Supply problems/question

Avindian · Jun 5, 2011

So, playing as Germany, 2.4f beta patch SF. It's 1942, but having a devil of a time with the USA. I've taken out most of the allies except Canada, USA, NZ, and Australia. I've got three of the four VPs to make Canada surrender, but damned Winnipeg is so far away from everything it's a huge pain to deal with. Then Japan goes and DWs on the US, I get dragged in (despite being a limited war), and instead of just beating up Canada, I have to fight the US too.

So, I've done a pretty successful invasion of the US; I've taken Boston, NYC, and Norfolk as my main ports (as well as Halifax, St. John's, and Quebec in Canada). However, the game insists on routing all supply through Boston, which puts most of my units in constant danger of running out of supplies. Even if a unit is sitting in New York, it's still supplied through Boston. I've admittedly got a pretty big force, but it's still mighty irritating.

Here are my questions.

1) Does the fact that many of these are Italian expeditionary forces affect supply at all? (It is affecting my German units as well, so I doubt it, but I could be wrong.)

2) What determines which port a unit is supplied from? Is there something I could do to fix it (besides switch to arcade mode?)

3) A little digression, but why did I get dragged into Japan's DW if they called a limited war?

4) I'd heard a rumor that the USSR is hard coded to attack Germany by 1942 -- is this true?

This is kind of frustrating, because my superior, battle hardened units are getting brushed aside without much of a fight because they have no supply. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some screen shots that illustrate my problem:

Political map:

Proof I'm not crazy:

Supply map:

Infrastructure map:

Pro_Consul · Jun 5, 2011

1. Only insofar as you must provide the supply for them as well as for your own forces.

2. I am not sure what criteria decide which specific port is the primary supply source, but I think it may be the first one captured. In any case, Boston is not a bad choice since it is a level 10 port in a 100 infra province. And the only thing you could do to "fix" it would be to allow Boston to be recaptured. But I don't see that moving your primary supply port will fix your problem anyway, since you cannot do better than a level 10 port in a 100 infra province, and you already have that. Look for other sources of your supply problems, like convoy raiding, poor supply theoreticals, etc.

3. Did Japan's DoW result in the USA joining the Allies?

4. I don't know if it is hard-coded, but it is extremely reliable. "Did the USSR suddenly DoW Germany?" "Must be 1942..."

From looking at your pics I suspect that you have two primary problems that are somewhat within your control (not counting your convoys, about which you didn't post any info so I am assuming they are uninterrupted):

a. Your "beachhead" is all fudged up. The sudden changeover apparently caught you with your knickers down, and you have not yet consolidated a proper beachhead around your captured ports. That should be priority #1 right now, not seeing how much undefended territory you can grab.

b. The provinces you grabbed in your unopposed rush all prolly have damaged infrastructure right now. This is the reason for establishing a more orderly beachhead, in order to allow the provinces you have grabbed a chance to repair their infra. But you also need to pull back units that have overextended themselves through too many such provinces.

I suspect that your US invasion is going to get you royally screwed. In order to drive it home you really need to commit a lot more units and grab more ports. But if you do so, then the USSR is likely going to eat your lunch at home. You should have taken care of the bear on your back porch before going after the tiger on the other side of the lake.

Edit: oh, and so you don't blame this all on Japan, you would almost certainly have ended up at war with the USA anyway. The moment you invaded Canada you became such a huge threat on their radar that you pretty much guaranteed their entry into the war on the side of the Allies.

Avindian · Jun 5, 2011

Pro_Consul said:
1. Only insofar as you must provide the supply for them as well as for your own forces.

2. I am not sure what criteria decide which specific port is the primary supply source, but I think it may be the first one captured. In any case, Boston is not a bad choice since it is a level 10 port in a 100 infra province. And the only thing you could do to "fix" it would be to allow Boston to be recaptured. But I don't see that moving your primary supply port will fix your problem anyway, since you cannot do better than a level 10 port in a 100 infra province, and you already have that. Look for other sources of your supply problems, like convoy raiding, poor supply theoreticals, etc.

