The Cost of Occupation

[Porkman]

This is based on a thread that happened in the final week of the previous forum.

It was a thread on how it was kind of ridiculous how occupations worked in previous HOI's both that they were too cheap in terms of men, but that the whack a mole problem was also super annoying. I made a suggestion that was halfway thought out and the military police thread made put it in to an actual proposal. (with color coding!)

Outline: A) The problem of occupation

1) Occupation is too cheap
2) Whack a mole is annoying as all hell
3) Occupation never seems to resemble the historical situation.
4) Partisan suppression and invasion defence are separated when they really weren't. ​

B) The Solution: Revolt risk, suppression and garrisons

1) A base revolt risk for the province based on local MP and NU.
2) A division occupying a province would have a "suppression value"
3) Suppression and revolt risk can both spread into other provinces but how they spread is different.
4) An example to illustrate.
​

C) "Garrison" instead of being a troop type, is just a mission that you put an army group under using the battleplan system.

1) Give orders
2) We don't have to fiddle with "garrison" divisions.
​

D) The Goal

A) The problem of occupation. In the previous thread, someone mentioned how it was ridiculous that you could conquer an entire country, leave three division on some airports, and then just leave the place alone. Taking more territory than you had forces to administer was never an issue in HOI3 (or HOI2 or HOI1). Germany had hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in the Balkans, France, Greece, Poland etc. Japan kept 300,000-500,000 troops (of 600,000 to 1.2 million) in China on "Pacification duties" at all times. Taking large swathes of territory generally entailed a significant commitment of troops to hold it. I'm not talking about industrial exploitation, merely holding the infrastructure required a significant commitment.

1) In the current system, occupation doesn't cost much. There are eventual downsides and the risk of revolt, but mostly the area behind the lines can be managed with few troops. ​

2) In every conversation about partisans and occupation, everyone hates whackamole, both because they are annoying to deal with, and because partisan forces rarely ever rose up in division sized formations enabling the occupier to crush them. ​

3) Furthermore, even when there were massive partisan armies, (Yugoslavia, China) they generally confined themselves to the areas of low infrastructure. The high mountains, the remote forests, the Pripyat marshes... they weren't rising up in the middle of Kiev to be crushed by the German army. Unfortunately, that's what happens to often in HOI3. The game never figured out how to deal with the fact that it was historically the least populated areas that the most effective partisans appeared. ​

4) When organizing the occupation of taken territory, the player has to very clearly demarcate between "garrison" divisions and the divisions they want to use to hold off the Allied invasion of France/Yugoslavia/Norway etc. That demarcation didn't exist. The divisions in France were doing garrison duties and then moved to a more defensive posture when they feared the Allied invasion, but it wasn't like the second line units weren't going to be used for defense, nor was it that the first line units weren't involved in partisan suppression. Instead, it was a posture that they changed as needed. ​

B) The Solution: The way to solve this uses the Battle plan system and it actually reduces the player's need to micromanage the game. It's a system that requires a new mission in the Battle Planner called "garrison" as well as two mechanics that are there already.

1) The first mechanic: Revolt risk or what would be better termed "Local resistance." This would be a province specific value determined by NU (or whatever the new equivalent is) and local MP (as a rough proxy for population). A higher NU means more local resistance as does a higher MP. Since NU will drop for a nation that's actually defeated and annexed, this will make resistance stronger in occupied areas that belong to countries that have not been defeated yet. Local resistance would harm infra efficiency, IC efficiency, resource production etc.. but it wouldn't lead to actual armed revolt unless it got absurdly high. ​

2) The second mechanic is suppression. Every division has a suppression value that can reduce local resistance by a certain amount. So far, so standard. ​

3) How these two interact is the core of my idea. Both local resistance and suppression can spread across province borders but how they spread would be modified by different things. Suppression would be at full power in the province actually occupied and then spread further based on the adjoining terrain and infra, so a single division in a city in France, connected to wide open plains by good roads and rails can suppress a pretty large chunk of territory effectively. A Japanese division holding a rail junction in China next to rugged hills and dirt roads, is going to be less effective. The lower the infra, the worse the terrain, the worse the spread​

