Looking for pointers for my France composition

[Rascal Nag]

Vanilla TFH 4.02

Playing France, going for this comp in Europe:

4 armies
Each army:
3x INF corps (INF INF ART AT)
1x ARM corps (2x ARM MOT MOT SPART, 3x LARM MOT MOT AC)
1x Special Forces Corp (3x SPC SPC SPC ENG, 2x MOT MOT MOT ENG)

4x3 INT 2x3 TAC 1x3 CAS to start but expanding throughout the war

Navy unchanged from day 1

I made a first rough go of it, seemed to be enough to hold the line with no issues, but since I’m heading out for a work trip I figured I could ask for some tips and come back, tweak it and try to optimize it over the weekend when I come back. I messed up the math and was missing a couple brigades here and there but I was quite surprised at how well it all fit into France’s manpower and IC constraints right off the bat (Two year through peace time, war economy ASAP in jan 1937). I was down on officer ratio by Danzig or war but acceptable by the opening of western hostilities, and fully upgraded to 1938 with few 1940s. With some staggering and maybe some less focus on air doctrine (or at least not devoting 3-4 leadership to it at once) I think I could better prepare this, not to mention with a better comp - any suggestions? I also was lucky in that the republicans won the SCW and I recruited them to the Allies, but that’s quite a minor point.

 

[roverS3]

Let's see. This is very much my own opinion and should not be seen as 'the meta':

The first big question is whether you will be using the AI to run this force, of will be moving corps, or even Divisions yourself.
If you're going to be handing it over to high level AI, this composition isn't too bad as each army has a bit of everything, so the AI can't screw up too bad by using a Tank army to defend a mountain a mountain range or a bunch of mountaineers to try and stop an enemy armoured spearhead.

If you're going to be doing things yourself, the big question is what you're planning to do with this force.
As it stands, each army is equipped to hold a part of the line (infantry, Mountaineers if part of the line is mountains or hills), and it holds a small mobile offensive force. This means that each army should be able to execute small scale breakthroughs with massed infantry and some Armour and then funnel the LArm and Mot units through the gap to encircle a province or two or to get to an objective. However, they are not equipped for larger scale offensive operations. Your Motorised forces being stuck in corps with slower Special forces means that the Motorised forces will outrun their corps HQ (or the latter will outrun the special forces) when you do large sweeping operations with multiple armies' offensive forces, which are in turn more likely to outrun their respective HQ's. I've assumed a 2-1 ratio of Mountaineers and Marines in your special forces.

How would I organise those same units into more specialised corps:
12x INF corps (INF INF ART AT) to hold the line and for combat in rough terrain (except mountains)
2x ARM corps (4x ARM MOT MOT SPART, LARM MOT MOT AC) for breaking through the enemy line
2x L ARM corps (5x LARM MOT MOT AC) for exploitation of said breakthrough.
2x Mot corps (4x MOT MOT MOT ENG) for mobile defence/exploitation (mobile fire brigade to hold the line or additional forces to hold the flanks of an armoured spearhead)
2x Alp Corps (4x Alp/Mtn Alp/Mtn Alp/Mtn (Eng) ) for fighting in the mountains
1x Mar Corps (4x Mar Mar Mar (Eng) ) for river crossings or amphibious operations
Now into armies:

Line Army 1 to hold the front against GER, mainly defensive
4x INF corps (INF INF ART AT)
Mot corps (4x MOT MOT MOT ENG)

Line Army2 to hold the front against GER, mainly defensive
5x INF corps (INF INF ART AT)

Alpine Army to hold the front against ITA, mainly defensive
3x INF corps (INF INF ART AT)
2x Alp Corps (4x Alp/Mtn Alp/Mtn Alp/Mtn (Eng) )

Tank Army for large scale offensive operations
2x ARM corps (4x ARM MOT MOT SPART, LARM MOT MOT AC)
2x L ARM corps (5x LARM MOT MOT AC)
Mot corps (4x MOT MOT MOT ENG)

Marine Corps in reserve could be swapped into Tank Army for river crossing operations or used independently for amphibious operations.

There are of course many possible variations here.

