destruction of divisions

[Spruce]

I'm pretty sure that this point has been raised in the HOI1 forum, but due to the fact that I never participated much in the HOI1 discussion o due to some reasons - and due to the fact that I think it's a major point of discussion I raise this discussion again,

destruction of divisions seems to be one of the major points for victory and defeat. Suppose you retreat your army and the army loses more then 75% of it's strength, there's still a fair chance that you can easy reinforce all the troops and suffer no "combat" power. When you have 2 armies attacking and one of them is battered seriously and looses half of it's divisions - it seems to be a drama for your military combat power.

Altough the difference is not that drastic, still the impact for HOI is huge. A "lost" division seems to be one of the worst things that can happen.

Even more, a division that goes home with 5 strenght is totally restored and a division that's destroyed needs to be rebuild from scratch...

Even worse, when you defeat an army I would hunt their last soldiers down with my tac. bombers. Just to be sure the division is wiped from the map. But that's hardly possible - to bomb a division where some hundreds of troopers are running for their life,

Shouldn't this be handled differently? I mean why not creating a chance for loosing a division after you've lost a battle,

strength < 50 - chance is 5%,
strength < 25 - chance is 10%,
strength < 5 - chance is 25%,

I mean destruction of a division - seems to me the destruction of the command chain and majority of resources. In HOI1 - there's simply too much difference between 1000 soldiers making it back home (simply reinforce them) and bombing those last 1000 soldiers (how on earth can you bomb 1000 soldiers to the last man after a battle ???) into dust...

I think it's nice that you can destroy divisions - but I wasn't that happy with the HOI1 model - especially at very low strength,

any thoughts ?

 

[unmerged(25612)]

Reinforcing is made more difficult and costly. -And that is already amended and included.

This oughta do it.

 

[kionas76]

Here are my thoughts(all prase the Lord ).
The chance a division is disbanded from incide after having casualties i think heavily depends upon how elite and furious its troops are.
Let my give you an example.A rooky green division after taking 50% or more casualties might withdraw in totall disorder making its comanding impossible untill Military Police gathers them back and issue them weapons after disciplinary acts.Major battles ended the existanse of divisions this way.
However a battle hardened division(if it is elite or fanatic like Waffen SS)might looses many more than 50% and still be there.
So how will this be modelled if exp. for land units is in?

Keep in mind that there are exceptions as well from the above so maybe it will be better to have a division destroyed only when its strenght points hit 0.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Well, historically it was very rare to completely destroy a division. This only happened after an encirclement. But, division was considered 'destroyed' if it lost 50% of it's manpower, because that meant that the division was unable to fullfill it's mission anymore. And, because of a critical situation on the front, sometimes such division were still issued combat orders etc.

This is a very tricky balancing act, because of exp/manpower/etc...

 

[jacob-Lundgren]

What would be cool is destroyed divisions names go back in the name pool, same with ships. i COULD be wrong and it already does but if so ehh sorry, if not then it should

 

[unmerged(29126)]

The instant-o-rama-click-to-transform-supplies-plus-MP-into-soldiers-scheme has the top-position on my annoyance list (among alot of other things, but then, I'm easily annoyed) from HOI1. There is talk of a new priority-system for replacements which leads me to guess the replacing bit is gonna be completely revamped. The most realistic way to simulate replacements IMO would be a pool of equipment and personel. Production and reorganisation (disbanding of damaged units) returns stuff to the pool, levying a new unit draws from it. So you would actually have to build strength-points from which you could form divisions.

Losing a damaged division after battle (or a chance for it happening) would remove the necessity to bomb them into the ground ...

Any system in which you cannot combine resources from two divisions to form a new one, meaning in whcih a divisions needs to be "built" from scratch is gonna be unrealistic.

Replacing losses for a division at 5% strength should take about 95% (+/- 10 %) of the time and resources that it would take to construct a new division of the same type.

