Comment on Stony Road from a player

[LM+]

Having played a complete HSR game as Germany on UGROFAZ level, I have some understanding of the dynamics. I am sorry to say that I do not believe that the overall historicity - fidelity to historical powers and limitations - of this mod is particularly high. I also will claim that some of the changes in this mod hinder the AI badly enough to allow the player too easy a victory on any level of difficulty.


Maintainence costs of units:

Tanks, mech infantry, and aircraft use up a great deal of oil. This change, combined with very restrictive coal-to-oil conversion for players, makes it extremely costly to a human to operate these units. Let me define "extremely costly": An improved medium tank costs 14 oil when moving. Once one's oil reserves have been tapped out, it will take 46.66 coal to create that much oil. I assume maximal tech.

I did not build tanks. I built mech infantry late in the game, and remain uncertain as to whether they are worth the expense.

Bad as the problem is for human players, for the AI it is worse. This statement sounds absurd; the AI can convert coal to oil 1-to-1, rising to 1-to-2 in some cases. However, the AI builds so many tanks and planes that most nations, the USA excepted, suffer a major economic crunch no later than 1943. Russia get hit early and hard, the UK follows later (probably when she starts fielding modern tanks in quantity). This throws their entire war efforts out of wack.

If you doubt the above, I will present screenshots. I won the game because I ran a more efficient economy and military.


---------------

The stats and costs of aircraft:

Aircraft costs and stats are very curious. All aircraft other than fighters start out being extremely expensive to build and restore to maximum strength. I repeatedly had to invest 2000 supplies - the cost of building almost 4 infantry divisions - to restore my tactical bomber stack after moderate usage.

All models of aircraft in a particular category have the same stats: A pre-war aircraft is as good as a turbojet bomber. Techs increase the stats of tactical aircraft fairly slowly, but every plane benefits. So there is almost only one model of tactical bomber.

I could not get tactical or dive bombers to yield good results in battle. In a test game, I went to great pains to get Improved tactical and dive bombers for the early war, building 12 (at further expense), and seeing them have only limited effect and take significant casualties in the clear skies and open terrain of Poland.

Fighters are totally different. Improved interceptors are so good that there is nothing clearly better for dogfights until improved rocket fighters. Because of how the tech table is laid out, you do not have to learn about basic fighters - just jump straight to improved. However, unit costs are such that it is better to build pre-war fighters, and then convert them to modern ones.

Because of AI lack of interest in air technology, and their mid-game economic collapses, improved interceptors (when sufficiently numerous) ruled the sky for me until the end of the game. Repeatedly annihilated enemy forces in a given theatre of operation, never faced a serious challenge.

The best strategic bomber is the pre-war model. It has a base strategic attack of 12; all other models have 6. I was wondering why one-bomber runs were so powerful ... now I know.

With an oil usage of 8, a single strategic bomber group would use all the oil Germany produces from its own provinces. Sufficient numbers of strat bombers can drain even Texas dry.


---------------

The stats and costs of ships:

Destroyers seem expensive. This makes it hard for the Allies to stop my subs...

Subs are quite inexpensive. Those small electro subs are just plain ridiculous. Assuming the British knew about the mass-production of ships and that they were using an "open seas" minister, they could build a destroyer unit for the cost of more than 11 small electro subs (when built under Donitz)!


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Rate of technological advancement:

Tech advancement is quite slow.

By 1-1-1945, the (AI-controlled) Americans could build Improved heavy tanks, basic surface ships and medium-range subs, and basic planes of all types except for improved interceptors. They remained ignorant of any centrimetric radar application and any mass-production application.

In similar fashion, the Russians never learnt how to build T-34s, and although the British were fielding Advanced heavy tanks*, they were also making do with basic fighters!

* High-level British tanks are mis-named. This can be seen in both the unit production and tech screens.

Germany had the tech advantage after about 1941. However, she failed to maintain technological parity with the historical Third Reich in any fields other than infantry, artillery, land doctrine, electronic, and industrial tech.


---------------

Tech and utility of techs:

Infantry and artillery techs are very powerful, and can be obtained very rapidly. In a test game as South Africa (normal difficulty) I came within an ace of conquering Germany by focusing purely on these fields.

Land doctrines are reasonably priced. Expensive, but very useful. Same with rocketry, electronic, and industrial tech.

Armour tech just ain't worth it, in my opinion, unless and until oil consuption rates are rejiggered.

