hoi IV Managing armies strategy

[foxbal]

I think HoI IV has an enormous potential. There have been many improvements recently and the game enhances the previous versions experience such as hoi2 or hoi3.

However, i still have some concerns regarding the armies management. Somehow, when i played hoi2, i had a clear image of the ongoing attacks and progress (in hoi3 it was quite confusing sometimes). When i invaded Poland with battle plans as Germany, there were some moments in which the battle plans colorful lines overlapped and collided each other. There counters also were stacked in small areas. I wonder if playing without battle plan can improve this messy situation. Maybe thinner battle plans lines would help? or reduce the number of offensive lines (armies)?

how do you feel when you are launching offensive as an strategy game? you could still clearly visualise the progress of the operation? what kind of strategies do you use for managing your armies and keeping control of the situation?

I think the rest of the game is great and will become better in next updates surely.

on the other hand, i can check the casualities but there is no a screen that tell us how many divisions were lost? i felt some divisions evaporated but no message or report was received.

thanks!

 

[Sidetrack Nick]

You use battle plans? Good luck!

I usually only use the battle plans feature to quickly distribute troops to a front/border, or garrison conquered areas and sea coasts. Whenever I use troops offensively, they do very stupid things. Even when assigned to a front but not told to move during a war, they will move around and worse, use strategic redeployment.

 

[cellinis]

how do you feel when you are launching offensive as an strategy game? you could still clearly visualise the progress of the operation? what kind of strategies do you use for managing your armies and keeping control of the situation?

Personally, in hard games, I've stopped using battle planner. When I do, on easier fronts where I have superiority, I tend to use a single army, with a single offensive instruction, or two armies, one with a single offensive instruction, and the other usually divided into two with the breakthrough command.

 

[Juan Peron 2]

You use battle plans? Good luck!

I usually only use the battle plans feature to quickly distribute troops to a front/border, or garrison conquered areas and sea coasts. Whenever I use troops offensively, they do very stupid things. Even when assigned to a front but not told to move during a war, they will move around and worse, use strategic redeployment.

I can't imagine playing without battle plans. Here is why: HOI4 is a vast improvement over HOI3 in so many areas EXCEPT, I just have no interest in micor-managing troops. In HOI3 if you clicked on a tank divisions and did an attack it felt exciting. If you were moving ten divisions in an encirclement maneuver it was exciting and there was a lot of tension around closing the last province and completing the encirclement.

None of that excitment or tension exists in this game. It is a bunch of funky icons that literally bounce around on the screen for no apparent reason and you have to be able to zoom way in all the time in order to figure out what the hell is going on.

Is there a Mod brings back that old feel somehow?

Anyway, I play as an Albert Speer type and mostly manage industry and resources and thus use the battle plans.

 

[Napoleonetniet]

I generally have 'defensive' divisions to keep frontlines with, and some specialised attack/breakthru units/armies to push.
The specialised get a battleplan often - the defensive only a frontline (sometimes a plan for bonus but not activated).. the defensive units will fill up the frontline as my specialised units take it. Now i only have to adjust the smaller battleplans and fronts when those widen/split up.

another thing to avoid is drawing frontlines over ports.. keep those out and occupy them seperately would be my advise to not ever have a chance of divisions choosing an (unsafe) sea-route to redeploy/shuffle to spread around the frontline(s).

my portguards/coastguards are in a seperate army , set up so they will not move and keep that nice dug-in bonus. Same for suppression garrisons, if possible i leave the coast OUT of it i dont want them to take a boat to redeploy. Or if its not possible i'd use the garrison order to deploy/spread them out, and then after they arrived remove the order so i'm 100% sure they wont move.

 

[foxbal]

Battleplans seem good but still the control of armies/counters was somewhat clearer in HoI2/HoI3. I think PDX can improve a little that in next DLC/pacth

 

[bERt0r]

You make one big army to hold the line with inf + art divisions and multiple little armies with tank + mot divisions.
Your big army holds the line all across your front. You dont activate their battleplan unless you severly overpower the enemy (the tooltip on the battleplan is not an indicator for this).
Now you look for some area with good terrain and a potential to encircle enemy divisions. If you find a spot, you send one tank army above and one below your target, make two small frontlines around the location you want to encircle. If you don't want to manually control anything, draw your plans. If you want to have more success, just take a few of your best tank divisions and move command them to do the encirclement, you can use shift to plot the path. Don't use your whole army for this, half your army should not join the spearhead and instead cover the advance.

 

[Dalwin]

I can't imagine playing without battle plans. Here is why: HOI4 is a vast improvement over HOI3 in so many areas EXCEPT, I just have no interest in micor-managing troops. In HOI3 if you clicked on a tank divisions and did an attack it felt exciting. If you were moving ten divisions in an encirclement maneuver it was exciting and there was a lot of tension around closing the last province and completing the encirclement.

None of that excitment or tension exists in this game. It is a bunch of funky icons that literally bounce around on the screen for no apparent reason and you have to be able to zoom way in all the time in order to figure out what the hell is going on.

Is there a Mod brings back that old feel somehow?

Anyway, I play as an Albert Speer type and mostly manage industry and resources and thus use the battle plans.

If that is the kind of excitement you want to see, you should have witnessed the last time @Secret Master and I faced off over Barbarossa. Probably ten times or more through that campaign we had major operations where we were both encircling each other in a given area. It was very tense to see who could close it off first and whether they could hold the pocket long enough to reduce it. Sometimes one of us died and sometimes the other. Sometimes the surrounded troops fought their way out or were rescued. As often as not it ended with neither of us closing an encirclement. We came to call this process the dance. It was very exciting.

 

[bERt0r]

I am still hoping that it will be possible sometime to do your "dance" with battleplans. What I mean is not drawing one big arrow to the Urals and click go, rather pull off encirclements by letting different army groups work together with small scale battle plans. Right now, its impossible due to unwanted expansion of frontlines.

 

[Secret Master]

I faced off over Barbarossa.

And in eastern Turkey.

Soviet MTN covering mountain provinces, while German and Soviet armor clashed in the deserts. Since the mountain provinces are surrounded by rivers and deserts, it was always tense to see who came out on top, as the MTN were screwed if the pockets closed. But it cost so much to pin them in place, the pocket had to be closed quickly, or the German INF would wear out trying to hold the Soviet MTN troops in position to prevent withdrawals/pinning attacks on armored columns.

EDIT: I never succeeded in killing too many divisions in Turkey. You held the line there better than around Vitebsk, I felt.

Then again, your occupation of western Turkey did nothing to save British and Dominion forces in Syria, nor save the Suez, so I'm not crying too many tears.