Hearts of Iron IV - 44th Development Diary - 12th of February 2016

[Karelian]

How moddable will the occupation laws be?
Could you please enable an option where some of them could be made country-specifically unavailable unless certain circumstances (set time, certain national focus and/or other requirements like certain tech researched) are met?

By allowing modders to tweak the occupation laws like this, one could have a modded game where Nazi Germany couldn't just set up mild occupation policy to Poland and Soviet territory from the start of the war, unless they have the "Sensible occupational policy" National Focus enabled.

 

[jamesd]

In the Baltic States when Germany effectively increased their occupation laws, they implemented conscription and recruited more manpower with men of military age having to choose between the armed forces or working in factories. That obviously won't work under the occupation laws as outlined, so could Germany release them as puppets while the war was still ongoing? It could be argued that Belorussia and Galicia were also released as puppets in 1944.

Why doesn't state population have an impact on resistance? To me it would be quite logical for states with large populations to have faster resistance growth than smaller states. The more people there are the more that will be willing to resist initially and they will be able to talk to and recruit even more people. Say for example there are 2 states of equal area, one with 5,000,000 people and one with 100,000. The effect in the larger state will be much greater in the absence of occupation forces.

How much suppression will be needed to reduce resistance? I take it that troops anywhere in a state will reduce resistance in that state, but will they also reduce resistance in adjacent states? If a player is using the harshest occupation laws, will a force of 1 Inf + MP company be sufficient to hold down a state, or will more troops be needed?

The reality is that if a state is left empty of occupation troops for long enough, eventually the resistance will take control of it. The random HOI3 spawning of rebels was not a good way of handling it, but there were some significant resistance movements that resulted in HOI level combat - Russia, Yugoslavia and Poland being the prime examples. At some stage could there be a mechanism whereby a faction leader could trigger an uprising? The resistance level and population could determine the number of people available, but the more difficult part would be equipping them. The Russians and Yugoslavs originally had equipment from their own armies that had been defeated and later captured equipment from the Germans and had supplies air dropped.

 

[jju_57]

While I won't miss the constant "whack-a-mole" annoyance, it's a bit of a drastic change to go to NO Partisans at all.

But historically the vast majority of partisans were just a handful of people. The game is at least battalion/regimental in scope. Partisans would do sabotage and intradiction of supply and this reflects that very nicely. In

 

[Thanik]

You WANT the Soviets to surrender, not because you want to annex everything (you could just occupy it all), but because you don't have to waste time fighting partisans.

Seriously I cannot imagine what instanly boost Germany will have for that, or Japan after China conquest(if nobody cares about them).

 

[Tanksandor]

The DD was pretty informative. What I wonder about is will be get an option to remove industry from occupied territory and move it back to our core provinces? Of course, you would incur some malus for doing that: like, lower efficiency for a couple of months, higher chance of sabotage, higher unrest etc.

This is not related so much to the DD, but I am also curious if we will get an option to blow up key infrastructure when you are retreating/evacuating an area. So if your division had engineers attached to it, they could blow up ports and infrastructure. Of course, there would be a cost associated with such an action- lower NU, higher revolt risk, lower morale etc. The way the German army blew up bridges, ports, roads, and railways as they retreated in '44-'45.

 

[Mannstien]

Infrastructure is on state level.
Forts are at province level which the 1st picture also shows. Or am i wrong?

Thanks Vid, I should probably have guessed that given how they are building everything else at state level though TBH I'd rather build infrastructure at the province level for specific reasons but I'm sure it makes the complexity far less.

 

[CharlieFox]

Why?

I mean, I know that since at least HOI3 Cavalry has basically been treated as anti-partisan troops, but there really isn't anything about them that particularly suits them to CO-IN warfare more than, say, light infantry. Cavalry being anti-partisan troops is just another thing that was basically invented for game purposes and which has kinda-sorta become accepted as true.

I agree. It feels gamey that if you want to play optimally you have to use cavalry as partisan suppression troops...

 

[DPKdebator]

Will it be possible to transfer occupation with individual provinces instead of entire states?

 

[Liserg]

Nice Developer Diary, really looking forward for the next one.Can't wait for the game

 

[Kovax]

But historically the vast majority of partisans were just a handful of people. The game is at least battalion/regimental in scope. Partisans would do sabotage and intradiction of supply and this reflects that very nicely. In

Yes, the vast majority were just a handful of people, EXCEPT in the few cases where nobody stopped them and they recruited enough ex-army members and other people to threaten the puppet government or attempt to drive out the occupiers, either with or without foreign support. That happened in the hills of Yugoslavia, in the Priyapet (sp?) Marshes in Russia, and in the city of Warsaw in Poland. Some of those resulted in a few actual military engagements. As pointed out by a few other people, the rate of growth of the Resistance should have some link to population, because it takes more troops to keep a large city in check than a couple of scattered villages and not much in between, and a strong Resistance movement has a larger population base to draw members from. Given enough time, however, even a relatively empty backwater area can support a small but significant Resistance movement, spreading to the cities where there's enough angry people to take more direct forms of action.

