I've never brought this up before because the basic mechanics for HOI were already designed by the time I'd heard of its existence. No point.
Years ago I went through a long exercise of figuring out what keeps WW II strategy games from being more realistic. Here's the #1 problem, in terms of game mechanics: 95 % of games have you move, then fight. It should be the other way around.
Change this, and some other details relating to combat, and HOI will be radically better.
First, let me say that this was not a problem when Paradox came up with the EU engine, because prior to the 20th century, armies did indeed march into enemy territory, then fight a single pitched battle, after which one side would retreat. The EU engine represents 16th-century combat in a reasonable way. And it certainly made sense not to mess with that part when creating HOI 1 because it was a very speculative undertaking. So many systems to integrate, so much that could go wrong . . . it was reasonable to leave that part alone, because it already works.
But the fact is, in HOI we're dealing with armies that in real life hold a continuous line. At any given moment they are a few hundred yards apart, within artillery range, often within small arms range. When ordered to attack they do not take a week to march over to the enemy. The attack would be immediate, and it could be called off at any moment, leaving the attacking unit right where it was. In HOI, you spend a week marching over, then another week marching back if you lose, and during that time the province you attacked from is unguarded! This creates all kinds of anomalies that nothing can really solve.
The whole "march to the target" model also creates big problems for the air game, because planes have to move province by province, and can only do so one hour at a time. There's no easy way around that -- because of how the data is stored, the plane has to be SOMEWHERE each hour, and it eventually has to be in the target province (or hex) for the fighting to occur. There are long-standing and apparently unsolvable problems with bombers being forced to abort their attacks because there's a fighter (even a fighter with 1 % strength and zero org) in their mission province. There are similar problems with planes that are forced to retreat in strange directions and spend two weeks bouncing from one enemy-held province to another.
It's tempting to say, let's have hexes instead. Then movement is regularized, and you don't have big provinces that take a month to move across. However, in my opinion, the people who are unhappy because HOI doesn't have hexes have only recognized half of the problem. It seems like it's a scale problem: the game plays hour by hour, and so you spend dozens or hundreds of hours "frozen" in movement toward an objective. You can SEE those damned arrows creeping across the map and it just feels wrong somehow. Breaking the map into hexes would cut those long stretches of time into more manageable parts.
However, as others have observed, hexes are simply smaller provinces, with a certain compulsive symmetry about them. In hex-based games you will frequently find long straight front lines along the hex grain, to avoid allowing an attack from three adjacent hexes. Operations become dictated by simple geometry, not terrain or other real-world concerns. And unless the hexes are very small, like 5-10 km across, you will still spend several days marching from one to the next. So all the basic scale mismatch problems will remain. Planes will have the same problems in hexes that they do now.
The deeper problem here is that most game designs see movement as a means of bringing about combat . . . you move to where you can hit the enemy. Instead, combat should be a way of bringing about movement . . . you attack an adjacent enemy and force him to retreat, which then allows you to move into (and through) the space he occupies.
Why is this radically different? Because in this model you're no longer attacking a province, you're firing on a particular enemy unit.
Let's say I have two corps, each of three divisions, in Province A. The enemy has two corps, each of two divisions, in Province B.
I select 1st Corps, then right-click Province B. A window similar to the CCB box comes up, labeled "Province Attack". It offers me these choices:
Start time & date
Number of hours
Move while attacking? Y/N
Repeat each day same time? Y/N
I choose a start time of 8:00 am (dawn local time), and set number of hours to 12. I don't like fighting at night, so I want to stop at dusk. I choose "move while attacking" and "repeat each day". At 8:00 am, each division in 1st Corps fires on a random target in Province B, and 1st Corps accumulates hourly gains in moving toward Province B. Then at 7:00 pm 1st Corps stops firing (and being fired upon) and stops accumulating hourly distance gains.
So long as 1st Corps does not start moving to another province, it can resume attacking each morning, and it will keep whatever hourly distance it has gained on the previous day. With me so far?
Now here's where it gets interesting. I don't actually want 2nd Corps to move into Province B. I just need them to help keep the defenders busy. So I assign 2nd Corps different orders. They will attack starting at dawn and ending at dusk, and they will NOT move.
Meanwhile the enemy commander has his own decisions to make. Let's say he selects 1st Enemy Corps, and he right-clicks on province B (his own province) and a window comes up labeled "Province Defense" with slightly different options. There is no start time or end time, no "repeat each day," because this option is totally reactive. His choices are:
Defend against:
All adjacent provinces
Province A
Province C
Province D
Are you following this? Sorry I can't post a graphic. What he can do here, is highlight either the "all" choice, or one or more of the specific provinces, to effectively issue a standing order to 1st Enemy Corps to fire on enemies attacking from there.
Now so long as he does this, he keeps the terrain benefit of being a defender, but he doesn't get to fire except when my attacking units do. My attack sets the pace of combat. If I have my units attack for one hour each morning, and he has his units set to defend only, the fight lasts an hour and stops until the next day.
What is even more important, is that if he picks one particular province to defend against, then even if I attack province B from multiple directions, 1st Enemy Corps does not get a penalty for being enveloped.
I'll continue with the rest of my explanation in the next post.
