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  • Hearts of Iron III
I am confused over the effects of “zero width units”. As I understand it, in a battle solely between two provinces, the provincial border has a combat width of ten. Ten units with a width of one each can take part from one side of a battle.

Infantry brigades have a width of one. So if side A’s force consists of two regular divisions (each consisting of four brigades of infantry) and one light division (of two infantry brigades), they would fit into the combat border. This provides a potential of ten brigades (from three separate divisions) taking part in a given round of combat.

Artillery brigades have zero width. Now suppose that side B’s force consists of five divisions (each division made up of two infantry brigades and two artillery brigades). Again, ten infantry brigades fill the provincial border, ready for combat. However, as I understand it, there are an additional ten brigades of artillery also contributing to the fight. This means that effectively, there are twenty brigades on one side opposing ten brigades on the other.

One side gets a potential of twenty shots to the opponents ten. Granted that the five divisions would incur a stacking penalty of about 10% (to their combat value?), but they would still be spreading their received damage over twice as many units as their opponent.

Therefore, it seems to me that ideal game divisions should consist of one infantry brigade with three or four support brigades. Which I believe is the opposite of real world military doctrine of combat divisions containing mostly infantry types, with a smattering of combat support units.

What am I not understanding? :confused:
 
The stacking penalty is based on the number of divisions... abusing the support brigades substantially raises the number of divisions, thus the stacking penalty.

Ideally, you want a combat width of 3 per division, which gives you about three infantry brigades and one support brigade (or two, if you have Superior Firepower tech)
 
Novacat said:
Ideally, you want a combat width of 3 per division, which gives you about three infantry brigades and one support brigade (or two, if you have Superior Firepower tech)
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I disagree... I consider 2+2 Divisions to be superior to the standard 3+1 Divisions, even after including the stacking penalty.

I'll agree that both set-ups are superior to 1+3 Divisions, though... a stacking penalty of -52% is a bit excessive. The penalty on Defensiveness and Toughness risks catastrophic casualties, given that un-blocked shots effectively do double damage.

Bugwar... you seem to slightly (only slightly!) misunderstand how combat width interacts with frontage. Check my equations in the other thread again. Side B's force should be SIX 2+2 Divisions, not five.

Have you read over my "German Infantry Build Strategy" thread? It contains an interesting back-and-forth discussion on 2+2 vs 3+1 Divisions.

German Infantry Build Strategy
 
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The problem with using 1-width Divisions (or even more extreme, one-half-width Divisions created with the Militia Doctrine) is that 11 Divisions in a single-province attack gives you a stacking penalty of -52%, which in turn reduces your battle-winning ability by more than three-quarters.

Battle-winning ability is the product (A x B) of your ability to hurt the enemy multiplied by your ability to absorb casualties and keep on fighting. Note that high battle-winning ability is not necessarily associated with a favorable casualty ratio... the ability to continue fighting while taking heavy losses might win battles, but at the expense of taking heavy losses!

The stacking penalty is a multiplier on all four of your prime stats... Soft Attack, Hard Attack, Defensiveness and Toughness. So a -52% stacking penalty reduces your ability to hurt the enemy by a factor of two, and also reduces your ability to absorb punishment by a factor of two. Taken together, that reduces your battle-winning ability by a factor of four.

... this would still be true even if Manpower were an infinite resource... and it isn't.
 
I always research the tech for 5 brigades. As Germany for manpower reasons I will switch to two combat brigades and 3 support. As the Soviet Union my main divisions will always be 3 combat brigades and 2 support. As the Soviets I do not need more divisions.
 
I am currently running a mixed setup as germany. The Inf-Corps of my armored armies (two in each) use a modified 2Inf2Art scheme (the 5th div having 4Inf instead, for optimal width on a single-border attack), while the regular Inf-armies only consist out of 4x3Inf-Divs, with their HQs holding some support brigades, just in case. The later is my reaction to the supply-issues i had in the ukraine during my last game, where i had run 3Infx1Art-Divs exclusively.
 
blue emu said:
The penalty on Defensiveness and Toughness risks catastrophic casualties, given that un-blocked shots effectively do double damage.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by "un-blocked shots doing double damage"? AFAIK the difference between hacing a defense point left or not is the chance of the attack scoring a hit: if there's still a point left, then you have 80% to avoid being hit, if there's no points left, you have 60%. (Which is not that big of a difference IMO...) The values are from 'defines.lua'.
 
