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Thats why I dont do it, MP runs out :( and you have far too much coastline to protect. What if you take Vichy France and / or Spain are you going to plop 2-3 divisions in all those ports as well? its just too much frontage to cover. Its better to eliminate their forces then try and prevent them from landing.
 
2xInf brigades isnt going to break your manpower pool. The western coast of France does not really need to be occupied or protected especially from invasion. Ive never seen the Brits or Americans try anything funny there. The only place they attack is Northern coast and Norway (I also protect Brest and Lorient). Plus a 2xInf can be reorganized quicky into a 4xinf once the invasion comes and can be rushed to the front where it is needed. Garrison this isnt possible..

Ok if you take Spain your army will be strecthed to a limit. However when i took Spain i puppeted them, and bam my spainards protect their own ports.

As Danmian said manpower isnt an issue if you took the Balkans/Greece and start making progress in Russia. Besides, if Russia is not defeated before 1943 or any major VP city isnt taken, you can bet your in for a tough game.

Ah i meant to say this also RADAR!!!! RADAR is your best friend in France!!!! I cannot tell you how many time i saw Infantry massing or transport being moved because of RADAR. I adjusted my army accordingly and prevented any major breakthroughs! I believe RADAR is grossly underestimated! I have RADAR is Brest/Cherborg/Caen/Calais/Dunkeuqe/Amsterdam/Norway/ and Denmark! They are all at least level 5 radar. Not only does it give you accurate descriptions of the British forces in South Britian and beyond, but it also helps in the air war!!
 
I think I'll go for a combination of these ideas this game, but the main thing is, I'm going to stop trying to build an Atlantic wall because it's impossibly expensive and doesn't stop the invasion anyway. I'll go for a handful of strong garrisons in very important cities, just to delay any attacks, and a strong army sitting around Paris ready to stratmove into position when the invasion comes. The good thing here is, I won't be building garrisons which are basically useless for anything else. It'll be divisions which can be used elsewhere if necessary - still expensive but at least they're versatile and I was keeping reserve divisions with my old tactic anyway, so it's still cheaper.
 
Not sure what version you guys are playing, but im DIG, the allies did try to land in Holland, one time succeeded before our Panzers pushed them back in the see. The mistae I made was not putting a garrison along each province.
 
Gefallener_Held said:
The problem with this approach is that Germany does not have manpower to spare. ....
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or the IC to waste on garrisons? Do you realize how fast units move when strategically redeployed? 20kph. That is way faster than attacking units, so who cares if they take a few provinces before your backup arrives? Building garrisons as Germany is just very stupid.

Gefallener_Held said:
Not sure what version you guys are playing, but im DIG, the allies did try to land in Holland, one time succeeded before our Panzers pushed them back in the see. The mistae I made was not putting a garrison along each province.
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if you didn't waste that IC on garrisons, you could have easily built some better divisions for the same amount of manpower that it costs to put a garrison "in every province". besides, if you run out of IC as Germany... you're probably doing it wrong. If you don't believe that it's possible, you can watch my video AAR in my signature where I roll over opposition in DI:G.
 
nightraid3r said:
or the IC to waste on garrisons? Do you realize how fast units move when strategically redeployed? 20kph. That is way faster than attacking units, so who cares if they take a few provinces before your backup arrives? Building garrisons as Germany is just very stupid.



if you didn't waste that IC on garrisons, you could have easily built some better divisions for the same amount of manpower that it costs to put a garrison "in every province". besides, if you run out of IC as Germany... you're probably doing it wrong. If you don't believe that it's possible, you can watch my video AAR in my signature where I roll over opposition in DI:G.
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Stupid? That would be you--Germany's limitation is manpower, not IC. That is one of the most basic tenets of the game. As far as wasting IC, I can apply far more of the Wehrmacht--in other words IC-- to Barbarossa when the coast is guarded. It is a waste of Ic to have a corp of panzers and a corp of motorized guarding the coast. ...
 
Your all missing the real issue, it was brought up earlier. you WANT them to land. Who cares if they take some territory?? YOu want to destroy the units and remove them from the game, that is the ultimate goal. If you deter them from landing where you are in force, they simply will find someone else. The easiest way to defeat the British and US? destroy their troops.
 
