Ahhhhh, more elightenment about it all. Now I undrstand how to do a blitzkrieg. Also, you can put the cookie itslef into your sig. Makes it colourful.
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Thanks a ton both of you, this should be stickied somewhere or something as it's incredibly useful for us newer players who are having difficulties understanding the new system!!!
But then i noticed that OB West was sending some troops from down south up north to guard the newly occupied provinces. And doing that in a situation where the French were actually successful in breaking through and had taken 4 provinces. Plus, the large scale attack is confusing enough without units of another theatre marching around
Is this WAD or am i doing something terribly wrong?
Hmmmm, and one more thing: when i ordered Wermacht to take positions near Belgian/Duch border, they nicely strategically deployed all units there... exept for HQs that were left behing to Poland. Is this again me pressing something wrong?
Remember that an theatre HQ AI that has been turned on will consider itself responsible for all of its theatre. This explains why your OB West shifted troops from the French border it controlled to cover the expanded border you'd created by declaring war on the low countries.
I'd never actually had the AI create a new theatre, so the following is a bit of a supposition. By taking away all of Ober. der Whermacht's area of control, shifting OB west's area east, and creating a new theater for the east, it was essentially destroying Ober. der Whermacht. The proper course of action would have been to transfer control from all divisions under it to either OB West or the new HQ and then disband it. The fact that it essentially took an existing theatre's area slightly shifted it and created a new theatre HQ to deal with that area makes it sound to me like the theatre redraw routine is perhaps a bit wonky, but testing will have to see.
In any case, to prevent the unfortunate situation you had with your forces along the french border, you'd have been better of leaving OB West under human control, then you could make sure that all units facing the maginot line were under Heeregruppe C, which is an army group under OB West, turn on *that* HQ's AI and set it to a defensive or prepare stance with an objective within the French border just inside the maginot line and it should handle itself properly. You could then create a new army group or move one or several that were originally with Ober. der Whermacht and give *it* the offensive objectives.
In the AAR I'll begin writing in a bit, my basic plan to attempt to recreate the battle of france to at least some degree is to have three army groups, the one in the south defending the siegefried line, the one in the north set to 'attack' orders into the Netherlands, and one set to prepare stance with highly mobile forces in the center facing Belgium. One the attack into the Netherlands has developed and the French have committed forces to it, I can unleash the center army group with an axis of attack along the ardennes to first envelop the French (and British if the Brits actually commit an actual BEF, natch) in the Netherlands, and once the pocket I create has been cleared, have the center army blitz into France.
As to what happened with your HQ's and your units, did you just give them move orders? Did you make sure to detach the HQ's into their new position in the western front hierarchy?
If you set objectives and attached them properly, then I have no idea what's happening. Make sure you did, is all I'm saying.
Chilango2 and potski, thank you very much for the enlightenment!
I was really unsure about this AI-thing and had no time to test it out, but you guys blew away all doubts and clarified what the manual left shrouded. Thanks again, this was the best read in terms of information.
I was really unsure about this AI-thing and had no time to test it out, but you guys blew away all doubts and clarified what the manual left shrouded. Thanks again, this was the best read in terms of information.
Thank you so much for this!
Now I have a question as well. From what I understand, each hirachy level, receives bonuses from the above HQ. Meaning my Corps, gets a bonus from the Army Group, the Army, and last the theatre HQ. So the higher the hirachy the more bonuses the devisions below get. Now if you, lets say turn off AI for the Theatre HQ, beacuse you want a more manual Army approach, does this mean that my troops now will no longer receive the theatre bonus? Or does this not depend on simply turning on/off AI control, but instead completly detach a HQ from hirachy. For example, let's say I would completly detach all Armies from OKW HQ, basically leaving it as a shell, and therefore all detached Armies would no longer receive the Theatre bonus?
In any case wouldn't everyone wants to put as many devisions as possibble in the lowest hirachy level, corps, in order to get as many bosunses as possible from the evry additional hirachy above? Or is there some kind of balancing out system?
Now I have a question as well. From what I understand, each hirachy level, receives bonuses from the above HQ. Meaning my Corps, gets a bonus from the Army Group, the Army, and last the theatre HQ. So the higher the hirachy the more bonuses the devisions below get. Now if you, lets say turn off AI for the Theatre HQ, beacuse you want a more manual Army approach, does this mean that my troops now will no longer receive the theatre bonus? Or does this not depend on simply turning on/off AI control, but instead completly detach a HQ from hirachy. For example, let's say I would completly detach all Armies from OKW HQ, basically leaving it as a shell, and therefore all detached Armies would no longer receive the Theatre bonus?
