How much of an advantage do the allies start with at the beginning of the game?

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Is this or have other HoI games given the allies an advantage where it is easier to attain victory for the Allies vs the Axis? If so, how strong of an advantage will it be or has it been?

Midas

I don't think the game has ever given the allies an advantage that they didn't already have at the beginning of WWII. In fact in HOI2 and HOI3 France was purposefully nerfed to make the game flow always happen with Germany beating France.

HOI4 is moving away from this with the division builder and experience requirements etc, so technically France could be on equal terms as Germany as was the case in WWII, but simply suffers division issues.
 
I don't think the game has ever given the allies an advantage that they didn't already have at the beginning of WWII. In fact in HOI2 and HOI3 France was purposefully nerfed to make the game flow always happen with Germany beating France.

HOI4 is moving away from this with the division builder and experience requirements etc, so technically France could be on equal terms as Germany as was the case in WWII, but simply suffers division issues.

Care to explain how france could have been equal to Germany? It seemed like the war was pretty one sided.
 
From a purely "paper" standpoint, France looked to be a tough fight for Germany. FRA had considerably more tanks, many of them more powerful than the Germans had. France also had a large infantry force which should have been more than sufficient to stop Germany at the Maginot Line and at several of the rivers to the north.

In practice, German operational doctrines, combined arms tactics, and sheer speed of advance rendered most of the French advantages moot. France spread its armor out in direct support of its infantry, meaning that a German Armor Company frequently faced 2-3 French tanks at a time: a series of one-sided massacres. The French airforce was heavily damaged on the ground before it had a chance to fight. That gave German Stukas a free hand to shoot up or bomb anything that moved. If it had come down to a direct head-on confrontation between concentrated forces, that could have gone badly for Germany. There were several smaller clashes in which the French Army handled itself respectably well. Germany essentially won by NOT fighting most of the French army, but by maneuvering and cutting it off from supply and reinforcements. The French leadership was unable to to react in time, or in some cases failed to react at all. The French did not lose on the basis of being "outnumbered" or "outgunned", they lost by obsolete methodology and a few incompetent leaders at the top.
 
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From a purely "paper" standpoint, France looked to be a tough fight for Germany. FRA had considerably more tanks, many of them more powerful than the Germans had. France also had a large infantry force which should have been more than sufficient to stop Germany at the Maginot Line and at several of the rivers to the north.

In practice, German operational doctrines, combined arms tactics, and sheer speed of advance rendered most of the French advantages moot. France spread its armor out in direct support of its infantry, meaning that a German Armor Company frequently faced 2-3 French tanks at a time: a series of one-sided massacres. The French airforce was heavily damaged on the ground before it had a chance to fight. That gave German Stukas a free hand to shoot up or bomb anything that moved. If it had come down to a direct head-on confrontation between concentrated forces, that could have gone badly for Germany. There were several smaller clashes in which the French Army handled itself respectably well. Germany essentially won by NOT fighting most of the French army, but by maneuvering and cutting it off from supply and reinforcements. The French leadership was unable to to react in time, or in some cases failed to react at all. The French did not lose on the basis of being "outnumbered" or "outgunned", they lost by obsolete methodology and a few incompetent leaders at the top.

And this is now being modeled by the "doctrine" research providing bonuses to troops in HOI4. Blitzkreig doctrine will provide many bonuses to troops in the early parts of its research, but by the final research the other trees have caught up to the bonuses.

So now on paper Germany = France, but German troops would have better leadership, morale, organization (basically all the things they did have) over france. On top of this France will probably start with smaller divisions (maybe 3 brigades) which means less combined arms bonuses and won't be able to move to 4 or 5 like Germany because they wouldn't have the XP until the war starts.
 
And this is now being modeled by the "doctrine" research providing bonuses to troops in HOI4. Blitzkreig doctrine will provide many bonuses to troops in the early parts of its research, but by the final research the other trees have caught up to the bonuses.

So now on paper Germany = France, but German troops would have better leadership, morale, organization (basically all the things they did have) over france. On top of this France will probably start with smaller divisions (maybe 3 brigades) which means less combined arms bonuses and won't be able to move to 4 or 5 like Germany because they wouldn't have the XP until the war starts.

That sounds good except for one major point.

If the armies are well represented vis a vis history, how is Germany supposed to fare well assuming the French player does not advance heavily into Belgium allowing most of his forces to be cutoff? If the French simply hold at the Belgian border and have enough defense in depth to avoid breakthrough and encirclement, Germany is then forced to slog its way to Paris. Even if they are able to do this it will be much slower and costlier than history.
 
