HOI4 Dev Diary - Combat and Stats changes

[Jamor]

I mostly agree, here, but there were two important riders:

- It was often possible to split off single brigades for particular jobs, especially where terrain and supply were particularly harsh or troops in particularly short supply. An example would be North East Africa, both in the deep desert operations (by the Italians, especially) and for Ethiopia/Abyssinia (by the British, particularly Indian divisions).

- Ad hoc "units" of around brigade size were sometimes made for "emergency" situations. How to include this in the game I have no idea, but it was definitely done!

100% true, but in a game with a global map, with divisions as the basic unit, certain abstractions are made. Independent regiment/brigade/Kampfgruppe action was absolutely commonplace but it'd be rare for a unit detached thus to get farther away from its parent division than width of an in-game province. In general we should consider detached actions to be subsumed components of the generalized province-wide battle.

I'm the sort who translates dusty old photocopies of TOEs for units that have been whispers and dust for almost a century, so believe me, I know the small stuff is mega important too. Just, we can't granularly depict absolutely everything, or the game would be figuratively unplayable.

 

[ThaHoward]

Also I think it is abstracted in the game already with RCTs and Kampfgruppen in the doctrines.

 

[Abadon777]

Looking forward to hearing more about combat with and weather effects. The new supply system should make the game more interesting and calculating.

 

[sterrius]

• Plains
  • Standard 90
  • Reinforce 45
• Desert
  • Standard 90
  • Reinforce 45
• Forest
  • Standard 84
  • Reinforce 42
• Jungle
  • Standard 84
  • Reinforce 42
• Hills
  • Standard 80
  • Reinforce 40
• Marsh
  • Standard 78
  • Reinforce 26
• Urban
  • Standard 96
  • Reinforce.32
• Mountain
  • Standard 75
  • Reinforce 25

Im gonna think as a german player, so i have a front with Plains + Forests. A few Hills but i can go around them. North of Russia or parts of france are like that.

Plains 2 provinces attack (90+45 = 135)
Forest 2 provinces (84+42 = 126)
Hills 2 provinces (80+40 = 120)

Plain 100% use of front = 45 (two divisions).
Forest 100% use = 42
hill 100% use = 40


While at first the difference does not look big. As you attack from the sides you can see this is far from easy.
For example. Sooner someone said to keep at 30 Widht.

plains 135/30 = 4,3 divisions
forest 126/ 30 = 4,2
Hills 120 / 30 = 4

While this give you advantage to fight on Hills. On plains your unit is just gonna suffer extra casualities as you will be missing to use 15 Widht.
Thats a ton of space you're not using. Or a ton of penaltys if you manage to add a 5º division.

Its gonna take tests with the new disadvantagens ,doctrines, climate, etc to see if it will be better to miss a Widht or to go extra and eat the penalty.
But im actually liking a lot the fact that depending on the country now i actually have to make a division for it. For example. ITaly now demand very specialized force, you can´t just change from D-Day to Invasion of rome without changing the divisions first, giving a better chance for Italy to defend itself.


My recommendation right now , at least for Germany and Russia is to still use Plains as the main Division Number. Above 50% of the terrain is flat terrain and its not worth it to worry about taking extra damage because of a few forests. On hills you sorround them as i don´t remember a ton of hills on the North and Center front to worry too much about it.

You will need to becareful with the marshes (78/26 widht). So just pushing trough is not gonna cut anymore, you will need to do what the germans did and mostly encircle it or attack weak positions.

And Around Baku, after stalingrad you will need specialized units to take the Hills and Mountains. Its a total different kind of war there now.
So Securing Stalingrad to take the river and stop the russian player reinforcements, allowing you to change divisions to attack Baku makes a lot more sense now. ( Will make even more with railroads too).


PS: By increasing the "Meta" Widht to 45, as long doctrines are not changing (And i bet they are), Russia got a slight buff as the russian doctrine give a widht discount. I think it will be enough to add 1 extra infantary.



I will want to play japan again now. China is gonna be so different with Weather + Railroads + Widht change its gonna be Wild there.

 

[Idle America]

View attachment 714953
We all know what is also Gold...

Hey, I know you...

Also, I don't understand any of this, but I'm excited nonetheless!

 

[andersonm]

He may not be the most articulate person considering his aggressive phrasing, but he's not wrong about the main point he's making. Variable combat width will lead to a lot of tedious micro by players who want to optimize their gameplay as much as possible, and that's not fun. But people will do unfun things if it makes it easier to win.

