What's the point of Military Police? (Discussion)

[Talamare]

I know, I know... Suppression after you conquer to prevent rebels and such.

However, I'm starting wonder if there is any point to Military Police specifically.

Cavalry provides 2.0 Suppression, Military Police increases this by a percentage based on how much you have researched it.
20% base, increasing by 10% each tech until 50%.

However Suppression is a passive minimum requirement. It's not like Soft Attack, in which you need an overwhelming amount and more is better. You really just need to be as cost efficient as possible.

Which brings me to Suppressing your targets. Now when I was in the middle of my games, I didn't really care. I copied my Infantry 20 width, removed the support and slapped on an MP and said good to go!

Now it's end game, and I'm looking at the places I conquered, and there is a lot of poorly used divisions here. Most places have a decimal. 0.33, 3.64, 22.47. Which means that there is more suppression than is actually needed. The 3.6 for example has ~8 wasted 'width' , the 0.33 has ~14 wasted 'width'.

So I decided to learn what is actually good at Suppression, and quickly learned that it's Cavalry. They have basically more Suppression than anything else, and require nothing special to make them.

So the low cost of 34 production per Suppression, I can make a division that is a single Cavalry and the game will solve the rest. Let's just slap a Military Police onto it... and now I'm paying 50 production per Suppression.......... Wait a minute, Military Police has literally made my Suppression worse!

Well, that's just because I'm using it inefficiently. I'm only using a single Cavalry after all... Let's add a few more Cav width.
4 Width? 38... Not yet
6 Width? 34... Technically tied
8 Width? 32! We did it

Military Police is now technically making Suppression Cheaper... but hold on a second. With just the little 2 Width, it's efficient as possible. If you need 41 Width of units to Suppress you, you get 42 Width. Now we are back to basically wasting 6 Width. Which means that really you're still behind.

Not to mention the hassle and extra costs of needing to research Military Police. As well as the ~30 extra Army Experience needed to design this template.

Now admittedly, the production values I posted above are with using Military Police and the 1st research. They would be more effective with more Research. However, that's even more time wasted researching something that seems to be about as good as just throwing a boy on a pony.


EDIT - Learned a lot from the following posts, so I'm glad to have made this topic.
In summary, Military Police is optimal but you essentially NEED to design a template including 25 Cavalry or Armored Cars.
If you can't afford to do that because of low infantry XP, then just use a 1 Cavalry Template which costs 5 Infantry XP

Altho it's optimal to work towards slowly improving/expanding your MP Template if you can't afford the 25 right away.
Once you hit around 8-14 Cavalry, the MP Cav Template becomes better than the Single Cavalry Template, and only goes uphill from there.
Armored Cars being much heavier production costs only needs 2-3 Armored Cars in the Template before adding the MP is optimal.

Note that Armored Cars require about 4.5x more Production than Cavalry, However they require half the manpower that Calvary requires.
So, if your countries has a ton of factories and is struggling on Manpower, use Armored Cars.

 

[King Of Heroes]

Something you got wrong early on, and that is the width is "wasted", Garrison divisions take exactly how much men and equipment they need to keep an area pacified the benefit of Military Police is simply that their cost is constant.

If you're not going to use military police in the first place however there is no point in changing anything about a cavalry template with no support companies but if you're going to use MPs it's most efficient to make the division as big as possible.

Also Armored Cars(added in LaRe) have higher suppression than Cavalry.

 

[Mousetick]

I don't quite follow your reasoning. There is no waste of 'width' as you call it.

The game uses fractions of divisions, down to the hundredth, to assign to each occupied territory based on the amount of suppression needed.
Then it adds the numbers of divisions across all territories to give the total number of divisions, itself a fractional quantity.
Then it calculates the amount of manpower, infantry equipment, support equipment and armor (if applicable) from that total number of fractional divisions.

Your theory:

	Divisions Assigned	Divisions Used
Territory 1	0.33	1
Territory 2	3.64	4
Territory 3	22.47	23
Total	26.44	28

The game in reality:

	Divisions Assigned	Divisions Used
Territory 1	0.33	0.33
Terrritory 2	3.64	3.64
Terrritory 3	22.47	22.47
Total	26.44	26.44

You can easily verify this by looking at the 'Equipment in Garrison' tab on the 'Occupied Territories' panel.

 

[FindFloppies]

Now it's end game, and I'm looking at the places I conquered, and there is a lot of poorly used divisions here. Most places have a decimal. 0.33, 3.64, 22.47. Which means that there is more suppression than is actually needed. The 3.6 for example has ~8 wasted 'width' , the 0.33 has ~14 wasted 'width'.

