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Demo AAR: HQ Tutorial as Germany

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First of all, many thanks to Chilango2, Potsky and all others contributing with questions to further develop this thread. Great work!

The HQs Command Hierarchy was a dream come true in HOI3. This was one of the things I have longed most in HOI1 and HOI2. I'am enjoying to "play" with it now, although I haven't been as succesful as I expected. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or just being too anxious...

1. When I set Corps to the AI control, it promptly moves the Divisions, but often leaves the Corps HQ behind... way behind and beyond its command range. This has already been reported here but got no answers. Is it just me or an AI flaw?

2. I created an Army with two Corps and gave it AI Attacking Stance and objectives. However, nothing happend for quite a few days (can't say exactly how long but max one or two weeks) up to the point I had to take it back to human control in order to start my attack and don't get way behind a parallel advance also under human control. Is that normal? Was it preparing itself (reinforcements, organization, supplies) to start the attack? I saw in the AAR that the attack in Poland started just immediately after the AI orders and then started to wonder why mine didn't.

Thanks for your help!

Regards,

Marconi
 
conao said:
First of all, many thanks to Chilango2, Potsky and all others contributing with questions to further develop this thread. Great work!

The HQs Command Hierarchy was a dream come true in HOI3. This was one of the things I have longed most in HOI1 and HOI2. I'am enjoying to "play" with it now, although I haven't been as succesful as I expected. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or just being too anxious...

1. When I set Corps to the AI control, it promptly moves the Divisions, but often leaves the Corps HQ behind... way behind and beyond its command range. This has already been reported here but got no answers. Is it just me or an AI flaw?

2. I created an Army with two Corps and gave it AI Attacking Stance and objectives. However, nothing happend for quite a few days (can't say exactly how long but max one or two weeks) up to the point I had to take it back to human control in order to start my attack and don't get way behind a parallel advance also under human control. Is that normal? Was it preparing itself (reinforcements, organization, supplies) to start the attack? I saw in the AAR that the attack in Poland started just immediately after the AI orders and then started to wonder why mine didn't.

Thanks for your help!

Regards,

Marconi
Click to expand...

1) In my experience, HQ's sometimes move to keep up with their units, but sometimes also fall behind, it's a bit undepenable in terms of keeping up with its attached units. I haven't been able to figure out what, if anything, causes the AI to do this. I'll note that I tend to use AI control at the army level and that tends to work. Also, I believe some technologies expand the range of HQ's, in my Annals of the OKW AAR my HQ's tend to have 400km range, which is actually quite a wide area.

2) The AI sometimes seems to "fall asleep" especially after loading a game, if it doesn't start moving units or attacking right away, turn AI control off then back on and try again, you may also need to set the A slightly differently, once I couldn't get armies to attack but when I turned on the army group above them they finally started moving. The AI does not tend to sit and wait, it should start working towards its objectives as best as it can with its availble resources.
 
Chilango2 said:
2) The AI sometimes seems to "fall asleep" especially after loading a game, if it doesn't start moving units or attacking right away, turn AI control off then back on and try again, you may also need to set the A slightly differently, once I couldn't get armies to attack but when I turned on the army group above them they finally started moving. The AI does not tend to sit and wait, it should start working towards its objectives as best as it can with its availble resources.
Click to expand...

I tried it several times in the scenario I'm playing as a minor... Brazil, of course, with some 30 Inf Divs trying to stop the German advance over the Iberian Peninsula and liberate our Portuguese and Spanish brothers. ;)

They are organized into 6 Corps, under 2 Armies, under 1 Army Group. No Theather is created though, no matter how many times I click the Define Theater button (not a problem since the Army Group HQ should do the job). They're all well supplied by Lisbon and in range of its superior HQ level.

I tried to activate the AI in different HQ levels, in defensive and attacking stances, turning it off and on several times, always with objectives set. I can see the objectives being distributed to lower HQ levels, down to Corps, but no objectives or actions are passed to the Divisions. They just sat still for 3 months, watching the Germans walk through.

Just to check it, I opened another scenario (1941) as the Germans about to invade Soviet Union and the AI "worked"... I mean, the command structure only, because the Soviets arrived in Berlin just 4 months after the invasion started! :eek:

I guess I'll have to take a backup and continue with the micro-management... :rolleyes: If someone ever find a way to wake up the HQ AI, please let me know!

Regards,

Marconi
 
conao said:
I guess I'll have to take a backup and continue with the micro-management... :rolleyes: If someone ever find a way to wake up the HQ AI, please let me know!
Marconi
Click to expand...

