Blitzkrieg, Me... and you? (How-to Guide to Blitz'ing)

[Vhorthex]

Hello everyone,

I'm going to take a break from writing bug reports. And finally write my own personal guide to blitzkrieg (Land Combat only for now). I've seen nice threads about the subject. I wanted to bring my own take on it. And also, give nice screenshots with them

I'll be using my invasion of poland as an example. I'll cover the make up of my army. The technology i've researched. And i'll do a battle by battle review(Well the important ones ). I'm going to break this up in a few posts so I don't go insane But i'm going to write them up fairly quickly, no worries.

I'm declaring war on Poland on June 9th early morning. A tad early, but we'll manage.

Guide to Blitz'ing V0.3.3​

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(Updated October 17th)​

PART 1 - RESEARCH​

<INFANTRY>

- Solely focused on all Infantry weapons (less on the anti tank ones)
- Researched Artic Warfare Equipment (Why not)
- Should of Researched Desert Warfare (Lending troops to Italy)
- Oh and if you pay attention at the list of current research, you'll see that that the Fuhrer will get some nice toys for his Infantry around christmas

<ARMOUR>

I've put focus on of speed and offensive. I'm going to get 1942 Light Tank Engines on July 39, which is really good to help speed up my Motorised, Armored Car, Mechanized (evantually) and obviously Light Tank brigades. With this i'll be pushing my Light Tank & Mech brigades up to 11kph!

- It's important to notice that Light Tank Engines also affect:
Motorized
Mechanized
Armored Cars

To succesfully blitz speed will be crucial. At one point you might be able to "overun" retreating enemies, thus "destroying" them. From what I remember in HOI 2 if you would overrun a retreating enemy, you would just enter another combat and he would be allowed to retreat again (Maybe this was adressed, if so, disregard )

- Same goes with Medium Tank Engines:
Self Propelled Artillery
Self Propelled Rocket Artillery
Tank Destroyers

Obviously you must keep an eye on reliability, which in offense is important. More so then defense. I will even purposely start slowling down the armor research since it does remove speed. If we go fast enough, they'll never attack

<Theory>

Not much to say here except, I haven't encountered supply problems so i'm not tempting fate. The more the better for these techs. Civil Defense is also great to quickly repair allied bombing. And god, do I know a lot of that can happen once France falls. *sighs*

<Land Doctrines>

- Combined Arms (A MUST!) Gives you +10% bonus when operating a division that has between 33% - 66% softness! Put a Panzer Leader on top and ouch!

- Operational Level Organization (A MUST!) Reduces the time your units are down after attacking a division. Can someone say practical?

-Spearhead Doctrine (A MUST!) Lowers the combat width of your amoured divisions. This will factor in during big battles.

- Mobile Warfare (A MUST!) Gives more KPH to your HQ, and speed is always welcomed. Perhaps this won't affect us in poland, but when you are fight in Russia or across wide areas. You'll need your HQ to keep up with your super fast Mech/Armoured Divs

- Superior Firepower (A must, but it can wait). Since this allows you to add up to 5 brigades to a divisions. This will allow you to make lethal divisions, or divisions with varied support brigades. Gives you more flexibility. But early on I don't need them, as you will see in the next part of the guide.

- Grand Battle Plan (Interesting) Gives 5% chance for reinforcements. This is when a division enters an already active combat. They fall in the reserves slot, and this gives you an incresed chance that they will come to the front.

And then i'd suggest trying to balance morale/org for your MOT/MEC/ARM/INF. Perhaps not focus so much on INF, for I believe that with GER, if Fuel permits, you should defiantely focus on MOT/MEC as a base force. This allows you to have great defense/offense and good speed. Then you make a few powerful armored divisions and you can break through hard spots. Although the penalties in urban, hills, mountains... Amours aren't at their best, which is where your MOT/MEC will become highly useful.

PART 2 Is available! Scroll down
PART 3 Is available! Scroll down

PS: I wish it would display your actual tech level on the main view, and the next level in the empahized box at the bottom but hey. Or if we had the old HOI 2 screen with all your current tech levels and effects.

