HOI4 Dev Diary - Stability and War Support

[Skullzrulerz]

Disappointing that you have to steal features from other great mods...We don't mind don't worry about us take what you want

 

[paranoidsteve]

colour me intrigued

 

[Pete0714]

New concepts make much more sense, look forward to seeing them implemented.

 

[Invader]

Hey, @podcat. This seems very nice! Questions:

Can war support be connected to gains and losses? For instance, losing Kiev should be worth -0.5 for the Soviets, while taking Kiev should be worth +0.25 for ze Germans.
Some of these could be temporary: Losing the Bismarck should be worth a negative 0,1 for Germany for say, 6 months (then people get over it) and also worth + 0.1 for the British since it pleases Her Majesty's subjects greatly to sink German capital ships? (for instance, +/- 0.2 for sinking/losing SHBB, + 0.1 for CV and BB, +0.05 for BC, +0.025 for CA, non-capitals does not matter).

Also, can it be connected to having divisions overrun or soldiers KIA (since you have a losses counter)? I'd like a mechanism that would make a encirclement slaughter at Dunkirk a political catastrophe for the UK as well as a military one. Also, having the encircled Sixth Army surrender at Stalingrad should make Germans sad and Soviets happy.

 

[ramius3443]

So how do you capitulate an enemy country now?

 

[Sleight of Hand]

@podcat

Please don't add money to HoI IV; it's utterly meaningless during a time of total war, and only has any meaningful effect post-war. We're modelling the war itself here, not the effects on the civilian population (much of which is a banned topic) and all money will do is add a pointless modifier that the player has to keep an eye on for no real reason.

 

[Archangel85]

So how do you capitulate an enemy country now?

80% of VPs occupied, but we are experimenting with low stability/literally being France lowering that threshold

 

[Ethanol]

Ahah I like this a lot, looks like it will be way better to model the subtilities of internal affairs and I can already foresee a soviet buff with the war support mechanic. Great work !

 

[svennnnnnnnnnnn]

My favorite dev diary in a long time, psyched about all of this. Also the mobilization speed modifier brings hope about getting back hoi3's excellent reserve/mobilization system

 

[MSIOCGenie]

Since Germany never actually declared war on either France or Great Britain, how will this affect their ability to mobilise, since they weren't really in a defensive war? Or will it count as such because of guarantees to Poland and so on?

 

[Sleight of Hand]

I assume the red phone refers to the number of ISPs in that particular country, but I could be wrong.

 

[henzington]

Just hope Japan actually will attack the USA more far too often America doesn't join as a result of a Japanese attack.

 

[CrazyZombie]

@podcat

Please don't add money to HoI IV; it's utterly meaningless during a time of total war, and only has any meaningful effect post-war. We're modelling the war itself here, not the effects on the civilian population (much of which is a banned topic) and all money will do is add a pointless modifier that the player has to keep an eye on for no real reason.

Well, on the other hand money meant a lot during Interbellum. And will mean a lot right after end of WW2, when there will be two giant alliances, standing.

They kind of could be useful for periods "before the War" and "after the War". Also, you can't play the game "just print more money" endlessly, even during wartime.

 

[Archangel85]

Since Germany never actually declared war on either France or Great Britain, how will this affect their ability to mobilise, since they weren't really in a defensive war? Or will it count as such because of guarantees to Poland and so on?

Let's ask the Poles if the war was aggressive...

 

[JerkyJerry]

It's more of a "The Western Allies are a bunch of cowards, if it comes to war we can take them easily and they will back down anyway"/"The Führer clearly knows what he is doing so if he says we need to go to war then we need to go to war"

This is exactly my point.
How many countries did the population have a say in what their leader did or did not do? America, yep. England, I think so. Germany, nada. Russia, no sir. Japan, nope. Italy?

Now I may be 100% incorrect in my assumptions. However why are we having National Unity (now called something else) in a game where only a couple of countries took into account what their population thought in the first place?

Shouldn't stability and war support only matter for very few countries? Why would those be any part of a country that during the time period did not care?

And if playing historical and the game goes just like the real world, why do we need this feature after 9/1/1939? This like its predecessor seems to be: a feature that may be used by a very few countries and none after 9/1/1939?
It just seems to add more restrictions with absolutely no benefits whatsoever.

