Land Doctrines

[BloodAsp]

Hi,

I would like to ask which land doctrines you consider usefull for major powers.
This is how I see them (and I am just starting my adventure with HOI3):
1time doctrines:
1. Superior Firepower - YES. There is no such thing as too much firepower! Never! Always get it
2. Grand Battleplan - no idea what it does - looks grand
3. Human Wave - important stacking penalty removal - get
4. Large Formations - only for people aroused by Militia - DON'T
5 . Spearhead Doctrine - GET, you have to have it (maybe except for Jap)
6. Combined Arms Warfare - neat - get

Multiple:
Here is where things start to get tricky. Genrally speaking I avoid People's Army for obvious reasons, and Special Forces if I am not using Marines... Operational Level Organisation looks uberimportant. I heard that you should get Org\Morale bonuses, but I don't need more org\org recovery - I need to KILL my enemies! So maybe I should also get the ones which give me chance for nice battle cards (Assault for example....)
Any synergies/cancellations here? Stuff to avoid?

 

[incognitus]

Hi there!
First of all: If you play a major power, there is really no reason not to get almost all of the land doctrines. As a general rule, I research all those that give a bonus to unit types I use or plan to use (so I ignore all the stuff that only affects militia, partisans, etc.)

The one tech I always research, even if I am far ahead of time, is Operational Level Organisation. Each level reduces the delay between attacks by 24 hours. Which means that you can fight more with the same number of divisions.

1. Superior Firepower: That's what I used to think. But no. It's actually a pretty stupid tech, especially since it's so expensive. Think about it: How often do you have a single division fight a battle as a major? That's right, hardly ever. And if you do, it's because you're going to win that battle anyways. Superior Firepower does nothing towards getting more troops into battle. I'd say forget about it.
2. Yes, this is a very good one. Nothing more frustrating than sending in reinforcements and seeing them sit there and not participate for weeks.
3. Human wave: Sounds like one of those stupid militia techs. Check if it does anything for INF, if it doesn't, forget about it.
4. Large formations: same as 3.
5. Spearhead Doctrine: Again, sounds great, is useful, but how useful? All it does is allow more tanks to participate in a single battle. How often do you need this? The number of battles where more tanks will fix your problem is very limited. Usually, if you're attacking with tanks, it will be against soft targets who get destroyed anyway or less advanced tanks, wo get destroyed anyway or fewer tanks of the same level, who get destroyed anyway. The only battles where I have seen my tanks get into trouble, were attacks across rivers or against fortifications. And in those cases, more tanks is not the best fix. Much better to get some ENG (NO width) or flank and go around the enemy, so you don't have to attack across the river. Or use air force.
6. Combines Arms Warfare: This is a good one too, especially because it's a one off. You don't have to keep leveling it. Not sure how got the SPRArt is, I've never had it, but I assume you need to research SPArt and RArt first, before you can unlock it via CAW.

I also like Guerilla, because Ambush is a pretty good manoever in battle.

 

[marxianTJ]

If you're playing a major you can afford to get all of them and you'll find some kind of purpose for it - even the militia doctrines as they sit and guard ports or something because you'll gain the +1 theory to make the research faster on other stuff you want.

If you're not playing a major then you're basically restricted to the 5 most important techs: Infantry Warfare, Operational Level, the +Morale tech for INF, the + Morale tech for ART (Delay Doctrine), and Assault Concentration (+org for ART) unless you're using Militia instead. And then that's probably all the research you can sustain anyways unless you steal it from a major.

 

[Kovax]

The two essentials are Infantry Warfare and Mass Assault. The first (in combination with your Officer Ratio) gives your troops more Organization so they don't break and run away, the second restores lost ORG more quickly. Without ORG, you lose the battle, no matter how many enemy troops you killed (which is what your Small Arms techs are for). If you're running a pure INF army, that's almost all that you need right there.

Operational Level Organization, which I believe is the doctrine in the upper left corner of the Militia doctrine group, reduces the amount of time that your troops sit there twiddling their thumbs before they can move or attack again, and obviously is very important to continue an offensive before the opponent recovers from the last push. If you add Artillery, you'll almost certainly want Assault Concentration and possibly the Delay doctrine in the group above it to restore lost ORG to your ART brigades (which also improves the combat ability of your HQs, in case you attach brigades to the HQs).

The doctrines which you (BloodAsp) listed would be:
Superior Firepower - unlocks the ability to add a 5th brigade to your divisions. I'd rather construct more 4-brigade divisions, which provides greater flexibility and uses less supply per division.

Grand Battleplan - very useful if you don't have decent officers at Corps level to allow fresh divisions to move up from reserve to the front line, but takes a lot of preliminary work to unlock. I research it if I can afford to unlock it (ALWAYS, as Germany), otherwise it's a "nice to have, but too expensive" kind of thing.

Human Wave - only useful if you're massing large waves of troops from a single province against an opposing stack. If I can make attacks with 3-4 divisions from each of 3 different provinces, I have zero use for this. If I have to go head-to-head against a mega-stack from one province, then it's good.

Large Formations - unless you use Militia in massed assaults, this won't help.

Spearhead doctrine - useful only if you're using massed Armored formations, and your tanks are eating up too much frontage. I'd prefer to use INF with air support (and with ARM support if I have a spare ARM division handy) to break the hard spots, and use my armor to outflank and encircle, not attack head on. Killing a few more enemy grunts in combat than they manage to kill of yours won't win the war; you need to overrun or encircle and eliminate enemy divisions, which removes them completely. Let's see......I can kill 1500 of the enemy in an ongoing series of bloody battles and lose 900 of my own, or I can encircle them and break them in one battle, losing 200 men to their 300, but their entire division of 10,000 men is then captured and removed from the game. I know which I'd rather do.

Combined Arms - previously mentioned as boosting ORG of Artillery, AT, and AA, which is helpful especially if the enemy is bombing your troops, as the support brigades will take greater ORG losses than the INF and other line brigades.

 

[Wraith11B]

Don't forget about the Large Formations/Guerilla Warfare techs: the names are misleading and something they do is to lower HQ supply consumption, each by .1 or .2 or something. Stacked up, it can be powerful (more supply for the grunts where it belongs) and especially powerful when you have a massive army.

 

[Kovax]

Don't forget about the Large Formations/Guerilla Warfare techs: the names are misleading and something they do is to lower HQ supply consumption, each by .1 or .2 or something. Stacked up, it can be powerful (more supply for the grunts where it belongs) and especially powerful when you have a massive army.

If you're a minor country with 5-10 HQs, it's pretty pointless. "Woohoo! I saved a full unit of supply per day!"...instead of an industrial tech to give me another effective IC with which to build several more supply units per day, or to build another division. If you're playing the Soviets, that's a lot of IC no longer being spent on supplies, or clogging the supply lanes.

 

[Wraith11B]

Yeah, I didn't think that they were talking about a minor nation, but I totally forgot about that when doing my play-through as Germany and I am probably suffering for it now.