FTM Invasions...too many, too early!!

[plasticpanzers]

Every FTM game I have played so far has far too many
amphibious invasions far too early in the war. Even defeated
Denmark landed a division on its coast a month after the country
had surrendered. There is just no way that so many over the beach
invasions could occur. It took years to design, build, and collect
enough landing craft for what I see so far. Nations should have
to research "Landing Craft" to land at any other point than a port.
Even the Germans in Norway attacked all the ports, not the coast.
Its not a question of transports, its how you get all the troops
ashore. early transports use lifeboats. Hard to get a 150mm
howitzer into one let alone a truck. Then trying to get 40 guys
ashore in bad weather in an open rowed or low engine powered
lifeboat inmasse is suicide, especially in bad weather. There
really needs to be some hard looks done at how invasions are
done. The improved AI, graphics, and details are great but
when you continue to allow and now even encourage the AI
to conduct these over the top repeated amphibious landings
so early in the war 1940 with 50-80,000 men, it just drops
the flavor and history of the game into the sandbox again and
we know what gets left in sandboxes...

 

[unmerged(229769)]

I have to agree with this. One of the major problems that needed to be overcome in WWII was how to do successful land invasions and it took alot of time to design and create all the specialized landing craft and equipment that the game now gives to everyone in the beginning of the game. Maybe having a "landing craft" research tech could be needed to do major invasions at least.

 

[civlibprof]

+1, I would go even further and make the ability to do oversea invasions its own technology track. Reduced penalties for each level of research of course level 1 allows non port attack.

 

[Spricar]

Every FTM game I have played so far has far too many
amphibious invasions far too early in the war. Even defeated
Denmark landed a division on its coast a month after the country
had surrendered. There is just no way that so many over the beach
invasions could occur. It took years to design, build, and collect
enough landing craft for what I see so far. Nations should have
to research "Landing Craft" to land at any other point than a port.
Even the Germans in Norway attacked all the ports, not the coast.
Its not a question of transports, its how you get all the troops
ashore. early transports use lifeboats. Hard to get a 150mm
howitzer into one let alone a truck. Then trying to get 40 guys
ashore in bad weather in an open rowed or low engine powered
lifeboat inmasse is suicide, especially in bad weather. There
really needs to be some hard looks done at how invasions are
done. The improved AI, graphics, and details are great but
when you continue to allow and now even encourage the AI
to conduct these over the top repeated amphibious landings
so early in the war 1940 with 50-80,000 men, it just drops
the flavor and history of the game into the sandbox again and
we know what gets left in sandboxes...

+1

 

[BattleMoose]

An amphibious landing is not that hard, for all the disaster Gallipoli was, they did successfully get ashore and maintained their position for some time, they were not dislodged, they retreated, this was WWI. An opposed landing I agree is an entirely different matter but lets face it, the entire coast line of Europe was not manned after the fall of France, it should have been an easy task to land troops unopposed.

Although, their fate afterwards would have been relatively doomed, but they could get ashore.

Also, for historic precedence, the Anzio landing was achieved with relatively minimal planning.

 

[krogoth21]

Armed landing on shores outside ports have been conducted since the Ancient Greece history. Remember that without Marines and amphibious warfare + massive air/naval support, you'll never land in a province which is guarded by a Garrison division. So for me the tech requirement and difficulty for landings are well represented ingame. If you don't man your shores, why couldn't an entire army land even by swiming from their cargo ships ? if there's nobody to face them.
The problem is the survivability of that army, and i've seen (FTM latest patch) UK make endless suicide landing in German territory, and this behaviour is bad, not the fact that it is possible.

 

[unmerged(54975)]

One of the major problems with the game in my opinion has always been the lack of naval invasions and even once they became more common they were still not a threat due to it being single division spam.

I just did my first game in 3.04 and decided to play as Argentina for a change, so you can imagine my mix of delight and horror as the USA launched an invasion with 19 divisions. It quickly became laughter though as they were slaughtered due to the huge stacking penalty. I lost 600 men they lost 18000 :O They also shipped plenty of divisions into Columbia which led to my total defeat.

