Aren't 12 to 15 battalions per division more historical than 25?

[Corpse Fool]

A lot of those divisions in the historical list aren't far off from being usable factors of common combats, like 16, 20, 26/27, or 30.

The problem is that only one of those widths are good for defense, which is what most of those divisions lean towards.

 

[Fulmen]

With 9x Infantry bn's they fit. The only one that has a tight fit is the Square division, Other than Japan, none saw combat.

The Russian 1939 rifle division with a tank battalion at 19,350 men might want a word with you:



BICE allows for a historical battalion count (if you ignore the support battalions being marked as companies, save for the HQ, which was company-sized IRL), though there too the number of men end up too low, and the equipment figures are even more all over the place than in vanilla:

 

[GeorgieBest]

A lot of those divisions in the historical list aren't far off from being usable factors of common combats, like 16, 20, 26/27, or 30.

The problem is that only one of those widths are good for defense, which is what most of those divisions lean towards.

But the current system is extremely limiting. In my opinion divisions shouldn't join combat unless there is room for them in the battle, and the width of combat should be randomised more instead of nearly always being factors of 20/40.

I have no idea how they can stop 40 width divisions from being OP/abused but baby steps I guess.

 

[PARAfel]

That's a incredible suggestion due to their exploitness and even prohibition within many hoi4 communities of wider divisions (like 40w)

Also, theres chance that when they change these combat mechanics (like dvision width limitation etc.) they maybe fixed some holes in the hoi4 general gameplay, i dont know why the paradox even need to put 25 battalions when the standard is 12. Thanks for posting that.

 

[Corpse Fool]

But the current system is extremely limiting. In my opinion divisions shouldn't join combat unless there is room for them in the battle, and the width of combat should be randomised more instead of nearly always being factors of 20/40.

I have no idea how they can stop 40 width divisions from being OP/abused but baby steps I guess.

Two questions. What is your goal? And/or what problem are you trying to solve?

 

[GeorgieBest]

Two questions. What is your goal? And/or what problem are you trying to solve?

I'd like to see the game improved and have its potential realised?

The problem is that the game actively punishes you for having historically accurate divisions whilst rewarding players for abusing the game mechanics with 40 width divisions.

 

[Corpse Fool]

I'd like to see the game improved and have its potential realised?

This is exceptionally vague and highly subjective. Not at all what I was hoping you'd give me, but I suppose I can't be too surprised.

abusing the game mechanics with 40 width divisions.

I wouldn't really consider 40 wides to be an abuse, more of a consequence of the mechanics involved.

The problem is that the game actively punishes you for having historically accurate divisions

You want historical divisions to be more competitive with gamer divisions? Gamer divisions will always technically be better (by definition), but the gap could certainly be narrowed. So the question becomes how powerful we think they should be in comparison to 40 wide and to each other, unless of course you opt to simply remove 40 wides from the game by limiting battalion slots.

The problem seems to revolve around a disconnect between historical ORBATs, manpower and equipment counts, how those are translated into battalions and companies in the game, and the resulting stats. I don't think this problem can be solved by small tweaks in a way that would satisfy the history buffs, I can imagine it would only give them something new to complain about. There certainly is criticisms that are deserved and beneficial, but there is also a point where people have to realize that there is a distinction between what the game is and what they want it to be. The developers most likely (I hope) have a vision for what they want the game to be, and this might greatly differ from yours. Sometimes it is better to just cut your losses and move onto greener pastures, rather than smash your head against the wall.

The first hurdle to solving your problem is that PDX is taking a one-size-fits-all approach where every nation has largely the same blocks, when historically they all had different shape blocks. You will never be able to perfectly recreate a historical ORBAT, how close do you feel like you have to get for it to be close enough?

Spoiler: Choices

I suppose the first option to make historical divisions more powerful in comparison to 40 wides, is to simply remove 40 wides. This isn't a very interesting choice in my opinion, it seems lazy. Reducing regiments and battalions per regiment can do that, or we could halve the width that infantry and tanks and most other things offer such that getting to 40 width would be difficult. 4x4 would still allow 8/8 style divisions to be used at 40 width, we basically just made the old 60 wides the new 40 wides.

