Plus it beats the nonsensical HoI3 system, where you could research pretty much perfect "doctrine." Army doesn't work that way.
Hearts of Iron IV - Development Diary 4 - Land Doctrines
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Yeah, doctrines are as limiting as they are helpful, that's an in built feature. I don't get why people are complaining about tihs
USSR did not "choose" human wave. It had it`s own, based on the expirience of civil war war plan, "deep operation".
However due to initial succes of Germany in Barbarossa, SU had to resort to desperate defence for 2 years, with Stalingrad offencive being the first properly executed "Deep battle", after which, again, USSR did had a rather respectable cassualty ratio, and running mostly motorised and mechanised offencives, backed by huge chunkes of artillery and aviation. USSR`s approach can be seen as a kind of superior firepower or Blizkrieg approach by the start of 1944, definitely not a human wave thing.
I know, but Soviet operational art was still developed in light of their large population (and because of the influence of Stalin). I would like a separate option to pick a fully deep battle strategy if you don't purge the army, but in light of the Soviet situation circa 1938, 'human wave' makes sense as a descriptor. But you wouldn't see human wave (or deep battle) being implemented by the French, or the British. Both of those strategies came out of the Russian experience post-civil war and they both had similarities (based around the same principle of the focusing of force).
There is also the difficult that the USSR would have had actually implementing deep battle given the ragged nature of its army in the 30s, they were barely able to pursue an offensive in Finland during the winter war.
That is a false argument.
First, most people ignore terrain. Karelia is not plains. It is swampy, forested place with next to no population, infrastructure. It forces any invader to advance along a few roads and rail lines, which were fortified by a defencive line. It is better to fight during winter there, because the ground can actually sustain heavy machienery and rivers become crossable by ice. In that place there is no option for manuver. It forces WW1-style grind, which Soviets completed in less than 3 month.
If anything, Winter war shown Soviet army being quite capable.
Just because they had teoretical concept of deep operations doesn't mean they were ready and able to use it.
Armor spearhead was famously envisioned by Basil Hart and yet British army didn't use it. Carpet bombing is of Italian origin and yet Italy didn't use it.
There is huge gap between having an idea and putting it into practice. And until it is put into practice, which requires hammering many tiny details (what German officers did for many years), training both officers and men and properly equiping them, you don't have that doctrine.
I think we should be able to research all the doctrines, but only be able to apply one to each unit (or maybe rather: HQ), so that we could have branches of speciality, if we are willing to pay for the extra research required to invest into two (or more) trees. Switching a unit´s (HQ´s) doctrine would temporarily de-org it (s units - and incur an officer-cost if those are still in). Penalties could apply if units of different doctrines are used together (in command or in battle). Officers, if still in the game, could accumulate a tad more slowly, if multiple doctrines are in use.
This would add a layer in giving two basic options, with somewhat of a continuum in between: A generalist army, or a specialed one. Do you take the heavy investment and inflexibility of having your amored corps going with ´blitzkrieg´ and your infantry armies with ´human wave´, or do you rather have an allround army on ´grand battleplan´ for all and spend a significant amount of research on something else, instead.
Balancing and AI-coding would probably become a bit harder because of this, but i think, it would add to the replay-value of the game, as you might want to try at least two games with each major, just to try both approaches concerning this for each (and many more games for other reasons, of course).
Interface-wise, it would be a matter of a button on the HQ-tab, displaying the currently chosen doctrine, naming it in the tooltip with the bonuses it applies and triggering a drop-down-menu listing the avaiable doctrines, which in turn would be tooltipped with name and stats-boosts to be applied, if chosen. As HQs have zero org when created anyways, and switching is penalized with deorging, there is no need to pick a doctrine on creation, just maybe a button to choose a default somewhere. Plus ledger integration (an overview showing which HQ runs on what doctrine). That should be it, pretty much.
This would add a layer in giving two basic options, with somewhat of a continuum in between: A generalist army, or a specialed one. Do you take the heavy investment and inflexibility of having your amored corps going with ´blitzkrieg´ and your infantry armies with ´human wave´, or do you rather have an allround army on ´grand battleplan´ for all and spend a significant amount of research on something else, instead.
