Johan a bad HoI4 player?

[PlacidDragon]

If i understood the stream correctly, it was one of the off camera players who left the port open in Italy (TheletterZ i think ?), and they obviously had the Stream going up there, as (s)he immediately tried to correct the error, but too late, hehe.

If we look past the game being in beta (so lots of bugs/errors still in the game, as well as what looks like a very rudimentary AI).. Daniel is probably the best player in the world right now. Remember that he took over a very...uhm.. how should i put it.. non optimal game, and somehow managed to salvage it. Not only salvage it, but utterly excel. He is going to lose in the end, the lack of sea assets assures that. But it'll take many many years, unless the nukes are a much nastier weapon than we have been led to believe.

As i see it, the only way he can lose in the next episode (which is the last) is if somehow his national unity is.. well... literally nuked

And although he is clicking like a frenetic hamster on crack, his speech is very calm... thats just unnatural...lol

 

[General WVPM]

If i understood the stream correctly, it was one of the off camera players who left the port open in Italy (TheletterZ i think ?), and they obviously had the Stream going up there, as (s)he immediately tried to correct the error, but too late, hehe.

If we look past the game being in beta (so lots of bugs/errors still in the game, as well as what looks like a very rudimentary AI).. Daniel is probably the best player in the world right now. Remember that he took over a very...uhm.. how should i put it.. non optimal game, and somehow managed to salvage it. Not only salvage it, but utterly excel. He is going to lose in the end, the lack of sea assets assures that. But it'll take many many years, unless the nukes are a much nastier weapon than we have been led to believe.

As i see it, the only way he can lose in the next episode (which is the last) is if somehow his national unity is.. well... literally nuked

And although he is clicking like a frenetic hamster on crack, his speech is very calm... thats just unnatural...lol

The allies lack a single German town, so even with 1% NU he shouldn't surrender (unless they changed the way nukes work).
And good luck invading Germany itself.

 

[alkomon]

*CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK*

Dont forget the slurping nouse sounds too.

 

[tom_jones]

If I got it right, the Italy invasion went pear-shaped when the US player pulled their troops with little to no warning. It seems to me overall they have trouble coordinating (likely not much time to type messages with game going without any pause) and that's the main reason why the Allies are unable to pose much of a challenge -- they are weaker than Germany separately, and attempts at combining forces which actually could create a threat fall apart while the German player has it all under single command.

 

[Goodis]

He is going to lose in the end, the lack of sea assets assures that. But it'll take many many years, unless the nukes are a much nastier weapon than we have been led to believe.

Lose ? For one I don't think they will have time to deploy nukes. Secondly, have you seen Germany's manpower pool ?

He has 5.6M with only service by requirement.

My third point, have you seen any successful invasion in Europe? I don't count Italy since the AI is so stupid and Daniel wasn't paying attention to Italy borders.
They have lost invasions in Sweden, Latvia, Spain, Greece, Turkey etc Not to mention how many million men they lost this stream in Spain lol.

If and IF they even got nukes, how many would they be able to build within the timeframe they got left ? Germany spans from France in west to China in the east, India south to Russia/Scandinavia in the north. They would need several nukes to scare away 560m ppl.

For all, I could be very wrong, but I feel like Daniel knows exactly what he is doing. His wargoal was to take Poland, the guy has almost conquered whole of Eurasia, I don't know his warscore but he should be on the winning side.

 

[tom_jones]

Lose ? For one I don't think they will have time to deploy nukes. Secondly, have you seen Germany's manpower pool ?

He has 5.6M with only service by requirement.

It dropped to below 3 mil by the end of last stream. Granted, this is in part because he's now fielding ~600 divisions.

 

[kalauer]

Lose ? For one I don't think they will have time to deploy nukes. Secondly, have you seen Germany's manpower pool ?

He has 5.6M with only service by requirement.

My third point, have you seen any successful invasion in Europe? I don't count Italy since the AI is so stupid and Daniel wasn't paying attention to Italy borders.
They have lost invasions in Sweden, Latvia, Spain, Greece, Turkey etc Not to mention how many million men they lost this stream in Spain lol.

If and IF they even got nukes, how many would they be able to build within the timeframe they got left ? Germany spans from France in west to China in the east, India south to Russia/Scandinavia in the north. They would need several nukes to scare away 560m ppl.

For all, I could be very wrong, but I feel like Daniel knows exactly what he is doing. His wargoal was to take Poland, the guy has almost conquered whole of Eurasia, I don't know his warscore but he should be on the winning side.