Germany essentially won by NOT fighting most of the French army, but by maneuvering and cutting it off from supply and reinforcements. The French leadership was unable to to react in time, or in some cases failed to react at all. The French did not lose on the basis of being "outnumbered" or "outgunned", they lost by obsolete methodology and a few incompetent leaders at the top.

Yep.

And none of this French stuff takes into account how key German leaders ignored their orders and pressed the attack at critical junctures. Rommel and Guderian weren't doing what Hitler or the General Staff wanted when they pressed ahead at key battles. The famous Ghost Division and Rommel was even out of contact with higher headquarters when he made portions of his famous advance. The situation was so disagreeable that Hitler and Kliiest kept trying to give stop orders to commanders like Guderian, who were able to conveniently ignore them.

Had Kleist and Hitler had their way in 1940, France might not have lost so many divisions in early combats and encirclements, changing the war entirely. Generals like Guderian and Rommel made it look easy, but it really wasn't.
 
It's true that in every single HOI game 1-3 that I have played - that the allies don't do what they historically did and launch 40 of their best divisions into Belgium to help defend the line there. What I often would get would be maybe a dozen french units going north at most. They'd join with the Belgian and Dutch forces, but would still present me with the fact that all those divisions combined would be a real beast to fight against in Northern France, so I still cut them off and destroy them.

I reach Calais and with my panzers, and cut the AI off before it has a chance to regroup. I follow up with my infantry to make a strong line, annihilate the forces in the Low Countries, and then go after Paris and Northern France. Regardless, I just wish the AI did what was historically done at least half the time. The bulk of the French armies are along the Maginot Line, making it easy to flank in Northern France, but annoying that the AI is so incompetent.
 
I had always thought that the French military was capable of fighting Germany, had the French been under better leadership and not fallen prey to the same move twice lol. Seems like de Gaulle was the only semi-decent leader. All these tank commanders se have defined the European theater very well.
 
From a purely "paper" standpoint, France looked to be a tough fight for Germany. FRA had considerably more tanks, many of them more powerful than the Germans had. France also had a large infantry force which should have been more than sufficient to stop Germany at the Maginot Line and at several of the rivers to the north.

In practice, German operational doctrines, combined arms tactics, and sheer speed of advance rendered most of the French advantages moot. France spread its armor out in direct support of its infantry, meaning that a German Armor Company frequently faced 2-3 French tanks at a time: a series of one-sided massacres. The French airforce was heavily damaged on the ground before it had a chance to fight. That gave German Stukas a free hand to shoot up or bomb anything that moved. If it had come down to a direct head-on confrontation between concentrated forces, that could have gone badly for Germany. There were several smaller clashes in which the French Army handled itself respectably well. Germany essentially won by NOT fighting most of the French army, but by maneuvering and cutting it off from supply and reinforcements. The French leadership was unable to to react in time, or in some cases failed to react at all. The French did not lose on the basis of being "outnumbered" or "outgunned", they lost by obsolete methodology and a few incompetent leaders at the top.

yeah the contrast in doctrine was stark. The germans simply jumped from ww1 tactics to modern warfare very quickly. The french had a doctrine to use tanks to support infantry and the heavy ones to assault enemy positions not much removed from ww1 thinking while the germans realised you could mass your tanks to punch a hole quickly in enemy lines and cut of their supplies and communications. This was reflected in the design of the tanks as well as the deployment. The french may have had better armour in some of their heavy tanks like the Char B1 but it was awkward in tank v tank combat because of a heavy work load on the driver and visibility was an issue. (according to a recent doc I watched lol)

So yeah I guess the issue with the game designers is while we know all this and we know with hindsight how to rectify the problem is how much flexibility will we have to do this. I think with the doctrine paths instead of artifically nerfing france , using inferior doctrine will be what will make it difficult. Possibly there will be an option to modernise but at a cost.
 
Also, radio. Every panzer was equipped with radio, while french tanks didn't. Orders were badly relayed down the line. Overall, I think a french player should be able to fare much better than historical, holding off the germans if enough effort is done.
 
Also, radio. Every panzer was equipped with radio, while french tanks didn't. Orders were badly relayed down the line. Overall, I think a french player should be able to fare much better than historical, holding off the germans if enough effort is done.

didnt they use flags? I think thats where the white surrender flag came into being.
 
That sounds good except for one major point.

If the armies are well represented vis a vis history, how is Germany supposed to fare well assuming the French player does not advance heavily into Belgium allowing most of his forces to be cutoff? If the French simply hold at the Belgian border and have enough defense in depth to avoid breakthrough and encirclement, Germany is then forced to slog its way to Paris. Even if they are able to do this it will be much slower and costlier than history.

