Killed or captured generals

[PEP]

I've been reading John Keegan's Mask of Command lately. At some point he claims that out of 1400 German generals that served during WW2 almost 500 died during the conflict. This figure is staggeringly high! In fact it is so high that I couldn't really believe it so I tried to find some hard figures. That's when I stumbled upon a study by a certain Major French L. MacLean that gives some more precise numbers. It was even worse than I thought: 642 German Generals died during the war ("only" 64 suicides...) including 3 army and 23 corps commanders killed in action. I believe this is a strong argument in favour of the in-game possibility of generals being killed in combat.

What do you think? Does anyone have any numbers for other armies during WW2? Should generals be killed in action from time to time during the game?

 

[Dalwin]

This topic has always been a controversial one on the forums, mainly I think because certain generals used to have hardcoded removal dates in HOI1. I am sure we won't end up with that again.

There should certainly be a possibility for it and not only when their unit is in combat. Things like traffic accidents, or partisan attacks, or simply old age and disease took their toll as well.

 

[Opanashc]

How many generals were in command, and not chiefs of staff, staff pukes, etc?

 

[PEP]

How many generals were in command, and not chiefs of staff, staff pukes, etc?

Well the study gives a lot of details : 3 army, 23 corps and 110 division commanders were KIA (that's more than 20% of German generals casualties).

Here are the numbers :

Army General Officer Casualties
Killed in Action/Died of Wounds-----223
Accidental Deaths-----30
Suicides-----64
Executed (By Germany during WWII)-----20
Died (In Prisoner of War Camps)-----128
(Of War Related Health Problems)-----145
Missing in Action-----32
Total-----642

General Officer Commander Casualties (by position)
Army Commanders-----3
Corps Commanders-----23
Division Commanders-----110
Total-----136

 

[EmperorTojo]

What exactly applies as 'accidental deaths' ?

 

[Mackus]

What exactly applies as 'accidental deaths' ?

Are you thinking CK2 style hearts attacks?

 

[Raventhefuhrer]

It's kind of a neat idea I guess, but I think a lot of people (myself included) would be kind of annoyed if Rommel dies on day one of the Invasion of Poland to a stray bullet or a run away staff car.

Some sort of mechanic like surrounding an army and destroying it (thus 'capturing' a large portion of it) would be interesting if then some of those troops (very small percentage) or generals might be interested in joining your side or forming a 'National Legion' composed of their men in hopes of joining the enemy and freeing their homeland from Bolshevism/Nazi-ism or who knows. But even that's too small to really be worth representing beyond maybe an event for Germany to get a brigade of Russian anti-bolshevists or something.

Also I think Paradox in general shys away from representation of PoWs in Hearts of Iron because that drifts dangerously close to things like slave labor, gulags/concentration camps, and all of those nasty things.

 

[bestmajor]

What exactly applies as 'accidental deaths' ?

air plane crashes and car accidents (Dietl, Eglseer, von Wickede, Löwrick, Schroth for example)

 

[PEP]

It's kind of a neat idea I guess, but I think a lot of people (myself included) would be kind of annoyed if Rommel dies on day one of the Invasion of Poland to a stray bullet or a run away staff car.

Well it just add to the challenge! Each general should have a very minor chance of being killed at any given moment and a slightly higher chance of it happening if he is in battle or under bombardment. Those probabilities could be designed to reflect the average casualty rates among generals during WW2.

Also I think Paradox in general shys away from representation of PoWs in Hearts of Iron because that drifts dangerously close to things like slave labor, gulags/concentration camps, and all of those nasty things.

No need to go that far in my opinion. Just roll a dice when a formation is destroyed to see if the generals is killed/captured (either way he isn't available any more).

 

[Holy.Death]

Well it just add to the challenge! Each general should have a very minor chance of being killed at any given moment and a slightly higher chance of it happening if he is in battle or under bombardment. Those probabilities could be designed to reflect the average casualty rates among generals during WW2.

What challenge? In making a random chance that your general might - or might not - die based on probabilities made up through average casualty rates among generals during WW2? Where is challenge - or fun - in this?

 

[podcat]

What challenge? In making a random chance that your general might - or might not - die based on probabilities made up through average casualty rates among generals during WW2? Where is challenge - or fun - in this?

potential pros:
- it punished the player who relies on just a couple of superior leaders (I imagine the better commanders tended to be close to the front where they could more accurately judge the situation and react to it), so it could create an interesting choice between deploying your best leader to solve a very tricky situation and being more sure of success, but also risking losing this leader because the situation is so difficult
- shakes up tactics and strategies because you are forced to adapt to potentially losing someone making your strategy work

cons:
- nobody thinks famous leaders randomly dying early is particularly fun, and its a hard hit to delivering historical flavor.

We've discussed it as a mechanic, but we are currently sceptical because it would either be lots of working on a mechanic you would almost never see happen, or be common enough that you are likely to see a lot of famous people getting picked off, watering down historical flavor and sad players restarting because they can't use and roleplay with their favourites.

 

[Alex_brunius]

My suggestion: Leave it up to the players to decide if they want to it or not, then everyone that wants specific leaders or roleplay can just turn it off if it's a setup option.

IMO you can't have to many setup options in a complex game like this. And moving many of them into the actual games instead of textfiles would be something the 95% that don't mod would greatly appreciate.

 

[AureliusBob]

yeah I could just see this forum exploding with rants because someone was experience spamming Rommel and he ended up dying....

 

[telesien]

Shame, I would love that to be in

 

[Augustus93]

I would hate it to be in. It was even irritating when in HoI3 your fleet got destroyed your fleet commander just died.

 

[Pelican Sam]

I don't mind losing a commander to battle, but this isn't Oregon Trail.

 

[TheNotoriousAMP]

I would hate it to be in. It was even irritating when in HoI3 your fleet got destroyed your fleet commander just died.

I personally liked it, the death of leaders played a large role in WW2 and killing or neutralizing them should be a part of your strategy. Just look at the assassination of Yamamoto, for example.

 

[Ricox]

I would hate it to be in. It was even irritating when in HoI3 your fleet got destroyed your fleet commander just died.

...? That was a completely logical mechanic, lol. While random killing could be really annoying to take the flavor away, I don't see a single thing wrong with fleet commanders dying with their fleet. They don't have teleportation devices to get away at the last moment.

 

[PEP]

What challenge? In making a random chance that your general might - or might not - die based on probabilities made up through average casualty rates among generals during WW2? Where is challenge - or fun - in this?

It's war. You can't just control everything and sometime the unexpected happens. But keep in mind that this wouldn't happened very often and not necessarily to your best generals. Maybe generals that historically survived the war could have a higher chance of survival than those that didn't? IMO it would add some flavour and force the player to react to the unexpected.

On the other hand, if admirals could stop being killed with their subs that would be great.

 

[Augustus93]

...? That was a completely logical mechanic, lol. While random killing could be really annoying to take the flavor away, I don't see a single thing wrong with fleet commanders dying with their fleet. They don't have teleportation devices to get away at the last moment.

No, but they had emergency equipment (or whatever they are called) including rescue ships which they could get into. Unless they were following the "captain goes down with his ship" then there is no reason why they should die every time. Furthermore what happens if I have two separate fleets, one transport fleet and the other one with capital ships and the transport fleet gets destroyed why would not the other fleet pick up the shipwrecked people including the commander from the transport fleet.