I find that when I set objectives behind enemy lines, the AI often gets confused and does nothing. But if I set objectives on the enemylines, then they forge ahead. For example, for an army in Germany 39 in Poland, I set most armies to attack 2 adjacent ennemy-occupied hexes in the line, then change the objectives to further back when my units occupy the objectives.

The AI does not seem to understand that to get to an objective behind enemy lines, it first has to make a plan to break through enemy lines.

If you set the AI at Corps level, it works even better, because you can make one Corps wait a bit while another breaks through, then order the rearward Corps to forge ahead through the hole to an objective behind enemy lines.

Henri
 
Hi,

After posting it in the Bug Report forum, it seems I got the answer (thanks to GLENN). The AI will not control my armies outside my Theaters and specially not inside an Allied Theater.

Since I landed my troops in Lisbon before Germany took control of it, it's still Portugal's Theater and the only way my troops could operate AI controlled there is if I give them as Expeditionary Forces to Portugal. I guess it makes sense though, otherwise there would not be forces cooperation within a Theater. But, of course, that way I wouldn't be able to influence their strategy at all.

Nevertheless, I'm still not happy with it. This means that playing with a minor not directly invaded is not that fun. To be able to participate in the war in Europe I would always have to give my forces to someone else and just sit and watch or deal with micro-management all the time... no rest! By the way, if I'm allowed to control them there manually, why not using the AI just to reduce the micro-management?

I guess I would have to force an invasion myself in some German controlled province to be able to open my own Theater. I hope that works...

Regards,

Marconi
 
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Nice tutorial.....

KLorberau
 
Very nice AAR. Perfect for beginners! It helped my a lot, thanks!
 
Very informative post.

KLorberau
 
Henri said:
I find that when I set objectives behind enemy lines, the AI often gets confused and does nothing. But if I set objectives on the enemylines, then they forge ahead. For example, for an army in Germany 39 in Poland, I set most armies to attack 2 adjacent ennemy-occupied hexes in the line, then change the objectives to further back when my units occupy the objectives.

The AI does not seem to understand that to get to an objective behind enemy lines, it first has to make a plan to break through enemy lines.

If you set the AI at Corps level, it works even better, because you can make one Corps wait a bit while another breaks through, then order the rearward Corps to forge ahead through the hole to an objective behind enemy lines.

Henri
Click to expand...

That s weird, when I ve sett the whermacht HQ (the german east main HQ that attacks poland) on blitzkrieg and the objective on warschau it will eventually take that province. Initially it seems that is lets all the units wander arround (I think that s when the main HQ is making a plan), but when the units finally get where they re supposed to be the main HQ will begin the attack: try this and sett the speed up to the highest lvl and you ll see that the HQ will get the objective eventually. But I m not quite sure if it is the best way to do it since I ve not tried doing the attack manually (hard to compare which method is best if you ve not done the other one, I m still experimenting myself)
 
potski said:
Pretty much any province will do. In fact, it is even possible to give the AI no Objective province when selecting either Prepare or Defensive stance. The AI knows it is at war with France, and not with Holland, and should distribute its forces accordingly.
Click to expand...

I do not agree with you there, I ve tried to do this but the AI moved its units from the south up north and left a gap in the south: leaving your fort-provinces for the taking. I did reload there to improve the defence (by setting objectives on all fort-provinces), imao it is better to use the advantage of all the forts than to leave them for the enemy to take advantage of them (unless you do not have forts there). Maybe this is the elastic defense, but I m not sure if it pays of in the end: has anyone tried this yet?
 
This AAR is really a basic for those who like to use military AI. Maybe, we'd need a new one with 1.3 patch, as AI got really improved.
 
The problem with sometimes making the AI take over is that when positioning divisions, the HQ's are sent far away from where their divisions are and it messes up the communication range.



An easy way to move units from one front to the other when done with a war is to select an Army and then click the amount of soldiers button... That will select the army and all its corps with all its divisions... Send them all to one province... Then select one of the corps of the army and click on its amount of soldiers which will then select the corps HQ and its divisions and then send that to another province... And that way you will be sending out every part of your forces to a area they need to be in a organized and systematic fashion.
 
I have question regarding the advancement of time in the game. How is it advanced? Do I advance it or does the HOI3 advance it at a certain rate automatically? If the later, where do I look to see what time period I've advanced to after logging in to make your decisions? Been looking through the wiki but it doesn't seem to answer this question. Also is there a place I can find the original manual to the game to see its explanation regarding the passage of time and other background information? Thanks, as I'm a "newbie" trying to learn the game.
 
Time moves forward automatically, HoI3 is technically an RTS when you get down to it.
 
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