 

[plasticpanzers]

Do some reading about Guadalcanal. It was a terrible landing and even after days
only part of what they needed got ashore and they had the early Higgins boats to
boot (early non-ramped LCVP). Yes you can land just about anywhere with a small
group but try and land 60,000 men with tanks, trucks, and artillery over a beach in
1940 and your screwed. There are NO landing craft as such, just barges and lifeboats.
Try and imagine a two ton truck balanced over two lifeboats motored ashore x 500 then
ammo and fuel and tents and all the other stuff. Ports in modern invasions are a absolute
neccessity without landing craft. Gallipoli mentioned but do you remember the liner the
Brits converted into a "landing ship" with ramps over boats? The men were cut to ribbons
by Turkish MG fire. They could not support the landing by barge/lifeboat and it collapsed
within a mile or so of the shore. Again real history of WW2 shows you need to research a
technique of landing on opposed shoreline in tandem with purpose built landing craft to carry
heavy equippment ashore. A landing craft type Tech must be introduced so that you have
to spend research to get there just like we did in real life. A start date of 1943 gives you
the ability to do it in 1940 and have it researched by 1941. The Germans needed their
Seibel Ferries for Sealion, they did not appear in a puff of smoke, nor did the Higgins boat.

 

[podcat]

I just did my first game in 3.04 and decided to play as Argentina for a change, so you can imagine my mix of delight and horror as the USA launched an invasion with 19 divisions. It quickly became laughter though as they were slaughtered due to the huge stacking penalty. I lost 600 men they lost 18000 :O They also shipped plenty of divisions into Columbia which led to my total defeat.

seems like ai got the last laugh though

 

[Think Tank]

This seems to relate to the thread on the FTM strategic ai being unbalanced

Link If you want to see a possible cause.

 

[Rancher]

Generally agree with this thread
1. If easy to land troops on unguarded coast line IRL but troops get slaughtered afterwards, this seems to be covered by the "suicide landings as described
2. Major problem seems to me to be that AI keeps on invading, surely 1 or 2 would teach the Generals something
3. Another tech track seems a good idea
4. If discussing Overlord or some other major invasions of WW2 this raises once more the ugly head of how do you create one of these without controlling the allied troops. eg during Overlord the player or the AI would need to have overall command of at least Brit, US and Canadian troops and ships and aircraft At this time this is impossible so the above is not feasible until this is fixed.
Yes I know Guadalcanal was US only but much of the European theatre (which is what HOI3 is mainly concerned with) had invasions that incorporated more than one nation. But I take the point that fixing invasions would go someway to reality

 

[krogoth21]

Do some reading about Guadalcanal. ... The Germans needed their
Seibel Ferries for Sealion, they did not appear in a puff of smoke, nor did the Higgins boat.

All that you say is true, but i must point out something : there were somebody on the shore to counter the landing, so again, where there's nobody, you can land whatever you want, and where there's a garrison, you found yourself in a hell of a battle, it is well represented ingame, man your shores and no-one will land on them without having a hard time doing it.

Generally agree with this thread
1. If easy to land troops on unguarded coast line IRL but troops get slaughtered afterwards, this seems to be covered by the "suicide landings as described
2. Major problem seems to me to be that AI keeps on invading, surely 1 or 2 would teach the Generals something
3. Another tech track seems a good idea
4. If discussing Overlord or some other major invasions of WW2 this raises once more the ugly head of how do you create one of these without controlling the allied troops. eg during Overlord the player or the AI would need to have overall command of at least Brit, US and Canadian troops and ships and aircraft At this time this is impossible so the above is not feasible until this is fixed.
Yes I know Guadalcanal was US only but much of the European theatre (which is what HOI3 is mainly concerned with) had invasions that incorporated more than one nation. But I take the point that fixing invasions would go someway to reality

+1

 

[EnsignElliott]

Generally agree with this thread
1. If easy to land troops on unguarded coast line IRL but troops get slaughtered afterwards, this seems to be covered by the "suicide landings as described
2. Major problem seems to me to be that AI keeps on invading, surely 1 or 2 would teach the Generals something
3. Another tech track seems a good idea
4. If discussing Overlord or some other major invasions of WW2 this raises once more the ugly head of how do you create one of these without controlling the allied troops. eg during Overlord the player or the AI would need to have overall command of at least Brit, US and Canadian troops and ships and aircraft At this time this is impossible so the above is not feasible until this is fixed.
Yes I know Guadalcanal was US only but much of the European theatre (which is what HOI3 is mainly concerned with) had invasions that incorporated more than one nation. But I take the point that fixing invasions would go someway to reality

+1. It would be very handy to control allied armies as well as your own (like in AoD).

