Division composition

[Sun_Killer]

as it really shouldn´t do, aa in divisons mostly was against CAS and Fighterbombers, so high-medium rate of fire, small-medium caliber and small-medium range.
i only know how the germans did it, but iam pretty sure that they had no 10,5cm or 12,8cm Flaks with their divisonal aa.

 

[Denkt]

To protect against strategic bombing you have to build state level anti air.

Both types of anti air is said not only to shoot down aircrafts but also reduce the effectivness of enemy aircrafts.

 

[nastydisease]

I dont think its advisable to add many supports to a division because not only is it more expensive, it saps the ORG. Losing ORG for stuff that pays dividends in soft or hard attack is certainly worthwhile in its respective circumstance (fighting infantry or armor), but for a tiny reduction in casualties when you're fighting in high infrastructure temperate climes? I think not, especially as a major with millions of men to spare. Its pointless lowering ORG just to save a few trucks and rifles as well. I'd only use maintenance on large mechanized or armor divisions.

There is nothing wrong with simple triangular infantry divisions either as Daniel proved in the WWW. Keeping his ORG high and with just engineers and recon for the direct and cheap force multipliers he was pretty unstoppable. No doubt adding artillery in there could prove more efficient and it might depend heavily on the enemies force composition and the size of the front you are expecting to attack across whether the cost of production and replacements to the units is worthwhile. It would be variable the amount of artillery that is optimal.

I'd probably sick with triangular or 4x3 divisions of infantry with a variable artillery contingent. I might have a separate template for with artillery and without so I could more quickly move the artillery to where its needed if that is at all practical. Also at least AT support for all line infantry type divisions come mid war.

Line Armored divisions would probably be obscenely large and contain a whole variety of SP art, TD's and Mechanized for a bit more ORG and would probably be the only units that I would have five supports in. Eng, Recon, Signal, Maintenance and probably Logistics. They would be used to create breaches in a line for Fast units of light arm and triangular motorized to quickly exploit and envelop sections of line.

I'd also have specialized divisions for fighting in low infrastructure and hostile areas such as Burma or the Aleutian Islands. They would end up proportionally more expensive as they would be more numerous in smaller sizes to capitalize on every last bit of supply available. They'd probably be Binary Inf, Marines or Mountain troops with eng, recon and hospital. I would give some thought to a logistics company but that would depend on how many of them I could spare to make and wouldn't be a high priority.

 

[Yavanion]

@nastydisease
While i can agree to what you say for bigger countries... there is a dilemma for smaller countries that have a large area to protect, binary divisions with support elements save manpower, and you need many divisons so you can be flexible, and still have garrisions and a reserve to move around... not all countries will be able to just chunk out divisions en mass and keep them "supplied/Reinforced" with people and material...

It all depeneds how many divsions you can "support" having a few big ones, is wourthless when a Daniel walks through the gaps and cuts them off, if you dont have the numbers to react to what happens ?

So i actually think Hospital is fairly important for small countries, or nations with manpower problems

 

[nastydisease]

I wholeheartedly agree. Smaller countries are an insane challenge when faced with majors. Difficult to tell the best way to go "all in" in a war with them. Look forward to finding out when the game is released.

 

[Aleksi_i]

Sounds pretty solid all around, but i am not sure about you garrison, has alot of org lose from the AT,AA,Art so maybe only use the art, for costal defence because invasions are usally undertaken by marines, soft targets so Art should be the right weapon dor the situation.

hmm..Maeby other garrison with 3 inf and police for cities and not coastal cities.
Coast guard 3 Bn and art combany. :/

Garrison unit is hard because too expensive units eat resources from the real fighting units, and too weak is just a waste.
Would need to know the stats better so could be anything really.

 

[Denkt]

Cheaper divisions do allow more resources for building forts which should not be forgotten. Even a single fort level can help quite a lot.

 

[Sun_Killer]

I dont know if it is efficent to build defenses if you have a lot of frontage or coast and only small amount of industry. If you invest to much into defense you can´t expand your industry fast enough. and than you don´t have enough military factories to even supply your limited amount of troops.

 

[nastydisease]

Fortifying the ports can be very helpful as the enemy is cut off from supply until that fort falls. The longer it holds out the weaker the enemy will be and the longer you will have to deal with an incursion before it becomes a full blown problem.

 

[Fulmen]

No matter how many fighters you build you can never ground an enemy airforce completely.

In past HoIs this was not true at all. AA was literally a waste of resources if you knew what you were doing.

