Battle Planner what is it really?

[GermanPower]

The Podcats: You can move units manually. What a plan does (currently, we havent even done a dev diary on these yet so stuff can change) is give you an increasing bonus as your troops sit in position and prepare for it. A plan that hasnt been prepared has no bonuses compared to just giving manual orders.

So if I'm getting this straight you are trying to simulate preparation for a attack and the bonus of said prep(Cool and good idea)? That being said...I'm hoping that you don't discourage manual orders...as in not being able to do plans and get the bonus if you manual control the troops from the start or someway to inter work that. Because in brutal honesty....the uh well...AI has never been good or better then players...it always is a totally different level between the two and AI always being at the bottom. What I'm getting at is I understand this is a useful tool for newcomers...great too even to vets for small stuff...but I hope there aren't advantages by letting the AI do all the grunt work when frankly...they are worse at conducting combat+plans then veteran players

 

[Modestus]

@Modestus

The podcast is quite different to what quill18 was experiencing.

It may be because of that he had access to HoI4 before that press event and had more experience how things work.


1.
A command group(A General! -Yay!) is needed to create a battle plan.(Wich can be more or less complex.)

2.
From a new line to reach or fall back line you can assign more arrows wich will be the axis of advance?
Or that will be done automatically by the ai as bruebottom wrote above.
Then I guess you can change it later on. In HoI you could so far also manually set the movement path of a unit is you use shift while plotting the provinces to move through.

3.
Each of this axis can get assigned different units.

4.
That leads to the following possibilities.

a)
Assign one new line wich can have more arrows. So you can have strong left flank with mobile forces through plains and moderate center while weak right flank(mointains?) That could lead to a big breakthrough and encirclement. Just imagine your fast units break through and follow up units secure that whole untile you reach the drawn line. The other units assigned to different arrows will follow up as fast as they can. If the enemy can't retreat fast enough, he is encircled automatically with your fast units in his back.
No arrow would mean "steamroll along the front as in mid WW1"?

b)
Assign more new lines wich interleaving steps to allow more detailed plans like encirclements.
These smaller new lines will be connected by arrows with the final line that should be reached.
Assigning new units to these arrows looks pretty fluid from what I've seen.

c)
Using more Generals/command groups and make more smaller plans. Bonus would be to shift units from one group to another more easily mabye.

Anyway. With that kind of system you can pretty fast reorganize your units and also have the freedom to decide wich plans to activate later on. As you are free to not activate or draw a new line/arrow any time.
The bonus to stuck with a plan was already explained pretty early.
Units assigned to a plan get a bonus to its execution if they're longer assigned.
As a downside, the enemy might spy you on your plans and discover what you have plannend the longer those plans exist too.

If we look at HoI3.
There we could already draw plans and save them.
So imagine to plan, draw it onto the map, then save it for later possible use.
If times come, put those plans on the map, assign the units you have at hand to it and when time is right, press "execute"..
That way you can still later on pull single units out of those plans(and thus ai control) and push them manually as "Oberkommando override" where you want them to have.

Same to when your initial plan fails. Load a prepared one, or draw a complete new one.
The vid above shows how easy that is already by now.

And the time needed to address new situations is the same as before with HoI when we did assign all movements on our own. If a plan failed we need to assign the units anew. Wich can be quite a hassle if unpausable.
With the battle plan we can do that already before and can better react to such situations as we just need to activate the new plan. While manually you need to be a fast click-click-click men.


To guard the coast/rear:
That would need "only" the whole coast/back as frontline and a special "guard" order.
Afaik I saw in the vid above some tooltip with GAR.
So that would then put some units in the ports/cities and hold back some reserve in central locations.
Or the player can drop in some mobile units if the coast/area is attacked somewhere and the ai then sends that units automatically to that spot.
In HoI3 that worked already that way with defending the Normandy as GER. Just assign the coast to one theater filled with GAR units and if landing occured the theater behind that coastline one(one prov deep only!) had a mobile reserve and would automatically send units to that attacked provinces, or you could manually send a mobile resond force via the OOB into that coasline theater wich will send that new units automatically to the combat zone.

I understand some of what you can do I just don’t understand why you would bother to do it, your getting close to investing as much time in creating a Plan (Something that has not happened) as you would if you just took over manual control of all of your Divisions and made it happen.