3. Did Japan's DoW result in the USA joining the Allies?

4. I don't know if it is hard-coded, but it is extremely reliable. "Did the USSR suddenly DoW Germany?" "Must be 1942..."

From looking at your pics I suspect that you have two primary problems that are somewhat within your control (not counting your convoys, about which you didn't post any info so I am assuming they are uninterrupted):

a. Your "beachhead" is all fudged up. The sudden changeover apparently caught you with your knickers down, and you have not yet consolidated a proper beachhead around your captured ports. That should be priority #1 right now, not seeing how much undefended territory you can grab.

b. The provinces you grabbed in your unopposed rush all prolly have damaged infrastructure right now. This is the reason for establishing a more orderly beachhead, in order to allow the provinces you have grabbed a chance to repair their infra. But you also need to pull back units that have overextended themselves through too many such provinces.

I suspect that your US invasion is going to get you royally screwed. In order to drive it home you really need to commit a lot more units and grab more ports. But if you do so, then the USSR is likely going to eat your lunch at home. You should have taken care of the bear on your back porch before going after the tiger on the other side of the lake.

Edit: oh, and so you don't blame this all on Japan, you would almost certainly have ended up at war with the USA anyway. The moment you invaded Canada you became such a huge threat on their radar that you pretty much guaranteed their entry into the war on the side of the Allies.

I may have missed something fundamentally critical about the game (in which case, you're absolutely right) -- can you only be supplied by one port at a time? If so, I need to totally rethink my strategies when assaulting amphibiously.

I've more or less given up on this particular game of HOI 3 as a bad job at the moment.

Re: convoys, I lose a transport or two every month, but generally convoys I don't care about.

Pro_Consul · Jun 5, 2011

Avindian said:
I may have missed something fundamentally critical about the game (in which case, you're absolutely right) -- can you only be supplied by one port at a time?

Not exactly. One port province will serve as the "hub" for that general region, yes. But you can still make use of other ports to pump more supplies into that region. They will still be more or less distributed from that "hub" province, but you won't be limited to only what convoys that one province's port can handle.

Edit: to use your case as an example, Boston is a level 10 port, so it can handle a lot of incoming supplies. But it is still just one port and its capacity is still finite, so that might not be enough to meet your needs when you factor in supply costs and the like. You also captured New York and control a land connection between it and Boston. So Boston remains your supply hub, and your units still show as being "Supplied from Boston". But notice that the AI convoy system automatically setup another supply convoy into New York. It is taking advantage of that second port to pump more supplies into your beachhead. Those supplies are still distributed from Boston, but the fact that you now have TWO level 10 ports bringing in supply convoys means that your supply hub in Boston now has that many more supplies it can distribute.

mrsmith00 · Jun 5, 2011

Basically, all supplies brought in from other ports will go to Boston before heading out to your troops. It's quirk with the system, that though annoying, can not be changed.

Avindian · Jun 5, 2011

Pro_Consul said:
Not exactly. One port province will serve as the "hub" for that general region, yes. But you can still make use of other ports to pump more supplies into that region. They will still be more or less distributed from that "hub" province, but you won't be limited to only what convoys that one province's port can handle.

Edit: to use your case as an example, Boston is a level 10 port, so it can handle a lot of incoming supplies. But it is still just one port and its capacity is still finite, so that might not be enough to meet your needs when you factor in supply costs and the like. You also captured New York and control a land connection between it and Boston. So Boston remains your supply hub, and your units still show as being "Supplied from Boston". But notice that the AI convoy system automatically setup another supply convoy into New York. It is taking advantage of that second port to pump more supplies into your beachhead. Those supplies are still distributed from Boston, but the fact that you now have TWO level 10 ports bringing in supply convoys means that your supply hub in Boston now has that many more supplies it can distribute.

mrsmith00 said:
Basically, all supplies brought in from other ports will go to Boston before heading out to your troops. It's quirk with the system, that though annoying, can not be changed.

I've got it now. That makes a lot of sense. Well, it doesn't, but at least I know why it doesn't make sense

Ideally, it would seem, I should have left Canada/the US alone until I finished with the USSR, but to be honest, I thought I could take out Canada on the cheap before the US could even get involved; Winnipeg, in effect, is what actually screwed me, at least in my opinion. It's just too isolated and too hard to get to. I really shot myself in the foot when I lost my two PARA divisions -- that would have been the ideal way to get to Winnipeg.

