Armor is broken in HOI2

[unmerged(46221)]

mld, what is your point exactly? this thread gets completely OT.

Some think that armour is well simulated in the game. This is a constructive opinion.

Some think it is broken. Like me. Because in the game, it is not the battle DECISIVE weapon it was in reality. My quote of Guderian tried to give a hint in that direction.

Some even proposed a solution to it. Like Joshua. Why does nobody reply to constructive posts?

 

[mld0806]

mld, what is your point exactly? this thread gets completely OT.

Some think that armour is well simulated in the game. This is a constructive opinion.

Some think it is broken. Like me. Because in the game, it is not the battle DECISIVE weapon it was in reality. My quote of Guderian tried to give a hint in that direction.

Some even proposed a solution to it. Like Joshua. Why does nobody reply to constructive posts?

My point is this:

You quote Guderian saying one thing. Someone else quotes Guderian saying that follow-on infantry support is vital to success and is vital to tie down enemies from responding to the breakthrough, and that infantry is needed to take and secure provinces.

The "Armor is Fine" crowd here is responding to the constructive posts by saying, "This is unnecessary, Armor is fine, it's employment that is the issue." You persist in your belief that independent armored divisions should be able to take and hold territory, which is what the OP wanted as well. Many of us have pointed out that Armor cannot take and hold entire provinces. To which you and others respond with flawed microcosm arguments that don't justify having armored divisions taking and holding provinces on the macrocosm of the map in the game.

This is all discussion of the "armor is broken" premise, and has not shifted off topic. It's turned into two camps. The way I see it, the "Armor is Broken" crowd has formed into a camp that sees small scale battlefield success as the same thing as large scale strategic success without factoring in all the historic reasons why infantry was a key component of Blitzkrieg. The "Armor is Fine" crowd has formed into a camp that says, "You're overestimating the importance of armor on an overall strategic level. Yes, they'd have battlefield success in localized areas against pure enemy infantry, but they aren't going to take entire provinces by themselves."

The "armor is fine" crowd doesn't respond in detail to suggested changes because that's their opinion, "armor is fine". Why go through all sorts of "Well, don't do this, or maybe refine this...but I don't think it's necessary" when you can say, "Armor is Fine". Then someone like you quotes a couple of things Guderian says, totally ignoring other things Guderian says, much less what Guderian actually DID on the battlefield, and it slides into nattering debates.

To attempt to get this back on an OT track, for your benefit misty:

- "Armor is broken. It can't take territory all by itself or hold that territory against concerted counterattack."
- "Armor isn't meant to take and hold large amounts of territory without infantry support."
- "Well, maybe we should make it tougher for infantry to overtake armor by decreasing their toughness."
- "Assinine Assumption #1 is made: 1000 tanks and 50,000 men will defeat 240,000 men, even though that's a ratio of 190 men per tank unengaged by infantry who could, with that sort of numerical superiority, move up, jack the tank up, remove all their wheels, and leave it sitting on concrete blocks without suffering too many casualties"
- "You don't need to decrease the toughness of infantry. 4:1 odds is plenty for infantry to take back a province from a few armored divisions. Decreasing infantry toughness will make their balance on the attack be thrown off even more and more severely throw the odds in favor of the defender"

That's the basic main premises throughout this thread. Can we stop going 'round and 'round about Assinine Assumption #1?

 

[unmerged(41237)]

Even the best tank commanders found spotting AT guns difficult. The infantry compontent of armoured divisions is minimal, maybe 1/3 of the total force of the division. There are constant examples when they were not effectively supporting eachother (the Infantry was late, or the tanks were late), and in most of the attacks, the infantry fared better alone than the tanks. Just saying that they could spot AT guns easily, does not mean that they did! Most cases, AT guns were spotted just after they fired.

Tanks may be the only unit able to engage other tanks after a breakthrough, but listen to what I said, am saying, tanks are not the optimal unit for fighting other tanks. Casualties on both sides will be very high in a tank v tank battle, even though there would be no other option. In most cases, tank penetration attacks were stopped because of a stubborn infantry force rather than an effective armoured counter-attack. The Germans wore themselves down on the entrenched Russian Infantry at Kursk (which was a fortress), and both sides suffered equally horrendous losses. If you can easily replace losses, then tanks are a good weapon against tanks.

Tank losses are always high. The Germans lost hundreds of tanks in the Polish campaign, and hundreds more in France. Since they controlled the battlefield, they were able to recover and rehaul many of these lost vehicles, but they were effectively knocked out. These were relatively easy campaigns. The ratio of infantry casualties to total infantry was significantly less than the ratio of tank casualties to the total tanks deployed.