Min/maxing is a choice and definitely not a necessity, if people want to play that way great but please do not try to keep the game simpler so that an "optimal strategy" is easier to achieve. There's plenty of games out that fill that niche and in my opinion they are boring as hell. Combat width has absolutely nothing interesting going on right now, build 10/20/40 and that's it. I don't see how that is more fun than having to make a choice based on the situation and am glad to see HOI4 trying to keep things interesting.

 

[blahmaster6k]

Min/maxing is a choice and definitely not a necessity, if people want to play that way great but please do not try to keep the game simpler so that an "optimal strategy" is easier to achieve. There's plenty of games out that fill that niche and in my opinion they are boring as hell. Combat width has absolutely nothing interesting going on right now, build 10/20/40 and that's it. I don't see how that is more fun than having to make a choice based on the situation and am glad to see HOI4 trying to keep things interesting.

In multiplayer it is absolutely a necessity. If you don't minmax and your opponent does, you are guaranteed to lose. I know most players here don't care about MP, but it needs to be considered on the behalf of those of us who do.

 

[Sourlol]

In multiplayer it is absolutely a necessity. If you don't minmax and your opponent does, you are guaranteed to lose. I know most players here don't care about MP, but it needs to be considered on the behalf of those of us who do.

So then min max? Like lol, your arguement can’t jointly be min maxing gives an advantage in a competitive setting but also I don’t want to be compelled to have to actually put effort into min maxing.

If you’re into min maxing, embrace the challenge of engaging in a competitive min max.

If it’s too much, slow the game speed down.

Either way, my assumption is the intent isn’t to force you into having a template for every terrain, it’s to incentivize a generalist template and smarter corresponding decision making in other systemsof the game.

 

[andersonm]

In multiplayer it is absolutely a necessity. If you don't minmax and your opponent does, you are guaranteed to lose. I know most players here don't care about MP, but it needs to be considered on the behalf of those of us who do.

Fair enough on that point, it's true I am looking from an SP perspective where min/maxing is utterly unnecessary. For me, I specifically play these games because they are complex.... anything that adds more depth and gives me pause to think is good in my book.

 

[FrederickHoffman]

This looks awesome, I have always loved how combat width evolves through Paradox games. In EU4, it increases as nations become more advanced and capable of fielding large armies. In Vic2, it decreases as technology vastly increases firepower. We know now that charging machine guns with bayonets is a bad idea. Hoi4 has long had a fossilized "meta" that discouraged both new players learning and veterans experimenting. Making it more dynamic should encourage much more creative (and situational) designs. With the coming supply update, this will hopefully lead players to have many division types for many situations.

Feature request, can you make the division UI easier to use? Currently it lists all division types, if it was sorted by type that would make variety easier. So list my tanks, line infantry, marines, and others separately.

 

[Sighfer]

Stalingrad is an example for urban warfare. It had a population of about 440000 people in 1940.
During the battle of Stalingrad, Germany had 850000 solders in the field around Stalingrad (not all combat units, but 1/3 combat to 2/3 supply is a fair ratio), and the Red Army about 1700000.

Not that great of an example since "Battle of Stalingrad" includes 100km outside the city, with ~80k Germans vs 54k Soviets fighting in the city itself, but yes, the point stands. If anything, 96 is too low for the kind of nightmare urban combat is, at least for a proper modern reinforced concrete urban center like Stalingrad. It's also where German Bewegungskrieg goes to die, because they were awful at it, and advent of Assault Rifles like StG-44 came way too late to save them.

US Army released 4 hours of detailed documentary regarding battle of Stalingrad. If Paradox is interested, here

 

[Sourlol]

Not that great of an example since "Battle of Stalingrad" includes 100km outside the city

Pretty sure the Stalingrad province in hoi is larger than just the city limits, if anything it’s pretty analogous for a 200km diameter if not larger.

 

[Shadow86]

In multiplayer it is absolutely a necessity. If you don't minmax and your opponent does, you are guaranteed to lose. I know most players here don't care about MP, but it needs to be considered on the behalf of those of us who do.

I'd say that hopefully the time/pace constraints of MP will make the extreme micromanagement of designing, managing and maneuvering terrain-specific divisions unfeasible at best. As others have said, the idea is to allow for generalism, experimentation and more meaningful decision-making, instead of adopting a single stale meta-template before 1939 and forgetting about that side of the game entirely.

Anything that breaks up the One True Way to play and makes players think (and hopefully not so easily find a new One True Way) is good from my perspective. Why should we insist on negating the game's depth, given the chance to rekindle its potential?

