They really need to add Mobilization to the game

[Fulmen]

In the US, we don't usually think of the term mobilization in this way. We think in terms of the National Guard and Reserves.

But they serve a similar purpose. You have a pool of trained manpower that can be called up for active duty, but they have civilian jobs.

The US has the manpower, economic wealth and geopolitical strength to afford a system like that. However in a bigger conflict America would have to reintroduce at least some level of conscription to cover her manpower needs, which would mean quickly training a lot of people with no prior military experience and all the burdens that come with that. In that scenario having a large pool of pre-trained manpower through peacetime conscription is preferable. Of course, nuclear deterrent and other factors mean the chances of such a conflict happening are slim.

Here in Finland during the Interbellum Era we had a voluntary Civil Guard system in place, which in many ways resembles the American NGs. They augmented the army by providing extra training and equipment that the army itself could not afford. This, and particularly their donation of weapons to the Defence Forces at the eve of the Winter War, played an important, perhaps decisive, part in beefing up the army enough to stop the Russians and save the country from occupation.

Nowadays the closest thing we have are provincial companies that are formed from volunteer reservists; men who have already completed their conscription. In peacetime they function similar to the American NGs, but in wartime they differ in the sense that signing up replaces the person's previous wartime posting, so in case of war he will, at least by default, be a part of the provincial company, and not whichever wartime unit he had been assigned to prior to joining the company.

They would have the active duty portion and the reserve portion.

The Supreme Ruler series actually models the military manpower pool this way.

Mobilization should normally only be done when at war, but I suppose some exceptions can be made. Regardless, mobilizing should add to WT like a DOW (without stacking with a DOW if you mobilize at peace) since mobilizing is usually seen as akin to a DOW anyway.

Mobilisation usually occurs a few days or weeks before the outbreak of hostilities, and is sometimes a clear act of self-defence, in which case there should be more leeway with how much WT it causes. E.g. Finland mobilised in October 1939, well over a month before the Soviet invasion.

Related to my previous post: one of the negatives I forgot to mention about the mobilisation systems of HoI3 and Vicky 2, is that they're either-or: you either fully mobilised, or you didn't at all. This is not realistic. I didn't play Vicky 1 much (or Ricky, as people called Victoria: Revolutions back then), but I believe that game had a tiered mobilisation system, which is much more preferable.

 

[Secret Master]

The US has the manpower, economic wealth and geopolitical strength to afford a system like that. However in a bigger conflict America would have to reintroduce at least some level of conscription to cover her manpower needs, which would mean quickly training a lot of people with no prior military experience and all the burdens that come with that. In that scenario having a large pool of pre-trained manpower through peacetime conscription is preferable. Of course, nuclear deterrent and other factors mean the chances of such a conflict happening are slim.

The US had conscription for years in addition to the Reserves and National Guard. There were people who enlisted tried to enlist in the National Guard to avoid the draft for Vietnam.

Or did you just mean in the interwar period?

Mobilisation usually occurs a few days or weeks before the outbreak of hostilities, and is sometimes a clear act of self-defence, in which case there should be more leeway with how much WT it causes. E.g. Finland mobilised in October 1939, well over a month before the Soviet invasion.

WT doesn't have to be the result of aggressive actions. It's just the world getting more tense.

But the goal here is to prevent human players from using mobilization to spoof the system by doing things like Germany mobilizing for a few months, but the US, UK, and France just have to sit on their hands.

but I believe that game had a tiered mobilisation system, which is much more preferable.

Well, not tiered in the sense that you had multiple versions of mobilization. You pressed the button, and you mobilized.

The tiered element was that you had to invest in mobilization. Every six months, you could increase your mobilization pool by 4 divisions (with some limitations) if you had the resources.

 

[seattle]

Keep in mind that Germany actually demobilized partially in mid 1940.
We had to send our soldiers back to the civilian workforce until the next major campaign.

So the protagonist of WW2 mobilized in mid 1939, demobilized in mid 1940, mobilized again in early 1941 and totally mobilized as late as early 1943.

That was an economic necessity. Yet in HoI4 Germany is mobilized from 1936 to the end of the game.

BICE has a mobilization feature in the laws section. It incentivizes you to mobilize a couple of weeks before going to war. The law affects combat modifiers, weekly stability and IC I believe.
It's better than nothing, but not really satisfying.

@Fulmen already covered the rest. Vicky and AoD had a much better system. HoI4 lacks money.

 

[Fulmen]

The US had conscription for years in addition to the Reserves and National Guard. There were people who enlisted tried to enlist in the National Guard to avoid the draft for Vietnam.

Or did you just mean in the interwar period?

