Artillery stats from Johan's Netherlands game on twitter

[Axe99]

Sharing for interest, I know there's been a bit of talk about arty in recent days . The stats are for soft attack, and the three arty battalions +55.8, nine infantry battalions +67.5 and the support arty +15.6.

 

[jamesd]

Sharing for interest, I know there's been a bit of talk about arty in recent days . The stats are for soft attack, and the three arty battalions +55.8, nine infantry battalions +67.5 and the support arty +15.6.

Four points:
1. Artillery battalions have 36 guns or 3 battalions worth for most armies throughout the period, meaning some big compromises in trying to create historical templates.
2. The artillery is not powerful enough. With that many guns, many more than most divisions had, and no distinctions from light through to siege guns, the artillery soft attack should dwarf the infantry soft attack, but it barely exceeds it.
3. Manpower is way off. A division with 9 infantry battalions, engineers, recon and 11 battalion equivalents of artillery should be at the very least 15,000 men, if not more.
4. Historically the Netherlands only managed to field less than half that number of guns per division when including the guns held at corps level, so there's been some alternate history explored. An extra 80 artillery pieces probably more than makes up for the missing 24 x 47mm AT guns.

 

[ringhloth]

2. The artillery is not powerful enough. With that many guns, many more than most divisions had, and no distinctions from light through to siege guns, the artillery soft attack should dwarf the infantry soft attack, but it barely exceeds it.

Artillery is almost 3x as powerful as infantry, and that is "barely exceeding?"

 

[Midden]

Axe99,

thanks for the screen shot, the stats look intriguing. It seems the Art soft attack is quite different to the Inf, which blows away my previous assumptions in other threads, worrying about it.

 

[Vidkjaer]

And not least forget that Johan choose Superior Firepower doctrine and got 20% soft attack and a tactic called "suppresive barrage".

 

[Victor Cortez]

Thanks for the screen Axe.
So if I get this right, all else equal, an Inf div without arty will be crushed by one with arty, no discussion.

 

[Axe99]

Thanks for the screen Axe.
So if I get this right, all else equal, an Inf div without arty will be crushed by one with arty, no discussion.

I'd like to know how arty plays into defence as well, but in terms of a full regiment of arty, that's definitely the look of things. A support company would give a division an edge, but it wouldn't be as strong.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

Artillery is almost 3x as powerful as infantry, and that is "barely exceeding?"

I'd think the point is that 4 ingame artillery units is in the upper end of how much divisions were able to call on historically. Tube count wise that's essentially assault infantry division fitted with corps and army level gun support, the kind you might find in Normandy in '44 (minus anti-tank and ~50-100 tanks/TDs).

 

[PiousWarrior]

Artiller is a very good thing espesialy when you attack china

 

[jamesd]

Artillery is almost 3x as powerful as infantry, and that is "barely exceeding?"

With 132 artillery pieces and 9 infantry battalions, the total soft attack from artillery should be much higher than the total soft attack from infantry. I wasn't talking about the soft attack from a single artillery regiment vs a single infantry battalion. The effective structure of that division is an infantry gun company of 8 guns attached to each infantry regiment of three battalions, plus three 36 gun artillery regiments. A normal strong divisional structure would be the infantry guns plus a single 36 or 48 gun artillery regiment and maybe an additional 12-24 corps level guns. With that sort of structure (84-96 guns) the artillery should do more damage to the enemy that the infantry. With an extremely gun heavy structure of 132 guns, that Dutch division should have much more soft attack from the artillery.

 

[GhengisKhan]

With 132 artillery pieces and 9 infantry battalions, the total soft attack from artillery should be much higher than the total soft attack from infantry. I wasn't talking about the soft attack from a single artillery regiment vs a single infantry battalion. The effective structure of that division is an infantry gun company of 8 guns attached to each infantry regiment of three battalions, plus three 36 gun artillery regiments. A normal strong divisional structure would be the infantry guns plus a single 36 or 48 gun artillery regiment and maybe an additional 12-24 corps level guns. With that sort of structure (84-96 guns) the artillery should do more damage to the enemy that the infantry. With an extremely gun heavy structure of 132 guns, that Dutch division should have much more soft attack from the artillery.

That may be the case in real world situations but I think it would make the artillery far too imbalanced in game terms. The end result needs to be something that keeps the game fun and playable not only realistic. Also note the beta literally just started so there has been little to no balancing done.

 

[jamesd]

That may be the case in real world situations but I think it would make the artillery far too imbalanced in game terms. The end result needs to be something that keeps the game fun and playable not only realistic. Also note the beta literally just started so there has been little to no balancing done.

