Armor is broken in HOI2

[unmerged(39735)]

I see a lot of posts breaking down infantry vs armor on a purely attack/defense power per IC basis. I'll agree that infantry has the edge in that sort of analysis but Armor has a huge manueverability advantage and also allows more concentration of power within your stacking limits. Once you have a breakthrough situation ARM/MOT/Mech are in a much better position to exploit that advantage than infantry are. Achieving that initial breakthrough doesn't really depend on force mix, it depends on local superiority regardless of unit type.

A mixed army will be better able to complete encirclements and thus destroy enemy units completely rather than allowing them to retreat. It will also be able to reach strategic objectives and chokepoints faster and more reliably. Obviously if your choice was to go either all INF or all ARM, INF is the clear winner but having a mix of forces provides a significant advantage. They key is figuring out how large of a mobile force and how many special forces like MTN/MAR/PAR you need to give you that edge and then fill the rest in with INF.

The obvious assumption is that both sides have enough INF to prevent the other side from steamrolling them with sheer numbers. This does NOT require equal numbers of INF to given the advantage that the defender gets. If the other side outnumbers you 10 to 1 it doesn't matter what you have, you're going to lose. A 2 to 1 disadvantage is quite manageable though especially if the underdog has superior doctrine, as Germany does initially.

 

[Gwalcmai]

We've had several posts now remarking that the combat events simulate the effects of armoured warfare. Whilst it is true that the German doctrine sequence does reward them with enhanced rates of approrpiate combat events, these events are not linked to the presence of armoured divisions. They are linked to developing the doctrines. This actually makes them irrelevent to whether armoured divisions are broken or not. It is little odd that an infantry army getting breakthrough events should be considered an indication that armoured divisions are just right.

Like I said before, according to the manual, leaders with the Panzer Leader trait in command of a predominantly armoured formation get a higher chance of getting those combat events. Or at least that's what the manual seems to be saying...

But yes, unit composition should indeed play a (larger?) role in what combat events happen during a battle.

 

[unmerged(41237)]

Germany won in Poland because they outnumbered and out manovered the Polish. They didn't win because of a mass of armour defeating everything in sight (Poland had 1000 AFVs on hand), but that Poland was outnumbered, equipped with out-dated and limited equipment. Their divisions were more static than Germany's (even their infantry), and had significantly less anti-tank capable equipment on hand. Tanks performed well there (even though hundreds were lost) because Poland had nothing much to use against them.

Cause Guiderian said so (well, your quote says so, another quote of his says otherwize) means it must be true? Whatever.

Germany's flashy early war victories were partially due to their tactics, as well as due to their opponent's TO&E, their lack of AT weaponry. When they were up against infantry (attacking or defending) with high AT values, then tanks suffered. Take a look at Normandy, notably the attempt to cut off the American breakthrough, which resulted in the destruction of the entire army-groups armoured force.



What does this have to do with anything? Just because Guiderian won, does not mean that he knows everything. You COMPLETELY ignore the nature of Germany's opponents early in the war. They were ill-equipped to combat tanks, let alone fight a Great War style conflict. It was the SPEED of the advance which caught nations off guard. A highly mobile force (not necessarily armoured) would cause the same effect.

It is like saying that metal bats are better than wooden bats when you try to club a sleeping person. It doesn't matter what tool you use, you would still beat them senseless.

I didn’t want to be rude or aggressive in my preview reply. If you thought I was I apologize. You thing that infantry is good, I thing armor, someone else things something else who is right or wrong? You cant say actually because things never goes the way you want. War involves people and not machines only. Always there is a factor of pure lack. In general everybody is complaining not because the numbers are not correct but because the AI is so stu..d. In SP it doesn’t matter if you have armor or not. In MP only armor can give you a chance to win SU and I know that cause I did win. So is armor broken? It depends. The real problem is that the hall war situation is not simulated well in this game. One example. I do not like having penalties crossing a river. I prefer building or capturing with paratroopers bridges before they are destroyed and I want to see it on the map. Maybe paradox will make the perfect AI but always there will be people complaining “I don’t like the picture of rommel. He looks old”

 

[Kanitatlan]

Like I said before, according to the manual, leaders with the Panzer Leader trait in command of a predominantly armoured formation get a higher chance of getting those combat events. Or at least that's what the manual seems to be saying...

But yes, unit composition should indeed play a (larger?) role in what combat events happen during a battle.

I'm afraid this appears to be another one of those things that failed to actual get completed and included in the game. The biggest problem that Paradox have in creating realism is that they are a commercial company and can only really justify developing features that make a good game and create sales.

