Air and Naval Command Chain

I really hope there aren't any on-map HQs, and appointing commanders down to brigade level sounds like Yawnfest 3: Yawn Harder.

Not much has been disclosed about air and naval chains of command, but I am afraid you are going to be dissappointed. In HoiIV it has already been announced and discussed to death that there will not be divisional leaders for land units. Also, from what has been shown so far, there will not be a hierarchical chain of command for land units. Rather groups of divisions will be assigned to a single leader. So, I doubt you will get a chain of command for air and sea units. There will however be a new system where aces can be attached to air units.

I know. Keep calm and carry on.

Where you guys been the last few months?

There will be no Division commanders in HOI4 and no HQs for ground forces - Corps, Army, Army Group. And we know there is no plan to extend HQs to air forces.

Divisions will have no commander, and will not be assigned to a higher HQ which has it's own commander. Instead blocks of Divisions are assigned directly to a higher level commander. Depending on the level of the commander this decides the maximum number of Divs he can command, or perhaps the max before there is a command penalty.

This is more like HOI2, where stacks of Divs where assigned to a commander directly. HQs existed only as a bonus unit - if one existed in the stack it doubled the max divs the commander could control without a penalty. In a HOI4 we think there will not even be those sort of HQs.

The major difference with HOI2 is the group of Divs commanded by Lt.Gen / Gen / FM are not all in a single province but can be spread over a number of provinces. We have no information about this, and whether there is a limit, like the radio distance in HOI3. But as the commander has no on map HQ to represent his location, he is merely abstracted, so I can't see how you can set a radius defining how far Divs should be.

There will be no XV Corps or 8th Army. We saw no suggestion that the block of Divs can be named like that. And they are not persistent - they are a temporary arrangement of Divs to suit a particular moment, connected to battle plans.

So no:

7th Panzer Division commanded by Rommel
7th Panzer Division assigned to XV Armeekorps
XV Armeekorps HQ commanded by Hoth etc.

Simply:

7th Panzer Division part of von Rundsted's blue force

There will be no higher commanders even for air forces. They are simply arranged by air base and numbers of planes assigned to each Strategic Region. There will be named air aces, who give bonuses to other wings from the same base, but they are not commander, and you don't assign them to a "unit". They are randomly generated by combat.

We have not seen enough of naval forces. But it would be unlikely if every single DD etc will get it's own captain. They are more likely to be treated like air forces. Except that we can assume there will be the possibility of forming battle fleets as part of larger naval offensives governed by battle plans. So you can have the red fleet commanded by Yamamoto attacking Pearl Harbour.

Jugasa77 said:

This system seems to be arcade rather than strategy. You can enjoy it but perhaps you don't like it. If we forget the chain of command and HQs we will get an arcade rather much more easy than a grand strategy simulator. It seems that I wouldn't like Hoi4 because I prefer the chain of command of Hoi3.

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this has been discussed plenty of times, its a lost battle, sorry for you, me (especially me) and many others, but this is how HOI4 gonna be.

I can see why people like HOI3 system however for the time spent it did not give that much reward and the older HOI2 system worked just fine, better to have a command system that matters and how should we add in battleplans into the discussion.
HOI3 have many arcade things such as its production system and the doctrime system of HOI2 was way superior to HOI3 and it is good that they have gone back to the old ways.

Jugasa77 said:

This system seems to be arcade rather than strategy. You can enjoy it but perhaps you don't like it. If we forget the chain of command and HQs we will get an arcade rather much more easy than a grand strategy simulator. It seems that I wouldn't like Hoi4 because I prefer the chain of command of Hoi3.

Click to expand...

I fully agreed to Jugasa77, we like HOI series because it is a grand strategy game and most of the serious player is enjoy on the chain of command. In HOI2, you can see the player to create their Crops with single division to simulate the chain of command themselves. And we can see almost all HOI3 MOD to expand the chain of command to Air Force & Navy.

May state on HOI3 if HOI4 if it is more arcade rather than grand strategy game.

Part of the organizational structure is shown here http://youtu.be/LxGNpPz_W2A?t=7m56s (top right) It seems to be location based, and podcat has mentioned needing to organize the OOB..

Have there really been real factual statements from the dev team about not being able to organize your troops?

Stenner said:

Part of the organizational structure is shown here http://youtu.be/LxGNpPz_W2A?t=7m56s (top right) It seems to be location based, and podcat has mentioned needing to organize the OOB..

Have there really been real factual statements from the dev team about not being able to organize your troops?

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I think the only thing we know for sure is that divisional leaders and the OOB in a HoI3 sense are gone, and that there won't be leaders for air units beyond an air minister (and that memory's particularly sketchy). Beyond that, it's guesswork.

Stenner said:

Part of the organizational structure is shown here http://youtu.be/LxGNpPz_W2A?t=7m56s (top right) It seems to be location based, and podcat has mentioned needing to organize the OOB..

Have there really been real factual statements from the dev team about not being able to organize your troops?

Click to expand...

I don't see anything to do with the OOB top right. There is a reference to Western Poland, which is Strategic Region for the air war. As I said, you assign forces to missions in that Region.

You can clearly see von Rundstedt's forces on the left of the screen with just alot of Divs and no HQs, there are no subdivisions such as a recognisable Army structure, except that some of them are assigned to one axis of attack, others are assigned to the other two. But each axis of attack doesn't have its commander under von Rundstedt.

It is confirmed that's all you get in terms of real life command and control. There is no evidence that you can give von Rundstedt's force a name.

But they have a colour and all the counters show that colour along their right side. What more do you want

Jugasa77 said:

This system seems to be arcade rather than strategy. You can enjoy it but perhaps you don't like it. If we forget the chain of command and HQs we will get an arcade rather much more easy than a grand strategy simulator. It seems that I wouldn't like Hoi4 because I prefer the chain of command of Hoi3.

Click to expand...

HOI4 the definitive strategic arcade game