Battle Plan Questions and Front Lines

[Nordak]

Hopefully one of you can help me understand these concepts a little better:

Question #1 : When I form a battle line lets say after I land by naval invasion onto Normandy against German as US, when I setup a front line should you put the arrow and wait for the battle plan to fill up before moving forward or are there times when its better to simply click "execute" without having the bonus of planning especially if the front line is under heavy offensive attacks? If you could clarify for me when to setup a battle plan and waiting for bonus vs when to immediately execute without the bonus.

Question #2 : When you setup a frontline battle plan do your anti-tank divisions, tanks, artillery squads move specifically to their advantage or do you have to move them yourself? For instance if I had several anti-tank divisions that I wanted to line up against enemy tank divisions will they move to those locations on the front line automatically. Secondly, once you execute the plan will they continue to move to enemy tank division spots all throughout the battle or will I have to micro manage those AT guns myself? I'm hoping the A.I. has enough understanding to sort my various divisions on the line based on advantages.

Questions #3 : If you have units that you only want to defend would you not setup forward arrow battle plans for those divisions? Secondly, if you don't set up arrows and say you and your allies are taking ground, will the "defending" battle lines move forward on their own if they are not assigned battle plans? I was hoping they would but without arrows maybe it would be totally manual? Not sure if someone could explain. Also, if someone could explain how fall back lines work, I've never used them and not sure how to.

Questions #4 : Can someone give me some good examples of good offensive infantry squads? I heard of one called a 14-4 R.E.A.L.S which is a 40 width I believe type. My understanding of infantry is you can give them high soft attack but without tanks they will have low breakthrough so my understanding would be they would deal good damage to enemy but with low breakthrough they would still take high casualties on the offensive.

 

[Jays298]

1. During invasions, you need to take land ASAP for supply and frontage reasons. If theres a ton of unguarded tiles, then you should really execute immediatly and take a lot of territory so your reinforcements can be supplied. You basically have to take Paris within a month maybe or you will run into supply problems.

2. I never bothered to build specifically anti tank divisions. There's plenty of ways to get piercing / hard attack. I tended to have support AA instead of Anti tank. I guess to me its more efficient to have latest infantry weapons and anti tank Bazooka / panzerfaust, whatever its called from the infantry equipment research. Plus the Germans will have most of their tanks in Russia. They won't have enough in France to man their lines for a month or two.

Micro your troops around tanks, encircle them, attack with tanks of your own. The only units that are mobile enough to quickly get to the enemy tanks are usually your own tanks.

3. If you have a front line setup, they will follow it if they can, regardless of advancement orders. Lots of weird things can happen (lakes, peninsulas, etc.). You should draw the advancement line anyway, and execute it once in a while, take a few tiles, then stop the order.

4. Good is all relative to the doctrine, usage, etc. For the US a 7/2 or 14/4 with a bunch of support is fine. Breakthrough isn't what it sounds like. Soft attack is enough to push back most divisons. The breakthru of tanks allows them to keep attacking a long time while dodging counter attacks.

 

[Iskulya]

1. When you make a landing it's best to gain as much land as quickly as possible, which usually means going without planning bonus. However, whether an AI or human opponent, after a certain amount of time they are able to react and mobilize a defense with additional divisions and start digging in. At that point you might want to utilize planning bonus.

2. In singleplayer you do not need tank-destroyers or AT guns in your division templates. The AI does not produce enough armor nor know how to use it for it to required. In an MP environment, on the other hand, you will want some specialized AT/tank destroyer divisions and those you will want to micromanage without a front line tool so you can meet the enemy's armor. No point in wasting your AT divisions where there isn't an armor threat.

AA guns provide some piercing and hard attack, which is usually more than enough against the AI. With that said, I still wouldn't bother with AA guns specifically for the purpose of countering tanks, best only build them if you anticipate going up against enemy air superiority and bombers.

3. The "arrow"/battle plan builds up planning bonus in the divisions that are part of the army assigned to the associated front line. Planning bonus only works in offensive actions, so it is useless if you are defending. If you're going to use the front line tool, you may as well draw an offensive line even if you probably won't need it.

4. Infantry are never truly *good* for offensive purposes. They're only useful for that purpose if you're fighting a vastly inferior enemy whether it's in terms of numbers, org, or equipment; or if you have solid air superiority and plenty of bombers. In that case it's the bombers that will be doing the real damage, not the infantry. In Hearts of Iron 4, there needs to be active battles going on for bombers to inflict damage on enemy divisions. They cannot bomb divisions that aren't in combat, which was a thing in previous games.

In my opinion the division template with 7 infantry battalions and 2 artillery(20 width) battalions or 14 infantry battalions and 4 artillery battalions(40 width) is incredibly overrated. Dont' get me wrong, they have their uses, especially if you have a surplus of artillery, but I think it's usually a mistake to ramp up artillery production for the sole purpose of producing this kind of division.

Someone who focuses on artillery at the expense of having a good airforce or armor will lose to a competent opponent. Infantry spam is a noob fixation. If you want a good, cheap offensive divisions you can use motorized infantry and light self-propelled artillery. This is a template type that can be afforded by just about any minor country in the game including New Zealand. It's way better than the 7/2 and 14/4 infantry template some people fixate on. Not only will a division with motorized infantry and self-propelled artillery have much better soft attack, it will be much faster as well, letting you get more encirclements.