Is battlefield width fixed at 80? If so - why?

[Dalwin]

But you still take casualties/equipment losses on that extra 9% over width. You are paying an extra 9% in production cost on all of those divisions, but they fight 17% worse than they should for that cost.

So while the tactical penalties are not necessarily killer for the reasons you state, on the larger strategic level, you are wasting a significant amount of your production.

Just to illustrate the point, if you were hypothetically to get this same penalty in every battle (which of course you won't, but for the sake of argument), it would have the same effect as if you didn't use 17% of your factories.

That extra bit of casualties is trivial, plus as already stated, the example uses 29 width divisions which no one has suggested is a good size. There are also those, including myself, talking about having more than one size in your army which throws these kind of micro analyses out the window. Don't think single battle. Think entire campaigns and wars.

Well we have different philosophies. I know many playing HOI have been conditioned not only by the forum and by the wiki but also playing EU etc. to value that combat width more than I think is appropriate. When I start losing in MP because of the way I treat width then I will reconsider. In the meantime, I continue as I have been.

 

[Kaosium]

That extra bit of casualties is trivial, plus as already stated, the example uses 29 width divisions which no one has suggested is a good size. There are also those, including myself, talking about having more than one size in your army which throws these kind of micro analyses out the window. Don't think single battle. Think entire campaigns and wars.

Well we have different philosophies. I know many playing HOI have been conditioned not only by the forum and by the wiki but also playing EU etc. to value that combat width more than I think is appropriate. When I start losing in MP because of the way I treat width then I will reconsider. In the meantime, I continue as I have been.

I think you're right about this, that min-maxing combat width is not likely to be as useful as many assume. For one thing most battles won't even fill up the width so it's irrelevant. In other cases it won't matter if you perfectly align your forces to 22 or 44 width because in the combats that do fill out the width you'll have 'helpers' from the Axis minors/minor country infantry screwing up your perfect widths with 8 width units the computer puts into the battle because it thinks it helps your chances and from what I've seen I'd guess they're probably correct. If I have a 125% planning bonus along with general or Field Marshal bonus/traits and 25-75% bonuses from experience (etcetera etcetera) does the rather minor malus from going over-width actually matter all that much in the scheme of things knowing that you're getting another unit firing on the line in return?

I think there's some definite value to having 40-44 width units in many instances, but outside that there's not a whole lot of combats where it will matter and even in those you're going to run over due to things beyond your control regardless. In practice I can't help but wonder what people do to get all their units to 40-44 width at the same time anyway, do they horde their goodies (better equipment) until they can do it all at once everywhere? I often find myself with 27 width infantry, at least for a while, and I don't seem to run into many combats where it matters. Aren't the 40 width battles generally the ones where one side wins and then only occupies the hex with one unit which is immediately run off again by the returning counter-attackers so no hex actually changes hands?

 

[jamesd]

200+ single province width is theoretically sound from a tactical perspective but hardly on a divisional operational scale.
There are only so many avenues of approach that are suitable for combat movement and it usually follows roads and decent terrain.
Combat can happen everywhere but you're not going to see entire divisions utilizing the full breadth of their assigned area when advancing and then the same applies for the defender.

That dominating highground, crossroads, channeling gap, solid piece of ground, village, road, bridge, outcroop, gulley and creek is going to be a focalpoint and that's where the width disappears.
The system could be improved however and be tied to other provincial stats, infra and size. Cities for example should be manpower intensive affairs where in reality a single block can swallow a battalion in terms of "width".

I'm guessing you're commenting on me suggesting that realistic widths could be as high as 300? The points you've outlined are why I'd be fine with a maximum width of 160 in open terrain and smaller widths in more difficult terrain. That's why I'm also ok with additional angles of attack only adding 50% to the base - presumably the main attack will be launched from the most suitable position with supporting lines of advance allowing fewer troops to participate. A standard 9 battalion division operating in a 2 up & 1 back formation can have as few as 4 battalions forward, each on a 2 company frontage. In attack each battalion only needs 500-1000m, giving a divisional frontage of 2-4 km as I mentioned in my first post. With a 4km frontage in open terrain, that already allows for only 50% of the ground to be utilised for the advance. With say 40-50 km provinces, and some are larger, that's 5-6 divisions on a single axis of attack and if they're 30 width each that's 150-180 width, so I think that 160 maximum width would be fine for clear terrain provinces. In an attack from 2 provinces against 1, that would allow a maximum of 8 divisions along a front of 40-50km or about 5.625km per division, meaning up to 64% of the front may not actually be used in the advance. For say Hills or Forest I'd suggest maximum width should be more like 120 and for Mountains or Swamp 80. That would mean in hills, each division would need at least 7.5km to find a decent angle of attack and in more difficult terrain that stretches out to at least 11.25km per division.

Given that I don't know whether its possible to mod in different maximum combat widths for different terrain types, a standard width of 120 might work as a compromise.

Just as food for thought, what if planning bonuses reduced a unit's width rather than giving bonuses to attack? The planning could reflect scouting of different avenues of advance and time for a unit to fully deploy. I think it could represent the difference between positional and mobile warfare rather well. In such a fashion width could be left at 80 with maximum planning bonuses enabling an army to employ more men than normal (what's currently a 50% planning bonus could reduce width by say 25%). Under such a system the rate planning accrued would probably need to be speeded up and it should be lost if a unit moves to another province.

 

[jamesd]

Which historical? German infantry1939, no, 80 is low. German 44 infantry, 80 is about right. Italian historical? 80 is close as they used binary for a lot of their builds. Japanese, well it depends on if you are talking their 2 brigade, 3 regiment, or special detachment templates. US historical, are you talking 1939 infantry or 1944 Combat Command independent units? Russian ToE? Well, once again it depends on the year in question. Each country used different templates during different time periods based upon their military doctrine, history, and industrial capacity. If you want to dig deeper check out the Nafziger ToE files for this time period.

PDS is not going to create and maintain historical templates for each country, the production scripts to handle this would be a royal pain to code and keep up to date with each DLC and patch. This is why each "historical template" at start migrates more or less to the standard generic. They made the game design decision to set the standard combat width at 80 based upon all their other parameters and settings.

I'm really not following your thinking here in how this ties into my previous post. Width is dependant on the units within a template, so the internal makeup of divisions means that an army can employ a greater or lesser number of them on any given frontage. As such there's no need for Paradox to design individual templates for each nation in order for a wider combat width to work as it will be self regulating - the Germans or Soviets could employ more of their small late war divisions on the same frontage than the larger UK & US divisions. If you go back to my first post you'll see that I was talking about a theoretical 9 battalion division with a reasonable level of organic and higher level support being around 30 combat width.

That's say 10 Inf, 2 Art, 2 AT & 2 AA

The extra Inf represents engineers as a single 300 man company may be sufficient to represent a company attached from corps/army troops but most divisions of western major powers included a full battalion organic to the division as well. 72 guns is a reasonable mid range level for one of these divisions, noting that a British infantry division in NW Europe in 1944 could on average count on its own 72 guns plus about half an artillery group which could be 60 additional guns. Those divisions also had 110 organic AT guns & 120 organic AA guns plus more available from higher levels so 72 & 60 is not over the top.

Where the AI uses its 7 Inf & 2 Art divisions, they're roughly speaking 2/3's the size of a late war UK/US division or about the size of a late war Ger/Rus division.

My response to Praetori could also be useful to illustrate my thinking.

My Nafziger publications are referred to on a regular basis.