As far as the US goes, the question now would be, what should I have done differently? Gone slower? Used fewer troops? I've done quite well invading France (as the US), but that's obviously a much smaller target than the US. My original goal was just to get the allies out of the war; then Japan had to mess everything up by attacking the US (who then joined the allies; that answered that question!).

Thanks for the help you've provided thus far, BTW; this game is a lot more complex than EU 3 or Vicky 2, at least in my book

mrsmith00 · Jun 5, 2011

I see in your list of troops you have a lot of troops not in a chain of command. If you can put them under an Army Group with a level 5 leader, they will consume 25% less supply. You can then put leaders with the supply trait at each level, further decreasing the supply needed.

eqqman · Jun 5, 2011

Pro_Consul said:
Those supplies are still distributed from Boston, but the fact that you now have TWO level 10 ports bringing in supply convoys means that your supply hub in Boston now has that many more supplies it can distribute.

I don't think that is as big a deal as you are making it sound. If, for example, New York was also a level 10 port, then New York will suck up 100% of the supply that Boston is capable of receiving from the motherland, which will prevent Boston from providing supply to any other port. The number of units that Boston can supply is fixed, having 1 or 10 additional ports does not increase this limit since Boston must then split its supplies between these ports, meaning you might have been better off holding Boston as your only port. I've made the sad discovery that it is actually counter-productive to create a nice solid line that links up all your beachheads, since that will actually decrease the number of troops you can supply. If you keep your captured ports unlinked, then you can supply far more troops since each individual port will maximize its supply by receiving it direct from the motherland instead of having to share the limited pipe of the one central port.

Aside from that, you can also go all out for the Basing naval doctrine since that will increase your port throughput, that will be handy regardless of anything else you are doing.

mrsmith00 · Jun 5, 2011

eqqman said:
I don't think that is as big a deal as you are making it sound. If, for example, New York was also a level 10 port, then New York will suck up 100% of the supply that Boston is capable of receiving from the motherland, which will prevent Boston from providing supply to any other port. The number of units that Boston can supply is fixed, having 1 or 10 additional ports does not increase this limit since Boston must then split its supplies between these ports, meaning you might have been better off holding Boston as your only port. I've made the sad discovery that it is actually counter-productive to create a nice solid line that links up all your beachheads, since that will actually decrease the number of troops you can supply. If you keep your captured ports unlinked, then you can supply far more troops since each individual port will maximize its supply by receiving it direct from the motherland instead of having to share the limited pipe of the one central port.

Aside from that, you can also go all out for the Basing naval doctrine since that will increase your port throughput, that will be handy regardless of anything else you are doing.

You are sort of right. Each new port will bring in extra supplies. But those supplies will have to first travel to Boston before they then travel to your units. If you were to keep all the beachheads unlinked then each beachhead would have it's own supply depot from which all the troops are supplied from.

Having more than one port is advantageous. It just takes a while as the supplies get sent on a merry trip along the coast.

http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Logistics_reference

Alioth81 · Jun 5, 2011

I can feel with you - I discovered how the supply system works the hard way as well.

I played as Japan conquered China and made Yunnan my puppet. Then I launched a naval invasion near Calcutta to cut off the British forces in Burma... Everything worked well until I linked up with Yunnan in the north.
All supply was then routed through Haikou in China through all the low infrastructure in Yunnan. My forces stalled somewhere in western India and the British were able to hold around Rangoon.
However after what was seeming eternity I managed to finish the operation in India. Unfortunately when I captured Rangoon and some Chinese rebels captured Xuwen - all my troops in China where now supplied from Rangoon...

Operation Barbarossa started and I wanted to support Germany against the Soviets. After a swift capture of the Vladivostok area it took me until autumn 1942 to reach Irkutsk. I really should have annexed Yunnan and increased the infrastructure there. In addition the German advance came to a full stop before moscow

What worked in the end (for me at least) is to have only very few troops together with my puppets to hold the line in Siberia supplied by transport planes. The main bulk of the Japanese army was ferried to Europe and some to Iran, a creation of a beachhead around Sevastopol and an attack from Iran (together with a call to arms on them) followed. The Soviet forces in the Caucasus were cut off, Stalingrad captured and the German forces with the help of some Japanese units managed to capture Moscow.