Cheers,

 

[Tortuga Power]

PS: Here's what the main tech's look like. I wish it would display your actual tech level on the main view, and the next level in the empahized box at the bottom but hey. Or if we had the old HOI 2 screen with all your current tech levels and effects.

Agreed. Or maybe in the description box say what the current level is at and then say what the next level will improve. I don't know, seems like something could be fixed. Anyway, I shouldnt derail such a promising thread...


So thanks for taking the time to go through this. I have had success doing blitzkrieg but its only easy against inferior forces, so I can't wait to see if there might be some tricks that I'm missing (the answer to this begins with a "y").

 

[peterhoi3]

Thank you for taking the time to work all this. I will be following with attention.

 

[Vhorthex]

Part 2 - Army & Battle plan

PART 2 - ARMY & BATTLE PLAN​

Hello again,

In this post i'll be covering what is my army made of. I'll show you from Brigade on up.

My army is built from divisions made up of certain brigade mix that I keep constant. Except for some exceptions. At this current date here are what my divisions are made of and their stats:

DIVISION COMPOSITION

Medium Armoured Division:

Light Armoured Division:

Motorised Division:

Infantry Division:

This is the basic structure of my Divisions. I'm currently revising if I should use Armored Cars in my Light Tank Divisions, i'm thinking of throwing in the SP Art instead. They can keep up with the Light tanks. Still learning . SP-ART obviously holds a higher cost and supply/fuel consumption. Should crunch some numbers...

Now, my Corps. They are stuctured by Objectives. I know that if you capture 5 of Polands Victory Points, the country will surrender. Here's the basic plan i've outlined for my army.


BATTLE PLAN

My battle plan focuses on objectives A,B,C,D,E. Like I mentioned, I know that Poland will surrender with just these five victory points. I've named my Corps after their objectives and equip them to suit the objectives.

I used the terrain map mode to show how I ploted the general lines for the battle plan. I tried to keep it on plains, this is something to greatly consider. Hills and swamps will definately put a drag on your speed and combat efficiancy.

If you do have to fight through hills or mountains, try to avoid using tanks since their efficiancy is greatly decreased. Use Infantry and Motorized if you have to. Although i've seen myself using Armour in hills...

Also notice how narrow and focused the attack lines are. Our goal is not to have huge standoff and encirclement of units. We want to break the line, flood our army behind enemy lines. If we do this right, we will have minimal combat and make the nation surrender. Obviously this is something that needs rethinking depending on the size of your oponent. Russia for example, you'll have to cause them loses if you want to survive But i'll go into this a later date. I want to focus on early war tactics.

ARMY STRUCTURE - CORPS

Operation Krakow
- 4 X Infantry Divisions
- 1 X Motorized Division

(I'm giving mostly Infantry to this corps since the objective is near the border. I will be able to use the additional infantry to support the breach and provide units to counter attack any units trying to move into the corridor we will be making.)

Operation Lwow
- 2 X Light Armoured Divisions
- 2 X Motorized Divisions
- 1 X Infantry Division

(This Corps will have to travel quite the distance to reach it's objective. But they will follow Operation Krakow. And will push from that victory point. Although from experience Poland seems to prioritize it's army more to the north of the country. So By the time Operation Krakow has reached it's objectives, The light Armoured Divisions from Operation Lwow might be able to drive all the way to it's objective without combat.)

Operation Lodz
- 1 X Medium Armour Division
- 2 X Light Armoured Divisions
- 2 X Motorized Divisions

(This Corps will have the best the task of clearly the way for Operation Warsaw. And take Lodz along the way. It's got plenty of firepower and speed. The Medium Armor division can pratically destroy anything. )

Operation Warsaw

- 1 X Medium Armour Division
- 2 X Light Armoured Divisions
- 2 X Motorized Divisions

(Following Operation Lodz, it would be ideal if they could be kept away from combat until reaching Warsaw. Using the Armour divisions first, and keeping the Motorized divisions for the urban combat. They have the least penalties for urban combat, AFAIK.)

