Two Simple Ways to Make Nations Demobilize

[MacroWarrior]

All of us have the problem of mass armies all around the world in mostly mid to late game which makes game unfunny and also slows down the game in general. There is two natural (basic and normal) possible solutions that would both make the game more of "a pure strategy game" and fix our most problems with mass armies (for ai and competitive) as well as adding flavor to the economic aspects of the game.

First Idea
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Diffrantiate war support and war effort. They kind of look similar but they shouldn't be. A man doesn't have to support war in general but to protect their own country and lands, they can put their all efforts in war which eventually stop after the end of the war.

In a defensive war as a democratic nation, war support could be very low but war effort wouldn't in normal cases.

(Don't write to me that war support is spesific, the support of the war you are in, I know but those I mentioned need to be diffrantiated.)

War Support should reduce the stability debuff you get, increase the resistance to your enemy in your core states and make war goals easier. And also it should depend on the fascist party popularity too.
While War Effort is about the laws and regulations you do. Conscription, economy laws, export policy, war bonds . War effort should effect factory and dockyard output, your consumer good factories. But also war support should effect war efforts too. (The higher war support, higher war efforts even in peace time too, that is why fascist countries have ease to militarise.)

In normal times war support mustn't be too high and also the war effort unless countries are fascist and/or irredentist. (Why does Yugoslavia get 100 war support by late 1941, early 1942 ?)
In a war time, war support should not be uplifted in just a point but the war efforts should increase. Propagandas should increase both of them. But in a war there should be a pin point that war effort can not get lower.

After a war, war effort must be reduced down to near war support which forces you to reduce the laws and then demobilize. And also there can be events/decisions that leads to delete some of your armies if your war efforts are too low and give stability and war support debuffs otherwise (like what we have as "Demobiliize Your Economy" decisions that you have if you have not enough war support after . . And because of the mechanic itself, AI won't have an option not to demobilize because of lack of manpower.

Additional Ideas
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- Developpers, please and please add more decisions like war bonds that we can effect the economical aspects in the game.
- And also please add something to break strikes while in wars, it is really weird and unrealistic to have strikes while your country is at risk, loosing battles and land.
- Higher levels of conscription must reduce the stability. (extensive conscription -5, service by requirement -10, all adults serve -20, Scrapping the barrel -30)

Second Idea
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In real history of WW2 it was very curicial to have enough ammunition in some large areas. Axis forces suffered from this. In Africa and deeper Soviet lands etc. It was even too extreme in Battle of Stalingrad that there was an order not to use machine guns but rather use semi-automatic/ bolt action rifles beacuse of bullet scarcity. We have these as attrition debuffs on attack and braktrough but we miss the aspect on the economy of having such great armies. All men require machines working in factories.

Of course there was an effect of need of manpower in field to have such great armies but the main limit was the economy. It has been like this since the modern warfare's beginning (near 1840s).
A mass army without required equipments and supply do not mean anything, even if they have most powerful tanks and last technology guns.

Add ammunitions to be produced in factories and consumed regularly in battles/conflicts/garnisons and also transported. Beacuse we already have transport mechanic, it would be easier to implement, just add some more need of transporters (trucks and trains) propotional to the ammunition usage of armies at a province. And to balance increase the supply distrubition and factory output coefficient as well as increasing factory numbers.

These would eventually reduce the number of armies in later phases of the game because of the need of ammunition.




What are your opinions? How can these ideas be improved?

 

[Sourlol]

I don’t think they need to add ammunition production in the base game—that just gets into a rats nest of calibers.

I’d prefer to see a manpower cost to factories, air bases and naval bases, supply trucks, convoys, and ai logic that prefers to have a surplus of equipment and manpower versus building divisions constantly or whenever there is a surplus of equipment.

a tank in hoi4 doesn’t just represent the vehicle, but the parts to maintain one and the ammunition to use one, before mtg it also represented the fuel to operate it. Same can be said for infantry equipment, etc.

the exception is ships, which I’d argue should consume Support equipment (to avoid a new production line) when at sea which depletes then requiring the fleet to return to a port to resupply (augmented by auxiliary ships (convoys) attached to a fleet which would increase fuel consumption but extend time at sea). However I think for every player that would enjoy the increased fidelity of naval logistics, you’d find more who dislike the increased “micro”.

 

[JayPee]

A mass army without required equipments and supply do not mean anything, even if they have most powerful tanks and last technology guns.

The Chinese fighting in Korea begged to differ. They were underequipped, lacked guns, and ammo. They relied on capturing ammunition and weapons from UN forces.

I will agree that the amount of divisions mobilized tend to be absurd late game but I believe that can easily be changed with world tension, it decays wayyyyy to slow, I think updating that would cause democracies and unaligned to demobilize their units since it already does it, but World Tension stays high such a long time after the war is over

 

[davidc929]

The Chinese fighting in Korea begged to differ. They were underequipped, lacked guns, and ammo. They relied on capturing ammunition and weapons from UN forces.

I will agree that the amount of divisions mobilized tend to be absurd late game but I believe that can easily be changed with world tension, it decays wayyyyy to slow, I think updating that would cause democracies and unaligned to demobilize their units since it already does it, but World Tension stays high such a long time after the war is over

I'm not sure that would help. By the time the ear is over and democracies should be demobbong most people will have stopped the game. It's the unaligned countries that don't get involved that are the issue. And of course most countries having more divions than they did historically. Not counting marines the Americans only had about 90 divions in the field. No way could you win in the game doing that though.