I think the big issue here is that everyone is assuming a landing by a stupid AI. Let me be clear in that case any strategy that doesn't involve you disbanding your own units will win as there is no concerted effort or overarching strategy.

On these types of questions I try to figure out what would be best vs a human player trying to land rather than a AI. Now vs a human player the strategy that I'd take would be the following:

1) garrison divisions (2 brigades) on each province that borders sea (I ignore Spain and am thinking only of French to Danish coast or to Danzig if Baltic isn't cut off for allies)
- their goal isn't to win; their goal is to delay as long as possible (the reason why I select Garrison vs Militia is just for higher Org)
2) 1 infantry corp per every 3/4 garrison corps that are spread out and get strat redeployed to areas that are being invaded again to simply delay landing for as long as possible
3) 1 army placed centrally in France (around Paris) that contains both some good infantry corps and a good armor corp that's ready to actually setup a front somewhere if troops do manage to get a beachhead.

Now this is a good investment in both IC and Manpower but if a human UK/USA lands in Europe the investment you need to do so that you setup a full front when fighting the USSR also will be much higher so I prefer doing the setup at the start and being relatively certain of a defended coast
 
Gefallener_Held said:
Stupid? That would be you--Germany's limitation is manpower, not IC. That is one of the most basic tenets of the game. As far as wasting IC, I can apply far more of the Wehrmacht--in other words IC-- to Barbarossa when the coast is guarded. It is a waste of Ic to have a corp of panzers and a corp of motorized guarding the coast. ...
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just watch my video aar, it might make you better, sounds like you could use some improvement :D
 
carazvan said:
I think the big issue here is that everyone is assuming a landing by a stupid AI. Let me be clear in that case any strategy that doesn't involve you disbanding your own units will win as there is no concerted effort or overarching strategy.

On these types of questions I try to figure out what would be best vs a human player trying to land rather than a AI. Now vs a human player the strategy that I'd take would be the following:

1) garrison divisions (2 brigades) on each province that borders sea (I ignore Spain and am thinking only of French to Danish coast or to Danzig if Baltic isn't cut off for allies)
- their goal isn't to win; their goal is to delay as long as possible (the reason why I select Garrison vs Militia is just for higher Org)
2) 1 infantry corp per every 3/4 garrison corps that are spread out and get strat redeployed to areas that are being invaded again to simply delay landing for as long as possible
3) 1 army placed centrally in France (around Paris) that contains both some good infantry corps and a good armor corp that's ready to actually setup a front somewhere if troops do manage to get a beachhead.

Now this is a good investment in both IC and Manpower but if a human UK/USA lands in Europe the investment you need to do so that you setup a full front when fighting the USSR also will be much higher so I prefer doing the setup at the start and being relatively certain of a defended coast
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Yes. Also, I am not interested in talk of letting the AI land so you can wipe them out. One would never do this against a human player. Also, its a pain to contend with during, say, Barbarossa. Finally, wiping out so much of the Allies in gamey tactics like this just makes Sea Lion that much easier. By discouraging the AI from doing something stupid, the game is actually more challenging. Finally, it is just unrealistic to leave the entire coast of Western Europe undefended.
 
I put a wall of GAR at Maginot pre-war to discourage France from doing what France should do, and then use them to defend the ports for the rest of the game. Militia practical is easy to warm up for one massive run of recruitment and then can be abandoned forever. Everyone goes into Russia besides a couple odd corps which stay just in case Brits do something funny.

Whatever defends your ports, the easiest way to deal with invaders is to catch their transports with your fleet and sink them without even fighting against them.
 
nightraid3r said:
Don't build any garrisons or militia, it is a total waste.
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Not really. If garrisoning all occupied ports facing the prospect of Allied invasion with 4 MIL divisions results in no Overlord, then it's not a waste. It may not be as efficient as other methods, depending on your circumstances, but it is not a waste.

But there's the thing people forget.

Manpower can be "stored" in MIL divisions and recycled for use later. Manpower is returned to you when you voluntarily disband units. So, if you tie up manpwer in MIL divisions and sit them on "discourage the UK from invading ports" duty, that manpower isn't gone forever. It can be reclaimed at any time and either used to reinforce existing units or used to build new units. This might be particularly useful if the Allies commit to a big invasion in Vichy or Italy. :)

And here's maximum fun.