A second option that doesn't really change the 40's is to make the over width penalty less of a penalty. Changing the -2% per 1% down to -1% per 1% like some mentioned mods would bring 4x22 width divisions (several in the historical division wiki are 22 width, the soviet 27 width is 22.4 if MA doctrine is taken) in an 80 wide battle from only using 70.4 width of stats, up to 79.2 width of stats, which isn't far from what the perfect 20 would be using at 80 width worth of stats. But you are still paying more manpower/equipment to do less work.

Option 3.1 is to try to link certain types of divisions to certain doctrines, and include width modifications that would bring the divisions used under those doctrines more in line with what we want. As an example, it is pretty widely accepted that superior firepower is the doctrine the USA used. So lets find the historical USA templates, find out how those evolved over time, and give their doctrine adjustments to width that let them fit nicely into a particular width using the particular ORBATs at a particular time period (doctrine progression).

Option 3.2 is to just totally rebalance battalion manpower and equipment costs, their resulting stats and most critical to this discussion, the amount of width they have. Width is a pretty closed system, you are basically free to inflate and adjust the numbers however you want and it largely won't have an impact on much else in the game.

Option 4 involves changing how combat works, which is going to be a pretty big factor in what sort of design criteria we have for divisions, but this is much more involved.

At first glance I think option 3.1 would be the best way to bring about the changes you want, but this would be rather involved in terms of research and balance. I mostly like it because it makes doctrines more interesting. Option 2 is a close second as it does most of what you want while only changing 1 thing.

 

[billcorr]

unless of course you opt to simply remove 40 wides from the game by limiting battalion slots.

Some mods do limit the number of battalion slots.

The number of battalion slots can be modified by changing the defines:

    MAX_DIVISION_BRIGADE_WIDTH = 5,            -- Max width of regiments in division designer.
    MAX_DIVISION_BRIGADE_HEIGHT = 5,        -- Max height of regiments in division designer.
    MAX_DIVISION_SUPPORT_WIDTH = 1,            -- Max width of support in division designer.
    MAX_DIVISION_SUPPORT_HEIGHT = 5,        -- Max height of support in division designer.

Here is an example of changing the defines (number of battalion slots) in a mod:

-- MILITARY STUFF
NDefines.NMilitary.FIELD_MARSHAL_DIVISIONS_CAP = 6            -- was 24 -- how many divisions a field marshall is limited to. 0 = inf, < 0 = blocked
NDefines.NMilitary.MAX_DIVISION_BRIGADE_WIDTH = 4            -- Max width of regiments in division designer.
NDefines.NMilitary.MAX_DIVISION_BRIGADE_HEIGHT = 3            -- Max height of regiments in division designer.
NDefines.NMilitary.MAX_DIVISION_SUPPORT_WIDTH = 2            -- Max width of support in division designer.
NDefines.NMilitary.MAX_DIVISION_SUPPORT_HEIGHT = 3            -- Max height of support in division designer.
NDefines.NMilitary.BASE_DIVISION_BRIGADE_GROUP_COST = 14    -- was 20 --Base cost to unlock a regiment slot,
NDefines.NMilitary.BASE_DIVISION_BRIGADE_CHANGE_COST = 7    -- was 5  --Base cost to change a regiment column.
NDefines.NMilitary.BASE_DIVISION_SUPPORT_SLOT_COST = 7        -- was 10 --Base cost to unlock a support slot

 

[el nora]

Some mods do limit the number of battalion slots.

The number of battalion slots can be modified by changing the defines:

    MAX_DIVISION_BRIGADE_WIDTH = 5,            -- Max width of regiments in division designer.
    MAX_DIVISION_BRIGADE_HEIGHT = 5,        -- Max height of regiments in division designer.
    MAX_DIVISION_SUPPORT_WIDTH = 1,            -- Max width of support in division designer.
    MAX_DIVISION_SUPPORT_HEIGHT = 5,        -- Max height of support in division designer.