Submarine tech is definitely not over-priced. I ruled the waves with subs. If, however, electro subs (especially small electro subs) beame more expensive to build, then a reduction in cost might not be amiss.

Surface ship tech, heavy aircraft tech, air doctrine, and sea doctrines are all too expensive. If the cost of surface ship tech and sea doctrines were divided by 3, and the cost of heavy aircraft and air doctrines reduced by 33%, they would be competitive for at least some nations. It would be good if the benefits of air doctrines were more balanced; right now, some are far more useful for their cost than others.

I love the airmobile cavalry idea!


---------------

Overall historical fidelity:

I did not get the sense of an historical game.

As Germany, assuming I fielded no units that consumed oil, got hit with no resource-draining events, had stockpiled maximal rubber and oil, had maximal industrial tech, and wanted an industry of 400, I faced an economic crunch in 2.5 years. Historically, Germany fielded dozens of Panzer and mech divisions, thousands of aircraft, had an effective IC of substantially more than 400, and it was still not until 1945 that the Reich was so short of rare materials that she faced an crash in war production. This oil and rubber shortage business has been taken too far.

France was far weaker than historically. With an IC of roughly 75 for most of the game, she was worse off than Italy. In the game, as of 1-1-42, she could not build basic light or medium tanks, basic fighters, or basic bombers. And yet, with 309 divisions, she had the largest army in the world!

In the early game, Great Britain had by far the best land doctrines. Late in the game, she had by far the best tanks. But she did not take an interest in much else; ships, planes, and electronics showed little or no advancement. I leave you to determine how this compares to history.

The game heavily penalizes historical German moves, such as the conquest and occupation of much of Europe. 20 divisions for Polish police duty, 10 for the Low Countries, 2.5 for Demark -- these numbers add up quickly. A smart player will simply not play historically; he will leave most of the small fry alone until the major Powers are defeated.

Manpower is extremely generous, not merely to the AI (a reasonable rebalance), but to the human layer of many nations. For example, South Africa can without difficulty raise 50 divisions!

 

[Aregorn]

LM it was a very long post so I could not read it in detail. Which HSR version are you playing? about the comments I saw, you say resources are a problem for you, I know it is not easy but I do not get that problem and my core force are impr.med.80mm and mechanised, so if I can do it you should do it and my industry runs 600-700 IC depending on dissent situation and ministers of the time. Without those units and just with infantry units as you claim it is not possible to defeat the Soviets. Sorry but your infantry will melt like ice and you do not have the manpower to cover it, loosing more battles than the once you will be able to win not even considering the severe speed limitations you will get. So I do not get what you did. About the resources for the ai in all my tests the extremely generous conversion rates I gave them (obviously I am assuming here that you are playing harder levels in HSR and HOI with HSR 103c) together with the significant consumption cut given for them in the game difficulty level setting (they do not pay at all the amounts you pay) they manage to handle the situation quite well feeding their army and running their industry at max at all times, nothing else is required. About the air warfare it is extremely powerful if you use it correctly. In fact you will not be able to melt whole armies like in HOI but that is the purpose. Try to play real HSR without air force and I can assure you will loose. On the good side we manage to make planes only deadly in the case of 1-2 land unit against 12 bombers which is a good achievement not perfect but still much better than vanilla HOI. The extremely expensive cost of air units does not resemble plane construction but pilot training reason why the upgrade does not need sending them back to the building queue. And it works helped a lot now by HOI 1.06 which is finally penalising bombing with big stacks, so you want an air force of maybe two air wings for air superiority and about 3 bomber wings. The important thing is to realise that bombers will not win the battle by them self anymore they are a support weapon for the land units, and they are invaluable to make the enemy loose organisation as it is historically. I see a good comment though in your description which is the high costs of the air and naval doctrines. In fact for my self they are so expensive I never bother researching any of those and this is bad and we need a change. About the US it is true they are less technological than Britain but this is because the heavy investment in nuclear techs. We will be adding with events further techs to the Yanks to equilibrate this problem. I think you are right with the manpower of small countries, and I keep lowering them although seems not to be enough yet. The problem with France is that they produce a massive amount of militia and I have not been able to modify that substancially.

 

[LM+]

Taking the response point by point:

LM it was a very long post so I could not read it in detail.

I urge you to read it in detail. It's a bug report; bug reports are useful!

Which HSR version are you playing?