MIL (more so than GAR), uses only 10 officers per brigade, and has absurdly low IC costs. While you spend some IC to "store" manpower in this way, it's not that expensive for any major to do this since militia practical is pretty easy to build up. And since it ties up so few officers, it's not like adding 120 brigades of MIL to cover ports is going to kill your officer ratio, either.

You don't even have to research techs for them if you are feeling really stingy. The AI only cares about whether it sees divisions there. It really has no way of knowing if you have really up to date MIL or just some guys with sharp sticks.
 
Sorry to derail the topic a little bit, but that's a very informative answer and a question arises - speaking of garrisoning, how would you handle defending China as Japan? I'm always in doubt on how to garrison that massive area of land.

At the moment, I usually just give the entirety of mainland China to an AI command, give them an army worth of what I usually use for the invasion (some 25 x 3 inf + art divisions) and let the AI handle it as it wishes, but that seems like major overkill - the only advantage being that I can pull away troops north against the USSR or south against India if needed..

I feel that manpower becomes somewhat of a non-issue as Japan once you have taken all of China and are able to conscript the Chinese into your army, and what really limits Japan is IC (and resources), and Leadership - for your carrier fleets and ahead of time technologies to counter the inevitable USN death stars that will be coming your way (even if they do seem to have trouble crossing the pacific...).

Do you feel that building a ton of militia for the purpose of garrisoning China would be ideal? I'm thinking a 3 or 4 brigade militia division in each port/major province, and a few cavalry corps to handle uprisings (I think Japan starts with 12 CAV brigades).
I'm iffy about the idea though, since I never research Militia techs (so stuck at 36 techs), so not particularly useful if it came to a fight (not that I've ever seen the AI invade China, but that's besides the point right?) - and of course this means I sit at zero militia practicals..

If I get enough militia up for garrisoning China, I could use those practicals to build some to defend the pacific islands I suppose.. they are very cheap, but it would probably requiring bringing the militia techs up to '40 at least, which is leadership that could be spent elsewhere..
 
ShoGuL said:
(..)
If I get enough militia up for garrisoning China, I could use those practicals to build some to defend the pacific islands I suppose.. they are very cheap, but it would probably requiring bringing the militia techs up to '40 at least, which is leadership that could be spent elsewhere..
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As Japan, I went down the Mil/Gar path. For garrisons in China I used about 2o divisions Gar*2 plus 5 divisions Cav*2 for rebel hunting. The garrisons were placed in harbours and provinces with IC and strategic ressources. I built more garrisons for the Islands, for Burma, for Dutch East Asia and for India. That worked fine so far. They are dirt cheap now and thanks to constant research and all the strategic bonuses Japan enjoys, researching a new militia tech takes less than 90 days.
It is August 1942 in my current game and the IJN is just about to commission their 5th CTF (5CV + 6CL) with up-to-date techs and doctrines. So there was enough leadership left for other important projects :)
 
Coastal defence is a serious issue, and it is unfair to develop tactics against the AI for such senarios, because the AI is hopeless at actually conducting amphib. operations, therefore any tactic developed should be applicable vs a human intelligence and work with that it mind, otherwise its just plain bad advice.

That said, the threat of a defended coast, outweighs the cost of actually creating a defended coast in terms of utility.

What that means, is that the best defensive plans are ones that aren't designed to actually defend the coast, but only make it look as if it is defended, hence your opponant (human or AI) is fooled into not landing there.

For such tactics to work their best, what you want to do is create a 'faux landing area' that looks purposefully weak and undefended, while other sections of the coast look well defended. Milita are a poor use here, because psycologically your opponant will look at them and go 'weak divisions = push over => attack here' if that's the case along your entire coast, then they aren't going to be much detered.

Yet if you go round with binary infantry divisions every other province or even 1 in every 3, then that looks far more intimidating. Sure it will cost you 50+ divisions 100 brigades or so, but you can produce such numbers even with 'limited manpower' such as when you are Germany and still come out on top. Best of all, you have a massive strategic reserve even if the game turns against you. Dropping protection to ports and the immidate surroundings.

If you created the 'faux landing area' you can cut out a mass of those divisions because you leave a stretch of coastline undefended. The idea here (against human or AI) is to have an armoured corps a couple of provinces back just waiting to push the invaders back into the sea a la gamey tactic. Although it's not really gamey, because you've tricked the opponant into landing their by making it look like a favourable area to land. Hence you can claim the warm fuzzy feeling.

