Get rid of partisan units

[sillyflower]

I must start by saying that I have always hated them in strategic games. Indeed it often puts me off playing as axis altogether because of the tedium of partisan-whack-a-mole. The axis player's job is to command of the world's great powers, and several other nations, not to run anti-partisan ops. I have already posted 1 rant on the subject ('illiterate partisans') but this one is more generic in the hope of starting a wider debate.

I fully accept that during WWII, many citizens in occupied countries (though perhaps not nearly as many who claimed to have done so post-liberation) showed great resource and enormous courage to help the allies; for which they often paid a terrible price. However, with the possible exceptions of USSR and Yugoslavia, there were nothing resembling partisan units which appear in games. I haven't forgotten Warsaw in '44 but that was au urban popular uprising which was very different. The help given to the allies by resistence movement in Wetern Europe was very valuable, but essentially confined to helping individual fugitives, gathering useful intelligence and very small-scale sabotage either in the workplace or elsewhere. Again I am not trying to belittle those efforts. However, these activities are covered by fog-of-war issues and production levels, and neither required or were resolved by sending army divisions or larger formations marching back and forth on strategic maps.

Turning to Yugoslavia, it is the case that partisans there (when not doing deals with the Germans and/or fighting each other) tied down more Axis troops than anywhere else, it was a matter of scale rather than something different in character.

Turning to the USSR, one often sees maps in history books showing areas 'controlled by partisans', whose main efforts had to be on simple survival. I know there are lots of instances of the Germans doing clear-our operations with security troops and those going to or returning from leave, but this does not mean in terms of strategic gaming conventional type warfare versus partisan counters.

I agree that ay strategic WWII game on the scale of WP/SC/HoI etc that simply ignored partisans etc would be neither 'realistic' or free of heavy criticism. Also, there is no merit in arguing in favour of removing a bad system without proposing an improvement which is,at least, no more complicated or less fair, makes sense within the scale of the game, and which is less fiddly and annoying.

In my opinion the basic mechanism has to be garrisoning, which has the main solution to the problem throughout history. in historical terms, successful garrisoning was proactive rather than just sitting in forts/barracks. In terms of strategic gaming, static garrisoning represents that local activity, simple to design and I expect that every game of this sort already has that concept so players are used to it. Adequate garrisoning (which will be different for different countries/areas/cities and probably changing over time) means never having to care about partisan activity.

The real question is therefore 'what should be the penalty for inadequate garrisoning'? My answer is twofold:

1 It should only be economic, whether by loss of resources/production/transport capacity or some combination, proportionate to the shortfall in garrison numbers or strength.
2 It has to be fierce enough to ensure that lack of garrisoning is not a good option

I shall copy this on the SC forum in the hope of stimulating a debate which leads to a better system for modelling partisan warfare

[AlvaroSousa]

Thanks for the input. In the next patch they will be lowered in their chance of a unit appearing

[sillyflower]

Good up to a point..... but the bigger problem at the moment is described in my 'illiterate partisans thread' https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4787430 Partisans are not obeying your rules.

you may also want to keep an eye on responses on the SCII forum https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4787648. I am not alone!

[MorningDew]

Just like Diplomacy - any value to a toggle to turn them on/off?

[sillyflower]

I won't play pvp without a house rule not to use it, and I have it turned off with pve. What others do in the privacy of their PC is up to them, so it's not an actual problem

[RPKUPK]

Good!
I've had three enemy infantry corps form in one spot in summer 1941, and other later years I've had full strength Soviet armored corps form significantly behind the lines with a fighter-bomber over top of it! Now please tell me how that is correct or appropriate!!! Nuts! Please fix.

[AlvaroSousa]

So we have 4 situations here and I will detail all of them

#1 as is partisans - I have zero trouble dealing with them. I leave divisions behind to radius their entry. Many players I know dont have a problem with it including the beta testers. They are easily handled and reflect the problems the Axis has with them. They had 90k partisans by the end of 1941 and 500k in 1944.

#2 Remove them and force a garrison - Current rail damage will be the same. Extra rail damage will occur. In this situation players very likely won't garrison enough and get double whammied KOing a front.

#3 Some abstract value X that affects Y in general - While practical there is no strategy here. You just plop units in some pool. At this point this would be a new mechanism I have to introduce which I do not want to. That is considerable coding and testing.

#4 Expand the radius of units protecting vs partisan units to say 5 hexes.

[sveint]

Partisans need to be an issue. But they also need to be "fun" to deal with.

In games where you just have to garrison and then magically there are no partisans it's too easy on the Axis.

But units that do spawn need to be very weak and low quality.

May I suggest a division protects its hex and adjacent, small corps reaches another hex and a large corps reaches 3?