So it's 20% chance of being hit before and 40% chance of being hit after running out of 'defence' -> double chance of being hit = double damage (in space of several shots)
 
Right. When dealing with stochastics, never trust your gut-feel - always trust logic only... A change from 80% to 60% chance sure doesnt feel like much, but stochastics sometimes is totally counter-intuitive, as forgiven´s logic proves.
 
Forgiven said:
So it's 20% chance of being hit before and 40% chance of being hit after running out of 'defence' -> double chance of being hit = double damage (in space of several shots)
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Exactly. Naturally, there is a big random factor involved (so it will be rarely the same), but on average, it means double damage. In most cases toughness and defensiveness are no big deals at all, but when big stacking penalties apply, they start to matter...
 
Forgiven, Jazumir and Cybvep are correct... that's exactly what I meant, and is why I used the word "effectively". Of course, it would have been more accurate for me to say "have double the chance of causing damage", but the overall effect is exactly the same.

Every battle involves the exchange of a huge number of shots, back and forth... a single Infantry Division with 25 Soft Attack (at 100% efficiency) will fire 600 shots per day. Most battles involve several Divisions and can last for several days; that's thousands or even tens of thousands of shots exchanged. You simply have to look at the results stochastically. It's really the only point of view that makes sense of the numbers.

Bugwar... when considering this question of Divisional composition (how many line Regiments vs how many support Regiments) there are at least two opposing tendencies to keep in mind: density of fire (which favors one line and many support) and stacking penalties (which favor three line and one support). As a gut-feeling, I would expect to see the two tendencies balance out into a bell-curve effect, with the happy medium at two line and two support Regiments. That's the set-up that I use... good density of fire, with a small stacking penalty; 19% in a single-province attack, dropping as the front expands and reaching zero for a four province attack. Naturally, a skilled Theatre commander reduces this penalty further.
 
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Good point about the effective damage, I didn't really think it through.
 
Sorry for pestering you, Blue Emu, but what do you think it should be a good composition for a 5 brigades division? Or you think it´s a bad idea to use a 5 brigades div?
 
Cybvep said:
Emu, don't you think that 3+2 or 3+1 (depending on doctrines) would be better on defence?
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On defense, perhaps... and for a spread-out defense of one Division per province, yes. The two main drawbacks of the 2+2 build are (a) poor terrain modifiers when attacking certain terrain types, and (b) slightly lower Defensiveness when compared to 3+1 builds. A 2+2 unit takes a bit more damage on defense because of its slightly lower Defensiveness, but on the other hand, it has higher unit firepower and allows greater unit density, so it can really hurt your attacker.

When I said that I felt the optimum of the efficiency bell-curve was 2+2, perhaps I should have said that the peak fell between 3+1 and 2+2, and was slightly closer to 2+2 than to 3+1.

No idea said:
Sorry for pestering you, Blue Emu, but what do you think it should be a good composition for a 5 brigades division? Or you think it´s a bad idea to use a 5 brigades div?
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Not sure... I'm more of an early-war expert.

I suspect that it depends on your situation. If you have a lot of supply problems or are mostly on the defense, go with 3+2. If you are mostly on the attack, with the supply situation under control, I would prefer 2+3.

When I refer to supply problems, I mean supply distribution, of course... it's easy to produce all the supplies that you need. The problem is getting them into the hands of the fighting troops.
 
When I said that I felt the optimum of the efficiency bell-curve was 2+2, perhaps I should have said that the peak fell between 3+1 and 2+2, and was slightly closer to 2+2 than to 3+1.
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It should be the opposite for more plausible gameplay IMO. The recent stacking penalty change is still a move in good direction, though.
 
Cybvep said:
It should be the opposite for more plausible gameplay IMO. The recent stacking penalty change is still a move in good direction, though.
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Naturally, this "optimum efficiency" thing is just my own opinion, and I recognize that I might be biased by my previous experiments in this area. Like you, I think that the increased stacking penalty was a good move by Paradox.
 
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