In any case wouldn't everyone wants to put as many devisions as possibble in the lowest hirachy level, corps, in order to get as many bosunses as possible from the evry additional hirachy above? Or is there some kind of balancing out system?
The bonus has nothing to do with AI control, only with were the unit is attached.
Not sure about the benefits of having divisions attached to a higher level, e.g. army. I do know that it allows the AI, when you let it control the army, to attach these divisions where it needs them (it won't change pre-existing corps hierarchies). Other than that... no idea.
Not sure about the benefits of having divisions attached to a higher level, e.g. army. I do know that it allows the AI, when you let it control the army, to attach these divisions where it needs them (it won't change pre-existing corps hierarchies). Other than that... no idea.
Thanks for this very informative tutorial Chilango2 (and also thanks to potski for the "edits").
This information should somehow find his way into the wiki. A lot of people can benefit from these explanations...
This information should somehow find his way into the wiki. A lot of people can benefit from these explanations...
That Theatre AI controll thingy is awesome, but where is the strategy depth, what HOI 1 and II offered? You can now do the Poland campaign by 3-4 clicks and thats it... Just sit and watch...
I understand, the Fuehrer did it the same, but still... HOI should remain a game
I understand, the Fuehrer did it the same, but still
... HOI should remain a game
That Theatre AI controll thingy is awesome, but where is the strategy depth, what HOI 1 and II offered? You can now do the Poland campaign by 3-4 clicks and thats it... Just sit and watch...
I understand, the Fuehrer did it the same, but still
(smacks head)...
Seriously???
You can set up the AI if you want, but you don't have too.... it's an option...
Alternatively you can play it yourself....
Lets say I want the AI to defend the Maginot line, but I want the rest of my forces on manual control to make an attack. Obviously this HQ will have to be independant of OB. West, because it needs a different objective. I know that I will put it on defensive stance. But how can I give it an order to defend just a portion of the border with France?
Thanks again! You're really helping to get the hang of the whole system.
But now, the following problem: after taking Poland, i tried clicking on that theatre button in the production menu and voila! It worked! I had 3 theatres... OB West in well, west. Wermachtsomethingsomething in Berlin and new one somewhere in Poland. The problem being that OB West and New HQ divided the area between them, leaving poor Wermacht without any territories. OB West moved their area of influence a bit to the east, covering amongst others Kiel and Berlin (and sending some troops to protect these areas too, nice chaps that they are), while New HQ took Poland and Eastern Germany.
Cool, i thought- that leaves Wermacht free to do whatever i want. So i detatched some units to New HQ and sent the rest of them to Belgian/Dutch borders. After a while, all was ready and i attacked, wiping floor with Belgium and Holland and marching my troops to south. But then i noticed that OB West was sending some troops from down south up north to guard the newly occupied provinces. And doing that in a situation where the French were actually successful in breaking through and had taken 4 provinces. Plus, the large scale attack is confusing enough without units of another theatre marching around
Is this WAD or am i doing something terribly wrong?
Hmmmm, and one more thing: when i ordered Wermacht to take positions near Belgian/Duch border, they nicely strategically deployed all units there... exept for HQs that were left behing to Poland. Is this again me pressing something wrong?
Oh, and thanks again
You need to turn on the Theatre Mapmode to be sure here, but I think you may have had only two Theatres after the surrender of Poland.
What happens is that when you allow it to do so, the game will redraw the Theatre Areas. If it creates a Theatre Area which has no Theatre HQ located somewhere within it, then it will create a new HQ. Let's say it has created a new area covering just Poland, then there will be no Theatre HQ there and it might create one and call it "Warsaw HQ".
The reason there is no Theatre HQ there is because Oberk. der Wehrmacht is still located in Berlin, and is not in Poland. As the troops advanced into Poland some HQs will follow them, but the Theatre HQs tend to be fairly static - they have no reason to be near the frontline.
This can mean that you can end up with more Theatre HQs than Theatre Areas. Hitting the Theatre Forces button the Production Screen should sort some of this out. Everything that was attached to Oberk. der Wehrmacht which is now in Poland should be attached to Warsaw HQ, and everything within Germany should be attached to OB West.
And this should leave Oberk. der Wehrmacht with no units assigned. I'm not 100% sure that will be the case. But either way, this is the time when you really need to MANUALLY sort out the OOB's. You can't entirely rely on the AI to do everything for you here. You have just won in Poland, now you need to ready your forces for the campaign in the west. You need to ensure that the right forces are attached to the right Theatre HQ, and that OB West has all of the resources it will need for what you are going to ask it to do.