 

[unmerged(28147)]

I didn’t want to be rude or aggressive in my preview reply. If you thought I was I apologize. You thing that infantry is good, I thing armor, someone else things something else who is right or wrong? You cant say actually because things never goes the way you want. War involves people and not machines only. Always there is a factor of pure lack. In general everybody is complaining not because the numbers are not correct but because the AI is so stu..d. In SP it doesn’t matter if you have armor or not. In MP only armor can give you a chance to win SU and I know that cause I did win. So is armor broken? It depends. The real problem is that the hall war situation is not simulated well in this game. One example. I do not like having penalties crossing a river. I prefer building or capturing with paratroopers bridges before they are destroyed and I want to see it on the map. Maybe paradox will make the perfect AI but always there will be people complaining “I don’t like the picture of rommel. He looks old”

McNaughton was in no way vouching for infantry being good and armor being bad, he was stating that you have to have a mix of both. As for the simulating war, if you want a more realistically simulated war in a game design one yourself. From the little knoiwledge I have about programming it would take so much code and so much processing power to realistically represent war on this scale that I doubt we have the computing power to do it currently. This game is a beautiful simulation of war as far as the mechanics goes, sure there are some things that may not be realistic, but then again it's not supposed to be a super trainer for the Uber Officer of the future. It's a game, it's designed to try and represent something sipremely complex in as simple a fashion as they can while still providing some realism.

 

[unmerged(41237)]

McNaughton was in no way vouching for infantry being good and armor being bad, he was stating that you have to have a mix of both. As for the simulating war, if you want a more realistically simulated war in a game design one yourself. From the little knoiwledge I have about programming it would take so much code and so much processing power to realistically represent war on this scale that I doubt we have the computing power to do it currently. This game is a beautiful simulation of war as far as the mechanics goes, sure there are some things that may not be realistic, but then again it's not supposed to be a super trainer for the Uber Officer of the future. It's a game, it's designed to try and represent something sipremely complex in as simple a fashion as they can while still providing some realism.

You are not the only person familiar in programming. Saying that it is too complex to do something is the same saying I don’t know how to do it. Because I find math difficult doesn’t mean that someone else feels the same. The system as it is, is not so complex as you think it is. It ignores major factors like recon units (air and infantry), supply issues (you just move on and everything is fine. You know you must bring the supply to the front line not just come automatically), political situations (you take a country, lets say Spain and try to conquer the world. Do you think that your people, population, would let you do that?), creation of divisions (you just click a button and that’s it), air battles (I don’t get the org factor. You just lose planes and replace them.), laying mines, destroying bridges, move troops to the front not just redeploy them, city fights, communications( when a division loses communication cant fight but in hoi you just have to look on the map to relocate them) and so more.
My intention is not to argue with anyone but when you say if you don’t like some things in HOI don’t buy it or even worse make something your self misses my point completely. Hope you understand what I am talking about.

 

[Camrik]

Germany won in Poland because they outnumbered and out manovered the Polish. They didn't win because of a mass of armour defeating everything in sight (Poland had 1000 AFVs on hand), but that Poland was outnumbered, equipped with out-dated and limited equipment. Their divisions were more static than Germany's (even their infantry), and had significantly less anti-tank capable equipment on hand. Tanks performed well there (even though hundreds were lost) because Poland had nothing much to use against them.

Cause Guiderian said so (well, your quote says so, another quote of his says otherwize) means it must be true? Whatever.

Germany's flashy early war victories were partially due to their tactics, as well as due to their opponent's TO&E, their lack of AT weaponry. When they were up against infantry (attacking or defending) with high AT values, then tanks suffered. Take a look at Normandy, notably the attempt to cut off the American breakthrough, which resulted in the destruction of the entire army-groups armoured force.



What does this have to do with anything? Just because Guiderian won, does not mean that he knows everything. You COMPLETELY ignore the nature of Germany's opponents early in the war. They were ill-equipped to combat tanks, let alone fight a Great War style conflict. It was the SPEED of the advance which caught nations off guard. A highly mobile force (not necessarily armoured) would cause the same effect.

It is like saying that metal bats are better than wooden bats when you try to club a sleeping person. It doesn't matter what tool you use, you would still beat them senseless.

Although I agree with most of your post, the example of Normandy is not well chosen. In Normandy (as well as for the Ardennes 6 months later), it is the planes mainly that stopped the German Armoured corps, not the AT weapons.