Years ago I went through a long exercise of figuring out what keeps WW II strategy games from being more realistic. Here's the #1 problem, in terms of game mechanics: 95 % of games have you move, then fight. It should be the other way around.
Change this, and some other details relating to combat, and HOI will be radically better.
First, let me say that this was not a problem when Paradox came up with the EU engine, because prior to the 20th century, armies did indeed march into enemy territory, then fight a single pitched battle, after which one side would retreat. The EU engine represents 16th-century combat in a reasonable way. And it certainly made sense not to mess with that part when creating HOI 1 because it was a very speculative undertaking. So many systems to integrate, so much that could go wrong . . . it was reasonable to leave that part alone, because it already works.
But the fact is, in HOI we're dealing with armies that in real life hold a continuous line. At any given moment they are a few hundred yards apart, within artillery range, often within small arms range. When ordered to attack they do not take a week to march over to the enemy. The attack would be immediate, and it could be called off at any moment, leaving the attacking unit right where it was. In HOI, you spend a week marching over, then another week marching back if you lose, and during that time the province you attacked from is unguarded! This creates all kinds of anomalies that nothing can really solve.
The whole "march to the target" model also creates big problems for the air game, because planes have to move province by province, and can only do so one hour at a time. There's no easy way around that -- because of how the data is stored, the plane has to be SOMEWHERE each hour, and it eventually has to be in the target province (or hex) for the fighting to occur. There are long-standing and apparently unsolvable problems with bombers being forced to abort their attacks because there's a fighter (even a fighter with 1 % strength and zero org) in their mission province. There are similar problems with planes that are forced to retreat in strange directions and spend two weeks bouncing from one enemy-held province to another.
It's tempting to say, let's have hexes instead. Then movement is regularized, and you don't have big provinces that take a month to move across. However, in my opinion, the people who are unhappy because HOI doesn't have hexes have only recognized half of the problem. It seems like it's a scale problem: the game plays hour by hour, and so you spend dozens or hundreds of hours "frozen" in movement toward an objective. You can SEE those damned arrows creeping across the map and it just feels wrong somehow. Breaking the map into hexes would cut those long stretches of time into more manageable parts.
However, as others have observed, hexes are simply smaller provinces, with a certain compulsive symmetry about them. In hex-based games you will frequently find long straight front lines along the hex grain, to avoid allowing an attack from three adjacent hexes. Operations become dictated by simple geometry, not terrain or other real-world concerns. And unless the hexes are very small, like 5-10 km across, you will still spend several days marching from one to the next. So all the basic scale mismatch problems will remain. Planes will have the same problems in hexes that they do now.
The deeper problem here is that most game designs see movement as a means of bringing about combat . . . you move to where you can hit the enemy. Instead, combat should be a way of bringing about movement . . . you attack an adjacent enemy and force him to retreat, which then allows you to move into (and through) the space he occupies.
Why is this radically different? Because in this model you're no longer attacking a province, you're firing on a particular enemy unit.
Let's say I have two corps, each of three divisions, in Province A. The enemy has two corps, each of two divisions, in Province B.
I select 1st Corps, then right-click Province B. A window similar to the CCB box comes up, labeled "Province Attack". It offers me these choices:
Start time & date
Number of hours
Move while attacking? Y/N
Repeat each day same time? Y/N
I choose a start time of 8:00 am (dawn local time), and set number of hours to 12. I don't like fighting at night, so I want to stop at dusk. I choose "move while attacking" and "repeat each day". At 8:00 am, each division in 1st Corps fires on a random target in Province B, and 1st Corps accumulates hourly gains in moving toward Province B. Then at 7:00 pm 1st Corps stops firing (and being fired upon) and stops accumulating hourly distance gains.
So long as 1st Corps does not start moving to another province, it can resume attacking each morning, and it will keep whatever hourly distance it has gained on the previous day. With me so far?
Now here's where it gets interesting. I don't actually want 2nd Corps to move into Province B. I just need them to help keep the defenders busy. So I assign 2nd Corps different orders. They will attack starting at dawn and ending at dusk, and they will NOT move.
Meanwhile the enemy commander has his own decisions to make. Let's say he selects 1st Enemy Corps, and he right-clicks on province B (his own province) and a window comes up labeled "Province Defense" with slightly different options. There is no start time or end time, no "repeat each day," because this option is totally reactive. His choices are:
Defend against:
All adjacent provinces
Province A
Province C
Province D
Are you following this? Sorry I can't post a graphic. What he can do here, is highlight either the "all" choice, or one or more of the specific provinces, to effectively issue a standing order to 1st Enemy Corps to fire on enemies attacking from there.
Now so long as he does this, he keeps the terrain benefit of being a defender, but he doesn't get to fire except when my attacking units do. My attack sets the pace of combat. If I have my units attack for one hour each morning, and he has his units set to defend only, the fight lasts an hour and stops until the next day.
What is even more important, is that if he picks one particular province to defend against, then even if I attack province B from multiple directions, 1st Enemy Corps does not get a penalty for being enveloped.
I'll continue with the rest of my explanation in the next post.
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No need for complex formulae to decide from which direction a province is being attacked, the hex does that for you.