Balancing and AI-coding would probably become a bit harder because of this, but i think, it would add to the replay-value of the game, as you might want to try at least two games with each major, just to try both approaches concerning this for each (and many more games for other reasons, of course).
Interface-wise, it would be a matter of a button on the HQ-tab, displaying the currently chosen doctrine, naming it in the tooltip with the bonuses it applies and triggering a drop-down-menu listing the avaiable doctrines, which in turn would be tooltipped with name and stats-boosts to be applied, if chosen. As HQs have zero org when created anyways, and switching is penalized with deorging, there is no need to pick a doctrine on creation, just maybe a button to choose a default somewhere. Plus ledger integration (an overview showing which HQ runs on what doctrine). That should be it, pretty much.
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You are totally right, Budienny has proved several times his courage during the civil war. But he was also a boozer and a very bad tactician and Stalin liked him because he was one of his preferated drinking companion and also because he was one of the rare person (at this time) "intellectualy inferior" to him in the party.
Stalin started to delegate responsabilities to the rare capable guys he hasn't murdered (Zhukov, Konev...), only after he has caused several catastrophic military failures (Kiev pocket, Bryansk etc....) that have caused the whole regime to be severly threatened.
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While I hated genericness of techs and ideas in EU4 - making most nations of the same culture bland and thus not interesting - I do hope that HoI4 won't go the opposite direction: making certain doctrines fit only certain countries "because that was historical". I am uncertain of desperate defense fitting the Blitzkrieg doctrine specifically as well.
If you call Winter War a display of the capability of the Red Army, and in a positive way, quite a few people might call that a false argument. Soviet Union did not reach their goals in Finland, as the country remained independent.
Soviet leaders and troops envisioned a quick march to Helsinki. Soviet leadership had even commissioned music for their victory parade in Helsinki. And the troops brought along their instruments, musical ones.
Yeah, the Red Army sure was quite capable. Of underestimating opponents at least. And the grind that soviets "completed" resulted in 1:6 kill ratio in favor of the finns. And even as a result of that sacrifice, the ultimate victory was not reached.
Someone has been reading too many russian history books about the "Great Patriotic War".
Is there any example of a country using multiple doctrines (doctrines, not strategies)?
What do you want to see as a "proof in practice"?
SU had all the nececery equipment to make that happen(over 26k tanks, 7k fully functional), planes, mechanised corpses, infantry and military exercises.
But SU was cought before it`s army was mobilised and most of border troops were destroyes. First succesfull Soviet deep operation would be battle of Stalingrad.
It is a succesfull display of capability of Soviet army to fight in complicated terrain. The cassualty rate is quite normal for conditions.
Mind you in WW1, UK+France had to loose 3:1 for each German, and they were fighting good terrain, with good logistics and good weather. Soviets fought on a narrower front, Fins had a decent defencive line, and better readiness to fight under weather conditions.
Yes, Soviets didn`t expect Fins to have the spirit to fight. But in the long run that was irrelevant, as Soviet army achieved what it wanted, territories to better protect Leningrad and Finish uncapability/unwilingness to advance far into Russia WW2. But which of world leaders ever envisioned military campaign right? Allies, Soviets and Germans all "envisioned" their troops overperform.
As for books&stuff, Please, provide better arguments that dull acusations.
I dare say that it's practically impossible to have different "doctrines" at an army or even army group level. "Doctrines" represent the entire ethos of a nation's armed forces, ranging from the makeup of battalions all the way to an army level. It represents the entirety of officer training ranging from lieutenant to field marshal and how different units communicate and interact with eachother. Thinking that any military formation, no matter what the size, could simply change their mind, leave a 1940 French style "grand battle plan" and decide to go "Blitzkrieg" a bit is ludicrous.
