Developer Diary 12 – Military

[unmerged(174694)]

green provinces mean the ones where you can recruit from? and the thermometer has something to do with weather and modifiers?

 

[telesien]

green provinces mean the ones where you can recruit from? and the thermometer has something to do with weather and modifiers?

It is supposed to be batton/club and almost certainly has something to do with crime fighting

 

[HisMajestyBOB]

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?

I'm wondering if you'll start out with a 1:1 ratio of military casualties to pop reduction. With advances in medicine, field hospitals, sanitation, etc. you could reduce this, to represent military casualties that are able to return to the workforce. So, a late-game brigade that loses 2000 men, will see its home pop lose only 1000 men. Then your brigade can be reinforced back to 2000, assuming an initial pop size of 3000, representing wounded returning to duty.

 

[sbr]

It is supposed to be batton/club and almost certainly has something to do with crime fighting

Not sure at which part you are 'ing at.

There is the baton, which is some sort of suppression/crime fighting value; on the picture of the mountains is a horizontal thermometer as well.

 

[Lloyien]

The comment above made me think about something. Is the draft simulated? Because Great Britain basically (bit of an exaggeration but stick with me) drafted/enlisted their entire male population between 18-30 for the army while the women took over in the factories. The same women who before worked as much as men (first half of the 19th century), then got to do less work due to laws prohibiting long work hours for women and children in the late 19th/early 20th century and become the pillars the war industry supported during WWI. Okay, that just added the question if women are represented at all in POPs and how. So is there draft and are women simulated in the workforce and does the latter change (or even child labor as that was still big in the early 19th century).

This could be simulated by having 1/4-1/2 of the given pops enlisted as soldiers, and cap it off at that. The rest of the pop would simulate the women, children, etc, that are working in the factory.

Not entirely accurate, mind, but it allows the pop system as it stands to continue functioning with the factories still manned.

 

[telesien]

Not sure at which part you are 'ing at.

There is the baton, which is some sort of suppression/crime fighting value; on the picture of the mountains is a horizontal thermometer as well.

Yes, but that looks like good old life rating, so I didn't think it to be any kind of mistery

 

[sbr]

Yes, but that looks like good old life rating, so I didn't think it to be any kind of mistery

Oh yeah. Well carry on then.

 

[Rhion]

Maybe the "batton" or whatever it is, represents the government efficiency coming from the amount of bureaucrats/aristocrats in the province

 

[Alerias]

"30.00K" on the screenshot is pretty funny considering that with one less character you could write "30000" ...

 

[unmerged(71436)]

What about Zeppelins and the Riesenflugzeuge, i.e. the beginnings of strategic air warfare? Will this be represented at all?

I'm guessing not, from the diary, but it would make some sense, considering the game goes until 1936.

 

[Sovereign]

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.

Why not both.

The brigade stops reinforcing manpower even though still subject to battle-losses and attrition, and remaining small arms go back under Crazy Eddy's bed.

How do small-arms apply anyway, are units of small arms used to replace losses lock-step with manpower losses, or does the brigade or division just require an initial outlay of small-arms to make the brigade, and then the brigade or division consumes a set percentage of arms on an ongoing bases or what?

 

[Colon]

I'm wondering if you'll start out with a 1:1 ratio of military casualties to pop reduction. With advances in medicine, field hospitals, sanitation, etc. you could reduce this, to represent military casualties that are able to return to the workforce. So, a late-game brigade that loses 2000 men, will see its home pop lose only 1000 men. Then your brigade can be reinforced back to 2000, assuming an initial pop size of 3000, representing wounded returning to duty.

There shouldn't be a 1:1 ratio regardless (as was the case in Vic1), because a single POPs would actually also represent 3 other persons who weren't in the labour force (housewives, children, elderly...). Even taking account of civilian casualities, a 1:1 POP reduction is excessive.

 

[Sovereign]

They need maintenance in the form of goods too, because that way you get constant demand for miltiayr goods allowing the world market to function properly.

W00000T!

>ahem<

Escuse me, carry on.

 

[Niptium]

I do hope in Victoria 2 that unhabitated provinces but by few men won't see immigration up the wazoo this time around (like Northern Canada, Hudson Bay, Siberia, etc).

 

[unmerged(7537)]

The idea of linking soldier pay to desertion levels is laughable, it's only in the last 20-30 years that soldiers have been relatively well paid, during Vicky's time frame they were treated like dirt. According to BBC magazine British soldiers during the great war were embarrassed that girls in munitions factories were far better paid than they were.

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.

 

[Darkrenown]

Don't forget that in V1 we had a reserve system, so that in times of emergency you could call your reserves to arms.

There hasn't been a DD comment on that yet, but that would I think be a natural answer to the question of what happens in a war - your reserve units would be changed from farmer/artisan/craftsmen whatever to Soldier POP for as long as they are in service, and whatever natural growth you'd get (as well as further recruitment via better pay etc, maybe draft laws even???) based on that much larger population that is now all solider POPs would feed into the unit supply, based on the numbers of POPs in the province fielding the brigade in question.

I think it'd make more sense for the pops to stay in their original form rather than convert to soldiers for the duration. Maybe they could lose some men equal to the number mobilised from that pop, but the base. If the entire pop converted, seeing that pops can work in multiple factories at the same time, you'd risk the wrong large pop being mobilised and leaving multiple factories empty. That'd be frustrating.

Assuming there is such a thing, I think the way to mobilise would be to cycle though your farmer/labourer pops over X size (maybe 10k) and remove 3k for each brigade in the pool. If you've taken men from every pop and there are still brigades to be called up it'd cycle through them again. If there are no more large enough farmer/labourer pops it could start taking your craftsmen/artisans etc. Or perhaps it'd be better to draft craftsmen/artisans before going through farmers/labourers again, but the idea would be to spread the mobilisation load ratehr than convert pops wholesale.

 

[Red_Communist]

Nice.

This sounds a lot easier than HoI3's (of course ), that's good because I'm not much of a fan when it comes to warfare.

Can't wait too buy it.

 

[Alsadius]

An idea for that recruitment map mode - have more colours than two. Off the top of my head:

green = can recruit a brigade and still have 1000 reinforcements for each brigade linked to that pop

yellow = can recruit a brigade, but short on reinforcements

red = cannot recruit a brigade, but has soldier pops

white = no soldier pops

It'd seem to give a much better idea of where you want to build troops than the two-colour map shown.

This could be simulated by having 1/4-1/2 of the given pops enlisted as soldiers, and cap it off at that. The rest of the pop would simulate the women, children, etc, that are working in the factory.

Not entirely accurate, mind, but it allows the pop system as it stands to continue functioning with the factories still manned.

Vicky 1 did the same sort of thing, basically - your nation's population was 4x the sum of all your pops, to represent women and children. The pop sizes themselves were just the adult men.

 

[unmerged(138973)]

I like how this is going. The new way of doing aircraft is an improvement over the VIC1 system, but while it looks good for WW1 type conflicts it doesn't seem quite right for the 1920's and 1930. It also doesn't leave much scope for any modder who wants to make a post 1936 scenario. I've always thought that Victoria had the greatest potential for an excelent Modern day scenario. Perhaps somebody will be able to do something with VIC2 thats similar to what the Arsenal of Democracy or Magna Mundi groups have done with HOI2 AND EUIII 5 years.

I have a question ? will reinforcing use goods as well as manpower. For instance would reinforcing a damaged air unit use up some planes from the national stockpile.

 

[unmerged(45464)]

"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.