4) Local Resistance would work similarly. But it would spread when it was suppressed. If the Germans can suppress a bunch of local resistance in Paris, that will increase local resistance in the adjoining areas, representing partisans moving away from suppression. This "bleed off" of Local Resistance would NOT be mediated by the infrastructure. This is important. In an area with good infrastructure, this spreading bleed off would be entirely offset by the spreading suppression value. However, in areas of bad infrastructure, the bleed off effect will be stronger than the suppression effect so the swamps and forests and high mountains will become hives of partisan activity. You could always send in troops up there to suppress, but then there's high attrition to worry about. ​

Let's say suppression value is a function of the division size and local MP. ​

Furthermore, let's say that suppression transmission from province A to province B = (Suppression value of division in province A) x (.5) x (the average of the infrastructure values of A and B) ​

Also, the "bleed off," the increase in Local Resistance of province B due to suppression in province A = (Amount Local Resistance suppressed in Province A) x (.3) ​

So an example of how this works. I am Germany. I have seized Eastern Poland and the area around the Pripyat marshes. I've captured Minsk and have a strong garrison there. (Assume for the sake of argument, that Minsk is just north of the marshes, it isn't but I just want to show what I mean.) The garrison has a suppression value of 21% and is suppressing the entire 15% local resistance in Minsk (also, values are just for illustration. The important thing is the relationship) Minsk has good infra as do the provinces to the East, North and West. (70% to the east North and west) so those provinces are affected by a .5 x 21 x 70% = a 7% increased suppression value as well. But in Pripyat, to the south, the infra is only at 10% so the suppression is 21 x .5 x 40% = 4.2%.​

All of the adjoining provinces get bleed off from the 15% Local Resistance suppressed in Minsk. All of them get a .3 x 15% = 4.5% increase in Local Resistance. For the provinces to the North, East, and West, that 4.5% increase in local resistance is entirely overcome by the 7% increase suppression value. However, in Pripyat, the Local Resistance has increased by 4.5% while the suppression value has only gone up by 4.2%. ​

Thus the suppression in Minsk is actually raising the Local Resistance in Pripyat. ​

You'd have to fudge the numbers a bit, but the idea is that suppression will cause the revolt risk to collect in more out of the way areas even those these areas "base" local resistance is low due to small populations. ​

C) You may have noticed that the above looked very calculation intensive. Luckily, we play this on a computer and we have Battleplans. One of the battleplans should be just "garrison." You select a commander, you select a group of troops, you select an area (much as one highlights a front) and then select any "priority provinces" that you want the computer to make sure you have troops on. Click the button and then the troops distribute themselves over the area to maximize the reduction in local resistance... you could even further prioritize them to garrison for infrastructure protection, resource protection, or IC protection. The mission would also show a guess about how much Local resistance would be suppressed with the forces assigned.

1) Garrisoned units would get a bonus to their suppression values that would take some time to build up to full effectiveness, furthermore, their supply needs and priority would be reduced. They would also be "greyed out," remaining on the map, but wouldn't be selected when highlighting large boxes to select active forces. They can still be moved or reassigned, possibly moving slower, but they would remain on the map. However, a unit on garrison duty will suffer a malus if it meets regular forces. ​

2) Garrisoned units can go off garrison duty with a 1 or 2 week period to regain full combat effectiveness. That way, if the Allies start landing in Yugoslavia, your garrisons can join in the defence. ​

So the way this would work as fire and forget, just pick your 14 divisions to garrison the Balkans, select the area, prioritize a few cities and airfields, click "garrison" and those divisions will go sort themselves out and you won't have to hear about them again. If the Allies start invading the Balkans, you can always switch them to active and then they will be able to fight. You can always attach and detach units to the garrisoning army group as well, so you can use it for rear area recovery. If you send a battered 1st Panzer division to join the French Garrison army group, the computer will automatically move it to optimize suppression and then you can take it out once it's recovered.
​

The Final Goal of this is to make a system where players and the AI distribute forces behind the lines to hold the territory more effectively and that holding territory effectively costs troops. It would also put partisans and local resistance where it was historically, away from the cities and the rails and into the marshes and trackless areas. It would also solve the whack a mole problem since allocating sufficient troops would make uprisings impossible.