Unfair to pick on Quill18 but look at this screen shot below why in the name of God do I need a Plan, the Yugoslavian Army is completed exposed in the south I would be all over them in a matter of hours and most of those units would be encircled and destroyed why would I arse around creating Fronts and axes of attack when I could just attack?

Edit: The simple truth is I will be be able to move my Divisions more accurately,with more precision and be more effective then any Plan. Not only that I will have immediate feed back, be fully aware of what is happening more so then if I choose to use a Plan. I wont be wasting my time creating that Plan in the first place, a Plan that I will almost certainly have to change once the AI reacts to it.

 

[Gamer_1745]

Maybe use plans as a handicap to balance the AI??

Quill18 wants really just to form an Army and point it in the direction he wants it to go. That is what he is used to with other paradox titles. He makes some very stupid moves! To be a bit fare some of the front he attacked on is on the Isonzo front (Battles of the Isonzo) which likely he never hear of or knew how had it should be and an early Italian Army should have trouble there even the the Yugoslavian Army and when he takes manual control of some units and send them to the capital he does well.

 

[Modestus]

Maybe use plans as a handicap to balance the AI??

Quill18 wants really just to form an Army and point it in the direction he wants it to go. That is what he is used to with other paradox titles. He makes some very stupid moves! To be a bit fare some of the front he attacked on is on the Isonzo front (Battles of the Isonzo) which likely he never hear of or knew how had it should be and an early Italian Army should have trouble there even the the Yugoslavian Army and when he takes manual control of some units and send them to the capital he does well.

It does not matter if its Quill18 or me your prone to make more mistakes if your virtually moving your Divisions in a Plan rather then just actually moving them and once that Plan is being implemented its almost certain you will need to change it.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

You can use both options... create a detailed plan and execute and then pull units of the plan manually as things develop. That way some units can gain the bonus for preparing with the plan while some units move to opportunity targets.

The planning tool is a great way to equalize the AI with the player by giving bonuses for units that act within a plan.

The option to reshape the arrows and refocus them seem like something that indicate how units will to some degree follow the arrow as its main thrust.

I really think I will enjoy this tool quite allot... it can become quite immersive to do this type of planing. The time you like to invest in them is obviously up to you as a person. Some people are just going to use it as way to automate their units and draw large fronts and sit back an watch the AI trying to accomplish those plans. Others will create smaller plans and really plan operations on a much smaller scale. The way you want to use it is up to you... you will even be free to just move units manually if that is your thing.

I'm going to spend a lot of time drawing up very detailed operations and keep a watchful eye on the progress such as reinforcements or changes to operational needs, how units and air function and what is effective and what is not

 

[Hans_Schnitzel]

Unfair to pick on Quill18 but look at this screen shot below why in the name of God do I need a Plan, the Yugoslavian Army is completed exposed in the south I would be all over them in a matter of hours and most of those units would be encircled and destroyed why would I arse around creating Fronts and axes of attack when I could just attack?


Edit: The simple truth is I will be be able to move my Divisions more accurately,with more precision and be more effective then any Plan. Not only that I will have immediate feed back, be fully aware of what is happening more so then if I choose to use a Plan. I wont be wasting my time creating that Plan in the first place, a Plan that I will almost certainly have to change once the AI reacts to it.

One thing: It's probably not the most thrilling thing to manually take over a minor nation as Italy, so instead of doing it yourself which is probably going to be many clicks in a war that the AI could easily win for you, you simply draw one frontline and let the AI conquer that minor nation, while you focus on more important matters or microing operations that are more important and where you are not sure to just steamroll the enemy.

 

[Modestus]

You can use both options... create a detailed plan and execute and then pull units of the plan manually as things develop. That way some units can gain the bonus for preparing with the plan while some units move to opportunity targets.

The planning tool is a great way to equalize the AI with the player by giving bonuses for units that act within a plan.

The option to reshape the arrows and refocus them seem like something that indicate how units will to some degree follow the arrow as its main thrust.

I really think I will enjoy this tool quite allot... it can become quite immersive to do this type of planing. The time you like to invest in them is obviously up to you as a person. Some people are just going to use it as way to automate their units and draw large fronts and sit back an watch the AI trying to accomplish those plans. Others will create smaller plans and really plan operations on a much smaller scale. The way you want to use it is up to you... you will even be free to just move units manually if that is your thing.