Quoting a tank commander to show the importance of armour is like quoting George W Bush to show the success of the US Federal government in the past few years. Pretty biased in my opinion.

I want to see you hiding behind a tree while the airforce is bombarding like hell.
So in your assamption guderian lost in poland and in france and of course in barbarosa the germans didn't march to moscow because lets say 5000 soldier were hiding behind trees destroying tanks and so WWII never happened because the polish and the france smashed germans with their infantry firing them with AT's.
If i read something like that again i propably assume that Albert was a stupid man.

 

[unmerged(46221)]

The "Armor is Fine" crowd here is responding to the constructive posts by saying, "This is unnecessary, Armor is fine, it's employment that is the issue." You persist in your belief that independent armored divisions should be able to take and hold territory, which is what the OP wanted as well. Many of us have pointed out that Armor cannot take and hold entire provinces. To which you and others respond with flawed microcosm arguments that don't justify having armored divisions taking and holding provinces on the macrocosm of the map in the game.

That's were we don't agree. Nobody said that armored divisions should be able to take anf hold territory. That's an infantry job. Armour cannot do it. We agree on that. OK?

There are other things which are better done by armour. Like break-throughs. In both quotes of Guderian you will find that. And that is NOT simulated in HoI. So I, and the OP say: there is a problem, can want to discuss it.

The "armor is fine crowd" does refuse to discuss it. Perhaps they should post in another thread called "We love our superhero infantry and wonder why tanks were build during wwII and are still build today"

You still did not comment Joshua's idea btw.

 

[unmerged(41237)]

SOLUTION:
-Smaller provinces, scale 20-25 Km
-Stack limit to four units
-Infantry and armor values, Ok
-Creation of artilery division which move slawer and have some range
-Airforce attacking roads railwais (delaying retreats) armor and artilery divisions, not infantry
-Airforce using regions to attack is Ok
-Supply units which you can move them across the map having a supply range lets say three provinces(only in enemy territory)
-Cancel redeploy and use the ability of moving troops with train. Every railway with the capacity of moving 3 divisions at a time without losing org
Problem solved.....

 

[unmerged(28147)]

That's were we don't agree. Nobody said that armored divisions should be able to take anf hold territory. That's an infantry job. Armour cannot do it. We agree on that. OK?

There are other things which are better done by armour. Like break-throughs. In both quotes of Guderian you will find that. And that is NOT simulated in HoI. So I, and the OP say: there is a problem, can want to discuss it.

The "armor is fine crowd" does refuse to discuss it. Perhaps they should post in another thread called "We love our superhero infantry and wonder why tanks were build during wwII and are still build today"

You still did not comment Joshua's idea btw.

As has been stated previously it's all a matter of use of the armor, you want to use armor to punch a hole in an enemy defensive line with tanks and just tanks, but that's not going to work in this game due to the scale being too large for that. What it took me a while to learn was that you have to combine Infantry and armor to make the most effect out of armor. Feel free to continue to pound your head against the wall, but your logic doesn't work with the logic needed to effectively use armor in the game.

 

[unmerged(44018)]

i think the problem is the atack model in hoi2, should be like in hoi1 first move to
target province and them fight i think this solved the instant counter-atack bs.

 

[MAC]

- "Assinine Assumption #1 is made: 1000 tanks and 50,000 men will defeat 240,000 men, even though that's a ratio of 190 men per tank unengaged by infantry who could, with that sort of numerical superiority, move up, jack the tank up, remove all their wheels, and leave it sitting on concrete blocks without suffering too many casualties"

Sorry, but this is a silly argument. We have seen huge pockets in WWII because of the mobility of the tanks. Theiy are at advantage if they can choose their battle and thats how they would have to be used vs 24 divisions. They would not engage this units all at once and the enemy would not for sure know its just 5 divisions, just that the crucial river crossing in his back was just taken and the HQ orders fast retreat to prevent being cut off.

Just wondering what others think of armoured / mech / mot having lower reorganizing time to simulate their higher mobility? Even if the question would be if differing the values is easy implementeable...

 

[mld0806]

That's were we don't agree. Nobody said that armored divisions should be able to take anf hold territory. That's an infantry job. Armour cannot do it. We agree on that. OK?

The original poster DID say that, though.

There are other things which are better done by armour. Like break-throughs. In both quotes of Guderian you will find that. And that is NOT simulated in HoI. So I, and the OP say: there is a problem, can want to discuss it.

The "armor is fine crowd" does refuse to discuss it. Perhaps they should post in another thread called "We love our superhero infantry and wonder why tanks were build during wwII and are still build today"

Differences in scale, my friend, differences in scale. The initial breakthroughs that people keep pointing to are the intial BATTLEFIELD breakthroughs that are exploited by infantry to help widen the breach. Subsequent to that you have the rear area actions of the armor.