Thanks to Axe99 for saving the earlier posts and sending them to me.

 

[PogoMarimo]

I haven't read it yet, but it looks very pretty!

 

[joe9594]

This seems better than the existing system but I think it has a few problems. Firstly it seems very spontaneous, during world war 2 alot of the active resistance seemed to be supported by governments. My though would be that goverments get some of the manpower from occupied regions (some percentage of what the occupiers were not getting) and can use this to support resistance which is actually violent rather than essentially passive as this seems like it was very important. My other concern is that given swamps, mountains etc rarely contain as much useful resources or industry and with this system they are harder to hold you would end up with an optimum system where people put no suppression forces into those regions at all which would be unrealistic.

 

[Axe99]

Glad you put these up, those ideas were too good to waste, and it would felt wrong me posting them (and been nowhere near as colourful to boot ). I like how you've laid them out as well.

 

[Noramia]

This is a very interesting idea!

 

[knul]

Nice ideas! Whack-a-mole rebels should indeed be removed from Paradox games and this mechanism looks like a very good alternative.

 

[Rudawitz]

Those ideas really are excellent.

 

[Kovax]

One important detail that the current system doesn't model is that partisan activity in the hinterlands DID affect the overall productivity of the country. When 100% of the manpower, industry, leadership, and resources are tied up in a few provinces, and the rest absolutely blank, there is no point in trying to reduce revolt risk in those empty provinces. If the developers would spread about half of those points from the urban centers out across the backwater areas, so every province had at least a tiny amount of relevance, it would make it more important to garrison the entire country, not just 3-4 VP or resource-intensive locations.

It's probably way too late for HOI4, but if Revolt Risk were to increase and spread unless "drained", it would require sufficient garrison forces or erupt into open rebellion across the entire country. With a sufficient garrison, you would never see open revolts. No more whack-a-mole, unless you ignore it for too long.

Another point is that in several cases, the occupier found it expedient to hold a few prime locations, and turn the rest over to a puppet government (which had to deal with any discontent over the loss of territory and the change of government) or to allies. That was the case in Poland, France, and Yugoslavia. The "all or nothing" approach in HOI3 (only partially fixed by the incomplete addition of Wargoals), other than in a few scripted surrender events, made it all but impossible to set any kind of credible demands, and you had to drag the war out for another full month to take another small "bite" if you chose to claim specific individual Regions. More modest wargoals (reclaiming cores, or a single province without a major city) should not require a complete subjugation of the country, merely a reduction below perhaps 50% of their effective NU value (depending on internal factors). while other more aggressive demands should make them fight to the last drop of blood. A lot of countries had no options at all in the last game other than Annex, Puppet, or Status Quo. You don't invade a country to demand "Status Quo".

 

[Beckhamz]

I envision, perhaps, a more tangible effect the partisans/local resistors would have... Perhaps stockpiles in provinces with higher local resistance could be negatively affected (or even their throughput efficiency reduced) to simulate the disruption of supply lines?

Overall, the garrison idea does seem like a very solid one...reduced supply consumption and reduced combat effectiveness if immediately returned to combat.

 

[safe-keeper]

The colours!

 

[Bluestreak2k5]

I would like to add some things to your excellent idea:
1. Resistance should drop over time, say it starts at 15% and drops 1% per year or .1% per month. This happened in HOI3 and HOI2.
2. The NU of the occupying country should be affected by annexing countries and this NU should also affect the revolt risk. Basically if you have 100% NU as Germany that means you have managed to integrate a lot of the annexed society into yours and they won't resist as much. The NU would drop for Germany as they annex more and more, as they struggle to integrate all the different people in the country. Maybe this shouldn't be NU and some other value.