For example you could go for mixed mobile corps for exploitation and mobile defence with a mix of LARM MOT MOT AC and MOT MOT MOT ENG/SPART/TD

You could also go for 2 mobile armies with 1 ARM corps, 1 LARM corps, 1/2 Mot Corps each for more versatility instead of concentrating all your tanks in one army. These forces could then operate either as a tank army (breakthrough-> exploitation) or as a fire brigade to plug gaps in the defensive line and push back enemy offensives.

Now to Division composition:
INF INF ART AT (binary) is weaker on the defence than INF INF INF ART/AT (triangular), however with the smaller frontage of the former, you get more punch if you max out the frontage cap with 5 binary units rather than 4 triangular units (in the case of a 10-frontage battle). Of course, manpower is also a serious consideration and binary divisions will be less manpower-intensive. There is something to be said for simply having more Divisions allowing you to cover a longer front, at least temporarily.

ARM MOT MOT SPART This is fine, a good breakthrough division that will hold up well against a counter-attack.

LARM MOT MOT AC Also good, a division geared for speed perfect for exploiting a breakthrough (consider upgrading to Mec when that comes available for the ultimate speed demons). I do wonder whether you need quite so many of these though, a single corps of these is probably enough, maybe two. Instead I think more medium armour and motorised divisions would give you more flexibility.

SPC SPC SPC ENG This is a bit questionable. As France your Special forces are either Mountaineers/Chasseurs Alpins or Marines. In the case of the former, adding Engineers will detract significantly from their advantage in Mountainous terrain (where they are the best) whilst helping them a little in Forests and the like (where regular Infantry is going to be better anyway). In the case of the latter Engineers make a lot of sense if they are used to attack across river, but much less sense when they are used as amphibious forces (unless you're charging a defended coastal fortification)

MOT MOT MOT ENG Here too the Engineers are questionable, they will help negate some of the negative modifiers for Mot in forests and when crossing rivers, places where regular Infantry is going to do better anyway. SPART or TD are superior in most circumstances, the former when fighting infantry, the latter on the defensive and when fighting tanks.

If you're going to use Engineers, better to put them into Infantry divisions which you either spread across your Infantry corps (one division/corps), or group into specialised river crossing/forest fighting/fortress busting corps (maybe one in each line army)

Putting your special forces into square divisions ALP ALP ALP ALP, MTN MTN MTN MTN, or MAR MAR MAR MAR would save on HQ's and skilled officers without much of a penalty, as special forces do their specialised job better (except for MAR when river-crossing) when they don't drag along support brigades. So you would have one Alpine Corps (5 x ALP/MTN ALP/MTN ALP/MTN ALP/MTN ALP/MTN) and one Marines Corps (4 x MAR MAR MAR MAR) with the same number of special forces brigades.

The Air force looks fine to me. You'll have to be careful with those CAS though because Int will tear through them. If you can't guarantee Air Supremacy consider going for INT, CASx2/3 or FTR, CASx2/3. Tac will generally do more damage except when bombing heavily armoured formations, it is also less limited in range so not as dependent on there being an air base close to the area of the front you want to target, and it is more versatile doing ok at strategic and logistical bombardment. CAS is good at naval/port bombardment though (but quite limited in that role due to it's very short range)

I regret the lack of expansion of the Marine Nationale for historical reasons, but I understand the decision.

 

[Rascal Nag]

That’s incredibly comprehensive, thank you. As for my plans, I do intend to control the divisions myself (might let the AI do purely defensive fronts though) and the general plan is to push into the lowlands to establish a river defense as far away from France proper as possible. If I feel like I can manage it, even a Saar offensive to take up positions along the left bank may be in the cards, but that’s not necessary if it proves too difficult. After that I would pivot to Italy and just be opportunistic with the Germans as the Comintern becomes involved.

With that in mind, your armor suggestions make plenty of sense and I will adopt the full armored army approach with more medium armor emphasis. Dropping the engineers from many divisions is fine by me as well, though I may keep some around for the initial contact with the Siegfried line. Not sure what the best fort buster division would be, though. Square divisions are probably better as well; for the special forces divisions I had, I felt they were unnecessarily numerous for the provinces that required them anyway, due to the extra divisions from adopting a triangle design. Air Force wise, a second trio of CAS would be nice to provide some ability to swap in fresh wings. So maybe…

Army 1 - Infantry, GER:
4 INF Corps, 1 MAR Corps

Army 2 - Infantry, GER
4 INF Corps, 1 MOT Corps (Is MOT MOT SPART TD reasonable or is picking one support the way to go?)