 

[dididiipro]

He may not be the most articulate person considering his aggressive phrasing, but he's not wrong about the main point he's making. Variable combat width will lead to a lot of tedious micro by players who want to optimize their gameplay as much as possible, and that's not fun. But people will do unfun things if it makes it easier to win.

I mean, tbf, he kinda changed his argument several times throughout that whole thing. Originally it was no terrain CW, then terrain CW was fine but only if done with different variables, then it was that the modifiers should be baked into equipment/research. While I'd concede that you're right in that people who want to optimize their gameplay as much as possible WILL be micromanaging more with this, he was pretty consistently phrasing it as though players have NO CHOICE but to optimize as much as possible. Which is obviously not the case.

I stated earlier, and I still stand by the statement, that if you really want your army to always be at peak optimization and performance in every terrain, weather condition, and theater: then frankly that SHOULD require a lot of micromanagement. I don't think that a division should be able to be designed in such a way as to be optimum in every condition.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

I'd say that hopefully the time/pace constraints of MP will make the extreme micromanagement of designing, managing and maneuvering terrain-specific divisions unfeasible at best

Yep, there will definitely be generalism, it's just incredibly annoying that it will be (sometimes) advantageous to switch templates before a battle over a province. That really isn't what happened IRL at all - instead, regiments/battalions "outside of combat width" would be in reserves, and the others in combat. Now, it will be that if you're pushed back from, say, a plains into a forest, suddenly one of your units will no longer be able to fight. Combine that with the upcoming changes whereby targeting will favor larger units and damage will be distributed, and you will get a meta which massively favors very small (12 width?) units for defending, with maybe two different widths for attacking - which would actually be a downgrade from the current system, where there are two widths that work for defending and two that work for attacking (10/20 and 20/40, respectively).

Anything that breaks up the One True Way to play and makes players think (and hopefully not so easily find a new One True Way) is good from my perspective

The thing is, ironically, SP players tend to massively overestimate how much of a "single-template" meta there is for MP. I made a division template guide on reddit a while back and it had around 25 different templates, not accounting for variants (i.e. 12/8 tank vs 13/7 tank or heavy/mech vs heavy/mot). Changing things up for the sake of it does not inherently mean more fun/dynamic gameplay, it just means it's slightly more immersive (though this system really isn't that historical either). And immersion like this or the tank designer is kind of silly when it means adding many tedious clicks to the game.

 

[dididiipro]

Regarding piercing, I don’t see why people are up in arms with pierce < armor being binary.

if your at shell can’t pierce, it can’t pierce. It doesn’t matter how close you were, if you can’t—you can’t. Now once you approach the threshold where a shell of size X can pierce in certain circumstances, you begin to be able to pierce. As the shell size increases, or shape charges are invented, the odds you you piercing go up until you can reliably always pierce the enemy armor. But so long as you can’t meet that minimum threshold of being able to pierce at least *some* of the time, it doesn’t matter how close you were—you still can’t pierce.

also re: division templates. I don’t think the intent is for a single nation to be making a template for each terrain type for both infantry and armor. I think the intent is for a 24 width template and a 20 width and a 25 width and a 30 width to not result in wildly different outcomes. As it is now, everyone independent of country or terrain reality is incentivized to run with 10w, 20w or 40w templates. If you deviate you’re gonna get wrecked. There will likely be a catch mall template that savvy USA Germany, UK and USSR players will field when fighting in N Africa and Europe. But if a player decides they want 3 arty battalions, 9 infantry battalions and doesn’t want to invest in an AT battalion their disadvantage isn’t the width, it’s the combat stats that additional arty battalion brings coupled with the disadvantages of no AT battalion. These width changes seem to jointly disincentivize 40w while also making width less dogmatic.

Well piercing IRL is a bit more complicated than that so it shouldn't be a binary IMO. For example: an AT round may not be able to pierce a tigers front armor but could pierce its sides. Or it couldn't pierce at 2 km but can at 1 km. Or more vulnerable elements of a tank could be destroyed by lower piercing weapons (IE treads), rendering it inoperable. There's a specific account of a Tiger (or Panther, maybe?) crew which came up against a battalion armed with a few dozen PTRS 41's. Even though a PTRS obviously could not fully penetrate the armor of a Tiger there was a signifigant enough volume of fire to where the tank was effectively put out of commision for the battle (treads damaged, optics shattered). So frankly I don't think it should be as simple as "You can't do anything to hurt those tanks" or "You readily cut through their armor." A sliding scale is appropriate within a certain range.

