Notes about military

[Kawira]

Had easy 2 wins so far and while I like civilian and government aspects of the game the military is a big miss imo. Running and chasing insurgents throughout the regions is very unrealistic and bit dumb. Military both in Afghan and Iraq relied frst and foremost on military presence and patrolling or striking crucial targets. I feel like garrisons should be the thing we get manually and they just spawn both foreign and local troops we can assign to missions that take certain time like defend garrison/patrol adjacent area or send reinforcements.

That would open possibilities for some real life upgrades like QRF, special forces support and militia training programs

[Thorin]

The military is a big mess currently, you get four local and five coalition units (with two more local with random event), but you need 4-6 for a single insurgency zone, and if got unlucky with two or even worse three, you just simply not enough troops, and no matter how high your support, you cannot get more troops, so the half-dozen insurgent will destroy an area with 10K pop because they just watch and do nothing.

[EurakaLi]

it should be able to get 6 troop for higher price....coalition sux

[Kawira]

Yeah that's what I mean. You can play cat and mouse cornering them but it feels totally stupid and unrealistic (looking by store page they want it to be simple but still authentic). My idea is adressing it by changing army aspect into something very close to real life. Like some regions despite heavy presence still had clashes for many months but soldiers were fighting insurgents locally, not driving all around the country every 2 weeks (and lategame looks exactly like this)

Foreign troops would be balanced in a way that you get more of them early and can pick their garrison but in time they decrease their presence which you must substitute with nationals and militia trained locally (police/militia would add bonus strength to garrisons instead of current mechanics).

To make it more specific - fresh garrisson would have always 1 regiment but it would be hard to defend against even small insurgency without connection from adjacent garrissons or even support missions from other regions. Fights for provinces would be longer and stabilization harder but strategic planning and picking right task for missions would have greater impact than just bruteforcing military funds which actually work super effective if u know what u are doing

[Black Hammer]

Eh, I'm pretty content with the way military works. I do wish the police upgrades rolled out a bit quicker and were more reliable. Had two zones get conquered by a lone floating insurgent in a game on Normal difficulty.

[AC Seaweed]

Depends on map
Saffron Fields's military is quite overpowered actually, by delaying when you fight the insurgents in foxtrot, you can focus on support for the military or civilians
Mountain Pass is a bit dumb, the river ends in the mountains so its hard to corner them, I do think tho you need to attack almost immediatly.
Southern desert is either Stupidly easy or Unfairly hard, military takes forever to get to places, but if they spawn in the top right corner you can corner them and attack at wish, stupidly Easy as insurgents barely spawn elsewhere if they are already active and not being attacked.
Pistachio Forest is a mess, no matter where the insurgents tart, they always have 3 locations to run to, there also a ton of remote forest and mountains and a ton of bridges, if it wasn't for those mountains and forests, it would be ok but military always takes 12+ logistics to hop the border, Its just a tedious mess at this point.
Distant Steppe has the same mistakes as pistachio forest, but the "X-Ray" Island has 4 bridges meaning its pointless, why have a river there, if insurgents and military can easily pass through it without needing them? I personaly think that the river Connecting X-Ray to the rest, to not even be there, And for a new river that seperates some of the normal, rural areas.



This all can be fixed however of moving from one place to another would take less time, mabye even half as much because once insurgents are somewhere, Unless you can deploy anywhere at will and you aren't on brutal, They'll take over the location and then you defeat them and a surprise attack happens there while you are still unprepared and it gives you a message that says:

InSurGeNtS rEtAkE (Name of zone)
And you'll quickly lose the game from lack of stability if you wanted to be unprepared for insurgents on any other map than lucky desert or Saffron.

A failed game (which is 90%)almost always fails from Insurgent activity, or LacK oF StAbILiTy.

[Kawira]

Well I'm not even commenting difficulty (althrough it feels too easy for me) but whole logic behind usage of troops. Remember Fallujah or Karbala? Those cities in theory were controlled by military presence but in practice fights were taking a looong time (and Karbala city hall was even sieged by insurgents despite "control of city"). I think devs think too conservatively about military during civil war. Zarqawi completely changed the face of insurgency focusing more on terror and blending into civil population instead of clear zones of control between rebels and government armies

[AC Seaweed]

I just feel the main problem i have is beating any other map on normal+ and Saffron and Southern desert, I still think military in real lief is actually faster than these, Crosses a bridge in 1 month? Very unrealistic.

[76561198051514398]

Originally posted by Thorin:

The military is a big mess currently, you get four local and five coalition units (with two more local with random event), but you need 4-6 for a single insurgency zone, and if got unlucky with two or even worse three, you just simply not enough troops, and no matter how high your support, you cannot get more troops, so the half-dozen insurgent will destroy an area with 10K pop because they just watch and do nothing.

I've done the first 3 missions on regular with only using National Troops, not very difficult at all.

I don't know about higher difficulties.

[76561198051514398]

Originally posted by Kawira:

Well I'm not even commenting difficulty (althrough it feels too easy for me) but whole logic behind usage of troops. Remember Fallujah or Karbala? Those cities in theory were controlled by military presence but in practice fights were taking a looong time (and Karbala city hall was even sieged by insurgents despite "control of city"). I think devs think too conservatively about military during civil war. Zarqawi completely changed the face of insurgency focusing more on terror and blending into civil population instead of clear zones of control between rebels and government armies

Fallujah and Karbala were Iraq, this game is Afghanistan. The Taliban very much fight for control of territory and launch probing attacks into Coalition/Government areas until they think they can overrun them.

This game portrays the tactics used by the Taliban quite well.

[Thorin]

Originally posted by JohnTheGreat:

I've done the first 3 missions on regular with only using National Troops, not very difficult at all.

I don't know about higher difficulties.

Its not about difficulty, its about randomness. When they stay in one place, and wait with the random surprise attack until you cleared them, easy and you just won. But sometimes they start second and third group before that, and you simply run out of troops.

And you cannot place only national troops unless special advisor used, so, ye...

[76561198051514398]

Originally posted by Thorin:

Originally posted by JohnTheGreat:

I've done the first 3 missions on regular with only using National Troops, not very difficult at all.

I don't know about higher difficulties.

Its not about difficulty, its about randomness. When they stay in one place, and wait with the random surprise attack until you cleared them, easy and you just won. But sometimes they start second and third group before that, and you simply run out of troops.

And you cannot place only national troops unless special advisor used, so, ye...

I haven't noticed any randomness, you just have to corner them and they're easy enough to destroyed.

And yes you can, your first set of coalition troops get sent home super early and from then on you can just use National Troops.

[Buntkreuz]

I already made a very long post with feedback about this, im on the same page with you.
The military is not well executed and rather an annoyance than a feature.
The retreat is not only bugged (like retreating through two military units instead of retreating t othe own lines), but also not interesting.
I get it, rebels can occur anywhere as long as they have support in an area.
But i had rebels retreat from battle into stabilized areas that had militia support, police and the locals on my side helping me out. Yet rebels just went there, destroyed all the upgrades and destabilized the region, to then just claim it.
I dont get how militia and police is unable to provide any minor defense. They should be able to defend an area from rebels. Either weakening them and slowing the destabilization down A LOT, or outright pushing them back.
Yet these upgrades are pointless.

Besides that, my main gripe is with about 4 points:

1.) the military/combat is not transparent. Nothing tells me why and how my military performs and what reason there is it might not perform well.
I cant make decisions when i dont know what happens.

2.) The military is no deep mechanic but rather a blant placeholder. I cant tell my tropps to push the enemy into a certain direction foring them to retreat into a direction i want them, i cant order special assignments and tasks to fight them.
Its just red dots fighting a military icon.

3.) Further i feel like the rebels themselves arent bound to the games rules it proposes.
As said above i had several instances where the game broke its own rules, claiming you have to surround rebels to kill them off and/or rebels will retreat away from military, yet i had rebels several times retreat from one combat into the next combat and then into my backlines, which was nonsense (and apparently is a bug they now know of).
But that aside, i feel like military needs much longer to be moved, while rebels can just walk anywhere right away in no time.

4.) Last but not least, the rebels feel blant, because they are just red dots.
Theres no twist to them.
They should perform assassinations, perform bombings (for example to destroy infrastructure), organize demonstrations and sabotage and not just come out and fight.
They main strength is to bring instability and thats done by causing fear, destroying stabilization structures and establishments etc. not just by running and gunning.
Rebels as of now, are feature with no, with no thought and without any intelligence.
There should be much more to them.
As of now, i would have prefered if rebels are rather entirely "event"-like.
Meaning that they cause trouble destroying stuff and causing that people turn against me.
You know, the plague inc. desease spread sort of mechanic. Not tangible dots i have to fight.

All in all, the games military feels like the worst streamlined combat feature you could imagine for a strategy game. Totally empty, not really thoughtful.
Cheap, in other words.
A more desease like way to go with rebels would have fitted the series much better, as we know that from plague inc.
They didnt do that, because i think they wanted to set the game a bit apart from Plague Inc. to not let it appear like a reskin.
But probably it would work better if military was a positive influence against the rebel influence. Take the rebel dot wars completely out and change it entirely, or make the combat/military and the rebels (most importantly) much deeper.
The placeholder mechanic it is right now makes it play bad.

[Kawira]

Originally posted by Dr. Damn Nation:

I already made a very long post with feedback about this, im on the same page with you.
The military is not well executed and rather an annoyance than a feature.
The retreat is not only bugged (like retreating through two military units instead of retreating t othe own lines), but also not interesting.
I get it, rebels can occur anywhere as long as they have support in an area.
But i had rebels retreat from battle into stabilized areas that had militia support, police and the locals on my side helping me out. Yet rebels just went there, destroyed all the upgrades and destabilized the region, to then just claim it.
I dont get how militia and police is unable to provide any minor defense. They should be able to defend an area from rebels. Either weakening them and slowing the destabilization down A LOT, or outright pushing them back.
Yet these upgrades are pointless.

Besides that, my main gripe is with about 4 points:

1.) the military/combat is not transparent. Nothing tells me why and how my military performs and what reason there is it might not perform well.
I cant make decisions when i dont know what happens.

2.) The military is no deep mechanic but rather a blant placeholder. I cant tell my tropps to push the enemy into a certain direction foring them to retreat into a direction i want them, i cant order special assignments and tasks to fight them.
Its just red dots fighting a military icon.

3.) Further i feel like the rebels themselves arent bound to the games rules it proposes.
As said above i had several instances where the game broke its own rules, claiming you have to surround rebels to kill them off and/or rebels will retreat away from military, yet i had rebels several times retreat from one combat into the next combat and then into my backlines, which was nonsense (and apparently is a bug they now know of).
But that aside, i feel like military needs much longer to be moved, while rebels can just walk anywhere right away in no time.

4.) Last but not least, the rebels feel blant, because they are just red dots.
Theres no twist to them.
They should perform assassinations, perform bombings (for example to destroy infrastructure), organize demonstrations and sabotage and not just come out and fight.
They main strength is to bring instability and thats done by causing fear, destroying stabilization structures and establishments etc. not just by running and gunning.
Rebels as of now, are feature with no, with no thought and without any intelligence.
There should be much more to them.
As of now, i would have prefered if rebels are rather entirely "event"-like.
Meaning that they cause trouble destroying stuff and causing that people turn against me.
You know, the plague inc. desease spread sort of mechanic. Not tangible dots i have to fight.

All in all, the games military feels like the worst streamlined combat feature you could imagine for a strategy game. Totally empty, not really thoughtful.
Cheap, in other words.
A more desease like way to go with rebels would have fitted the series much better, as we know that from plague inc.
They didnt do that, because i think they wanted to set the game a bit apart from Plague Inc. to not let it appear like a reskin.
But probably it would work better if military was a positive influence against the rebel influence. Take the rebel dot wars completely out and change it entirely, or make the combat/military and the rebels (most importantly) much deeper.
The placeholder mechanic it is right now makes it play bad.

Yeah I was considering your idea too actually. Like make it more micro manage with missions and crucial decisions or more passive with special upgrades and events that let you make some clutch (hopefully hard) decisions. I'd say the biggest factor during middle east insurgencies was evolution of both insurgent tactics (terror, using civilians, bombing etc) and measures taken by coalition (switching humvees for MRAPs, FOBs, QRF, different engagement tactics)

[Black Hammer]

It's also worth pointing out that the Insurgents represent an organized, armed force fighting you more or less in the field and not some distributed terrorist force.

[Buntkreuz]

Originally posted by Black Hammer:

It's also worth pointing out that the Insurgents represent an organized, armed force fighting you more or less in the field and not some distributed terrorist force.

sure but that doesnt matter.
Every militaristic force is able to perform a multitude of tactics.
Destroying infrastructure, causing fear through bombings or attacking specific targets (like a water silo) and assassinate people is not a matter of an unorganized force (in fact its the opposite).

Actually i think you underestimate what terrorists are. Its a mere term for people considered to work against a government/authority by using force.
It is no indicator of their organization level or their military force.
And all of the named tactics are used by any force/army on this planet. Yet, these insurgents are somehow unable to target specific structures or people.

That means, your point is supporting that the rebels in this game should be able to perform these actions. Since they are an organized armed force, they are able to pull off more complicated or ambitious tactics.