Operation Backup
- 1 Motorized Division

(Yeah, not impresive huh? Was caught up in building the S.E.T.I. program in Hamburg...(level 10 Radar) So IC was a bit lacking. But this corps will only be there to take Danzig, assisted by the defensive border troops. And if chance smiles upon us, they'll get out of combat fast enough to help with an assault from the north during the final plan of the battle on warsaw.)

Dedicated Corps VS. Mixed Corps

I wanted to bring this topic up. When I started playing HOI 3 I wasn't certain how I wanted to set up my Corps. At first I had Armoured only, Motorized only Corps. But I realized that I often wanted to combine my divisions in attacks rather then simply use 1 type of division. So this lead to sometimes the HQ being caught in the middle while it's divisions stretch out of reach from it's command range.

This is way I opted for Mixed Corps. This way I find it helps focus the attacks as well, when I get into the actual war we'll see that I often have many divisions stacking on top of each other. So have them split by objective really helps keep the chaos undercontrol. I'm a bit of an extremist but I go up to putting a "tag" on the divisions to identify which corps they belong to.

For example:
301st MOT Div. (KRA) <--- For Operation Krakow.

This might be a tad overkill for some, but to each his own.

I actually based my offensive army corps structure, after setting up my defensive army. My strategy is all about HQ range and keeping units togheter. We want all the leader bonuses we can get!

PART 3 Is available! Scroll down

 

[Gladiator]

Interesting to read all of that. Do you plan to use HQ controls? Did you read about notger.heinz experiments with Polish campaign?

 

[Vhorthex]

PART 3 - Battles

PART 3 - BATTLES​

June 9th 01:00AM​

Battle of Tarnowskie Gory (Main Breach) / Rybnik Oportunity

(A1 Offensive) - Attack on Tarnowskie Gory
The 114th & 129th Infantry Divisions of the Polish Border Corps will assist with the breakthrough lead by the 209th Motorized Division of the Operation Krakow Corps.

This may seem minimal, but we don't want to bog down anymore troops then necessary. It's a bit of a gamble.

(A2 Offensive) - Attack on Rybnik
Poland has not garrisoned any border guards in the province of Rybnik. We will take advantage of this. The 116th & 130th Infantry Division of the Polish Border Corps will take advantage of this a rush to Rybnik.

(M1 Movement)
All the HQ's heading to the front.

(M2 Movement)
There was the 131st Infantry Division in Ostrava just along the Slovakian border, so I will bring up this unit and help push along the southern border. One game Poland was more heavy south, and attacked through slovakia. >.>

Battle of Danzig (Victory Point Capture)

(A1 Offensive) - Attack on Danzig
The 110th Infantry Division will be attacking Danzig along side Operation Backup's 208th Motorized Division. I hope this battle won't last long, so I get to push the 208th Motorized division to join in the battle of Warsaw. But with minimal forces, we must be hopeful .

There is also 21st Infantry Division Will be offering support on the attack, from the province of Marienburg.

(M1 Movement)

HQ - Operation Backup is racing to the border.

June 9th 02:00AM​

First shots fired...

Battle of Tarnowskie Gory(96%)

Battle of Danzig(90%)

June 10th 02:00AM​

Battle of Tarnowskie Gory -(Victory!)

After 24 hours of intense fighting the Polish division is routed!

Because of this quick battle, I will decide on a risky move. All the corps will push for Tarnowskie Gory immediately. We won't wait for the province to be taken. By the motorized division part of the attack. Ideally you shouldn't do this and always have a unit taken a province before moving your reserve forces. This could cause an undesired attack resulting in all the divisions involved to have Delay penalty. In a blitz war... not too good.

(M1 Movement)
Corps Warsaw, Lodz, Lwow and the rest of Krakow head for Tarnowskie Gory.

(R1 Retreat)
The Polish Division heads for hills.

Meanwhile...

Battle of Danzig -(96%)

Things are about to wrap up here as well.

June 10th 03:00PM​

Battle of Danzig -(Victory!)