I'm going to spend a lot of time drawing up very detailed operations and keep a watchful eye on the progress such as reinforcements or changes to operational needs, how units and air function and what is effective and what is not

How can I argue with you if you make such sense? What you say is true, it is a tool that will allow the player to play the game the way they want and the idea that you can create a Plan and watch that Plan being implemented successfully is certainly appealing but …........


If you take something like Barbarossa you could easily have a 140+ Divisions and while you could if you wished draw a few Offensive Front-lines along the Urals I presume most players will instead attempt a series of breakthroughs and encirclements to destroy as many Russian Divisions as possible, obviously how detailed they make this is the players choice.


But how detailed can a Plan be ? The more time a player spends creating a detailed Plan the less flexible that Plan will become and the greater the likelihood that you will need to change your orders. I would go as far to say that there is a correlation between the detail within your Plan and the need to change that Plan as its being implemented.


Looking at it from the perspective of game play this means that the player is investing a lot of time in something that will need to be changed which I suppose is a sort of game play but you would expect the player at some point to realise that the time their investing is in fact a waste of time.

 

[Hans_Schnitzel]

How can I argue with you if you make such sense? What you say is true, it is a tool that will allow the player to play the game the way they want and the idea that you can create a Plan and watch that Plan being implemented successfully is certainly appealing but …........


If you take something like Barbarossa you could easily have a 140+ Divisions and while you could if you wished draw a few Offensive Front-lines along the Urals I presume most players will instead attempt a series of breakthroughs and encirclements to destroy as many Russian Divisions as possible, obviously how detailed they make this is the players choice.


But how detailed can a Plan be ? The more time a player spends creating a detailed Plan the less flexible that Plan will become and the greater the likelihood that you will need to change your orders. I would go as far to say that there is a correlation between the detail within your Plan and the need to change that Plan as its being implemented.


Looking at it from the perspective of game play this means that the player is investing a lot of time in something that will need to be changed which I suppose is a sort of game play but you would expect the player at some point to realise that the time their investing is in fact a waste of time.

I don't think plans will be "Plan: How to conquer the whole SU" but moreso "How are we going to precede for the first month of our invasion", you know? So the plans are not as static as you might think. But I can be wrong of course.

 

[Bernard Black]

Woah, still arguing the toss, it seems.

I don't know what good all this debate about a feature which is still in development is. I also feel that someone who wants an old school style map and counters to get the feeling of being a general in a planning room should argue in favor of the battle plans rather than against. Why you ask? Well, think about the reason the German Army worked out detailed Plans for the invasions of Poland, France or Norway ( Fall Weiß, Fall Blau( I think), Operation Weserübung). I wonder why the commanding officers when approched with these plans just took them and tried to execute them rather then saying: "Na thanks, i just cross the border and play it by ear, these plans wont work anyway after the first day."

Well i guess it is because the strategic goals remained the same no matter how things on the battlefield developed and as anyone who ever had to move millitay units on a divisonal level can tell you, it is not an easy task to plan the logistic for that, to give each and every unit the exact orders where they have to be at which point in time and then let them prepare for redeployment, let them stock up on fuel and supply and organize the supply lines along their movement.
So from a realism point of view there is a good case for the battleplan system, as in real life you cannot just tell divisions to move to a certain point within moments notice as we can do in a Game.
If things had been so easy in WWII as it is for us in HOI they probably wouldnt have bothered developing Plans like Operation Barbarossa, which i believe still left enough room for tactical changes.

"Screw Realism!" you say " they dont care about that when i appreciate it" Yea as every developer does when he feels realism comes in the way of gameplay instead of enriching it.

So what could be the purpose of these battleplans gameplaywise. Because you are totally correct: The Battle planner will never be as good as a player moving all his divisions manually. A player who can see openings in the enemy front lines and then change his movements on the fly to exploit them will always be better, so why not let the player do it himself?

Well if you think about that at a big scale operation like Barbarosse whee you have easily 200+ divisions this gets a rather tedious undertaking. Lets assume 8-in-game-hours average for a division moving to another provinve or finishing a battle. This makes an average of 25 Popup and pauses per hour-tick where you have to click "Go-To" and give every divisions a new order. If you think these are far to radical numbers, I give you half the amount and it still gets tedious if you expect your operation to take about 3 to 6 in-game-months or even more as the Germans discovered in the far countryside of Russia. This is the dreaded micromanaging hell of HoI3 which lets the accountants in us celebrate but the gamer in me gets gloomy.

