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HoI4 Dev Diary - Resistance and Compliance

Hello HoI bois and ladies, welcome to the second dev diary on our upcoming unannounced expansion and 1.8 ‘Husky’ update. This update features some big changes to how occupied territory functions. The biggest part of this is an overhaul of the game’s current resistance system into what we are calling the “Resistance and Compliance” system. This should help curb a bit of power from snowballing (Hello, Germany), remove gamey early war sniping of provinces, and put a bit of a clock on world conquest runs.

The old resistance system is rather simple. Each occupied state has a suppression requirement. If you meet that requirement nothing happens. If the suppression requirement is not met then you suffer from increasingly common sabotage to factories or infrastructure as resistance strength grows. We decided we could make this more interesting and use it as a way to further control the power of snowballing.

The growth of resistance is no longer stopped by having an adequate garrison. Resistance now functions with a target system. The resistance level will grow or decay towards whatever the current target is. The target is impacted by the development of the state, the core owner still existing and other factors. Resistance activities will still scale with the level of resistance, but the garrison will now work as a shield that absorbs these sabotages. If the garrison is adequate, the garrison shield will absorb the vast majority of sabotage attempts and take losses to manpower and equipment. Not having an adequate garrison means a higher resistance target and more resistance activity making it past the garrison shield to the state.

DD_RESCOMP_COMP.png


Compliance is in some ways the opposite of resistance. It is a rating of how willing the local state is to work with their occupiers. Compliance will normally start at zero and increase slowly over time. Compliance growth will generally be slow and several factors can affect that speed of growth. As compliance increases in a state, it will decrease local resistance and give access to more resources, factories, and manpower.

DD_RESCOMP_COMP2.png


Resistance and compliance also will have various effects that are unlocked. Resistance will gain the ability to more frequently bypass the garrison shield after it reaches a strength of 25%. Reaching 25% compliance means reducing suppression requirements for the current level of resistance.

DD_RESCOMP_UNLOCKS.png


The highest level of resistance unlocks include two levels of uprising. The first is a passive malus that is applied to the state, adding attrition, decreasing move speed, and slowing org regain for occupying forces in the area. The 2nd level uprising is a full scale organized uprising that functions somewhat like a civil war. The states that rise up will gain low-quality divisions and either rejoin their former master or if that no longer exists, reestablish themselves on the map. Both of these should be somewhat rare and will require the local resistance being supported by an outside source.

DD_RESCOMP_UPRISING1.png



In conjunction with these new systems, we have reworked how occupied states are handled. Colony states will be removed as a concept and every state not controlled by a nation with a core on the state will be viewed as occupied. Occupied states will now be less rewarding for the occupier. Access to the factories and resources of the state will by default be much lower than before. However, the conqueror can get more out of the state by cultivating compliance or adjusting occupation laws. This gives a bit of granularity between what was previously colony states and cores.

Occupation laws will also be updated to work with the new resistance and compliance systems and give the player more choice. Previous occupation laws were mostly a linear system of paying PP and increasing suppression need for increasing rewards. If you could afford it, harsher occupation would almost always be more beneficial. This was also a system not a lot of people interacted with as it was hidden behind several layers of the menu.

New occupation laws are built around trying to give the player choice based on playstyle and short and longterm goals. The new laws tend towards one of three objectives: compliance growth, resistance suppression, factory/resource exploitation. Compliance growth is a longterm reward, while resistance suppression and resource gains are more short term. These laws will, in turn, be bad at what they are not concerned with. IE focusing on resistance suppression will generally not be very rewarding in terms of resources or long term compliance growth. Cultivating compliance will mean that the player will have to deal with a period of low yields and maybe a more active resistance movement. Each of the big three ideologies will also get their own special occupation laws. These laws fit the themes of the ideologies and give them some unique choices

DD_RESCOMP_OCULAW02.png


That's all we got for this week. Next week we will update the good people of these forums on what is going on with France. Secrets and things hidden will be revealed!
 
Good. Now Soviet Resistance would also be a factor in war. Also it would be more realistic to actualy show resistance as a factor in war. Also Chinese war would be closer to atctualy second sino-jappan war. At least Jappan wont win in 1940.
Unfortunally, the second sino-japanese war is so one-sided right now that this is very unlikely to change a thing in Chinese survival.
At least it will make Japan less powerfull after they innevitably capitulate China by 1940.

The saddest part is that China isn't that weak by itself, any decent player can easily defend itself against the Japanese AI and in multiplayer it isn't that much one sided.
I have no idea where the Chinese AI fails ao hard, maybe its their division templates, maybe its because they seem to leave all those ports unguarded, leading to several sucesfull invasions... but they do always colapse too fast, even when buffed by one or two ticks in the custom buff slider.
 
Unfortunally, the second sino-japanese war is so one-sided right now that this is very unlikely to change a thing in Chinese survival.
At least it will make Japan less powerfull after they innevitably capitulate China by 1940.

The saddest part is that China isn't that weak by itself, any decent player can easily defend itself against the Japanese AI and in multiplayer it isn't that much one sided.
I have no idea where the Chinese AI fails ao hard, maybe its their division templates, maybe its because they seem to leave all those ports unguarded, leading to several sucesfull invasions... but they do always colapse too fast, even when buffed by one or two ticks in the custom buff slider.