 

[Kovax]

One other aspect about HOI3 that was lacking was that the "scale" of the Revolt Risk map mode was relatively useless. Either a province was "fine" because it was a core and had no net revolt risk, or it was "problematical" and red because you had annexed or occupied it. There was only a relatively small range where it showed a gradual color change between the two values, such as where your front-line troops were in occupied territory, or where you had stacked a pile of GAR and MP brigades in some VP or resource-intensive location in annexed territory. Most of your territory showed up as either solid "good" or solid "bad", which gave you no real indication of where the areas at highest risk were.

 

[Secret Master]

There are a lot of good ideas floating around, but I wanted to address some specific issues with the "problems" side of the equation.

A) The problem of occupation. In the previous thread, someone mentioned how it was ridiculous that you could conquer an entire country, leave three division on some airports, and then just leave the place alone. Taking more territory than you had forces to administer was never an issue in HOI3 (or HOI2 or HOI1). Germany had hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in the Balkans, France, Greece, Poland etc. Japan kept 300,000-500,000 troops (of 600,000 to 1.2 million) in China on "Pacification duties" at all times. Taking large swathes of territory generally entailed a significant commitment of troops to hold it. I'm not talking about industrial exploitation, merely holding the infrastructure required a significant commitment.

This is true, but you have to remember why it was so easy to garrison conquered territory with few troops in HOI3.

1) Smart players basically optimized occupation specifically so that it did not require a lot of troops or suppression. Unlike their Axis counterparts, players would run collaboration government (or military government at the most) to minimize partisan activity. Combined with proper ministers (as in, not choosing the +10 partisan ministers), you could manage occupied territories easily. By not antagonizing the locals with harsh resource extraction, the need for garrisons would drop.

2) Most players only need suppression in key areas. As long as key supply arteries were running at full throughput, the rest of the countryside can go to Hell. Ditto with strategic locations. You say it below, but I want to reiterate that since most large countries were open space in HOI3, the garrison requirements were low.

3) In many cases, players would use tiny garrison forces because they thought they could get away with it.... until URs would spawn uprisings. Then they would complain about wack-a-mole. The catch here is that if the player had bothered to garrison the country properly with suppression-oriented units in the first place, there would be no need for wack-a-mole and you would have more troops in-country performing suppression duties. Players would often forget that suppression not only reduces the partisan impact on supply, but it also roots out and destroys URs. And GAR/MP/MP/MP divisions are very cheap ways of generating tons of suppression even without researching better MPs. With minimal research effort in MP techs, you could destroy the French and Polish Resistances without a second thought. But you have to actually have enough divisions in country to create a network of suppression in the first place.

4) Players often also forgot that one of the best uses of URs had nothing to do with spawning revolts. URs lifted fog of war in their province. So, while the AI would often spam URs and waste them in pointless uprisings (which could be annoying if you didn't suppress properly), smart players wouldn't do ahistorical things like that. They would use the URs to gather intel (like they did historically) and only cause uprisings on the event of things like Overlord. Which, it turns out, was historical. The French Resistance practically liberate Brittany by themselves.

For all its flaws, the system in HOI3 was not nearly as bad as some players claimed.

3) Furthermore, even when there were massive partisan armies, (Yugoslavia, China) they generally confined themselves to the areas of low infrastructure. The high mountains, the remote forests, the Pripyat marshes... they weren't rising up in the middle of Kiev to be crushed by the German army. Unfortunately, that's what happens to often in HOI3. The game never figured out how to deal with the fact that it was historically the least populated areas that the most effective partisans appeared.

To me, this was kind of a problem. There was no reason to garrison the hinterlands, nor was there a reason to bother putting URs in the hinterlands.

4) When organizing the occupation of taken territory, the player has to very clearly demarcate between "garrison" divisions and the divisions they want to use to hold off the Allied invasion of France/Yugoslavia/Norway etc. That demarcation didn't exist. The divisions in France were doing garrison duties and then moved to a more defensive posture when they feared the Allied invasion, but it wasn't like the second line units weren't going to be used for defense, nor was it that the first line units weren't involved in partisan suppression. Instead, it was a posture that they changed as needed.

