Land Combat Battalions

[dizzle3]

Imo if there are more slots to fill in a divisions, there need to be more combined_arms unit types. Which encourage the player to make diverse units. Infantry_unit_type, artillery_unit_type, armor_unit_type, support_unit_type and direct_fire_unit_type are imo than not enough.

Yes, I agree. with the current level of complexity (in which I listed the current number of CA types) there just aren't enough different things for each of those 70 different units to do. Adding more CA types is increasing combat complexity - I have no argument with saying that increasing complexity could increase the number of useful units.

The rules of rock-paper-scissors are very simple, and therefore optimal play is relatively simple (choose randomly between the 3 available options). What you are saying here is that if we make the game more complicated (rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock), then the optimal solution increases in complexity (choose randomly between the 5 available options)

The challenge is to give all those units a use ingame and make it differently stat wise. I believe that with the current HoI3 brigade stats that it is possible.

I disagree, unless you start expanding the combined arms types drastically.

With the current TFH mechanics, this is the way that I see things:

I didn't put in a role for SHARM, RART, SPRART. Even the AA units probably are worthless, just using the IC to buy planes instead is probably more optimized

You can see that it's pretty crowded already, so a massive expansion of unit types is going to be hard to accommodate. Ignoring paradrops for one second, I think the only things that are missing are potentially some fast amphib units (maybe amphib armor or something?), a fast mountain/arctic unit (too specialized or not realistic though?), and possibly something resembling cheap non-motorized engineers?

There are some choices to be made within each box, but generally speaking this is either early/late game (as in Mot vs. Mec), or dependent on whether your nation is better suited to IC or manpower costs (Inf vs Mil)

On paradrops, I made a note of units I would say are too specialized, (paradropping into mountains for example - how often does this happen?). This leaves a few more open spaces, that I agree could be filled in with some more variety if people were desperate to do so. The trouble is that you don't want to make paradrops even better than they are by allowing the dropping of a full combined arms division.

You could probably make more use of some of the other terrain types, but for the most part these are too specialized to be of use. I'm not sure that Mountain is even really worthwhile so jungle/plains/desert/marsh troops probably are too specialized

 

[1alexey]

There really is no point in expanding "unit types" significantly above HOI3 roster.
HOI games are about resource allocation first and foremost. Unlike most of wargames, you`re not stuck with what countries historically had (not for long anyway) and can build your own army to your heart content.
HOI is also a game where you tend to control close to a hundred of divisions. That thing alone is usually a reason enough for most players to standardize their division composition.

What the game needs to show, is how the equipment and structure of average division changed during the conflict, and reflect on certain choices and limitations armies of various countries had.

HOI3 had a very clear hierarchy of Leadership and IC allocation:
First make sure your infantry is cutting-edge and you have enough of it
Second add either simple mobile forces or planes depending on the enemy.
Third add the second element of step 2.
Forth add a single type of tank, to boost your mobile forces. Usually this is medium, simply because upgrading firepower and armor of light tanks is counter-productive, and thus you can just use plain MEC+AC and skip tanks altogether if you only need speed.
Fifth, add elaborate bombing force.
Six, add whatever else you may need, as you won the game anyway.

I would imagine HOI4 would have similar one as well.

 

[tommylotto]

Both of the examples that he pulled out from my mod -- motorcycle v. mechanized and armored engineers v. motorized engineers are unfair examples, because he is basing his comparisons on base stats, not how they would actually appear in game. Both the mechanized unit and the armored engineer unit are improved by the light tank techs -- in addition to the normal techs effecting that type of unit. So, both of those units are considerably stronger than the units that they are being compared to once 4 or 5 levels of light tank techs are added. Also, the lower softness rating of the armored engineer can keep the overall softness rating of the division down causing opponents to have to use its hard attack stat instead of soft attack. Then you need to take into consideration manpower usage, casualties, etc. not just IC/days. I do not pretend that my mod is perfectly balance and concede that there might be gamey exploits, but that is hardly a knock on a system with diverse battalion types. I would expect more from Paradox. That is why I started this thread -- to advocate for more variety. I would prefer they do the work then rely on my ham fisted modding efforts.

And combined arms bonus seems to be the logical mechanism to use to force the player to take advantage of that diversity.

 

[dizzle3]

Both of the examples that he pulled out from my mod -- motorcycle v. mechanized and armored engineers v. motorized engineers are unfair examples, because he is basing his comparisons on base stats, not how they would actually appear in game. Both the mechanized unit and the armored engineer unit are improved by the light tank techs -- in addition to the normal techs effecting that type of unit. So, both of those units are considerably stronger than the units that they are being compared to once 4 or 5 levels of light tank techs are added.