Battlefield breakthroughs of the enemy line are handled by the Breakthrough event (makes sense to me!).

The subsequent encirclement operations on the strategic scale have NOTHING to do with the initial battlefield breakthrough, and hole didn't appear in the front without infantry to press into and expand the initial battlefield breakthrough to cause the enemy front to disperse combined with the redeployment of now-encirclement-threatened forces to other terrain or to attempt to stop the armor movement in the rear that follows the battlefield breakthrough.

You still did not comment Joshua's idea btw.

You mean this one?

I've read some of the posts, and scanned through others. I didn't see anyone mentioning something that came to mind when I read through this thread a few days ago. Couldn't, and shouldn't the combat events that happen during combat account for the armor vs. infantry superiority? You know, the encirclement, surprise, etc. bonuses you'd get at the top of a battle break down sometimes based on doctrines and leaders and such? There could be ones for Armor like 'Flanked' that provided a huge bonus for that hour or what not.

Okay, here's my response. These events are already modeled by a combination of battlefield events and doctrines. Armor itself could cause a breakthrough, but had to be used in a method that allowed them to do this, which we call Blitzkrieg. The increases of combat event chances with HQs of the correct doctrine line represent the application of the armored division WITHIN THE PROVINCE according to Blitzkrieg doctrine. A Mobile Defense doctrine has increased chances of events that better simulate the use of armor by those nations.

When you stop crossing lines of scale (in-province vs. multi-province), you clear up a lot of debate. WITHIN the province, most representations of armor are modeled under the hood based on doctrine. Outside the province, at the strategic level, Armor operating without infantry support was pointless. The loss at the provincial level didn't occur without follow up infantry support, nor did the operation of the tanks behind the lines subsequent occur without infantry to engage the enemy at the front and keep him from effectively responding to the breakthrough.

 

[mld0806]

- "Assinine Assumption #1 is made: 1000 tanks and 50,000 men will defeat 240,000 men, even though that's a ratio of 190 men per tank unengaged by infantry who could, with that sort of numerical superiority, move up, jack the tank up, remove all their wheels, and leave it sitting on concrete blocks without suffering too many casualties"

Sorry, but this is a silly argument. We have seen huge pockets in WWII because of the mobility of the tanks. Theiy are at advantage if they can choose their battle and thats how they would have to be used vs 24 divisions. They would not engage this units all at once and the enemy would not for sure know its just 5 divisions, just that the crucial river crossing in his back was just taken and the HQ orders fast retreat to prevent being cut off.

Just wondering what others think of armoured / mech / mot having lower reorganizing time to simulate their higher mobility? Even if the question would be if differing the values is easy implementeable...

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.

 

[Gwalcmai]

You still did not comment Joshua's idea btw.

Kanitatlan has made some posts touching that, though (maybe it was in the "combined arms" thread?). Longer battles would make the effects of combat events more noticeable.

Now, the manual states that Panzer leaders in command of predominantly armoured formations have a greater likelihood of getting "nice" combat events (breakthrough, encirclement). Can anyone verify this?

 

[unmerged(46221)]

OK, so everything is fine, right?

So can somebody explain me why in the game, in single player, I can win just the same with and without armour?

Do you feel that this is historicaly correct?

- If yes, then it's OK, we have different opinions and I stop my useless posts.

- If not, I'm glad to open the discussion, at last

 

[mld0806]

OK, so everything is fine, right?

So can somebody explain me why in the game, in single player, I can win just the same with and without armour?

Do you feel that this is historicaly correct?

- If yes, then it's OK, we have different opinions and I stop my useless posts.

- If not, I'm glad to open the discussion, at last

For the same reason that you can win with or without aircraft, or with twice to 3 times the historical levels of armor, or with 1/2 the historical navy, or with all submarines, or with anything else. You come up with a strategy to build and implement your tools of warfare in a manner to succeed (along with a piss poor AI, but I don't want to take credit away from you). This isn't a flaw in armor, but a flexibility of playstyles. Too restrictive a system has people complaining about being tied into a historical straight jacket.

An all infantry system poorly employed on the battlefield WILL lose. A combined arms system poorly employed on the battlefield WILL lose. ANY system better concieved, better implemented, and better employed WILL win.

 

[unmerged(37046)]

The original poster DID say that, though.

When did I say that?
My example with Civ3 clearly stated that infantry is still very good for defence (more cost effective).


> Battlefield breakthroughs of the enemy line are handled by the Breakthrough event (makes sense to me!).

Currently these events don't make up for Armor cost-ineffectiveness comparing to infantry.


> Outside the province, at the strategic level, Armor operating without infantry support was pointless.

