How did Germany get almost 500 divisions?

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes... the size of provinces are too small for division based unit templates only... more or less.

In reality it was pretty much the road network that dictated the controllable part of any area. The one who controlled the roads or more precisely road junctions where the one who controlled the area. That is why you can control vast areas with a rather small number of troops. Sure... soldiers can enter the terrain and wide fronts often result with combat in open terrain... but under no circumstances can you get supplies to flow through the terrain, you need the roads and railways unhindered.

This is why it is NOT unrealistic to have rather small forces controlling relatively large eras or small brigades able to control and block entire provinces.

What need to happen is that the AI need to start building garrison and smaller brigade sized support units that real armies actually used.

A German divisions had roughly 12-15000 troops and a division was not really disperse enough to control much more than a province in HoI4, but each corps had an additional 30-60.000 personnel of which a large part was actual fighting troops. These should be represented by smaller infantry brigades, artillery brigades, armored brigades/regiments and so on. A German Army Group had between 50-100.000 personnel and provided yet another source of spare support troops in the form of recon troops, infantry, artillery, tanks, assault guns etc.

If you figure that a German corps had between 2-4 division under its command and an Army group was about 2-4 corps you get about 120.000 troops in divisions, 120,000 troops in corps and 70.000 at Army Group level. You could imagine that for every 9 divisions you are likely to have at least 2-3 time that number in smaller support units such as brigades, regiments or battalions. In HoI4 it would probably be best to group them into brigade sized units (4-6 battalion) for play-ability sake.

When I play I build these support units all the time and they are very helpful for many things, the thing is the AI also need to build these smaller support brigade units to complement their divisions. The AI certainly need to start building 4-6 strong Garrison units for port, VP and suppression duties.

If you combine this with lowering the manpower to a reasonable level to represent actual combat formation ready manpower you will get a much better realistic representation of forces.

The AI also need to learn to not suicide their troops or run around in attrition heavy terrain all the time. The AI are loosing way to much equipment because of this and this is actually a large problem with why it is so easy to beat. Since they can't maintain a good equipment ratio their divisions become weak and the problem are just exasperated even further and their overall industry suffer even further. But this is an entire different problem altogether.

 

[cellinis]

Yes... the size of provinces are too small for division based unit templates only... more or less.

In reality it was pretty much the road network that dictated the controllable part of any area. The one who controlled the roads or more precisely road junctions where the one who controlled the area. That is why you can control vast areas with a rather small number of troops. Sure... soldiers can enter the terrain and wide fronts often so combat in open terrain... but under no circumstances can you get supplies to flow through the terrain you need the roads and railway unhindered.

This is why it is NOT unrealistic to have rather small forces controlling relatively large eras or small brigades able to control and block entire provinces.

What need to happen is that the AI need to start building garrison and smaller brigade sized support units that real armies actually used.

A German divisions had roughly 12-15000 troops and a division was not really disperse enough to control much more than a province in HoI4, but each corps had an additional 30-60.000 personnel of which a large part was actual fighting troops. These should be represented by smaller infantry brigades, artillery brigades, armored brigades/regiments and so on. A German Army Group had between 50-100.000 personnel and provided yet another source of spare support troops in the form of recon troops, infantry, artillery, tanks, assault guns etc.

If you figure that a German corps had between 2-4 division under its command and an Army group was about 2-4 corps you get about 120.000 troops in divisions, 120,000 troops in corps and 70.000 at Army Group level. You could imagine that for every 9 divisions you are likely to have at least 2-3 time that number in smaller support units such as brigades, regiments or battalions. In HoI4 it would probably be best to group them into brigade sized units (4-6 battalion) for play-ability sake.

When I play I build these support units all the time and they are very helpful for many things, the thing is the AI also need to build these smaller support brigade units to complement their divisions. The AI certainly need to start building 4-6 strong Garrison units for port, VP and suppression duties.

If you combine this with lowering the manpower to a reasonable level to represent actual combat formation ready manpower you will get a much better realistic representation of forces.

The AI also need to learn to not suicide their troops or run around in attrition heavy terrain all the time. The AI are loosing way to much equipment because of this and this is actually a large problem with why it is so easy to beat. Since they can't maintain a good equipment ratio their divisions become weak and the problem are just exasperated even further and their overall industry suffer even further. But this is an entire different problem altogether.

That's a very interesting concept and one I used frequently in HoI3 (especially BICE). However, in the current iteration of the game, I'd say it is of limited value. Sure, there is the coastal defense garrison. Perhaps troops to suppress partisian activity. But beyond that? The enemy can't really bomb supplies, the recon unit is within the main division as a support battalion? It is also complicated to manage (unless using seperate armies).