I beg your pardon. HSR, version 1.03c.

about the comments I saw, you say resources are a problem for you, I know it is not easy but I do not get that problem and my core force are impr.med.80mm and mechanised, so if I can do it you should do it and my industry runs 600-700 IC depending on dissent situation and ministers of the time.

I am astonished. I actually tried a game using methods similar to yours, and exhausted my reserves in short order. Having plundered most of the oil and rubber in European capitals, I suffered an economic crash in '42.

600-700 IC? That costs in excess of 300 rubber per day, so a maximum stockpile is exhausted in slightly under a year. Assuming you carefully time your conquest of Brussels, Amsterdam, Belgrade, Copenhagen, and Paris, and get Romania onboard fairly early, you may with luck be able to last for three years of war. Assuming the war starts in '39, this means a rubber crunch not later than end '42.

How do you last longer? Please give numbers and some detail.

As for oil: Every mech unit costs roughly 6 oil / day (taking into account tech advantages and periods of rest). Every impr.med.80mm costs roughly 8 per day (using the same fudge factors). Even if I ignore the very substantial cost of a large airforce, the oil-reduction events, and the eventual need to convert oil to rubber...

... 17 tanks and 24 mech will cost you roughly 280 oil per day, exhaustng a maximal stockpile in roughly a year. I repeat my question for rubber: How do you find the oil to last more than perhaps 3 years?

Without those units and just with infantry units as you claim it is not possible to defeat the Soviets. Sorry but your infantry will melt like ice and you do not have the manpower to cover it, loosing more battles than the once you will be able to win not even considering the severe speed limitations you will get.

I disagree. I have a winner game on UGROFAZ level to back me up.

I broke the Soviet Union with a pure-infantry force. No foe ever found an answer to massed German landsers. When 24 Russians face 72 Germans, and the Germans have been teched-up as hard as possible, the result is a massacre. It was one massacre after another all the way to Magnitagorsk.

I suspect you believe that armour/mech is the end-all and be-all, and have balanced the game accordingly. I do not believe that armour/mech is the only way to go, and will abandon them if they are, in my opinion, not cost-effective. This is the single most important reason I won your mod.

So I do not get what you did. About the resources for the ai in all my tests the extremely generous conversion rates I gave them (obviously I am assuming here that you are playing harder levels in HSR and HOI with HSR 103c) together with the significant consumption cut given for them in the game difficulty level setting (they do not pay at all the amounts you pay) they manage to handle the situation quite well feeding their army and running their industry at max at all times, nothing else is required.

I played several games on GROFAZ and UGROFAZ level. Without exception, Russia, then later the UK, suffered a major downturn in production from the sheer expense - oil and supply - of maintaining units.

See picture in following post.

About the air warfare it is extremely powerful if you use it correctly. In fact you will not be able to melt whole armies like in HOI but that is the purpose. Try to play real HSR without air force and I can assure you will loose. On the good side we manage to make planes only deadly in the case of 1-2 land unit against 12 bombers which is a good achievement not perfect but still much better than vanilla HOI.

In my opinion, backed up by substantial testing, massed tactical air on GROFAZ level has only a marginal effect against land forces of substantial size - in other words, the important battles. Tactical air is also *extremely* expensive to build, maintain, and restrength! Because the AI gets air-to-ground bonuses, its airpower is moderately annoying, but I believe that it spent enough precious IC servicing its airforce as to weaken its performance elsewhere.

I won the game almost without tactical air. However, I had a lot of well teched-up fighters to own the skies.

(snip)

About the US it is true they are less technological than Britain but this is because the heavy investment in nuclear techs. We will be adding with events further techs to the Yanks to equilibrate this problem.

I urge you to fix the basic problems that the AI faces before patching over the issue with events. The US, the UK, and the SU have limited tech for the reasons I describe - excessive armed forces maintainance and sometimes resource shortfalls - not because they lack IC or favorable events.

I think you are right with the manpower of small countries, and I keep lowering them although seems not to be enough yet. .

The problem does not affect just small nations. As Germany, I fielded a larger army than Russia at her peak. Manpower values and national use of that manpower differs significantly from reality at any level of difficulty. Standard HOI has it approximately right; I recommend reverting to its values, and then adding special bonuses for AI nations facing a human who chooses a hard game.