Furthermore, we have so little information about the feature that is pretty much pointless to argue how good it is. We dont know how it distributes our divions along the assigned frontlines. We dont know how it determines which divisions to send along which path or with which divisions to engage the enemy where and when. We don't know how well it keeps specialist divisions on their appropriate terrain. In short: We don't know how well it will do the job its meant to do and how, because most of it isn't even developed. When we see that feature in action and made some experiments we can tell if it is a failure or not and not before.

At that point you will still say: " I can do it better manually myself" and the best thing is, you will be able to play like that. You can totally ignore the Battleplans and probably play quite successfully if that floats your boat. So i don't see what your beef here really is, if you are not just trying to tell everyone that your way to play the game is the only real way.

Regards

 

[Jakalak]

I don't know what good all this debate about a feature which is still in development is.

Furthermore, we have so little information about the feature that is pretty much pointless to argue how good it is. We dont know how it distributes our divions along the assigned frontlines. We dont know how it determines which divisions to send along which path or with which divisions to engage the enemy where and when. We don't know how well it keeps specialist divisions on their appropriate terrain. In short: We don't know how well it will do the job its meant to do and how, because most of it isn't even developed. When we see that feature in action and made some experiments we can tell if it is a failure or not and not before.

I don't really understand this criticism. No, we don't have perfect knowledge of how this feature works. Everyone is aware of that.

Are the developers willing to divulge every single aspect of the feature, both as it currently exists and how it is planned to exist in the future, right now, in order to facilitate this discussion? No? Then all we can do is work off of what we know, which is gameplay footage and reviews from an early build of the game.

So either we talk about it now, when the developers are unlikely to drastically change the game and people come in every five seconds to say that we can't possibly have this discussion because the game isn't finished, or we talk about it when the game is finished and it's even less likely that the devs will change anything (simply because the workload involved probably increases the more the features become finalized). But at least we'll have full knowledge of the feature!

So what could be the purpose of these battleplans gameplaywise. Because you are totally correct: The Battle planner will never be as good as a player moving all his divisions manually. A player who can see openings in the enemy front lines and then change his movements on the fly to exploit them will always be better, so why not let the player do it himself?

Well if you think about that at a big scale operation like Barbarosse whee you have easily 200+ divisions this gets a rather tedious undertaking. Lets assume 8-in-game-hours average for a division moving to another provinve or finishing a battle. This makes an average of 25 Popup and pauses per hour-tick where you have to click "Go-To" and give every divisions a new order. If you think these are far to radical numbers, I give you half the amount and it still gets tedious if you expect your operation to take about 3 to 6 in-game-months or even more as the Germans discovered in the far countryside of Russia. This is the dreaded micromanaging hell of HoI3 which lets the accountants in us celebrate but the gamer in me gets gloomy.


At that point you will still say: " I can do it better manually myself" and the best thing is, you will be able to play like that. You can totally ignore the Battleplans and probably play quite successfully if that floats your boat. So i don't see what your beef here really is, if you are not just trying to tell everyone that your way to play the game is the only real way.

My question, and I think it's one that Modestus has raised elsewhere, is whether or not the battle planner really removes all that micromanagement. If the battleplanner handles the assigning/pathing/etc of divisions really badly, then you're inevitably going to have to step in every second to make sure that the AI isn't massively mismanaging the attack, which isn't really very different from manually controlling divisions. Add to this the disorganization that may or may not arise from the lack of an OOB, and I think it's a valid concern.

 

[Chromos]

I understand some of what you can do I just don’t understand why you would bother to do it, your getting close to investing as much time in creating a Plan (Something that has not happened) as you would if you just took over manual control of all of your Divisions and made it happen.


Unfair to pick on Quill18 but look at this screen shot below why in the name of God do I need a Plan, the Yugoslavian Army is completed exposed in the south I would be all over them in a matter of hours and most of those units would be encircled and destroyed why would I arse around creating Fronts and axes of attack when I could just attack?





Edit: The simple truth is I will be be able to move my Divisions more accurately,with more precision and be more effective then any Plan. Not only that I will have immediate feed back, be fully aware of what is happening more so then if I choose to use a Plan. I wont be wasting my time creating that Plan in the first place, a Plan that I will almost certainly have to change once the AI reacts to it.