After more then 36 hours the battle comes to an end!

The suppoting force from Madenberg will remain in it's position, while the units from Launberg will, once rested, make the rush for Warsaw in hopes to meat Operation Warsaw corps.

June 10th 07:00PM​

Just as the sun sets over London on the second day of the war, the first unit from the Tarnowskie Gory battle establishes itself on Polish land!

June 11th 12:00AM​

The 209th Motorized Division arrives in the Province of Danzig.

It will be 65 hours before it can press on, but that will probably give Operation warsaw enough time to reach the bordering provinces of Warsaw.

June 11th 01:00AM​

One hour later the first 2 Light Armored Division from Operation Lwow arrive in Tarnowskie Gory, but immediately press onto the province of Katowice. Forging a path for Operation Krakow.

Again, moving 2 units is a bit of a gamble since if they do get intercepted, Delay will ensue for both. I know i've been saying this a lot, but the trick in successful blitzing in HOI 3 is about avoiding this delay whenever possible. Ideally only one of the Armours should of been sent out. But i'm getting a feeling that Poland is pretty thin in terms of layered defense, so we'll take a chance.

Take note that it is key to not have time go by to fast at points like this in the game. Missing a few hours, even 1 might just be enough to let that enemy infantry move into the province thus blocking your swift invasion. Always give orders as soon as they can be given! No point in having idle units sit around at times like this.

June 11th 09:00AM​

Rybnik -(Captured!)

 

[unmerged(168202)]

Very nice guide, but how do you intend to defend the territories you get when blitzing through Poland? I always use slow inf that follows the tanks, but maybe you have a better plan... Looking forward to see how this plays out.

 

[Gladiator]

Very nice guide, but how do you intend to defend the territories you get when blitzing through Poland? I always use slow inf that follows the tanks, but maybe you have a better plan... Looking forward to see how this plays out.

An idea could be as in my last experiment, here:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=435569

It's post n° 89 in the thread, at page 5. But he'd need some amount of garrison units, and an AI Army in charge of defending those places, green flagged and detached from Theatre HQ. He could then run all attacking units manually, being sure garrisons will automatically go to assigned provinces to defend.

 

[Tortuga Power]

This is the basic structure of my Divisions. I'm currently revising using Armored Cars at all, i'm thinking of throwing in the SP Art instead....

Based on some pretty weak mental number crunching, I employ the mantra "speed kills", so AC. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think its about 1kph faster (I use 1940 or '42 tank engines), and then less supplies too. This LA works very well without the need for sparty, thanks CA! But I don't really know if that extra speed results in anything different... Otherwise I use almost identical division setups, which was really reassuring

Very nice guide, but how do you intend to defend the territories you get when blitzing through Poland? I always use slow inf that follows the tanks, but maybe you have a better plan... Looking forward to see how this plays out.

Motorized has worked well for me, but I'm also interested in seeing how this goes down... quite informative so far.

 

[Vhorthex]

UPDATED to V0.2.1​

General changes:
- Tried to get rid of a few typos and polished the overall look.

Changes to PART 1:
- Expanded on Research per field. Gave details about certain techs I focused on and why.

Changes to PART 2:
- Expanded on the logic behind the battle plan.
- Added my views on Dedicated VS. Mixed Corps.

I will probably be working on the actual war today. Part 3 will be about the flow of the war and we'll cover the major battles. And I'll try to give as much details to the orders given to each divisions so we get an idea of the tactics I use. We'll also keep track of how much time it takes to reach each objectives. I want to try to get Poland down in less then 20 days.

Thanks for all the nice comments & support! Opinions and suggestions are, as always, more then welcomed.



Cheers!

 

[Alex_brunius]

Here is what I would have made differently:

¤ Added a single TD brigade to MOT/MECH divisions instead to give them combined arms, especially with the amount of great Panzer leader Germany have available.

¤ Focused on having a higher tech then 1934 on Assault Concentration. With this obsolete level ALL your divisions with any kind of artillery will have lower org.

