Yeah, I saw that but it isn't the same. The description indicates that is a line which you fall back too from the initial front. I'm talking about a line which your forces simply sit at and await the enemy to reach from day one, no "falling back" necessary and something you can position your forces along in peacetime. The military term for this is "main line of resistance", or MLR.
Hearts of Iron IV - 45th Development Diary - 19th of February 2016
- Thread starter podcat
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Yeah, I saw that but it isn't the same. The description indicates that is a line which you fall back too from the initial front. I'm talking about a line which your forces simply sit at and await the enemy to reach from day one, no "falling back" necessary and something you can position your forces along in peacetime. The military term for this is "main line of resistance", or MLR.
Pretty sure that you can use this in that way. In www Daniel uses this along the french coast as a line of defence.
Too late, I already quoted Moltke, and yes, I used the shorter quote.
It is more likely, however, that whatever Moltke said was in German, and so any translation will fall somewhat sort of the mark.
Regrettably I have not been able to find the original quote in German.
The likely problem, as I see it, is that resistance to the units of the battle plan is likely not even across its face. So taking the large Purple Army advancing across a wide front, what will happen if there is an area of severe resistance? Will units to the right and left of the province of resistance simply continue along their pre-planned route, leaving the divisions pitted against the pocket of resistance to go it alone? Will some of the units peel off from the right and left to encircle the pocket? Will the whole advance stop until the pocket retreats or is destroyed? What will happen?
Given that the plan may have a 5 province wide starting point and a 10 province wide battle line, what will happen? Will the troops in each province just attack those in front of them? Will two or three provinces coordinate in an attack on one enemy province? I felt that the AI in HOI3 was pretty good at brute force attacking, but not so much at attacking well and making use of the right unit types (mountain troops in the mountains for example). Has that been improved, or am I just going to watch as my whole army attacks straight ahead?
If it so happens that the player has to manually intervene whenever their is any hiccup in the plan, then, while the idea of plans sounds neat, wouldn't it just be another layer of management on top of the existing layers? If the plan will change itself, then what control does the player have over that? What if I want any non-engaged divisions to advance as fast as possible, ignoring battles near them? Can I set the plan to do that? Or if I want pockets to be concentrated on and cleared, can I plan that? If I can embed that kind of logic in the plan then things could be good. If I have to stop the plan every three days to take care of something then I'd wonder why I wasn't just handling all the units manually to start with. You can already take a stack of units and give them a complex movement order chain of dozens of provinces.
I really like the idea of Battle Plans. I'm worried that the implementation of the plan will not be good, or it will require so much maintenance that, other than the preparation combat bonus, I might as well have done it all myself in the first place.
Given that the plan may have a 5 province wide starting point and a 10 province wide battle line, what will happen? Will the troops in each province just attack those in front of them? Will two or three provinces coordinate in an attack on one enemy province? I felt that the AI in HOI3 was pretty good at brute force attacking, but not so much at attacking well and making use of the right unit types (mountain troops in the mountains for example). Has that been improved, or am I just going to watch as my whole army attacks straight ahead?
If it so happens that the player has to manually intervene whenever their is any hiccup in the plan, then, while the idea of plans sounds neat, wouldn't it just be another layer of management on top of the existing layers? If the plan will change itself, then what control does the player have over that? What if I want any non-engaged divisions to advance as fast as possible, ignoring battles near them? Can I set the plan to do that? Or if I want pockets to be concentrated on and cleared, can I plan that? If I can embed that kind of logic in the plan then things could be good. If I have to stop the plan every three days to take care of something then I'd wonder why I wasn't just handling all the units manually to start with. You can already take a stack of units and give them a complex movement order chain of dozens of provinces.
I really like the idea of Battle Plans. I'm worried that the implementation of the plan will not be good, or it will require so much maintenance that, other than the preparation combat bonus, I might as well have done it all myself in the first place.
- 1
Indeed battle plans as shown in the OP are fine as long as the enemy is weak and the player is ready to intervene almost from the first day, if you have almost any resistance from the enemy AI the Plan will quickly degenerate into a mess with some parts moving forward towards a new Front line and other parts grinding away against a force it may not be able to defeat.
The less complex a plan the more control the AI has and the more likely the player will need to intervene the more complex a plan the less control the AI has and the more likely the player will not need to intervene.
The latter requires less intervention by the player when instructions are being implemented but more involvement by the player when instructions are being issued, this is known in the military and it may come as a surprise to some people as a Plan! And why a Plan should get a preparation bonus.
The former requires more intervention by the player when being implemented because and this may also come as a surprise to people the AI has no military training whatsoever and has about as much military acumen as a mushroom so as your Divisions move forward under the control of this type of fungi the player will need to intervene on a regular basis which of course implies that you really did not have Plan.
- 1
If micro translates into using groups or one or a few units, the benefit of a group commander will only extend to those few units directly under that commander.
I am hopeful that the battle plans will give the player a good experience -- You might have general control of the attack, but not absolute control, to represent field commanders making mistakes or going off on their own, but you still maintain the ability to issue orders during the attack to get them back on track. It is going to be like herding cats to Moscow, but that might not be a bad thing.
- 2
I believe the solution to the problem you've put forth is to use generals instead of field marshals across a wide front (generals are the ones with a limit of 12 divisions right?). This way you could have many lines of battle and instead of having to re-draw the whole plan in order to react to your opponents maneuvers and counter-attacks, you need only re-draw the plan of 1 of however many armies you have, thus saving the remains of the planning bonus of your other armies. I'm sure that not even Hitler in his more insane moments would have thought to assign a single man to control the entire front against the Soviets. That said I guess Daniel has done more or less that in his conquest of the Soviets (although against a severely crippled Trotsky-USSR
).- 2
I think that could result in terrible game play, you will get little or no satisfaction from your Plan and spend most of the time chasing after your own AI trying to prevent it doing something idiotic, its almost the antithesis of game play.