[sillyflower]

In response to Alvaro

#1 In reality patisans were ineffective most of the time and concerned mainly with day to day survival. For example, not much spare food or armaments lying around in occupied lands. NB, as before, I'm writing about activities of significant disrution beyond the activities referred to in my 1st post. Not much spare food around in occupied lands). To do more they needed to be supplied from external sources (well modelled in WiTE) with professional organisation. I can't think of any major disruption in western Europe during WWII except in France at the time of D Day when they did a lot disrupting communication lines. Very little earlier - indeed SOE were very keen that they conserved their strength for D Day.

As to numbers they are not reliable. A friend of mine became v. good friends with the head of maquis/partisan recuitment during WWII in a major french city (which I won't name). At the post-liberation parade there were 3000 proud frenchmen marching wearing their maquis armbands. This surprised the head of recruitment who only knew of 47.

In other words, the effect of partisans was minimal in properly-garrisoned areas, and whack-a-partisan unit is a poor way of simulation what they did. It is also time consuming in gaming terms - sometimes it takes me longer to deal with partisans than to run the rest of my evil empire, which makes me want to start chewing the carpet.

#2 The risk you described is real, hence the necessities to have penalties that deter that behaviour. I supect that will need to be more than a few damaged rails.

#3 Was not part of my solution and I agree that it seems to be without merit for a number of reasons, including your right to have time to answer annoying questions/demands from your son rather than from me[;)].

4 Not as good as #2 but has the enormous benefit of being the option most likely to be seen in the next patch. I am familiar with the concept of the best sometimes being the enemy of the good.

EDIT - sveint's suggestion of the control radius being tied to the size of unit is clearly better than the same radius for all units. I have no idea if that is easy or not to code.

[AlvaroSousa]

Originally I didn't have partisans. It was requested by the beta testers.

Ok then let me expand the radius of protect for partisan UNITS.

There simply needs to be some punishment for players who leave nothing behind. We ran the scenario in beta testing in many ways. I think the expanded radius will be a good solution. I am just expanding the radius in general. There is no perfect number for radius as there will be a min-max issue.

[PanzerMike]

Ok, so you are saying to give units a greater radius that will prevent spawning of partisan units within that radius. The radius will not affect rail sabotage, which will remain as it is right now. Correct?

Ow, and if possible, the idea of giving a corps a greater radius than a division is a good one IMHO. It can represent that a corps will fan out over a greater area to flush out partisans than a lone division can.

[AlvaroSousa]

The issue with the 2nd one is that there is a min-max situation there. Why use divisions when corps can cover a greater area. No one would ever use divisions.

Assuming 1 hex radius (6 hexes) vs 3 hex radius (18 hexes) except in very small places. Also it is hard to code and would eat up CPU time as I have to make a ton of pathfinding checked.

So yes and yes it will be command radius. I'm working on bugs today instead of relaxing to get you guys a beta version by Monday. I am looking at the map and I think 5 hex radius will work well.

[PanzerMike]

A beta for Monday. Great! Much appreciated. Looking forward to the bugfix list.

[sillyflower]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

There simply needs to be some punishment for players who leave nothing behind.

A very hard spanking indeed for such egregious gamey behaviour! Perhaps partisans can acquire nukes - tho' presumably they will have to wait until you've coded them for the Pacific version[:D]

You were right to have partisans in the game. The only alternative would have been to cut out all the units that would otherwise be on anti-partisan duty whilst reducing axis economic strength to preserve balance.

[abulbulian]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

Originally I didn't have partisans. It was requested by the beta testers.

Ok then let me expand the radius of protect for partisan UNITS.

There simply needs to be some punishment for players who leave nothing behind. We ran the scenario in beta testing in many ways. I think the expanded radius will be a good solution. I am just expanding the radius in general. There is no perfect number for radius as there will be a min-max issue.

I'm dumbfounded that no action has been taken here so many months into the game. I can't play this game out of the box because of the partisan whack-a-mole and unhistorical nature of partisan uber-ness. I've posted many times about how partisans can be handled in the abstract. This game is, in the words of Alvaro, is one of corps and armies. So for partisan units to be running around the map having major impact is just nutty. The axis should have to place some manpower and productions (units?) in abstract partisan boxes to avoid losing production base on how much they allocate. Done. Keep in mind during the war on the east front there were very few large scale (more than a div - usually resting/refitting too) sweeps against partisans. I'm not including Yugo here. If you feel there were more on the east front, please name them. So why does the Axis play have to leave behind many corps size units to fight or protect again partisans??? That's just too unhistorical for my taste.

[sillyflower]

Whilst I obviously support your views on the OP'dness (can this possibly be a word?) of partisans, I don't think that a 'partisan jaeger box' is the best solution. The main problem is that both the part-time and full time partisan hunters also fought in conventional battles when needed or caught napping. The other problem with a box is that it would be complicated to flex the number of security units/div equivalents as the amount of occupied territory changed.

[AlvaroSousa]

You don't need corps sized units. Divisions will do.