The point is, you can prepare plans and activate them faster(-> react to situations in faster game speed mode) as you could do manually with many units.
And you can do them as detailed as needed/wanted too.

If you don't like it that way, you can still use the old system and do it manually. That has the benefit that nobody will know your plans ever beforehead.

You can mix both ways too. But you don't have to.

Thats the same as for the ai usage in HoI3 right now.
Think about trading: For some people doing all trades is just tedious and boring. So they do some important trades, and let the ai do the rest. Thats possible with research and production too.
I also fared well with using ai for my units against the ai.
That negated some of the big advantage a human has in HoI3 over the ai. So that games felt more like being in high command as to be personal Commander of every unit on the map. That way it felt more like grand strategy and less like an manual operational war game.

The point about detailed planning:
Thats the same for doing manual instructions to your units.
Onece you assigned them orders and fighting starts, you may assign new oders to them because of the result of that fighting.
In HoI3 you could assign them targets behind the frontlines to avoid some regroup time(attack delay). But sometimes you need to change that orders and then had to take the "regroup timeout", and also have the work to assign new orders.
Now if the main plan is all fine, you can just adjust it and don't have to redo all of it. The same as if you wold do all manually.

Is it worth it?
From my experience with HoI3. If you have to manage huge amount of units and have time pressure of MP, a system of BP will aid you much in managing your armies. Also adds upp a different playing style in contrast to do all orders for all units on your own.

And people who still like to micro can still do that!
So micro fans should have no worries here.


With the ai not needing of managing HQ in reach of assigned units anymore like in HOI3, it can focus of attack the marked target provinces. And that worked already quite satisfactory in HoI3. People didn't noticed that because some tweaks had to be made to the vanilla system of how fast mobile units can be and the amount of units at hand for the ai.(-> mods!)
So if the ai can build up a defense in deep(enough units) and also an attacker has highly mobile units that can actually easily outrun(think about speed teched LARM) Std-INF, then you will see breakthrough and exploit attemps by the ai more often. It will also build "some sort of Schwerpunkt" to some extend.
Also if the defender then has mobile units, it will use them to counterattack those breakthrough attemps.
I made many many hours of playtesting with many many different settings to have witnessed many great moves by the often blamed HoI3 ai.
Best thing I allways remember when GER HARM was taken back behind the lines to regain some org and the was thrown in again the fight where the enemy tried the most to break through over and over again. HoI3 ai!
In the end the HARM was wearing down slowly lossing more and more strenght until it was shattered and rebuild in Berline. Those testgames were the most fun to just sit and watch the ai..

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

How can I argue with you if you make such sense? What you say is true, it is a tool that will allow the player to play the game the way they want and the idea that you can create a Plan and watch that Plan being implemented successfully is certainly appealing but …........


If you take something like Barbarossa you could easily have a 140+ Divisions and while you could if you wished draw a few Offensive Front-lines along the Urals I presume most players will instead attempt a series of breakthroughs and encirclements to destroy as many Russian Divisions as possible, obviously how detailed they make this is the players choice.


But how detailed can a Plan be ? The more time a player spends creating a detailed Plan the less flexible that Plan will become and the greater the likelihood that you will need to change your orders. I would go as far to say that there is a correlation between the detail within your Plan and the need to change that Plan as its being implemented.


Looking at it from the perspective of game play this means that the player is investing a lot of time in something that will need to be changed which I suppose is a sort of game play but you would expect the player at some point to realize that the time their investing is in fact a waste of time.

The time a player will be investing with this tool is going to be a personal preference... I know I will most likely find this very fun and sink hours upon hours of dreaming up all sort of operations.

Every plan will eventually need to be altered or scraped altogether, this depends on the situation. No one will hinder you from doing several different plans or contingencies if you really have to and the complexity of the plans will be up to you.

If they work like I think they will you will be able to make hem as complex as you like. If it is worth your investment of time is your prerogative to decide. If you feel it is a wast of time then make simpler plans in the future or just move the units yourself. If you are able to use the tool to gain maximum bonuses and still control the units to do what you want you will receive the most efficiency out of the system. If you just like to spend time creating operations because you find the experience of creating them is fun that is time well spent for you.