Ghis

 

[unmerged(28147)]

You are not the only person familiar in programming. Saying that it is too complex to do something is the same saying I don’t know how to do it. Because I find math difficult doesn’t mean that someone else feels the same. The system as it is, is not so complex as you think it is. It ignores major factors like recon units (air and infantry), supply issues (you just move on and everything is fine. You know you must bring the supply to the front line not just come automatically), political situations (you take a country, lets say Spain and try to conquer the world. Do you think that your people, population, would let you do that?), creation of divisions (you just click a button and that’s it), air battles (I don’t get the org factor. You just lose planes and replace them.), laying mines, destroying bridges, move troops to the front not just redeploy them, city fights, communications( when a division loses communication cant fight but in hoi you just have to look on the map to relocate them) and so more.
My intention is not to argue with anyone but when you say if you don’t like some things in HOI don’t buy it or even worse make something your self misses my point completely. Hope you understand what I am talking about.

I was speaking in the sense of creating a game that encompasses everything that could be a factor in such a war, if you look at it from a standpoint of programming values it would take millions of different values to represent everything that could happen in a battle, each individual soldiers morale, and mental state would have to be represented, weather down to the droplets of rain would have to be programmed, you would have to find some way to create an Artificial Intelligence that can actively make decisions, learn from those decisions and also have personality, mental stability and mental conditions represented. As it stands right now we do not have the storage capacity on hard drives to represent the infinite values that would need to be represented in a truly realistic war game. As far as HOI2 goes they are doing their best to try and fit the game within the constraints of currently available technology and they have done a masterful job of it, sure there are some problems with the game due to not being able to fully represent everything. But that just wouldn't be plausible to try and make a game to cover everything as realistically as some people want. You have to look at it from a stand point of trying to make a game for people to enjoy or try and build a super computer that can perform all the calculations and store all the variables that would need to be stored to make it realistic. Frankly there is nothing severely wrong with this game, they've done a **** fine job of simulating an unpredictably chaotic environment to the best of their abilities while trying to keep things fairly simple, but not overly simple.

 

[von_Manstein11]

I just thought I would point out that the German Armoured Force was able to inflict a humiliating defeat and cause a pain in the Russian Side when von Manstein took command of Army Group south in the wake of Stalingrad. In the 3rd Battle of Kharkov Manstein used his armored forces to envelop the Soviet attack and crush the spearhead and then use his tanks to encircle and destory Kharkov stabilizing the front until Hitler went ahead with Operation Citadel. The Russians were equiped to deal with armor there what happend? During the Battle of Kursk most people dont realise that the Germans inflicted heavier loses in Tanks and Self Propelled guns to the soviets and it is arguable whether Hitler giving Manstein the XXIV Panzer Korps for the breathrough attempt would of been successfull shows that the use of Armor by the most skilled commanders can achieve remarkable results, notably the defeat of a much more powerfull force.

 

[unmerged(46637)]

I'm glad someone mentioned Manstien. The master of Blitzkrieg should always be brought up in a discussion of panzers.

 

[liuzg150181]

You are not the only person familiar in programming. Saying that it is too complex to do something is the same saying I don’t know how to do it. Because I find math difficult doesn’t mean that someone else feels the same. The system as it is, is not so complex as you think it is. It ignores major factors like recon units (air and infantry), supply issues (you just move on and everything is fine. You know you must bring the supply to the front line not just come automatically), political situations (you take a country, lets say Spain and try to conquer the world. Do you think that your people, population, would let you do that?), creation of divisions (you just click a button and that’s it), air battles (I don’t get the org factor. You just lose planes and replace them.), laying mines, destroying bridges, move troops to the front not just redeploy them, city fights, communications( when a division loses communication cant fight but in hoi you just have to look on the map to relocate them) and so more.

Uh,do you know that everything you see and play out are in macro-level?
And i believe you and Jack are losing communication,he is talking about the programming side of it........
And just a reminder,computer programming is not omnipotent,there are also limits to which what it can do btw.

My intention is not to argue with anyone but when you say if you don’t like some things in HOI don’t buy it or even worse make something your self misses my point completely. Hope you understand what I am talking about.

So what's your points,someone bought the wrong game and come here to grumble?
Recently played wargames like Close Combat series(+ Squad Assault),Combat Mission,and lighter ones like blitzkrieg and Sudden Strike. They all have some excellent gameplay feature which i really like,but at the same time my ideal gameplay features all in a game could not be found on one,but seperately amongst game which i had mentioned.
Love the games for what it is,while feedback could be helpful but be more realistic.

 

[mauzzer]

I think thers nothing wrong with the balance in HOI2, imagine how many rifles you can make out of 1 tank.

In terms of IC tanks may seem ineffective but when a panzer leader is used tanks really make the difference between a slow 'trench' war or a blitzkrieg.