I think that HOI4's approach is a far better answer than HOI3's random spawns, but it fails to result in a realistic situation if totally ignored: open revolt.

The removal of many of the effects of Cores in the game has other issues, since so many of the forces which drove the historical events were directly tied to difficult and multi-faceted ethnic and nationalistic problems in the aftermath of WWI. Ignoring the causes behind the events and going with a simplistic sandbox approach where "anything goes" and all you need to do is fabricate some claim totally misses the reasons WHY the events occurred in the first place. Hitler didn't set his sights on Austria or Czechoslovakia purely because of their industrial value, it was because there were thousands of ethnic Germans, and a lot of people already pushing for unification. He didn't create the situation, although he exploited it shamelessly. "Cores" were the closest thing that HOI3 had to representing it (at least in the original release and first expansion - TFH pretty much ignored them other than for affecting productivity after occupation), and a more detailed approach like Vicky2's "pops" probably isn't necessary to model it over such a short time span.

 

[FOARP]

I agree. It feels gamey that if you want to play optimally you have to use cavalry as partisan suppression troops...

I remember a game of HOI3 where, playing as Japan, I had in excess of 40-50 one-brigade divisions of cavalry plus MPs chasing over various corners of the map. Ahistorical and a chore.

 

[TheRomanRuler]

Size of population should have no impact on revolt risk. On dense cities, you need less men to keep eye on more people. In vaste empty areas, you have plenty of places to hide, and more people are reguired to hunt less partisans.

 

[Emmanuel_M]

One thing I fear is the rewarding of gamey tactics.

As Germany you want german combat troops and hungarian/romanian "occupation trrops". Will there be a brake against this kind of optimal yet ahistorical behavior ?

 

[grandad1982]

I see the army around the borders to protect in the photo. but its only 1 in every province like in www. it seems so little and too easy to just send 10 divisions or more and crush them. whould be better to build up a bigger army

That's because it is from www.

 

[FOARP]

One thing I fear is the rewarding of gamey tactics.

As Germany you want german combat troops and hungarian/romanian "occupation trrops". Will there be a brake against this kind of optimal yet ahistorical behavior ?

Except that behaviour wasn't ahistorical - Germany did use allied troops to hold down areas thus liberating German troops for combat. It didn't do it in Western Europe (much - the Italians did have an occupation zone in France) but they were used a lot in Yugoslavia, Greece, and the Soviet Union for this purpose.

 

[Razor]

Thanks for the DD Podcat!

 

[Xyrael]

So, as Communist China, if I ally with the Soviet Union they are obviously going to commit more to a fight against Japan than I could. Will I be able to ask them for Manchuria, despite not matching their commitment, because of claims? On the same vein, will the Germans return Transnistria to Romania, or the Finnish marshes to Finland? Or, as Communist China, is allying with the Soviets basically acknowledging that I won't be getting Manchuria, or Taiwan, back anytime soon?

 

[TheRomanRuler]

Or do French occupy part of Germany, despite smaller contribution to war than UK, USA, or SU

 

[ViKiNG-NoR]

That's because it is from www.

yea i tought that. but your answer was just so not useful..

 

[jamesd]

But historically the vast majority of partisans were just a handful of people. The game is at least battalion/regimental in scope. Partisans would do sabotage and intradiction of supply and this reflects that very nicely. In

Except looking at my book on the Soviet Partisan Movement, they had about 80,000 partisans behind Army Group Centre on 1st October 1943, with some groups as large as 15,000. There were also another 13,000 behind Army Group North. They had formed into actual combat units that controlled territory unless the Germans concentrated significant forces to drive them out, which left other areas undefended or weakened the front lines. They weren't well equipped with heavy weapons as there's a limit as to what could be flown or parachuted in or how much they could capture and maintain, but they caused big problems for the Germans that went well beyond we need to add an extra infantry battalion with its attached police company to that state.

The Yugoslavs also formed combat units from their partisans, growing in numbers from 80000 in late 1941 to more than 300000 by late 1943, as did the Poles in their uprising.

I think that resistance is going to be another area that won't be modelled well by the state mechanic (as opposed to provinces) as occupation forces could concentrate on keeping the main lines of communications through a state open, while there were large numbers of partisans in the woods on either side.