Hearts of Iron IV - Dev Diary 13 - Conscription & Training

[Secret Master]

Question:

Can I put troops into division template A, which uses Crappy Old Tank A, and train them up to regular on the map, then morph those troops to division template B, which uses Awesome New Model Tank B, and have them retain experience?

I'm asking because I was thinking of using up all my old tanks and artillery for training purposes rather than giving them to my worthless allies.

 

[smurphy99999999]

I think they said battle planner. In the stream he drew a box around a few divisions and selected a general. Then just clicked training.

I think he was referring to batch construction of divisions not ordering them to train, move, etc.

 

[franc001sher]

this dairy is too late.

 

[Bluestreak2k5]

Question:

Can I put troops into division template A, which uses Crappy Old Tank A, and train them up to regular on the map, then morph those troops to division template B, which uses Awesome New Model Tank B, and have them retain experience?

I'm asking because I was thinking of using up all my old tanks and artillery for training purposes rather than giving them to my worthless allies.

I would really like this to be implemented if it isn't.

 

[jju_57]

Question:

Can I put troops into division template A, which uses Crappy Old Tank A, and train them up to regular on the map, then morph those troops to division template B, which uses Awesome New Model Tank B, and have them retain experience?

I'm asking because I was thinking of using up all my old tanks and artillery for training purposes rather than giving them to my worthless allies.

In an older DD they said you can change a division's template but it costs XP.

I think he was referring to batch construction of divisions not ordering them to train, move, etc.

Seems rather obvious to me that you click the "add" button to construct more divisions. So maybe you have to click add 20 times for 20 new INF divisions. Remember even the largest armies only had a couple hundred divisions and that took years to actually build.

EDIT: Let me add a thought about training using old equipment. I think the key is when you switch tank types moving from light to medium to heavy. So this plan works if I train on a template using old light tanks and switch to a new template built around medium tanks. But as far as I can tell a template doesn't distinguish from using a Pz-III medium and a Pz-IV medium. So what a training division actually uses I guess will depend on what you have in storage. I haven't seen any buttons or any screen shots saying the division should use Pz-III medium tanks when newer models are available. My guess is the newest will be used for building a division as long as you have them in storage.

 

[Bluestreak2k5]

In an older DD they said you can change a division's template but it costs XP.



Seems rather obvious to me that you click the "add" button to construct more divisions. So maybe you have to click add 20 times for 20 new INF divisions. Remember even the largest armies only had a couple hundred divisions and that took years to actually build.

He's not asking about changing the template, he is asking about changing the template specifically, he is asking more if you can assign a template to have certain equipment.

Template A has 4X Artillery, 4X infantry, 4X Tanks but you want it to have 1936 artillery and Panzer I's. You assign the division template A for training.
Template B has 4X artillery, 4X infantry, 4X Tanks but you want it to have most up date equipment possible. You assign the division Template B after they have completed all training.

 

[Jazumir]

Question:

Can I put troops into division template A, which uses Crappy Old Tank A, and train them up to regular on the map, then morph those troops to division template B, which uses Awesome New Model Tank B, and have them retain experience?

I'm asking because I was thinking of using up all my old tanks and artillery for training purposes rather than giving them to my worthless allies.

I see the strategic choice you are pointing at here, SM, but still sincerely hope that there will be some xp-hit (in the changed units) for changing equipment. Else it would feel kind of gamey and not realistic. I mean, i couldnt help imaging soldiers going from PzI to Tiger and act as if everything was the same. I have been driving cars for ~2 decades now, but never an automatic - i am still totally green with that. Now, sure, this XP-hit shouldnt destroy the choice you are pointing at, but it should nevertheless be.

EDIT: Maybe 10% per tier, or so.

EDIT2: I feel like this is gonna be quite micro-heavy, btw.

 

[JustChaos]

One would be to solely focus on the tactical aspects of warfare.

So what I actually want to ask for from anyone desperately trying to pursue PDS to "keep" all the tactical warfare stuff in the game is to understand all those players like myself, who liked HoI2, even though it didn't bother with much tactical warfare. I liked HoI3 for the tactical warfare, but there was something special about HoI2, otherwise it wouldn't have been played by so many for so many hours.

It's not tactical, it's strategic warfare. There are no tactics in that scale of war, we talking about pure strategy here. Tactics is all about squad/platoon/company level of command, not even battalion/regiment. There are some great tactical games out there and only one with that planetary scale of strategy in real time and it's HoI3. We have games like Wargame trilogy or Supreme Commander (they are both RTS but they can be played with deep military thinking of battalion/company/platoon levels even considering that the second is the game about freaking robots).

I don't say that HoI4 must be all about military structure and battles, I only say that this kind of specific military stuff is very important, it's equal to diplomacy, production, espionage etc and without it HoI4 will lose a lot of depth IMHO.

 

[jju_57]

He's not asking about changing the template, he is asking about changing the template specifically, he is asking more if you can assign a template to have certain equipment.

Template A has 4X Artillery, 4X infantry, 4X Tanks but you want it to have 1936 artillery and Panzer I's. You assign the division template A for training.
Template B has 4X artillery, 4X infantry, 4X Tanks but you want it to have most up date equipment possible. You assign the division Template B after they have completed all training.