The whole purpose of playing a game is to have fun and fun is a highly subjective proposition. I'm the type of person that play a game if I find it's game-play is fun and really don't care about the end goal as much as the journey there. This is also why I almost never play a game until its end, I like the start and middle of the game more than the last part.

 

[kaspar42]

You can move units manually. What a plan does (currently, we havent even done a dev diary on these yet so stuff can change) is give you an increasing bonus as your troops sit in position and prepare for it. A plan that hasnt been prepared has no bonuses compared to just giving manual orders.

To me, manually moving units seems like the only practical way to control manoeuvre warfare (e.g. the middle of Barbarossa). You are constantly having to redeploy divisions to complete encirclements, exploit breakthroughs, and block flanking attacks. I'd never trust an AI to do that as well as I can myself. Even if it could, where would the fun be in that?
I can see myself using the battle planning to get the bonus for the initial assault on a static line, or when building up strength to reduce a stronghold, but not beyond that.

I hope you realise a number of us prefer to play the game that way, and don't gimp that playstyle too much
Not having an OoB to organise our divisions will be bad enough.

 

[Bernard Black]

Well you answered this question:

I don't really understand this criticism. No, we don't have perfect knowledge of how this feature works. Everyone is aware of that.

with this paragraph

My question, and I think it's one that Modestus has raised elsewhere, is whether or not the battle planner really removes all that micromanagement. If the battleplanner handles the assigning/pathing/etc of divisions really badly, then you're inevitably going to have to step in every second to make sure that the AI isn't massively mismanaging the attack, which isn't really very different from manually controlling divisions. Add to this the disorganization that may or may not arise from the lack of an OOB, and I think it's a valid concern.

The point is, that nobody can answer the question you raised, not us or the devs and certainly not from looking on screenshots or videos. If you think the concept of the Battleplanner is sound, which i think it is. Then you have to wait for the implemantation to see if it works out or not. Right now i don't think anyone can make that call. Well we can be sure that it wont remove ALL micromanaging, we can answer that much.

If it doesn't work at all, then we play like HoI3, thats the worst case for the Battleplanner. Depending on how well the feature will be implemented it will be used with varying degrees of player interventions, because it will never be as good as a player doing everything manually. But this brings also new gameplay decisions into the game, you will have to decide if deviating from the plan and loosing your prepardness bonus is worth exploiting the opening in the enemy lines, which you didn't anticipate in your plannings. If the feature is well done, than this will be a difficult and fun decision.

So realisticly the far ends of Battleplanner capabilities will be: None at all and not as good as a human. But i think if it is good enough its well worth the effort, I'll reserve judgement until then. Also regarding your concern about them probably not changing features after they are finished I just say: EU IV patch 1.12. I have never seen a developer changing core features as radicially as PDX there in a game almost 2 years out.

Regards

 

[Modestus]

Woah, still arguing the toss, it seems.

I don't know what good all this debate about a feature which is still in development is. I also feel that someone who wants an old school style map and counters to get the feeling of being a general in a planning room should argue in favor of the battle plans rather than against. Why you ask? Well, think about the reason the German Army worked out detailed Plans for the invasions of Poland, France or Norway ( Fall Weiß, Fall Blau( I think), Operation Weserübung). I wonder why the commanding officers when approched with these plans just took them and tried to execute them rather then saying: "Na thanks, i just cross the border and play it by ear, these plans wont work anyway after the first day."

Well i guess it is because the strategic goals remained the same no matter how things on the battlefield developed and as anyone who ever had to move millitay units on a divisonal level can tell you, it is not an easy task to plan the logistic for that, to give each and every unit the exact orders where they have to be at which point in time and then let them prepare for redeployment, let them stock up on fuel and supply and organize the supply lines along their movement.
So from a realism point of view there is a good case for the battleplan system, as in real life you cannot just tell divisions to move to a certain point within moments notice as we can do in a Game.
If things had been so easy in WWII as it is for us in HOI they probably wouldnt have bothered developing Plans like Operation Barbarossa, which i believe still left enough room for tactical changes.

"Screw Realism!" you say " they dont care about that when i appreciate it" Yea as every developer does when he feels realism comes in the way of gameplay instead of enriching it.

So what could be the purpose of these battleplans gameplaywise. Because you are totally correct: The Battle planner will never be as good as a player moving all his divisions manually. A player who can see openings in the enemy front lines and then change his movements on the fly to exploit them will always be better, so why not let the player do it himself?

