HOI4 Dev Diary - Combat and Stats changes

[Mikhail Kalashnikov]

No need. If you read any of the hundreds of combat width discussion threads over the years you will see that the two most popular changes are:
* more varied width + less overstack penalties so that it matters less what width you use and if it aligns perfectly
* have targeting and damage allocation not be so advantageous for wide divisions

Hey Podcat I am excited for the new DLC. I also wanted to ask whether these stats could be made accessible to modders as I plan on making a mod where I wanted to add a stat called accuracy to ground units

 

[blahmaster6k]

I don't think this is the case, because then you'd have entire regiments with only 500 men. Men are not abstracted in the game; they are 1:1, but equipment is not. Artillery equipment is not just the actual guns, but also the shells, horses, tractors, etc. required to operate the artillery. But I do wish they lowered the amount of artillery equipment in ART bns. to 12 (and adjust the price accordingly), so the "1 ART battalion is actually a regiment" crowd would get on the same page.

If they did this then HP damage would cripple a division with artillery much too quickly.

 

[Corpse Fool]

* more varied width + less overstack penalties so that it matters less what width you use and if it aligns perfectly
* have targeting and damage allocation not be so advantageous for wide divisions

Over stack and over width are different things. Most of the conversations I've seen suggest lowering the over width penalties, but this is twice you've mentioned over stacking. Can we get clarification here? I would think that lowering the penalty for being off-width sort of defeats the purpose of also mixing and varying the widths you want to be.

The changes that you've proposed to the targeting seem to only matter if the divisions on one side of the combat aren't all the same width. If divisions are the same width, I'd imagine there is an equal chance of either of them being chosen? I think a consequence of allowing a larger division in the combat to get targeted more, means that there is the possibility that larger divisions can act as shields for smaller, more specialized damage dealing divisions.

 

[Bane5]

Something I want to comment on is that the division designer's handling of combat width has been one of the weakest and most glaring problems of HOI4, and I'm a bit worried in advance that this land-combat content update might turn out to be a missed opportunity on a lot of things. While the 40-width meta is indeed an issue, its not the only issue with the system

• Too small a combat width is a big problem. If you've ever seen people spam 2-width divisions in-game, its an unbreakable wall against things that aren't 40-width artillery or tank spam so long as manpower reserves holdout. The problem is that just a single battalion of infantry has 60 org (much more with doctrines). What makes things worse is that units have org regardless of whether they have equipment or not. When you spam out tons of cheap units and have a high-reinforcement rate, you get an "Enemy at the Gates" scenario whereby hordes of cheap infantry with almost no weapons can literally hold off enemy offensives by blocking the roads with their piles of dead bodies. You have to meet a certain threshold of soft attack such that it can shatter each unit immediately and the need for such things also reinforces the high-width combat meta.

• There is also a historical aspect of how divisions were organized. Generally triangular divisions were used because they had a system of placing two brigades at the frontline and rotating 1 brigade in reserve. In addition to providing rest, this reserve element could respond to threats or opportunities as the situation required. Generally most armies followed this blueprint with varying levels of fire support attached. The pentomic divisions that everyone builds currently are really only seen as the cold war heated up. The idea behind Pentomic divisions and integrated combat units was to reduce the time required to initiate an attack to the bare minimum. This was achieved by minimizing the communications overhead to coordinate with various inner-army branches. By being to able to launch a full force assault as quickly as possible, the window of time that the enemy had to respond with a nuclear strike would be minimized. Right now the game doesn't encourage the player to follow historical trends in any way shape or form.

• 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.
  • <Forum Link>More to read about this specific problem in this post. <Link>

• There is also a lot to grumble about with artillery having 3-combat width and all. Personally, I think its a huge culprit in letting people fill up the combat width too easily. The easier it is to max out combat width, the easier it is to get WW1-style western front stalemates. (note, the western front had several factors, not just a "lack of tanks" that resulted in it being such a static meatgrinder. Many other places during WW1 were certainly not static despite the level of technology and equipment available then). I could write pages and pages ranting about artillery being unrealistic in so many ways as its portrayed in HOI4 currently, but that's probably its own post. But as a quick summary, the biggest thing about it that dismays me is that very simplistic implementation of artillery in HOI4 robs a lot of the nuance of the quality and capability of certain armies. There was a huge gap between the heavy-weapons capability of the Polish and the Chinese army for example, but they both just have "basic vanilla" infantry units currently. You can't overcome certain fortifications without some pretty big dakka (210-320mm stuff), you can't effectively win fire-superiority overtime against another well-equipped enemy without some very long range howitzers, you need lots of cheaper medium howitzers if you want lay down huge volumes of pre-assault barrages, and you need lighter artillery guns to deal with smaller emplacements that require direct-fire precision on the frontlines to eliminate, just to name several examples.
  

