Developer Diary 12 – Military

[King]

Of course, most British soldiers in the Great War happened to be conscripts, i.e. they were forcibly drafted to fight.

And apparently it's not decided yet what form conscription will take in the game.

Most British soldiers in WWI had very generous seperation allowances paid to their families to keep their moral up.

 

[King]

"The Victorian period opens with Cavalry still being the supreme shock weapon; just witness the amazing success of the Charge of the Light Brigade."

How do you define success? I thought the Charge of the Light Brigade was generally regarded as a disaster. Almost the entire brigade was wiped out after all.

Cardigan did take the guns, go Cardigan. Although perhaps I was being a touch ironic to illustrate my point about cavalry.

 

[King]

What do soldier pops who aren't attached to an active unit represent?

Reservists, people employed in the armed forces but not fighting, naval personel, basically what ever you want them to be.

 

[King]

I got just a question for King:

What would happen to countries with low populated provinces, let say Argentina? By 1836, the country just have about 900.000 inhabitants more or less. What I say is, that as being such a large country for so small population, the provinces( except Buenos Aires, and maybe Córdoba, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán) have almost no population, which may mean that very few brigades can be recruited. In contrast, Chile had almost the same population, but as the territory is smaller, more population live in a same province so there are more provinces than in Argentina with a population enough to recruit brigades. So what happens if there is a war between this two countries, but the two have the same military spendings? Will Chile be allowed to recruit more brigades and so win the war?

We are going to do a lot of work with the setups to make sure they are balanced. Part of the reason why we budget 6 man months for a scenario.

 

[Vricklund]

Hmm, I'd like to bring out the whip if my soldier POPs try to leave the country, or maybe the execution squad
These POPs shouldnt so easily migrate. Maybe you will have conscription laws and such in the game that can manage this?

Couldn't this be solved easily with pop-promoting scripts kicking in (like we've seen ideology scripts do in previous DDs) or desicions you enact when atwar=yes? A call to arms or a draft, increasing the number of pops who want to turn into soldiers and decreasing the urge or ability for soldiers to move or evolve.

 

[BlueWarrior]

Sweet - nice way of dealing with Cavalry too.

 

[Karri]

The only thing still bothering me:
My 3000 soldier POP in province Imaginatioland is supporting a 3000 men brigade. The brigade is shot to pieces and has 1000 men remaining. Will the POP be 3000 or 1000 men?

King, care to answer? Because as I said: it is bothering me. I don't want what we had in Victoria when 2 million men army being destroyed had no impact on population unless they were mobilized divisions.

 

[Johan]

King, care to answer? Because as I said: it is bothering me. I don't want what we had in Victoria when 2 million men army being destroyed had no impact on population unless they were mobilized divisions.

pops and units are linked. actual damage to the pop from damage to soldiers depend on tech.

 

[unmerged(81228)]

We have two thoughts here, one is simply brigade disbands and the small arms return to the pool for you to use else where. Or the brigade remains, but will not reinforce, meaning you will want to disband it sooner or later anyway. However we haven't 100% decided exactly what we will do. It is a matter of what will work best in the game.

I'm not entirely convinced. Of course I see advantages of linking brigade directly to a POP. What worries me is playability of this solution in a case of running out of "man-meat".
If I have brigade in a structure of the army I would rather prefer to swap source of manpower rather than being forced to create new brigade. It is hassle.
Isn't it easier, as Ralph sugested, having a warning pop up if POP emigrates/change profession/run out of people and be able to swap to another POP?

One more question: how the army menu would work? Will it be 'windows explorer' based?
It was problematic in Vic to find an army you were after if you had plenty of them. Ideally, I would klike to be able to create 'folders' for my armies - this way I can have any army structure I would like. It can be teritorial, it can be functional, it can be mixed....

 

[Brownbeard]

Is it just my CPU... but I remember soldier pops decreasing from casualties. One of the reasons I mostly used minorities for soldiering, like my francophone Prussian horde, Amazonian shock troops from Brazil... basically, make the least useful pop from a province that will not secede by event your soldier pop culture and location. They died to size 10 and then assmilated. The workaround to further pop loss was to keep the bulk of your manpower in a culture whose pops do not field divisions, but that is another exploitish story.

 

[unmerged(81228)]

Is it just my CPU... but I remember soldier pops decreasing from casualties. One of the reasons I mostly used minorities for soldiering, like my francophone Prussian horde,

No, it is not just you. It was the case in Vic1. I always used to use minorities as a slaughter meat

 

[Vricklund]

Probably best if the brigade simply disbanded if a pop dropped below 3000. That way we won't have AI ghost brigades.

 

[Vricklund]

Also, why are people so bent on slaughtering their entire male population? If you wiped out your soldier pops and lost your professional army you probably did something wrong.

 

[unmerged(71032)]

Also, why are people so bent on slaughtering their entire male population? If you wiped out your soldier pops and lost your professional army you probably did something wrong.

Mainly because experience with "stay positive" approach in case of various EU-series games mechanics is that it is not such great idea to just assume, that "it will be fine, no worries".

To be fair, I'm not worried if human player wipes his population because he did something stupid. Tough luck, reload the scenario, try again. I'm more worried about AI ability to manage such things - it simply got tendency to use its resources in much more wasteful way.

Anyway... to some extend I think it's not that critical, as soldier POPs should rarely be the bulk of your armed forces manpower. Critical part of the system should always be mobilization/draft - if standing regiments (based on soldier POPs) are mayority of your "serious" army, it means something is really wrong.

 

[telesien]

I got just a question for King:

What would happen to countries with low populated provinces, let say Argentina? By 1836, the country just have about 900.000 inhabitants more or less. What I say is, that as being such a large country for so small population, the provinces( except Buenos Aires, and maybe Córdoba, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán) have almost no population, which may mean that very few brigades can be recruited. In contrast, Chile had almost the same population, but as the territory is smaller, more population live in a same province so there are more provinces than in Argentina with a population enough to recruit brigades. So what happens if there is a war between this two countries, but the two have the same military spendings? Will Chile be allowed to recruit more brigades and so win the war?

It is all matter of POP distribution. It is logicall to assume, that in provinces where the population is low, people won't be that enthusiastic about military career. There are usually more jobs available and needed. Also I imagine that even when you as a soldier came from such a place, government made you serve in some more suiting place. Soliders should concentrate in more heavily populated areas. If not for realistic purpouses (I've never studied that issue much and this is just my interpretation), then for gameplay reasons.

 

[Peekee]

pops and units are linked. actual damage to the pop from damage to soldiers depend on tech.

Or health care?

 

[safferli]

Or health care?

Don't think health care has anything to do with the health of the solders...

 

[ollobrains]

looks ok so far

 

[Searry]

i hope the next one will be about navy!

 

[SA_Avenger]

So basically if you lose a province from which a regiment originates, it won't get any reinforcement anymore and will eventually die out with time if you can't retake that territory. (but if the people there are strongly attached to you they might migrate back to another of your province etc....)?