How to manage armies manually or using battleplans

[GeorgioCZ]

Hi,

I am playing as Germany and currently fighting France and I have big difficulties. Not only that I can't find a good place to attack as most of French sectors have 3+ defending divisions which are immediately strengthened as soon as I attack,, but the problem is that my army doesn't do what I need and I am fighting AI of my own troops.

I set up a front lines for each of my army at the beginning of the attack on France. With moving frontlines (and especially after creating a pocket) my divisions started to do stupid things. F.e. when I send a division to a new acquired sector, it happens that after it reaches it, it turns back and goes somewhere completely different. Same way, when I need a division to stay in some sector to guard it or to get some organization, AI decides to send the division elsewhere and immediately marches from the sector. When I click to cancel the order, AI immediately restore the order.

How can I get organization or concentrate on attack when I have to check all frontline three or four times a day, whether they don't do anything what I don't want? Recently I was trying to change the frontlines according the situation, but having 9 armies and lots of divisions in each sector makes the writings on the frontline partially unreadable (See picture). I just don't know what frontline belongs to what army and whether there are divisions connected to it. It is a mess.

Is there a way to minimaze situations when AI does with your army what you don't want? How do you control your troops and how you make them do just what you need (and especially to stay in a sector)?

I have to confess that don't use Battle Plan offensive line. Firstly because I'm used to use direct control of my army (I played HOI 3) and secondly I don't understand much how it works and how can I react on what is happening on the battlefield. Maybe the problem is that I should learn how it works, right? Is it THE solution? What is your way to attack?

Thank you

 

[Andrew0Red]

It's much simpler if you either MM troops or use AI assistance on them. Trying to have both you and the AI command troops is generally ... exactly what you describe.


If you want a fairly simple victory (provided you're strong enough), start over:

• For each army, erase all previous orders by right-clicking the waste-bin.
• Manually assign each army a section of the front by right-clicking. Adjusting this is easy enough.
• Drink a cup of tea, listen to some calming music, do something that helps you relax, then ...
• Assign each army an offensive line. Getting it exactly where you want is very much a craft that must be learned by practice, practice, practice, and adjusting an existing one is very tricky...
• Wait. The divisions need to get in place.
• Wait some more. The command staff needs to work out the plan in details. This takes days, and our turns are hours, so be patient. :/
• Click the green arrows and watch them go!

Now enjoy watching your divisions fight all on their own, and without the penalty from non-planned maneuvers!

If you see a kettle that your AI is ignoring, manually send in the by-standers; first they'll actually go there and defeat the surrounded, second the AI will take over and send them somewhere usefull.

(Edit.: Actively trying to pincer is off course better, this is just easier.)


Lastly, what about all the other stuff? Do you have air superiority? Do you have enough CAS?

Do you use railway cannons or are you getting your boni elsewhere?

Which doctrine are you using, and how deep down are you?

Are the railways repaired? Are they large enough? Are all armies switched to supply-by-truck? Do you have enough transport airplanes doing air-supply?

Have you gotten a collaboration government standing by?

 

[Corpse Fool]

I think the best way is to micromanage the battle planner.

 

[GeorgioCZ]

To

I think the best way is to micromanage the battle planner.

What exactly do you mean?

 

[GeorgioCZ]

I think the best way is to micromanage the battle planner.

It's much simpler if you either MM troops or use AI assistance on them. Trying to have both you and the AI command troops is generally ... exactly what you describe.


If you want a fairly simple victory (provided you're strong enough), start over:

• For each army, erase all previous orders by right-clicking the waste-bin.
• Manually assign each army a section of the front by right-clicking. Adjusting this is easy enough.
• Drink a cup of tea, listen to some calming music, do something that helps you relax, then ...
• Assign each army an offensive line. Getting it exactly where you want is very much a craft that must be learned by practice, practice, practice, and adjusting an existing one is very tricky...
• Wait. The divisions need to get in place.
• Wait some more. The command staff needs to work out the plan in details. This takes days, and our turns are hours, so be patient. :/
• Click the green arrows and watch them go!

Now enjoy watching your divisions fight all on their own, and without the penalty from non-planned maneuvers!

If you see a kettle that your AI is ignoring, manually send in the by-standers; first they'll actually go there and defeat the surrounded, second the AI will take over and send them somewhere usefull.

(Edit.: Actively trying to pincer is off course better, this is just easier.)


Lastly, what about all the other stuff? Do you have air superiority? Do you have enough CAS?

Do you use railway cannons or are you getting your boni elsewhere?

Which doctrine are you using, and how deep down are you?

