Infantry OP?

[TheMesp]

I saw some good discussion in an AI thread about how Infantry seems really OP in the WWW streams - to the point where no attempt is made to integrate other aspects of a land army (such as artillery and tanks) into an assault.

I didn't want it to be buried in an unrelated thread, so I made this thread for discussion about it to hopefully increase visibility and maybe get a developer response.

 

[Damiani]

You could probably get away with an all INF army in HOI3 as Germany, but INF has its limitations. In the WWW streams there has never been a situation where ARM has been needed (Japan fighting all INF China and Hungary against all INF Cze, Austria, Yug, and Romania). But straight up INF against a hard target will favor the latter any day. So basically if you are invading Russia, you will need tanks because the Russians will certainly have tanks.

Plus it is a pretty bad idea to not mechanize since speed is essential for encirclement.

 

[Orlunu]

Yeah, we've only seen fairly undeveloped countries grinding against each other in the early years so far, other than the multi (when they used a lot more variety). Tanks will force the enemy to use AT units, which will help a lot, and cav should be good for wide empty areas. Battalion level arty seems derp, but coys will be attached as standard if possible, I'd imagine.

 

[Otto of england]

I'm kind of confused how people are drawing infantry is OP from the Hungary or Japan WWW's. It's rather obvious that the primary reason Daniel isnt building tanks/artillery has anything to do with their ineffectiveness, rather his desire to keep the entirety of his army adequately supplied in equipment. It can been seen in the second Hungary stream and the later Japan streams that he starts production lines for artillery and tanks when he felt he had sufficient infantry equipment. Furthermore he highlighted that artillery gives +30 soft attack, and even voiced a concern that artillery might be to good bow!

Ba Lance complaints like this are rather pointless unless we see a country with sufficent industry in the current build neglecting tanks, artillery, planes, etc un favour of more infantry. Currently we have only seen a Germany with an army of infantry + ATG with some motorized, air and armour assets, a Britain with an entirely motorized + TD army, a Japan with a primarily infantry army supported by a few tanks, and a hungary with an army of infantry and artillery. (All values taken after Da9l has acquired sufficent infantry equipment)

 

[Sharp163]

I personally just want to see the AI execute more strategy on the battlefield (encirclements, defense in depth) rather than a who-has-the-most-manpower grindfest.

 

[kviiri]

By what we've seen, I think leg infantry is an excellent choice of "basic unit" for countries that can afford the manpower, but struggle to equip their soldiers. Artillery is much more industry-heavy solution, and including it is probably better for countries that can afford it without having to sacrifice, say, air force for it.

That said, I think it's sad we still haven't seen anyone use self-propelled artillery, AA or tank destroyers in the streams.

 

[Rommel 459]

infantry so far has only been "OP" because the twitch crowd is making Daniel start the war early enough that his fully/mostly armed infantry are fighting mobs of partially/mostly unarmed infantry... thinking logically, how can 1 unit be "OP" because of how well it's performing against itself....?

 

[LordOfWar16]

The main reason Daniel didnt use tanks in the Yapan (never gets old) and Hungary campaigns is, that he simply didnt had the resources or capacity to really build up armored divisions. As Hungary he didnt even had a single tank researched and didnt had any resource to really build them. Ontop of that he really only attacked rather weak countries that dont really have much if any strong armored divisions. Ontop of that the terrain didnt really favor armored combat aswell.

During the early WWW MP with UK vs Germany, which was even more unbalanced since the built was more than half a year old, the soviet union suffered from the trotsky coup basicly from day one, leaving them with a -40% construction (not production) penalty, making them unable to really build up their industry. When daniel attacked early on top of that, with the little organisation exploit of that early unbalanced built by removing artilelry, the soviet union basicly was already dead in the waters and daniel just had to walk right through them.

 

[Sun_Killer]

By what we've seen, I think leg infantry is an excellent choice of "basic unit" for countries that can afford the manpower, but struggle to equip their soldiers. Artillery is much more industry-heavy solution, and including it is probably better for countries that can afford it without having to sacrifice, say, air force for it.

That said, I think it's sad we still haven't seen anyone use self-propelled artillery, AA or tank destroyers in the streams.

In the multiplayer WWW Johan used TD's nearly throught out the hole game. So we have seen TD's.

 

[kviiri]

In the multiplayer WWW Johan used TD's nearly throught out the hole game. So we have seen TD's.

Oh, ok. I had missed that. What did he use them against, anyway? Daniel played pretty infantry-heavy.

 

[kalauer]

When daniel attacked early on top of that, with the little organisation exploit of that early unbalanced built by removing artilelry, the soviet union basicly was already dead in the waters and daniel just had to walk right through them.

Although we saw in the latest WWW, that Art still harms ORG. But now, it gives a lot more in return. It is likely, that INF without ART now will seriously fail against INF with ART, which was one other major concern earlier.

 

[Denkt]

Artillery have 12.5 soft attack per width, infantry have 3. Infantry have two things going for them, they are super cheap (50 production per battalion) and have good org. But they are slow, soft, weak attack and use up alot of manpower.

Anti tank is basiacally artillery that destroys tanks, it have very high hard attack something that is very rare and also very strong piercing value.

 

[General WVPM]

Try France or Russia inf only, see germany roflstomp the shit out of you

 

[kviiri]

Anti tank is basiacally artillery that destroys tanks, it have very high hard attack something that is very rare and also very strong piercing value.

