Italy or Soviets, which do you think is coming first?

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Germans used baltics and other poorly equipped or trained troopes as garrisons and police force in occupied regions.

Generally devs reworked two majors and several minors.
Germany, USA, UK, Japan, China, France, Spain have been reworked. Poland get their NF tree reworked in United and Ready flavor pack.
Only two majors remain - Italy and USSR.
They've already stated that they're going to redo Poland as well though.

The polish focus tree is worse than the generic one, and needs thorough attention.
 
So, I've noticed that a lot of people want the Soviet rework first, both because they perceive (correctly) the Soviet Union to be a more important player in WWII than Italy, but also because they believe that with the Soviet rework will come an overhaul to land combat.

This brings me to my question: What is wrong with land combat right now? It seems pretty straightforward - get troops, create frontlines, draw arrows to the enemy capital, go. If something goes wrong, that's because you have no organization, are short on supplies, or are fighting in hills, swamps, jungles, or mountains. The main problems I see are the unintuitive UI and the fact that allies can flood your lines with troops and ruin your organization, which can lead to your defeat or at least prevent you from making any progress. If someone could explain what needs to be improved beyond those things, I would appreciate it.
 
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So people are misinterpreting a tweet dated to 2018 as a "new" teaser. Well, at least that explains where it's coming from when there's nothing new of the sort on there.
 
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So, I've noticed that a lot of people want the Soviet rework first, both because they perceive (correctly) the Soviet Union to be a more important player in WWII than Italy, but also because they believe that with the Soviet rework will come an overhaul to land combat.

This brings me to my question: What is wrong with land combat right now? It seems pretty straightforward - get troops, create frontlines, draw arrows to the enemy capital, go. If something goes wrong, that's because you have no organization, are short on supplies, or are fighting in hills, swamps, jungles, or mountains. The main problems I see are the unintuitive UI and the fact that allies can flood your lines with troops and ruin your organization, which can lead to your defeat or at least prevent you from making any progress. If someone could explain what needs to be improved beyond those things, I would appreciate it.

Combat width has unsatisfying and overly restrictive implication on division templates. Battleplanner results in increased micro (when it was supposed to cut down on it) because of having to fix the mistakes of the completely braindead AI.

But mainly, logistic. There's strange behavior with region farther ahead being better supplied just because supply is decided by region and there's less units there. At the same time, being slightly low on supply feel too punishing while being completely out of supply not enough. China, the Pacific, and the Eastern front also are so badly represented because of the failure of the logistic system.

I think the game shouldn't have the assumption that your unit are fully supplied is the default state (and be balanced around the fact that your units will be low on supply, but that's normal), at least not if you're fighting in China, or have advanced deep into Russia without building up infrastructure (speaking of infrastructure, that you can build it up to max anywhere is ridiculous).
 
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Here's the current roadmap

  • Improvements to frontline stability
  • A logistics system with more actual player involvement (now you only care once stuff has gone very badly)
  • Long term goals and strategies to guide ai rather than random vs historical focus lists, visible to players
  • Improving peace conferences
  • Update core national focus trees with alt-history paths and more options (Germany, Italy, USA, United Kingdom, Soviet, France, Japan, Poland)
  • Wunderwaffen projects
  • More differences between sub-ideologies and government forms
  • More National Focus trees. (Among most interesting: China, South America, Scandinavia, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Greece)
  • Make defensive warfare more fun
  • Adding mechanics to limit the size of your standing army, particularly post-war etc
  • Have doctrines more strongly affect division designing to get away from cookie cutter solutions and too ahistorical gamey setups
  • More usage of drag and drop and QoL like this. For example controlling template lists.
  • Rebalance ministers and ideas to give more interesting choices.
  • Improve weather mechanics
  • Strategic and tactical AI improvements

IIRC Paradox has said they need to redo a number of gameplay systems before they tackle the USSR. In that spirit, I'm (un)reasonably confident that at least these features will come in the next DLC.
- Italian focus tree, because Soviets will come in the DLC after next and Paradox needs to redo at least one major per DLC.
- Sub-ideologies and governments, to better distinguish, say, Nazi Fascism from Italian Fascism, and setting up a mechanic for the devs to do Trotskyism, Stalinism and other Soviet ideologies properly in the DLC after next.
- Long term goals and strategies to guide AI, to prepare the USSR AI for the jumble of national foci and ideologies that will come in the DLC after next.

I also forecast (completely unscientiffically) that the DLC after next will cover:
- USSR focus tree
And because they all fit together so closely with land combat that you need to do them all together:
- Logistics
- Frontline stability
- Defensive war
- Limit the size of your army
- Doctrines impacting division design
- Weather mechanics

All the others could happen at any time. They could be in the next DLC, the DLC after next, or an interim patch.
 
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I think Poland will be the other "major" in the Soviet expansion, sort of how China functions as a "lesser" major in the Japan DlC (yeah they did a Germany rework in that one too, but in terms of how the DLC plays out it's mostly China vs Japan).

Reworking Italy too would lose them the ability to market another major DLC and I imagine wouldn't be a great business decision. It'd also take away from the interactions that a Soviet rework could have, like with Finland, the ComIntern, Eastern Europe, and maybe the Middle East (though that'll probably be spun off separately).
 
I imagine an Italy focused DLC would also add trees for Greece, Turkey, and maybe Bulgaria.

A Soviet focused DLC would probably address the disaster that is the Polish tree- seriously the Polish tree needs to be fixed more than any other tree in the game- and maybe add a couple of South American countries (Brazil, Argentina?).
 
