I Find I Hardly Ever Build/Use Fortresses

[unmerged(371738)]

If I am a small power in danger of invasion, I simply don't have the IC to waste on fortresses. If I am a big country I almost always want to go brutal offensive. Forts, what are they good for? The only time I ever build them is as the USA because I have nothing to do, and they are obviously useless in that case.

I don't despise occupying them, if they're already there they're nice, but they're not worth the divisions and IC they cost.

 

[Jamesk2]

Does EVERYTHING in real life need to be "worthy" to exist?

 

[Gort11]

Does EVERYTHING in real life need to be "worthy" to exist?

What a worthless answer - you could answer any balance question whatsoever with that. Fortification-building was a key aspect of certain battles in WW2 - the Overlord beach assaults would've been a lot easier without the Atlantic Wall fortifications, and Kursk would've been a lot harder on the Russians.

I agree with Bonapartist - forts are currently not worth spending IC on, and they should be. Extending the Maginot Line should be a viable tactic - as it is, you're better off building hordes of militia as France instead.

 

[unmerged(238359)]

That might be purposeful - after-all, at the time period in question,fixed fortifications had limited effectiveness for their cost. Pre-existing fortifications that already exist on the map are probably the main reason for their existence. Only a high-IC nations short on manpower should really bother using them. And I think that this means that it's the mobilization manpower that is a bit screwy, not the fort costs.

However, there are a lot of pre-existing fortification lines that existed in real life that simply aren't on the map. The heavy coastal fortifications that defended the shores of the US come to mind - most US beach provinces should heavy high level coastal forts, at least the major cities like San Francisco.

Another thing that really doesn't show up are the vast web of last-ditch fortifications put up by the Soviets as the Germans advanced. The network of anti-tank ditches, dragons teeth, trenches, bunkers, and lines of barbed wire that were hastily flung up by Soviet civilian work gangs made significant contributions to many of the sieges in the war, like Leningrad, Moscow, and Sevastopol. The Soviets should probably get events as they loose territory that radically cut down on cost and build time for land fortifications. I'm talking as in "forts that would otherwise take a year to build are done in two week" fast.

 

[Jamesk2]

What a worthless answer - you could answer any balance question whatsoever with that. Fortification-building was a key aspect of certain battles in WW2 - the Overlord beach assaults would've been a lot easier without the Atlantic Wall fortifications, and Kursk would've been a lot harder on the Russians.

I agree with Bonapartist - forts are currently not worth spending IC on, and they should be. Extending the Maginot Line should be a viable tactic - as it is, you're better off building hordes of militia as France instead.

Oh hey have you ever played a German game and get so desperate that you DID build coastal fort? There is a massive hole of difference between real-life and game. Be realistic, dude.

 

[Gort11]

That might be purposeful - after-all, at the time period in question,fixed fortifications had limited effectiveness for their cost. Pre-existing fortifications that already exist on the map are probably the main reason for their existence. Only a high-IC nations short on manpower should really bother using them.

However, there are a lot of pre-existing fortification lines that existed in real life that simply aren't on the map. The heavy coastal fortifications that defended the shores of the US come to mind - most US beach provinces should heavy high level coastal forts, at least the major cities like San Francisco.

Another thing that really doesn't show up are the vast web of last-ditch fortifications put up by the Soviets as the Germans advanced. The web of anti-tank ditches, dragons teeth, trenches, bunkers, and lines of barbed wire that were hastily flung up by Soviet civilian work gangs made significant contributions to many of the sieges in the war, like Leningrad, Moscow, and Sevastopol. The Soviets should probably get events as they loose territory that radically cut down on cost and build time for land fortifications. I'm talking as in "forts that would otherwise take a year to build are done in two week" fast.

Well, quite. I'd probably say that the best way to do forts would be some kind of diminishing returns - a level 1 fort takes a couple of weeks and represents the Kursk ditches and such, while a level 10 fort takes years and represents the Maginot line style of fort.

Oh hey have you ever played a German game and get so desperate that you DID build coastal fort? There is a massive hole of difference between real-life and game. Be realistic, dude.

The whole point of this thread is that forts aren't worth building, so no, I obviously have never bothered building coastal forts as Germany. The point is that they should be worth building in certain situations because they were obviously successful during WW2 in certain situations. At the moment there is no situation in Darkest Hour where you're better off building forts than something else.

At a risk of derailing, Overlord never happens in my games as Germany because you can take Britain out of the war in 1939 or 1940 by dropping paratroopers in Exeter and sending across an unstoppable horde of Wehrmacht soldiers.

