Divisions capitulate too easy when retreating.

[Trentos]

So, I'm a big fan a hopeless German defensive situation and I love the Gotterdamerung Mod starting late 1944 which paints a pretty dire situation for German forces especially in the East. I try building forts on the Vistula West bank and retreating my forces back into those position to put up a strong defence. Something frustrating I have found is that my units seem unable to withdraw (with the green arrow) easily without getting attacked and then forced to actually retreat them back (with the black arrow) into the nearest province from which the soviets overrun before they get there and then they capitulate. I went from having 30 divisions in the northern sector of the front having barely any at my newly built forts on the Vistula. Am I doing something wrong? Is there something I can do to have a systematic withdrawal and not lose much in the ways of whole divisions capitulating?

Whilst it makes sense for the enemy IRL to put pressure on the withdrawal I still don't think it's very realistic for hundreds of thousands of soldiers to just capitulate within a number of days and I don't think historically it was so final. I think trapped devisions need to hold out longer and slow the enemies advance so other division can retreat easier. Maybe represent the unit as trapped inside enemy territory without giving them a sector but show their counter on top of the enemy divisions in enemy territory, perhaps also and give movement speed penalties for enemy forces in that sector for the cleaning up operations. I do believe that whole devisions can and should capitulate without a fight but maybe this should be if the organisation, experience or morale are below a certain level in game.
Historically we can see that division remnants operating behind enemy lines can actually cause problems for the supply of the front and tie up forces i.e SS division Nord East of Frankfurt in 1945.

Whilst I acknowledge that mods can make things out of balance, I feel that this is more the mechanics of the game issue. I definitely think the defensive play in this game needs some work, especially in the area of a smart retreat.

 

[aono]

Whilst it makes sense for the enemy IRL to put pressure on the withdrawal I still don't think it's very realistic for hundreds of thousands of soldiers to just capitulate within a number of days and I don't think historically it was so final.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kiev_(1941)
Look into soviet casualities. Battle began 12 September, encircled 16 September, battle finished 26 September.
Or Battle of Vyazma. Something about half a million russian troops in 11 days.

 

[Secret Master]

I still don't think it's very realistic for hundreds of thousands of soldiers to just capitulate within a number of days and I don't think historically it was so final.

That's what the Soviets said in 1941...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kiev_(1941)
Look into soviet casualities. Battle began 12 September, encircled 16 September, battle finished 26 September.
Or Battle of Vyazma. Something about half a million russian troops in 11 days.

... nevermind, I see it's been covered.

Hell, overrun mechanics that the OP describes have been a part of wargaming since at least the 70s.

 

[Dan1109]

As Secret Master said, the issue is being overrun. Yes, very frustrating, but part of the game. While retreating, you do have a movement bonus, but if being chased by tanks or having a horrendous movement malus due to enemy air superiority, there isn't a lot you can do. I would try:

a) focus on air more, to gain air superiority, which will remove the malus on your troops' speed and give a malus to the attacker who is trying to overrun you - if the enemy has too much air superiority, you will get overrun by tanks no matter what you do.

b) manually retreat when you know you have lost the battle, but before you actually lose it. Retreating earlier will give you more time to reach the next province before the enemy shows up and attacks again. You can then move to a secondary defensive line and begin digging in and resupplying (or strategic redeploy to ensure you are not caught again by the rushing tanks, at the cost of having to rebuild your org - best done if you have a multi-layered defense). When regrouping, this time of course have enough forces so that you will be the victor, or atleast be able to 'significantly' delay the attackers prior to next retreat. If this fails, then you have lost the war regardless...

Unfortunately, with the battle planner, all retreat is dumb retreat. What the AI certainly doesn't do is a multi-layered defense, which would prevent most overrun situations....but a multi-layered defense is very "expensive" in terms of resources, therefore it is weaker per layer than a single layer defense. But if that single-layer can't hold, what's the point, you just get overrun, encircled, and GG. Multi-layered defense is guaranteed to break, but it buys time on each layer. Each layer of defense allows retreating units to have enough time to go a few layers back, dig in and resupply, so they can be at 100% Org and Str when they are attacked again.

 

[Louella]

You could try drawing a fallback line in the battle planner, and assign divisions to it, when you want them to withdraw. They'll move a lot faster then, and should have a much better chance of not getting overrun.

 

[KevinG]

You have to manually micro divisions and retreat from battles early. AI is and will never be smart enough to do this.

 

[Dan1109]

You have to manually micro divisions and retreat from battles early. AI is and will never be smart enough to do this.

It could, if PDS focused on it. But I'm not saying it would be something easy to do, rather quite difficult, but possible to do as well as some players would do manually. It would fail at times, just like sometimes humans still get overrun by the AI when facing overwhelming odds. Unlike a human, the AI won't be able to rage quit, reload 12-18 months prior, and make better divisions.

 

[Dan1109]

You could try drawing a fallback line in the battle planner, and assign divisions to it, when you want them to withdraw. They'll move a lot faster then, and should have a much better chance of not getting overrun.

Using fallback lines do not provide any additional difference in speed, other than taking micro out of it. the problem is that there is only one fallback line per commander, where as with front lines you can assign numerous contiguous front lines to a single commander, as assign individual divisions to each of the front lines. Additionally, divisions don't go to the nearest point on the fallbackline, they spread out across it, so large fallback lines are useless. Many other issues too, no need to bring them up, PDS is surely aware.

Hopefully the AI can take advantage of improvements offered by CoC and that we get the PDXCon design goal "make defense more fun" in 1.5, which I assume would include a revamp of fallback lines.

 

[Claremont Waltz]

the problem is that there is only one fallback line per commander,

100% wrong. You can have any number of fallback lines per army.