Are the railways repaired? Are they large enough? Are all armies switched to supply-by-truck? Do you have enough transport airplanes doing air-supply?

Have you gotten a collaboration government standing by?

Lastly, what about all the other stuff? Do you have air superiority? Do you have enough CAS?

- my planes are in the area, but Allies are stronger. I have nearly 500 CAS, 600 fighters and some 900 TAC bombers, but I didn't use all of them in France as there are not enough airfields in the area and it is using a lot of fuel, maybe I underestimated it. Allies have 1987 planes in the area. My planes are fighting them, but I don't have air superiority. Can I have air superiority with 600 fighters against 2000 planes?

Do you use railway cannons or are you getting your boni elsewhere?
- I don't have any. I never used them and nobody mentioned them in youtube guides, so I didn't build them.

Which doctrine are you using, and how deep down are you?
-- Battlefield support (direct ground support researched) and Mobile Warfare Doctrine (Elastic defence researched)

Are the railways repaired? Are they large enough? Are all armies switched to supply-by-truck? Do you have enough transport airplanes doing air-supply?
-- I am not able to do all the repairs as from beginning of war I was attacked by air in multiple sectors and Allies are doing more damage that I am able to repair. Currently I have around 17 railwails in repair and 11 infrastructure in repair). What you mean with "supply-by-truck? I can't see any place to set it up.

Have you gotten a collaboration government standing by?
-- no

I have problem with low supply penalties having 15-19,5% attack penalty and 60-68% breaktrough penalty from that. And yes, it is a problem as French troops have defence from 300 to 650, which is huge!

 

[Corpse Fool]

Well, if you prefer to move about all your formations by yourself, you might want to set up a marshal frontline while all the generals are given an area defense order in some neutral space they can't actually move to or occupy, such that they end up doing nothing. Having them still sit on the marshal line will still generate your planning bonus, though I'm not sure if the generals will be earning skill/trait XP (@blahmaster6k ?). I know I ran into issues with a marshal line (not using area defense) where none of the officers were gaining organizer XP to unlock logistics wizard.

The alternative here is to constantly be deleting and remaking, or redrawing your orders. to adjust to the situation, which can be tedious but will completely allow you to gain skill and trait XP to develop your officers and have your planning bonus. The downside here is your formations will constantly be shuffling about on the line.

 

[Andrew0Red]

What exactly do you mean?

(While I cannot speak for Corpse Fool, I'll take a guess at what he meant.)

Use the battle-planner, more or less as described above, just in more detail:

E.g. be carefull of whether the army is on cautious, normal or aggressive.

Select [some of] the tank divisions in the army, and give them a narrow front and a narrow spearhead (rather than ), so there'll be potential for encirclement.
Selecting motorized divisions and giving them the same narrow front to prevent the tanks getting cut off.

Gauge whether it's best to wait for planning to complete or execute the order ASAP.

Maybe leave non-tank division without offensive orders, since they suffer so much when attacking, especially if the enemy frontline is well-entrenched.

Selectively attacking with inf+art only when the enemy suffers penalties, such as out-of-supply or air inferiority.


But as you have problems in so many other areas, I doubt it would be enough.

Adding AA to your divisions (even just the support one with early tech) will reduce damage from enemy CAS by 75% ... but it is much better to have air superiority.

It sounds like you have too few civilian factories. ... or maybe you're just suffering due to lack of fighters to defend...

Supply-by-truck: When selecting an army or army-group, there's a button somewhere in the big tab on the left. It shows a horse, but can clicked over to 1 or to 3 trucks.,that alleviates supply a little.
Maybe move your tank divisions out of the salient and leave that low-supply area to infantry?
Maybe add logistics companies to your divisions? Especially tank divisions and divisions that will stand near the tanks.
Consider building up railroads between your capital and the area with supply-problems.

 

[GeorgioCZ]

(While I cannot speak for Corpse Fool, I'll take a guess at what he meant.)

Use the battle-planner, more or less as described above, just in more detail:

E.g. be carefull of whether the army is on cautious, normal or aggressive.

Select [some of] the tank divisions in the army, and give them a narrow front and a narrow spearhead (rather than ), so there'll be potential for encirclement.
Selecting motorized divisions and giving them the same narrow front to prevent the tanks getting cut off.

Gauge whether it's best to wait for planning to complete or execute the order ASAP.

Maybe leave non-tank division without offensive orders, since they suffer so much when attacking, especially if the enemy frontline is well-entrenched.

Selectively attacking with inf+art only when the enemy suffers penalties, such as out-of-supply or air inferiority.