Yeah, they capitulate way too fast that I doubt the partisan changes will affect the Japanese too much. Often times when I play, usually non-iroman to fix a few things that make no sense to me. I usually tag switch to China and give 150 free PP just to buy First Lady of the Republic so they can get guns from the Americans and I like to force Britain down the Burma Road path. I remember hearing that the devs were stuck, if they nerfed Japan then China would destroy them and they figured what we had was the best option, at least this is what I was told. I'm wondering if the devs contemplated ever checking to see if the other nations actually send the vital help to China. I never see the AI take any sort of focus or decisions to help China on their own. One of the downsides of having massive tress and each focus takes 70 days, historical routes are being changed to make room for all the new added focuses.

Maybe China accidentally has Italy's AI thought process :p
 
I was just wondering, could the ability to supply guns attached a bit more to gameplay factors than political power.

For example, it acts as a sort of lend lease, where you decide to supply weapons at a certain rate every month, say 1000 infantry equipment. With the percentage that successfully supply the resistance being affected by a series of maluses. For every occupied province you border, plus 10 percent (representing weapons supplied overland), plus or minuses applied depending on compliance of border provinces and enemy troops in said provinces. Plus 10 percent for Cargo planes doing supply missions (representing weapons that are airdropped inland), Plus 10 percent for every sea province (representing all the small fishing boats that were used to receive weapons and operatives such as in Norway) etc etc. I don't know if I explained what I meant correctly, all the percentages are just examples.
 
we have reworked how occupied states are handled. Colony states will be removed as a concept and every state not controlled by a nation with a core on the state will be viewed as occupied. Occupied states will now be less rewarding for the occupier. Access to the factories and resources of the state will by default be much lower than before. However, the conqueror can get more out of the state by cultivating compliance or adjusting occupation laws. This gives a bit of granularity between what was previously colony states and cores.
How is that going to work with the UK and other nations because there are a couple of focuses for the UK that affect the colony states?
 
Introducing things like "Forced Labor" opens something which should stay forever closed in HOI4.

From my POV there is no necessity to expand the current occupation system, especially when it brings additional tedious micro management. The purpose of the game is having fun fighting the war and not about being bored by coercing civilian population to obey. I am sure these dev resources can be used somewhere else with higher effect.
 
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Introducing things like "Forced Labor" opens something which should stay forever closed in HOI4.

And what do you think the current harsh occupation law does currently represent? Certainly it's not respecting the civilian civil rights during the occupation.

Anyway, if anything this system will have less micromanagement since it appears the occupation forces will be off map.
 
And what do you think the current harsh occupation law does currently represent? Certainly it's not respecting the civilian civil rights during the occupation.

The current system ranging from "Gentlest" to "Harshest" is pretty abstract and doesnt force any interpretation on the players. Even if you for some reason assume the worst here, there is still a long way from violating work safety regulations and overextending the legal working hours to "forced labor".
 
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Introducing things like "Forced Labor" opens something which should stay forever closed in HOI4.
You have slavery in eu4, this isn't much different.
Besides there is still no direct reference to civilian casualties of any sorts, so the occupation laws are still abstract enough to avoid being an holocaust simulator.

The purpose of the game is having fun fighting the war and not about being bored by coercing civilian population to obey
Dealing with the occupation and civilian resistence its an absolutely fundamental part of warfare, sometimes even more decisive than the battles themselves! Not only was this the case during ww2 but also before (Napoleon's disaster in the peninsular war) and after (The USSR's and USA's failed invasions of afganistan).
 
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You know what would really go great with a resistance/espionage system? Somebody with a reputation for causing... *cough*Soviet rework*cough* ...revolutions. Stalin's best friend, maybe.
 
You know what would really go great with a resistance/espionage system? Somebody with a reputation for causing... *cough*Soviet rework*cough* ...revolutions. Stalin's best friend, maybe.

I imagine this system will greatly impact the eastern front, so they wanted to get it out of the way before the ground war rework that will come with the soviet update. Reworking resistance *after* doing the eastern front may lead to it being less optimized, whereas doing resistance first lets them account for it while building the best Barbarossa they can. It's a painful wait but I'd rather the most impost important front of the war also be the most polished one.
 
You have slavery in eu4, this isn't much different.
Besides there is still no direct reference to civilian casualties of any sorts, so the occupation laws are still abstract enough to avoid being an holocaust simulator.
The issue is that there is a lot more of a historical and political baggage attached to WW2 than to slavery. And in EU4, it doesn't go further than a tradegood, events which have the price drop and fall and a descision which removes that tradegood when you abolish slavery. It isn't like you gain a goods produced modifier on goods which were produced by slaves.
 
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The issue is that there is a lot more of a historical and political baggage attached to WW2 than to slavery. And in EU4, it doesn't go further than a tradegood, events which have the price drop and fall and a descision which removes that tradegood when you abolish slavery. It isn't like you gain a goods produced modifier on goods which were produced by slaves.

No instead you get a tarriff efficiency bonus, which one might argue is even worse because that affects all production in all overseas colonies. Not just the sugar, cotton, etc. But the timber, grain, fish, gold, all of it. And if we're really going into the weeds, Victoria I and II both modeled slaves as pops who worekd RGOs as less efficient workers compared to farmers and miners with the upside of that they didn't really need so many goods to maintain them. If anything I would say it's not so much historical and political baggage. One need only look at the Mongols who were very horriffic and we have people (including historians) who are saying "look at all the wonderful things the mongols did." No, it is instead that we are still far too close to the memory of WW2 thats makes it not worth dealing with. A couple hundred years down the line and just like the mongols, the subject will probably be touched on in games one way or another.
 
This all sounds awesome!!

But, good grief, could you please rename 'compliance' to 'cooperation' or 'collaboration' or even 'sympathizers'?? 'Compliance' makes it sound like a GDPR exercise... Collaborators was a common label given to people who collaborated with the occupying enemy.

No, compliance has a nice Horus Heresy style euphemism thing going on.