HOI4 Battles Too Fast?

[Dichologos]

So his first point is valid. Hungary should never be able to conquer all those nations that easily. They should not be able to fend off naval invasions from France as simply as they did in the stream. The SU should have invaded Hungary after all the tension it caused and wiped them out. Germany should have protected its borders with at least a thin line of troops given how hostile Hungary has been. Etc.

The disagreement people like me have with the sentiment is that we didn't see Hungary "easily" conquer other nations, we saw it do so at the cost of ending up annihilated by the end and making the entire world its enemy (and having poor research and almost entirely just infantry due to doctrines chosen to boost that initial rush).

As far as France is concerned though, their invasion was half-hearted at best, and a half-hearted invasion being stopped by a defensive line and by building forts seems perfectly reasonable to me. It makes sense to me that France wouldn't send in a massive invasion force when they might be worried about Germany invading them at any month/year, among other things, and besides it takes a long time to get a proper invasion built up - by the time France could have done so, I could see them being too busy fighting Germany (which was by far a bigger threat in terms of potential, territory aside). So regardless of how the AI reacted (optimally or not), it made sense to me as far as the history and politics of the situation are concerned. Once the Axis and Allies were at war as well, France would have been too busy fighting the Italian Navy to send in a proper invasion force by sea.

Hungary actually was very well positioned in terms of being hard to invade. After all, the Allies would have to go through Germany and/or Italy to get to them, and the Soviet Union - while being the biggest threat geographically and in terms of nearby forces - never really seemed to care.

Well, biggest threat other than Germany, but making friends with the Axis seems the smart course if you end up bordering Germany and just ended up pissing off the rest of the world. In a "real" game, Hungary could have survived by joining the Axis and then supporting Germany and Italy, while taking that time to rebuild and expand perhaps into Greece, and prepare for war with the Soviet Union as well. But this was meant to show us the battle, and given the limited time on WWW videos it was rushed.

 

[Constans]

I find it strange that so many people are "defending" the Hungary stream and coming up with excuses to how this and that might happen. In my opinion, that stream was a massive failure, most of the stuff Hungary did, should have consequences. However it didn't. So to me it seems possible to conquer the world with a small country as Hungary.... Especially if he had shown more patience - in my opinion that should NEVER be possible to do with a minor. Hungary conquering just Romania or Yugoslavia should be a MASSIVE task for a country like that, a war that would last years perhaps. But with almost just infantry he rolled on and conquered nation after nation...

However. More on topic. Battles both last TOO LONG and TOO SHORT in my opinion. Sometimes battles should be won immediately, looser just fleeing from superior enemy, other times it could and should last for months. I mean there was battles that lasted 5-6 months in real life during WW2. With the tactic Hungary chose in the stream, some of the battles in that stream should resemble more of WW1 and perhaps last even longer than 5-6 months - Verdun lasted almost a year. Also sieges are missing from this game (and always has).

I respect that opinion, but I like that the base game allows for a wide range of options when playing.

I expect there will be mods that make the game far more historical/restrict the actions of the player far more severely soon after release, whereas there rarely are mods that come out that make it more sandboxy (at least from my experience with HOI3's modding community)

 

[Aries666]

What about my other point that everyone is ignoring? That Japan took almost the entire Chinese coast before the end of SEP 1938. And completely conquered China by the end of 1939.

If you want to be historical, Japan never made it even halfway what it did in the WWW series by 1940.

Either that's a sign of battles/movement being too fast, especially since China's poor infrastructure should impede fast battles and movement. Or that China is underpowered, in which case it's all a matter of buffing them.

However, given how fast his German conquest was of SU and likewise his conquests of Austria and Yugoslavia as Hungary, I'd attribute it toward battle and movement speed. And especially, another thing people are forgetting, is how fast he invaded into Germany and CAPTURED their capital! How can this insignificant minor, with infantry only troops, beat back Germany! If you say "they were occupied by France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Denmark" I'd say that's no excuse. Neither Denmark nor Netherlands nor Belgium should be able to push a small line of Germany divisions.

Hungary only began to collapse after Italy pushed through. So in summary, a tiny minor with infantry only troops, no anti tank, artillery, etc. captured Berlin..