What's the difference between hard attack and piercing?

 

[Denkt]

What's the difference between hard attack and piercing?

If your piercing value is less then the enemy armor value, then you only get to use half of your soft and hard attacks. Hard attacks are the same as soft attack but they are used against hard targets such as tanks while soft attacks are used against soft targets such as infantry.

Armor is basically to make tanks really hard to destroy without anti tank weapons.

 

[electriccat]

The interesting part was when he was comparing having artillery out in the main division structure rather than just as a support unit. It drastically changed the stats of the division as a whole in combat width and in the soft attack.

 

[Kovax]

What's the difference between hard attack and piercing?

Piercing value is compared against the target's Armor value, and if it's too low, then the armored unit gets a bunch of bonuses to its ORG damage, while the shooter who can't pierce only inflicts half damage.

That's a totally separate mechanism from Hard and Soft attack versus the target's Softness. The harder the target, the higher the odds that the shot will be taken using the shooter's HA value instead of its (typically higher) SA value. A unit with very low hardness (Infantry) will almost always be shot at using the SA value, while a very hard unit (heavy armor) will normally be shot at by the HA value. Since most units have WAY more SA than HA, extremely high hardness means that only AT weapons or other forms of HA will be effective against you. Shooting at a soft unit (the vast majority of the units in the game, including most armor divisions with only limited amounts of armor and several motorized supporting units), you STILL want as much SA as possible; HA is mainly there for the Piercing value. This may function a bit differently in HOI4 than in 3, where the HA value may be needed to destroy the equipment.

It's not that Infantry is OP, it's that Infantry is extremely cost-effective in standard roles against other standard units. Armor, motorized units, artillery, and other assets are means of concentrating force or as force multipliers, but they're too expensive to use en masse as your main army components. In a min-max environment of multiplayer, players tend to concentrate on a few things, rather than spread out efforts and become "just OK" at everything. Infantry is certainly one to concentrate on.

 

[Denkt]

Cost for cost artillery add more soft attack then infantry and much better soft attack/width and this for a lower manpower need, artillery do have low org however.

 

[kalauer]

If your piercing value is less then the enemy armor value, then you only get to use half of your soft and hard attacks. Hard attacks are the same as soft attack but they are used against hard targets such as tanks while soft attacks are used against soft targets such as infantry.

Armor is basically to make tanks really hard to destroy without anti tank weapons.

Also, the hard/soft attack mechanism yields that anti-tank weapons are weak against INF.

Piercing value is compared against the target's Armor value, and if it's too low, then the armored unit gets a bunch of bonuses to its ORG damage, while the shooter who can't pierce only inflicts half damage.

That's a totally separate mechanism from Hard and Soft attack versus the target's Softness. The harder the target, the higher the odds that the shot will be taken using the shooter's HA value instead of its (typically higher) SA value. A unit with very low hardness (Infantry) will almost always be shot at using the SA value, while a very hard unit (heavy armor) will normally be shot at by the HA value. Since most units have WAY more SA than HA, extremely high hardness means that only AT weapons or other forms of HA will be effective against you. Shooting at a soft unit (the vast majority of the units in the game, including most armor divisions with only limited amounts of armor and several motorized supporting units), you STILL want as much SA as possible; HA is mainly there for the Piercing value. This may function a bit differently in HOI4 than in 3, where the HA value may be needed to destroy the equipment.

I perceived it somewhat differently: hardness and softness do not define a probability, but a weighting factor for the average attack, made up from soft and hard attack. So when having 5 SA and 10 HA, a hardness of 100% yields 10 attack, 0% yields 5 attack, scaling linearly. So always going for HA will get you in trouble against soft targets.

Piercing and armor seem to work in an integer way: Do you pierce or not, yielding the already described bonus. It may very well be possible to have high HA but low piercing or the other way around, though normally these values will coincide. But they have no relation in game mechanic other than the "realistic" assumption that they should occur together.

 

[Kovax]

At least in HOI3, each turn there was a chance to use either HA or SA, and the odds of one or the other were totally dependent upon the target's Softness. If the target had 90% Softness, then there was a 90% chance of using Soft Attack against it that turn, and a 10% chance of using HA. A 100% soft target (Infantry) will ALWAYS cause the firer to use its SA value, while no unit in the game had 0 Softness, meaning that a unit with NO Hard Attack always had at least some slim possibility of inflicting a small amount of damage against it. A 5% Softness division (all Heavy Armor) would still have a 5% chance each turn of being engaged by the opponent's Soft Attack value (typically halved because of the piercing mechanics), and a 95% chance of facing its HA value (again, probably halved).

As you point out, most often high Piercing and high Hard Attack values usually coincide, because the weapons that provide the one usually provide the other, although in HOI3, Infantry could already get fairly decent HA via the portable AT weapons techs, so you only needed a source of Piercing to make it useful against Armored targets. AT brigades provided high Piercing AND Hard Attack, but almost no SA, making them relatively useless against infantry and other soft targets, where their high HA value was totally wasted. Armor, on the other hand, generally provided both Armor values and Piercing values to the entire division, reduced Softness (so the opponent had to use its HA value more frequently, instead of SA value), and also contributed decent amounts of both HA and SA.