Well if you think about that at a big scale operation like Barbarosse whee you have easily 200+ divisions this gets a rather tedious undertaking. Lets assume 8-in-game-hours average for a division moving to another provinve or finishing a battle. This makes an average of 25 Popup and pauses per hour-tick where you have to click "Go-To" and give every divisions a new order. If you think these are far to radical numbers, I give you half the amount and it still gets tedious if you expect your operation to take about 3 to 6 in-game-months or even more as the Germans discovered in the far countryside of Russia. This is the dreaded micromanaging hell of HoI3 which lets the accountants in us celebrate but the gamer in me gets gloomy.

Furthermore, we have so little information about the feature that is pretty much pointless to argue how good it is. We dont know how it distributes our divions along the assigned frontlines. We dont know how it determines which divisions to send along which path or with which divisions to engage the enemy where and when. We don't know how well it keeps specialist divisions on their appropriate terrain. In short: We don't know how well it will do the job its meant to do and how, because most of it isn't even developed. When we see that feature in action and made some experiments we can tell if it is a failure or not and not before.

At that point you will still say: " I can do it better manually myself" and the best thing is, you will be able to play like that. You can totally ignore the Battleplans and probably play quite successfully if that floats your boat. So i don't see what your beef here really is, if you are not just trying to tell everyone that your way to play the game is the only real way.

Regards

I am not arguing for or against Battle plans I am arguing that they don’t seem to make much sense especially for players like myself that like to micromanage and discussing this and that whether you agree or disagree can slowly tease out a much better understanding for everyone about what something really is, how it could really work or even if it will work.


If you assumed that I was against Battle plans then indeed it would be a little odd but not impossible that I could still favour a more traditional type of map.


The reality of using a Battle Plan during WWII and having something in a game that you call a Battle plan should be enough to stop you trying to make a direct comparison between the two.

In HOI IV you can move Divisions instantly so while you can attempt to make the game more realistic by introducing the concept of a Battle Plan it tends not to make a great deal of sense because the player does have Godlike control over them so for a player like me it serves no real practical use regardless of what the Germans did in Poland .


As you said the Battle planner will never be as good as a player moving all his Divisions manually so why would I use it? Of course that does not preclude other people from doing things differently but as I said already it appears to me that there must be a optimum level of detail that you can use before the workload in creating any Plan becomes just as heavy as manually controlling all of your Divisions, on top of that you have the extra workload of monitoring your Divisions while at the same time adjusting any orders that need to be changed.


I don’t understand what your saying about pop ups there is no reason to assume that there is an attack delay in HOI IV or that Divisions need to stop after they reach a province its very easy to manually order a Division to move 3 or 4 Provinces ahead. In fact the one thing you can do if your manually ordering your Divisions is to turn most of the pop ups off because the chances of not knowing your attacking the enemy when you had to manually order that attack is nil whereas using a Plan your going to need as much information as possible to tell you what your AI is doing.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think it is hard to tell how much the difference of the battle planning bonus will be versus just moving all your units by yourself.

If you can utilize the battle planning tool in a way to capitalize on this bonus over moving units manually (or a combination) then you will find it useful from an efficiency point of view.

You can also view it as an equalizer between you and the AI. So... in order to still get fairly good control of your units and still a decent amount of resistance by the AI it can be used to simply avoid manually move your units and still be able to keep interest in the tactical part of the game. Not every person are able to do this and feels compelled to use whatever means given to them to "win" against the game... if you are that kind of person this method will not be for you.

 

[GermanPower]

From what've seen here is arguing that don't actually make smart creative AI. Just give'm bonuses and it'll make it even out. A++++. Whut..really -_-This isn't good AI at all. This what has been done ever since strategy games have been invented...ever since they've been around. This isn't anything new.

Where I see the purpose and idea behind it is cool idea coming from a cool place but if (which I don't know they don't) allow you to draw plans and execute themselves I think the feature is silly(Not game breaking...more just discouraging as I explain below) and unknowingly or purposely discouraging players from manually controlling and excuting plans. THE AI SUCKS. Even with bonuses it always does and to sit there and just here have the advantages is a terrible thing to add into a game. I'm unsure if it is...but for me giving the AI bonuses to do things isn't creating good AI its being silly.