I didn't feel like doing the calculations to put all of the stats up to some given tech year. The principle is still the same - with only 20-30-different unit stats there is no way that 70 different units (even if I made an adjustment for tech) won't contain some units that are strictly worse than others.

I was trying to show that even with a decent number of unit stats there will always be some "bad" units when your unit count exceeds your stats count. I can fairly easily show that for 4 units and 3 statistics there will always be redundancy. I can show it for 5 units and 4 stats. I can show it for 30 units and 29 stats. It's a purely linear relationship, not exponential.

Also, the lower softness rating of the armored engineer can keep the overall softness rating of the division down causing opponents to have to use its hard attack stat instead of soft attack. Then you need to take into consideration manpower usage, casualties, etc. not just IC/days. I do not pretend that my mod is perfectly balance and concede that there might be gamey exploits, but that is hardly a knock on a system with diverse battalion types. I would expect more from Paradox. That is why I started this thread -- to advocate for more variety. I would prefer they do the work then rely on my ham fisted modding efforts.

There are some potential complications caused by the different costs for example, but they are devilishly hard to balance.


I guess I would be interested how you would fit all 70 units into this kind of framework. I see a few options:
-Fill in the blank cells, but as discussed there doesn't seem to be too much joy there
-Add some extra unit stats (for example being good in forest) or extra combined arms types, but these do seem pretty marginal - it's going to be hard and/or unrealistic to make forest combat so demanding that any unit fighting in the forest needs a special battalion to work
-expand the grid sideways for more unit speeds. I think this is again pretty fruitless. generally about 90% of the benefit of faster units is that they are faster than infantry. a speed 6 division can encircle nearly as well as a speed 8 unit. The difference is small enough that you're going to struggle to make both sets of units relevant to an optimizing player

A final option: try to get more units into each box. The reasons for multiple units in each box are
1. different costs. I suppose you could make a low manpower version of every unit for times when manpower is low and you have lots of IC... but in this instance you're going to struggle to make these units look better than simply building aircraft which are a great low-mp investment. This is very, very tricky to do, look, for example at the arguments between using militia and infantry. Generally militia aren't used by most players, and I would say that this balance is actually well struck. This could also apply to trying to make low supply, low frontage, low weight, low fuel consumption and low officer count versions, but again a REALLY tough ask
2. Different tech years. So for example mot vs mec where because of tech the mec "overtakes" the mot in terms of being useful. I don't think you can find too many examples of one unit type totally replacing another unit types role during the course of the game timespan

If I'm wrong then why not put together something similar for your 70 units to show how they all have a unique use?

 

[Jazumir]

So... we need costumizable battalions. Pick how many men go in there, assign the equipment you want it to use, name it (and a toggle for roman or arabic numeration), choose an icon. Constrained by doctrine/XP, how much you can put into it (so you cant make a 10,000 men battalion).

EDIT: Actually, i dont know why we have battalions at all, and dont just do that directly to the divs... make a template, call it Infantry Division (and set the toggle to arabic enumaration, so that you get 1., 2.... Infantrie Division), assign a normal complement of say 10,000 men, 10,000 units of small arms (rifles, grenades) and 500 of heavy small arms (mortars, MG) to it. Done. Add 10,000 packs of mountain gear to make it mountain div - template. Or just 5,000 if you dont care about the unit-type only mitigating the mountain malus half as much as it otherwise could.

 

[unmerged(83175)]

The above is something very WIP (to low buildtime and such...)and doesn't take in account terrain and should be used with more CA bonus types.

Edit: It was very roughly calculated with the amount of Batterien per unit.

Although for the discussion it's probably more relevant to post stats of:
Aufklärungs-Abteilung
Aufklärungs-Abteilung (mot)
Maschinengewehr-Bataillon
Kradschützen-Bataillon

 

[DEY123]

So... we need costumizable battalions. Pick how many men go in there, assign the equipment you want it to use, name it (and a toggle for roman or arabic numeration), choose an icon. Constrained by doctrine/XP, how much you can put into it (so you cant make a 10,000 men battalion).

I think this is spot on. Not sure I agree on changing battalion default size as that might get tricky for determining weight for transports. But I think each country should decide on its own unit templates / kits. So maybe what one country calls a mountain unit is a bit different then another as they have outfitted it differently. This should all be possible if we build and assign equipment based on templates. If you don't assign your battalion the Mountain survival kit well then your unit is not really a mountain unit. However, you could play as Switzerland and give all of your infantry the mountain survival kit but still call them your general infantry unit. The limit each country has is based on experience or some type of points as I think these points have to be spent to create a new unit template. In this way each country can start with appropriate unit templates and then build more as needed. No reason to have a huge number of standard unit types as it is all equipment based.