Another bug there? He has harshest occupation everywhere and should not get Manpower from those. So unless Germany heartland turned into some giant rabbit-hole, where did he get 565 Million peple from? Can't be Russia, even though they surrendered (should still have a lot of malus on these provinces or are the russians turning loyal citizens after their government folds?).

His divisions are about 10000 men each, so roughly 6 Million man in the field? That seems already far stretched, given that 1 rifleman takes several more men in logistic etc. (read this on this forum somewhere), unless they are included in the division numbers, which I doubt. With about 18 Million soldiers in historical Wehrmacht, the Manpower seems huge. Germany should not be able to do this kind of mass-assault with regular troops.

I guess this too is subject to balance?

But getting kind of off-topic here. I give you that Johan was in a difficult position due to SU. So I agree, he might not care so much anymore as he would otherwise and mostly showed what the game has to offer. Still, I believe I saw some mistakes on the operational level at least.

 

[adam_grif]

Considering all of his occupation laws are as harsh as possible I'm not sure why Germany's manpower reserves seem so vast. That tooltip is confusing, because 5.86m is not 15% of 565.48m, it's more like 1.5%. Is this the case because Germany has taken so many losses, or because only part of the 565m is available due to these laws? Or both? In any case that needs to be cleared up.

400,000 new recruits per month is also insane, I hope that's the total population not the recruitable population because otherwise that's :O

RE: Johan being a bad player. I'm sure he's quite good compared to the AI, but against a skilled Germany he seems to be falling flat. But then it's not exactly a fair fight because the Soviet glitch basically gave the USSR to Daniel for free, when the USSR would normally be the most powerful opposition the Germans could face. Had the UK been able to invade in late '42 early '43 while the Soviet army was still fully in tact and bleeding the Germans, things probably could have been quite different, even though Johan has clearly demonstrated his difficulty in estimating the supply situation and the ability of the Germans to react to his invasions.

 

[kalauer]

Considering all of his occupation laws are as harsh as possible I'm not sure why Germany's manpower reserves seem so vast. That tooltip is confusing, because 5.86m is not 15% of 565.48m, it's more like 1.5%. Is this the case because Germany has taken so many losses, or because only part of the 565m is available due to these laws? Or both? In any case that needs to be cleared up.

400,000 new recruits per month is also insane, I hope that's the total population not the recruitable population because otherwise that's :O

RE: Johan being a bad player. I'm sure he's quite good compared to the AI, but against a skilled Germany he seems to be falling flat. But then it's not exactly a fair fight because the Soviet glitch basically gave the USSR to Daniel for free, when the USSR would normally be the most powerful opposition the Germans could face. Had the UK been able to invade in late '42 early '43 while the Soviet army was still fully in tact and bleeding the Germans, things probably could have been quite different, even though Johan has clearly demonstrated his difficulty in estimating the supply situation and the ability of the Germans to react to his invasions.

Get out of my head

 

[Goodis]

...where did he get 565 Million peple from? Can't be Russia, even though they surrendered (should still have a lot of malus on these provinces or are the russians turning loyal citizens after their government folds?).

I think once you fully annex a country, the resistance penalty instantly disappears and he get's their population+manpower. It probably says 565 based on all the current occupated nations(Bug or not priotized to fix yet) Don't quote me on that doe

 

[EntropyAvatar]

The 565 million probably covers all the annexed and occupied land, but he only gets a small fraction of that manpower. So he gets something like 15% of Germany's population, plus 1.5%(15% of 10%) of the rest. Minus losses.

I do think the numbers are too big however, considering that the logistics functions don't require manpower. Especially considering that the logistics bill for supplying armies scattered across all of Asia (without use of sea lanes) should be astronomical.

 

[PlacidDragon]

Lose ? For one I don't think they will have time to deploy nukes. Secondly, have you seen Germany's manpower pool ?

He has 5.6M with only service by requirement.

My third point, have you seen any successful invasion in Europe? I don't count Italy since the AI is so stupid and Daniel wasn't paying attention to Italy borders.
They have lost invasions in Sweden, Latvia, Spain, Greece, Turkey etc Not to mention how many million men they lost this stream in Spain lol.

If and IF they even got nukes, how many would they be able to build within the timeframe they got left ? Germany spans from France in west to China in the east, India south to Russia/Scandinavia in the north. They would need several nukes to scare away 560m ppl.

For all, I could be very wrong, but I feel like Daniel knows exactly what he is doing. His wargoal was to take Poland, the guy has almost conquered whole of Eurasia, I don't know his warscore but he should be on the winning side.