The Demo, and the later scenarios in the full game, are set-up to start with fairly reasonable OOB's, which have been based closely on the historical OOB's for each country, with some adjustments for game balance. You can play the 1939 scenario as Germany on 1st September 1939 without any major changes to the OOB's. You cannot expect to do the same for the Battle of France.
What you must not do is leave Oberk. der Wehrmacht as a Theatre HQ without any Theatre Area of its own and expect it to do the normal job of a Theatre. It is possible to occasionally have two HQs in one Area, but the AI expects to have one. Unless you are absolutely confident about what you are going to do with Oberk. der Wehrmacht, especially if you are going to manually manage the units attached to it, then I would suggest that you disband it. Using AI Control at Theatre level it is no longer required. If you want to keep the flavour names, just rename "Warsaw HQ" to "Oberk. der Wehrmacht".
Once you are more familiar with this, then the answer in future might be to not reorganise the Theatres immediately after the surrender of Poland. First manually SR Oberk. der Wehrmacht to Warsaw, and then reorganise the Theatres. I'm sure you will find that it will then become the HQ for the new eastern front area, and a new HQ will not be created.
Once you have sorted out the HQs, that leaves you with a straighforward organisation of your forces: one Theatre to fight the western Allies; and one Theatre to garrison the Poland border with the Soviet Union, and deal with any partisan uprisings there. You can then check what Army Groups and Armies are assigned to each of the Theatres.
Can you give corps and armies movement and attack orders without setting them on AI control, or does it only works with single divisions?
The lowest level of HQ that it is useful to directly give move and attack orders is the corps. It has divisions directly attached to it. If you go higher up, however, HQ brigades are not frontline commands, they tend not to have any combat divisions directly attached to them. If you give them move or attack orders, they will not command the corps, armies etc to move in tandem with them.
Is there a way to get new devisions into the hierarchy without doing this all manually? Doing this for 40+ divisions isn't really my idea of having a nice game.
You can have the computer auto deploy, which will ahve it drop it into the hierachy, or if you manually deploy, deploy it to the appropriate HQ.
Yes auto-deploy seems to work.
But when doing it manually I get a LOOONG list of all kinds of hq-names, which are really hard to differentiate from each other. It would be nice if they could color-code or atleast do something so I know which HQ is theatre, amry,corps etc. My understanding is that divisions should only be dropped in the lowest hq-type not the others. So those could be greyed out or something. Right now my main theatre hq is filled to the brim with divisions my bad I know.
But again auto-deploy feels so strange, when I would do that I never know when units are done.
I rather put the armies together myself but right now I feel the UI is too labor intensive to do it.
Just find it a shame that when I tried hoi2 I could easily deploy and make my own armies, which felt good. Right now all that is taken away because it got too complex leaving me with no option to let everything be done by the AI. So it feels now that they made the game so complicated that only an AI can manage it properly.. really.. really strange.
My manual action comes down to me wanting to deploy a new division on a place where I think it's needed, I don't need motorised at some defensive front, I want them at the place where I want to make a breakthrough. So right now when I want to deploy and get a list of hq's it doesn't give me the info that I need to properly deploy them.
Just letting the AI do everything and hope he does it well isn't how I'd like to play a game.
But yeah I get it.. it's just me wanting a game that is not hoi3. :sobs:
But when doing it manually I get a LOOONG list of all kinds of hq-names, which are really hard to differentiate from each other. It would be nice if they could color-code or atleast do something so I know which HQ is theatre, amry,corps etc. My understanding is that divisions should only be dropped in the lowest hq-type not the others. So those could be greyed out or something. Right now my main theatre hq is filled to the brim with divisions
my bad I know.But again auto-deploy feels so strange, when I would do that I never know when units are done.
I rather put the armies together myself but right now I feel the UI is too labor intensive to do it.
Just find it a shame that when I tried hoi2 I could easily deploy and make my own armies, which felt good. Right now all that is taken away because it got too complex leaving me with no option to let everything be done by the AI. So it feels now that they made the game so complicated that only an AI can manage it properly.. really.. really strange.
My manual action comes down to me wanting to deploy a new division on a place where I think it's needed, I don't need motorised at some defensive front, I want them at the place where I want to make a breakthrough. So right now when I want to deploy and get a list of hq's it doesn't give me the info that I need to properly deploy them.
Just letting the AI do everything and hope he does it well isn't how I'd like to play a game.
But yeah I get it.. it's just me wanting a game that is not hoi3. :sobs: