Resistance: how it works

All numbers on this page are resolved at build time from the game's own common/defines/00_defines.lua — they cannot go stale.

Two meters per occupied state

Every state you occupy tracks resistance and compliance, each 0–100. A newly occupied state starts at 1 resistance and 0 compliance. They pull in opposite directions: resistance feeds sabotage and garrison attacks, compliance feeds factories, manpower, and intel from the state. When the state changes controller, compliance takes a -0.5 hit — half of it gone — so liberating an ally's state (or losing and retaking your own) restarts much of the long compliance climb.

The resistance target

Resistance does not wander; it chases a target the game recomputes from your occupation policy and the state's situation:

The situation terms are all defines: having a claim on the state (-5), the war being over (-10), the original owner having capitulated but fighting on (+10). Victory points raise it in steps — the pairs { 0, 0, 5, 5, 20, 10, 50, 20 } read as (VP threshold, bonus), so a 50-VP state adds 20. Nearly empty states barely resist: below 10000 people the target drops by -20, below 1000 by -50.

Note the compliance term: every point of compliance pulls the target down by half a point — and only compliance can push the target below 10. Harsh garrisons suppress resistance; only compliance dissolves it.

Moving toward the target

Each day resistance drifts toward the target at a speed proportional to the gap $\text{target}-\text{current}$: growth uses base factor 0.2, decay (when you are above target) uses 0.1, both clamped between 0.01 and 100 points per day. Decay runs +25% faster where you hold a claim. Growth being twice decay is why resistance spikes fast after an occupation-law slip but takes long to burn back down.

Compliance: the long game

Compliance grows a flat 0.075 per day at base — about 27 points a year — modified by +10% once the war is over and +5% where you hold a claim. At 100 it slowly sags (-0.083 per day), and a government-in-exile working against you drains -0.015 per point of its legitimacy per day. States you lose keep their compliance memory, decaying only 0.05 per day until you retake them.

Garrisons: suppression demand and the power law

A state's garrison demand is set by its resistance:

so demand never exceeds 50 no matter how hot the state burns — garrison quality past that point is wasted. How well an under-supplied garrison performs is a power law:

Equipment is cubed, manpower only squared: a garrison at 80% equipment fights at half strength, one at 80% manpower at nearly two-thirds. When your factories are tight, the garrison's guns matter more than its men.

When resistance strikes

At maximum resistance, the chance of resistance activity on each check is 0.312 (31.2%), scaling down with lower resistance — and even a full-strength garrison is penetrated with at least a 0.02 (2%) chance. Each attack on the garrison costs it 0.016 of its manpower (1.6%) and 0.02 of its equipment (2%). The garrison template's hardness shrinks those losses, capped at 0.9 (90%) — which is why armored-car and light-tank garrisons bleed an order of magnitude less than cavalry.

Holding an occupation — checklist

1. Pick the occupation law for the target, not the moment — resistance chases the target; the law is the biggest lever in the formula.
2. Build compliance early — each point cuts the resistance target by half a point (-0.5), and only compliance pushes the target below 10.
3. Keep garrisons fully equipped before fully manned — strength scales with equipment cubed but manpower only squared.
4. Use high-hardness garrison templates — losses from resistance attacks shrink with hardness up to the 0.9 (90%) cap.
5. Don't over-suppress — demand is capped at 50; excess suppression changes nothing, but compliance keeps paying forever.