How did Germany get almost 500 divisions?

[mattcissna]

Cant paradox just easily patch this? Wouldn't it be pretty easy to alter a few lines of code, and then balance it? I think some guys here said 900 + divisions, not only is that way off historic accuracy, it (I imagine) would lag the game pretty badly?
Just my thoughts on this matter.

 

[mattcissna]

Just checked google, the german army had 10 million men at its peak in 1944, doing simple math, that would be very much appromitely 666 divisions (creepy)

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Just checked google, the german army had 10 million men at its peak in 1944, doing simple math, that would be very much appromitely 666 divisions (creepy)

You do realize that the vast majority of people servicing in the army was not combat ready soldiers?
Only a smaller part of those 10 million were front line soldiers or crew servicing tanks or guns.

Germany had roughly 300 division at its peak and not all of them were at full strength at any particular time. If they were that would be roughly 4.5 million people counting just the division personnel (not all combat people mind you). But as I said at no time were all divisions at full strength, many were under strength divisions on rest or guard duties and even front line divisions often lacked personnel. So assuming about 70-80% or even lower might be closer to the truth. So most of the people servicing in the German army (or any army) was working with logistics, maintenance or administration. Western armies in particular had an even higher number of people in their logistical and administrative branch.

So if Germany had about 300 divisions and 10 million people that would be roughly 33.000 people per division and each division had perhaps 10.000 (best case) combat ready personnel.

 

[stewart_king_2000]

Yes, what he said.

To use the Americans as an example: the US mobilized about 16 million personnel during WW2. The largest the US Army ever got was 89 divisions though there were 124 numbered divisions (102 infantry, 2 cavalry, 20 armored, some units had more than one number and some units were dissolved at different times). There were six Marine divisions. A US Army Infantry division in the July 1943 TO&E had about 13,500 men at full strength. The Armored division was somewhat smaller, around 10,500. I think Marine divisions were somewhat bigger but this suggests that number of men in ground divisions in the US armed forces at their peak was around 1,200,000. There were a bunch of non-divisional battalions in the US army, some 300-400 are listed in my Order of Battle book and some separate regiments and such. A bunch of those guys were combat support - engineers and the like - but counting them would add at most another million.

 

[xsmilingbanditx]

You do realize that the vast majority of people servicing in the army was not combat ready soldiers?
Only a smaller part of those 10 million were front line soldiers or crew servicing tanks or guns.

Germany had roughly 300 division at its peak and not all of them were at full strength at any particular time. If they were that would be roughly 4.5 million people counting just the division personnel (not all combat people mind you). But as I said at no time were all divisions at full strength, many were under strength divisions on rest or guard duties and even front line divisions often lacked personnel. So assuming about 70-80% or even lower might be closer to the truth. So most of the people servicing in the German army (or any army) was working with logistics, maintenance or administration. Western armies in particular had an even higher number of people in their logistical and administrative branch.

So if Germany had about 300 divisions and 10 million people that would be roughly 33.000 people per division and each division had perhaps 10.000 (best case) combat ready personnel.

And there's the difference. Problem is, how do you count them as combat ready and what exactly is "trained"?
Just thinking about the russians army meatgrinder where folks where put into uniforms, given some shots of ammo, one out of ten got a rifle and hello front line here we come

 

[durbal]

Maybe paradox should just do a global search and replace on their source code. "Division" -> "Brigade"

In my 1.3 RAJ game, Germany is well over 1000 in late 1941.

That solves the semantic problem, but not the performance and supply ones that actually have a bearing on gameplay and are created as a direct result of the AI spamming more units than is beneficial.

 

[Ancalimé]

Just checked google, the german army had 10 million men at its peak in 1944, doing simple math, that would be very much appromitely 666 divisions (creepy)

You do realize that the vast majority of people servicing in the army was not combat ready soldiers?
Only a smaller part of those 10 million were front line soldiers or crew servicing tanks or guns.

Germany had roughly 300 division at its peak and not all of them were at full strength at any particular time. If they were that would be roughly 4.5 million people counting just the division personnel (not all combat people mind you). But as I said at no time were all divisions at full strength, many were under strength divisions on rest or guard duties and even front line divisions often lacked personnel. So assuming about 70-80% or even lower might be closer to the truth. So most of the people servicing in the German army (or any army) was working with logistics, maintenance or administration. Western armies in particular had an even higher number of people in their logistical and administrative branch.