Germany might have had more time to react/reposition troops if the troops didn't advance so quickly.

Or maybe this is just an AI priorities problem, or maybe Germany needs a buff, I can't really pinpoint the issue. The point is.. I hope by launch, you can't be at War vs UK, France, Italy, and Germany, and actually capture Berlin with an army comprised solely of infantry as a minor nation

From what I gather from previous HOI games is that there is a larger than historical disparity in power between China and Japan deliberately so that Japan stands a better chance in the long run.

 

[Denkt]

In terms of losses, he took maybe more then USA did during the world war, pure infantry armies are not good for sustainability.

 

[Otto of england]

Back to the point: I think you tweaked my initial idea in a better direction. You mentioned that if a division is simply made up of infantry, battles should take months akin to WW1. This makes a lot of sense. Battles would revert to trench warfare if no artillery nor tanks were being used. Thus perhaps battle length can depend on these units being present? Faster battles when tanks, artillery, close air support is present and slower battles when its only infantry and machine guns.

(Emphasis my own)

It has been stated several times by the devs that infantry battalions have organic artillery support in them, being mortars, 75mm guns, etc. So by definition there is no situation where you have a battle without artillery as every infantry battalion has artillery. The Artillery battalion in game instead represents bigger guns, like 120mm, 155mm, etc.

In terms of losses, he took maybe more then USA did during the world war, pure infantry armies are not good for sustainability.

My rough count on his losses was ~600k-800k, with the majority being in the Romania war and the German war, that puts it in the realm of 1.5-2x the US war losses.

 

[Gort11]

One thing that's worth noting is that the "recruitable population" stat that conscription laws gives you has been cut in half since the multiplayer WWWs. So a law that previously gave 10% of your population as manpower now only gives 5% - manpower has become twice as scarce and valuable as it was in those games. I would have thought that this would make training your troops a better option, since if they're learning in battle they're also bleeding manpower as well as equipment.

-----

As for how Daniel plays, I don't think anyone's really complaining about what he achieves - rather the way in which he achieves it. Pretty much every game has been an infantry grind - even when playing advanced and (normally) highly mechanised countries like Germany.

Given that:

1. Infantry are the unit that requires least research to deploy
2. A conscript horde was shown to be greatly inferior to mobile forces with air superiority

I think that infantry divisions at the moment are far too efficient. They should be cheap and useful for holding ground, but the "star players" of a WW2 game should be the tank divisions, and we just haven't seen them shine in the material we've been shown so far. Air power's the same - it always seems to be the last thing Daniel thinks about.

 

[Marfach]

OP I appreciate your points. The troops moved too quickly, this, I think, is because they didnt have the attack cooldown that exists in HoI3 (and has doctrines and technologies dedicated to it) so his troops could continue attacking until they broke. Now, if they had a 72hour wait after attacking before being able to attack again, reduced to 48 hours due to his Human Wave Doctrine choice, his conquests of Romania and Yugoslavia would have been much slower (austria just folded) and similarly for Germany. Anyone who has played HoI3 will remember the importance of this battle cooldown in theatres like the African Campaign and Italian front where micromanagement of your unit rotation, whether attacking or defending, became paramount.

An almost unrelated issue I would like to point out is the Germans were making progress through the maginot line. Which is simply absurd. This is due to French troops moving around and losing entrenchment bonuses. I think the French AI needs to prioritize defending the German border more and keep a reserve of maybe 2 divisions per province which it simply does not move. This could also become true of the Italian border once the "Alpine Forts" NF is taken.
I'm not advocating it to be hard-coded into the game, but the AI should be given some modifier or reason to take a defensive stance when it is setting on the best defended border on earth.

 

[Mamluke]

OP I appreciate your points. The troops moved too quickly, this, I think, is because they didnt have the attack cooldown that exists in HoI3 (and has doctrines and technologies dedicated to it) so his troops could continue attacking until they broke. Now, if they had a 72hour wait after attacking before being able to attack again, reduced to 48 hours due to his Human Wave Doctrine choice, his conquests of Romania and Yugoslavia would have been much slower (austria just folded) and similarly for Germany. Anyone who has played HoI3 will remember the importance of this battle cooldown in theatres like the African Campaign and Italian front where micromanagement of your unit rotation, whether attacking or defending, became paramount.