Here is an example of changing the defines (number of battalion slots) in a mod:

-- MILITARY STUFF
NDefines.NMilitary.FIELD_MARSHAL_DIVISIONS_CAP = 6            -- was 24 -- how many divisions a field marshall is limited to. 0 = inf, < 0 = blocked
NDefines.NMilitary.MAX_DIVISION_BRIGADE_WIDTH = 4            -- Max width of regiments in division designer.
NDefines.NMilitary.MAX_DIVISION_BRIGADE_HEIGHT = 3            -- Max height of regiments in division designer.
NDefines.NMilitary.MAX_DIVISION_SUPPORT_WIDTH = 2            -- Max width of support in division designer.
NDefines.NMilitary.MAX_DIVISION_SUPPORT_HEIGHT = 3            -- Max height of support in division designer.
NDefines.NMilitary.BASE_DIVISION_BRIGADE_GROUP_COST = 14    -- was 20 --Base cost to unlock a regiment slot,
NDefines.NMilitary.BASE_DIVISION_BRIGADE_CHANGE_COST = 7    -- was 5  --Base cost to change a regiment column.
NDefines.NMilitary.BASE_DIVISION_SUPPORT_SLOT_COST = 7        -- was 10 --Base cost to unlock a support slot

Changing those values can sometimes cause gui issues. if you want to make it bigger (the opposite of where this diection is going, I know), then you also need to modify the graphical files to allow it to be displayed properly.

 

[Question]

Gamer divisions will always technically be better (by definition), but the gap could certainly be narrowed.

The fundamental problem is that the combat bears little resemblance to actual ww2 combat beyond very vauge concepts like "air power is good" and "tanks are good for attacking".

Historical divisions had things like "line" artillery, AA and AT because they were useful. They are not terribly useful in this game unless you are abusing something like 2x heavy tank SPAA to neuter enemy CAS (which is also, extremely unhistorical, ground AA simply wasnt that good).

The way hp, org and other stats stack additively also encourage 40w when in reality, the commander would have trouble commanding so many troops at once and it would be an extremely unwieldy formation.

In reality, using mountain divisions to take mountains would be a good idea...in hoi4, the game encourages you to just throw a 40w heavy tank division at it because it has breakthrough while your mountain division does not (and will rapidly lose org and be forced to retreat).

Until the balance issues are solved, anything close to historical divisions isnt going be very effective because you are gimping yourself by using something other than 10/0 infantry + tank division spam.

And thats not even addressing the huge combat width penalties.

 

[D.Knight]

Historical divisions had things like "line" artillery, AA and AT because they were useful. They are not terribly useful in this game unless you are abusing something like 2x heavy tank SPAA to neuter enemy CAS (which is also, extremely unhistorical, ground AA simply wasnt that good).

The way hp, org and other stats stack additively also encourage 40w when in reality, the commander would have trouble commanding so many troops at once and it would be an extremely unwieldy formation.

The dual nerfing of all forms of indirect fire and the removal of "leadership capacity" as we had in HoI3 is pretty much this imo. Whether they solved OPs "problem" idk but I do see symptoms of the problems of their removal.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Historical divisions had things like "line" artillery, AA and AT because they were useful. They are not terribly useful in this game

Support AA and line AT are useful. Support AA largely because line AA is practically worthless and SPAA is basically OP. Line AT because 'space marines' are 'taboo', and there isn't another cheap source of hard attack/piercing to help fend off tanks, and support AT is pretty bad against dedicated tanks.

The way hp, org and other stats stack additively also encourage 40w

HP and org do not stack additively, this isn't really much of a benefit for 40 wides over 20 wides. The effect of having half as many support companies dragging down total org or influencing your HP ratios is a pretty minimal benefit. Unless you're using a lot of last stand (or using tiny divisions), the cumulative total of your HP doesn't really matter, what matters more is your HP ratios. As for org, each division might have slightly more org because less influence from the supports, but because they are twice as big you can only fit half as many into the same space, your total org in the combat is often going to be much smaller with the 40 wide than the 20 wide.

The other stats like attacks and defenses actually being additive does benefit the 40 wide with being able to generally deal more damage and suffer less because of stat concentrations, but that is more of a result of how the combat is resolved with random target selections. I haven't thought much about it, but nothing immediately jumps out as a solution that makes smaller divisions more viable without making players just swing hard towards just spamming small divisions instead of having larger ones.

encourage 40w when in reality, the commander would have trouble commanding so many troops at once and it would be an extremely unwieldy formation.

I suppose one problem is that we seem to be overly caught up in calling any "division" a division. Some people have drawn more parallels with these larger 'formations' to be more along the lines of corps size. Why don't we stop calling 40 wides divisions, and start calling them corps?

And thats not even addressing the huge combat width penalties.

I'd like to hear more of your thoughts about this.