The bitter peace that followed was really bitter for Japan and not very rewarding :-(

I really hope that in For the Motherland you can at least choose the supply hub of a region (even if you can only do this once in a few months per linked region)

unmerged(151058) · Jun 5, 2011

Supplies do not have to go through the "supplied from" province. The "supplied from" province only serves as a depot, the game will build reserves there but units will be supplied through the nearest ports if needed.

mrsmith00 · Jun 5, 2011

Sort of. If the unit is between a port and the supply depot they will get supplied as the supplies move from the port to the supply depot.

Avindian · Jun 5, 2011

mrsmith00 said:
I see in your list of troops you have a lot of troops not in a chain of command. If you can put them under an Army Group with a level 5 leader, they will consume 25% less supply. You can then put leaders with the supply trait at each level, further decreasing the supply needed.

Yeah, I think this was my other big mistake; I'm still quite new to HOI, and have a tendency to just grab troops and plug holes instead of paying attention to bringing along HQs. I definitely should have done that on this invasion; I did it for the US invasion of France, so I'm not sure why I forgot

Most of my HQs are still in Germany; I need to start grabbing troops at the corps, army, or army group level, not individual divisions. I also forgot to build a command structure for the divisions the Italians keep sending me; I initially just planned on them defending the British Isles should an invasion come. Next game I play as Germany (started as the UK; I'm holding off on the Soviets until FtM is released), if I have to go across the Atlantic, I will make sure I bring the HQs along.

Any other suggestions for invading the US?

Pro_Consul · Jun 5, 2011

eqqman said:
I don't think that is as big a deal as you are making it sound. If, for example, New York was also a level 10 port, then New York will suck up 100% of the supply that Boston is capable of receiving from the motherland, which will prevent Boston from providing supply to any other port.

No, that is not how it works. New York and Boston, each being level 10 ports, can each bring ashore X amount of supplies per day. Because it is the hub, Boston's convoyed supplies go directly into the outgoing network toward your units. New York, because it is not a hub, must have its incoming supplies moved overland to Boston, paying the supply cost in each intermediate province, and THEN the supplies get fed into the local network. But the cost of moving supplies overland from New York to Boston is still far, FAR less than what New York is bringing in, so you still have a net gain in supplies that actually reach units. Here is the order of how many units you can supply based on your ports, from least to most:

1. Boston alone, no other ports captured.

2. Boston plus other ports whose port capacity is higher than the supply cost of moving supplies overland between themselves and Boston.

3. Boston plus every other port on the eastern seaboard of the USA.

Now if you add in a level 1 port that is far distant from Boston, then the supply tax will eat up the meager stream of supplies that wimpy port brings ashore so that none of them reach Boston. But even that doesn't make the number of units supplied go DOWN, it just fails to make the number go up since all the incoming supplies from that little port get eaten up by the transportation costs.

eqqman said:
The number of units that Boston can supply is fixed, having 1 or 10 additional ports does not increase this limit since Boston must then split its supplies between these ports, meaning you might have been better off holding Boston as your only port.

No, the number of units is NOT fixed. The only thing that is fixed is the amount of supply that can pass through the PORT, either by being convoyed in or convoyed out, and since Boston is not connected by land to your capital it cannot send outgoing supply convoys anyway. Boston does not "split" its supplies with other ports. It receives supplies FROM them, not the other way around.

eqqman said:
I've made the sad discovery that it is actually counter-productive to create a nice solid line that links up all your beachheads, since that will actually decrease the number of troops you can supply.

This is also incorrect. Connecting your ports by consolidating your beachheads does indeed force you to pay the supply "tax" involved in transporting supplies overland from other ports to the primary hub. But in no case does capturing another port connected to the beachhead cause the total number of units you can supply to go down; it just doesn't go up as much as it would have if the port remained unconnected to the beachhead.

eqqman said:
If you keep your captured ports unlinked, then you can supply far more troops since each individual port will maximize its supply by receiving it direct from the motherland instead of having to share the limited pipe of the one central port.

