Dev Diary #25 - Guerrilla Warfare I 🔥
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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Modern guerrilla warfare was born between the 1930s and 50s, maturing right around the start date of Espiocracy.
Spectacular successes of insurgencies and revolutions - from Yugoslavia to Cuba - and dramatic failures of counterinsurgencies - from Indochina to Afghanistan - solidified popular uprisings as a nation-forming tool. These conflicts were often anything but clear, a stark contrast to pleasant war rooms of WW2. Here, irregular combatants were virtually invisible, cycling between hideouts and hit-and-runs, silently winning over villages, and corrupting local security forces. This messiness is common for most Cold War conflicts, where insurgencies erupted in reaction to other successful insurgencies, irregular forces evolved into conventional armies, military organizations employed guerrilla tactics, foreign states used civilians as disposable agents of influence, and the fire of civil wars ravaged entire countries for many years.
This developer diary marks the start of series about armed conflicts in the game. Today we begin at the most elemental level: conflicts where combatants can be indistinguishable from civilians. We will take a look at the general structure and course of guerrilla conflicts. Player agency and interactions are largely omitted - they will receive a separate developer diary.
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How did we go from this...
Lawrence of Arabia, frame from the 1962 movie
...to this...
Situation in Afghanistan around 2009. It's not as bad as it looks, the original presentation breaks that into 30 slides: http://www.willreno.org/Afghanistan_Dynamic_Planning.pdf
...in eighty years?
As per usual with Espiocracy, we begin by poking human psychology. What convinces ordinary people, civilians, to take up arms and risk their life?
[h2]Causes[/h2]
People need real reasons to volunteer. Usually, guerrilla conflicts in the game are propelled by multiple fundamental causes:
Sometimes people judge insurgency as not possible at all - postwar Germany is good example of a population that probably won't wind up in wider guerrilla warfare. Exhausted and starved crowds, fed by strong occupation authorities, receiving promises of rebuilding severely bombed country - they are not keen on assisting Werwolf or even opposing forced expulsion from western Poland. Moreover, large propaganda campaigns, enormous POW camps, widespread judicial and military actions were further proving that any resistance would be truly futile.
Other times, armed resistance can be possible but people usually require the last spark(s) to begin armed struggle. This may be a reaction to political change (which includes anything from lost elections to the death of the leader), widely popularized event (for instance activists killed by the government), introduction of highly controversial policy, or protests evolving into violence.
There is no arbitrary first day of a conflict. Fights can silently escalate, under the guise of criminal activities, beyond the control of local police forces, and lead to the loss of first villages and entities. Ultimately, population is funneling their will to fight via ubiquitous system of actors, which here focus on political parties creating military wings (like SWAPO), armed organizations (such as many postwar partisan movements), and obviously state actors.
[h2]Indirect Conflict[/h2]
There are two main resources acquired and spent in guerrilla wars.
People - recruited, trained, and fed. Even if the population widely sympathizes with the causes, organizations have to put a lot of effort into recruitment (historically, there were for instance only 7,000 insurgents for 1 million supporters of the Malayan Emergency). Low numbers mean that losing any of them can be noticeable. In addition to vital members, wider popular support provides food and hideouts for insurgents - or lack of these when people remain loyal to the other side. Last but not least, population is also a priceless source of intelligence for all sides of the conflict.
Weapons - acquired, stored, distributed, resupplied with ammunition. Their flow across borders, transport networks, and caches is directly simulated, which creates emergent defensive challenges and opportunities to strike for all sides. Postwar abundance of weapons favors civil wars early in the game but so do regional conflicts (leading to very practical waves of irregular wars), black market, or mass production of the iconic AK-47.
In a cycle of sorts, insurgents procure people and weapons and use them to get more people and weapons. At the same time, state actors try to deny access to people and weapons. Needless to say, actions constantly influence both factors in many dimensions, for instance, indiscriminate attacks or ill-disciplined members can anger the population whereas protection of villages against them can earn the support of local people.
Indirect competition is extrapolated into the wider game world. All kinds of neutral actors can be brought over to one of the sides with promises, protection, coercion, and alignment with the causes. Usually, they are more or less opportunistic, deciding which side promises better favors and has a higher chance to actually implement them (by winning the war) but these loyalties are highly fluid. Naturally, support extends far into the international world, with countries providing training, sanctuaries, and weapons. Here, borders take an extremely important role, with access to the border of an ally often making an entire difference between victory and defeat.
[h2]Direct Conflict[/h2]
The precise course of the war - establishing camps, conducting ambushes, raids, battles, patrols, sweeps, cordons, aerial campaigns, and other tactics - depends on multiple factors. In addition to people and weapons spent on attacks, local terrain plays critical role. Mountains, jungles, and forests provide necessary hideouts. Dense countryside can serve as a powerful base of members and defines main targets in the conflict (eg. compare Indonesian National Revolution in a country with 15% urbanization - to Cuban Revolution on an island urbanized in 60%). In more motorized countries, transport networks become common and very useful targets, providing and denying supplies.
Clashes between asymmetric belligerents or factions of civil war are tied to the notion of contested territories and cities. Without conventional army and law enforcement services, it's usually difficult to control vast liberated areas. This is true also for the state apparatus under pressure that leads governors to spread their forces thin. Oftentimes, one or more sides focus simply on undermining authority over the territories of their opponents. Failure to protect controlled territories may introduce the feeling of helplessness and betrayal, that can quickly turn into action motivated by the sheer need to survive, leading to entire villages, police units, and companies changing sides in exchange for safety.
Guerrilla warfare is the queen of ambiguous decisions. Villagers punished by the state are angered both at the government (as punishment is usually collective, indiscriminate, and/or based on false intelligence) and the insurgents (for lack of sufficient protection and being the ultimate cause of punishment). Patrolling activities can very risky and poor for morale (lowering for instance enlistment rates), especially in environments such as jungles, but lack of pronounced state presence breeds insurgency. Introduced repressions push the government into a spiral of harsher and harsher policies, in the fear that concessions would suggest weakness and grant legitimacy to the insurgents. Use of corrupted officials with poor morale - or mercenaries and foreign volunteers - can prove disastrous for the popular reception but can be necessary for the progress in combat.
[h2]Spoils of Guerrilla War[/h2]
Most irregular conflicts are about attrition that wears off capabilities of all sides over years. Unlawful combatants are generally too weak to push for decisive battles. Unless state authorities flee (which is often the case) or negotiate a peace deal (usually when the body count becomes too high), the main road to victory lies in conventionalization. This can happen in multiple ways:
The boundary between irregular and regular warfare is not sharp. A new conventional army can work alongside volunteering partisans - and, vice versa, a national conventional army in retreat or under occupation can resort to underground combat.
It's not required to conquer or hold the capital for any of the sides. Although it can lead to decapitation of government, generally governments do evacuate, and other sides can make any city a new capital of their self-proclaimed state. Further consequences of such a conflict play out equally on the ground - by rebuilding security infrastructure, preventing secondary insurgencies, disarming the population - and in the sphere of diplomacy, where international recognition can solidify the new status quo.
[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]
In summary and as a follow-up to the Afghanistan graph:
The next dev diary, Guerrilla Warfare II will explore mainly the interaction and player agency.
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
---
"War upon rebellion was messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife" - Thomas Edward Lawrence
---
Modern guerrilla warfare was born between the 1930s and 50s, maturing right around the start date of Espiocracy.
Spectacular successes of insurgencies and revolutions - from Yugoslavia to Cuba - and dramatic failures of counterinsurgencies - from Indochina to Afghanistan - solidified popular uprisings as a nation-forming tool. These conflicts were often anything but clear, a stark contrast to pleasant war rooms of WW2. Here, irregular combatants were virtually invisible, cycling between hideouts and hit-and-runs, silently winning over villages, and corrupting local security forces. This messiness is common for most Cold War conflicts, where insurgencies erupted in reaction to other successful insurgencies, irregular forces evolved into conventional armies, military organizations employed guerrilla tactics, foreign states used civilians as disposable agents of influence, and the fire of civil wars ravaged entire countries for many years.
This developer diary marks the start of series about armed conflicts in the game. Today we begin at the most elemental level: conflicts where combatants can be indistinguishable from civilians. We will take a look at the general structure and course of guerrilla conflicts. Player agency and interactions are largely omitted - they will receive a separate developer diary.
---
How did we go from this...
Lawrence of Arabia, frame from the 1962 movie...to this...
Situation in Afghanistan around 2009. It's not as bad as it looks, the original presentation breaks that into 30 slides: http://www.willreno.org/Afghanistan_Dynamic_Planning.pdf...in eighty years?
As per usual with Espiocracy, we begin by poking human psychology. What convinces ordinary people, civilians, to take up arms and risk their life?
[h2]Causes[/h2]
People need real reasons to volunteer. Usually, guerrilla conflicts in the game are propelled by multiple fundamental causes:
- Government perceived as illegitimate (eg. after a coup)
- Ethnic and historic self-determination
- Opposition to foreign interference
- Ideology (usually communist or anti-communist)
- Religious beliefs
- Severe political repression
- Economic crisis
- Power vacuum
- Weak opponents
- Access to tools of irregular warfare
Sometimes people judge insurgency as not possible at all - postwar Germany is good example of a population that probably won't wind up in wider guerrilla warfare. Exhausted and starved crowds, fed by strong occupation authorities, receiving promises of rebuilding severely bombed country - they are not keen on assisting Werwolf or even opposing forced expulsion from western Poland. Moreover, large propaganda campaigns, enormous POW camps, widespread judicial and military actions were further proving that any resistance would be truly futile.
Other times, armed resistance can be possible but people usually require the last spark(s) to begin armed struggle. This may be a reaction to political change (which includes anything from lost elections to the death of the leader), widely popularized event (for instance activists killed by the government), introduction of highly controversial policy, or protests evolving into violence.
There is no arbitrary first day of a conflict. Fights can silently escalate, under the guise of criminal activities, beyond the control of local police forces, and lead to the loss of first villages and entities. Ultimately, population is funneling their will to fight via ubiquitous system of actors, which here focus on political parties creating military wings (like SWAPO), armed organizations (such as many postwar partisan movements), and obviously state actors.
[h2]Indirect Conflict[/h2]
There are two main resources acquired and spent in guerrilla wars.
People - recruited, trained, and fed. Even if the population widely sympathizes with the causes, organizations have to put a lot of effort into recruitment (historically, there were for instance only 7,000 insurgents for 1 million supporters of the Malayan Emergency). Low numbers mean that losing any of them can be noticeable. In addition to vital members, wider popular support provides food and hideouts for insurgents - or lack of these when people remain loyal to the other side. Last but not least, population is also a priceless source of intelligence for all sides of the conflict.
Weapons - acquired, stored, distributed, resupplied with ammunition. Their flow across borders, transport networks, and caches is directly simulated, which creates emergent defensive challenges and opportunities to strike for all sides. Postwar abundance of weapons favors civil wars early in the game but so do regional conflicts (leading to very practical waves of irregular wars), black market, or mass production of the iconic AK-47.
In a cycle of sorts, insurgents procure people and weapons and use them to get more people and weapons. At the same time, state actors try to deny access to people and weapons. Needless to say, actions constantly influence both factors in many dimensions, for instance, indiscriminate attacks or ill-disciplined members can anger the population whereas protection of villages against them can earn the support of local people.
Indirect competition is extrapolated into the wider game world. All kinds of neutral actors can be brought over to one of the sides with promises, protection, coercion, and alignment with the causes. Usually, they are more or less opportunistic, deciding which side promises better favors and has a higher chance to actually implement them (by winning the war) but these loyalties are highly fluid. Naturally, support extends far into the international world, with countries providing training, sanctuaries, and weapons. Here, borders take an extremely important role, with access to the border of an ally often making an entire difference between victory and defeat.
[h2]Direct Conflict[/h2]
The precise course of the war - establishing camps, conducting ambushes, raids, battles, patrols, sweeps, cordons, aerial campaigns, and other tactics - depends on multiple factors. In addition to people and weapons spent on attacks, local terrain plays critical role. Mountains, jungles, and forests provide necessary hideouts. Dense countryside can serve as a powerful base of members and defines main targets in the conflict (eg. compare Indonesian National Revolution in a country with 15% urbanization - to Cuban Revolution on an island urbanized in 60%). In more motorized countries, transport networks become common and very useful targets, providing and denying supplies.
Clashes between asymmetric belligerents or factions of civil war are tied to the notion of contested territories and cities. Without conventional army and law enforcement services, it's usually difficult to control vast liberated areas. This is true also for the state apparatus under pressure that leads governors to spread their forces thin. Oftentimes, one or more sides focus simply on undermining authority over the territories of their opponents. Failure to protect controlled territories may introduce the feeling of helplessness and betrayal, that can quickly turn into action motivated by the sheer need to survive, leading to entire villages, police units, and companies changing sides in exchange for safety.
Guerrilla warfare is the queen of ambiguous decisions. Villagers punished by the state are angered both at the government (as punishment is usually collective, indiscriminate, and/or based on false intelligence) and the insurgents (for lack of sufficient protection and being the ultimate cause of punishment). Patrolling activities can very risky and poor for morale (lowering for instance enlistment rates), especially in environments such as jungles, but lack of pronounced state presence breeds insurgency. Introduced repressions push the government into a spiral of harsher and harsher policies, in the fear that concessions would suggest weakness and grant legitimacy to the insurgents. Use of corrupted officials with poor morale - or mercenaries and foreign volunteers - can prove disastrous for the popular reception but can be necessary for the progress in combat.
[h2]Spoils of Guerrilla War[/h2]
Most irregular conflicts are about attrition that wears off capabilities of all sides over years. Unlawful combatants are generally too weak to push for decisive battles. Unless state authorities flee (which is often the case) or negotiate a peace deal (usually when the body count becomes too high), the main road to victory lies in conventionalization. This can happen in multiple ways:
- Establishment of state-like administration and military order (eg. communists in the Greek Civil War)
- Acquisition of heavy weapons (eg. Viet Minh in the First Indochina War)
- Conventional army units surrendering and joining the insurgents (eg. 2021 in Afghanistan)
- Creation of air and navy units (eg. Yugoslav partisans)
- Inviting foreign army, possibly under disguise (eg. little green men in Donbas)
The boundary between irregular and regular warfare is not sharp. A new conventional army can work alongside volunteering partisans - and, vice versa, a national conventional army in retreat or under occupation can resort to underground combat.
It's not required to conquer or hold the capital for any of the sides. Although it can lead to decapitation of government, generally governments do evacuate, and other sides can make any city a new capital of their self-proclaimed state. Further consequences of such a conflict play out equally on the ground - by rebuilding security infrastructure, preventing secondary insurgencies, disarming the population - and in the sphere of diplomacy, where international recognition can solidify the new status quo.
[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]
In summary and as a follow-up to the Afghanistan graph:
The next dev diary, Guerrilla Warfare II will explore mainly the interaction and player agency.
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
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"War upon rebellion was messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife" - Thomas Edward Lawrence