Futhermore, this tactic gets you additional miliage on cutting back on not building a tough all round Atlantic or Chinese Wall with 50+ divisions, and so can cut the number more down to 30 or so depending on how much you distrust the allies.


Above all, the best defence for your coast, is having the better offense at sea. That is taking out Germany Sea Lion style so that there is no 'spring board for invaison'. The downer in both MP and SP is that in one this is too easy, such that it could be considered gamey, on the other its often too hard to be doable. Thus your in a Catch-22 european style.


One must also consider the same question from the island nations of Great Britian and Japan. From their perspectives, they have truely massive coastlines compared to MP and total land coverage, hence for them defending the coast itself is the impossible. From their perspective there are only too avennues to pursue;

1. A rapid relief force.
This is better as motorised infantry rather than tanks and armour, fuel/supplies and the fact that ARM or LARM has more utility in offensive work means that it is a poor choice for your defensive corps. Such a corps has to be centralised, and be ready to act at the first sign of an invaison fleet, since if they are landing on undefended coast, will have a good opertunity to make a beeline for the VPs on the island.

Land forts and garrisons on these centers of VP, industry and airfields can be a great way to prevent this if you are on the 'loosing side' of your MP war. The RRF will only have one opertunity to stop the attack in general, so it is better to have a corps, and then some, if possible, then just a corps. However one must also recognise the attacker will be looking directly to take ports, or use paratroopers to screw over your counter invaison attack. Hence spearheading to the LZ with large stacks isn't always the best option. Nor is containment. You need to know from your intelligence networks if they have paratroopers or large numbers of TP to stage multiple landings and act in a suitable manner in case your opponant has a grand battleplan.

2. Sealane Control.
Best defense is a good offense, and it shows well here. If you control the seas, it works just like defending the coast directly. The option of an amphib. landing looks risky, because the threat is too high. Hence it works in the exact analogous manner. For nations like Germany, this is a tough one to pull off vs the AI, but a human player whoose RN has been smashed could get a bit paranoid against conducting D-day, even if there is an american player.


At the end of the day, amphib. operations in HoI3 are far too easy to conduct, there should be large org penalties associated with not landing at a port. So its up to you how 'paranoid you want to get' with worrying about landings. Personally, between SP and MP I don't worry much at all on coastal defence, and prefer to leave weak port garrisons, and keep a strong RRF whatever nation I am simply because I'm a risky player when it comes down to it. I'd rather have an interesting game with a 'D-day' and crush it, than to never have a 'D-day' to begin with. But that doesn't mean I haven't experimented with building an Atlantic Wall, since coming from the Channel Islands it was one of, if not the, most fortified place on the entire Atlantic wall taking up 1/12th of all the Atlantic Wall funds, and totaling half of all the earthworks build by Organisation Todt. There is a good reason that the Channel Islands weren't liberated until the day after VE day, the Allies didn't want to touch the place with a barge pole it was so well defended...but now I'm rambling so I'll cut this post here.
 
ShoGuL said:
Sorry to derail the topic a little bit, but that's a very informative answer and a question arises - speaking of garrisoning, how would you handle defending China as Japan? I'm always in doubt on how to garrison that massive area of land. QUOTE]

Japan - MILITIA IS YOUR FRIEND!! Remember this statement, you will see it again as the wise gunny said to the recruit. Japan has to balance everything on the cheap, more to do than any major and less IC than any major to do it with. Before you even open your war with China, start pumping militia divisions of 3xMIL 1xART. I always shoot for about 16 of these divisions at start. They make great place holders to allow your line infantry to do the real fighting, are cheap and quick to make, use few officers, can actually fight well against many chinese units, and build up your practicals fast.