¤ Infantry is always the main backbone of your army. Having its Org on 1936 levels (due to low doctrine tech) is not a good Idea. Even If its expensive to research each level is worth +10 org due to high officer levels.

¤ For the same reasons as above I would recommend even more research into Infantry small arms.


Edit: Oh sorry I forgot to say, Great guide! The rest of your advice are nice, and cool with Night vision so early.

 

[Vhorthex]

¤ Added a single TD brigade to MOT/MECH divisions instead to give them combined arms...

Interesting, i'll take a look at that.

¤ Focused on having a higher tech then 1934 on Assault Concentration...

Yeah I agree, If you look at the current research i'm getting the next level on June 16th. I reasearched a lot of things out of time, and neglected some land doctrines. It's not the ideal start up, but we'll pull through. Thanks for the tip.

¤ Infantry is always the main backbone of your army. Having its Org on 1936 levels (due to low doctrine tech) is not a good Idea...
¤ For the same reasons as above I would recommend even more research into Infantry small arms.

True, again I over researched Agriculture, and both Industrial IC related techs. But I think I still have time to reajust before I feel the stinge of this missing ORG. I do have 195% Leadership which will greatly help my forces with ORG.

For small arms, I agree as well. But I think that it's current level if more then sufficiant for this date. I'll be researching it again as the game unfolds. But with my past experience this setup will proove more then enough to quickly puch a hole in Poland.

Thanks for all this information, it's noted and i'll test it out in my future games.

Cheers,

EDIT:

"Edit: Oh sorry I forgot to say, Great guide! The rest of your advice are nice, and cool with Night vision so early."

THANKS

 

[pnt]

Hm, perhaps you should consider separating your discussion on tactics and the division composition? You may have put some thought into the former, but your advice on the latter is, unfortunately, not very good.

Optimized division compositions are available on the wiki.

http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Division_composition

 

[unmerged(136935)]

nice battle plan and a good thread to all the noob's who are wondering about how to do things. Might of moved one thing but everyone probably has their own little tweak or two. If you have time give your idea's on France as it will help some who are a little lost.

Don't get discouraged about the na sayer's who post. People are very ridgid in their ideas and some will try to take over the discussion. Something like the old guard in the game.

keep it up
good job...

 

[delra]

pnt you should expand that article so we have more comparison and can clearly compare other popular choices with your designs. For example Arm + Sp Art or L Arm + MOT CA divisions. This way we could see how much better your designs are.

 

[Vhorthex]

...Optimized division compositions are available on the wiki.
http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Division_composition

I must say, there is some impressive math behind all these divisions. I would dare to be bold and feel that theses divisions are a tad overkill. Not saying that I'm not going to try some of these, but to say base my whole army on these. I'd rather have a little less brigades per divisions and have more divisions. Requires more micro management but it offers more flexibility. If you are pushing into enemy territory and making corridors, you'll want more units to cover your tracks rather then powerful divisions.

Thanks for the link though, good math! I wouldn't be able to crunch it up like this

I don't want to give out an impression that i'm an 'elite' player of HOI. I know my way around, and i'm offering this as a startup for people who are having trouble blitzing.

It's a learning process!

Thanks again for your input!

Cheers,

 

[Vhorthex]

...If you have time give your idea's on France as it will help some who are a little lost.

good job...

Well thanks

I actually wanted expand after Poland, and give other examples. I invaded Hungary, Yogoslavia in that campaing as well. I'll cover those, I think Yogoslavia will be interesting as well.

But definately i'll cover the invasion of France. It's quite time consuming. But It's fun

Until then,

Cheers,

 

[pnt]

pnt you should expand that article so we have more comparison and can clearly compare other popular choices with your designs. For example Arm + Sp Art or L Arm + MOT CA divisions. This way we could see how much better your designs are.

Wow, there are many combinations out there!

Overall, however, there are a few considerations, some of which are summarized on the wiki.
http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Division_building#Division_Composition

Using the individual brigade stats from the wiki
http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Land_units
it is also easy to calculate the values for any combination.