 

[Slavick3000]

If anything, forts in DH are more useful than in vanilla Hearts of Iron 2. The battles are much longer, so the fortress bonus is active for longer. Longer battles against heavily fortified lines also tend to grind down the enemy's manpower which is more valuable and less replaceable in DH. Also, with the longer unit build times, the opportunity cost of building up forts is lower. The problem, of course, is that forts are more useful against certain army compositions and doctrines than others. Germany has the high org to outlast the French for instance, and has the fast units to exploit any opening in the fortified line. Against the slower and less maneuverable nations such as Japan or Italy, forts have a much better force multiplier effect, especially in places like North Africa that have narrow corridors of high-infrastructure provinces that are really difficult to bypass.

 

[unmerged(371738)]

At a risk of derailing, Overlord never happens in my games as Germany because you can take Britain out of the war in 1939 or 1940 by dropping paratroopers in Exeter and sending across an unstoppable horde of Wehrmacht soldiers.

Hahahaha, that's exactly what I do. SURPRISE, COMPUTER, 400K MEN ON YA SHORES!

And I agree about the missing fortresses, the coasts of America are STILL monstrously fortified; even the many abandoned fortresses in the Pacific area could rapidly be turned into fully functional fortifications in a few months.

f anything, forts in DH are more useful than in vanilla Hearts of Iron 2. The battles are much longer, so the fortress bonus is active for longer. Longer battles against heavily fortified lines also tend to grind down the enemy's manpower which is more valuable and less replaceable in DH. Also, with the longer unit build times, the opportunity cost of building up forts is lower. The problem, of course, is that forts are more useful against certain army compositions and doctrines than others. Germany has the high org to outlast the French for instance, and has the fast units to exploit any opening in the fortified line. Against the slower and less maneuverable nations such as Japan or Italy, forts have a much better force multiplier effect, especially in places like North Africa that have narrow corridors of high-infrastructure provinces that are really difficult to bypass.

Yes, existing fortifications are nice, but the point is that building fortresses is usually totally pointless.

I'd much rather have several infantry divisions than 1 level of fortification. Forts don't shoot back and they don't move.

As Austria-Hungary in the 1914 game I exploited France's soft underbelly and annexed most of them as well as most of Italy; their fortifications did nothing more than slow down my inevitable grinding army; at that point my manpower was through the roof and the rest of the Entente were basically trivial to defeat.

If the game started, say, 20 years before a war I'd build fortresses. But in any immanent-war situation, men > fortresses.

This is also somewhat true in EU3; though that has more to do with my total-war attrition style than their cost.

 

[Rotten Venetic]

Play Poland. Fortify Wloclavek, Plock and Katowice. Pwn Hitler.

Fortresses are good when you know or suspect you'll be fighting a defensive war in an area, where you won't be able to attack for a long while. Naturally, that area must be yours from the start if you want to fortify it. This was the consideration behind the Stalin line, the Maginot and Siegfried lines, Eben Emael, the Sudetenland forts, the Atlantic wall... you name it.

Now, the above might sound like a Captain Obvious moment, and maybe it is, but the problem is that we, as players, can always find solutions to attack, to seize the initiative, to take land. I'm not that good at HoI, but, playing Poland with almost no buffs at all (just a few modified and extra specialties on the tech teams) I can eventually beat back Germany (which is, in my personal mod, buffed rather more than Poland) and begin to take their land. Hell, I even manage to attack Allenstein though as a rule I can't really keep it in the first year.
If I minmax at the level some players on this forum have shown, I can probably either nail down Allenstein easily or actually keep North-Western Poland (Poznan, Gdyna etc) and grind down the East Prussia natural pocket.

With that in mind, building forts makes no sense, because I need to put all those IC days toward hitting Germany harder. The game is conceived in such a way that the desired result, pwning Hitler, is best achieved by trying to seize the initiative from Germany rather than trying to create an airtight defense and outlast Germany. The offensive approach would have been unthinkable in real life, and it is unthinkable against a human Germany (in fact, if the GER player is at least at my level of skill, it's altogether impossible to beat back Fall Weiss as Poland).

 

[Palaiologos]

Just because Germany's modern tactics in WW2 rendered forts obsolete doesn't mean they are worthless to everybody else. Do you think that if Bulgaria invaded Greece, or Italy invaded France they would have better luck against the fixed fortifications there?

 

[TremblingBlue]

The problem is, if fortresses are made cheaper...a ridiculous amount can be created by major powers. It'll be hard to balance

 

[Pasha]

I used to like playing as Czech in HOI2 and expanding their forts to keep Germany out. It actually worked, although I would always ally with the other Balkan nations and oppose German with a United Front. Not meaning to threadjack, but is it possible to play as Czech in DH. I thought I read somewhere that German AI decisions basically make playing as a human Czech impossible.