NO NO NO, that kind of cooldown is way to extreme, besides it doesn't even cover the main problem here, just avoids it.
the Main problems among others : 1 - AI fails to prepare for war even with OBVIOUS sings of aggression, (Czechoslovakia, if Hungary is making a claim on you, they are up to NO GOOD mkay?)
2 - infantry (alone) is too much cost efective and making breakthrough and progressive offensives.
3- attacking Infantry suffer little casualties compared to IRL (add the fact of a 50% combat bonus thanks to battle plans, and it makes infantry overcame enemy defensive modifiers way to easily. with little cost)

ho, and Potcat mention that units lose a bit of ORG when they move to a new enemy province. so we have that.

now. a very short Cooldown before a Division could move after an attack, say 4 - 8 hours can be much more realistic (after all. we are talking about a single coordinate unit of 6K to 20K men!!! I mean just Imagine telling 10K men to move all at ONCE, after being exhausted from combat, walking for days beforehand, carrying all their equipment and supplies, etc, etc.

eck, you could even add a plausible opportunity cost here, the more men / battalions a unit has, the bigger the potential Cooldown, (it also depends how long they have been fighting!) But no more the 10 H I think.

I admit, I don't know how it work exactly with divisions IRL, if they need to wait a bit or if they just chose to wait a bit, or if the bigger Divisions were more prone to stay put compared to smaller Divisions (in terms of total manpower).

 

[Marfach]

NO NO NO, that kind of cooldown is way to extreme, besides it doesn't even cover the main problem here, just avoids it.
the Main problems among others : 1 - AI fails to prepare for war even with OBVIOUS sings of aggression, (Czechoslovakia, if Hungary is making a claim on you, they are up to NO GOOD mkay?)
2 - infantry (alone) is too much cost efective and making breakthrough and progressive offensives.
3- attacking Infantry suffer little casualties compared to IRL (add the fact of a 50% combat bonus thanks to battle plans, and it makes infantry overcame enemy defensive modifiers way to easily. with little cost)

ho, and Potcat mention that units lose a bit of ORG when they move to a new enemy province. so we have that.

now. a very short Cooldown before a Division could move after an attack, say 4 - 8 hours can be much more realistic (after all. we are talking about a single coordinate unit of 6K to 20K men!!! I mean just Imagine telling 10K men to move all at ONCE, after being exhausted from combat, walking for days beforehand, carrying all their equipment and supplies, etc, etc.

eck, you could even add a plausible opportunity cost here, the more men / battalions a unit has, the bigger the potential Cooldown, (it also depends how long they have been fighting!) But no more the 10 H I think.

I admit, I don't know how it work exactly with divisions IRL, if they need to wait a bit or if they just chose to wait a bit, or if the bigger Divisions were more prone to stay put compared to smaller Divisions (in terms of total manpower).

48-72 hours is perfectly reasonable and realistic from both a gameplay and accuracy perspective. If you fight a 12 hour battle (so short almost instant win, many will last days) you will then need to reorganize supplies before moving out, plan the route to next location, take note of the dead, tend to wounded. Send AAR to command (was much slower in WW2, could take a few hours even with dedicated signal regiments considering cryptography etc, British were much better at this than Germans particularly in early war) You then need to feed troops, troops need to make camps and sleep for a few hours, so using 2 rotations 6 hours sleep will mean 12 hours just sleeping, Will then need to eat again, logistics checks have to be done, enemy POWs sent home and after all of this is completed your division can then move forward.
None of this applies to a division that is not fighting, a division that is not fighting just has to sleep and eat. So it makes sense that a fighting division early in the war when mobile warfare was a new concept (on this scale and at this speed) would be very slow at completing these tasks but get faster as the war progresses through introduction of signal regiments and more efficient command and control methods.