Yes, i've seen it

Which is why i said it would take many many years (IE, well beyond the scope of the game). Its a very simple "we can get at him any time we want, but he cant get at us". Both the US and the UK has more manpower (unless my memory is messing with me), their fleets can counter anything the Germans build for the next 40 years, and the US had over 10.000 planes, which will eventually turn central Europe into rubble. But again, that takes time, and even with a flattened central Europe, Germany still has plenty of resources elsewhere on the map, they are not going to collapse.

I am outlining a "play until the end" scenario here. Germany cannot win that. But in terms of "lets end it in 194x and check warscore", he should knock it out of the park (not that they are going to get that far unfortunately)

 

[GermanPower]

I honestly have enjoyed Johan's invasion and his playthrough. I've honestly thought he'd done a better job then Daniel. But he's seemed to have fucked up massively in naval invasions. Daniel is at the end of his line in my view he's reaching Mongol heights and that's not a good thing. He's overstretched and only repelling invasions because of the effectiveness of his fighting force.

Sure the invasion keep Daniel on his toes but all it does is loose you manpower and veteranize the German troops. Its a pointless tactic. The invasions he has made have been illprepared with no thought of maintaining a front. Any invasion I'd launch would have to be at least 100 divisions and backed by massive naval support. I watched in Sweden how he let troops cross through Denmark when he had total naval control. I watched failed use of force..spreading them out and letting them just get swallowed up as Germany has units everywhere.

The goal isn't to make it easy on your enemy by engaging his forces worldwide. But by engaing his forces in a weak point. Germany could have been defeated in 42. All the divisions they had in the UK simply should have invaded a single point. Plopping those massive divisions into a single point and then creating a slow marching bridge front. Daniel would have been forced to not just draw a few units here or there but draw entire armies off the still Alive Soviet Union. I'd just keep pouring units in and in and in in that single point and eventually it'd turn into Daniel running scared and triyng to reform a defensive line instead of being able to attack the massed numbers.

They lost so many troops pointlessly in these naval invasions. It could have been so easy to have invaded and taken by France if only they'd centralized their forces. But they seem keen on splitting up their greatest advantage..manpower and letting it play to the Germans side of highly effective small fighting forces. This war could have been easily won in my view if they hadn't spread out on so many fronts. They got luck in Italy because of Germany leaving a entire ENTIRE Front open. But in all the other areas they weren't so lucky. You shouldn't play on luck. But play on a assured front to be made..

SO IN short I feel like he played well but the two biggest issues were conduction of naval invasions and effective teamwork with the US. For example in Italy you need one commander to make the unit effectively working together. It seemed unorganized and no real work in it. Fix those two issues and he played great and easily well enough to make Germany fall.

 

[OblivionMC]

Johan is relying on the AI to defend the front line. The AI in HOI3 is terrible in defence, it will transfer troops to hold the line in one province opening up multiply gaps if you don't have numerical superiority to start with (every time). The AI doesn't think 1 move ahead, hence it get cut off and destroyed.
Playing with the AI control at different levels: Corp, Army Group, Theatre, Army/Corp did ok on the offensive in HOI3, even if occasionally they surround empty provinces with 6 division?

 

[adam_grif]

The goal isn't to make it easy on your enemy by engaging his forces worldwide. But by engaing his forces in a weak point. Germany could have been defeated in 42. All the divisions they had in the UK simply should have invaded a single point. Plopping those massive divisions into a single point and then creating a slow marching bridge front. Daniel would have been forced to not just draw a few units here or there but draw entire armies off the still Alive Soviet Union. I'd just keep pouring units in and in and in in that single point and eventually it'd turn into Daniel running scared and triyng to reform a defensive line instead of being able to attack the massed numbers.

They lost so many troops pointlessly in these naval invasions. It could have been so easy to have invaded and taken by France if only they'd centralized their forces. But they seem keen on splitting up their greatest advantage..manpower and letting it play to the Germans side of highly effective small fighting forces. This war could have been easily won in my view if they hadn't spread out on so many fronts. They got luck in Italy because of Germany leaving a entire ENTIRE Front open. But in all the other areas they weren't so lucky. You shouldn't play on luck. But play on a assured front to be made..

I agree they needed to fully commit to one invasion, but dumping them all on one spot would be unwise because of supply issues. Really they should have done multiple large invasions in Spain or France simultaneously (but not both) including airborne operations to secure key areas (instead of #YOLO suicide paradrops from the American player) and they needed to fight for air superiority before doing this.