I can only think of three sensible ways of getting around this:

- multiple starts (so a June 1940 start date, say, when the breakthrough has already been made and the French army pretty much defeated);
- some kind of optional "France has a strategic brain explosion" event;

- if there is enough strength placed on leaders and doctrines, then a similar historical result could be achieved as long as France was AI, so that it would be possible for Germany to punch holes in the French lines, were they in Belgium or on the French border (and if a player was in charge of France, I could imagine they would want to do things differently and get a different result in any event, so it wouldn't be an issue).
 
The latter wouldn't be an issue in SP games. There is still a significant number who play MP.

Perhaps MP groups will need to include a house rule such that no one can play France.
 
The latter wouldn't be an issue in SP games. There is still a significant number who play MP.

Perhaps MP groups will need to include a house rule such that no one can play France.

Aye, sorry - completely forgot about MP. As long as it was a 1939 start (so the doctrines and leaders are pretty much locked in) it'd probably be alright for someone to play France. 1936 wouldn't work as you say. I think in any MP game, where we all have the benefit of hindsight, the Axis side is going to be at a severe disadvantage unless the game is skewed away from the historical outcome by some margin, particularly on a 1936 start - and then it comes back to the victory mechanics discussion in the other thread :).
 
That sounds good except for one major point.

If the armies are well represented vis a vis history, how is Germany supposed to fare well assuming the French player does not advance heavily into Belgium allowing most of his forces to be cutoff? If the French simply hold at the Belgian border and have enough defense in depth to avoid breakthrough and encirclement, Germany is then forced to slog its way to Paris. Even if they are able to do this it will be much slower and costlier than history.
Same way it fared well in Russia. Break the line, don`t let armies retreat. France simply didn`t had the territory to sustain loses and rebuild divisions as USSR did.

If Germans manage to get air superiority, it should be hard for France to maneuver as fast as Germans can or keep as much troops ready for fight.
Also, radio. Every panzer was equipped with radio, while french tanks didn't. Orders were badly relayed down the line. Overall, I think a french player should be able to fare much better than historical, holding off the germans if enough effort is done.
The "greater number of radios" of German tanks are mostly a myth. French tanks had radios, most of them anyway. Also, Russians also were not that much behind on radios either.
 
The "greater number of radios" of German tanks are mostly a myth. French tanks had radios, most of them anyway. Also, Russians also were not that much behind on radios either.
No myth.
Every German tank had one, while for the French, IIRC it was only the command tank and for the russian those only if they were lucky. That forced both Russian and French tanks to operate in the infamous 'Hen and Chicken' formation which hit the russian even harder because of the bad visibility of the T-34 and the heavy workload for the commander (which was an issue for French tanks as well).
Overall the German tanks were 'better' because they could be and were better lead, had more crew, better division of labour and greater tactical awareness.
 
France spread its armor out in direct support of its infantry, meaning that a German Armor Company frequently faced 2-3 French tanks at a time: a series of one-sided massacres. The French airforce was heavily damaged on the ground before it had a chance to fight.

That's actually not really true, and is the History Channel version laced with a bit of French/British apologism (really, the French and Brits tried very hard to make it as though the Germans were so superior in 1940. In reality, it was discovered by the Americans in 1944 that the French and Brits had completely lied about the Order of Battle of 1940, and the French/British actually had more tanks than the Germans).

The French actually began the war with an outstanding all-armed motorized formation - the 7th Army - which included two Panzer Division equivalents, a pair of elite motorized Divisions, and a couple of other motorized outfits. While not yet quite a Panzer Army in terms of doctrine, this outfit - plus another half a dozen or so armored and mechanized Divisions - shows that the idea that the French didn't concentrate tanks was fiction. The French "penny-packeted" their tanks to an extent - but these were mostly old and slow tanks (eg H35) meant for infantry support. Moreover, to think that this penny-packeting is wrong is to fly in the face of the German and American OOB in 1944 - both of which also "penny packeted" armor in support of their infantry Divisions (the Germans typically allocating one company of assault guns per infantry Division, while the Americans allocated a battalion of Shermans).

The real problem is that the French high command made a mistake, which ran contrary against doctrine. Instead of keeping 7th Army in reserve at Reims - where it was about 2 day's march away from Sedan at worse - they instead decided to spend their reserves immediately to try and extend the battle line in Belgium so that they could link up with the Dutch in Breda. Hence, this superb all-arms reserve, instead of facing the main effort of the German army, was stuck in Belgium against the German diversionary effort.