You don't have to do so in HOI3. It just turns out that suppression is a lot cheaper in terms of manpower, IC, and officers if you use dedicated suppression units. I mean, nothing stops you from putting INF in areas to suppress stuff. It's just more expensive. You ever wonder why the front lines are so secure from partisan activity? It's all those INF divisions in a tight group that does it.

In fact, I see GAR/MP units as so cheap that disbanding them to make new INF divisions is practically just changing their stance (the manpower and officers are recycled, and the IC cost is so small that you won't miss it).

But I would also welcome a change in stances instead of dedicated units.

(or even their throughput efficiency reduced) to simulate the disruption of supply lines?

Partisans in HOI3 did reduce supply throughput. Just because you didn't see a "rebel" unit on the map didn't mean there was no partisan activity. You want to watch your supply network collapse? Run total exploitation in the Soviet Union with no suppression units or air transport of supply and see just how far you get.

Do keep in mind that people who abuse TRA to move supplies by air in HOI3 were committing double abuse: they were moving supplies by air and bypassing the supply tax AND they were bypassing all the partisan reductions in throughput.

 

[Paglia]

You want to watch your supply network collapse? Run total exploitation in the Soviet Union with no suppression units or air transport of supply and see just how far you get.

I did that once in HARD as GER... my troops almost all starved to death during the 1st winter...

 

[Secret Master]

I did that once in HARD as GER... my troops almost all starved to death during the 1st winter...

A powerful lesson, to be sure.

Did you even have any fuel for tanks and planes?

 

[Paglia]

A powerful lesson, to be sure.

Did you even have any fuel for tanks and planes?

It was an awful campaign... no fuel, no nothing. Only dying Germans... Did that only once, was quite enough. lol

 

[Centurion1973]

Activity of partisans should also depend, on how much external support for they have. Its rather hard to make significant actions against occupation, if all you have is 2 pistols and 1 stick of dynamite....

 

[agus92]

This is based on a thread that happened in the final week of the previous forum.

It was a thread on how it was kind of ridiculous how occupations worked in previous HOI's both that they were too cheap in terms of men, but that the whack a mole problem was also super annoying. I made a suggestion that was halfway thought out and the military police thread made put it in to an actual proposal. (with color coding!)

Outline: A) The problem of occupation
1) Occupation is too cheap
2) Whack a mole is annoying as all hell
3) Occupation never seems to resemble the historical situation.
4) Partisan suppression and invasion defence are separated when they really weren't.
B) The Solution: Revolt risk, suppression and garrisons
1) A base revolt risk for the province based on local MP and NU.
2) A division occupying a province would have a "suppression value"
3) Suppression and revolt risk can both spread into other provinces but how they spread is different.
4) An example to illustrate.
C) "Garrison" instead of being a troop type, is just a mission that you put an army group under using the battleplan system.
1) Give orders
2) We don't have to fiddle with "garrison" divisions.
D) The Goal

A) The problem of occupation. In the previous thread, someone mentioned how it was ridiculous that you could conquer an entire country, leave three division on some airports, and then just leave the place alone. Taking more territory than you had forces to administer was never an issue in HOI3 (or HOI2 or HOI1). Germany had hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in the Balkans, France, Greece, Poland etc. Japan kept 300,000-500,000 troops (of 600,000 to 1.2 million) in China on "Pacification duties" at all times. Taking large swathes of territory generally entailed a significant commitment of troops to hold it. I'm not talking about industrial exploitation, merely holding the infrastructure required a significant commitment.