You could indeed supply more overall units in the USA as a whole if you did so by taking and holding a series of unconnected beachheads, each with its own port, thereby evading the overland supply costs between the secondary ports and the primary hub. But that is a crappy way to try to conquer a country with such a vast interior. And it is a ridiculous amount of trouble to go to just to avoid paying the supply "tax".

eqqman said:
Aside from that, you can also go all out for the Basing naval doctrine since that will increase your port throughput, that will be handy regardless of anything else you are doing.

Basing is certainly a vital tech for anyone who plans to conduct overseas conquests. But you must also not neglect the two supply techs in the theory tree, one of which reduces the supply "tax" for supplies being transported overland. These can have a dramatic effect on the efficiency of overseas logistics.

Pro_Consul · Jun 5, 2011

Avindian said:
Any other suggestions for invading the US?

You chose your invasion point very well; you can't really improve on that. The northern half of the US eastern seaboard is all very high infra and has several good ports, Boston and New York being the best of them. It is also the focus of a large portion of their IC and gives ready attack vectors on their capital. All in all a solid move there.

You didn't bring a bunch of armor - another good move. There isn't that much freedom of movement for tanks in that region, and securing and expanding your beachhead is a higher priority. Good on ya there, too.

You didn't bring enough mountaineers. You have to contend with a lot of hills and the entire Appalachian range before you can break out into the plains, and that is a very wide mountainous front. You will need a LOT of mountaineers for it.

Keeping a single corps of marines on hand is also wise, since they can invade over and over as you expand your beachhead down the coastline. This gives you an extra attack vector and the ability to land behind the enemy front and hopefully pinch off the odd division now and again so it can be forced to surrender instead of just breaking. It is also the quickest way to grab extra ports so that you can pump more supplies and fuel into the beachhead.

Edited to add: BTW, expanding down the coastline to grab all the ports is more than just for logistical purposes. If you can peel away the entire coastline, i.e. all the ports in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, then the nearest major naval base the USA will have left is in California! Certainly they can base some units at Panama or one of the Caribbean bases, but those are small ports and cannot supply that many units. Also, once you have a port in Florida, grabbing the Panama Canal is an excellent next move, even if you have to DoW the nation of Panama and attack the canal overland.

Don't come in piecemeal. Make your initial invasion to put your marines ashore next to your selected port (Boston is still a great choice there) so they can attack and grab it quickly. Then bring in MASSIVE reinforcements (like 18 transports fully loaded) in wave after wave. This will allow you to rapidly expand your beachhead without leaving holes in it that the enemy can exploit with pesky HQ or CAV units. It's like blowing up a balloon; the faster you push more air (units) into it, the sooner it will pop. And speed is your ally here, while time is your enemy. The USA may be bad about properly garrisoning its most valuable real estate, but it is like the USSR in that if you give it time to use its massive IC base, it will bury you.

And the number one tip for invading the USA as Germany: don't do it while the USSR remains a power to be reckoned with. Knock out the USSR first, and then start looking farther afield.

Avindian · Jun 5, 2011

Pro_Consul said:
You chose your invasion point very well; you can't really improve on that. The northern half of the US eastern seaboard is all very high infra and has several good ports, Boston and New York being the best of them. It is also the focus of a large portion of their IC and gives ready attack vectors on their capital. All in all a solid move there.

You didn't bring a bunch of armor - another good move. There isn't that much freedom of movement for tanks in that region, and securing and expanding your beachhead is a higher priority. Good on ya there, too.

You didn't bring enough mountaineers. You have to contend with a lot of hills and the entire Appalachian range before you can break out into the plains, and that is a very wide mountainous front. You will need a LOT of mountaineers for it.

Keeping a single corps of marines on hand is also wise, since they can invade over and over as you expand your beachhead down the coastline. This gives you an extra attack vector and the ability to land behind the enemy front and hopefully pinch off the odd division now and again so it can be forced to surrender instead of just breaking. It is also the quickest way to grab extra ports so that you can pump more supplies and fuel into the beachhead.

