My solution is to make special abilities not belong to the battalions but to the template such as you can create a marine template.
Combined Arms Bonus
- Thread starter scroggin
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You can add 1 battalion of armor to the marine division like the USMC did. They will be a bit worse at landing, but a bit stronger in land combat. It's a tradeoff and not a penalty.
Also there is a tech that will probably negate some of the penalties tanks get when landing. Its the last tech in the "transports" line.
It may be magical, but it also does not make that division actually any good. If a player is just chasing CA bonuses, they will build crappy divisions.
As I point out in the strategy guide for HOI3, divisions have to be built with several considerations in mind, including mission, terrain penalties, firepower type, speed, and a list of other things. The CA bonus, like SA, HA, and suppression, is something that should be considered, but not necessarily be the end goal of optimization.
The reworking of the CA bonus for TFH was an attempt to fix some of the ridiculous division compositions of previous versions of the game. Say what you want about HOI3, but it had a nice library of brigades to use in divisions. Too bad that most of them were next to worthless prior to TFH. In TFH, they redid unit stats (AC woo hoo!), but they also changed how the CA bonus worked to encourage more diversity in units. It kind of worked. Instead of all armored divisions either being pure armor or just ARM/SPART spam (or even worse, MECH/TD spam), you started seeing various division types. LARM/MOT/AC/AC, or ARM/MOT/TD/TD or ARM/MECH/SPART/SPART or even ARM/MECH/SPART/SPAAT (for countries with weak air). The CA bonus being spread around helped convince players to use diverse units.
But...
The CA bonus also ties in with the leader stuff and doctrines. By reworking the CA bonus to exclude MIL, it prevented stupid cheesy strategies. By requiring some kind of infantry, armored divisions started seeing MOT and MECH far more often. Coupled with the armor-penetration mechanics, there was no more need for stupid 4xHARM divisions; HARM/MECH/whatever would be far more efficient all around. Then you have leaders that either start with battlemaster or who gain it from leading CA divisions, you end up with a better system of grooming leaders.
I feel the CA system in TFH, coupled with other changes, made division composition much more realistic.
Now, maybe HOI4 will be able to work without the CA bonus in any form. But I keep wondering what will happen with this new battalion system without any CA bonus at all. Will we devolve back to unrealistic pure ARM divisions from earlier HOI3 instead of better INF/ARM configurations?
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Im pretty sure good choice of stats can replace the combined arms bonus.
Pure tank divisions are super expensive, a single light tank battalion can cost as much as a infantry division and the tanks are not great in every situation.
Pure tank divisions are super expensive, a single light tank battalion can cost as much as a infantry division and the tanks are not great in every situation.
Stat choice may not cut it.
But perhaps better handling of shared stats and average stats might do the trick.
In HOI3, some stats are additive (SA, HA), some are averaged (terrain, softness), and some are shared (penetration and armor). Speed is also "worst of all stats in division."
Hypothetically, you could tailor more unit stats to be averaged or shared so that doubling up or tripling up on certain battalion types would be inefficient (beyond the special ones in the support slots). We'll see how it all shakes out.
One thing that I haven't seen (maybe you have) is any kind of stat that represents the problems of armored/vehicular units trying to hold/clear out terrain that isn't open. I don't just mean attack penalties for armor in certain terrain (because it's not just about attacking). I'm talking about the problem of sneaky infantry disabling tanks in choke points that all terrain types have, and doing so whether the tanks are attacking or defending.
Regardless of attack ratings, tanks without infantry (especially in a game with battalions instead of brigades) is kind of pointless. Even Guderian knew better years before the war started.
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Good posts as always @Secret Master
I agree with you in some parts, and disagree with others. I don't really want to argue about this, because I also thinkTFH handled the CA bonus adequately, so if something similar gets into HOI4 I'm fine with that. I'm also open for a completely new system however(if done right). I guess we'll have to wait and see how it will be implemented.
I agree with you in some parts, and disagree with others. I don't really want to argue about this, because I also thinkTFH handled the CA bonus adequately, so if something similar gets into HOI4 I'm fine with that. I'm also open for a completely new system however(if done right). I guess we'll have to wait and see how it will be implemented.