The problem with France is that they produce a massive amount of militia and I have not been able to modify that substancially

I think I may have an answer. In this mod, France on normal difficulty has far more manpower than she does in standard HOI, and substantially less IC. She is, in short, another China. If you revert to the base game's figures, I believe that the problem with militia will largely go away.

Failing this, you can improve militia. Stat bonuses through techs, increases to max organization, etc.

------------------


We appear to disagree about the things the game is showing us. If you provide web space, I will upload a series of savefiles that provide evidence for the things I claim in this thread.

I apologize for the bluntness of some of my responses; please be assured that I care about improving your important mod!

 

[LM+]

This picture displays the burden the AI laboured under shortly before I attacked.

 

[Aregorn]

Taking the response point by point:




I urge you to read it in detail. It's a bug report; bug reports are useful!




I beg your pardon. HSR, version 1.03c.




I am astonished. I actually tried a game using methods similar to yours, and exhausted my reserves in short order. Having plundered most of the oil and rubber in European capitals, I suffered an economic crash in '42.

600-700 IC? That costs in excess of 300 rubber per day, so a maximum stockpile is exhausted in slightly under a year. Assuming you carefully time your conquest of Brussels, Amsterdam, Belgrade, Copenhagen, and Paris, and get Romania onboard fairly early, you may with luck be able to last for three years of war. Assuming the war starts in '39, this means a rubber crunch not later than end '42.

How do you last longer? Please give numbers and some detail.

As for oil: Every mech unit costs roughly 6 oil / day (taking into account tech advantages and periods of rest). Every impr.med.80mm costs roughly 8 per day (using the same fudge factors). Even if I ignore the very substantial cost of a large airforce, the oil-reduction events, and the eventual need to convert oil to rubber...

... 17 tanks and 24 mech will cost you roughly 280 oil per day, exhaustng a maximal stockpile in roughly a year. I repeat my question for rubber: How do you find the oil to last more than perhaps 3 years?




I disagree. I have a winner game on UGROFAZ level to back me up.

I broke the Soviet Union with a pure-infantry force. No foe ever found an answer to massed German landsers. When 24 Russians face 72 Germans, and the Germans have been teched-up as hard as possible, the result is a massacre. It was one massacre after another all the way to Magnitagorsk.

I suspect you believe that armour/mech is the end-all and be-all, and have balanced the game accordingly. I do not believe that armour/mech is the only way to go, and will abandon them if they are, in my opinion, not cost-effective. This is the single most important reason I won your mod.




I played several games on GROFAZ and UGROFAZ level. Without exception, Russia, then later the UK, suffered a major downturn in production from the sheer expense - oil and supply - of maintaining units.

See picture in following post.




In my opinion, backed up by substantial testing, massed tactical air on GROFAZ level has only a marginal effect against land forces of substantial size - in other words, the important battles. Tactical air is also *extremely* expensive to build, maintain, and restrength! Because the AI gets air-to-ground bonuses, its airpower is moderately annoying, but I believe that it spent enough precious IC servicing its airforce as to weaken its performance elsewhere.

I won the game almost without tactical air. However, I had a lot of well teched-up fighters to own the skies.

(snip)




I urge you to fix the basic problems that the AI faces before patching over the issue with events. The US, the UK, and the SU have limited tech for the reasons I describe - excessive armed forces maintainance and sometimes resource shortfalls - not because they lack IC or favorable events.




The problem does not affect just small nations. As Germany, I fielded a larger army than Russia at her peak. Manpower values and national use of that manpower differs significantly from reality at any level of difficulty. Standard HOI has it approximately right; I recommend reverting to its values, and then adding special bonuses for AI nations facing a human who chooses a hard game.




I think I may have an answer. In this mod, France on normal difficulty has far more manpower than she does in standard HOI, and substantially less IC. She is, in short, another China. If you revert to the base game's figures, I believe that the problem with militia will largely go away.

Failing this, you can improve militia. Stat bonuses through techs, increases to max organization, etc.

------------------


We appear to disagree about the things the game is showing us. If you provide web space, I will upload a series of savefiles that provide evidence for the things I claim in this thread.

I apologize for the bluntness of some of my responses; please be assured that I care about improving your important mod!