I dont think WW1 on the western front can be called good terrain. Yes maybe before they shot it to pieces but not after and isnt trench warfare also a good defensive line? Also why did the Finns have a better readiness to fight in the conditions afaik there shouldnt be a major difference between the soviets and the finns in readiness except for what they themselves had created from poor planning etc. The Soviets are just as used to harsh weather and cold winters as the Finns. Regarding the ratio of losses in WW1 the French had 1/4-1/5 of their deaths and calsuaties in the first five months of the war. Why? probably had something to do with their uniforms and doctrines.
Actually, one could argue, that of course there have been proponents of at least two different doctrines in the german army as well as in the french. Not every french commander was a de Gaulle and not every german one was a Guderian, to put it simply. But that´s just one way of interpretating and justifying this suggestion. Another would be, that even for later years, one could argue, that the WSS was following different doctrines than the rest of the Wehrmacht, perhaps. That´s were this idea actually stems from: A way of branching out your military forces and give you the ability to ´customize´ special forces, if you so desire. To have your ´guards´ that never give up an inch, unless literally forced to do so, while also having your mobile response force, which is focused on retaking lost ground, doctrinally, for example.
To me that sounds far too much like wanting to have everything. "This unit is defending, so I'll give it the doctrine that gives big bonuses to defence. These units are my mobile spearhead, so I'll give them the doctrine that gives big bonuses to mobile units."
If all you want is for every one of your units to have a huge bonus suitable to its role, rather than having to pick a single doctrine that has both strengths and weaknesses, then why not just play the game on Very Easy rather than fiddle with doctrines?
Russia has had long tradition of mass shock assaults from 18th century and they still resorted to using similar tactics in Winter War, during the eve and initial aftermath of Barbarossa and even to some degree before Stalingrad before the practice began dying down for good*. That in mind I would not say human wave is not as much inaccurate to describe most common Soviet approach before they got their shit together as much as it's simply silly given even if one was to make flexible doctrines and give more logical names to them, like mission-type tactics than blitzkrieg (which inevitably sounds less marketable for most people) and mass shock instead of human wave and yadayada. After all we can say plenty of German WW2 tactics were essentially nothing but simplified versions of WW1 tactics taken to the logical extreme and some of them screamed completely opposite of the typical propaganda-ish and romantic Blitzkrieg view, and mentality behind some of the tactics and general approach to warfare is nothing but good old Prussian tradition which one could say is also something Napoleon made fairly popular and even before that the Swedes and even before that we can assume any more aggressive and not-so-conventional approach until other folk caught up.
*I am speaking very broadly here since I have not have encyclopedic and photographic memory of every Soviet battle and skirmish in the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1943 and did such actions occur during specific battle or not.
(And yes, I am perfectly aware why they favoured such tactics during age of muskets (and why some other folk also did) and why its impact was more profound than it was after smokeless gunpowder took over blackpowder firearms. It still does not change the fact they resorted to such actions long after WW1 for numerous reasons and equally numerous occasions while most participants at least attempted to avoid such action since it was no longer as effective as it used to.)
Admittedly that is somewhat deterministic view of things and I do agree it could perhaps be renamed and shifted around a bit to be more natural, or if they intend to introduce combat tactics ala TFH it should be value of leadership than anything else, and purging the army should have extreme effect on general leadership which in turn influences bad tactics even if the doctrine itself is "good" until it slowly decays through combat experience and time. Since we know HoI4 is at least trying to attempt to avoid the usual train where war is fixed to start on more or less on a fixed date it might create interesting situation where effects of the purge may last longer or perhaps there will be war breaking out from reoccupation of Rhineland when France decides to say no and intervenes by force instead of idling and the purge has not yet taken place. Perhaps they could make purge itself more dynamic event which might be either avoided or delayed, or even fueled to trigger early on.
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Such harsh critique almost hurts me, when it comes from you, Stephen. I think i explicitely stated that it should be balanced in a way, that it should hardly ever be the optimal thing to do. Usually the most effecient way should of course be to stick with one, but the harder that feels for a player, the more (s)he feels tempted to branch out, the better this would model the various armies being constantly torn between different approaches, as it was at least before and during the early stages of the real war.
