a few cities and airfields, click "garrison" and those divisions will go sort themselves out and you won't have to hear about them again. If the Allies start invading the Balkans, you can always switch them to active and then they will be able to fight. You can always attach and detach units to the garrisoning army group as well, so you can use it for rear area recovery. If you send a battered 1st Panzer division to join the French Garrison army group, the computer will automatically move it to optimize suppression and then you can take it out once it's recovered.
The Final Goal of this is to make a system where players and the AI distribute forces behind the lines to hold the territory more effectively and that holding territory effectively costs troops. It would also put partisans and local resistance where it was historically, away from the cities and the rails and into the marshes and trackless areas. It would also solve the whack a mole problem since allocating sufficient troops would make uprisings impossible.
Thanks to Axe99 for saving the earlier posts and sending them to me.
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