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

That's a very interesting concept and one I used frequently in HoI3 (especially BICE). However, in the current iteration of the game, I'd say it is of limited value. Sure, there is the coastal defense garrison. Perhaps troops to suppress partisian activity. But beyond that? The enemy can't really bomb supplies, the recon unit is within the main division as a support battalion? It is also complicated to manage (unless using seperate armies).

No... its not complicated to manage at all. If manpower are brought down to realistic numbers you will often not manage to deploy enough troops to cover really large fronts and perform offensives at the same time... you will need those support troops to fill the gaps.

Japan would never be able to fight using its 30 divisions in China without the 50 or so brigades it had historically. 30 units simply is not enough units for the fronts in China. The same will be true for German and Russian troops in Russia.

I did say that these support units would be brigaded for play-ability, no point in regiment or lower independent forces. That would mean roughly 4-7 battalions for a brigade and 9-12 battalions for a division.

 

[seattle]

The AI also need to learn to not suicide their troops or run around in attrition heavy terrain all the time. The AI are loosing way to much equipment because of this and this is actually a large problem with why it is so easy to beat. Since they can't maintain a good equipment ratio their divisions become weak and the problem are just exasperated even further and their overall industry suffer even further. But this is an entire different problem altogether.

Did anyone experiment with the priority settings?

GER_area_priority = {
   enable = {
       original_tag = GER
   }

   ai_strategy = {
       type = area_priority
       id = europe
       value = 110 #more focus here
   }
   
   ai_strategy = {
       type = area_priority
       id = north_america
       value = 100
   }
   
   ai_strategy = {
       type = area_priority
       id = south_america
       value = 75
   }
   
   ai_strategy = {
       type = area_priority
       id = asia
       value = 75
   }
   
   ai_strategy = {
       type = area_priority
       id = middle_east
       value = 50
   }
   
   ai_strategy = {
       type = area_priority
       id = africa
       value = 25
   }
   
   ai_strategy = {
       type = area_priority
       id = pacific
       value = 120 #less focus here
   }
   
   ai_strategy = {
       type = area_priority
       id = oceania
       value = 80
   }
}

IMHO German a.i. sends too many troops to North Africa and sometimes even guards Japanese Pacific islands.
I would assume that the easiest solution is to simply increase the Europe value instead of offsetting the balance by lowering some other values.

 

[seattle]

German a.i. picked "free market" while during Barbarossa. Result: -200 steel.

To prevent something like this, add the following "available"-condition in ideas/_economic:

free_trade = {
         
           available = {
           NOT = {
               OR = {
                   has_government = fascism
                   has_government = communism
               }
           }}
         
           cost = 150
           removal_cost = -1
         
           modifier = {
               min_export = 0.8
               industrial_capacity_factory = 0.15
               production_speed_buildings_factor = 0.15
               research_time_factor = -0.10
           }
         
           cancel_if_invalid = no
       }

It doesn't make sense for fascist or commie nations anyways to have a free market.

 

[Meglok]

German a.i. picked "free market" while during Barbarossa. Result: -200 steel.

To prevent something like this, add the following "available"-condition in ideas/_economic:

free_trade = {
        
           available = {
           NOT = {
               OR = {
                   has_government = fascism
                   has_government = communism
               }
           }}
        
           cost = 150
           removal_cost = -1
        
           modifier = {
               min_export = 0.8
               industrial_capacity_factory = 0.15
               production_speed_buildings_factor = 0.15
               research_time_factor = -0.10
           }
        
           cancel_if_invalid = no
       }

It doesn't make sense for fascist or commie nations anyways to have a free market.

Interesting and useful for the AI, but I would add an exemption for AI only so that players could concrete if they want to.

 

[seattle]

Interesting and useful for the AI, but I would add an exemption for AI only so that players could concrete if they want to.

Of course you could enter that line of code. I feel though that it's a nice touch to prevent fascist and commie governments from going free market. Both Germany and Soviets were pretty much planned economy. After all, there have to be some downsides to go that route.

 

[stewart_king_2000]

Personally, I think the problem starts with the map itself. The sheer number of provinces itself doesn't lend to division being the base unit in the game. Apart from overall reduction in the division numbers, I think one of the following must be addressed as well:

1. Either give divisions ability to spread over multiple provinces.
2. Or, go back to the HOI2 map.

The provinces are much bigger than any division's normal frontage. In the Ardennes offensive in December 1944, for example, the Americans were holding a front of about 100 km, from the Eifel just south of Liege to the French border, with 9 divisions. This area is represented by two spaces on the HOI IV map. And that was nowhere near enough.

