Well, if it can understand the concpt of group i dont see why it wouldnt be able to understand the concept of subgroup. I agree it can very well be trickier for the ai, but i guess it can be done.
HQs, Command Structure and OOBs
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Well, if it can understand the concpt of group i dont see why it wouldnt be able to understand the concept of subgroup. I agree it can very well be trickier for the ai, but i guess it can be done.
The player will give player defined groups of units (e.g. a corps) orders to follow various player defined attack vectors. If you give a group of units the order to advance along a vector, they will in all likelihood do just that. There is no indication as to hoi4's design regressing to hoi3 type control, where the player sets multiple province objectives and let the AI try to its ability to achieve those in 200 division chunks. Having a whole front on cruise control is not likely a design goal, nor something that would be especially enjoyable in the long run. Instead we have the quite exciting battle planner feature where you create a plan consisting of attack vectors, which you assign groups of divisions to.
On the off-chance you are talking about AI as in AI nations, then they would not need to be affiliated with grouping at all, just as they will not need to be associated with graphical interface control. It would purely be a helpful player tool when using the battle planner with all its attack vector possibilities.
It seems like you think I wrote that the player should be restricted to giving the mission "Take Moscow" and be obliged to watch the AI fight the war without intervention. Please read again.
So long as you have the ability to micromanage every step or every movement of your units, why burden other players unnecessarily? Players who prefer to play the role of higher command would prefer to assign missions and review and modify plans prepared for them by their subordinates (as is done in actual practice), if the UI to do so was manageable. They see no point in tedious planning and scheduling which a a CPU should be doing to help the player's planning and execution.
Planning rail transportation, road scheduling, supply transport, and staging of air forces can be very important, but also usually more tedious than entertaining, and an area were a CPU can be much more efficient than wetware.
I agree that what you describe is a concern. If you select an army group sized persistent group, assign it a single general and give it an order to defend a particular front, the AI will use the divisions in that persistent group without concern for any subgroups that might be defined. Armies would not be kept together and corps would not be kept together. I think Podcat even mention this as a justification for deep sixing the CoC. It would require constant maintenance to keep tidy and become a chore again. I agree. However, I do not think the problem you perceive would be a problem. If you assign an army group to defend a front, then select a subgroup of that army group and give it a different assignment (assign a corps to some other front), I would expect the AI to cause the army group to fill in the holes and continue to defend the entire front. In fact, in this instance pulling out a corps that is not concentrated would actually be easier to fill in the defense.
Where it might be a problem is on the attack. Ideally, you would like to have an army perform an attack, then after reaching a certain objective have the army's subordinate corps all have sub objectives. That would prove difficult, because when the army AI is attacking, it would not care for the subordinate corps' substructure and scatter the corps among its attack. Then when you assigned a corps a sub-objective, you would find the corps' divisions scattered, not concentrated. At that point, your alternatives would be to have a diffused less effective attack or to designate your corps based upon where your divisions happened to have ended up -- a chore that Podcat wanted to avoid for the player.
My response is that it is better than nothing. The persistent sub-groupings will be extremely useful while organizing and moving divisions around while not in combat. They may get mixed up if you give an order at a high level of the hierarchy, but then dividing them up into new corps should not be any more difficult that lassoing a group of divisions and assigning them to a different general. So, it should not be any more work than the alternative. Also, you can avoid that issue all together by assigning all your orders at the corps level -- even if that means modding in more corps level generals.
Yes, you are likely correct, but this example is not the example I responded to.
The original question was, if you have a CoC and give Army X (consisting of corps A, B, C, D) a certain target, can you then easily give corps B and C new orders.
My response was that the AI will probably not acknowledge subgroups like corps.
For all we know the Ai is not coded with any kind of CoC in mind.
There are only Ad-hoc-units under the command of a general.
Whether you choose to make all those Ad-hoc-units in corps size or in army size is up to you.
But as the "Ad-hoc-army" doesn't consist of corps, but only individual divisions - as far as I understand - there will not be any easy way to give order to a specific corps.
You would have to select a bunch of divisions in that army, making them a NEW Ad-hoc-unit, give them a general, pretend that they are a corps and give them new orders.
I don't say that this must be a bad thing.
