Exceeding Combat Width Penalties for sub-20 width divisions

[eastcoastceojam]

Until some digging in a recent game, I was unaware that Combat Width penalties applied to all divisions in a battle. I assumed that (a) only the last-division-in-the-fight would be affected by this debuff, and (b) divisions under 20 width wouldn't be impacted as much, since they had they had the problem of "un-used" width, instead of being too large to be divisible by 20. D'oh!

Here I'm playing as Yugoslavia, and fighting a solo war against Romania. Since my industrial capacity and Army XP is limited, I have 28 8/1, 19 width divisions. I was thinking that 28 8/1 units are better than 14 7/2 units, and I could always upgrade those divisions to a proper 20 width later, when I had enough equipment for the extra artillery battalions.

But looking at an early battle, the penalties to attack from the 19 width template are pretty significant (-21.60%), and apply to every one of my divisions in the fight.

I'm winning the battle since I have so many more units than Romania, but I wondering if I'm wasting my time with the 8/1 division as a stop-gap until I have the equipment I need for lots of 7/2 divisions.

Of course, as this war goes on, and my units spread out, the width penalties mostly disappear since I rarely have 5+ divisions in a single battle.

Let me know what you think.

Land battle - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

Divisions will be added from the reserve unless the combat width penalty exceeds 33%. The combat width penalty is calculated as 2 * (total_width - battle_width) / battle_width, so this shows that in a 80-width battle, it is possible to have a 93 width (penalty of 32.5%), but not a hypothetical width of 94 (penalty of 35%).

 

[Akela]

It's not hurting you quite as much as it seems, if you compare to the total stats you'd have with six divisions in the fight. Yes, that's a significant penalty, but it's offset by the fact that you have a whole extra unit on the field - you've brought 17% more troops to the field than you could have if you'd stayed under combat width.

Running the numbers, you have 78% * 7 = effectively 5.6 divisions worth of total attack - so only about a 7% total attack loss relative to what you would have had from the six divisions that could fit inside combat width. I don't remember off the top of my head if breakthrough is affected by the penalty, but I'm pretty sure that org is not, so you're actually ahead there relative to those hypothetical six divisions. Yes, going over combat width definitely is suboptimal, but it's not as bad as it looks at first glance.

If you've got the XP for it, though, you might want to consider making a duplicate template and splitting your forces between 7/2 and 10/0 rather than making them all 8/1. That way you bypass the combat width issue entirely (and have a bit of extra flexibility to put extra firepower where you need it while the pure infantry makes up the numbers).

 

[eastcoastceojam]

It's not hurting you quite as much as it seems, if you compare to the total stats you'd have with six divisions in the fight. Yes, that's a significant penalty, but it's offset by the fact that you have a whole extra unit on the field - you've brought 17% more troops to the field than you could have if you'd stayed under combat width.

Running the numbers, you have 78% * 7 = effectively 5.6 divisions worth of total attack - so only about a 7% total attack loss relative to what you would have had from the six divisions that could fit inside combat width. I don't remember off the top of my head if breakthrough is affected by the penalty, but I'm pretty sure that org is not, so you're actually ahead there relative to those hypothetical six divisions. Yes, going over combat width definitely is suboptimal, but it's not as bad as it looks at first glance.

If you've got the XP for it, though, you might want to consider making a duplicate template and splitting your forces between 7/2 and 10/0 rather than making them all 8/1. That way you bypass the combat width issue entirely (and have a bit of extra flexibility to put extra firepower where you need it while the pure infantry makes up the numbers).

Thanks for the detailed response.

I think the take-away here is that the 8/1 is fine as a temporary stop-gap, but that I should transition as soon as possible to a full 7/2, even if I need to convert some of 8/1 divs back to all infantry templates to free up the artillery pieces.

In this scenario, the 8/1 did the job by giving Yugo 2x the units, and letting me shove as much soft attack as possible into an early war, but the width penalty is severe and easily corrected, so there's no reason to use that template for very long.

 

[el nora]

I'm going to hard disagree with @Akela. The penalty is huge, you lose much more ic and manpower to deal much less damage. The extra org is meaningless.

The extra org from the seventh division brings absolutely nothing to the battle, you would have had access to that org anyway from reinforcement if you had needed it. But in its place you pay 16.67% more ic and manpower upfront to deal 8.53% less total damage and have 21.6% less individual breakthrough per division. That loss in breakthrough is hell on your divisions, causing them to take much more damage per hour in combat. The amount of extra damage taken is dependent on circumstances, here it is something like 10-15% extra damage taken. Combined, you are bleeding about 30% more manpower and ic per hour of combat in order to deal 8.5% less damage than you would have if you had brought only 6 divisions to the battle. I would take the extra damage and less loss of men and materiel any day over the added org in this scenario.

Using those divisions in combat is actively killing your artillery stockpile. It loses more artillery in combat than 7-2 would, to say nothing of the lost guns, making it harder for you to create your desired 7-2 divisions. I would highly recommend against using 7-2 in the first place, better to use pure 10-0 on defense and 14-4 on offense if you must attack with infantry, but that is neither here nor there. Using 8-1 in combat is not a good stop gap. It is worse in all cases than the alternative. If you had simply used six 10-0 with support arty and as it appears that you're using SF doctrine with integrated support, would deal more damage than seven 8-1 deal when accounting for the overwidth penalty. And that wastes almost no artillery in combat losses. Meaning you can save up more and create your desired 7-2 sooner.

 

[STABBY5]

It's not hurting you quite as much as it seems

No its hurting far more than that. Imagine if he had a tank division in the battle. Is that extra infantry division worth 21% of it? Even worse if its a concentrated armored break through with a single odd width infantry in support. Is that extra infantry division worth 21% of 6 tank divisions? No. Odd width divisions are actively awful. There is no reason to use them unless you haven't been able to change them yet.

 

[Bergermeister]

Just use fewer 7-2’s as a new template after duplicating the old one instead of editing the current one for 8-1 then 7-2. Switch what you can afford and use them where they will do the most good.