The US to my knowledge has never had traditional conscription in the sense that the entire male population, or almost all of it, was conscripted to serve in the military at some point in their lives. All US peacetime conscription has been highly selective, and looking at the numbers, their wartime drafts have been relatively selective as well. E.g. in WW2 only about 7% of the US population was drafted, with about 11% of the population serving in total. In Vietnam between August 1964 and February 1973 the amount of draftess was less than 0.9% of the total population.

I meant in 2020. The point was that the existing volunteer-based reservist system wouldn't be enough to fulfill American manpower needs in a larger conflict, as Korea and Vietnam showed, let alone in a larger conventional war against someone like Russia or China.

 

[Pitagor]

4) When mobilizing, reserve divisions quickly get up to full strength and have more XP than they would normally from reinforcing to full strength (otherwise, they will have the worst XP due to replacing 90% of their manpower).

You can already train divisions from government in exile to more than the regular level. Isn't it possible to use this system for reserve divisions ?
But then, if you choose to demobilize then you lose all experience and have to start the training from the start, which would be problematic.

8) Mobilization should normally only be done when at war, but I suppose some exceptions can be made. Regardless, mobilizing should add to WT like a DOW (without stacking with a DOW if you mobilize at peace) since mobilizing is usually seen as akin to a DOW anyway.

Well maybe allowing to mobilize if you are running a focus giving a wargoal/manufacturing a wargoal or the target of such ? With perhaps a more limited amount of time for the target to mobilize, ie if the focus is half-completed/the wargoal half-made ?

 

[mursolini]

The US to my knowledge has never had traditional conscription in the sense that the entire male population, or almost all of it, was conscripted to serve in the military at some point in their lives. All US peacetime conscription has been highly selective, and looking at the numbers, their wartime drafts have been relatively selective as well. E.g. in WW2 only about 7% of the US population was drafted, with about 11% of the population serving in total. In Vietnam between August 1964 and February 1973 the amount of draftess was less than 0.9% of the total population.

I meant in 2020. The point was that the existing volunteer-based reservist system wouldn't be enough to fulfill American manpower needs in a larger conflict, as Korea and Vietnam showed, let alone in a larger conventional war against someone like Russia or China.

In that case, you can probably argue that SU also didn`t have one, since from 1920s to 1936 Soviet army was simply far too small to conscript all males eligible for a period of service.

 

[Fulmen]

In that case, you can probably argue that SU also didn`t have one, since from 1920s to 1936 Soviet army was simply far too small to conscript all males eligible for a period of service.

Correct. The proper term I was looking for is "universal male conscription", which means once you hit a certain age, you must serve. Unless you've got a serious medical condition of some kind. There are very few countries in the world that still practice this kind of conscription outside wartime. Finland, Switzerland and Israel are some of them, though you could very much make the case that service in these countries is already de facto voluntary, since getting exempted from peacetime service isn't that hard, which has meant yearly conscription rates of all eligible males in those countries have dropped from around 85-90% to 65-75% in the past 20 years.

 

[seattle]

Correct. The proper term I was looking for is "universal male conscription", which means once you hit a certain age, you must serve. Unless you've got a serious medical condition of some kind. There are very few countries in the world that still practice this kind of conscription outside wartime. Finland, Switzerland and Israel are some of them, though you could very much make the case that service in these countries is already de facto voluntary, since getting exempted from peacetime service isn't that hard, which has meant yearly conscription rates of all eligible males in those countries have dropped from around 85-90% to 65-75% in the past 20 years.

Ironically I grew up with universal conscription in Germany. It was only abolished some 10 years ago.
All young men had to sacrifice 1 year of their life while our female classmates already went to university...

That's the Stug Life...
PS: Nobody in the real world understands the meme. I keep getting asked why I'm wearing a military shirt.

 

[Fulmen]

It was only abolished some 10 years ago.

Well in practice by the early 2000s it was already entirely voluntary. A quote from Wiki:

"The post-Cold War downsizing of the Bundeswehr led to a considerable decrease in demand for young conscripts. Of all men reaching draftable age, less than one half actually served. In 2005 about 15% served in the military".

I looked some numbers up and calculated that the West German conscription rate during the Cold War was in the ballpark of 50%, based on a yearly average of 178,000 draftees between 1957-1989. Not quite universal, but clearly more mandatory than during the 20 years of post-Cold War German conscription.

 

[Zauberelefant]

Well in practice by the early 2000s it was already entirely voluntary. A quote from Wiki:

"The post-Cold War downsizing of the Bundeswehr led to a considerable decrease in demand for young conscripts. Of all men reaching draftable age, less than one half actually served. In 2005 about 15% served in the military".