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This brings me to my question: What is wrong with land combat right now?
...
If someone could explain what needs to be improved beyond those things, I would appreciate it.
1. Overall balance state is poor, due to prevelance of 10 INF and 15 ARM+5 MOT/9ARM+4SPG+5MOT divisions.
2. Unit balance issues, that I will explain below.
3. Air force being quite a bit too strong.
4. Logistic being very easy, unless AI messes you up.
5. Allies often being more of a hinderance then help, especially if you try "liberating" your ally territory, and thus don`t get control.
6. 20/40 width meta.

Unit balance problems:
MEC too expensive,
Light armor - not good,
Heavy armor being useless apart from 1941 TD, which, if you can rush it, creates huge issue for AI, by adding 1 HTD into divisions, they tend to not get pierced unless 1940 lvl line AT is used,
Motorized divisions without armor being largely useless for their cost, but most importantly, require enormous amount of micro, because they are faster, hence they would attack first, instead of your actual armor spearhead.
Aviation balance issues needs fixing as well, especially Strategic bombing.

Despite the vast amount of units present, you can just use ARM, MOT and INF, with the addition of support ART and maybe AT. This being most efficient army is atrocious.
 
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Because nothing is more fun in a war game then constantly micromanaging supply issues.
Seems fine to me. I have to constantly build/upgrade infra and ports etc. or get bogged down.

Logistic is an integral part of a ww2 wargame though, given how most of the conflict was shaped more by logistic than by who had the bigger tank or the bigger ships.

That being said, a satisfactory logistic system doesn't have to mean it being excessively detailed and needing lots of micromanagement. Though it should be an ever-present concern when formulating your strategy, and impose limits on how far you can push against enemy resistance before having to pause to recuperate and repair the infrastructure.
 
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This brings me to my question: What is wrong with land combat right now? It seems pretty straightforward - get troops, create frontlines, draw arrows to the enemy capital, go. If something goes wrong, that's because you have no organization, are short on supplies, or are fighting in hills, swamps, jungles, or mountains.
1) Supply must stop being a no-brainer with "simply building some abstract infrastructure and that's it".
2) There should be a delay between giving an order to the unit and it actually starting to execute it.
3) Combat width must stop leading to a 20/40 meta.
4) Organization should become non-linear stat, and division with 40 width should be worse in org aspect than a unit of smaller size, because that is a hell of a unit to try and control without losing control over whole battalions on the march or in combat.
 
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I don't know what you'd want to do in South America, because they're not fun to play, with-or-without a focus tree.

Well, it's more that we're running out of countries that need focus trees. Greece/Turkey/Bulgaria are obviously going to be with Italy for historical and geographical reasons.

Who else needs a tree that could go with the Soviets besides Poland? Finland is the obvious answer... beyond that I'm not sure. Sweden? Iran?

Two South American countries (obviously going to be Brazil and Argentina if it's added) could play off each other and make the continent more interesting and add a new dimension to the game, rather than a completely isolated area+tree like Iran. Sweden has more options given its proximity to the war, but still doesn't quite fit unless the Soviet redo focuses heavily on the Winter War and potential Swedish involvement there.
 
Logistic is an integral part of a ww2 wargame though, given how most of the conflict was shaped more by logistic than by who had the bigger tank or the bigger ships.

That being said, a satisfactory logistic system doesn't have to mean it being excessively detailed and needing lots of micromanagement. Though it should be an ever-present concern when formulating your strategy, and impose limits on how far you can push against enemy resistance before having to pause to recuperate and repair the infrastructure.

I agree, but I think that is already in the game. I am constantly having to build and repair infra and naval bases to keep my army moving. Invade China as Japan and tell me this isn't already built into the game. I try not to argue other people's game experiences, but I have to wonder how anyone hasn't experienced this or seen the myriad of posts on steam from players not knowing why they have yellow exclamation marks on their troops, or why they won't attack when ordered to.

I just don't think the leader of a nation who is commander of ALL armed forces etc. needs to turn into a supply officer, or whatever is involved in making supply "harder".
 
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Because nothing is more fun in a war game then constantly micromanaging supply issues.
Seems fine to me. I have to constantly build/upgrade infra and ports etc. or get bogged down.
Look at production and tech. These you don't micromanage, but they are integral and important part of game. Logistics should be handled similarly. It needs a lot more player planning, iteration, and feedback before things go wrong.

If your strategy is to capture Med and Middle East oil, you'd better figure out supply flow before hand.

No, you don't need to constantly upgrade infra, if you fight right, not sure where you got that.

The kinda only interesting logistical challenge is invading USA.
I agree, but I think that is already in the game. I am constantly having to build and repair infra and naval bases to keep my army moving. Invade China as Japan and tell me this isn't already built into the game. I try not to argue other people's game experiences, but I have to wonder how anyone hasn't experienced this or seen the myriad of posts on steam from players not knowing why they have yellow exclamation marks on their troops, or why they won't attack when ordered to.
China is super-easy logistically, maybe you invade too late or let too much of their army retreat to interior.

Also, that is kind of a point, you only get feedback that something is wrong, and only after fact. Can't plan beforehand, can't make up difference by applying more trucks or ships to a problem, don't really have to think about troops numbers, transit, shortage of ships, rail carts, trucks, ex.
I just don't think the leader of a nation who is commander of ALL armed forces etc. needs to turn into a supply officer, or whatever is involved in making supply "harder".
If anything, better to cut out some of the petty micro you now. Logistics should be fundamental part of preparation, like when you invade USSR, you plan on army size, equipment, timing, and overall schedule. But the most important part, how do you supply 4-7m troops 1k km Into Russia, is simply, well, slap the place with a bottleneck with a level of infra, till bottleneck moves or situation improves.

That is hardly fun, or engaging.
 
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