Edit: I forgot to address your point about nations not building up when neighbors become aggressive, I completely agree and something could be done relative to world tension to encourage this globally as well as for neighbors. The low infantry losses I can only assume are because enemies were under-equipped and had no access to heavy artillery or motorized/mechanized weapons themselves. The success in the Germany push is exploiting AI who assume a nation with a common enemy = a friendly nation. Also he had an easy time with partisans because partisans only appear with a government in exile, a completely gamey and absurd tactic. Partisans should be a problem in any province you do not have cores in.

 

[Sic Domine]

An almost unrelated issue I would like to point out is the Germans were making progress through the maginot line. Which is simply absurd.

Why
Where did this 'fortifications are unbreachable' meme come from? I think WWII has shown us just that, static warfare is no longer viable.

 

[Marfach]

Why
Where did this 'fortifications are unbreachable' meme come from? I think WWII has shown us just that, static warfare is no longer viable.

Because it is laughable that the French military defending an incredibly well fortified river crossing faltered after a few weeks not because the Germans had superior artillery or direct fire units, but because the french couldnt sit still for 5 minutes to actually defend the place.
Getting through the Maginot line, even the northern line (no river) would have been akin to the battle of verdun, long and drawn out. Especially with the lackluster equipment the Germans had in 1940. They won because they invaded through Belgium and fought the French on their own terms, there should be some effort by the AI to use the assets it has and the maginot line is probably Frances biggest one in 1940. If the germans concentrated the majority of their forces on pushing through the Maginot line and after a few months of fighting broke through, I would be on your side, but its absurd to have the French walk out and let the German occupy the undamaged forts and is a blatant AI flaw.

 

[Sic Domine]

Because it is laughable that the French military defending an incredibly well fortified river crossing faltered after a few weeks not because the Germans had superior artillery or direct fire units, but because the french couldnt sit still for 5 minutes to actually defend the place.
Getting through the Maginot line, even the northern line (no river) would have been akin to the battle of verdun, long and drawn out. Especially with the lackluster equipment the Germans had in 1940. They won because they invaded through Belgium and fought the French on their own terms, there should be some effort by the AI to use the assets it has and the maginot line is probably Frances biggest one in 1940. If the germans concentrated the majority of their forces on pushing through the Maginot line and after a few months of fighting broke through, I would be on your side, but its absurd to have the French walk out and let the German occupy the undamaged forts and is a blatant AI flaw.

But this is exactly what happened IRL. The Germans(as multiple people pointed out multiple times...) actually did break through the Maginot line in a few spots.

 

[Marfach]

But this is exactly what happened IRL. The Germans(as multiple people pointed out multiple times...) actually did break through the Maginot line in a few spots.

Thats not the issue, the issue is that the French werent defending it. Why bother playing the game if you can walk over the Maginot line into Paris? Its like saying it's acceptable for the entire US fleet to sit in port being bombed into a pulp by Japanese CTF's because a few American ships were killed IRL by Japanese CTFs in port. Its fine for it to be possible, but you should have to work to do it, the US fleet being bombed should move ports, and the French being attacked by Germany should man the borders and especially the forts. Hearts of Iron should be difficult, they removed stockpiling and the old supply system and Air supply in an attempt to remove 'gamey' tactics, all of that will only detract from the game if gamey tactics like waiting for the french to shuffle troops on the maginot line and annexing a country without a faction produces 0 partisans remain as they are. Also no breakthroughs were made on the Maginot line until after the Germans were through Belgium.

 

[LostAlone]

Hearts of Iron should be difficult

It's really easy for mods/patches/DLC to make a game more difficult when the fans want that; it's inexcusable to need such things to make the game easier. Easy means that player can actually, you know, learn the game and it's systems. They can play an easy game and not just miserably fail. That's why the Maginot Line was more assailable than you might like. Because with the difficulty set to 'sane' everything is more assailable that you might like because new players would actually like to win a battle without having to play perfectly optimally. So people who don't know how to make a good battle plan, or to properly mix units or choose doctrines and techs, have the chance to play through a battle, win badly (taking too many losses etc) but still actually see the campaign through and figure out what they did wrong.

 

[Gort11]

The Maginot line issue was clearly an AI fault. Daniel said it would be looked into. I don't think a great deal more needs to be said about that.