I looked some numbers up and calculated that the West German conscription rate during the Cold War was in the ballpark of 50%, based on a yearly average of 178,000 draftees between 1957-1989. Not quite universal, but clearly more mandatory than during the 20 years of post-Cold War German conscription.

Germany has conscious objection in the constitution, so these numbers are actually higher if you count the compulsory servicemen in civilian functions.

 

[Fulmen]

Germany has conscious objection in the constitution, so these numbers are actually higher if you count the compulsory servicemen in civilian functions.

Yes, but I'm only talking about military service here (since the topic at hand was about mobilising pre-trained reserves), even if conscription technically also covers civilian service. To those that don't know, civilian service means blue-collar jobs like cleaning. Most, if not all, countries with some level of peacetime conscription offer this option.

 

[Zauberelefant]

Yes, but I'm only talking about military service here (since the topic at hand was about mobilising pre-trained reserves), even if conscription technically also covers civilian service. To those that don't know, civilian service means blue-collar jobs like cleaning. Most, if not all, countries with some level of peacetime conscription also offer this option.

The German requirements for conscious objection were lowered, however, as the healthcare and education sector became used to and dependent on objectors.
This made it rather trivial to evade military service and most men serving in the army did so for a service time discount of 1-6 months compared to civilian service.
I am not objecting to your point, just filling the picture.

In wartime, however, most men would have been drafted. Objectors or not.

 

[Fulmen]

The German requirements for conscious objection were lowered, however, as the healthcare and education sector became used to and dependent on objectors.
This made it rather trivial to evade military service and most men serving in the army did so for a service time discount of 1-6 months compared to civilian service.
I am not objecting to your point, just filling the picture.

In wartime, however, most men would have been drafted. Objectors or not.

I noticed when reading up on modern German conscription that there were also quite a few conditions that allowed exemption from peacetime service altogether, like being married, being a parent or having two brothers who had already served.

 

[KubiG37]

So many things are dumbed down and simplified for gameplay purposes, that I don’t see the mobilisation ever being properly represented. You’d need an actual economy in the game, or some form of money to make this work. That is way outside of reach of even a full expansion.

Maybe the penalties for higher recruitment should be much harsher, and scale with recruitement numbers. But this hits another problem - a number of people want to play this as a fantasy game, conquering whole world with irrelevant minors. So they don’t want to loose these (as customers) logically.

 

[Secret Master]

You’d need an actual economy in the game, or some form of money to make this work. That is way outside of reach of even a full expansion.

You don't need anything of the sort.

Decreasing the amount of CIC available when you increase peace time conscription would represent the drain on economic resources quite nicely. With the added bonus that it even gels well with Tooze's discussion of Germany's pre-war build up in Wages of Destruction.

 

[seattle]

I noticed when reading up on modern German conscription that there were also quite a few conditions that allowed exemption from peacetime service altogether, like being married, being a parent or having two brothers who had already served.

Yeah, a childhood friend of mine was in that luxurious situation of having two older brothers that served in the army.

Pretty sweet deal for him to know early on that he didn't have to sacrifice 1 tear of his life with forced labour below minimum wage.

 

[seattle]

You don't need anything of the sort.

Decreasing the amount of CIC available when you increase peace time conscription would represent the drain on economic resources quite nicely. With the added bonus that it even gels well with Tooze's discussion of Germany's pre-war build up in Wages of Destruction.

There are many workaround solutions within the frame of the game.
BICE even simulates civilian oil consumption via national laws brilliantly.
I forgot the exact implementation of their mobilization mechanism, but I think it worked quite nicely.
Btw. they also simulate the economy via taxes, tariffs, education etc.

 

[Zauberelefant]

Yeah, a childhood friend of mine was in that luxurious situation of having two older brothers that served in the army.

Pretty sweet deal for him to know early on that he didn't have to sacrifice 1 tear of his life with forced labour below minimum wage.

Hey, back then we didn't have "minimum wage", so that wasn't quite the issue. The wage being on welfare level was .

 

[seattle]

Hey, back then we didn't have "minimum wage", so that wasn't quite the issue. The wage being on welfare level was .

Adding insult to injury: people doing the civilian service instead could opt for getting some 300 German Mark (150 euro) monthly on top if they ate at home.
It wasn't unusual to earn tips from patient transports as well.
Soldiers couldn't even loot or pillage.

 

[Searry]

This is the least of the game's problems. Mobilizations are extremely complicated and take a long time to complete. It doesn't make sense for a game like this to have "mobilize" button which you press only ONCE during one game. Terrible idea.