Actually, I keep a group of garrisons of the proper template, and make sure I have at least as many in that group as the total of the garrisons needed. You don't have to have them out there in each province.

i.e. if I have .34, .69, .38, and .50, adding up to 1.91, I just need two garrisons somewhere of the proper template. Try to make sure they have priority on supplies, and they're usually actually watching my ports. What you *don't* want to do is bring a garrison near the front line where it may get caught into the major fighting.

I keep suppression at Local Police Force on an area till 40% compliance, and Civilian Oversight after that. Unless you let the amount of garrisons get away from you, or let their supply situation get bad, that's all you need.

(Example: my current garrison needs in occupied areas is a total of 4.67. I have six garrisons in a group of the proper template, but they're not in the occupied zones. They're actually back home watching ports for me. Works great.)

EDIT: I see now. It is completely ephemeral/off-map. Just make sure you have a template for it, and you have the equipment available to fill the needs for said manpower and equipment as requirements/needs change.

 

[Talamare]

It's great to know that there is no waste, but as you said the optimal usage of MP quite expensive.

You need to pay to research the MP, and it's optimal to get huge divisions which also cost Military Experience.
Admittedly, not doing this also has its costs. So there will be a scale to which is optimal.

 

[Mousetick]

Actually, I keep a group of garrisons of the proper template, and make sure I have at least as many in that group as the total of the garrisons needed. You don't have to have them out there in each province.

I may be misunderstanding what you're describing, so apologies if I'm off the mark. But you don't need to have actual garrisons divisions anywhere on the map to match the number of divisions assigned to the 'Occupied Territories'. The game automatically recruits those garrison divisions and they're located off-map. The garrison system for occupied territories is abstracted and managed by the game for you. You don't need to handle those divisions. You just need to specify a division template for use as suppressing garrison.

By having your garrison divisions on the map, you're just duplicating what the game already does for you. And you're wasting manpower and equipment.

It's no big deal, but I thought you might want to know. You can try it: disband your garrison divisions, and you'll see your occupied territories are still suppressed like they were before you got rid of those divisions. That's a nice improvement to the previous system, eliminating a lot of micro-management.

 

[Spelaren]

So what is a good cheap garrison division for a minor country that uses light tanks and is starved for research slots?

 

[Simon_9732495]

So what is a good cheap garrison division for a minor country that uses light tanks and is starved for research slots?

If you already have a cavalry template WITHOUT support use that. If your cavalry template has support, don't use it, becuase support companies are too expensive for garrison (except MP).
Removing 1 support costs 10XP.
Creating the template above costs 5 XP.

 

[Emren]

So what is a good cheap garrison division for a minor country that uses light tanks and is starved for research slots?

What Simon said. Basically, just use cavalry. MP is optional. Also, remember to set those garrison divisions to NOT upgrade to new weapons, they can keep the old stuff that they start with, and keep one factory producing old guns throughout the game. You're also likely to capture tons of old equipment that might as well be used for garrisons.

If you use light tanks or armored cars, you will increase the garrison division's hardness, which in turn will limit the losses you suffer from resistance. Those losses are both equipment and manpower, so if you are starved for manpower it might be a good idea to increase the garrison divisions' hardness - but this also then makes them more expensive in terms of equipment that you need to produce, i.e., light tanks and armored cars will take up production capacity.

 

[Simon_9732495]

Also, remember to set those garrison divisions to NOT upgrade to new weapons, they can keep the old stuff that they start with, and keep one factory producing old guns throughout the game. You're also likely to capture tons of old equipment that might as well be used for garrisons.

Are you sure that is working?

See this bug report:

Garrisons ignore equipment selections in templates. Garrisons will use any equipment of the relevant type available in stockpile (even if that equipment is specifically excluded in the template).

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/garrisons-use-best-equipment-ignoring-template-exclusions-1-9-2-beta-595b.1387929/

 

[Emren]

Are you sure that is working?

See this bug report:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/garrisons-use-best-equipment-ignoring-template-exclusions-1-9-2-beta-595b.1387929/

Now I am definitely not sure that it's working!

 

[NeverHelm]

MP gives a percentile bonus to the division's total suppression value. This means that it's most efficient with massive (read: 25-battallion) garrison templates, since you get the boost for more battalions per support company. If you have industrial capacity and resources coming out of your ears, the most manpower-efficient template for suppression is 25 ACs with MP. Obviously this template costs a ton of army XP to create, which isn't usually worth it. For most nations, a single cavalry batallion with no extras is the best option - just watch out for manpower bleed.

