Division spam

[ThaHoward]

Debuff manpower modifiers (UK had manpower issues, and could not form an independent offensive of their own once d-Day was done. Soviet Union was also scraping their barrels after Bagration).

Perhaps make it so that after hitting scraping the barrel, you can only train "militia" or "light" battalions, i.e Volksgrenadiers. To better represent what happens when you do that, discourage even more to go for that decision and spam troops.

Reworked supply system. Make supply lines drain manpower. Perhaps also differentiate between horse supply lines and motorized ones. Maybe also attrition far away from your supply lines will cause manpower loss. Even more so if you lack trucks.

These might at least debuff manpower and make it less appealing to pump out many divisions and much equipment.

 

[Harin]

The question we should be asking here is; What is the utility of us debating solutions to a problem if the developers don't manifest? It seems to me that Paradox do not have a sector responsible for listening to the community and bringing the thought of the public to the table of those responsible for producing corrections and new content. It is useless to have a forum if they ignore our petitions.

Many days, your post describes how I feel about the quietness of the HOI4 team. I have no statistics, so this is me talking out of my bottom half, but I would guess that 80% to 90% of the days of the year go by without a post from a HOI4 team member. I would love to be wrong.

After I let myself cooldown though, I realize that the team is to dang small for the job we want them to do and the communication we want to have with them. I then realize I am really upset with the suits over there who will not give the HOI4 team the resources they need to meet the players expectations and wishes.

Even so, I would disagree that the HOI4 team is ignoring our petitions. In the Turkish focus tree, it appears they were reading, with interest, threads from players on this forum about Turkey. I have heard people post before that they have seen things in the change log that they had asked for on these forums.

Is it enough? Not at all, but at least this small team does seem to try. I do not envy them. There is us on the forums, numbering hundreds? thousands? And then there are those outside the forums numbering hundreds of thousands who play the game, and even more hundreds of thousands I am sure the HOI4 team would like to get interested in the game for the first time.

Who to please? How to do it? And with this small team? Get me a drink!

 

[Meglok]

Just be aware that limiting division spam will have consequences. @podcat has said in the past that the ai front system works best with enough divisions to play with, especially over long fronts. If you start capping the number of divisions it can lead to worse front shuffling.

 

[Simon Marques]

Just be aware that limiting division spam will have consequences. @podcat has said in the past that the ai front system works best with enough divisions to play with, especially over long fronts. If you start capping the number of divisions it can lead to worse front shuffling.

Have you ever played "Go"? Occupy the maximum territory with the minimum of resources.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

Just be aware that limiting division spam will have consequences. @podcat has said in the past that the ai front system works best with enough divisions to play with, especially over long fronts. If you start capping the number of divisions it can lead to worse front shuffling.

That is correct. So I'd like to mention one of the advantages I see in the division limit system Kaiserreich uses. There is a maximum number of divisions assigned based on the economic law in place. The highest value being 300 divisions. There are modifiers for being a major (15%) and world tension (5%) .

More importantly, you can assign a modifier per nation.

So while Germany would max out at 360 divisions, Soviets could be given a national modifier of 300, letting them max out at 720.

That would not cause any additional problems for the AI (ie front shuffling), by allowing the larger nations to retain a large division count.

 

[Meglok]

Have you ever played "Go"? Occupy the maximum territory with the minimum of resources.

And that pertains to the way the HOI4 front coding works exactly how? I was stating info directly from the project manager. This topic has come up before just a few dozen times and Podcast did take the time to explain the reasoning of division spam. It has been a while since he said this, and they have managed to chip away at the issue. But the fact still remains that if you start artificially capping the number of units the ai has to play with, you risk increasing the front shuffling.

 

[GSP Jr]

But the fact still remains that if you start artificially capping the number of units the ai has to play with, you risk increasing the front shuffling.

If a "division cap" was implemented globally and arbitrarily, it would be a disaster, it's true.
However, limiting tiny island nations or countries like El Salvador and Uruguay severely and limiting division spam on a sliding, adjustable scale for other nations (like Kaiserreich as mentioned above) would seem to be a good answer. The excuse of it weakening the AI or causing shuffling is definitely a problem also, but two wrongs (unit saturation + poor defensive AI) in this case DO NOT make it a fun war, lol. At the very least, before the AI countries reach 'full strength' their fronts will shuffle, and after casualties take effect their fronts will shuffle again. Sorry, that is not a good AI and needs to be fixed.

The way to break up the unit-saturation log jam?? - add 5,000 planes per air zone!!

Let's hope that this dual problem is top priority for 1.11, the unit bloat, in my opinion, really is the biggest problem in the game today.

 

[Simon Marques]

And that pertains to the way the HOI4 front coding works exactly how? I was stating info directly from the project manager. This topic has come up before just a few dozen times and Podcast did take the time to explain the reasoning of division spam. It has been a while since he said this, and they have managed to chip away at the issue. But the fact still remains that if you start artificially capping the number of units the ai has to play with, you risk increasing the front shuffling.

I'm sorry, I don't think I understood you correctly, I thought you were referring to something else, sometimes English makes me confused.

 

[2brucben]

I feel like yall dont even read each others replies... My idea was very simple and would be the best solution. Have a lenient division cap based upon factors such as country size, front length, opponent size... Ecuador in it's 1936 state does NOT need 200+ divisions!

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

I feel like yall dont even read each others replies... My idea was very simple and would be the best solution.

Funny.

 

[Colonel_Kraken]

I'm not so concerned with how many divisions a particular nation fields. My only concern is how the AI focuses on fielding divisions at the expense of almost everything else. I will typically switch sides late in the war to give myself a challenge. ALWAYS, the AI has SOOOOO many divisions in the queue that it cannot possibly produce anything else because it is using nearly all of its factories to produce infantry weapons and support supplies.

For quite a while I would be extremely puzzled that USA or Germany had a HUGE deficit of Steel. Huh?? Then I thought to click on X5 and then X10 for factories on Infantry Weapons. The AI was producing so much Inf Weapons that it was using ALL of its steel to produce them. Now THAT is a real problem! And . . . it sucks ALL of its manpower to do so. Ugghhh! Why cannot the AI be "trained" (i.e. told) to save 1 million or so of its manpower for casualties, etc. ??!!!