They said that you can modify a template at XP cost but then it applies to all divisions using that template. Even in this DD they said I can change the template from light to medium tanks.

It makes zero sense to have templates based on year of equipment. If you take losses you want something to reinforce. Better to reinforce your medium tank unit with Pz-III's then to have nothing since you really wanted Pz_IV's.

 

[Bluestreak2k5]

I see the strategic choice you are pointing at here, SM, but still sincerely hope that there will be some xp-hit (in the changed units) for changing equipment. Else it would feel kind of gamey and not realistic. I mean, i couldnt help imaging soldiers going from PzI to Tiger and act as if everything was the same. I have been driving cars for ~2 decades now, but never an automatic - i am still totally green with that. Now, sure, this XP-hit shouldnt destroy the choice you are pointing at, but it should nevertheless be.

I agree with you only in the case of moving in such a extreme example from a Panzer I to a Tiger. I would disagree with you as long as they are the same category... there should be little to no XP hit for going from a Panzer I to Panzer III as they are both medium tanks and would not have drastic changes in the controls/ maneuverability of the tank.

You could model it something like the way factories are... moving from a Medium Tank to Medium Tank would lose very little XP, but moving from a Medium Tank to a Heavy Tank you would lose a lot.

 

[Jazumir]

Agreed, Bluestreak - Nothing too crass, as long as the mechanic is not being ruthlessly exploited. But always a little bit, at least. There should always be at least a little bit of an advantage in having the troops train with what they are actually going to fight. So, if you there´d be a scale from 0-100XP and 60 is what you can get at, without combat, and you do that in PzI, they should fall back to something like 58 when you switch them to PzII afterwards (you then can proceed to train the final 2 back to 60).

 

[Joppos]

Try the Men of War series or Blitzkrieg 3 then.

I actually understand where you are coming from, because, as I have stated above, the only interesting and playable part of HoI3 was the (land) warfare. However, the HoI-series has always been about so much more than just the combat. It is supposed to be a grand strategy game and focussing too much on warfare takes time away from managing your country through the given amount of time. In DD 1 it was stated that one of the goals of HoI4 was to make the player consider different things than just the plain warfare to control the fate of the country. I wouldn't categorically oppose an OOB, the question is, whether a simpler, off the map version of an OOB has much to do with an OOB.

I think Paradox is doing a lot of things right with HoI4 that were messed up with HoI3. HoI3 attracted many new players that liked the warfare aspect of the game, at the same time it drove away many longtime fans of the HoI series because it was too one dimensional (and terribly buggy). HoI4 will certainly discourage some players that liked the way HoI3 was designed and while I feel sorry for those, I am certain it will attract many new (or even veteran) players that like to focus on all the things that were important from 1936-1949.

Besides all that, HoI4 will probably get the same kind of attention and post-release development that CK2 and EU4 are getting. So there will be a lot of DLC and maybe one introduces an OOB if it is not implemented into vanilla. For those of you crying foul now, because "if they put it in a DLC, then they could have put it in the original game", I actually don't want to talk to you, but rest assured that an OOB probably requires a lot of development time. And that time is pretty sparse for a new project that has to rework so many features since they were simply unappealing in HoI3. There is also a diabolic rule of thumb: The more people buy the vanilla game, the more time and money PDS is probably willing to invest into making popular DLC.

Even if hoi3 never existed, or did but never had any OOB it would still seem like a functional tool for hoi4. Just the ability to tie together some armies intended for a specific task could potentially make overview and handling easier. Ugly mock-up:

 

[Bluestreak2k5]

They said that you can modify a template at XP cost but then it applies to all divisions using that template. Even in this DD they said I can change the template from light to medium tanks.

It makes zero sense to have templates based on year of equipment. If you take losses you want something to reinforce. Better to reinforce your medium tank unit with Pz-III's then to have nothing since you really wanted Pz_IV's.

Again your mistaking what he is actually asking to change. He is not asking to physically add a artillery unit to a template (change you are specifically referencing), he is specifically requesting to change template #1 to Template #2. Each division has a specific template assigned to it that you can change. I have never read that changing the specific template that the division is using will cost XP, only that changing templates will take the unit out of combat while all of their equipment is reorganized.

And you take such extreme examples... They already said reinforcements would prioritize the best units first then use whatever comes next within that category. So no Panzer IV's left mean a Panzer III would come instead. Or no more Panzer IV with 5/5/5/5 upgrades left means Panzer IV with 0/2/3/4 upgrades comes next. This continues until there are no tanks under the "Medium Tank" stockpile to fulfill the request.

Now this is very simple logic to actually reverse programatically since we are doing the opposite.

Add a option for the template itself to pull the "worst" units first and then pull the next worse. This is a very easy change to do and would fulfull the request to have a "training template" and a "combat template"

 

[Reficul]

Hello,

Questions:

1) Does your officer/general gets experience too when training troops?

2) Can I disband a trained unit to re-deploy it green so I can train them again to get "infinite" army experience?

3) Can we see enemy units training on the border, or lets say without fog of war? It would mean a great time to attack...