But somehow, when you think about it...
Ad-hoc-armies or even Ad-hoc-army-Groups must be the norm on the Eastern front.
Having all your forces organized in ad-hoc-corps, without any CoC, is hardly less micro compared to HOI3.
Again, there is no indication that there will be any setting of "certain targets" for groups in hoi4, where groups then take any path to reach that target á la hoi3. A core feature of hoi4 is the battle planner where the player makes plans consisting of of player-made paths, to which the player then allocate defined groups of divisions. So you could assign Army X to one long attack arrow, and know that it will follow this arrow. You could have this arrow split off in four, where you then want corps A, B, C & D to follow one path each. The units you allocate to these arrows would not go somewhere else. AI nations could make this allocation easy, but a player might not want to sort out divisions from a larger group, and instead have ready subgroups to swiftly allocate.
We know for a fact that the AI isn't/won't be coded with any CoC in mind. And it doesn't have to be. It'd just be a "Division selector & overview tool" for those 500+ divisions on a front. "Where do i have my [2x Arm, 1x L-Arm, 2x Mot] breakthrough group? Oh right, in X army group, Y army."
Indeed. Without any hierarchy, defined groups of 4-10 divisions as a smallest effective unit would be a hassle. Likewise, having to select individual divisions from larger groups/creating new groups/merging groups when plans change or new plans are made will hardly be less micro compared to hoi3 neither. That is why this thread keeps on going. Current speculated on design seems likely to make detailed operations needlessly microintensive, and i'm certain a player isn't expected to only make 6 arrows and put a bunch of large groups on these paths through the USSR.
@tommylotto:
I don't see how this is more than a general issue. The assumption that a random distribution along a front would only be a problem if you have subgroups is weird; You would still want specific divisions at specific places, so it would again only be more micro if no subgroups were present. Additionally, if the system regardless of subgroups is made to only work well with selection boxing of random units close to a new vector then there will undoubtedly be playability issues. Subgroups or not, i imagine the final game having an automatic preparation phase where divisions put themselves into place prior to executing a plan.
If you're executing a battle plan it wouldn't make any sense, subgroups or not, if the divisions wouldn't adhere to given vectors and thus stay rather coherent. On a stale front yes, but it would only seem fitting & realistic if a stale front preparing for an offensive operation require some time re-shuffling of units.
If you could preplan army X to attack along the Arrow and then at a (more or less) specific point split up in four Arrows - then fine.
But as far as I understand, that is not how it works.
You either send Army X along the long Arrow and then no split off unless you manually reorganize army X into corps A,B,C,D and give them new orders - or - you send A, B, C and D on four separate arrows, that happens to coincide up to the Point of split off.
Please prove me wrong - because I would be much happier if I have misunderstood the concept.
Well I don't know if anyone will be able to answer you definitively, as Podcat says, they have changed the system a few times since the August video. That being said, my understanding is that battle plans can have multiple stages which would allow you to take the unit attached to one vector, and split them off into other vectors when you wanted that stage to activate. We also, don't know what sort of sub groupings exist if any. Also, People have speculated they have to at least have RTS style ctrl+# groupings, but not even that is confirmed.
I can't prove you wrong as we are all just speculating. I'm also not arguing for how it will work, but rather how i believe it should (relating to a hierarchy that is). It seems very likely that apart from stages, modifications to plans when things go awry (which they are very likely to) or new plans when old ones are complete, as well as direct control because of an unforeseen event will require handy access to smaller elements of a large group without being a hassle. Say for example you start planning Barbarossa. You notice from intelligence some time after the plan has been made that you should create a series of encirclement maneuvers in a couple of places. So you add some splitting vectors (or coinciding-up-to-a-point new ones, effectively the same thing) to existing ones and add some ten corps-sized groups to those. Now, instead of going through lists of divisions from the larger groups already allocated, sifting through 'til you have the right corps-sized combination, you could with a hierarchy just select pre-made subgroups and allocate them. Same goes for modifications of plans when underway, direct control or new stages, subgroups would always be there to act as an effective smallest unit instead of those 500+ or more divisions in large operations.
What happens when your preselected corps sized groups in the heirarchy arent the size you need? An extra step shuffling units about in the heirarchy before giving orders?