 

[unmerged(742252)]

I absolutely love the changes. It will definitely make me change up how I compoese my divisions!
However one question that I find super important is with all these wonderful changes to combat width and such is do you plan on updating how army planning works with maybe the ability for more complex plans. Would you condisder something like painting provences as to highlight the area I want a battle plan to go through kind of like how theaters worked in hoi3. That way I could tailor how certain army's with specialized divisions staying in the area I want them too and not have my army's length in repeat with each other warped

 

[Bane5]

One of the major things that make larger divisions like 40 width armor hit disproportionally harder than smaller ones is also how targeting and damage works inside combat in relation to the enemies defense. Essentially the larger divisions make more efficient use of concentrated damage as it punches through defense. To solve this we are doing a few things. First of all we are weighting the targeting towards wider divisions being more likely targets and also when picking targets to try and match it to have wider divisions spread damage over smaller rather than always concentrating it. They will probably still hit harder, but combined with width changes and other downsides of larger divisions it should make it less clear cut.


Armor and Piercing
...... So things were quite binary. With the tank designer coming we wanted to make it feel like your investments in upgrades were always worth it, so we are changing armor and piercing to have more gradual effects.

If you guys want to nick this problem permanently rather than just simply making it less good, looking at mitigating the binary nature of the threshold for soft attack exceeding defensiveness/offensiveness might be worthwhile as well.

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Just to recap so anyone else reading this is on the same page, let me highlight the example on the wiki:

• Imagine a 1000 soft attack division vs an infantry division with 500 defense:
  • Every 10 soft-attack stat is one dice roll for an attack, every 10 defense is a chance to "block" an attack, reducing its odds of succeeding
    • 50 attacks will have a 10% chance of hitting (blocked)
    • 50 attacks will have a 40% chance of hitting (unblocked)

• Here is a recap of how this system results in bigger width having an advantage in the current live version of the game, imagine 2 scenarios:
  • A single 1000 soft attack division is fighting two 500 defensiveness divisions
    • The 100 dice attacks, 50 blocked and 50 unblocked, will be applied to a single division out of the two
  • Two 500 soft attack divisions will be fighting two 500 defensiveness divisions; each division will pick a random target to attack
    • In some cases both attacking division will apply 50 blocked attacks separately to both divisions
    • In some cases both attacking divisions will apply 100 attacks (50 blocked, 50 unblocked) to one opposing division
• ----The difference between the two above cases is that the 1000 soft attack division will always be inflicting unblocked attacks

• If I understand what PDX is considering changing (or at least partially along these lines):
  • Revisiting the scenario where a single 1000 soft attack division is fighting two 500 defensiveness divisions
    • The 100 attacks will be spread out among the two divisions such that 50 blocked attacks to each division will be occurring, thus equalizing damage
      • (more likely, there will be some randomization like 60%-40% or 35%-65% sometimes to compensate for lower width's organization advantage)

-------------

What was presented in the Dev Diary seemed to be more like an outline of what they're planning, light on details, but I want to write this to point out a possible edge case that may need to stamped out. Quoting myself from earlier:

• Smaller units punching a lot less also has big issues. Mainly in that when fighting at a disadvantage, one cannot implement a strategy of defeat in detail with smaller more flexible units. A big trend among a lot of militaries was to have their elite and mobile units be put into independent brigades or smaller divisions. In vanilla HOI4, doing this would be absolute madness as you want your most expensive assets to take the least amount of casualties due to how damage & soft attack stacking vs defensiveness works. As a very simplified example, imagine that a ton of infantry divisions on the frontlines are dueling in 1v1 matches. The idea behind a small elite rapid reaction force is to be able to move quickly from combat zone to combat zone to give a numerical advantage quickly in many simultaneously combats back-to-back. Then leveraging Lanchester's Law which says that combat strength of a force is the square of its numbers, you can turn each 1v1 duel into a decisive victory in many places as this elite unit moves from 1 place to the other. With independent brigades, you can do this in multiple places at once constantly. But its very undesirable in HOI4 because wars tends to always end up as western-front WW1 style conflicts of attrition and high-width units with very expensive stuff must take as few casualties as possible. One of the first things everyone does upon loading the game is deleting those 8 width motorized divisions, 8 width cavalry units, or 8-width tanks units--much to my dismay.