 

[tommylotto]

I was trying to show that even with a decent number of unit stats there will always be some "bad" units when your unit count exceeds your stats count.

I think I see why we are not seeing eye to eye. You do not want there to be any bad units from a min/max perspective. Whereas I have no problem with there being bad options, bad choices, dead ends, and non-optimized units. My mod focuses on Italy, if there were not inefficient units and bad choices now how could I possibly recreate the wonder that was the Regio Esercito, an army who's cream of the crop was the Celere, a divisions made up of horse cavalry, bicycle and motorcycle infantry, and crappy light tanks. So, when the player takes control of a nation in 1936 he may inherit a bunch of bad choices. He can either try to start all over and make your min/max optimized units or he can try to make due with the inefficient units that he started with. If my knowledge serves me correct, the were inefficiencies in the war...

No reason to have a huge number of standard unit types as it is all equipment based.

But how do you tell the game how to customize your battalion or which equipment to send to it? The easiest way that I can think of is to have different battalion types. Should mountain gear go to this infantry? If it is designated a mountain battalion, yes. If not, no. Should heavy TD's or light TD's go to this battalion? If heavy TD, heavy. If light TD, light. And since the equipment has to be built separately, transitioning a light TD battalion to a heavy TD battalion should not be that big of a deal. The division template change is made, the light TD's flow back to stockpile, and the heavy TD's flow from stockpile to the battalion. The battalion is disorganized for a while as it acclimates to the new equipment, but then its back ready for combat.

 

[DEY123]

But how do you tell the game how to customize your battalion or which equipment to send to it? The easiest way that I can think of is to have different battalion types. Should mountain gear go to this infantry? If it is designated a mountain battalion, yes. If not, no. Should heavy TD's or light TD's go to this battalion? If heavy TD, heavy. If light TD, light. And since the equipment has to be built separately, transitioning a light TD battalion to a heavy TD battalion should not be that big of a deal. The division template change is made, the light TD's flow back to stockpile, and the heavy TD's flow from stockpile to the battalion. The battalion is disorganized for a while as it acclimates to the new equipment, but then its back ready for combat.

I think you might be right. I am making an assumption that each battalion will be customization as its own base template that you would then use to make divisions out of... However, I have a feeling my assumption is wrong.

 

[Axe99]

@dizzle - I agree there's nowhere near as many battalions needed for min/maxing, but that's just one style of play of the game. For the rest of us, it'd be nice to have the full spectrum (or a sensibly close approximation) that were historically available .

I think you might be right. I am making an assumption that each battalion will be customization as its own base template that you would then use to make divisions out of... However, I have a feeling my assumption is wrong.

I can just see the devs reading this thread and thinking "they want customisable battalions now?!" . Is a top idea, but my bet is on a fixed list that we'll be picking from at launch at least. We can but hope though. One thought would be that a system like this would perhaps need 'defaults' for people to choose if they didn't want to build their own (so a default infantry/mountain/what-have you battalion) that you could perhaps use experience to modify as necessary. That way, it's completely optional micro, but for peeps that want it, they can give all their Swiss infantry mountain gear.

 

[fabius]

I hoped that a new manpower system would tack the specific manpower of the teeth arms of infantry, pioneer battalions etc.

 

[darkpatriot]

But how do you tell the game how to customize your battalion or which equipment to send to it? The easiest way that I can think of is to have different battalion types. Should mountain gear go to this infantry? If it is designated a mountain battalion, yes. If not, no. Should heavy TD's or light TD's go to this battalion? If heavy TD, heavy. If light TD, light. And since the equipment has to be built separately, transitioning a light TD battalion to a heavy TD battalion should not be that big of a deal. The division template change is made, the light TD's flow back to stockpile, and the heavy TD's flow from stockpile to the battalion. The battalion is disorganized for a while as it acclimates to the new equipment, but then its back ready for combat.

The UI for setting equipment priorities at Division template level is not that demanding. A dropdown menu on the Division template screen next to the equipment requirement totals could handle it easily enough, although I'm sure even more elegant methods could be thought of. We don't even know how much flexibility (in terms of game mechanics) the equipment system will have at this point. We don't know how the experience economy will be balanced. Will we have enough spare experience to be modifying Division templates and creating many variants for every 2 year base model for all equipment types? Will the experience handout rate be so stingy that every template modification or variant creation must be carefully considered since you won't be able to afford many changes? We don't know how well you can do horizontal differentiation between equipment(where they are not more powerful than the base model but simply better at different things) or if it will primarily be vertical differentiation (it is always an improvement and there is no reason for a unit to use the base model if a newer variant is available). If there isn't much horizontal differentiation there might be no need for the player to specify anything about equipment other than a divisions priority for receiving new stuff. As a result we are having to speculate about a lot of things without really knowing how they will work.

