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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!
 
Who wants to be liberated is not always clear without knowing history more in detail.

For example Estonia:
The USSR forced Estonia to annexation in 1940. Most Estonians considered it as an occupation.
The Germans attacked the SU and took Estonia in 1941. That was an occupation as well.
The Soviets succeeded in Operation Bagration in 1944. That led to German retreat from Estonia to Kurland (in Latvia).
Then the Estonian voluntaries took control of their country when the Germans had left, before the Soviets came.
The Soviets attacked the Estonian voluntary troops, and after fighting occupied it again. So it was not voluntary 'reannexation' that time. Not liberation, but occupation, if you ask Estonians today.
Estonian partisan resistance against the Soviets by the 'Forest Brothers' continued at least until 1955.

Conclusion: Estonia cannot be "core" for the Soviet Union (or Germany or any other country).
After annexation, there must be resistance against the Soviets in Estonia (and Latvia and Lithuania), since there historically was.
 
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1.8 should address two things at the first place.

1.) Fixing Soviet Union being a pushover

This isn't right. This should be the easier thing to do since in earlier versions they weren't so extremely weak. Could be done by AI and balance tweaking.

2.) Introducing a decent invasion AI

That is the harder thing since it always has been garbage. I don't want to be unjust towards the AI since mounting a proper invasion is difficult even for an inexperienced player. But proper large scale invasions are just necessary for a fun game. E.g. Bangladesh being able to infinitely destroy British probe invasions just bogs the game down.

Also together with this AI should gain the ability to evacuate troops by sea. Don't lose dozens of whole divisions but rather evacuate them if they control the sea.
 
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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.
Buff them more then. I always Buffing them and Japan to the most extent. Then that war lasts longer and is more bloody. That is why i don't have achivements. 1st i don't collect them 2nd i am buffing the hell of all bustable nations.
 
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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.
True
 
No, compliance has a nice Horus Heresy style euphemism thing going on.
I think this would be better if they simply called that "Heretics" or "Traitorssss". But really compiliance sound stupid in my oppinion. They should call that outhright collaboration or sympathizers. As was said above.
 
I'm really hoping this is a nerf for Germany, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I'm guessing the Axis might just have some godly way of dealing with this while the Allies just get held back or something.
Probably yes. They always getting everything.
 
Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV, and Victoria II. These game all had rebels and these rebels were NO JOKE. NOW YOU ARE TELLING ME, YOU ARE GOING TO PUT REBELS IN A GAME ABOUT CONSTANT WARFARE? I should've seen this coming, but fuck me this is going to be a hard game . . .
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can just hit the "keep playing" button when the end game screen comes up. I am 100% certain I have done with with USA's new tree in MTG, I was getting the new world order achievement.
Not in ironman mode
At least in some cases. I don't know what causes it (or if it's been reverted since 1.6 but I've been looking for patch notes saying it was and haven't seen any)
 
Will there be a way to influence resistence to occupation as the occupied one?

If i'm playing as the USSR and i'm driven back all the way to the urals... Would i have any sway over my partisans resistence?

And what if i'm playing Poland, or France in MP and get capitulated by Germany. Will i essentially become a spectator or will i have any further contribution in the war in the form of control over my partisans?
 
so, I don't understand quite from the post, is curbing restistance still done by sitting with divisions on provinces? Hopefully not and it is more abstract like a police force that uses manpower and equipment because the current system where you have to micromanage resistance number is a bit too mundane
 
During WWII there were very different kinds of resistanse and also different ways to get people to comply, hopefully in game also.

Thinking about the German occuption, it was really soft in Denmark. As far as I know, the Danish population was treated relatively nicely, and the Danish did very little active resistance. Or have you ever heard of Danish resistance battalions taking a fight with SS Divisions? I have not. The other side of the coin: thousands of Danish volunteers joined the Waffen-SS (Wiking Division and some other units) and fought on the German side against the Allies.

Totally different in Yugoslavia: the partisans formed large units that fought against the German SS and mountain divisions. The Germans did not act nicely in Yugoslavia as they did in Denmark. In Yugoslavia also, the Germans recruited locals to fight on the German side, but there mostly against the local partisans.

Just as examples of different occupations.
 
The situation in Yugoslavia was more complicated than that; early on (1941 and 42), the main resistance movement was the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, also known as Chetniks. The Partisans would only become dominant later on. But yes, this was an entirely different kind of resistance than whatever happened in Denmark (which was commonly known as the best place for a Wehrmacht soldier to be stationed); in Yugoslavia, it was a war between armies, each with their own territories and, sometimes, economy (Tito's Uzice Republic had its own arms factory, for example).
 
Will there be a way to influence resistence to occupation as the occupied one?

If i'm playing as the USSR and i'm driven back all the way to the urals... Would i have any sway over my partisans resistence?

And what if i'm playing Poland, or France in MP and get capitulated by Germany. Will i essentially become a spectator or will i have any further contribution in the war in the form of control over my partisans?
This is what I'm rlly hoping for
 
I like what I am seeing. It raises some questions though...
Will the resistance system also apply to puppet states ? Because releasing a country could be an easy fix to problematic annexed countries. Since countries with decolonization can't release occupied land, it kinda breaks the balance of the game.
This new mechanic could also interact with independence system.
That could be an opportunity to fix/improve some puppet focus trees (British raj maybe, it suffered from mtg from my point of view)
Also, I find kinda weird that every French colony are annexed. Tunisia, Lebanon and Syria were protectorates. Marrocco was more independent than let's say Algeria. These facts are not reflected in game.