Okay, so there is a misconception that a hierarchy is desired just because some old guard players liked the hard work of managing the mess of hoi3, or that people just want something because history had it no matter the game-play consequences.
There is actually a whole lot of merit to having some form of hierarchy, and I'm absolutely certain that many people would've also assumed/wanted such a feature after hearing about hoi4's battle plan system even if hoi3 had never even existed at all. Consider the battle plan system; a core feature of the new game, which will be your main method of ordering forces and something you are meant to spend a fair amount of time using. In this system you are supposed to create your own plans, in several stages, execute and modify them as the war progresses for up to several hundreds of discreet units. This means creating attack arrows for all sorts of maneuvers; simple advance, breakthrough, encirclement, defensive and so on from large groups down to rather small groups. The plans could be anything from one large arrow towards the enemy capital to several large arrows diverging into even more smaller ones.
Now of course, one will be able to make ridiculously simple battle plans when appropriate. But in being a core warfare feature let's assume it is meant to have some accessible depth to it, and that more than two or three large arrows towards the capital is a normal use of it. If it's too simple and it works against the AI nonetheless there will just be no game-play to such a feature. Let's assume that this battle plan isn't totally off the mark for a Barbarossa.
That's 3 - 5 main arrows for army sized number of units, 3 - 4 diverging arrows off of each of them for corps sized number of units, and a couple of other vectors for mixed sizes. So let's say you have one or two army sized bunches of units which you want to send on one of the main arrows, and divert some of their units along the diverging arrows. If you have one big group, the main arrow assignment will be easy as pie, but diverting some of its troops into the smaller arrows will entail having to sort through lists to make sure you get the right units types and subtypes. If you have many small independent groups you won't have a problem sorting, but you will have to do all of their arrow assignments and general orders individually. Then when their advance is complete you will have to redo it all. You could of course do a mix of these, but as plans inevitably change it will be nigh impossible to not get into a situation where your large groups need to be split, your your individual small groups needs to be used together. Simply put: you will want corps sized groups that can also be grouped together. Even at half the arrows from the hypothetical in-game Barbarossa, it would otherwise be unnecessarily levels of microing for relatively simple tasks.
The perfect fix for this is to have small groups also be a part of larger groups, so that you can order a large bunch around, while having direct access to smaller, functional units. This would also be very beneficial for actually executing orders like advancing on a plan or going defensive, and setting upgrade/reinforcement parameters.
Oh boy am i a broken record.
There is actually a whole lot of merit to having some form of hierarchy, and I'm absolutely certain that many people would've also assumed/wanted such a feature after hearing about hoi4's battle plan system even if hoi3 had never even existed at all. Consider the battle plan system; a core feature of the new game, which will be your main method of ordering forces and something you are meant to spend a fair amount of time using. In this system you are supposed to create your own plans, in several stages, execute and modify them as the war progresses for up to several hundreds of discreet units. This means creating attack arrows for all sorts of maneuvers; simple advance, breakthrough, encirclement, defensive and so on from large groups down to rather small groups. The plans could be anything from one large arrow towards the enemy capital to several large arrows diverging into even more smaller ones.
Now of course, one will be able to make ridiculously simple battle plans when appropriate. But in being a core warfare feature let's assume it is meant to have some accessible depth to it, and that more than two or three large arrows towards the capital is a normal use of it. If it's too simple and it works against the AI nonetheless there will just be no game-play to such a feature. Let's assume that this battle plan isn't totally off the mark for a Barbarossa.
That's 3 - 5 main arrows for army sized number of units, 3 - 4 diverging arrows off of each of them for corps sized number of units, and a couple of other vectors for mixed sizes. So let's say you have one or two army sized bunches of units which you want to send on one of the main arrows, and divert some of their units along the diverging arrows. If you have one big group, the main arrow assignment will be easy as pie, but diverting some of its troops into the smaller arrows will entail having to sort through lists to make sure you get the right units types and subtypes. If you have many small independent groups you won't have a problem sorting, but you will have to do all of their arrow assignments and general orders individually. Then when their advance is complete you will have to redo it all. You could of course do a mix of these, but as plans inevitably change it will be nigh impossible to not get into a situation where your large groups need to be split, your your individual small groups needs to be used together. Simply put: you will want corps sized groups that can also be grouped together. Even at half the arrows from the hypothetical in-game Barbarossa, it would otherwise be unnecessarily levels of microing for relatively simple tasks.
The perfect fix for this is to have small groups also be a part of larger groups, so that you can order a large bunch around, while having direct access to smaller, functional units. This would also be very beneficial for actually executing orders like advancing on a plan or going defensive, and setting upgrade/reinforcement parameters.
Oh boy am i a broken record.
