Hearts of Iron IV - 45th Development Diary - 19th of February 2016

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Like I said before that is not what the plans in HOI IV do, in HOI IV everything is ready but the units need to remain idle

Incorrect. You draw up the plan, assign the units, and then the units move to the required position for the plan.

Maybe they are sending every soldier on tour to the target area during the night or on a mosquito to make sure they are physically fit and won´t get lost on their way to the target? ;) :p

Or, more reasonably, they are ensuring that the supply chains are arranged, coordination with air and fire support is in order, various unit and sub-unit commanders are briefed, specialist personnel are in place, and all the other many, many things that a formation is supposed to do before the plan it is apart reaches the execution phase. You are ludicrously underestimating just how much preparation goes into a major offensive in modern war, even at the sub-divisional level.
 
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I certainly hope for a good tutorial :)
 
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I was thinking to have a GENERAL like Guderian in the "dent" in Poland's South frontier with armored and mech. to spearhead for Warsaw, but encircle, if the opportunity allows it, with say 1/2 half my divisions. While programming a "delay" for the main infantry push under an infantry FIELD MARSHALL (to allow the armored spearhead to penetrate and encircle Polish units along the front-line) ?

Is it possible to have a delayed attack to allow armored units to penetrate?
 
I was thinking to have a GENERAL like Guderian in the "dent" in Poland's South frontier with armored and mech. to spearhead for Warsaw, but encircle, if the opportunity allows it, with say 1/2 half my divisions. While programming a "delay" for the main infantry push under an infantry FIELD MARSHALL (to allow the armored spearhead to penetrate and encircle Polish units along the front-line) ?

Is it possible to have a delayed attack to allow armored units to penetrate?

I'm pretty sure that plans have a 'go' button, as well as different stages, so I'd expect (but don't know for sure, but am fairly confident from what we've seen) you could maybe set a one province deep first stage for the infantry and the full encirclement for your armoured force, and then hold the infantry at the first stage until you were satisfied with the armoured forces progress.
 
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What I have seen you have missed the ability to make splits with your Spearhead/Blitzkrieg like in the 1 and 2 picture to make encircle, pincer move and so on with one army spliting in to two or more parts and when finished rejoin the main army.
And there only seems to be some ability to make coordinated attacks with more then one army and not like in the 3 picture.
 
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Battle plans .... Will you...


-USE THEM and let the AI control my divisions.
-USE them but still correct and guide some divisions manually.
-NOT USE THEM and control all my divisions manually ?
 
In 44 days (woo!) I plan to use them and see how they go, but I expect (as the devs have advised) we'll need to adjust and adapt a bit. As long as this doesn't feel like it's beating down on the AI too much, that's what I'll do. I do like the sound of them, and what I've seen in the WWWs has been promising :).
 
I wonder if its possible to use the "garrison area" command to enact the capture of a precise line of provinces e.g. with panzers behind the enemy front to encircle them and then mopping up with separate infantry forces...

Drawback would probably be that you can´t implement a real plan ( for the combat bonus ) with that.
 
Garrison area covers whole states, not provinces.
 
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Battle plans .... Will you...


-USE THEM and let the AI control my divisions.
-USE them but still correct and guide some divisions manually.
-NOT USE THEM and control all my divisions manually ?

I think I'll do the top one if the AI does it decently. I'll probably use more than one battleplan though - infantry under a field marshal, then individual generals for each of my more interesting unit types (EG: Tank leader general controlling the tank divisions, cavalry expert in charge of those, mountaineers under another general and so on), and give those smaller battleplans overlapping the general infantry advance.
 
I know this post is old, but:

How do I actually "chain" battle plan commands like in the picture? Since release I never managed to do that?
Especially the combining/splitting of 2 parts of an army.
 
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I know this post is old, but:

How do I actually "chain" battle plan commands like in the picture? Since release I never managed to do that?
Especially the combining/splitting of 2 parts of an army.

Within each army group, you can select sub-groups of units, and give them their own front lines and attack vectors. If you keep the same group attached, you can give them a second attack vector (sorry, tired, can't recall the formal name) based off the end of the second. Try it in game - select half an army group, give them a front line, draw an attack vector, then draw another one after that.

That said, I'm not sure how to combine orders from two parts of an army after they've been split (but have never tried).
 
I've seen it whipped out triple quick in a battle plan instructional video, but struggle to do it myself without BP command arrows waving around and offensive lines sticking together like duct tape twisting in a blustery wind. I don't remember which videos, but there some of that in Bridger's guides to BPing.
 
Press tab when drawing subsequent plans to control where those plans originate from. If you're just chaining an entire army's plans, keep an eye on the text that says how many divisions will be assigned -- you can easily tell when you've hit the correct source when it goes from '0 divisions' to '24 divisions'.
 
If you have an army of say 24 divisions with 2 separate plans, then when one of them finishes and results in no unconnected front left to cover, it will automatically reassign its divisions to the main one.
This is immediately obvious (and the AI does this for you sometimes) when your army makes a pocket, e.g. against the coast. It'll slowly finish the pocket, then the divisions assigned to it get reassigned to the main thrust.
Assuming the target is a single province, it seems like if you had 2 thrusts and one of them finished (= a division reached the target), they'd fold into the other.