So if Germany had about 300 divisions and 10 million people that would be roughly 33.000 people per division and each division had perhaps 10.000 (best case) combat ready personnel.

Read this: How did Germany get almost 500 divisions?

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

And there's the difference. Problem is, how do you count them as combat ready and what exactly is "trained"?
Just thinking about the russians army meatgrinder where folks where put into uniforms, given some shots of ammo, one out of ten got a rifle and hello front line here we come

That is sort of reflected with having full manpower but only very little infantry equipment in a division. At least that is what you could imagine would happen.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Read this: How did Germany get almost 500 divisions?

I have already "fixed" this in my own modded game. Divisions now hovers very closely around the historical numbers (throughout the war). I did this with tweaking the manpower laws, manpower levels, battalion size to include none combat personnel and increase the cost in all land equipment to reflect the change. A standard German Infantry division will now be about 15-16.000 strong.

This work very well and is not a problem for the AI at all.

I also made land combat much more realistic so you need at least a 3-1 ratio on attack to be roughly ahead in strength. This is by known standard of how much strength it takes to attack a dug in defending enemy to be on roughly equal terms.

All of these changes have actually made the game much more fun and the AI are very good at using the new balance.

 

[xsmilingbanditx]

That is sort of reflected with having full manpower but only very little infantry equipment in a division. At least that is what you could imagine would happen.

Yeah, that's true. But it also does not really happen when you start the 1936 and let a human control the USSR.
I think someone already mentioned it earlier: Doctrines, strategies, tactics and internal politics don't play the role they should to mimic a somewhat realistic theatre.
As USSR you'll neither have resource or production problems in the late 30s. And Germany won't have manpower issues. A human controlled France can easily block AI Germany and even a human controlled one.
I don't day I want railroading. To be fair, the deck was always rigged against the Axis, internal politics made possible what pure industrial prowess would not. This is reflected in the game and thus there are inflated numbers of troops all over the place.

 

[Thane Solus]

Thanks, good to know! I only changed the 1936 starting templates for a few nations like Germany. Wasn't motivated to all of them. I only increased the "target template" size for the other nations, that is the template they are eventually striving for. It will take years though until non-combatant nations update their templates.
@Nobody987 has created a mod that increases all starting templates for each nation. Check that out, it's called something something "increased division size". You should be able to run both mods simultaneously if you delete the history/units folder from my mod. No guarantees though!

PS: I didn't pay attention to Nat Spain to be honest, but in theory they should have less units as well since I added the -50% manpower malus to the "recovering from civil war" spirit.

Expeditionary forces are still broken, i think that define doesn't work as it should. For example Hungary gave all their forces to Italy beside 1 division which were volunteers from Spain. They really, really need to fix this. In the context of my test game, it worked (cause troops were needed in south by italians and germans), but if Russia declared war, they would been wiped out in a few minutes...

Last time i put expeditionary on 0 didnt work. I think i am gona reduce your value more to see if it actually does anything....because so far, it did nothing for me.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yeah, that's true. But it also does not really happen when you start the 1936 and let a human control the USSR.
I think someone already mentioned it earlier: Doctrines, strategies, tactics and internal politics don't play the role they should to mimic a somewhat realistic theatre.
As USSR you'll neither have resource or production problems in the late 30s. And Germany won't have manpower issues. A human controlled France can easily block AI Germany and even a human controlled one.
I don't day I want railroading. To be fair, the deck was always rigged against the Axis, internal politics made possible what pure industrial prowess would not. This is reflected in the game and thus there are inflated numbers of troops all over the place.

In my modded game you will quite often have problem with manpower and industry and balance them properly...

So it IS possible to some degree simulate these effects.

 

[xsmilingbanditx]

In my modded game you will quite often have problem with manpower and industry and balance them properly...

So it IS possible to some degree simulate these effects.

I don't doubt that Given with what they got, the performance of the german army was quite remarkable. But at least half of the success lies within the failures of the opponents to wrap their head around what was happening. The whole thing was doomed from the start. On equal terms (commanders) Germany would not have overcome even France...that fell low like Gina Lisa on Rufies

 

[SDAirborne173]

In my modded game you will quite often have problem with manpower and industry and balance them properly...

So it IS possible to some degree simulate these effects.

Is your mod available on the Workshop?

