Advancing a hundred-mile(160km?) line vs concentrated attack

[MonkeyFuzz]

In many of the WWW videos we've seen invasions setup like so: the player (or the AI Germany) set their whole army along the entire border (many hundreds of whatever distance unit you enjoy) and make a broad, border-wide attack and push the entire length of it. Today, the Germans didn't appear to be seeking encirclements or singular breakthroughs in the Polish lines.

So here's my question: will HOI4 allow for us to make a single (or a few) concentrations on our offensive line, making a center of force (a schwerpunkt) to put maximum pressure in a few areas on the enemy's defense? Can we put a relatively huge pile of divisions in one or a few neighboring provinces to try to make a massive breakthrough there?

Ideally, that breakthrough in a small area should then be followed by the attacker racing into the enemy's rear, maneuvering to encircle and kesselschlact large sections of the enemy that were sitting on the border.

 

[mdw1985]

Yeah, that works. As an example:

Assign 20 infantry divs and 10 motorized/armoured to a front. Now you draw different offensive lines. Draw a bigger one for the infantry and a smaller one for the punch group, which may be only 2 provinces broad. Assign the groups to their correspondant advance arrows.

You can draw as many offensive lines as you want, with as many divisions assigned to each. This is the way i will play it when the game is out.

But more preferably i'd do the podcat version from the battleplan dd:

Assign an infantry army group to a broad front and a heavier group on a smaller or multiple points of that front. For example:

The infantry group is supposed to advance in a broad front and gets a broad offensive line. The armoured divs get smaller offensive lines, which link up somewhere behind the front to create bags for the later advancing infantry.

There is plenty of possibilities and plenty of details in the plans if you want

Edit: and of course my most preferred plan, which contains paratroopers, which land behind enemy lines and create themselves bags for the advancing armies.

 

[MonkeyFuzz]

In that case, can anyone clarify how many divisions or how much width we can apply to a single province?

I'm concerned about how the AI makes its attack. At least compared to the historic German invasions, they should be making a few big concentrations of force and punching through there. Although, alternately, invading on the whole front does help prevent your invasion from being flanked; you don't need to have echelon forces along your sides if every side is pushing forward.

 

[linen]

I really hope that this is the case... Failing that I'll just manually encircle with my mobile divisions as A.I inf mops up the rest and the non-important.

 

[Viktor_Vertex]

In many of the WWW videos we've seen invasions setup like so: the player (or the AI Germany) set their whole army along the entire border (many hundreds of whatever distance unit you enjoy) and make a broad, border-wide attack and push the entire length of it.

But but... I prefer parsecs!

Ontopic, do you put your mobile divisions on the front, before attacking? I don't, I put them a few provinces back, no need to advertise "BREAKTHROUGH ATTEMPT HERE". After a day or two of probing defenses, tanks go in and become visible to the enemy

 

[tfrules]

I do seem to remember the Germans encircling 5 Polish divisions near Poznan, so the AI is capable of encirclement, and Daniel was kept on his toes the whole time to make sure divisions weren't surrounded

 

[Frosted Vert]

That's true, but despite Poland having no defense in depth and certainly no armoured reserves, the Panzerwaffe was nowhere to be seen. Before Daniel (rightly) pulled back to the Vistula, there were times where I would have expected to see a more fluid situation, and concentration of forces would be needed for that to happen.

 

[Bridger15]

In that case, can anyone clarify how many divisions or how much width we can apply to a single province?

I'm concerned about how the AI makes its attack. At least compared to the historic German invasions, they should be making a few big concentrations of force and punching through there. Although, alternately, invading on the whole front does help prevent your invasion from being flanked; you don't need to have echelon forces along your sides if every side is pushing forward.

From what I've seen the AI will probably be the weakest point of HOI4 at launch (which is true of pretty much every strategy game ever released) but I expect with future patches as well as mod support it will get better over time. It seems like a tall order to try and get the AI to use the battleplans in the way the OP describes.

 

[MonkeyFuzz]

I do seem to remember the Germans encircling 5 Polish divisions near Poznan, so the AI is capable of encirclement, and Daniel was kept on his toes the whole time to make sure divisions weren't surrounded

I saw that, too, but was that the AI deliberately trying to encircle or was it blundering into that situation?

 

[GuderianTA]

yeah monkeyfuzz, I hear you. The AI seems like it wont be better than hoi3 AI in terms of pursuing encirclement and or concentrated attacks. Its a shame......

What we are going to end up happen is what always happens in the HOI series.... long grinding fronts without encirclement, strategic reserves, and terrible AI. (why do you think the devs are not showing us the Russia war?)

 

[linen]

What is so hard about telling the A.I to concentrate it's mobile forces and to avoid mountains and cities? Then just try draw circles around enemy forces.