1) In the current system, occupation doesn't cost much. There are eventual downsides and the risk of revolt, but mostly the area behind the lines can be managed with few troops.
2) In every conversation about partisans and occupation, everyone hates whackamole, both because they are annoying to deal with, and because partisan forces rarely ever rose up in division sized formations enabling the occupier to crush them.
3) Furthermore, even when there were massive partisan armies, (Yugoslavia, China) they generally confined themselves to the areas of low infrastructure. The high mountains, the remote forests, the Pripyat marshes... they weren't rising up in the middle of Kiev to be crushed by the German army. Unfortunately, that's what happens to often in HOI3. The game never figured out how to deal with the fact that it was historically the least populated areas that the most effective partisans appeared.
4) When organizing the occupation of taken territory, the player has to very clearly demarcate between "garrison" divisions and the divisions they want to use to hold off the Allied invasion of France/Yugoslavia/Norway etc. That demarcation didn't exist. The divisions in France were doing garrison duties and then moved to a more defensive posture when they feared the Allied invasion, but it wasn't like the second line units weren't going to be used for defense, nor was it that the first line units weren't involved in partisan suppression. Instead, it was a posture that they changed as needed.
B) The Solution: The way to solve this uses the Battle plan system and it actually reduces the player's need to micromanage the game. It's a system that requires a new mission in the Battle Planner called "garrison" as well as two mechanics that are there already.

1) The first mechanic: Revolt risk or what would be better termed "Local resistance." This would be a province specific value determined by NU (or whatever the new equivalent is) and local MP (as a rough proxy for population). A higher NU means more local resistance as does a higher MP. Since NU will drop for a nation that's actually defeated and annexed, this will make resistance stronger in occupied areas that belong to countries that have not been defeated yet. Local resistance would harm infra efficiency, IC efficiency, resource production etc.. but it wouldn't lead to actual armed revolt unless it got absurdly high.
2) The second mechanic is suppression. Every division has a suppression value that can reduce local resistance by a certain amount. So far, so standard.
3) How these two interact is the core of my idea. Both local resistance and suppression can spread across province borders but how they spread would be modified by different things. Suppression would be at full power in the province actually occupied and then spread further based on the adjoining terrain and infra, so a single division in a city in France, connected to wide open plains by good roads and rails can suppress a pretty large chunk of territory effectively. A Japanese division holding a rail junction in China next to rugged hills and dirt roads, is going to be less effective. The lower the infra, the worse the terrain, the worse the spread
4) Local Resistance would work similarly. But it would spread when it was suppressed. If the Germans can suppress a bunch of local resistance in Paris, that will increase local resistance in the adjoining areas, representing partisans moving away from suppression. This "bleed off" of Local Resistance would NOT be mediated by the infrastructure. This is important. In an area with good infrastructure, this spreading bleed off would be entirely offset by the spreading suppression value. However, in areas of bad infrastructure, the bleed off effect will be stronger than the suppression effect so the swamps and forests and high mountains will become hives of partisan activity. You could always send in troops up there to suppress, but then there's high attrition to worry about.
Let's say suppression value is a function of the division size and local MP.
Furthermore, let's say that suppression transmission from province A to province B = (Suppression value of division in province A) x (.5) x (the average of the infrastructure values of A and B)
Also, the "bleed off," the increase in Local Resistance of province B due to suppression in province A = (Amount Local Resistance suppressed in Province A) x (.3)
So an example of how this works. I am Germany. I have seized Eastern Poland and the area around the Pripyat marshes. I've captured Minsk and have a strong garrison there. (Assume for the sake of argument, that Minsk is just north of the marshes, it isn't but I just want to show what I mean.) The garrison has a suppression value of 21% and is suppressing the entire 15% local resistance in Minsk (also, values are just for illustration. The important thing is the relationship) Minsk has good infra as do the provinces to the East, North and West. (70% to the east North and west) so those provinces are affected by a .5 x 21 x 70% = a 7% increased suppression value as well. But in Pripyat, to the south, the infra is only at 10% so the suppression is 21 x .5 x 40% = 4.2%.
All of the adjoining provinces get bleed off from the 15% Local Resistance suppressed in Minsk. All of them get a .3 x 15% = 4.5% increase in Local Resistance. For the provinces to the North, East, and West, that 4.5% increase in local resistance is entirely overcome by the 7% increase suppression value. However, in Pripyat, the Local Resistance has increased by 4.5% while the suppression value has only gone up by 4.2%.
Thus the suppression in Minsk is actually raising the Local Resistance in Pripyat.
You'd have to fudge the numbers a bit, but the idea is that suppression will cause the revolt risk to collect in more out of the way areas even those these areas "base" local resistance is low due to small populations.
C) You may have noticed that the above looked very calculation intensive. Luckily, we play this on a computer and we have Battleplans. One of the battleplans should be just "garrison." You select a commander, you select a group of troops, you select an area (much as one highlights a front) and then select any "priority provinces" that you want the computer to make sure you have troops on. Click the button and then the troops distribute themselves over the area to maximize the reduction in local resistance... you could even further prioritize them to garrison for infrastructure protection, resource protection, or IC protection. The mission would also show a guess about how much Local resistance would be suppressed with the forces assigned.