There's a pretty simple fix. Go back to 12 gun battalions as they had at one point and limit the number of artillery battalions that a division can have to be equal to the number of front line type battalions. Thus the maximum artillery that could be attached to a 9 infantry battalion division would be 108 guns. That limitation is sufficient to represent a British division (10 inf inc a MG bn) in NW Europe in 44/45 with 72 field guns plus its share of the corps artillery group (around 124 guns supporting 3 divisions).

 

[Lither]

I'd like to butt in here with a link that's very helpful for finding artillery numbers and organisation within different British battalions, regiments, divisions and corps.

 

[LordOfWar16]

There's a pretty simple fix. Go back to 12 gun battalions as they had at one point and limit the number of artillery battalions that a division can have to be equal to the number of front line type battalions. Thus the maximum artillery that could be attached to a 9 infantry battalion division would be 108 guns. That limitation is sufficient to represent a British division (10 inf inc a MG bn) in NW Europe in 44/45 with 72 field guns plus its share of the corps artillery group (around 124 guns supporting 3 divisions).

you realize that every nation has different command structure right? That aside i dont see the problem anyway. It doesnt matter how you distribute the battalions in the game. You could put 5 artillery divisions in one line or distribute them on the 5 rows and stat wise it would make no difference. Other than that numbers arent final at all anyway.

 

[jamesd]

you realize that every nation has different command structure right? That aside i dont see the problem anyway. It doesnt matter how you distribute the battalions in the game. You could put 5 artillery divisions in one line or distribute them on the 5 rows and stat wise it would make no difference. Other than that numbers arent final at all anyway.

I didn't make any suggestions as to how artillery should be arranged within a divisional template, just that the maximum number of guns should be limited to no more than 12 per front line type battalion.

I am fully aware of the multitude of structures used by the combatants in WW2. I chose the British for my example as they concentrated a large number of guns in support of their forces in NW Europe. Even the US only averaged a little over 2 army troops battalions of artillery per division raised, so the artillery support in their average infantry division would be 18 infantry guns, 48 divisional guns and 24 higher level guns for a total of 90. With the Russians, a late war Breakthrough artillery division had 320 guns and rocket launchers and would normally be assigned to an army. Even if the army had only 6 divisions, and that's small for an army allocated a breakthrough role, that's 53 artillery pieces in addition to each division's organic 44 guns for a total of 97, still under my proposed maximum of 108 for a 9 battalion division.

 

[Raptor83]

Four points:
...
3. Manpower is way off. A division with 9 infantry battalions, engineers, recon and 11 battalion equivalents of artillery should be at the very least 15,000 men, if not more.
.....

In HoI games, divisions only display number of combat troops - IRL many troops are needed in non-combat roles and those are not included in HoI division numbers.

 

[panzerzombie]

And my earlier question is also answered: a towed artillery battalion obviously doesn´t slow down infantry - 4kmh

 

[shri]

Four points:
1. Artillery battalions have 36 guns or 3 battalions worth for most armies throughout the period, meaning some big compromises in trying to create historical templates.
2. The artillery is not powerful enough. With that many guns, many more than most divisions had, and no distinctions from light through to siege guns, the artillery soft attack should dwarf the infantry soft attack, but it barely exceeds it.
3. Manpower is way off. A division with 9 infantry battalions, engineers, recon and 11 battalion equivalents of artillery should be at the very least 15,000 men, if not more.
4. Historically the Netherlands only managed to field less than half that number of guns per division when including the guns held at corps level, so there's been some alternate history explored. An extra 80 artillery pieces probably more than makes up for the missing 24 x 47mm AT guns.

for 1- Partly covered by 2. (see below)
for -2. Guns less than 105mm inc. Mortars and Mines etc are assumed in HOI series as part of Infantry equipment, this means infantry includes- small arms, mines, mortars and infantry guns i.e. those 75mm guns etc.
for 3- HOI has not included the "support staffs" ever in their divisional model, so this division will probably be 18-20k in strength but their "bayonet" strength is 11k which is shown.
for 4- A player always goes a-historical.

 

[Mengo78]

Two small details:
1) The Dutch flag is upsidedown!
2) Jacometti is a very uncommon dutch name, it's more Latin.

 

[Victor Cortez]

Two small details:
1) The Dutch flag is upsidedown!

I can't remember how it is in the Democratic Dutch. Maybe it got inverted after the communist coup?

2) Jacometti is a very uncommon dutch name, it's more Latin.

Yeah. When I first saw it I looked it up because it sounds very Italian. Turns out it's a fantasy name (and one that sounds very Italian ).