Hey everyone, now that we have the ability to address the speed at which an insurgency grows (OPCOM option max simultaneous attack objectives and min civs present for making a civ recruitment center. Thanks @highhead !), I was wondering how you guys go about setting up your long term persistent insurgencies.

I seem to be able to get things feeling pretty good for awhile, and it's really really fun for a few hours, but I'm still struggling with getting too many insurgents after lots of hours of persistent play and could use some mission setup tips. I have some ideas for how to tinker things, but there's so many ways to go about it, and testing takes so long, I'd love it if we could share some pointers and techniques! :)

For example, I had a mission going on Takistan. Starting forces were roughly 40 (Invasion) vs 40 (Assymetric), with the Invasion Commander set to ignore the tiniest objectives so players can do a lot of the fighting in the smallest villages and so AI aren't constantly getting in the player's way.

Assymetric had no preplaced installations, Virtual AI speed at the slowest (25%), 4 simultaneous attack objs, 6 min civs for recruitment center, civ spawns were set to high, and civs had a medium hatred towards the insurgents.

Invasion also got 4 simultaneous attack objs, had a "constant" flow of military logistics, and civs had a low hatred towards them.

Everything goes well for a few hours, but about 2-3 hours in, things start to shift and the insurgents start to grow (though not really in a bad looking way. At that point it's usually 50 Invasion (due to logistics) vs 60 Assymetric). But at about 6 hours, it's totally out of hand, and the battle becomes roughly 40 (invasion) vs 200 (Assymetric) and completely insurmountable.

I've since gone in and increased the BLUFOR spawns so now it's 50 (Invasion) vs 38 (Assymetric)

Assymetric now gets 3 simultaneous attack objs, 10 min civs for recruitment center

Invasion now gets 5 simultaneous attack objs

It seems better, but I'm second guessing my methods. There are SO MANY other ways I could go about this (reduce civs, reduce enemies to just a small cluster of just a few groups to start the mission, increase the Invasion profiles, alter the civ hostility, etc etc.). I'm basically looking for good tips for how to setup a long term persistent insurgency, that has a good number of people to shoot, civs to interact with and HQ's to blow up, without things getting out of hand at some point and the insurgents just totally dominating the map.

Do any of you have any methods you feel like sharing?

Currently trying a new method, where I ensure the player Invasion/Occupation side outnumbers the insurgents by about 20 profiles on mission start, which hopefully will mean I'll have enough to keep things in check and to come to my aid once the insurgents hit their stride.

Example setup:

60 (Invasion) vs 40 (Assymetric), with Invasion filtering to slightly higher priority objs so players can fight in the tiny/small villages without too much interference from friendly AI

Civs: High
Civ hostility: low (Invasion) medium (Assymetric)
Min civs to recruit: 10
Simultaneous attack objs: 5 (Invasion) 3 (Assymetric)
Virtual AI speed: 25%
Pre-placed installations: None

With some of Spyderblack's enemies in vehicles to keep me on my toes, and some CQB to make the occupied objs a bit more populated and dangerous.

Seems to be a bit better, but it takes about 2 hours for the insurgents to really establish themselves so I'll need to test a bit and see if they're still growing too fast.

Yeah I'm liking this setup better so far because I can relax a bit and patrol, village to village, without feeling enormous pressure to discover and destroy all civ recruitment centers just to keep them from growing too big. I've been a bit busy lately, but two hours in, the mission started with around 100 total profiles and now has 97, which is exactly the kind of progression I was looking for.

I'm hopefully it stays that way for awhile longer.