<LINK> A thing to point out, was that just simply motorizing some of the bigger pieces shown above was a huge technical challenge in and of itself that not all interwar armies had the capability of doing. <LINK>

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My 2-cents is that land combat in HOI4 needs more than just a few small tweaks. I'm worried we're going to be stuck with the same-old, same-old meta (just slightly less acute in being more powerful) and the same old problems in historical representation and balance (just slightly less problematic). I'd urge you folks to be much more experimental if anything to try and learn lessons for building a foundation for Hoi5 that will inevitably happen someday.

 

[podcat]

Over stack and over width are different things.

yeah sorry I meant width

 

[Davidsal2908]

With the changes to divisions, I think a rework of the front-line system would pair up pretty well.

 

[Simon_9732495]

AT is better. With the current system if an enemy division had 60 armour, and your AT guns had 59 piercing, the enemy would get the full 50% damage reduction and you may as well have not had any AT guns at all.

With the new system the enemy would only get a 3.3% damage reduction because of their armour.

Where do you read that?

I read Armor > Piercing = no changes

Seems AT will be worse with the changes. Am I understanding it wrong?

 

[Fulmen]

This looks more like a temperature map mode no?

It does, yes. What I'm puzzled about is why most of Sweden is blue while most of Finland is green. Finland in real-life is colder than Sweden, by quite a bit too, not the other way around.

 

[Call Me Vandal]

View attachment 714957
That xp is pretty high for this "small" division have you increased xp gain and xp cap ?

Uh, unless I missed something, you just circled his total army xp value. It explicitly says that the template costs 25 xp to save.

 

[Aspielm]

I feel like comparing Jungle to forest is a bit underwhelming. Maybe make Jungle comparable to Marsh?
I don't know... i just feel like vietnam has taught us that forest =/= Jungle, but I guess I'm nitpicking again

 

[FStefanak]

Oh, yes! Thanks for fixing my favorite pet peeve with the combat width! You're awesome

@podcat wondering about the armor bonus. Previously it also applied to dealing damage (larger org damage dice), not just receiving.
Is this also changed to being proportional in the same way?

 

[Furiosa2727]

I already have the new combat width meta

Plains and Deserts are 15 and 30 widths.

Forests and Jungles are 21 and 42 widths.

Marshes are 26 widths.

Hills are still 20 and 40 widths.

Mountains are 25 widths.

Urban is 16 and 32 widths.

In the European East and West fronts, everyone is just gonna spec for the most common terrain type, plains, and make 30 widths. Russia will create some throw away 26 widths to hold down the marshes.

Overall, unless you're speccing for a certain terrain, 15 and 30 widths are the new meta. they fit the most common terrain type, and are a nice middle-of-the-road width for all the other terrain variants.

Sounds a bit like a micro nightmare then anything else, which I don't mind it's just gotta be done well.

 

[Shamas MacShamas]

Combat width is dead, long live the new combat width!

 

[Masterbobli]

yeah sorry I meant width

I hope you could correct that on the original post. I thought you're reducing the actual overstock penalty instead of over width.

 

[Leinad965]

Sounds a bit like a micro nightmare then anything else

You should think about statistics, which terrain you will fight most of the time, not about precise numbers.

 

[LordLemos]

You guys are moving towards a good direction and doing changes that impact the community.
Great job lads.

 

[Hippob4]

My one concern is that if smaller divisions are better, won't that mean there'll be more divisions? And not every country has enough generals to field as much units

That and Performance issues I guess as a result of more divisions on map

 

[Krey_Lollipop]

If you really were "pretty good" at the game, you would be capable of using all the features and game mechanics without wanting the AI to do it for you. Navy is easy to manage if you put in the time to learn how to use it.

It's not a matter of how easy it is, it's a matter of me having limited time and wanting to focus on the aspects of the game I find the most fun/important for any given playthrough. Between studies and other work I simply can't be bothered to manage every single branch of the military.

 

[Tdcamper]

Are you trying to compete with the Eu4 Leviathan DLC?
Trying to break the meta by making it even more complicated? And one big problem is that org is the average of all battalions. A 10w pure infantry divisions has the same org as a 40w division and with vanilla defense values they basically take the same org damage without getting critted.
Im also sure that making smaller divisions viable will increase the game performance by a lot like adding one million unnecessary tags in the la resistance dlc.

 

[Leinad965]

My one concern is that if smaller divisions are better, won't that mean there'll be more divisions? And not every country has enough generals to field as much units

That and Performance issues I guess as a result of more divisions on map

You can buy generals with PP. For some countries it is explicit simulation for lowering available PP.
AI currently fights mostly with 20w, new target goal looks will be around 20w - 30w