Frontages can vary enormously depending on circumstances, but none of these regions are small enough to be the frontage for a single division.

 

[stewart_king_2000]

Yes... the size of provinces are too small for division based unit templates only... more or less.

In reality it was pretty much the road network that dictated the controllable part of any area. The one who controlled the roads or more precisely road junctions where the one who controlled the area. That is why you can control vast areas with a rather small number of troops. Sure... soldiers can enter the terrain and wide fronts often result with combat in open terrain... but under no circumstances can you get supplies to flow through the terrain, you need the roads and railways unhindered.

This is why it is NOT unrealistic to have rather small forces controlling relatively large eras or small brigades able to control and block entire provinces.

What need to happen is that the AI need to start building garrison and smaller brigade sized support units that real armies actually used.

A German divisions had roughly 12-15000 troops and a division was not really disperse enough to control much more than a province in HoI4, but each corps had an additional 30-60.000 personnel of which a large part was actual fighting troops. These should be represented by smaller infantry brigades, artillery brigades, armored brigades/regiments and so on. A German Army Group had between 50-100.000 personnel and provided yet another source of spare support troops in the form of recon troops, infantry, artillery, tanks, assault guns etc.

If you figure that a German corps had between 2-4 division under its command and an Army group was about 2-4 corps you get about 120.000 troops in divisions, 120,000 troops in corps and 70.000 at Army Group level. You could imagine that for every 9 divisions you are likely to have at least 2-3 time that number in smaller support units such as brigades, regiments or battalions. In HoI4 it would probably be best to group them into brigade sized units (4-6 battalion) for play-ability sake.

When I play I build these support units all the time and they are very helpful for many things, the thing is the AI also need to build these smaller support brigade units to complement their divisions. The AI certainly need to start building 4-6 strong Garrison units for port, VP and suppression duties.

If you combine this with lowering the manpower to a reasonable level to represent actual combat formation ready manpower you will get a much better realistic representation of forces.

The AI also need to learn to not suicide their troops or run around in attrition heavy terrain all the time. The AI are loosing way to much equipment because of this and this is actually a large problem with why it is so easy to beat. Since they can't maintain a good equipment ratio their divisions become weak and the problem are just exasperated even further and their overall industry suffer even further. But this is an entire different problem altogether.

I like this idea. You build headquarters units for corps/armies, attach support elements and line divisions to them, and then they can control more than one region. Can't be done by modders, though.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

It doesn't make sense for fascist or commie nations anyways to have a free market.

But... but... Free Market is so good for SOV to get a nice early construction and research boost... :'(

Also: As a modder, I find your style of bracket use disgusting!

I actually tried to teach the AI some advanced law strategies a while back, but sadly it's frustratingly complicated, since the file doesn't allow to reference any laws that haven't been defined below the current line...

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I like this idea. You build headquarters units for corps/armies, attach support elements and line divisions to them, and then they can control more than one region. Can't be done by modders, though.

It is one way to do it but I don't think you need to make it that complicated... just teach the AI to build smaller support templates, this would be enough.

Such as...

Artillery Brigade (3xInf, 2xArt)
Support Infantry Brigade (5xInf, 0-1xArt, Eng)
Recon Brigade (3xMot, 1xL.Arm, Rec)
Tank Brigade (3xMot/Mech, 2xM/H Arm)
Assault Engineer Brigade (4xMar/Mount., Eng, Support Art)
Light Garrison (5xInf, MP)
Heavy Garrison (5xInf, Art, Eng)
Anti-Tank Brigade (3xInf, 2xAT) or (3xMot, 2xL/M TD)

These could just be additional templates the AI would build in a roughly 1-1.5:1 ratio with regular divisions except Garrison which the AI would build separately based on its garrison needs.

This would be an abstraction of those support units which usually came in battalion, regiment or brigade sizes.

 

[No idea]

October, 1941. The AI Germans have just started their invasion of my USSR. The Red Army is pretty big at almost 200 divisions but the Germans are advancing steadily and seem to have overwhelming numbers at each point of contact. My Spanish Republican friends are fighting along the Pyrenees, and they are also outnumbered. And there are dozens of German divisions fighting the Brits in Africa and the Med. I loaded up as the Germans and discovered that they have over 500 divisions. They have 60 (!!!) armored divisions.

Just for a reality check, the German army that invaded Russia in 1941 had 105 infantry, 19 armored, and 15 motorized infantry divisions.