 

[BernardoAZ]

I understand the frustration with the current game. My view is that the division templates to expand the "tail-to-tooth" ratio, require more manpower for each support unit and require more specific equipment for the support units.

In the game, the amount of manpower one uses for the army is the exact number that's deployed in combat divisions. So if we try to go realistic and deploy 6 million men for the US Army (its historical figure), that would equal to roughly 600 divisions with average sized AI divisions. However combat units is only one part of a division's actual strength. The game completely disregards life support, logistical and administrative figures (also known as tooth-to-tail ratio). In reality, the divisional slice is what's used to determine the true size of a division. The US deployed a total lof 89 divisions in WW2, 64 of which was deployed in the ETO. In game terms this is a force of around 650,000 men. However the actual number is closer to 4,350,000 because the operational slice of a typical infantry division was around 67,900 (13,800 standard division size + 54,100 non-divisional slice size = 67,900 operational slice size*). The number goes higher or the frontline numbers go lower if we are talking about armoured and mechanised divisions, which need more support.

1- The divisions the AI deploys are too small, hence there are too many of them.
2- The game doesn't account for the fact that support, logistical and administrative structures comprise 60-80% of total deployed troops. Hence the majors never run into manpower issues, where in reality, lack of manpower crippled the likes of Germany and the Soviet Union.


Sources:
* The Other End Of The Spear: Tooth-to-Tail Ratio (T3R) In Modern Military Operations by John C. McGrath, Combat Studies Institute Press

My suggestion for PDS to consider is to:
1 - Have 10 slots for support units
2 - Expand the manpower for each support unit from 500 to 1,000
3 - have templates in which the realistic number of support units are included
4 - have specialized equipment for some of the support units - eg. medical equipment for hospital support units, motorcycles for recon units, heavy equipment for engineer units, radio and cypher equipment for signal units.
5 - have substantial penalties for divisions that lack support units, rather than small benefits from adding support units
6 - go back to the component of HOI3 and have corp and army units. One corp unit for every ___ divisions (3, 4, ??) and one army unit is need for every ___ corp units (3, 4, ??). There are substantial penalties for divisions that lack corp units, and for corps that lack army units. Minor nations will require one army unit and the army unit serves as the corp unit.

Maybe this will be in a future patch - around 2018??

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Is your mod available on the Workshop?

No... at least not yet... I'm still testing and balancing it. It takes time to see how the AI and overall flow of the war goes... both historical AI and none historical.

But so far it looks promising. I have had some really cool developments... In one unhistorical game I had Germany and Japan dominating land while the Allies dominated the Sea and it basically was a stalemate, very cool game with the AI doing all sort if interesting warfare all over the world. In some the Axis is beaten very close to historical... the varied result is a good thing. Japan often bog down for a long time in China and sometimes beat China and sometimes don't. That is good to see.

 

[stewart_king_2000]

And there's the difference. Problem is, how do you count them as combat ready and what exactly is "trained"?
Just thinking about the russians army meatgrinder where folks where put into uniforms, given some shots of ammo, one out of ten got a rifle and hello front line here we come

Actually, that's a legend but mostly untrue. There were a few emergency militia units mobilized to defend fixed positions who got little or no training but the image you get of the 59th Guards going into action in "Enemy At The Gates" with a rifle for every other man is hogwash.

(They did have to go into action on the first evening without much of their support weapons, that were in follow-on trains. But the division was battle-tested and well-trained, not the conscripts driven into the attack by NKVD machine-gun squads that you see in the movie).

 

[cellinis]

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.

 

[SonGoku]

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 answer is actually scrapping the division as the unit that is shown on the map entirely and introduce regiments as the unit that is presented with an icon on the map. This _could_ be done, since the division builder allows for smaller units to be designed - but you need then seperate division and army HQs presented on the map. This may result in even more units, not less.

 

[cellinis]

The answer is actually scrapping the division as the unit that is shown on the map entirely and introduce regiments as the unit that is presented with an icon on the map. This _could_ be done, since the division builder allows for smaller units to be designed - but you need then seperate division and army HQs presented on the map. This may result in even more units, not less.

You are quite right, of course. However:
1. Not all unit levels needs to be controllable. For instance, even if the base unit is regiment, it doesn't have to be put under player-control (which can remain at division, or even Corps level).
2. It will be far more immersive/historically correct/feel like WWII!