All of the problems encountered by the French at Sedan - including sending tiny numbers of tanks against entire Panzer Divisions - was actually a function of a lack of reserves rather than the lack of armored/mechanized formations that can go head-to-head against a Panzer Army. This is why the Panzers were able to avoid fighting for the most part - the French had no units at all to stop them, because all the reserves were stuck in Belgium/Holland. This is a mistake in generalship, not doctrine or army composition, and it's been basically covered up to excuse the bad decisions of Gamelin.

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Finally, French aircraft were not caught on the ground napping (that's the issue with the Poles and Soviets). They did however lack fighters because the French were very focused on tactical bombing while forgetting you need to establish air superiority first; and in any case the Reich did in fact invest far more in their air force before the war and were thus in a much more advanced state than the French.
 
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yeah the contrast in doctrine was stark. The germans simply jumped from ww1 tactics to modern warfare very quickly. The french had a doctrine to use tanks to support infantry and the heavy ones to assault enemy positions not much removed from ww1 thinking while the germans realised you could mass your tanks to punch a hole quickly in enemy lines and cut of their supplies and communications.

The German WW2 doctrine was essentially their First World War doctrine but with trucks to speed up movement. Conceptually it was far from revolutionary and was really just a natural progression based on technology.

And in any case the French doctrine in fact was closer to the 1944 doctrinal standard of all armies; by which time all armies had figured out that massed tank attacks can in fact be stopped with sufficiently developed defences and entrenchments.

The whole "punch a hole in a line and breakthrough" thing was, to be blunt, a gimmick. It worked only against enemies that didn't have sufficient anti-tank weaponry. The Brits for instance kept trying it over and over again and made it work only once - against the Italians at Sidi Barrani - because all the other times they tried it the Germans with their sufficient anti-tank weapon suite simply shot the attacking massed tank force to pieces. And even if you did punch through (and probably lost half of your tanks in the process just doing so), all armies in 1944 already knew you can still contain such a breakthrough with an armored counter-attack of your own.

Ironically, as noted in my previous post, the French actually had a force capable of counter-attacking. But it was stuck in Belgium due to bad decisions by French high command; which actually went so far as to blatantly ignore their own doctrine.
 
That's actually not really true, and is the History Channel version laced with a bit of French/British apologism (really, the French and Brits tried very hard to make it as though the Germans were so superior in 1940. In reality, it was discovered by the Americans in 1944 that the French and Brits had completely lied about the Order of Battle of 1940, and the French/British actually had more tanks than the Germans).

The French actually began the war with an outstanding all-armed motorized formation - the 7th Army - which included two Panzer Division equivalents, a pair of elite motorized Divisions, and a couple of other motorized outfits. While not yet quite a Panzer Army in terms of doctrine, this outfit - plus another half a dozen or so armored and mechanized Divisions - shows that the idea that the French didn't concentrate tanks was fiction. The French "penny-packeted" their tanks to an extent - but these were mostly old and slow tanks (eg H35) meant for infantry support. Moreover, to think that this penny-packeting is wrong is to fly in the face of the German and American OOB in 1944 - both of which also "penny packeted" armor in support of their infantry Divisions (the Germans typically allocating one company of assault guns per infantry Division, while the Americans allocated a battalion of Shermans).

The real problem is that the French high command made a mistake, which ran contrary against doctrine. Instead of keeping 7th Army in reserve at Reims - where it was about 2 day's march away from Sedan at worse - they instead decided to spend their reserves immediately to try and extend the battle line in Belgium so that they could link up with the Dutch in Breda. Hence, this superb all-arms reserve, instead of facing the main effort of the German army, was stuck in Belgium against the German diversionary effort.

All of the problems encountered by the French at Sedan - including sending tiny numbers of tanks against entire Panzer Divisions - was actually a function of a lack of reserves rather than the lack of armored/mechanized formations that can go head-to-head against a Panzer Army. This is why the Panzers were able to avoid fighting for the most part - the French had no units at all to stop them, because all the reserves were stuck in Belgium/Holland. This is a mistake in generalship, not doctrine or army composition, and it's been basically covered up to excuse the bad decisions of Gamelin.

====

Finally, French aircraft were not caught on the ground napping (that's the issue with the Poles and Soviets). They did however lack fighters because the French were very focused on tactical bombing while forgetting you need to establish air superiority first; and in any case the Reich did in fact invest far more in their air force before the war and were thus in a much more advanced state than the French.

Interesting read. Thank you.
 
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