The big problem that I still foresee is in regards to the reinforcement system. Let's say that I've set my army up with lots of 20 width divisions and 10 width divisions and that my opponent has a ton of 35 width or 40 width divisions. As the frontline shifts, there are naturally going to be a lot of situations--even with good micro--where I have these lower width divisions finding themselves in 1v1 combat against bigger enemy divisions as other units come in to reinforce. During this period of reinforcement, my smaller divisions will be taking a lot of unblocked attacks and thus I'll be losing lots of equipment/manpower as a result. Two divisions being out of a sync by just a small bit while moving to a province can result in a reinforcement chance roll to occur which is can sometimes take a long time. This initial big window of damage has a huge snowball effect too as the mauled division before its reinforced by other units will have lower stats. Once its been reinforced, the bigger division will be still be scoring extra hits (i.e. a 1000 soft attack vs a 450 defensiveness (mauled before reinforcement) + 500 defensiveness division) after the reinforcements have arrived.

-------------

I think the easiest solution to this case would be to borrow a page from Hoi3's amphibious naval landing system in some form and apply it to all types of land-based combat. At some point, naval landings in HOI3 were changed such that combat wasn't an immediate clash, but a growing escalation. In the process of landing, a division would gradually fill up a progress bar from 10% to 100%. This value represented the percentage of soft attack, defensiveness, and offensiveness stats that could be applied. If a 1000 soft attack division was landed in naval combat, it could only apply 10 damage dice rolls initially, but this would gradually grow overtime and it could apply the full 100 damage dice rolls.

So imagine that every individual battle had this ramp up mechanic (but applied to the entire combat, not just individual divisions). Whenever a land-combat started, all divisions would have 10% modifiers which then grows overtime to 100% after a few hours. So a 1000 soft attack division will apply only 5 blocked and 5 unblocked attacks to a 500 defensiveness division. After a few hours, the full 50 blocked, and unblocked damage rolls will occur resulting in some massive damage.

• Now lets say with this change that the 1000 soft attack division was fighting two smaller 500 defensiveness divisions that are slightly out of sync. The bigger division will be scoring extra hits, but at a much smaller 5/5 blocked-unblocked split. Once the 2nd division arrives to reinforcement (let's say at 40% combat progress), then the situation now looks like 40 dice rolls vs 19 (slightly mauled) +20 defensiveness blocking opportunities and will keep a similar ratio throughout the escalation of the entire combat with a much smaller snowball effect.

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Such a deep dive into mathematic examples might be a bit dizzying, but let me summarize what this change achieves and could achieve when leveraged with other systems:

• Encourage "force concentration" on the strategic level. Hoi4's ww1-style experience in many cases is partially due to the implications of trying to weaken your front in one place to bulk another part of the frontline. The weakened part of the frontline will be taking horrible casualties in attrition-style battles; however, with a system of "escalating combat", parts of the front that are weak can take only minor damage if you only allow combat to occur for a few hours and then order a retreat. This allows for your weakened delaying force to preserve its fighting strength so long as it has room to retreat.

• Encourage "defeat in detail" on the operational level. In the self-quote I mentioned, you can't have small elite flexible & mobile units as rapid reaction forces due to the danger of suddenly going hundreds in deficit of your best expensive equipment due to the slightest quirks in the frontline and reinforcement. With such an escalating damage system overtime, you can have these smaller units on the frontline and not worry about situations where another division was few hours late. So long as they achieve reinforcement in a reasonable time, they won't suddenly be mauled. One can also imagine the desire to micro/retreat these rapid reaction units and bring them to combats that already have a high percentage of participation progress to create immediate results. The fact that some combats are progressing slowly initially gives time for this micro to blossom and have use in hectic multiplayer games which can't be paused.