I'm not a expert at the game or the war. I'm just putting this into real world play. At this point in time I fail to see any benefits to my future game play. Exactly what countries will this have a profound effect upon? What will it change? Isn't it just all out the window on 9/1/1939 or earlier?

However, I'm hear to learn. Where am I wrong? School me boys!

 

[TheWind]

I hope trade system gets revamp aswell.

 

[Bane5]

I could easily see money as replacing the continuous national focus system, but in a more expanded form.

Money is a catch-em all to get what you want:
Pay money for more factories (investments), pay money for more military experience (army funding), pay money for more temporary aircraft production bonuses (diminishing returns), pay money to raise war support (propaganda efforts), suppress subjects, create technology sharing bonuses, buy licenses, and so forth. Just add a simple +button next to what you want to pay for and the balance is subtracted.

Being used in trade, it would serve its purpose as a medium to exchange goods as opposed to the non-liquid assets they are used to pay for.

 

[FOARP]

Japan would have high war support and also high stability (mostly due to the emperor’s influence).

Hmm . .weren't there an impressive number of attempted coups/assassinations during the pre-war period in Japan? Didn't they have like, half-a-dozen leaders during that period?

I think some Japan-specific mechanics are in order to account for this.

 

[adski42]

Just a thought on capitulation/coming to the peace table - shouldn't % of army/armed forces destroyed not come into it? Using the UK example again, if the British hadn't evacuated most of its troops from Dunkirk, it is likely that Britain would have been forced to the negotiating table as it didn't have much of an army any more. This was despite no British territory (VPs) being occupied. It would add an interesting dynamic and increases the need to fight cleverly (encirclement etc) rather than just rushing for VPs.

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Podcat, the extra detail Archangel and the info on E-Dawg's wherabouts Great Bearded One . Very, very tasty changes, lots of interesting things that can be done modelling both separately (you could have some interplay between war mobilisation, warscore (how much one is winning by) and economy law - total mobilisation if absolutely smashing the opposition could hurt war support, and keep high laws post-war could hurt stability, particularly for democracies?) I am curious how surrender is determined now, but I'd bet good money you'd have told us if you were ready to .

On war support, iirc the demand for unconditional surrender by the Allies had an effect on the willingness of both Germany and Japan to surrender - an event like this could be an interesting way to give Allied players choice about the post-war world (demand unconditional surrender and have to fight tooth and nail, or allow something less harsh, but not be able to overthrow the regimes in place). Would require new surrender mechanics though, so may not be the best idea in the short-term at least.

The team is split on the issue of money. 14 out of 15 people on the team want money in. @podcat thinks differently.

The issue is that money played very little role in the internal economies. The Reichsmark was essentially monopoly money during the timeframe of the war. Inflation was an issue, but price controls and rationing could counteract that. Manhours spent is a far better value to assess the "cost" to the war economy of building weapons. For the purpose of paying soldiers, the government could always just print money, so in this particular event the effect is simply that it costs more pp.

Personally, I would love to get money back in the game at some point, but it'll probably by focused more on international trade where you actually had to pay in hard cash.

Not trying to cause trouble, but the money isn't any good if there's nothing to buy with it - you'd just get runaway inflation, which would almost definitely lower stability and possibly cause a reduction in war support as well . There was a thread on this the other day, and I read up a little on it, and the Reichsmark basically pilfered savings by forcing banks to loan the Government private savings to it at low rates - but this wasn't something that could be done together. Once those savings (representing accumulated civilian capital) were used up, things would have got messy.

In the discussion we had in the thread, the thought was more along the lines of money isn't necessary per se - what's more important is the stock of accumulated civilian (clothes, cars, furniture, etc.,) and 'industrial civilian' (factories, railroad stock, trucks, barges) capital. In wartime, this is generally run down, but past a certain point of it being run down, things get messy.

Where money would be useful in a way that isn't particularly replaceable would be in international trade, where one nation in particular might be happy enough sending goods to another nation for the promise of payment in the future, rather than payment directly (which happened in some circumstances, but not in others). At least, as best I can remember, off the top of my head, but don't want to derail the thread .