Don't worry about that, from critics like this we found the best improvements. About the airwarfare, the way you describe it is the way it is design for. As I said I do not want the airforce to win the battle but be a factor for the victory (realistic WWII, this is not desert storm yet) and this is what I experience and what I was looking for.
About the resources, you can see from your screen display that England has no problem at all with it. No shortage of anything apart from maybe steel (I did not see that before) which is not related to units consumption. The IC should be ~450 if England has a beginner level, you playing as Grofaz HSR, very hard HOI, but if your image was taken exactly after reloading the game and not run it at least until the next game day the IC level shown is not the actual one and for sure the production level of every resource will be 0 because the game is not ready yet to show you the data. The goods level states on your picture 58.2 when it is requiring 72.8 which is clearly showing that the true IC of the UK is higher if you let it run until the next day. You can see also the plenty of resources also gathered in different colonial provinces that need to be transported to London and coal at maximum which in the case of having no oil will be immediately converted to it, being impossible to have those levels if so much is in need, right? Remember that it is easy to convince people showing partial data if those people do not see the whole picture of the situation. Now from this few data I could gather your wrong assumptions because I am use to check very different variables for improving the mod. I find tough to believe you defeated the ai with only pure infantry and this I am taking it into consideration as a possibility nevertheless. But then you see you might have not tell me something important that would explain me the reason for it, the same as for the resources. I am going for Holidays now so we can continue the discussion in a couple of weeks, ok?

 

[unmerged(27668)]

Very interesting discussion this. LM, as you may be aware, some of what you bring up is a source of discussion in the www.stonyroad.de forums. The conversion rates and the fuel consumption of air/mech/armour are controversial issues. Aregorn I think you should believe LM if he says he won over Russia with massive inf attacks. The dogpile effect can be a good ally.

I think the findings of LM are very interesting, especially regarding the supply situation of the AI - once again our most stubborn obstacle in creating a historically challenging mod. I assure you LM, we are very aware of its deficiencies and the modders are constantly working on it.

I think it would be very interesting to hear your opinion of a specific solution to what you see as a key problem with the mod. You seem to have grasped the philosophy of the mod, and I think you had a good time playing it . Congratulations on acing the GröFaZ level, it shows you are an accomplished HoI player in my opinion. I for one am a fan of the mod mainly because of the possibility it gives me to explore alternate paths of strategy and meet a plausible amount of opposition.

The new version of the mod is out this week hopefully; the changelog is available at the forum.

Looking forward to your feedback Aregorn, LM you should join us at the stonyroad forums, you would be a valuable asset in improving the mod

 

[LM+]

Very interesting discussion this. LM, as you may be aware, some of what you bring up is a source of discussion in the www.stonyroad.de forums. The conversion rates and the fuel consumption of air/mech/armour are controversial issues. Aregorn I think you should believe LM if he says he won over Russia with massive inf attacks. The dogpile effect can be a good ally.

I think the findings of LM are very interesting, especially regarding the supply situation of the AI - once again our most stubborn obstacle in creating a historically challenging mod. I assure you LM, we are very aware of its deficiencies and the modders are constantly working on it.

I think it would be very interesting to hear your opinion of a specific solution to what you see as a key problem with the mod. You seem to have grasped the philosophy of the mod, and I think you had a good time playing it . Congratulations on acing the GröFaZ level, it shows you are an accomplished HoI player in my opinion. I for one am a fan of the mod mainly because of the possibility it gives me to explore alternate paths of strategy and meet a plausible amount of opposition.

The new version of the mod is out this week hopefully; the changelog is available at the forum.

Looking forward to your feedback Aregorn, LM you should join us at the stonyroad forums, you would be a valuable asset in improving the mod

Thank you very much for your kind words; I feared my input had been rejected without due consideration, but am glad that it's been factored in.

The "dogpile" effect was indeed my strongest ally...

 

[Aregorn]

Not at all LM you are even in the changelog of HSR 1.04 now:

*air_doctrine_tech Decreased cost of all techs by 33% to make them more attractive (cost reduction requested by LM).

*naval_doctrine_tech Decreased cost of all techs by 50% to make them more attractive (cost reduction requested by LM).

I also just in case increased conversion bonuses for the ai and improved the soviet opposition although I fear critics there, but then it will be your fault . In any case I still do not understand how you can manage to get the inf. army size to keep the front stable defensively and have enough spare to be able to concentrate offensively such massive force in one point. Obviously always thinking about man power limitations.

 

[LM+]

Not at all LM you are even in the changelog of HSR 1.04 now:

*air_doctrine_tech Decreased cost of all techs by 33% to make them more attractive (cost reduction requested by LM).

*naval_doctrine_tech Decreased cost of all techs by 50% to make them more attractive (cost reduction requested by LM).