However regardless of that, having a lot of specific battalion types would be a poor choice where it concerns game play. I understand why you and other people want it, for immersion purposes. I also like immersive stuff like that but you also have to consider what game play purpose is it achieving? As others have been stating, with a limited number of statistics you can only meaningfully differentiate a certain number of unit types. Having more than that is only going to cause some battalion types to be useless as other battalion types(or combinations of battalion types) are going to be superior in almost every way. This is already a problem in HOI3 with some brigades being considered mostly pointless. HOI3 has less than a quarter of the number of brigades as the number of battalion types you are proposing. Having too many battalion types is also going to increase the clutter in the tech tree. With more battalion types comes the need for more technologies to make them interesting.

In the end the game play will be better served with fewer battalion types that have more clearly defined roles and purposes. They will be easier to design the rest of the game around so that the game play is more compelling and it will also be easier for players to understand the relationship between them so that they can make interesting decisions. Not that fewer unit types doesn't have it's own problems. Too few unit types can cause all divisions across all countries to be kinda bland and similar but if they utilize the equipment system(including variants) and the Division templates that should be able to allow that differentiation between countries and types of divisions.

 

[dizzle3]

I guess I'm reasonably happy that most people are agreeing that when min/maxing, the current number of brigade types that are useful in TFH is about the maximum.

The debate at this stage is essentially about whether to include useless but flavorful units. I am pretty relaxed about this, as long as us min/maxers at least still get a playable game. The problem is that by taking a fairly nice, balanced system with a complex and vaguely historical optimized solution like TFH and then adding units, you run the risk of disrupting the equilibrium. If the new units are too good then this disrupts and is likely to simplify the solution (like for example if I add a flak unit that is better than AT and AA, then this reduces the number of optimal brigades by one, rather than increasing it)

I would generally be fine with something like building hoi4 to a similar set of unit types as hoi3, and then adding a "silly Italians" DLC that gives them some historical but bad units. Or a Wunderwaffe DLC where all the new units are too expensive or hard to research to make it into a min/max play through.

I would say that it makes sense to get a basic balanced structure up and running before you get too immersed in flavor though

 

[Axe99]

I would say that it makes sense to get a basic balanced structure up and running before you get too immersed in flavor though

Oh aye, as far as I could guess (ie, I haven't done it before m'self), you'd get your 'backbone' of battalions together (of which you wouldn't need very many at all), and then start iterating on each of your core units.

That said, until we actually know the combat model, and how all the stats inter-relate, then we still don't know this for sure. I expect if it's aggregating battalion stats up to the division, and then combat happens, then you wouldn't need many battalion types for min-maxing, but if each battalion has a role in combat, then a much wider range of battalions would be appropriate (and min/maxing would be far more difficult, because it would be less about maximising the stats of each division, and more about making sure each division had the right battalions for the job it was doing - which is what I'm hoping will happen in my wildest dreams, but totally understand if it doesn't ).

 

[darkpatriot]

One battalion type I think could potentially add a lot to the game that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread (although I was skimming quite a bit so if I missed it I apologize) would be "amphibian tractor battalions." These battalions were fundamentally the difference between divisions that were organically capable of of amphibious operations, like US Marine Divisions or Army Divisions that were organized for landing operations, and other Infantry divisions. If these battalions were included they could have a strong reduction of amphibious landing penalties and river crossing penalties, along with engineers to a lesser degree, as well as possibly adding some hardness and hard/soft attack for units that would otherwise be limited in the armor support available to them (I'm assuming armor battalions added to a division would strongly reduce the amphibious landing and river crossing capabilities). If these were in it would make less sense to include Marine Infantry as a separate battalion type since they would essentially just be regular Infantry battalions in a division that had an adequate number of "amphibian tractor battalions."

The downside to these would be that they were somewhat highly specialized and it might clutter up the tech tree for a Battalion that is just for highly specialized situations. Although you could probably have it go off of light armor tech for the most part to help reduce that clutter.

Edit: lol. Looks like I was skimming far too much. These were mentioned within the first few posts of this thread. Should have read better.

 

[Chromos]

Since everyone else is posting what they want from battalions, I might as well do it to.

My choices:
..snip

Am I leaving anything out?