• Encourage "speed & motorization" on the tactical level. Something that HOI4 gets wrong in my opinion is viewing the speed of individual brigades as being relevant only for purposes of strategic mobility. If you look into the OOBs of many units that are travelling long distances on foot, you still see mixes of mobile and non-mobile elements. While infantry aren't going to be in trucks while they are being shot at, the ability to transport forces rapidly has big implications for the entire width of a division's frontage. If opportunities for a breakthrough arise, or a pressing need to rescue a part of the front emerges, then having a unit that can quickly move to the location is a huge plus. Just imagine an artillery battery for example on the defense parked on a hill. They are being shelled by direct fire a few kilometers away, and the enemy is zeroing-in on them from afar. The battery needs to reposition before they get fully zeroed-in on, so they retreat down the reverse slope. The ability to limber and rapidly move to a different hill to setup a new ambush down the road is a huge advantage over being stuck in place. Speaking of this example, a big thing that separated the capabilities of many armies was the ability to motorize their artillery and heavy weapons inside foot infantry divisions and rapid reaction forces. Such was one of focuses of Rydz-Śmigły's army reforms. (A bit off-topic, I think tanks steal too much of the spotlight over other heavy hardware when history nerds/enthusiasts analyze the capabilities of interwar and WW2 militaries).
  • To achieve this specific bullet point, mobile brigades could start with a higher percentage of combat participation in combat that has just begun. For example a poorly-equipped foot division might start at 10% participation initially, but a division with motorized artillery & some trucks & cavalry/bicycle elements might have 15-20% in the same time frame, a full tank battalion could have 20 or 25%. If balanced right with doctrines, we could see the effects of Blitzkrieg whereby nations with a high degree of motorization could smash enemy units pretty heavily before they could react to sudden thrusts. This would also make motorized rapid-reaction units very effective as they can reinforce at slightly higher participation.

• Differentiate between tube and rocket artillery. Building upon the previous bullet point: the Hearts of Iron series has long struggled with the question of how to represent traditional tube artillery and rocket artillery in a meaningful way. When the Soviets first evaluated the Katyusha rockets as a weapon system, it almost got rejected as they asked themselves, what was the point of an extremely slow-to-reload weapon system that fires a LOT less shells than a traditional artillery piece over the course of a few hours. From practical experience, they would discover that it had usefulness in its surprise element.
  • Going with the same theme, rocket artillery could have extremely high participation rates early on in combat despite having much worse stats on paper. That 20 soft attack might be applied immediately at 100% vs a 40 soft attack tube artillery unit has to ramp up from 10% to 100% overtime on an ongoing combat tile that has just begun. How you use divisions with rocket arty versus divisions with tube artillery suddenly changes as you want the former to participate in recently started combats then retreat/break-off vs the latter which you might send into long-term meatgrinders.

• Break Perpetual Stalemates. Right now a lot of games can end up in stalemates. While its correct that defensive warfare tends to have the advantage, its a bit too easy in my opinion to setup unbreakable chokepoints. People have sometimes posted their millions of kill counts as the AI bangs its head against a fort wall. Something a unit participation system can do is to allow combat zones that have dragged on for weeks, months, or even a year to progress beyond 100%. If you have a meatgrinder like Stalingrad that has had continuous fighting for months and the participation multiplier is like 215% as a result, it becomes a high stakes game where millions of soldiers could be lost very quickly, but it at least accelerates the timetable for the combat to end (months to a year, not decades). One side will run out of steam faster eventually, but at least with this system, long-term persistence can result in a mountain river crossing fort actually being eventually capturable rather than perpetually impenetrable.

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Just some food for thought and to encourage further discussion.

 

[Caeric]

Unless they've already planned for this and intend to discuss it at a later date, wouldn't changing the multi-directional combat penalty to reduce armor by -X% help reduce the binary nature of < piercing than enemy armor?

As tanks were historically quite vulnerable to being hit in the flank with most armor concentrated in the front and armor overall being abstracted into a singular value in the game that seems like solution to increase overall value of piercing as well as the new armor mechanic. Afterall even an autocannon with armor piercing rounds can rip through the sides of a tank like swiss cheese in reality.

Or at least some similar mechanic to simulate this effect in combat.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

Just some food for thought and to encourage further discussion.

The build-up system actually sounds really cool!
However, I am stauchly against "spreading" attacks.
Imagine that each width of a division has 1 attack, 1 defense and 1 breakthrough. Obviously, this isn't the case, but it isn't horribly far off.
If I attack with a 40 width, and the defenders have 2 20 widths, then each hour I am doing 20 damage over bkt to an enemy division, while they are neve doing damage over bkt to me. This means that, if a division crits, it's better as a 40 width. (More accurately, 40 widths are good for attacking because they crit).
Now, if the system is changed so that attacks are split, then neither side will do any crits. The same is true if the enemy has 4 10 widths, or 8 5 widths, and so on (well, before the overstacking penalty at least).
Meanwhile, if I split my 40 width into 2 20 widths, the enemies will only apply 20 attack to each, meaning neither will crit. The same is true if I go down to 10/5... widths.
Now, since smaller widths means more overall organization - the main reason why 20s and 10s are generally preferred on defense - than there is 0 incentive NOT to make my divisions as small as the overstacking penalty allows.
Spreading attacks will lead to a 10 width (and only 10 width) meta.