 

[Bernard Black]

So many things to address. The first one is just confusing at best:

I am not arguing for or against Battle plans I am arguing that they don’t seem to make much sense especially for players like myself that like to micromanage and discussing this and that whether you agree or disagree can slowly tease out a much better understanding for everyone about what something really is, how it could really work or even if it will work.

Are you arguing with yourself? You say they don't make much sense for you, how are we not to see this as arguing against Battleplans. You bring up a laundry list of issues you think are wrong with battleplans and now you say you are not arguing against them. And how are you about to tease better understanding out of something that isn't even done yet. That sounds like literally getting meaning out of nothing. You need to take a position if you want more than just discussing for the sake of the argument.



Here you are just trying to be clever:

The reality of using a Battle Plan during WWII and having something in a game that you call a Battle plan should be enough to stop you trying to make a direct comparison between the two.

let me see if can do that too: The reality of using a map during WWII and having something in a game that you call a map should be enough to stop you trying to make a direct comparison between the two.
That wasn't so hard. It is a Non-sequitur at best, meaningless at worst and quite possibly both. Game concepts are modeled upon real life but not the same, go figure.

In HOI IV you can move Divisions instantly so while you can attempt to make the game more realistic by introducing the concept of a Battle Plan it tends not to make a great deal of sense because the player does have Godlike control over them so for a player like me it serves no real practical use regardless of what the Germans did in Poland .


As you said the Battle planner will never be as good as a player moving all his Divisions manually so why would I use it? Of course that does not preclude other people from doing things differently but as I said already it appears to me that there must be a optimum level of detail that you can use before the workload in creating any Plan becomes just as heavy as manually controlling all of your Divisions, on top of that you have the extra workload of monitoring your Divisions while at the same time adjusting any orders that need to be changed.


I don’t understand what your saying about pop ups there is no reason to assume that there is an attack delay in HOI IV or that Divisions need to stop after they reach a province its very easy to manually order a Division to move 3 or 4 Provinces ahead. In fact the one thing you can do if your manually ordering your Divisions is to turn most of the pop ups off because the chances of not knowing your attacking the enemy when you had to manually order that attack is nil whereas using a Plan your going to need as much information as possible to tell you what your AI is doing.

Alright, I'll try to keep it short: For a lot of players controlling every division individually is quite off putting because it becomes very tedious at large scale operations. You might not be among them, but reducing micromanaging was a declared goal of the devs. The Battle planner will be a tool to guide the AI along your combat ideas and to make automatiziation of your troops a viable Alternative!, to manual control. Depending on implementation of course. But as i said:

At that point you will still say: " I can do it better manually myself" and the best thing is, you will be able to play like that. You can totally ignore the Battleplans and probably play quite successfully if that floats your boat.

You once told me i should see your post above mine and now i will ask you too: Please read my posts a bit more carefully, because i think i already addressed what you said.

Regards

 

[GermanPower]

So many things to address. The first one is just confusing at best:

Alright, I'll try to keep it short: For a lot of players controlling every division individually is quite off putting because it becomes very tedious at large scale operations. You might not be among them, but reducing micromanaging was a declared goal of the devs. The Battle planner will be a tool to guide the AI along your combat ideas and to make automatiziation of your troops a viable Alternative!, to manual control. Depending on implementation of course. But as i said:

In single player I can see the use and against AI I see it has a helpful feature. As I said above I have a issue with bonusing AI to make it viable is something I'm strongly against. Its not creating good AI its creating boofazoo AI. But in MP....player versus player. Controlling troops will always beat not controlling troops...AI pathing among many things is inferior to player hands. The best thing the AI has is efficiency and all that really is being more attentive players and really just knowing far more in strings then the player because its not apart of the program. My point is making plans I feel won't work and will fail if one side is controlling units directly.

 

[wukk]

Drawing the front lines seems to be at "ok" as a solution. That's how I feel after watching the videos. Sure, it needs some adjustments, but it probably will work ok.

What I would like to see in addition is something like in google maps. Like when you plot a route and you're not happy with it you can click and drag from any point of the route to force it go through a certain point in the map. How it would function here is that you first draw the front line and then you could grab any part of it to make it "bulge". This would allow for a static front line to be extended to simulate an advance. Perhaps it would be 1-2 province wide as default and while holding the mouse button you could widen it with arrow keys or something.