National morale affecting combat performance

[RedRalphWiggum]

The general morale of a nation seemed to have an effect on many soldiers' performance, with France a notable example of a country where defeatism undermined the war effort. It would be tricky to do, but is there any plans to model this in Har-chuff-ion-vour?

 

[jasonf]

That's a good idea, though I don't know if I'd have it affect combat directly. Perhaps if "war_exhaustion" or whatever national morale affected IC, build days, and supply throughput, it would still seriously undermine the war effort without a direct effect on combat.

On the other hand, you would think losing lots of provinces, mp, etc., would be the major drivers of war exhaustion, and this caused a quick defeat in France but an eventually rally for the USSR...

 

[Bullfrog]

I would not like to see this. In my mind, it is already in HoI3: NU hits that caused faster surrender. That's well and good, but something that made my troops fight badly just because I was losing would be very annoying.

Besides, there is not a lot of historical value in this. Your French example is perhaps most pertinent, but the troops themselves were not the true culprit, rather the high command and government. So if you're government is fragile, defeat might lead to more defeat, but this is not generally the fault of the men on the ground.

Poor morale is different. If you consider Italy... they simply had poor leadership and no morale. This is already in the game.

 

[EmperorTojo]

This seems highly related to this thread: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?753835-quot-Will-to-fight-quot-of-units

They could probably be merged. But yeah, I would love to see this.

 

[FOARP]

The general morale of a nation seemed to have an effect on many soldiers' performance, with France a notable example of a country where defeatism undermined the war effort. It would be tricky to do, but is there any plans to model this in Har-chuff-ion-vour?

HOI3 had a dissent metric that impacted on fighting power, the problem was dissent was far, far too easy to keep down and wasn't affected by how the war was going.

Personally, I'd much rather see the impact of military defeats at a higher level - the troops can be fed a bunch of lies, but the generals and ministers know what the true situation is. Allows ministers and generals to engage in plots against your leadership similar to the ones you see in CK2 if you look like you're going to get beaten. You can then replace them, but you'll likely be replacing them with less able (but more loyal) people.

Something that should be modelled, though, is the decline in MP quality as losses rise. A simple malus that increases as MP usage increases could do this. The interaction between MP and IC should also be modelled - you can deactivate IC to gain a MP boost, but you'll be harming your war-effort by doing so. A poor-quality militia that you can activate for home defence. although this will result in more IC being deactivated, would also be a good mechanism to have.

 

[Cybvep]

National Unity could give bonuses/penalties to morale. It's an easy solution and it would also give the NU more impact, as ATM it's sth that you only care about when you are losing, so in practice, once you hit the NU level required for one of the useful laws, you can freely ignore it. It's also an example of numerical gameplay, which is meh. Every point of NU should give sth, even if the benefits are small. Thresholds lead to gamey behaviour.
Also, significant military victories/defeats should affect the NU, I think. Not drastically, but it would be good both for gameplay and for flavour IMO .

 

[seeds24]

The general morale of a nation seemed to have an effect on many soldiers' performance, with France a notable example of a country where defeatism undermined the war effort. It would be tricky to do, but is there any plans to model this in Har-chuff-ion-vour?

I think the same, but I don't think that France is a good example of a collapse of morale. They lost because the cohesion of the army was broken after the german successful strategic move, after that the french could have continue to fight but it was pointless because the germans would have won anyway. But they didn't lost because of low fighting spirit of the soldiers, in fact they did put quite a strong fight in some battles like Stonne or Hannut.

I'm thinking more about Italy or other Axis minors like I said in the other thread.