Tank armies were quite successful in mobile defensive operations.
Example: Goth's 4th army defending extended area around Rostov.

WW2 is full of examples of successfull tank raids, when objective was not to capture ground, but to inflict damage on enemy and return back to front.

 

[unmerged(15268)]

When did I say that?
My example with Civ3 clearly stated that infantry is still very good for defence (more cost effective).


> Battlefield breakthroughs of the enemy line are handled by the Breakthrough event (makes sense to me!).

Currently these events don't make up for Armor cost-ineffectiveness comparing to infantry.


> Outside the province, at the strategic level, Armor operating without infantry support was pointless.

Tank armies were quite successful in mobile defensive operations.
Example: Goth's 4th army defending extended area around Rostov.

WW2 is full of examples of successfull tank raids, when objective was not to capture ground, but to inflict damage on enemy and return back to front.

Hoth's 4th Panzer Army's successful "defense" of the extended area around Rostov was less of a defense than a series of limited counterattacks, which is what I believe you mean by the phrase "mobile defensive operations". The same can be said of Balck's use of the 11th panzer division as a fire brigade along the Chir river.

 

[mld0806]

When did I say that?

That is 24 strong infantry army in neighboring province can INSTANTLY (!!!) kick butt of 5 armor divisions.

Instant attack isn't INSTANT ATTACK. Divisions aren't all pooled up in the center of one province and move to the center of the next. The 24 defeat the armor in combat enough that they are forced to retreat in a matter of X time, sure, but an argument against that assumes both sides not being deployed along a front, rather spread through a province without consideration of a "front".

> Battlefield breakthroughs of the enemy line are handled by the Breakthrough event (makes sense to me!).

Currently these events don't make up for Armor cost-ineffectiveness comparing to infantry.

They most certainly do. Watch a battle hour for hour and watch for the little Exclamation point, and look at comparitive org damage when a breakthrough occurs. Quite telling. If there happens to be a HQ unit in the same province, watch the manpower of that HQ. Again, quite telling. Enough to overcome 4.8:1 odds, though? No.

> Outside the province, at the strategic level, Armor operating without infantry support was pointless.

Tank armies were quite successful in mobile defensive operations.
Example: Goth's 4th army defending extended area around Rostov.

Tank armies could be successful in mobile defensive operations, but not at major odds disadvantage and not enough to keep much larger odds from taking the province. Was this area around Rostov literally 500 miles wide, though? That would be a 3 province area on the map. WITHIN the province they could defend, but not against very, very large odds. And they're just as effective as infantry at defense.

WW2 is full of examples of successfull tank raids, when objective was not to capture ground, but to inflict damage on enemy and return back to front.

This would be an attack that isn't followed up by province taking, not necessitating a change in armor statistics. Anything deeper is a full scale battle and a full scale province taking, with any further movement on the map being strategic exploitation of the initial battlefield success and the disruption of the enemy front. Far more than a "tank raid".

 

[unmerged(48316)]

I think it is quite ballanced they way it is. No need of overpowering the armoured units.

 

[McNaughton]

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.

I want to see you hiding behind a tree while the airforce is bombarding like hell.
So in your assamption guderian lost in poland and in france and of course in barbarosa the germans didn't march to moscow because lets say 5000 soldier were hiding behind trees destroying tanks and so WWII never happened because the polish and the france smashed germans with their infantry firing them with AT's.
If i read something like that again i propably assume that Albert was a stupid man.

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.

 

[P3D]

The arguments about tanks being better on the offensive (with infantry support follow-up) are good arguments change the combined arms bonus. Why is it that armored divisions helps defence more (+15% CA) than attack(5%)?

 

[Kanitatlan]

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.

In addition I am starting to see the imperfections of the basic HOI2 model become more prominent in this discussion. The instant attack issue for example is intimately attacked distance granularity issue I raised earlier. For thos of you who think the HOI2 move-attack model is better I would suggest seeking out my 1944 mini-AAR on the HOI1 forum (main forum) in which I describe proceeding rapidly towards potential world conquest (with Germany) after using the faults of that scheme to annihilate the Soviet hordes. This whole issue is only properly fixable by fundamental changes in the games spacial design and since this isn't going to happen they are pretty much things we will have to live with. In particular, they are general issues and not specific to armoured divisions.

Whilst instant attack to counter a breakthrough may seem strong it isn't nearly as powerful as the defence by counter attack technique. For this you basically hold your defensive line back from the enemies start position and instantly attack any enemy units that appear next to your defenders with every unit available. Once defeated you cancel the attack and remain in your current line. This gives you a massively improved defence unless the enemy can contrive to have every unit in their force appear adjacent to your line simultaneously along the entire front. This technique is a much bigger indictment of the instant attack rule.