 

[Pugmak]

Generally agree with this thread
1. If easy to land troops on unguarded coast line IRL but troops get slaughtered afterwards, this seems to be covered by the "suicide landings as described
2. Major problem seems to me to be that AI keeps on invading, surely 1 or 2 would teach the Generals something
3. Another tech track seems a good idea
4. If discussing Overlord or some other major invasions of WW2 this raises once more the ugly head of how do you create one of these without controlling the allied troops. eg during Overlord the player or the AI would need to have overall command of at least Brit, US and Canadian troops and ships and aircraft At this time this is impossible so the above is not feasible until this is fixed.
Yes I know Guadalcanal was US only but much of the European theatre (which is what HOI3 is mainly concerned with) had invasions that incorporated more than one nation. But I take the point that fixing invasions would go someway to reality

4. Overlord, and every other successful amphib op of any real scale, was possible because the USMC and USN began serious work on amphib operations in 1930. Much testing, much trials, many exercises. Each of which pointed out deficiencies, problems and areas of concern. If you are interested in an insider's view of what went into it all, you can read "First to Fight" by Gen. Krulak. In his younger years in the Corps, Krulak was directly involved, either in the exercises or on the planning, evaluation staff during nearly the entire span of the development of the doctrine and specialized equipments required for successful large scale amphib ops.

 

[Red Phil]

Playing as UK 1936

Well the USA have done a great job in the pacific taking islands and also conducting a succesful landing in Southern Japan in 1943. However once they landed it has not been a easy fight so at least the Japanese AI did a good job of putting up some defence at Home. Also in Jan 44 the USA conducted a succesful invasion of the Netherlands and once it had liberated the Netherlands it gave all the invasion forces to the Netherlands, Germans are having a problem throwing them out and as the UK I am planning the Normandy landing to try and link up. (To many enemy in Belgium to try and land along side.)

 

[Corelli]

I think it is a pretty fine line to tread and don't envy Paradox's job in coding the invasion AI.

I suppose what could be done is to add proviso's for the Allied AI to launch invasions:
Add an amphibious invasion tech that has to be researched. While yes you can land unopposed from transport ships, the speed at which troops moved in WWII was faster than anything before so getting troops, supplies and heavy guns ashore FAST is key to success, this requires planning and special landing equipment.
No invasions of less than (x) divisions in strength in German held territory before Germany and Russia go to war
After the starts no invasions of less than (x) strength
Invasions against smaller Axis powers could have it's own (x) strength required.
You may also want to hard code in units to STAY in the home country of the nation doing the invasion so they don't empty out their country making them extremely easy to counter invade (like Di:G has done with Britain). Certain provinces HAVE to be defended by divisions and you subtract those divisions from your available invasion force pool.

The invasion AI in the Pacific is a different animal all together since historically they hit islands where the islands were so small or the jungle so thick that it impeded fast reaction from the defense that getting troops ashore unopposed didn't require anything special. Now it obviously requires special equipment for opposed landings, which a lot of the smaller islands had.

Each Pacific nation should also have to keep certain home provinces garrisoned (I'm looking at you here Japan) to keep them from being easy prey from surprise invasions.

 

[juv95hrn]

Maybe this (along with leaders) chould be the theme for the next expansion? ;-)

Don't forget how easy it is to evacuate to waiting transports without port facilites in game. Dunkirk and other examples shows it wasn't all that easy.

 

[No idea]

+1. It would be very handy to control allied armies as well as your own (like in AoD).

This is one of the main reasons why is more difficult to win the game as the UK or USA than as Germany. As Germany, you don´t need anybody else, but USA and UK need each other. Giving control of the armies to the allied player, would make things easier and more realistic. This could be achieved by allowing certain (let´s say, the major ones) countries to ask another ones for expeditionary forces AND planes/ships (for example, a UK player asking USA AI for X number of land divisions and X number of planes)

 

[Cainrae]

Simply do what the German's did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Wall

Having played as Germany and experienced these invasions, building forts and coastal fortifications really helped stop invasions of my occupied territory.

 

[FOARP]

Maybe this (along with leaders) chould be the theme for the next expansion? ;-)

I'll say this again - we shouldn't have to pay for fixes!