1) Garrisoned units would get a bonus to their suppression values that would take some time to build up to full effectiveness, furthermore, their supply needs and priority would be reduced. They would also be "greyed out," remaining on the map, but wouldn't be selected when highlighting large boxes to select active forces. They can still be moved or reassigned, possibly moving slower, but they would remain on the map. However, a unit on garrison duty will suffer a malus if it meets regular forces.
2) Garrisoned units can go off garrison duty with a 1 or 2 week period to regain full combat effectiveness. That way, if the Allies start landing in Yugoslavia, your garrisons can join in the defence.
So the way this would work as fire and forget, just pick your 14 divisions to garrison the Balkans, select the area, prioritize a few cities and airfields, click "garrison" and those divisions will go sort themselves out and you won't have to hear about them again. If the Allies start invading the Balkans, you can always switch them to active and then they will be able to fight. You can always attach and detach units to the garrisoning army group as well, so you can use it for rear area recovery. If you send a battered 1st Panzer division to join the French Garrison army group, the computer will automatically move it to optimize suppression and then you can take it out once it's recovered.
The Final Goal of this is to make a system where players and the AI distribute forces behind the lines to hold the territory more effectively and that holding territory effectively costs troops. It would also put partisans and local resistance where it was historically, away from the cities and the rails and into the marshes and trackless areas. It would also solve the whack a mole problem since allocating sufficient troops would make uprisings impossible.

Thanks to Axe99 for saving the earlier posts and sending them to me.

Wow, hats off sir. I really appreciate your effort and your thoughts on this one. This mechanic looks like a winner to me. The only major problem is that requires work for the coders and it needs to be optimized to avoid too much calculation. So it's unlike that this can made it to the release, but, if doable, this NEEDS to be implemented (unless somebody makes a better approach to the problem, but yours look quite a winner right now).

That being said, a few thoughts:
- Militia.
With this system we can put militia to effectively perform anti-partisan duties in the areas where the partisans are not a big thread. Militia could be used to move more "good" divisions to the front in regions that are unlikely to get attacked (and thus without a need to strong divisions close by).

-Mobility of your troops.

Suppression would be at full power in the province actually occupied and then spread further based on the adjoining terrain and infra

Probably you already had it in mind, but more mobile units would suppress further.

-Different units and their effectiveness.
Every units needs to have defined it's "suppression power". As I just said, mobile units should perform better. But not all of them: heavier units like med or heavy tanks should suppress badly.
Infantry and cavalry would be the best ones, and militia kind of in the middle.

-local MP on suppression?

Let's say suppression value is a function of the division size and local MP.

I'm not sure about this one, since you already counted local MP on the revolt risk.

-Disappearance of "Garrison" and "Military Police" brigades.
I think that they're not useful any more, since it's duties would be completely redundant.

 

[Porkman]

This is true, but you have to remember why it was so easy to garrison conquered territory with few troops in HOI3.