Something is wrong here. Some sort of bug or other must be affecting AI production. I noticed in the earlier game I played that when we were ready to go to war with the Allies in 1948, the UK had something like 600 divisions. I think the AI is busted in some way.

I put a save game file in so you can see if I've missed something.

It is not a problem with ai being busted. You can also do it. It is a problem of ai making small divisions, getting too low casualties and having no supply need (as there is no real supply need in the game. Once you have made them, they work forever with no problems. This is linked with problem number two).

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

It is not a problem with ai being busted. You can also do it. It is a problem of ai making small divisions, getting too low casualties and having no supply need (as there is no real supply need in the game. Once you have made them, they work forever with no problems. This is linked with problem number two).

No... the AI make historically more or less accurate divisions... it is the manpower who is the problem. Divisions do not contain the correct amount of manpower and mainly represent combat personnel. The manpower pool represent more or less historical manpower but most of the manpower 60-70% were none combat personnel so nearly sixty or seventy percent of the total manpower can't be used for divisions as things stand in the game.

I do agree with the supplies though, this would create a soft cap of the amount of divisions you can support and also how many you can support far from your central provinces and good infrastructure. If supplies cost more the further you get in to bad infrastructure.

 

[damnt512]

I'm working on limiting the division spam now with my own tweaks. The AI seems to manage its armies better when there are less divisions. I would like to see the division spam reduced officially.

May I know what did you do with it ?

 

[Moser]

May I know what did you do with it ?

I'm still working on it. I can curb the division spam easily enough -- GER had about 200 divisions up to the end of a successful Op. Barbarossa, but now I've sort of moved on to getting the AI to build armor divisions with SPART. For some reason, they don't like SPART!

 

[seattle]

But... but... Free Market is so good for SOV to get a nice early construction and research boost... :'(

Also: As a modder, I find your style of bracket use disgusting!

I actually tried to teach the AI some advanced law strategies a while back, but sadly it's frustratingly complicated, since the file doesn't allow to reference any laws that haven't been defined below the current line...

I knew I wouldn't get away with it.
I'm usually pretty anal about brackets and formatting and tidy code that is as slim as possible. I just wanted to get the job done without thinking twice.

If you used to exploit the free market Soviets, then it might have been for the best to completely deny commies that law. Modern day China is probably the closest a commie nation ever got to a free market. Still, it's far from it and more like a controlled protectionist system with forced joint ventures and stuff.

 

[Pyramid_Head]

500 divisions for GER and SOV for me renders most of infantry equipment II and III useless. Because the only way to counter GER spam is to spam. With 500 divisions and upgrading to Infantry equipment 2 and 3 you'll need 300000 to be replaced, given three lines on 100% efficency and all concentrated industry upgrades, earning about 150 equ daily per line that's 650+ days of production to upgrade. At that point it's hardly reachable, with steel demand, time to upgrade and stuff.

 

[wildbillhdmax01]

Yea I just got done quitting a Canada game. By 1941 the game was starting to slow down. Even with my computer. Germany had over 600+ divisions.... I don't understand why they thought this was a good solution. It's unrealistic and cripples the game at the same time.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yea I just got done quitting a Canada game. By 1941 the game was starting to slow down. Even with my computer. Germany had over 600+ divisions.... I don't understand why they thought this was a good solution. It's unrealistic and cripples the game at the same time.

The sheer number of provinces require more units than countries had line combat divisions. This is why the AI need so many divisions to play properly overall. The AI need to be taught to build smaller reserve and garrison units as well as smaller support units in brigade form.

If they did this they could reduce the number of division to and manpower to sane levels and cut down the number of overall units to about half. This will increase late game performance substantially.

The AI do quite well with less divisions aside from garrison duties with weaker units properly, the AI still garrison with regular line division which is a waste of both manpower and equipment, more or less.

Germany had around 200 proper line division the rest were mostly understrength garrison and reserve forces. In addition to this they also had Corps and Army Group assets which were smaller units and amounted to almost an equal amount of troops as the line divisions in total.

Another problem which is more of an AI problem is how the AI shuffle units around in large fronts which waste too much equipment and the AI tendency to suicide attack and loose too much manpower and equipment. This will especially cripple weak nations such as the Chinese. I wich the AI could get some serious reliability bonuses on equipment as long as this is not looked into.

 

[CrazyZombie]

There should be some balance with this issue.

But right now I don't see any - only 500-600 divisions. What can be done? Production speed reduced, factory slots cut down, recuting laws rebalanced so every harder law will give greater debuffs to industry and etc.