Penalties for using multiple doctrines should be (rough outline of course):
- slower officer accumulation rate (a modifier sort of like the ´split government´ in HoI3 concerning national unity - call it ´split military´, or whatever)
- a flat out penalty to org and/or combat-effeciency for using different doctrines under the same (army and up, if HQs carry the doctrines) HQ/in the same battle.
- complete deorging of subordinated units whenever an HQ switches its doctrine.
- last but not least, the added cost to research more than one tree of the land doctrines.
EDIT: To me, one ´doctrine´ in game design is: soft cap beats hard cap (for as long as AI can handle it). This would turn the one-land-doctrine hard cap into a one-land-doctrine soft cap, sort of.
EDIT2: Granted, this would be a lot more interesting, if we didnt know quite exactly what kind of battles we were going to fight against whom years ahead of time, since then we might have wanted to invest into various doctrine trees, ´just in case´, to be able to apply them, should the need arise. Kind of unfortunately, most of us know what they are going to need and who they are going to fight where and when. Well, there´s multiplayer, i suppose, so...
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I´ll ramble on a bit: Not only did the Wehrmacht (for example) not follow a coherent doctrine path throughout the war, applying it to every single of its commands, but also a single commander could turn from a proponent of one doctrine to one of another, depending on circumstances: Rommel was very much pro-flexible defence in africa, but a staunch hold-the-(coast)line guy in normandy (and, remarkably, in this context: both times he was frustrated with his superiors concerning this). I mean: If the german military was in total agreement about doctrinal affairs, how come the constant quibbles between Hitler and his generals? What was the german doctrine when faced with an overwhelming enemy offensive? To hold the positions at any cost (like Hitler usually demanded) or going over to an elastic defence (like v. Manstein, for example, advocated)?
EDIT: This could also be a way to give the germans an edge over reality. As in: The real german Wehrmacht would be, for me, a prime candidate for application of various doctrines. As they´d already start with some techs in them, some of the cost (the opportunity cost) is already covered, so it is a good thing to have, and, occassionally apply, when proper. That´s what they did in the early years. But then, in reality, they continued to invest in all of these trees and also fudged up in doctine-assignment here and there. It might have been more effecient to stick with one tree and convert all the forces to it, little by little, than to expand on each one. In the game, the germans (AI or human) can do that, thus enhancing their late-war performance and making the war ´more interesting´ at its later stages, when compared to the real thing, lifting the axis winning chances from maybe 5% to maybe 20% (pulling the numbers out of absolute vacuum, of course).
EDIT2: In fact, one could argue, that Hitler tried to do exactly that, at one point or another, by appointing certain generals (Model, for example). It kind of follows, for me, that generals should have a ´prefered doctrine´ assigned to them. They can be assigned other doctines than their prefered one, but they wont be as good in it (wont get the full bonus). Certain things might alter a generals prefered doctrine, but i am not sure which those would be.
EDIT: This could also be a way to give the germans an edge over reality. As in: The real german Wehrmacht would be, for me, a prime candidate for application of various doctrines. As they´d already start with some techs in them, some of the cost (the opportunity cost) is already covered, so it is a good thing to have, and, occassionally apply, when proper. That´s what they did in the early years. But then, in reality, they continued to invest in all of these trees and also fudged up in doctine-assignment here and there. It might have been more effecient to stick with one tree and convert all the forces to it, little by little, than to expand on each one. In the game, the germans (AI or human) can do that, thus enhancing their late-war performance and making the war ´more interesting´ at its later stages, when compared to the real thing, lifting the axis winning chances from maybe 5% to maybe 20% (pulling the numbers out of absolute vacuum, of course).
EDIT2: In fact, one could argue, that Hitler tried to do exactly that, at one point or another, by appointing certain generals (Model, for example). It kind of follows, for me, that generals should have a ´prefered doctrine´ assigned to them. They can be assigned other doctines than their prefered one, but they wont be as good in it (wont get the full bonus). Certain things might alter a generals prefered doctrine, but i am not sure which those would be.
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