 

[unmerged(21104)]

Perhaps the Organization of a division could be somehow realated to its Strenght ... for example when reaching 25% strenght ... the maximum obtainable organization could be only 50% of the maximum... (i dont agree with the total destruction)

 

[unmerged(33151)]

after reading this thread, i looked at that one screenshot that shows a japanese army corps (you know the one with four cav divisions and one inf?)

yeah so i cant see a reinforce button like there was in hoi 1, and together with the comments by various people closely affiliated with paradox, about the army system being redesigned completely lead me to believe the following

division strength (the left bar, since it doesnt look like there is a number 1-100) grows slowly to 100 with speed based on corps priority, and on various supply conditions that we dont know anything about yet, and on manpower of course

 

[Spruce]

yes I know the reinforcing of units will be revamped, altough the point I was raising is more aimed to "when is a division lost/annihilated/removed from the map/temporary removed from the map",

like somebody stated, a "green" division might loose itself more quickly, a valid point

and a division is like a number of soldiers, a big pile of resources and a command structure. For the rest - it's experience and specific attachments like tanks, artillery, etc.

when you are playing HOI1 with Germany and you defeat the enemy on the ground after a splendid move, and then bomb the beaten enemy units into zero strength (=unit lost) - it's not the fight on the ground that is the victory it's the destruction to the last man - that yields strategic victory.

I think that that final remark could be improved,

perhaps a new reinforcing model will handle this issue. But then the time to reinforce should be parallel to the time to equip a new division with new resources (guns - ammo - basic training).

 

[Oscu]

I think fast units (arm, mot, mec [cav ]) should be able to encircle enemy units (depending on the terrain). 1:1 without using other provinces.

 

[unmerged(25612)]

This is quite ironic...

The improvements for Vic and HOI, ie. The introduction of Division based armies, actually made waging wars far more unrealistic and easy...

EUs were far better in this field...


Back to the roots Paradox, Back to the roots...


Seriously though I really do hope that reinforcing is almost as costly as making a new division. (Well if 80% of your men and equipment are gone, I don`t see any reason why you wouldn`t have to pay that 80% of the full price of a division)

 

[Spruce]

agreed, and just to honour the spirit of strategy games,

the victory is conceived on the table, then in the team and on the field of glory,

not some crappy Heinkel 111 bombing the hell out of defeated troopers making it back to the hospital to heal their wounds,

know what I mean?

In my Germany games the tac. bombers are like blasting out those defeated troopers so they never get reinforced and never come back!

change it please

 

[Oscu]

...Seriously though I really do hope that reinforcing is almost as costly as making a new division. (Well if 80% of your men and equipment are gone, I don`t see any reason why you wouldn`t have to pay that 80% of the full price of a division)

Although since the HQ, TO&E and logistics are still there maybe only 75%

 

[mvsnconsolegene]

Well, historically it was very rare to completely destroy a division. This only happened after an encirclement. But, division was considered 'destroyed' if it lost 50% of it's manpower, because that meant that the division was unable to fullfill it's mission anymore. And, because of a critical situation on the front, sometimes such division were still issued combat orders etc.

This is a very tricky balancing act, because of exp/manpower/etc...

Or if the said division was covering the retreat of larger forces, they would often sacrifice themselves.

Happened several times in Africa -> Italy lost it's only good panzer division defending the retreat of the larger army.

- MVSN

 

[vertinox]

What would be cool is destroyed divisions names go back in the name pool, same with ships. i COULD be wrong and it already does but if so ehh sorry, if not then it should

Actually... That is what Hitler did with many divisions lost at Stalingrad even though the divisions had basically no members of the original (unless they were lucky enough to have been flown out).

However you can always just rename the divisions yourself I would assume like in HoI

 

[Bossemanden]

IIRC names of destroyed (or disbanded) divisions ARE actually put back in the build pool. Not those already under construction, but the next batch.