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Maybe more negated with the CA bonus and improved infantry weapons from Techs but abstracted so you have to add an AT support to your infantry Divisions. That's a tough nut to crack without some differentiation in the Tech tree and perhaps Tanks without a CA bonus would be more susceptible attacking Infantry with AT without having infantry via different attack types that can be carried out by the commander.
One option would be a rock-paper-scissors approach, though that would likely suck and lead to gameyness as well. Honestly I have no problem with the HoI3 approach, it's not perfect and could use some tuning, but a lot of the issues could be negated by just moving some brigades (like AA) to support, so you can't use them for CA bonuses, making weird combinations less possible.
Another possibility would be adding a more robust combat action system and requiring certain levels of a certain type of unit to be present in order to attempt an action. Like if you have no armor Breakthrough is less likely, if you have no arty then Delay is less likely.
Another possibility would be adding a more robust combat action system and requiring certain levels of a certain type of unit to be present in order to attempt an action. Like if you have no armor Breakthrough is less likely, if you have no arty then Delay is less likely.
They have not evolved the basic combat much. But this seems like a very nice evolution idea !!
I'd add, that compared to Hoi3 Combined Arms system, that Infantry should get a plus plus. Like one infantry brigade shouldn't be as good as 2 or 3 in a division for Combined Arms. Always need more boots on the ground.
By the way, do you know what that diamond symbol next to the Roman numeral rank of each ship except the subs means?
Kind of pointless but maybe it indicates Surface Combatant in case people cannot tell the difference, not sure why a diamond would help indicate that but none of them increase in diamonds as you progress down the line?
The diamond is for capital ships, or ships that need escorts if you want to say it that way.
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I also agree with this statement.
While I definitely agree with this statement it would be very nice to actually know how HOI4 plans on simulating and resolving combat and have a discussion on whether they are doing it as well as members think it should be done. (or "realistically" based on the historical period of the game). Things like "division builds" only make sense if a "better built" division does better in some way in combat or conversely is close enough to their opponents and "cheaper" to build in terms of manpower, technological development costs and industrial costs so that you can have enough more of them to use quantity to overpower quality. Pretty much everyone I know has a preconception that German Panzer divisions will over power Polish Hussars in 1939 and I presume the designers will have us all covered on this issue but it would be very nice to know how the game figures this out in a combat simulation when the 2 collide on the map. I too was more satisfied when TFH came along and particularly when Olebouch started fiddling with the rating tables in Deutsche Wehrmacht Immersion mod but there is always room for improvement.
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Thinking about it more as I lay awake in bed there's more possibilities. In addition to requiring certain unit types to perform certain actions effectively you could also have skilled generals customize their playbook based on the opponent's composition. So once the opposing general recognizes that you have no armor then they remove anti-armor plays and move towards anti-infantry plays for instance, increasing the likelihood of choosing a highly effective combat action.
You should open a book about WW2 combat sometime. I've read quite a few of them by now and on several things opinions differ from author to author. But one thing that is consistant in their conclusions is that combined arms makes the difference between succes and failure.
Allied and Sovjet forces, for example, had tank units such as tank bridages or tank corps which served the same purpose as it's German counterpart, the panzer division: to break through the enemy lines and flank the opponent. But unlike the panzer divisions, these units were usually tank heavy and only had limited numbers of infantry to support it. And sometimes even no infantry at all. These units proved to be a failure, while the german units, we all know by now, were a big succes. And this despite the fact that many consider the quality off allied/russian tanks equal or supperior to the german ones.
Just a small example to illustrate this: the Sovjet tank corps in 1941. Because of lack of reconnaissance these untis often wandered into unfavourable terrain or just charged into the enemy, not knowing what they would encounter. Lack of an engineer unit ment they often had to search for intact bridges, driving around, losing time, fuel and tanks to breakdowns. And with no decent logistics battalion suppporting them, many just ran out of fuel. Lack of infantry support meant german infantry could just let sovjet tanks pass by so that PAKs and Flak88 that were waiting behind the infantry, could pick the tanks off one by one while they didn't have to fear any indirect fire because, well, sovjet corps didn't have artillery support either.
Allies and sovjets alike, learned it the hard way and gradually incorperated combined arms into their units in later years.
So should there be a combined arms bonus? I would say: hell yes!
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