Lessons Learned

[Palmerdale]

Here's a thing I learned from my recent game. Feel free to add other items that illustrate something useful about a specific country / strategy / tactic.

Italy vs UK / Iraq, 1942. Do not mess with Iraq unless you have Supply Organization and Supply Transport past 1938 levels. I've got the units, but they can't get the supply they need. The rest of the Middle East along the coast is fine, as it can receive supply from a port. It's been a great fight, with Baghdad changing hands several times, but it should have been the usual cakewalk. Lesson: Don't experiment too much with your Supply techs.

 

[Kovax]

There are a few details to remember. If your supply techs are low, either you have to spread out your forces so the supplies travel along different lines, or else hold up in or near a decent port until everyone's at maximum supply before starting the advance. If you're getting 90% of your needed supplies to the front each day, and you started out with a 10 day supply for the unit, it will be 100 days before you run out, which is just long enough to get yourself deep in enemy territory and in the middle of a hard fight.

One solution is to run "leaner" units, with less supply-hungry divisions (Militia, or INF without artillery), rather than Motorized or Armored units, or to run less divisions. Another solution is to place a pre-built airfield just behind the front and directly along your line of advance, and fly supplies to it with a Transport plane. You can also go the "blitz" route with fast mobile units, and try to take the objective before your supplies run out. Then again, you can rush the supply techs, or build additional Infrastructure and improved ports behind you as you go. Logistics is a game unto itself, and learning how to deal with that is a key to success in HOI3.

Italy starts out with a nice, safe training war in Ethiopia, which SHOULD teach you the lesson that in areas of bad infrastructure, sometimes Less = More.

 

[marxianTJ]

One thing I would point out just to be certain, sometimes the UK AI absolutely destroys all the infrastructure in the Palestine/Jordan area - particularly around Jordan because there are only 2-3 tiles to move to Iraq through, so if they log bomb those 2-3 tiles to 0 you'll starve as soon as you cross into Iraq in perpetuity without TRA planes no matter your tech level.

The first time I saw them do it I was rather impressed, because it's exactly what a human would do to save themselves lol.

 

[Timotheus1]

Back from hiatus. That is some pretty impressive AI behaviour, whether hardcoded or not.
Read the HOI 4 forum for giggles, back to the real stuff now.

 

[Palmerdale]

This issue has finally forced me to deal with the manual shipping mechanics. The problem I am having is definitely related to supply, specifically the automated supply management. I have 48 extra transports and the automated system is running 29/29 convoys. The supply for the Baghdad area was running through El Iskandaria and overland to Baghdad a distance of 47 nodes. No shipping at all was coming into Tel Aviv, which is far closer. I think the closer route wouldn't be so impacted by inferior (1938 level) Supply Throughput and Supply Organization techs. Why the supply wasn't being shipped to Tel Aviv, I've got no idea -- maybe the route is avoiding Vichy France (Syria).

So, some questions.

• Is the AI limited to 29 convoys? That baffles me. I'd have expected that if there was some organizational limit, there would be some way to counter that restriction with technology.
• The manual system allows me to create more than 29 convoys. Is that a good thing or bad? Will creating more convoys cause issues?
  
• Should I need to review all the convoy routes to look for unused routes? If so, how? That seems like a huge micromanagement burden, especially for someone who's never managed convoys before.
• Better question. Is there some way to force the automated system to recalculate its routes? It should be relatively trivial to determine how much supply is needed per area, and adjust the routes to support the demand. That would be pretty deep into the code, though. Since I don't already know of such a mechanism, I'll guess there isn't one. But I'll ask, just in case there's something hidden that I don't know about.

I'd appreciate any insight you may have.

 

[Palmerdale]

Another questions.

• I set up another route to port directly from Taranto to Tel Aviv. When will this convoy take effect? I let the month change (from June 25 to July 5, but Tel Aviv still shows it is being supplied from El Iskandaria. I put 1 convoy and 1 escort on duty on that route, but it doesn't seem to be taking effect.

 

[Count Blue]

• Is the AI limited to 29 convoys? That baffles me. I'd have expected that if there was some organizational limit, there would be some way to counter that restriction with technology.
• Better question. Is there some way to force the automated system to recalculate its routes?

No.
Normaly the limitation for a supply convoy is the revceiving port size.
The bigger the port the greater the number of supplies(and fuel) that can be shipped.
If you let the AI maintain your convoys it will judge how much demand there is and adjust the number accordingly.
It will also replace any sunk convoys.