Kewl.

I also just in case increased conversion bonuses for the ai and improved the soviet opposition although I fear critics there, but then it will be your fault .

I can well imagine.

In any case I still do not understand how you can manage to get the inf. army size to keep the front stable defensively and have enough spare to be able to concentrate offensively such massive force in one point. Obviously always thinking about man power limitations.

An excellent question: I wil attempt to explain how I did it.

Firstly, I felt I had to - that I had no working option but foot infantry. I tried mech and armour in a previous game, and crashed my economy hard and fast. And I never could get tactical air to be what I considered cost-effective.

Given that it was going to have to be foot infantry, and pretty much nothing but foot infantry, I needed to do two things:

1. Keep supply cost down, because I would need a lot of divisions for a long period of time.

Keeping supply cost down:

This mod has extremely high base mainentance costs. When I fought Poland, keeping my foot and motorized infantry supplied used up almost 40% of my IC not needed for social spending. And Poland's army outnumbered mine. Immediately upon the end of that war, I disbanded my entire army apart from one paratroop division.

I kept my army as small as I could, as long as I could. This meant no wars except the brief one with Poland, until I had the supply-reduction techs in hand. That meant until 1942.

When you have all the big supply-reduction techs, and are careful about not researching techs that chew up too many supplies, you can get an infantry unit that uses no supplies. At all. This is a license to kill: While the AI was shooting inself in the foot with maintenance costs, my forces were pretty much free.

As time passed, however, my worthless allies insisted upon sharing their lousy anti-aircraft guns with me, and jacked up my army bill tremendously. Estonia in particular gave me fits: I do not jest when I say that that tiny nation cost me more lost production than any of my enemies.


2. Conserve manpower. I conserved it every way I knew how.

Conserving Manpower:

I did not fight with or occupy any nation other than Poland, and fought and then occupied Poland only because I had to have a front with Russia. No monkeying around in Yugoslavia, no playing with France, no lusting after the Low Countries, no adventures in Norway regardless of the 40 IC blockade penalty. All I cared about was maximizing strength for Barbarossa.

And - no surprise - I researched "1944 divisional reorganization" just as fast as I could. This was early 1942.

When the Russsians declared war in January 1942, therefore, I was unprepared. But I had Poland as a buffer, and bluffed the Russians until the '44 infantry divisions and Improved Interceptors came on-line.

Because I had lost essentially no manpower except for the Polish occupation costs, and because I was building nothing but divisions that cost only seven manpower each, I was able to build a whole heck of a lot of them. 350 divisions, as a matter of fact.

Now, when I tell you that 350 high-tech German landser divisions can conquer Russia, when properly protected by superior fighters, you may well believe me. I have never fought a Russian campaign with so few nasty surprises and so sure a prospect of success.

The tactics were brutally simple. Form 12 division strong armies and put two in each province. Deliver hammer blows - with no attempt to maneuver or prepare the battle - with at least 48 (and preferably 72) divisions against multiple points of the enemy line at once. Use recently conquered salients as additional axes from which to assault newly-exposed enemy provinces. Do not attempt any sort of outflanking or envelopment: just smash them where they stand.

 

[Aregorn]

Kewl.



I can well imagine.



An excellent question: I wil attempt to explain how I did it.

Firstly, I felt I had to - that I had no working option but foot infantry. I tried mech and armour in a previous game, and crashed my economy hard and fast. And I never could get tactical air to be what I considered cost-effective.

Given that it was going to have to be foot infantry, and pretty much nothing but foot infantry, I needed to do two things:

1. Keep supply cost down, because I would need a lot of divisions for a long period of time.

Keeping supply cost down:

This mod has extremely high base mainentance costs. When I fought Poland, keeping my foot and motorized infantry supplied used up almost 40% of my IC not needed for social spending. And Poland's army outnumbered mine. Immediately upon the end of that war, I disbanded my entire army apart from one paratroop division.

I kept my army as small as I could, as long as I could. This meant no wars except the brief one with Poland, until I had the supply-reduction techs in hand. That meant until 1942.

When you have all the big supply-reduction techs, and are careful about not researching techs that chew up too many supplies, you can get an infantry unit that uses no supplies. At all. This is a license to kill: While the AI was shooting inself in the foot with maintenance costs, my forces were pretty much free.