Just keep in mind that most division values are sums of all component brigades. The important exceptions are softness, which is an average, and speed, which is limited by your slowest brigade. Also, think ahead, because some units that are well matched in 1936 may not be in 1940.

Thus, the most important optimizations are related to the last two. Your need for speed depends on your planned use, but overall, it makes no sense to attach fast units to slow units, and definitely avoid a single slow unit in a division of faster units.

In terms of softness, you definitely want to be in the 33%-67% range to get the CA bonus. However, if you look in the table, you will find that almost any divisions has a much higher effective attack against soft targets than hard targets, so reducing your softness to be as close to 33% as possible greatly reduces your losses.

This is particularly important considering that the defense/toughness values do not work the way people often would think. Each shot fired has a base change of 40% to hit against an undefended unit. For a number of shots up to its defense value, this probability is reduced to 20%. However, since defense values typically are twice as big as the attack values, in order to get above the defense threshold an opponent already has to be able to fire twice as many shots as you. If you face an even stronger opponent, the last shots will be extra effective. But this rarely matters, since in that case you are going to lose big time anyway. Thus, low softness really is the key do reducing damage.

Globally, for an army the most important criterion is the attack/supply consumption ratio, since this determines how much firepower you can actually keep in the field.

The other relevant consideration is how to minimize the number of technologies one needs to research. For instance, L.Arm and Mech share their base techs, but while Arm and L.Arm share their doctrines, Mec requires an additional two. If you in your overall army composition can reduce the number of techs (including doctrines) that you need to research, you can either have more officers, or make sure you gain a technological advantage.

Thus, there are both tactical and strategic considerations when you choose a specific build. Furthermore, you want to be able to field 12 combat brigades per province, so it is good to stick to divisions based with either 3 or 4 combat brigades. However, mixing in single size 4 divisions is OK, since it will give you 9+3=13 combat brigades per province. Personally, I try to give paratroopers 4 brigades. Also, a higher formation that is nice for a large nation like Germany is

HQ
3 divisions with 3 Arm + 1 AC
1 division with 2 L.Arm + 2 Mec

Being fast, the latter can be used for exploitation and split into two divisions, each with its own general, if there is a need to fan out, and still fit into the same HQ. For Inf, however, having a Corps HQ with four divisions, each with 3 combat brigades is not a bad idea, since if need be all can be effectively assigned to one province.

Anyway, so summarize, it would be nice if you calculated the stats for the divisions compositions that you are interested in!
Remember that the attack against 67% soft is given by: 0.67*SA + 0.33*HA, and vice versa against 33% soft.

 

[notger.heinz]

Interesting read and I am looking forward to your war!

Damn, Emu'd on the divisional set-up, research of defensive stats and stuff. Well done, pnt.

 

[delra]

It would be much easier if there was an easy way to import data between Excel and Wiki tables. And also if there was an Excel sheet with all the stats (for each tech level) since importing them from Wiki format will take months. :-|
Maybe we could place it somewhere on google docs where everyone can open it read-only and mess with divisions as much as he wants without having to load Barbarossa scenario as Germany.

About compositions, my biggest disappointment is the fact that 3x Arm + Sp Art doesn't have Combined Arms. It would be the best combination of them all... After a while of fiddling with Arm + Mot now I use L Arm + Mot for exploitation and Arm + AC for breakthrough combos myself since they are obviously stronger than everything else.

I'm also pretty disappointed that historic combinations don't work as well as one could figure they should. For example historic German "Panzer 43" division is Arm + 2x Mech which is much softer and weaker than 3x ARM + AC while saving only 0.3 mapower and 1 IC daily.

And on a final note, the most freak-ish composition I ever designed was anti-blitzkrieg British divisions of INF + INF + TD +TD. It has Combined Arms, uses Artillery and Infantry practicals, has Soft Attack of 3x INF but also has 1/3 lower Softness, 3 times better hard attack and 1/3 better defensiveness. Sadly it also costs twice more IC, builds two times longer and eats twice the supplies (+fuel) so building two 3x INFs instead is a much better idea.