The limitation for resource convoys are the quantity of resorces simply.

I have never found a way to make the AI take anouther route wit ha convoy.
The only thing that makes them change the route are enemy ships.
if convoys get sunk they sometime change their path to circumvent the area of the last encounter.

 

[Count Blue]

Another questions.

• I set up another route to port directly from Taranto to Tel Aviv. When will this convoy take effect? I let the month change (from June 25 to July 5, but Tel Aviv still shows it is being supplied from El Iskandaria. I put 1 convoy and 1 escort on duty on that route, but it doesn't seem to be taking effect.

Your supplies(in that area/landmass) are drawn from the local central depot which is El Iskandaria.
The supplies delivered to Tel Aviv enter the network and get sucked back to El Iskandaria and than redistributed.
You need to wait some days for things to take effect (usually).

You could use some Transport Planes from Tel aviv Airport to distribute those Supplies if they are needed badly.

 

[Palmerdale]

Thanks, Count.

One thing I noticed is that everything in Africa is supplied through El Iskandaria. There are supply convoys from Geneva to Algers, but everything is supplied from Alexandria only because it has a port size of 10/10. Routing all supplies back to a centralized hub seems incredibly wasteful, especially if the Theory tab Supply techs are involved both ways. It also makes infrastructure overly important, in my opinion. That may be a contributing factor in my Italian-Russian debacles. Anyway, I ran the supply from June through Aug with nothing visibly changing.

I've already tried to Air Supply Baghdad. The default range of Italian Transports is exactly 1 province short. More tech that I routinely ignore. That's almost exactly the place where the supply runs out.

My Iraqi force is mostly an infantry force. I was trying to operate the entire war without armor (a lean Italy strategy). In Iraq, I have 5 brigades of MOT, 10 brigades of ALP with 3 ART, 12 brigades of MAR with 3 ART, 6 brigades of INF (for occupation duty until I can churn out some GAR), and a 9 brigades of INF with 3 ART and 3 AT (the Brits brought some tanks). I've never had these kinds of supply issues when I went in with a mostly armor (LARM, 2xMOT, 2xSPART) composition.

 

[Count Blue]

Routing all supplies back to a centralized hub seems incredibly wasteful,

For what I know the backflow to the central hub does neither cost supply tax nor does it take time.
Only when supplies are transported to the front supply tax and techs play a role.
(AFAIK)

You may drop supplies one province short of the target, if everything is well they should get drafted to the troops that are in need.

 

[Kovax]

The inability to choose a supply depot location, combined with the system being confined to a single hub for each connected landmass, leads to ridiculously extended supply lines. A worst case example would be Japan, getting a supply depot in northern China, and having to ship supplies overland all the way to India when there are ports scattered all along the way. Anything dropped off at those ports has a high likelihood of being routed all the way back to China before moving forward.

As far as I've read and seen, Count Blue is correct in that supplies returning to a supply depot suffer no transport "tax", but I suspect that they move at the same pace as supplies moving forward. After conquering the Soviet Union in one game, it took over a month before all of those captured Soviet supplies from Moscow came flooding into Berlin.

 

[Count Blue]

but I suspect that they move at the same pace as supplies moving forward.

The wiki is not clear about the speed.
But now come to think of it it makes sense what you wrote.

from the wiki:
Section :
http://www.hoi3wiki.com/Logistics_reference

"Apart from supply sources, any province that has received more supplies than the units in that province used will temporarily store these supplies. These supplies can be captured if the province is captured. After a short period of time (each night at 00:00), any provinces with surplus supplies (other than a supply depot) will send them back to a supply depot along the supply network. There is no throughput cap on supplies heading back to the center, and no supply tax."

 

[Palmerdale]

What version does the wiki apply to? I'm rather skeptical about the wiki, as a lot of it appears to reference the original game, and other bits seem to reference specific expansions (SF or TFH). Basically, while the wiki might have been accurate for the vanilla game, expansions have changed things that have subsequently invalidated parts of the wiki, and those changes may not have been documented appropriately.

As far as Kovak's observation about supply movement speed, it does seem to work at the same speed in both directions. Captured supplies from new provinces take way too long to flow into the system. Usually, I've imagined the capturing force simply uses those supplies in the captured province (as local supply) instead of putting them into the network. So, I think I'd agree more with Kovak than the Wiki in this case.