I ussaully put tanks together with mOt. inf. and later mec. inf. in 9 div. armies to break through the lines and when battling the USSR (or playing as the USSR) I find that the tank divisions usually are the only ones with some organisation left after fierce battles. Enabling you to keep the initiative.

And as far as inf goes, even if you have 6 inf divisions they together have the same hard-attack as one tank div.
Cost 6x supllies and 6x manpower.

so lots of reason to build tanks.

 

[MAC]

We saw large scale encirclements due to the continued operations across a multi-province scale, NOT an in-province manuver.

WITHIN the province level, the armored unit could not create an encirclement without a simultaneous attack by infantry to 1) keep the breach open, 2) expand the breach, and 3) prevent other front line forces from redeploying indiscriminately.

Again, differences of scale. 5 armored units can't take a province, nor defend it, alone (even misty agreed to this) without infantry support of the attack. On a larger level, the armor then manuver through the enemy rear, creating the encirclements that we see historically.

Dunkirk was the result of multi-province manuver, NOT of one big battlefield encirclement within one province.

What I was critisizing is the assumption all 24 infantry divisions would manage to hit the 5 tank divisions simultanously. A HOI2 province is usually still not a small battlefield but there is a lot of room to manouver so the tanks choose their engagements. Hence the comparison of 190 soldiers attacking 1 tank is not realistic ( I would anyways calculate 160 Infantry vs 1 tank and 30 PzGren ).

The point of discussion is that this advantage of mobility is actually not properly simulateable in HOI2 at the current state which brings some people to the conclusion that armour could need a boost (especially if TC effects would be more serious in return to prevent 50 tank armies). Other option would be a stack limit per province or maybe shorter reorganisation time after breaking up an attack or halving INF toughness value. All that helps to somewhat tune down the INF only strategy.

 

[Tozama]

I have no research or logic to add to the debate and agree to some extent that armor in HIO2 lacks a realistic advantage in combat.

But my attitude to building armor has always been that I am getting a faster more mobile unit for my money to use for specific tasks that require mobility.
Tanks have base speed 10, infantry base speed 5. Argue all you want. If you use mobility properly speed DOES matter.
You cannot execute breakthru-exploitation fast enough to make solid encirclements with just infantry as often as you can using armor.
Furthermore you cannot exercise as easily the time-tested concept of arriving where and when you're not expected when you lack speed capability.

Furthermore I buy tanks instead of just moto or mech (which arguably solve the speed need) for a combined set of reasons which include strong firepower and the ability to counter enemy tanks should they employ them against me in a counter-attack on my encircling force.


If you approach the subject purely on basis of IC vs. firepower without considering the unique ability of a unit, in this case its speed advantage, you take too narrow a view IMO.

 

[MAC]

Very good post but the main problem is probably that the AI does not use an infantry exploit strategy as the human player in MP and is in general not as good in countering offenses. Therefore tanks are of good use as Germany ïn SP, but the question is how we could make a infantry only strategy less valuable and therefore make tanks more valuable for the huge IC invested...

It is probably a good solution to make tanks more valuable compared to Inf by either boosting aspects of mobile units or tuning down Inf aspects like toughness, but in the same moment making tanks tougher to support via harder TC hits or bigger armoured losses especially in unfavourable terrain. A stack limit sounds reasonable either.

 

[Kanitatlan]

Very good post but the main problem is probably that the AI does not use an infantry exploit strategy as the human player in MP and is in general not as good in countering offenses. Therefore tanks are of good use as Germany ïn SP, but the question is how we could make a infantry only strategy less valuable and therefore make tanks more valuable for the huge IC invested...

It is probably a good solution to make tanks more valuable compared to Inf by either boosting aspects of mobile units or tuning down Inf aspects like toughness, but in the same moment making tanks tougher to support via harder TC hits or bigger armoured losses especially in unfavourable terrain. A stack limit sounds reasonable either.

There are two clear issues with armour within the game. One is easily corrected and this is that the scores given to armour do not accurately reflect their firepower compared to that of an infantry division. The manpower ratio of 7:10 is similar to the German ratio for a Panzer division versus and infantry division. taking them as an example then the armoured divisions actually had substantially more fire power than the infantry with the actual total varying depending on the model. This suggests that armour should simply have its soft and nard attack increased.

The second issue is unfortunately more important and rather hard to solve. HOI2 is based upon a province model for spatial granularity and the unit of manouever. ALL units are effectively given the ability to instantly manouever to any location within the province and, for combat purposes, instantly attack any location in an adjacent province. This is a quite dramatic manoueverability for all units as they can instantly redeploy by as much as several hundred miles. Giving this ability to slow moving units dramatically undermines the value of armour.