Why the doubles?
Bergsjäger/Alpini/Chasseurs Alpins/Gurkhas all mountain trained units of different countries.
Gurkas had/have a special attitude towards combat like Māori Battalion, but are nonetheless MTN in HoI terms.
Māori Battalion would be more a INF-Bat with special attributes.


With the new template system for the DIV in HoI4 you can make all that you like.
In the end you could end up with a Tank DIV wich has an Marine INF-Bat included..
The fear of cluttering on the map is reduced as you see only the main usage of the DIV, here a Tank-Div.
Attach Hvy AA or Hvy TD or whatever you can put in. It just makes your DIv better in some direction.

I like to have heavies in the game too. As they were historical build. Give me ISU-152 along my SU-100 to have hvy AH/TD capabilities while I still produce also SU-75.
When HoI4 can adjust the piercing capability of a unit with weighted values ontop of the ususal stat calculation all would be perfectly fine.
That way your hvy TD would significantly raise unit stats while not lifting it completely to the best units values.
But best values should have some more impact on the overall stats, because of that give it a bit more weight in the calculation.

Adding hvy AA would be of course fine to have the effect of GER 88mm/SOV 85mm AA in the game. Without that in your Army, the GER Pz could have some serious problems against some early FRA/ENG tanks and so on.

 

[tommylotto]

The UI for setting equipment priorities at Division template level is not that demanding. A dropdown menu on the Division template screen next to the equipment requirement totals could handle it easily enough, although I'm sure even more elegant methods could be thought of.

This has been suggested before, but I do not see an equipment based model being any simpler. In fact, I would suggest that such a method would be more complex and less transparent. Think of battalion types as battalion equipment templates. If you want an infantry battalion to fight in the alps, you can dial in a certain amount of mountain equipment, or you can just select a mountain battalion (which already has an allocation of mountain equipment). Then after you create your special mountain unit, how do you find it among your other 100 otherwise identical infantry divisions. With a mountain unit you get a distinctive counter and sprite to aid unit location. The same would go for TD units, where are my Marders and where are my Jagdtigers going? Either TD equipment will be inefficiently jumbled together or you will have to specify heavy TD's go here and light TD's go there for each TD unit you create. Then you will have to check the TD's stats every time you want to know which one is which. It would be easier just to have different TD units -- light, medium, heavy. That will tell the game which equipment to send and make it easier to distinguish on the map.

I guess I'm reasonably happy that most people are agreeing that when min/maxing, the current number of brigade types that are useful in TFH is about the maximum. The debate at this stage is essentially about whether to include useless but flavorful units.

Confirmation bias... No. If min/max is your only concern, we already have too many units. You said yourself 3xINF might be the best single build. Why add any variation beyond that? And your characterization of additional units beyond the optimal min/max as "useless" is so uncharitable as to be, well, wrong. First, they would not be useless, but only less efficient or suboptimal. Second, they might have a blend of features or a specific feature that though suboptimal makes them desirable in your specific situation. If you have massive practicals in one area and zero in another, you might go with a less optimal unit because it falls in your practical specialization (Multi-Role). You might go with a unit that is too expensive in IC days, because it saves a brigade slot and conserves manpower (Mechanized). The game is complex and has more variables beyond those stated combat stats. And finally, the battalion types suggested actually existed in real life history, regardless of whether they were suboptimal or not. The game seeks to simulate WWII. The game adds lots of suboptimal detail to recreate that era. I find the existence of Luxembourg suboptimal (as well as Belgium and Netherlands). They just get in the way of Germany and France, but we include them to recreate the rich tapestry that was WW2. We don't need a motorcycle battalion, just like we don't need Luxembourg, but that it not a justification for not including them in the game.

 

[GPounda]

So can someone explain to me what the difference between light, regular, and heavy inf battalions is? While I can see this being fun for some, it seems to add a lot on the micro end and I am not entirely sure they can be balanced all that well..

Hi AmpsterMan.

I hope this helps;

Light Infantry - Paratroopers. They are rapid response and only have what they can carry with them.
Regular Infantry - usually with a heavy weapons platoon (light mortars, .50cal machine guns,) access to a supply train
Heavy Infantry - vehicular support, dedicated artillery, possible tank support

Basic rule, the more powerful the punch, the more dependent upon supply convoys.

Hope that helps.

 

[NikephorosSonar]

Reading this thread I think people forget that this game has to at least be moderately accessible.

 

[Daelyn75]

Reading this thread I think people forget that this game has to at least be moderately accessible.

Accessible? That's exactly what I want!!! Where is my Semi-Motorized Wheelchair - Bazooka - Paratroop Soldier Unit? Now that is some accessibility!