I've never had supply issues this bad in Iraq before. In many of my prior Italy games, I've conquered Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey (and occasionally Syria) allowing Northern Iraq to be supplied overland from Rome. That's a lot longer route, and should have been more exposed to weak Supply techs. I have observed that when I build this land supply route, I can invade Russia from Eastern Turkey pretty easily (until my anemic unit composition falters in the face of Soviet armor). But if I try to invade Russia with an amphibious invasion across the Black Sea, I stall out every time. In retrospect, I suspect this is the same supply issue I'm seeing now.

And if the entire continent of Africa is to be supplied from Alexandria (El Iskandaria), about the worst possible thing I have done is to improve the infrastructure in Muhammad Qol and various places around Mombassa to extend supply to cover all of Africa, all the way to South Africa. The supply seems to work well if I've conquered the land route, allowing units in Cape Town to be supplied from Rome. I expect that if I relied on sea supply, I wouldn't be able to move through southern Africa to conquer the entire continent. Improving those few provinces of infrastructure increases the pressure on supply coming through a single province. As long as the infrastructure of Muhammad Qol is 1, the supply flows through both Alexandria and Edd, making 2 supply points instead of 1. Peculiar. (It also has the side effect of keeping the Ethiopians at home, where they can't try to help out with the war in Iraq. I previously suspected that they were eating my supplies).

Another lesson learned, I guess.

 

[marxianTJ]

The issue is that your tiles are only 2-3 tiles deep from Alexandria, and those tiles can only hold so many supplies, so everything is probably getting all jammed up leaving Alexandria, whereas going through Turkey, although the route is longer, it's also much wider and so you have a lot more tiles to shovel full of supplies and get them moving to their destination.

 

[Palmerdale]

That makes some sense, @marxianTJ. But even the overland route has at least one significant bottleneck -- in Easter Greece to Constantinople. Also, if you don't capture Syria, Northern Iraq is basically only 2 provinces wide, albeit with 4 infrastructure. I think the point I am most boggling with is the dreadful infrastructure along the northern coast of Africa (with several single province wide bottlenecks), which should make operations around Casablanca almost anemic.

 

[Kovax]

As long as you can inject additional supplies directly onto the path that they're already taking, you may be able to bypass at least some of the bottlenecks in North Africa. If you can choose a port beyond those single-width paths across bad infrastructure, and manually assign a convoy to deliver supplies, those should flow along with the trickle that's already getting through, provided that there are no additional bottlenecks ahead. If you choose a port that's NOT directly on the path, then those supplies may be routed back to wherever the depot happens to be located, most likely at the other end of that long line of bad infrastructure, and will then attempt to flow all the way back through that bad infrastructure again and past where you initially dropped them off.

The inability to select a depot location (or else use high-level HQs as relocateable supply depots) has been one of my biggest complaints about HOI3.

 

[Count Blue]

The inability to select a depot location (or else use high-level HQs as relocateable supply depots) has been one of my biggest complaints about HOI3.

Yep.

 

[Palmerdale]

Yep.

I agree. Tying the supply into the OOB, even at the Theater level, would have been more flexible, and probably superior.

 

[athunder7]

He probally needs to control suez canal zone. Its like 6 providences before you can get supply thru in my games. But I usually play as Germany and have multi spearheads taking 2-3 ports at a time.

 

[Big Nev]

Your supplies(in that area/landmass) are drawn from the local central depot which is El Iskandaria.
The supplies delivered to Tel Aviv enter the network and get sucked back to El Iskandaria and than redistributed.
You need to wait some days for things to take effect (usually).

You could use some Transport Planes from Tel aviv Airport to distribute those Supplies if they are needed badly.

Putting the transport planes in Tel Aviv does two important things.

Firstly, it creates an immediate demand there, which should result in supplies being shipped there as it seems this is not the case even though you have a supply convoy.

Second, it provides the facility to airlift supplies without disturbing your main supply centre & routes.

There is also something else to remember about air-lifting supplies.

You don't need to get them all the way to where you need them. Just drop them as close as you can, on the supply artery (which you can see as the green provinces, or maybe brown if there's a deficit, in supply mode) and the required draw will take what's needed the rest of the way.

This is similar to what Kovax describes with shipping in to the supply route, but you can do the same thing, anywhere, with aircraft.