 

[J1ffst3r]

Its a trade of IC vs manpower. If you use mps it takes less manpower but more equipment to garraion. For nations like Germany or Soviet manpower is not a problem so its prob not worth the research but for minors like Greece mexico or Netherlands that want to garrison a large area bit have low manpower MPs may be worth investing in if you have spare IC.

That said you can just ask for garrison support from a big ally and not bother with MPs

 

[Reman]

Its a trade of IC vs manpower. If you use mps it takes less manpower but more equipment to garraion. For nations like Germany or Soviet manpower is not a problem so its prob not worth the research but for minors like Greece mexico or Netherlands that want to garrison a large area bit have low manpower MPs may be worth investing in if you have spare IC.

That said you can just ask for garrison support from a big ally and not bother with MPs

This is not correct. The benefits from even just a 1936 MP company on a 25-battalion cav division are +20% suppression for 2% more IC and 2% more manpower per division. Since states can use fractions of garrison templates now, this effectively means the total manpower+IC cost goes down per suppression point by using MP companies. This is true both for the initial costs of the garrisons, as well as replacements needed from garrison combat. Unless you value the IC cost of infantry kits at 0 relative to the IC cost of support equipment (perhaps you capitulated a huge stockpile of rifles from an enemy), then MP companies are optimal from the perspective of manpower AND factories.

 

[blue_yonder]

threads like this are useful, because there are many players who still haven't realized that garrisoning stuff on-map is a complete waste of time since 1.9. As for MP, their worth is situational as others have said. If only they didn't reduce org they would often be a competitive option in on-map divisions, and the added discipline would make perfect sense from an RP point of view - way less likely to have conscripts going awol/punching officers/ etc.

 

[Zauberelefant]

threads like this are useful, because there are many players who still haven't realized that garrisoning stuff on-map is a complete waste of time since 1.9. As for MP, their worth is situational as others have said. If only they didn't reduce org they would often be a competitive option in on-map divisions, and the added discipline would make perfect sense from an RP point of view - way less likely to have conscripts going awol/punching officers/ etc.

MP was often tasked with traffic behind the front, which is a vital task and should increase Org!

 

[Emren]

MP was often tasked with traffic behind the front, which is a vital task and should increase Org!

Or maybe rather movement speed in enemy territory.

 

[Zauberelefant]

Or maybe rather movement speed in enemy territory.

Disagree, as that is aptly handled by recon units, MP would allow better flow of non combat material and personnel.
Cases where units would outrun supply due to traffic congestion are unknown to me.

 

[SophieX]

threads like this are useful, because there are many players who still haven't realized that garrisoning stuff on-map is a complete waste of time since 1.9.

Yes and no

The "confusion" in my opinion is that we have two different "types" , which can be and are called garrison.

The first type is the now off-map-garrison used against resistance in occupied provinces.
The second type is the "garrison" you will use on map to protect ports and may be other vital points.

Both have the same general task; to protect a specific "area" and fight against enemy "coming in" this area ( off-map-resistance members or on map invasions )

 

[Talamare]

Going off info from HOI4 Wiki

Cav = 51.6 Production
MP = 56 Production
A.Car = 240 Production

So, let's just Wolfram Alpha this
Cav
x*(51.6 / (2*1.2)) + 56 = x*(51.6 / 2) == 13.02
x*(51.6 / (2*1.3)) + 56 = x*(51.6 / 2) == 9.40
x*(51.6 / (2*1.4)) + 56 = x*(51.6 / 2) == 7.59
x*(51.6 / (2*1.5)) + 56 = x*(51.6 / 2) == 6.51

A.Cars
x*(240 / (2.5*1.2)) + 56 = x*(240 / 2.5) == 3.50
x*(240 / (2.5*1.3)) + 56 = x*(240 / 2.5) == 2.50
x*(240 / (2.5*1.4)) + 56 = x*(240 / 2.5) == 2.04
x*(240 / (2.5*1.5)) + 56 = x*(240 / 2.5) == 1.75

This shows how many units in a division you need for MP to be worth it. So at a Cav unit with 10 Cavs would not be worth having MP. This changes if you upgrade your MP (or give the Cavs guns that require more production).

Armored Cars are so insanely expensive that it is almost immediately worth using MP...
Since we should assume we should always use a full 25 unit division.
(A.Car vs Cav with best MP) vs a pony boy
(2.5*1.5*25) = 93.75 Suppression for 6056 Production and 13,000 Manpower
93.75 / 2 = 46.87 pony boys for 2418.75 Production and 46,870 Manpower

(2.0*1.5*25) = 75 Suppression for 1346 Production and 25,500 Manpower
75 / 2 = 37.5 pony boys for 1935 Production and 37,500 Manpower