But we'll see how it is in HoI4.

 

[Denkt]

Here are the stats for combat artillery in the WWW stream:

• 9 defence
• 3 breakthrough
• 15 soft attack
• 4 hard attack
• Less org then infantry
• 10 HP
• 0.5 weight
• 144 production cost
• 1 combat width
• 500 manpower
• 36 Artillery

Here is for infantry:

• 18 defence
• 4 breakthrough
• 6 soft attack
• 2 hard attack
• 10 HP
• 0.5 weight
• 50 production cost
• 2 combat width
• 1000 manpower
• 100 Infantry equipment

Artillery do take up width but they do so much more effective then infantry as you can use 2 artillery for each infantry you bring into combat. 2 artillery have 30 soft attack while a single infantry have only 6 so artillery can do 5 times as much damage with the same width.
Infantry is nearly 3 times as cheap as artillery and 3 infantry will hold a line much better then a single artillery as well do more damage. But then width become a limitation, then artillery become much more valuable. Also artillery use up far less manpower.

 

[TheRomanRuler]

I wish i could say, but until i get my hands on the game, i have no idea what to do with division compositions. All i know is that i am willing to sacrifice some soft/hard attack to get more defensiveness/toughness. And also i am willing to sacrifice soft attack to get hard attack. And i am willing to sacrifice raw stats for better terrain bonuses (such as replacing artillery with engineers).
I also want as low supply consumption as possible.

But of course i want a balanced division, i believe my divisions will be quite conservatively built. But who knows, maybe i am willing to take more casualties to be able to deal more damage to enemy. (aka take more artillery but less infantry, aka more soft attack but less defensiveness/toughness)

I would like my Panzer divisions be basically similar as motorised divisions, just with armor added in as extra. But who knows.
My elite Panzer divisions will have a lot of heavy armor and will be as big and strong as possible, despite the cost. They are elites that are heavy limited in numbers, maybe only 1 of them as Germany with rest being more regular panzer divisions, so cost won`t matter.
I also want my divisions to be able to do a little bit of everything, i don`t want to take special units just so i can attack mountains. I will build mountaineers also, but they may not always be available for what ever reason, so i want my standard "line" divisions to be able to do a little bit of everything.


Sorry for confusing formatting of this post.

 

[TheRomanRuler]

Does anyone know what is smallest division you can create? 2 battalions? Becouse if you have huge border with little troops, it would make sense to create lot of small delaying divisions without heavy equipment to hold enemy in place until stronger forces arrive. In RL, there never was border province with 0 soldiers in it. It may be 50 or it may be 500, but there were always SOME soldiers in every border province.

 

[Denkt]

The smallest division you can create is one that have only one battalion.

 

[TheRomanRuler]

The smallest division you can create is one that have only one battalion.

Awesome. No longer have to tolerate stupidity of having completely undefended provinces

 

[Antiboyscout]

If you are only defending, would it be better to use MECH for the extra hardness and defense or just regular INF for more ORG?

 

[jalapen0]

Here are the stats for combat artillery in the WWW stream:

• 9 defence
• 3 breakthrough
• 15 soft attack
• 4 hard attack
• Less org then infantry
• 10 HP
• 0.5 weight
• 144 production cost
• 1 combat width
• 500 manpower
• 36 Artillery.

That soft attack tho......

I'm gonna say that production cost is very high. There's gotta be a way to balance it out....or these are just alpha numbers and they are testing. Either way, these things are gonna pack a punch.

 

[tommylotto]

All these options in division composition have been rendered kinda moot by the fact that there is no combined arms bonus. In Hoi3 TFH, they added a great combined arms system that encouraged you to combine tanks, infantry and artillery in one division. Without that bonus, you might as well just have big infantry blobs and big tank blobs. There is no incentive to design historically accurate divisions.

 

[Sun_Killer]

yes there is. The Production Cost

 

[TheRomanRuler]

yes there is. The Production Cost

What does that help in battle.. In RL you would attach unit of motorised infantry in leg division to provide quick reaction force. And tanks have very different role from strongest of infantry, that is why 1945 mechanised infantry gets much stronger if battalion of mech inf is replaced by 1936 tanks, even tough on paper it should get weaker. But that is not how armor works.

But hey, we still get way more content than in Vanilla HOI3 which also did not have CA, and we get plenty of stuff that can't be added or modded into HOI3, and only loose some smaller things that can be added in, if not modded, then via DLC. And looking at EU4 and CK2, HOI4 should have bright post launch era.