But as you have problems in so many other areas, I doubt it would be enough.

Adding AA to your divisions (even just the support one with early tech) will reduce damage from enemy CAS by 75% ... but it is much better to have air superiority.

It sounds like you have too few civilian factories. ... or maybe you're just suffering due to lack of fighters to defend...

Supply-by-truck: When selecting an army or army-group, there's a button somewhere in the big tab on the left. It shows a horse, but can clicked over to 1 or to 3 trucks.,that alleviates supply a little.
Maybe move your tank divisions out of the salient and leave that low-supply area to infantry?
Maybe add logistics companies to your divisions? Especially tank divisions and divisions that will stand near the tanks.
Consider building up railroads between your capital and the area with supply-problems.

Thank you, I will try. But I have to study how the Battle planning works exactly.

It sounds like you have too few civilian factories. ... or maybe you're just suffering due to lack of fighters to defend...

-- I have 84 civilian factories (+ few from occupied territories). Is it too few? I was thinking that it is just fine. Firstly in the beginning of war I was repairing all the damage, but I found very soon that all my factories won't be doing anyhing else as from what I found any repair takes a minimum of 1 day and I took more damage daily than I was able to repair. Then I decided to leave the repair to autorepair (with exeption of factories and docks) to be able to work on something else. In case that I have 50 usable factories (as 34 are used for consumer goods and 8 for trade), I can't repair more than 4 railroads or infrastucture at once as I cannot use less than full stock of 15 factories on a single repair, right? So, to be able to repair more than 4 spots at once I will need to have extra 15 factories. That is too costly, isn't it? Or is there any possibility to make a single factory repair a single railroad?

Supply-by-truck: When selecting an army or army-group, there's a button somewhere in the big tab on the left. It shows a horse, but can clicked over to 1 or to 3 trucks.,that alleviates supply a little.

- I found the button, it shows a horse/two trucks/three trucks. There is no description for that button. What does it do and what is the diffrence between button with 2 trucks and button with three trucks?

 

[Andrew0Red]

What does it do and what is the diffrence between button with 2 trucks and button with three trucks?

It switches whether supplies will be moved by horsewagon or by truck for the last leg (i.e. from the railway to the division), with trucks being better.

It won't help if you can't get supplies near the division in the first place, of course. It is good if the distance from rail to division is large.

As for the difference between 2 and 3 trucks, that is a good question. :/ (Presumably many more trucks used for a little more supply?)

 

[Anaraxes]

If you're giving orders to a unit assigned to a battleplan order, then your order will take priority, the unit will execute it, and then immediately revert to AI control under the battleplanner. So, in your example, you manually order a unit to a new sector; it marches there; and when it arrives, it checks its battleplan orders and goes back to what it was doing (probably marching right back the way it came). If you want a unit to go fight "over there", then you need to remove it from its assigned order and reassign it to some other order relevant to its new sector. (See below for micromanaging the battle planner.)

If you want to direct where the unit goes manually without it reverting, then unassign it from its battleplan order. Then it will do what you tell it to, and only what you tell it to. (So, not accumulating a planning bonus or keeping up with an advancing front unless you revisit that unit from time to time.

"Micromanaging the battle planner" I think means creating detailed battle plans, as Andrew0Red says. An army can have more than one front, and probably should. (More provinces in a front line than units assigned is a recipe for constant marching and countermarching, since the planner can't cover all the territory it was assigned.) Plus, the army needs extra orders like spearheads or fallback lines (possibly multiple ones with alternate sets of units assigned, so you can have a rear guard fighting while you withdraw part of the army). You'll probably still want two spearheads for encircling some units from each side, not one wide spearhead with the expectation that the AI will just poke holes along its edges and encircle everything in the middle of the spearhead arrow. The fronts change as your armies advance and there's new border provinces that weren't in the original plan. You'll need to stay on top of the automatic additions and front overlaps, and update the directions of your advances as the days tick by. The more front lines and other orders you create, with fewer and fewer units assigned to each, the more detailed control you'll have over what the units wind up doing. The ultimate and probably illogical extreme is one front line for every province, with just one or two defending units assigned, with every attacking unit assigned its own spearhead.

The battleplanner is a tool, so you'll have to experiment with it, figure out how it generally does things, and then give it orders that will produce the results you want. (I'm still stuck in stage 2, personally, so I wind up micro'ing most units on important fronts, or any where the decision is close. The battleplanner I mostly use for scattering infantry along a line, a broad advance to clean up pockets automatically after resistance has mostly collapsed. With anything else, I'm still stuck in the 'experiment to see what happens' stage.)