 

[DesertFoxx]

NOBODY in this thread is saying not to use armored divisions...sheesh...everything's gotta be taken to extremes...

Ironically I don't usually play with much (if any) armor... in fact I don't have (or have plans to build) any armor in either of the MP games I'm currently involved in.

I suppose its important to note that I'm playing as Canada in one, and Japan in the other - and having avoided that whole China debacle, armor isn't terribly useful slugging it out in Burma, or defending islands against US marines... and as canada, I'm just too damned poor to afford nice things.

 

[unmerged(20725)]

Now this is the first time I've actually posted a reply to this forum, but I've been reading the forums for HOI since feb of 2003, and they have been very interesting indeed. Now this one in particular is important to me since it deals with MP issues. You have all made very good points, but you've said nothing about the West!!! So Germany has 150 inf and 30-50 armored divs; is this all in the East? And ok, Russia has no air power, so you neglect it aswell, but what about England's airforce, or even a human controlled American airforce? I doubt AA brigades attached to your armor will be much help when there are 1000 B-29s or P-47s blocking out the sun!

 

[jlpktnst]

Well let me put some of my points too. It took me hellishly long to read all this, but it was worth. I agree with Kanitatlan about most of the points he has made here. Most importantly the feature of infantry to "teleport" inside provinces is definetely bad. Even if we take (as mld suggested iirc) that inf. is spread evenly across the province - or if infantry is spread evenly across the frontline - it should not happen that all inf. battalions attack armor at once. Or even combined force. Maybe as a modifier of doctrine&general bonus attack could be concetrated (ger) - combined arms pushing the line on several spots encircling the troops in the province itself. This could be modeled quite easily - display would be showing some of the defenders not fighting at all with eta to the fight or in disarray (all of this gets a chance based on doctrine, general, mixture of offensive and defensive units) - some new events etc. Province-level combat should be modeled in more transparent way and a with a bit more complexity. Lenghtening the battle wouldn't hurt either. For ussr doctrine there would be totally different way to fight. Now I am fantacising a bit, but ussr had the manpower to attack whole front with massive waves. Why not model that? It is not so hard.
What am I trying to say - combat should be based more on the doctrines - the style of combat itself. Whose doctrine controls combat is decided from the units and generals on the field (better mobility, terrain, masses of people...). I don't know if this can be implemented with current model, but at least they could put in some kind of timer so not all inf. divs attack at the same time (except in the case of massive wave assault, where attacker wants to occupy all of the defenders at once and wear them away).

Also regarding the first "blitzkrieg" ever. I was there I can say (geographically ofcourse). Since it is mere 100 km away from my home eh. The mountains are crazy there. They say infantry just swept in the valleys isolating and leaving enemy positions on hilltops behind. Italians suddenly in dissaray, cut away, islands of people with no leadership or communication... not to mention the fog. That is what blitzkrieg supposed to be isn't it? If you have plains you take tanks for mobility, in mountains you just don't take tanks and don't take hilltops, but you move swiftly, crushing the front at places, do small scale encirclement, crush the morale and organisation.

In HoI2 this is not modelled AT ALL. It does not exist. There are some events but they do not drastically contribute to victory or loss. Since you don't control the actual tactical combat it should be ok, but it is not, since the game comes down to the bare brute force as many others - make more than the enemy and crush em... Tanks/mot. are useless in small scale breatktrough. Combined arms spearhead does not exist. Large scale breaktrough can not be exploited by armor since they get slaughtered (at least it happens to me). If you set synch-arrival you are too slow... Armor is not broken - just the model is lacking I think.

summary:
As some people pointed out additional combat events would definetely help, but that is not enogh. We need revamp of the province-based combat. The same with aerial combat. They are not fighting all the forces at once goddamit And what the hell with only the highest officer giving skill bonus, is there no independancy of smaller units?

Please flame me, so I can crystalize my thoughts

 

[unmerged(46396)]

Half Movement Time

I had a post about dividing each province up in an abstract sense into its center and edges and having units have to position themselves as such within a province. Though I think this would be a good idea, it is obviously too programming intensive to implement at this point.

A poster named "George S Patton" had a very good idea of making combat initiate after a unit has spent half the time it would normally take to move into the province. I think this is the best solution by far. It would be doable if Paradox really wanted to and would not require radical changes to the AI.

Another great side effect of this solution is that it factors in a units org level because org level affects movment which would tend to enhance armor due to the armors resilience to org reduction.