AI Order of Battle

[caffran]

I was out for my lunchtime walk from work today, and my mind drifted on to HoI3 as it is want to do on occasion, and i started thinking about the AI OOB. now, we all know the AI has no idea what its doing in this area and will assign panzer generals to garrison divisions, and winter specialists to North Africa, so i was wondering, what if i give it a little help?

We know the Poland invasion kicks off on or about Sep 1st '39, so what if on the 28/29 Aug, i tag switch in to Germany, and build them a proper OOB that makes sense? division commanders where they should be, all attached to Corps, Army's within range, right up to full blown army group even.

I know the basic AI battle plan will still be rather poor, but with all those bonuses it should give them more of an edge right?

I suppose the question is, will the AI leave the OOB alone after i tag switch back, or will just disband all the HQ's and do its own thing again?

Has anyone ever tried this? does anyone think its even worth it?

 

[Wraith11B]

As soon as you unpause, everything you have done will be undone, unfortunately.

 

[roverS3]

I suppose the question is, will the AI leave the OOB alone after i tag switch back, or will just disband all the HQ's and do its own thing again?

The AI will not leave it's OOB alone after you tag switch away. It will slowly undo your work as it sees fit, re-'organising' your corps in a way that makes 'sense' to it. Play ahead a few months, and you will find the Panzerkorps to have mostly Infantry and the panzers to be spread out over the entire army in a seemingly random fashion. You will also see extra HQ's and corps with 2-3 Divisions, Armies with 2 Corps, and yes, some of your HQ's will have been disbanded. The majority of your HQ's will probably still be there, with the same general (the AI doesn't seem to swap commanders very often), but probably not where you left it, neither geographically, nor in the command structure. The AI also doesn't change division composition much, it can add a support brigade, but this is quite rare in my experience, mostly it will leave it's existing divisions alone and build from it's own AI templates, unbothered by any need to conform to the standard that was set or the in-game templates you can modify.
In short, the AI tends to shuffle units around between corps, and corps between armies, all at a dizzying rate, at least within the same theatre. It will use existing HQ units for it's purposes before creating new ones (if HQ's of the right level are present in theatre, or at least within range), at least in my experience.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

Sounds like changing the AI Generals around may work well in the short term then? Worth a quick test in the 1939 war start at least.

 

[roverS3]

Sounds like changing the AI Generals around may work well in the short term then? Worth a quick test in the 1939 war start at least.

If you're willing to tag to Germany several times per month to clean up the AI's mess, it might work somewhat. But really, such an endeavour would make you the modern day sisyphus. Looking forward to the results of your test.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

I was working on your statement that the AI doesn't swap commanders very often. If it's actually quite frequent and require a major clean up, then that's a different prospect.

 

[roverS3]

I was working on your statement that the AI doesn't swap commanders very often. If it's actually quite frequent and require a major clean up, then that's a different prospect.

If all you want are realistic commander choices (but you don't care about the command structure), you should be fine checking once an in-game month, and even then, not many changes should be necessary. This is just based on keeping track of enemy AI commanders, so I'm curious how your experiment turns out.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

So quick test. Loaded up campaign game at start of Poland invasion. Tagged in to GER and replaced every (well nearly as I missed some) general. Selected all alphabetical A through G except didn't use anyone with skill over 2.

Tagged back to UK and fast forwarded for 2 game weeks. Looked back at GER and everyone seemed still in place. Masses of better skill 3/4/5 bosses still unused in the pool.

My army leader list on the stats tab shows a leaderboard of high experienced nobodies!

 

[caffran]

Hmmmm well that's disappointing. but from @50shadesofgreen test (kudos and thanks for doing that ), it might be worth it in the short term for division commanders even if not the higher echelon's. think i will run a few tests of my own over the weekend and see what happens. i mean i was mainly thinking of this to do before Barbarossa gets launched to give Germany an extra boost for the initial breakthroughs.

It all spun off from finding a way to give myself more of a challenge, so was going to leave AI assigned commanders on and not touching it unless i need to fire someone. but that led to the question would the AI just put the same guy back in charge of the same division? the answers going to be yes isn't it. guess i would have to promote the useless commander so he doesn't get chosen again . . .

Wait, that leads to another question. does the AI just promote anyone to fill a vacant slot? just wondering as UK has Middle East Corps with no commander, and the AI doesn't fill it. i assumed because there's no available General of that rank?

something else to test.

Thanks all

 

[50shadesofgreen]

The higher echelon commanders stayed as allocated too! I would also think that the game only assigns commanders to brand new formations.

Late in my game I have JAP rebel units popping up. They seem to be led by well chosen guys like Yamashita, often high skilled and traits.

It would be interesting to see how much it liked a command structure change? See what it left alone?

I like the idea of changing the AI leaders. It's something I have not seen tried before. Nice one.

 

[GarfunkeL]

You are better off by making an event you can run that gives the AI majors 5000 officers, 50000 supply, 50000 fuel and bunch of divisions and other units in relevant places and run it every 2 months. If the AI is not hobbled by supply & fuel constrictions, has 140% leadership ratio, and has plenty of units, it can actually do pretty well. The problem is that it can never get its strategic shit right to be able to do that alone. So, you have to cheat via events like that.

And you only have to do such an event once because you can then run it over and over again in every campaign you play.