 

[Jamesk2]

Well, quite. I'd probably say that the best way to do forts would be some kind of diminishing returns - a level 1 fort takes a couple of weeks and represents the Kursk ditches and such, while a level 10 fort takes years and represents the Maginot line style of fort.

The whole point of this thread is that forts aren't worth building, so no, I obviously have never bothered building coastal forts as Germany. The point is that they should be worth building in certain situations because they were obviously successful during WW2 in certain situations. At the moment there is no situation in Darkest Hour where you're better off building forts than something else.

At a risk of derailing, Overlord never happens in my games as Germany because you can take Britain out of the war in 1939 or 1940 by dropping paratroopers in Exeter and sending across an unstoppable horde of Wehrmacht soldiers.

Yes now you see a part of the point I'm making: NO ONE EVER PLAYED DH IN "DEFENSE" MINDSET. What is your goal when you starting a game with Germany? WORLD DOMINATION!!! USSR? WORLD DOMINATION!!! USA? WORLD DOMINATION!!! Japan? WORLD DOMINATION!!! And so WHY THE HECK DO A CONQUEROR NEED A FORT? Every country builds forts with the same purpose: To survive. What is the purpose of a DH gamer: TO BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF THEM.

 

[unmerged(371738)]

I've never played any Paradox game on the defense. Defense is pretty much always a losing strategy. You need to BREAK them and take their IC and manpower base, fighting on the defense just means you get men killed to no purpose. The longer you defend against Germany the more powerful they become versus yourself. You want to crush them, not keep them out. Maintaining borders is not a feasible goal unless you're some juggernaut like the USA or Russia.

 

[BeardedHoplite]

I played a game as France with the sole plan to extend the Maginot Line to Belgium and wait. I think I only built a few more divisions of infantry and a few extra tanks and interceptors, most of the IC went to the extending the line.

For the most part the plan worked, I managed to hold off the Wermacht and make modest gains in Belgium before the Soviets broke Germany sometime in late 1944.
My only complaint is that the only major territory I got was Cologne and the provinces around it. But it was pretty cool watching the German army bust their heads against my mighty wall for almost five years (there was no Sitzkreig, they annexed Poland and went straight for me.)

 

[unmerged(371738)]

I played a game as France with the sole plan to extend the Maginot Line to Belgium and wait. I think I only built a few more divisions of infantry and a few extra tanks and interceptors, most of the IC went to the extending the line.

For the most part the plan worked, I managed to hold off the Wermacht and make modest gains in Belgium before the Soviets broke Germany sometime in late 1944.
My only complaint is that the only major territory I got was Cologne and the provinces around it. But it was pretty cool watching the German army bust their heads against my mighty wall for almost five years (there was no Sitzkreig, they annexed Poland and went straight for me.)

But France starts out with one of the largest armies in the world. If they didn't that strategy would be suicide.

 

[TremblingBlue]

France can easily attack and take a good amount of land (thus enabling you to trap Wermacht between Holland and Belgium when they try to flank). Another good strategy is to send troops to Denmark too, and protect Norway with the French Navy. In my current game I've managed to defeat Germany in 1941, and the British ACTUALLY bothered to help by landing in Kiel.

PS. Pasha, I started a game as Poland and suffered a similar fate as Czech...just impossible. It's even easier to play as Ethiopia!

 

[Easy1]

Forts should be expensive, and by the 1940s a waste of time and money indeed. The second world war introduced the world to the power of mobile warfare.

Unless you only have a narrow bottleneck to protect, simply forget it.

 

[Rotten Venetic]

France can easily attack and take a good amount of land (thus enabling you to trap Wermacht between Holland and Belgium when they try to flank). Another good strategy is to send troops to Denmark too, and protect Norway with the French Navy. In my current game I've managed to defeat Germany in 1941, and the British ACTUALLY bothered to help by landing in Kiel.

PS. Pasha, I started a game as Poland and suffered a similar fate as Czech...just impossible. It's even easier to play as Ethiopia!

Not to hijack the tread, but are you playing Poland on very hard? On Normal it's by no means unreasonable to defeat the AI GER attack.

 

[Conanteacher]

I used some forts as Japan.

I joined the axis on Barbarossa time and Germany got their ass kicked by 1942. I had just conquered india and built level 4-5 forts from Bandar Abbas to the Afghan borders. To keep that line safe with a stack af 30 divisions from Thailand, Manchu and some other puppets - in order not to loose Mongolia and N. China.

Forts saved me - but that was in Iron Cross of Arma...