Assuming you take China out as a player should, manpower will never be an issue again. Your only concern is how to hold and expand. For holding China, I use 1 brigade of garrison/militia on each valuable province, and 2xCAV to play whack-a-mole on rebels. Break up some of your starting GAR divisions with LOW experience and make brigades to cover the rest. You can't do anything about revolt risk in China, Japan doesn't get an option of just occupying until we get to India and Siberia :). So all you want to do is keep control of the provinces you need and reduce supply costs as much as possible. Coastal ports that can be invaded by allies are covered by 3xGAR 1xAA divisions. These divisions make great islands garrisons also and can be shipped out as your conquests spread. I always assume whoever is invading a port will have aircraft assisting. A couple of AA brigades will chew them up. You could interchange them with 3xMIL 1x AA if yoyu want something that can actually walk to another province without a strat move. And always, I mean always, cover your mainland supply port/depot with serious defenders. Japan can be so easier castrated by the poorly structured supply system of the Pacific it isn't funny. This means a full division against the AI, a full corps against a player. NOTHING will ruin your day faster than losing your depot, game over.

Japan will lower it's construction practical fast. It has to improve ports, build airfields, build infrastructure, and needs coastal forts on islands, build them in major ports also. Depending on how the game is going you might even sneak in IC runs. I use forts of level 1 or 2 just to delay the invasion long enough for my fleets to show up and fight. Level 10 forts make an island almost invulnerable but Japan is wasting IC at that point on an island that can be bypassed. Any mainland port can be attacked from the sides ignoring the coastal forts.

Reaction forces depends on your situation. Assuming you still control the sea around China/Japan, keep Marines and line corps in Japan where they can be moved fast by transports covered by fleets to invaded areas. Once you lose control of the sea lanes, it is just a matter of time. Best you can do if that happens is post your corps in strategic areas and respond as best you can via strategic movement. If necessary call back line corps from the front lines wherever they are.

And remember, you have do all this while still building a fleet big enough to fight and defeat the Allies, expand your empire, and be ready to help AI Germany when it gets bogged down in Russia. No one ever said it would be easy.
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Everyone has different ideas and I guess it depends on how much you want to take advantage of the AI's tendencies. If you study enough games, you have a good idea of where the AI is going to land and how to "influence" the AI where to land.

One thing I will point out, no matter what tactic you use, you should take advantage of the opportunity to build up your construction practicals by building coastal/land forts. I always build up the Siegfried Line, then coastals in all my starting Atlantic ports, then coastals in major ports in France etc. You will need the practicals when it comes time for Barbarossa and you want to improve infrastructure and place airfields.

Also, as others have pointed out RADAR is your friend!. You want to see what is coming, where the Allied fleets are sailing, and you want to intercept those pesky Strat bombers as far way from your factories as possible. Radar allows this and is well worth the leadership investment.
 
Secret Master said:
Not really. If garrisoning all occupied ports facing the prospect of Allied invasion with 4 MIL divisions results in no Overlord, then it's not a waste. It may not be as efficient as other methods, depending on your circumstances, but it is not a waste.

But there's the thing people forget.

Manpower can be "stored" in MIL divisions and recycled for use later. Manpower is returned to you when you voluntarily disband units. So, if you tie up manpwer in MIL divisions and sit them on "discourage the UK from invading ports" duty, that manpower isn't gone forever. It can be reclaimed at any time and either used to reinforce existing units or used to build new units. This might be particularly useful if the Allies commit to a big invasion in Vichy or Italy. :)

And here's maximum fun.

MIL (more so than GAR), uses only 10 officers per brigade, and has absurdly low IC costs. While you spend some IC to "store" manpower in this way, it's not that expensive for any major to do this since militia practical is pretty easy to build up. And since it ties up so few officers, it's not like adding 120 brigades of MIL to cover ports is going to kill your officer ratio, either.

You don't even have to research techs for them if you are feeling really stingy. The AI only cares about whether it sees divisions there. It really has no way of knowing if you have really up to date MIL or just some guys with sharp sticks.
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You can also upgrade those Mil brigades rather than disbanding. I mean, convert to Mot, Mech, or whatever. What is the proper term for that? "Upgrade" refers to updating the tech level, I think.
 
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When playing as Germany on Hard, I typically put one garrison division (2gar, 1mp) at every port, and a corps of infantry (5 divs, each one is 2inf, 2art) in Paris. Those are typically enough to stop all but the biggest landings, and it's enough to slow down anything bigger until I can ship more stuff back to France.

Typically I work hard to keep the US out of the war, and I take London (sometimes before Moscow, sometimes after), and of course once those 2 events occur the threat on the west coast is reduced to near 0.
 
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