As time passed, however, my worthless allies insisted upon sharing their lousy anti-aircraft guns with me, and jacked up my army bill tremendously. Estonia in particular gave me fits: I do not jest when I say that that tiny nation cost me more lost production than any of my enemies.


2. Conserve manpower. I conserved it every way I knew how.

Conserving Manpower:

I did not fight with or occupy any nation other than Poland, and fought and then occupied Poland only because I had to have a front with Russia. No monkeying around in Yugoslavia, no playing with France, no lusting after the Low Countries, no adventures in Norway regardless of the 40 IC blockade penalty. All I cared about was maximizing strength for Barbarossa.

And - no surprise - I researched "1944 divisional reorganization" just as fast as I could. This was early 1942.

When the Russsians declared war in January 1942, therefore, I was unprepared. But I had Poland as a buffer, and bluffed the Russians until the '44 infantry divisions and Improved Interceptors came on-line.

Because I had lost essentially no manpower except for the Polish occupation costs, and because I was building nothing but divisions that cost only seven manpower each, I was able to build a whole heck of a lot of them. 350 divisions, as a matter of fact.

Now, when I tell you that 350 high-tech German landser divisions can conquer Russia, when properly protected by superior fighters, you may well believe me. I have never fought a Russian campaign with so few nasty surprises and so sure a prospect of success.

The tactics were brutally simple. Form 12 division strong armies and put two in each province. Deliver hammer blows - with no attempt to maneuver or prepare the battle - with at least 48 (and preferably 72) divisions against multiple points of the enemy line at once. Use recently conquered salients as additional axes from which to assault newly-exposed enemy provinces. Do not attempt any sort of outflanking or envelopment: just smash them where they stand.

This gives some light to the situation. You are not taking any country other than Poland you say right? you are not taking France??? this will be a mayor exploit as I have never considered a Player not dowing the Benelux and France. This historically would have been fatal if at war with the USSR. The Balkans was taken also to protect the back of the wehrmacht drowned deep in Russia. So please confirm that you only take Poland (only occupation event triggered), and then what we need to change will be a more aggressive situation for the allies if the happen to be in such a strong situation (possibility that was never assumed…).

 

[LM+]

This gives some light to the situation. You are not taking any country other than Poland you say right? you are not taking France??? this will be a mayor exploit as I have never considered a Player not dowing the Benelux and France. This historically would have been fatal if at war with the USSR. The Balkans was taken also to protect the back of the wehrmacht drowned deep in Russia. So please confirm that you only take Poland (only occupation event triggered), and then what we need to change will be a more aggressive situation for the allies if the happen to be in such a strong situation (possibility that was never assumed…).

Confirmed.

I honored the Munich agreement, and therefore Great Britain never offered Poland an alliance. Poland fought me alone. The Allies (including the United States at a fairly early date) got tied up with Italy when Mussolini declared war on Greece (1940). Meanwhile Germany fought no wars whatsoever between Poland and the Russian invasion of January 1942.

I believe Germany finally declared war on the Allies in 1944.

 

[unmerged(27668)]

That is an exquisite campaign, highlighting the historical importance of the Munich Agreement. By honoring it, you avoid war in the West altogether, in a historically plausible way. The inf-only army however I see as a tactical exploit/imbalance, that we should strive to avoid as an 'invincible' recipe.

 

[LM+]

That is an exquisite campaign, highlighting the historical importance of the Munich Agreement. By honoring it, you avoid war in the West altogether, in a historically plausible way.

I'm a little unsure on the historical plausibility. Historically, would the Allies have let Germany gobble up Poland without declaring war? Would that have been considered a violation of the larger understanding the British and French thought they had secured at Munich, that Hitler strove to unite Germans, but rule no one else? What would their response have been? It is hard to say.

The inf-only army however I see as a tactical exploit/imbalance, that we should strive to avoid as an 'invincible' recipe.

That's fine. But leave the player some option that can be sustained over the course of a long war. Preferably without using gamey tactics to boost oil and rubber stocks.

 

[unmerged(27668)]

Well, I think it would have been hard for the British and French governments to declare war immediately, given the lackluster popular sentiments of the time. A serious embargo, or an outright naval blockade may have become an option, to make Hitler declare war. If it was becoming evident that Hitler was more interested in going East, IMHO they would have let the dictators slug it out.