1) Smart players basically optimized occupation specifically so that it did not require a lot of troops or suppression. Unlike their Axis counterparts, players would run collaboration government (or military government at the most) to minimize partisan activity. Combined with proper ministers (as in, not choosing the +10 partisan ministers), you could manage occupied territories easily. By not antagonizing the locals with harsh resource extraction, the need for garrisons would drop.

2) Most players only need suppression in key areas. As long as key supply arteries were running at full throughput, the rest of the countryside can go to Hell. Ditto with strategic locations. You say it below, but I want to reiterate that since most large countries were open space in HOI3, the garrison requirements were low.

3) In many cases, players would use tiny garrison forces because they thought they could get away with it.... until URs would spawn uprisings. Then they would complain about wack-a-mole. The catch here is that if the player had bothered to garrison the country properly with suppression-oriented units in the first place, there would be no need for wack-a-mole and you would have more troops in-country performing suppression duties. Players would often forget that suppression not only reduces the partisan impact on supply, but it also roots out and destroys URs. And GAR/MP/MP/MP divisions are very cheap ways of generating tons of suppression even without researching better MPs. With minimal research effort in MP techs, you could destroy the French and Polish Resistances without a second thought. But you have to actually have enough divisions in country to create a network of suppression in the first place.

4) Players often also forgot that one of the best uses of URs had nothing to do with spawning revolts. URs lifted fog of war in their province. So, while the AI would often spam URs and waste them in pointless uprisings (which could be annoying if you didn't suppress properly), smart players wouldn't do ahistorical things like that. They would use the URs to gather intel (like they did historically) and only cause uprisings on the event of things like Overlord. Which, it turns out, was historical. The French Resistance practically liberate Brittany by themselves.

For all its flaws, the system in HOI3 was not nearly as bad as some players claimed.

Theoretically, you could make it work, practically, it was a lot of hassle.

Once you decided to garrison, you had to put the troops there and it was a matter of learned guesswork about how to make the most effective suppression network. A person who'd played for a long time would get a feel for it, but for a new player, you would sometimes get results like the guy playing Germany above or put in way too much.

One of the goals of the system that I advocate for is to make it so the player doesn't have to carefully design a suppression network for a given area. Just select the area, select the forces you want to assign, select any priority areas, select what aspect of suppression you want to emphasize (resources, infra, IC or mixed) and then the computer would give you an estimate of the partisan suppression you'd get and then you just click to execute the mission and then you can ignore it. You could even designate specific divisions like CAV to be mobile while on garrison duty.

This would tell the players whether they've assigned enough divisions and use the power of the computer to give the optimal suppression locations. Most players like to do the active front and not mess with the garrison stuff.

 

[Porkman]

Wow, hats off sir. I really appreciate your effort and your thoughts on this one. This mechanic looks like a winner to me. The only major problem is that requires work for the coders and it needs to be optimized to avoid too much calculation. So it's unlike that this can made it to the release, but, if doable, this NEEDS to be implemented (unless somebody makes a better approach to the problem, but yours look quite a winner right now).

That being said, a few thoughts:
- Militia.
With this system we can put militia to effectively perform anti-partisan duties in the areas where the partisans are not a big thread. Militia could be used to move more "good" divisions to the front in regions that are unlikely to get attacked (and thus without a need to strong divisions close by).

-Mobility of your troops.

Probably you already had it in mind, but more mobile units would suppress further.

The speed of the unit could increase the transmission coefficient.

-Different units and their effectiveness.
Every units needs to have defined it's "suppression power". As I just said, mobile units should perform better. But not all of them: heavier units like med or heavy tanks should suppress badly.
Infantry and cavalry would be the best ones, and militia kind of in the middle.

Heavy units wouldn't suppress badly, they'd suppress just as well as infantry. It would just be a waste of their capability to put them there.

-local MP on suppression?

I'm not sure about this one, since you already counted local MP on the revolt risk.

-Disappearance of "Garrison" and "Military Police" brigades.
I think that they're not useful any more, since it's duties would be completely redundant.

I actually would like to keep military police but maybe call them something else. There were after all some troops who were specifically designated to keep order in the rear areas.