The first screenshot of the DD shows the southern group splitting into two separate axis of advance in the Ukraine (while staying under the command of a single leader). I believe the player is able to choose which divisions follow which arrow:
Given this, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to split an army among different front lines. So if there is a path (with starting point) that you want your mountain divisions to tackle, you should be able to do that, without forming a separate army.
For the problem of having units under manual control revert to AI idiocy once they complete their manual orders, what about pausing plans? As long as pausing the plan doesn't negate the built-up planning bonus, then I could see pausing the plan as a way to tell the AI "don't do anything" while enabling complete manual control without potential interference.
Given this, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to split an army among different front lines. So if there is a path (with starting point) that you want your mountain divisions to tackle, you should be able to do that, without forming a separate army.
For the problem of having units under manual control revert to AI idiocy once they complete their manual orders, what about pausing plans? As long as pausing the plan doesn't negate the built-up planning bonus, then I could see pausing the plan as a way to tell the AI "don't do anything" while enabling complete manual control without potential interference.
Oh, ye of little faith ... Give it a chance. It is going to be like Starcraft but with a WWII theme.
Yes, you are right. If you designate a special axis of advance for the mountaineers through the mountains, then presumably when you position the mountaineers opposite the mountains where they are destined to fight, then when they revert to AI control, the AI will know enough to keep them there rather than jumble them along the rest of the front. (At least I would assume, and hope, that it would.)
- 1
Will we have engineers brigades in game? Will they give any bonuses in entrenchment(for example giving divisions more entertainment levels)? In defence ? In attacking (more effective in destroying fortifications, entrenchment)?
Yes :
"Engineers
Helps out when attacking forts and crossing rivers, as well as making far better entrenchments and defending in forts and behind rivers.
Requires Infantry Equipment and Support equipment."
- 1
It may force you to wait nearly 1% of the game timeframe per plan doing nothing and more than likely make you lose momentum, hopefully there won´t be any attack delay (as in HOI III) on top of that too. In my book this is another stalling mechanism to compensate for the their very poor AI just like the unbelievably high time that we will have to wait for CBs unless we are Axis, amphibious landings requiring plans, etc. etc. I wish they scrapped the workarounds and instead focused on the real problem which is to improve their AI in a meaningful way.
@Modestus Unfortunately there is no "funny" button in this forum because I would be pushing it almost everytime you post.
Last edited:
- 2
- 1
I personally love that they're experimenting with this. Would love to see other such features, too. For example intel arriving more slowly instead of being instantly shown to you when you move to a new province.
- 1
Have you tried playing EU IV with a perpetual regency council? Since you like waiting that much I think it would suit you perfectly.
- 2
Not to argue with you but just to understand. Do you claim that the game should leave some more freedom some country (such as, for example, the USA) to wage war?
This is a war game isn’t it? I have no idea of how many games I played in HOI III but beleive me when say that I played a lot but I barely touched the USA. Why? Because I had to wait half of the game before being allowed to actually wage war unless I gamed the game pretty hard (...) the fact that the US is hugely powerful did not help either but I digress. B4 someone jumps in with realism (etc.) remarks I gently remind you that the dev team thrown it out of the window with some simplifications and especially when they decided to make tanks and ships run on "fairy dust" for most likely convenience (EU IV starting canvas).
Last edited:
- 2
- 1
Just because the dev team makes one historically implausible design decision doesn't mean we should encourage them to make more! The Battle Plan approach to operational pauses looks better than the per-unit approach in HoI3, and operational pauses were (and are) very much a thing in warfare. It's not as if you have to put your whole military on hold while one plan prepares (well, as long as you're playing a major), there'll be stuff happening in other places, so it's not like you'll be sitting around doing nothing. Just my 2 cents, and keep in mind I'm very much in the pro-plausibility camp, so if you're looking at it more from a "prefer a quick-paced WW2 themed RTS" rather than something a bit more grounded in the mechanics of the period our preferences will clearly differ, and that's not a bad thing
.- 3
I'll reply to this because it's the only sentence in your post that isn't a sarcastic remark or otherwise unhelpful.
HOI4 is a grand strategy game, featuring production, research, diplomacy, and logistics -- so no, it's not a pure war game as such. It's a war game as much as War in the East and Battlefield, but it also features things like research and production, diplomacy, and logistics to a much larger degree. They don't have to be, Project Reality features as much logistics and base-building as it does fighting, but their formula works. You spawn close to the combat and spend most of the gameplay fighting.
The beauty of the Paradox games, as I see it, is that it's a sandbox that has so many play styles. The thing I often disliked in RTS games and games like Civ was how similar the different civs/factions were. In the Paradox games, you can play as pretty much any nation that existed during the time frame. If you don't want to spend years building up your armies, don't. Play as Japan or Spain or Italy or some other nation that goes to war early. Every nation requires a different approach, and there's bound to be one that suits you.
Likewise, if you don't think waiting and preparing suits your play style, don't. Charge ahead and make do without that bonus. You will probably be able to build your forces around this strategy. In fact, I'd like to read an AAR by someone attempting this.
Not to mention that, of course, preparations before combat is part of fighting a war. It's kinda like how Gran Turismo let you spend time buying and installing upgrades for your cars, and doing all kinds of tinkering to make them run faster and more effectively. Did that make GT any less of a racing game? Nope, it just took a different approach than, for example, Ridge Racer or Need for Speed.
- 5
- 1