 

[kalauer]

I agree they needed to fully commit to one invasion, but dumping them all on one spot would be unwise because of supply issues. Really they should have done multiple large invasions in Spain or France simultaneously (but not both) including airborne operations to secure key areas (instead of #YOLO suicide paradrops from the American player) and they needed to fight for air superiority before doing this.

Yes, I believe that too. Massing 100 divisions will only lead to their destruction by missing supply. But with total naval supremacy, Johan and USA could easily plan invasions to take the entire coast of Spain, Italy or greece at once thus having enough supply via ports. But in general, I feel that the supply issue favors the defender a lot (which might be accurate). He will most likely always have a good infrastructure and supply depots in his back while the capacity of ports bottlenecks Invasion strongly. Is it plausible that a port in a major city can only support, say, 10 divisions? And is it impossible to ship supply in other regions than ports? I know on D-Day, the ports were priority targets, but didn't the allies brought Basic supply ashore before that?

I really have to see the numbers and look foreward to planning those invasions and supply lines.

 

[General WVPM]

Yes, I believe that too. Massing 100 divisions will only lead to their destruction by missing supply. But with total naval supremacy, Johan and USA could easily plan invasions to take the entire coast of Spain, Italy or greece at once thus having enough supply via ports. But in general, I feel that the supply issue favors the defender a lot (which might be accurate). He will most likely always have a good infrastructure and supply depots in his back while the capacity of ports bottlenecks Invasion strongly. Is it plausible that a port in a major city can only support, say, 10 divisions? And is it impossible to ship supply in other regions than ports? I know on D-Day, the ports were priority targets, but didn't the allies brought Basic supply ashore before that?

I really have to see the numbers and look foreward to planning those invasions and supply lines.

The allies build their own harbours and oil pipelines.

 

[agentgb]

And is it impossible to ship supply in other regions than ports? I know on D-Day, the ports were priority targets, but didn't the allies brought Basic supply ashore before that?

I really have to see the numbers and look foreward to planning those invasions and supply lines.

allies basically built there own port, that was pre build in england and asembled in normandy. somthig that was possible in hoi3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry_harbour

here is why i thought the spanish venture would work. tbh, i think before the stream had even started, they seemed like they had been playing already, if i remember correctly from last week, the allies controlled alot more of north italy, and alot of spanish forces were moving to italy, but suddenly this weeks www, they were either already at the italian front, or seemed like some of them had returned back to spain.



This is how i thought it could have worked, but looking at what happened on wednesday, i think some huge miscalculation was made, and even now i can't see what went wrong, seems like supply issues, but the plan would have allowed for a broader front once spain had been secured, with a potential d-day in france also, perhaps a mass encirclment.I think the reason johan went for gilbratar first, was because it was a big port, but i think the terrain was killing his supplies, also looked like he had a lot of tank divisions there. Given the spanish terrain, may have suffered a penalty there? idk

Spoiler: pic's

 

[adam_grif]

Yes, I believe that too. Massing 100 divisions will only lead to their destruction by missing supply. But with total naval supremacy, Johan and USA could easily plan invasions to take the entire coast of Spain, Italy or greece at once thus having enough supply via ports. But in general, I feel that the supply issue favors the defender a lot (which might be accurate). He will most likely always have a good infrastructure and supply depots in his back while the capacity of ports bottlenecks Invasion strongly. Is it plausible that a port in a major city can only support, say, 10 divisions? And is it impossible to ship supply in other regions than ports? I know on D-Day, the ports were priority targets, but didn't the allies brought Basic supply ashore before that?

I really have to see the numbers and look foreward to planning those invasions and supply lines.

The supply issues in reality were massive, yet they were overcome with numerous innovations and extreme planning / preparedness. The game should let you build artificial harbors and pour supplies across beachheads too, simulated by aspects of the battle planner and tech tree, perhaps. There should also be ways to slow enemy reinforcements via logistics bombing as happened historically.

In the game we've seen so far, every naval invasion has been dealt with by Daniel just right clicking his units to all swarm the attacking forces, and his cheesy inf inf inf inf inf inf divisions just run into like 10 armored and motorized divisions and win because of stacking penalty and supply problems every time.
It's been very frustrating to watch happen repeatedly

 

[GermanPower]

A massive invasion with massive amounts of units is always better! Supplies are cool and all. But I just need to be able to spread my mob quick enough. With overwhelming force that seems possible.