Edited to add: BTW, expanding down the coastline to grab all the ports is more than just for logistical purposes. If you can peel away the entire coastline, i.e. all the ports in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, then the nearest major naval base the USA will have left is in California! Certainly they can base some units at Panama or one of the Caribbean bases, but those are small ports and cannot supply that many units. Also, once you have a port in Florida, grabbing the Panama Canal is an excellent next move, even if you have to DoW the nation of Panama and attack the canal overland.

Don't come in piecemeal. Make your initial invasion to put your marines ashore next to your selected port (Boston is still a great choice there) so they can attack and grab it quickly. Then bring in MASSIVE reinforcements (like 18 transports fully loaded) in wave after wave. This will allow you to rapidly expand your beachhead without leaving holes in it that the enemy can exploit with pesky HQ or CAV units. It's like blowing up a balloon; the faster you push more air (units) into it, the sooner it will pop. And speed is your ally here, while time is your enemy. The USA may be bad about properly garrisoning its most valuable real estate, but it is like the USSR in that if you give it time to use its massive IC base, it will bury you.

And the number one tip for invading the USA as Germany: don't do it while the USSR remains a power to be reckoned with. Knock out the USSR first, and then start looking farther afield.

All good tips; I really do need to pay better attention to terrain. I even had two full corps of Marines, but I stupidly tried to get cute and invade the west coast too. Didn't think of the whole stick to the ports thing; probably should have. I did have a whole bunch of units there, but no mountaineers (except one Italian division). I think what hurt me most was not having the HQs. Never even thought about the basing tech.

von Murrin · Jun 5, 2011

Suggestion: If you can afford it, and if you've invaded the US you almost certainly can, immediately start building ports along your captured coast. Hammer out as much infra heading into the interior as you can. Every little bit helps.

GUNNM · Jun 5, 2011

Last time I invaded USA was in 1944. By then USA had a sizeable army.

I landed about 20 infantry and 5 tank divisions at the same point as you and reached about as far as you did before the counterattack hit me. I was sure I was going to lose my foothold. I had to rush another armygroup to Boston so the first one could evacuate. About half of my divisions were down to between 40 and 60% strength. But the second armygroup could break the American line because USA was running out of manpower. I was also fighting them in Mexico and a second invasion in Florida broke their back.

That would be my tip to you. Reduce the frontline to a manageable size and make several invasions. Right now you're having a very long front and not enough troops to cover it.

Pro_Consul · Jun 5, 2011

von Murrin said:
Suggestion: If you can afford it, and if you've invaded the US you almost certainly can, immediately start building ports along your captured coast. Hammer out as much infra heading into the interior as you can. Every little bit helps.

While both of these are good practices in principal, neither is really necessary in this situation.

On the ports: there are enough high capacity ports to support an enormous force without having to build more. Also, deploying a bunch of level 1 ports is just throwing away your supplies. As illustrated above, the amount of supply a level 1 port can receive is less than the amount you will end up paying in transport costs to get those supplies to your hub, unless the level 1 port is practically on top of that hub to begin with. So the supplies you ship into more distant ports are generally just going down the drain to little or no actual effect.

On infrastructure: pretty much that whole invasion area from the DC area up past Boston, and inland all the way to the Appalachians, is all max infra already, and there are NO low infra provs anywhere in the USA. By the time you have expanded your beachhead beyond that area of super high infra, you have pretty much already won. Your forces from then on will be thinning out across a broader and broader front line, which will consequently thin out the supply traffic through the individual provinces, making the medium high infra provs in the rest of the country more than up to the logistical needs of your forces.

So basically that advice is great for invading a place like China, Africa or South America, but totally unnecessary for the US.

unmerged(320001) · Jun 6, 2011

Its much eaiser to invade florida. then have enough ports pre made to drop one in every province of americas wang. it means there are only 3 porvinces that you have to defend from a ground assault to dislodge you and you can build up all the necessay ports even if it takes a year or so. depending on your construction practiclae.

i think its florida. miami is there. i am bad a geography.

Supply problems/question

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