The philosophy of HSR is to provide challenge and historical plausibility. The more experienced the player, the harder it is to unite these two goals, especially if you take full advantage of the wide range of alternate diplomatic options in the pre-war years. In my opinion any historical mod SHOULD be a pushover if you make all the right diplomatic and strategical choices, given the tremendous room for improvement that hindsight gives. Then, for the sake of fun, we add more opposition, to compensate for the advantage of hindsight to some degree.

Mithel has long argued that a GD value of 999 should be implemented to avoid the dogpile effect altogether. It's a radical step, but I have yet to see a solid argumentation against it.

 

[LM+]

Mithel has long argued that a GD value of 999 should be implemented to avoid the dogpile effect altogether. It's a radical step, but I have yet to see a solid argumentation against it.

Thumbs up. I like. Of course, it's impossible to to know just how it will play out in practice, but I think the idea has real merit and ought to be tried.

Air defence of 999 on all planes too?

A issue - or opportunity - is to rework the tech tree so that the techs that currently give defensive bonuses are either deleted or remain viable and worthwhile.

 

[Mithel]

The GD value needed to avoid the dogpile effect depends on the attack values your units have. The Starfire mod has armored divisions that reach over 100 attack points. I actually raised GD to 2000 many months ago.

The Starfire Historical Mod has had GD of 999 or higher for roughly a year now. I've never heard any serious problem with it. It's critical to get the terrain and weather modifiers decent too (that night modifier really messes stuff up - one of the best improvements we made was to eliminate night combat).

In some of our latest mod versions we are experimenting with fixing the air combat issues too.

- Mithel

 

[unmerged(27668)]

So, gentlemen, how do you think a high GD could be implemented in HSR? Mithel are you familiar with HSR?

I am very reluctant to play any other mod as long as it is the only mod - to my knowledge - that handles occupation/annexation issues realistically, as well as providing grognards a challenge.

 

[Aregorn]

So, gentlemen, how do you think a high GD could be implemented in HSR? Mithel are you familiar with HSR?

I am very reluctant to play any other mod as long as it is the only mod - to my knowledge - that handles occupation/annexation issues realistically, as well as providing grognards a challenge.

GD in HSR is significantly increased when compared to HOI. The reason why we did not eliminate the variable is to induce tech research. If you do so no dogpile will ever happen (this is excluding sea warfare of course).

 

[Mithel]

One of the problems with not making GD "infinite" is that a lot of research / tech improvements are meaningless. Until and unless you reach the dogpile threshold then differences in GD mean NOTHING.

Example: 10 SA against 12 GD, now I research two more points of GD so it's now 10 SA against 14 GD - I've gained NOTHING. Take the same example only four vs one: 40 SA vs 12 GD enhanced to 40 SA vs 14 GD - the effective difference? Almost nothing.

GD however is "king" when the values are close... 10 SA vs 9 GD is very different from 10 SA vs 10 GD.

Of course it also is dramatically influenced by ground_def_eff.

 

[Aregorn]

One of the problems with not making GD "infinite" is that a lot of research / tech improvements are meaningless. Until and unless you reach the dogpile threshold then differences in GD mean NOTHING.

Example: 10 SA against 12 GD, now I research two more points of GD so it's now 10 SA against 14 GD - I've gained NOTHING. Take the same example only four vs one: 40 SA vs 12 GD enhanced to 40 SA vs 14 GD - the effective difference? Almost nothing.

GD however is "king" when the values are close... 10 SA vs 9 GD is very different from 10 SA vs 10 GD.

Of course it also is dramatically influenced by ground_def_eff.

As you said Mithel, they are king when they are close, so I want to stimulate research to keep GD as high as possible as you do not know (theoretically) what the enemy is upto technologically. In an armament race this is the case. Remember we have only GD and G_D_E as variables to distribute in all the defensive techs and both values are limited. Totally true, against 10 SA 10, 12 or 500 GD would have the same effect but then someone might be technologically capable of inflicting 14 SA and then you want to have at least 14 GD . In HSR we are obviously giving GD bonuses for the ai, but not for the human which will need to decide what to spend in research predicting the enemy values. About ground_def_eff is one of the most important balance values in HSR. To my knowledge we were about the first to correct the mistakes from HOI in a mod, and you will notice if you check our tech tree, all values are deeply studied and modified to finally get a proper balance in combat but closely related to technological development. Is where I spent most of my time for HSR, and I consider the combat simulation in HSR to be the best one currently available because it is the only one that actually makes me happy for my games and I am really demanding.