4) Can we train nukes? Hehehehe...

5) Is it preferable to train units in highly infrastructure province to reduce reinforcement cost?

Best regards,

 

[jju_57]

Again your mistaking what he is actually asking to change. He is not asking to physically add a artillery unit to a template (change #1), he is specifically requesting to change template #1 to Template #2. Each division has a specific template assigned to it that you can change. I have never read that changing the specific template that the division is using will cost XP, only that changing templates will take the unit out of combat while all of their equipment is reorganized.

And you take such extreme examples... They already said reinforcements would prioritize the best units first then use whatever comes next within that category. So no Panzer IV's left mean a Panzer III would come instead. Or no more Panzer IV with 5/5/5/5 upgrades left means Panzer IV with 0/2/3/4 upgrades comes next. This continues until there are no tanks under the "Medium Tank" stockpile to fulfill the request.

Now this is very simple logic to actually reverse programatically since we are doing the opposite.

Add a option for the template itself to pull the "worst" units first and then pull the next worse. This is a very easy change to do and would fulfull the request to have a "training template" and a "combat template"

Again you are not understanding. here is what the devs have said about the designer and training.

1) You can modify an existing template to change a light tank battalion to medium or even to ART if you want. It costs XP to do this and applies to all divisions using that template.
2) You can change which template a division uses. This allows you to change a pure INF to MOT for example. This also costs XP.
3) What I don't think you can do is make a template that specifically says to use 1940 medium tanks for example. You just pick medium tanks and can't specify the year.

Now why in the world do you want to automatically use worst unit type, especially in war? I don't care if you are training it up. Once trained it goes off to fight and maybe need to fight as a green unit. From everything shown so far when you build a division it will use the best equipment in storage first. Only if there is not enough equipment will it use older stuff. And this is 100% logical.

 

[hellfish6]

Not to beat a dead horse, but I will. Those sprites look gawdawful.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

I haven't seen any buttons or any screen shots saying the division should use Pz-III medium tanks when newer models are available. My guess is the newest will be used for building a division as long as you have them in storage.

I think that if item A is above item B on the queue, then item A has first crack at whatever equipment is available. So if the two items "upgrades" and "reinforcements" are above a new division in the queue, then deployed divisions will have first call on the new equipment, and the queued division will have to use whatever is left. So if your field divisions are turning in their Panzer II's for Panzer III's, then your new divisions in training will probably fill up with Panzer II's, because that is the best that is still available to them.

Probably there will also be a way of setting upgrade priority among the deployed divisions, at least in a rough way (prioritized, normal, don't upgrade). So if you don't want newbs hogging all the best equipment, make sure they are below the upgrade and reinforcement queue items, and once they are deployed, don't let them upgrade until they have completed training.

 

[SDSkinner]

HoI2 was deeper into that specific country aspect than HoI3. First, there were nation specific tech teams. Then we also had those sliders that would determine certain parameters of our nation (autocratic vs democratic, planned economy vs free market, politcal left vs political right, interventionism vs isolationism and so on). Even the espionage system was way better in HoI2, I remember stealing blueprints from major powers and that really could make a difference if you had bad tech teams at your disposal. In HoI2, especially with the sliders, the players could kind of "create" their own country, each way the gameplay would be greatly affected. The most important point though is, that the player had more to do during peace. Stealing blueprints, trying to sabotage the enemys production, adjusting sliders to change your country and so on. The warfare aspect was (way too) minor. With HoI3 they went into a totally different direction, all of a sudden it was all about warfare and the rest was rather redundant or you just didn't have much time because micromanaging your troops sucked your time budget up.

The same is true for stealing techs in Hearts of Iron 3; try it as China.

As for the sliders... there was
democratic-authoritarian
left-right
open-closed
market-planned
standing-drafted
hawk-dove
interventionism-isolationism

The last three were best one maxed out of the left side. Market/Planned was best maxed out on either the right or left side and your nation set which direction you could go (only democratic could max market, only authoritarian could make planned). Open/Closed was essentially the same.

Democratic/Authoritarian and left/right set your government type, but that didn't alter much. Only the ministers you had, the alliance you were predisposed to and the ability to declare war. Given the way the system worked, it could have just been pared down to communist, democratic, fascist and paternal autocrat- the granularity didn't matter much.

 

[Centerbe]

"Training on the map costs equipment for every day of training as rifles, tanks and other stuff breaks down, so if you are trying to build up a stockpile of arms for an offensive you might need to hold back on training to keep your storage filled."

Some question about consumed equipments during training, and during real battles.

1) How much equipment stuff break down during training ? Its a small percentage?
2) During real battle percentage of equipments lost is more high?
3) There are factors, techs, or environmental conditions that change the percentage of lost equipment?

Nice DD.

 

[JustChaos]

Even if hoi3 never existed, or did but never had any OOB it would still seem like a functional tool for hoi4. Just the ability to tie together some armies intended for a specific task could potentially make overview and handling easier. Ugly mock-up:

Yep, if we do not mention authenticity and simulation aspects - still remains a fact that an army which consists 200 divisions is a bloody mess, even with RTS'ish ctrl+number "army groups"