There would be a little movement within the hierarchy, but there's still a fair chance that it'd be less 'finickity' (probably not a formal game design/play word) than having to manually group all the divisions up every time a plan happens. You'd only have the extra step for people that had made their custom sub-groups, so it wouldn't be adding an extra step for those that didn't want it, but for players that benefited from an extra level of organisation, it'd be there too. It'd be an entirely player-side (no AI) UI/organisation thing (if I understand Joppos correctly). It'd probably only be used for large offensives where you have tens to hundreds of divisions on the go. Not trying to cause trouble, thanks for showing an interest
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If one army corps is not sufficient, then you either have to rework your plan or give it to the army HQ.
You will adjust the way you make the plans (your game play) after the way your army is organized.
So I am not sure if the situation you describe would ever happen if there was a CoC á la HOI3.
But sure - in a situation where there are no fixed structure/CoC at all, you would mayhaps adjust your game play after that.
Then maybe you start with the plan and then assign the number of divisions you think would be sufficient to execute that plan.
Well at least you'd start from somewhere. That would still be better in my book than having to reselect random groups of divisions every time i draw a new plan or a new attack vector in that plan or adjust my plan to new parameters.
The ability to have preselected groups once the number of units on the map is almost as old as real time strategy games.
Wouldn't you think that the ability to have custom and persistant grouping of units handy in a RTS game with tons of units on map ?
I mean in Starcraft if i've more than 20 units on the map i start to get lost without grouping them in group 1 2 3 etc. What we're asking here is not that much different, except it would be more tied to the historical context. Rather than group 1 2 3 it would be corps 1 2 3 etc.
We don't even need arbitrary group size limits, bonuses, radio ranges and millions of leader. Just the ability to create groups within groups and be able to name them how we want.
Godd idea, I'll write Starcraft devs to implement CoC instead of control groups. Oh wait...
In light of recent events let me just preface with that all this is intended as nothing more than friendly speculation and discussion.
As i see it it would still be preferable, as opposed to always be forced to make completely new temporary de facto groups from larger selections. I mean, even just weeding out HQ units from selections in hoi3 was a tedious experience not least in the long run. You might indeed need a mixed mobile group of say 6 divisions to get 2 additional divisions for some task, but reassigning those 2 divisions seems more prone to potentially streamlined gameplay than sorting and selecting 8 of various types from scratch. That and taking into account that for each one group that needed to be modified, several others might not and would if so save on division-selecting work over-all when battle-planning.
Then there's the possibility of simply assigning singular divisions to the same tasks/arrows, from other assigned groups without changing the hierarchy. That way you got the temporary strength boost for that task, and when the plan is nearing completion or total catastrophe and new orders are due those fall back into their original group.
In the end though, even if it would turn out to be just as tedious as making those manual selections, wouldn't still be real nice to have all those 300+ soviet divisions on the European front organized in a hierarchical structure, not only for swiftly allocating larger and fewer chess pieces to battle plans but also for general forces overview; better knowing where those small groups of mixed mobile divs are located in a flurry of divisions. And that a groupgroup or groupgroupgroup could make it easier to have its content stay close to one part of a front when an operation and it's stages progress. With my flurry of speculation I'd also say that while a hierarchy had very little actual use in hoi3 unless everything was manually controlled, it seems it would go hand in hand in making the battle planner and it's player-defined attack paths an even more awesome feature than it already is.
Looking at some gorgeous HOI4 screens again i noticed something odd :
Look at the top right corner, there's something that looks like a Theatre interface with different places and their divisions.
Wouldn't something like that be the equivalent of an off map theater HQ ?
(also was the year 1936 so cold that italy froze ?)
Look at the top right corner, there's something that looks like a Theatre interface with different places and their divisions.
Wouldn't something like that be the equivalent of an off map theater HQ ?
(also was the year 1936 so cold that italy froze ?)
Well, there was snow in Europe in 1936 at least (see: Winter Olympics 1936). And as this is a pre-alpha screenshot I wouldn't be bothered if it was raining coconuts.
That screenie looks very promising. If it can also be set to display, for example, all units of a certain division type, it'll go a long way towards replacing the CoC system altogether.