Army 3 - Armor, could be concentrated against either depending on plans/needs at the time
3-4 ARM corps, 1-2 LARM corps (depends on if I am concerned with IC)

Army 4 - Infantry, ITA
4 INF Corps, 1 ALP/MTN Corps

Air wise I would try to add a second CAS wing, so 4x3 INT 2x3 TAC 2x3 CAS, but perhaps I would start with 3x3 INT and just reposition the wing I had been keeping for the ITA front northward, aiming to build a wing for that front later.

And if I can squeeze in some navy, I’d probably go for some more ASW to chew on any axis shipping and perhaps expand the surface fleet modestly to open up some naval operations in either the Mediterranean or the North Sea. Could help with subduing Italy, or opening up a front around Wilhelmshaven to get things going north of the Rhine. But this is definitely far into wish list territory. Thank you again for all the help! I get back tomorrow and will attempt to implement all of this.

 

[Wraith11B]

Army 2 - Infantry, GER
4 INF Corps, 1 MOT Corps (Is MOT MOT SPART TD reasonable or is picking one support the way to go?)

INF x 2 and ART/AT is a usual jack of all trades, but you're not going to meet that much armor in the game. That said, the AI just *loves* itself some AT and puts so much of it on the board, because of a terrible AI programming choice. Notionally its better to go with the (INF x 2 + ART x 2) if you're just looking to game the system. That said, the motorized size its a bit more reasonable because those units are (again, notionally) more likely to encounter enemy armor.

 

[Kovax]

Note that AT has the lowest Soft Attack of almost anything you can put in a division other than MPs, so it's EXTREMELY weak against anything other than tanks, and even armor divisions typically include more soft units than hard. Against anyone but GER, I'd say drop the AT and rely on your own ARM, TD, and air power to deal with it. GER tends to go a bit heavier on armor, so some AT may be warranted. Still, you probably don't want it in the majority of your divisions. Note that TD provides Piercing one point higher than that of ARM at the same tech level, so it's nice (but not essential) to have one nearby mobile unit with TD that you can throw into combat against enemy tanks. Due to its weak Soft Attack, it's not nearly as effective on the attack against infantry.

I've had bigger issues with German air power rapidly disorganizing my units while they're engaged in ground combat, so adding some AA might be a good idea. French air power will probably not be sufficient by itself. AA isn't exactly bad against ground targets, but isn't very resilient, so it gets torn up easily and becomes ineffective. Putting the AA directly in with your HQs might work, where you stick the HQ/AA in the province under air attack, yet it won't engage ground targets without a "line" brigade in the division.

ENG is wonderful in certain situations, yet on its own is probably the next weakest thing you can put in a division other than MPs (or AT against soft targets). It does provide a substantial penalty reduction for combat in most bad terrain (woods, river crossings, urban, and swamps, but NOT mountains), so it's highly effective at modifying the effectiveness of the entire division in those cases, as long as there's enough base combat power to modify in the first place. I normally try to build one ENG-equipped division per Corps, and the difference in effectiveness against enemy units in woods or cities is significant, to the point where I'll often delay an attack until I can bring up the ENG. In open plains or hills, however, you end up with a substantially weaker division.

The proposed MOT MOT SPART TD seems like a "jack of all trades, master of none" design by committee. The SPART is primarily good against Soft targets, the TD primarily good against Hard. I'd rather put them in separate divisions in support of ARM, and use them where they do best, but it might be workable as something the AI could run. Likewise, I'd keep ENG out of specialist units, since MTN troops operate best in terrain where the ENG provides no advantages, and an INF, MAR, or another MTN would provide a lot more Soft Attack.

The AI makes no distinction between divisions of different composition (but contrary to the AI's beliefs, one size does NOT fit all), so it will happily garrison a port with highly mobile MOT+AC+LARM units, send heavy armor into the mountains, and race to close an encirclement with abysmally slow Garrison troops, while 2xMIL divisions struggle to hold the front lines. I once saw AI Germany send 4 HQs, two GAR divisions, and one actual Infantry division to blitz Denmark. It worked, but took close to a year.

 

[Rascal Nag]

Okay, so maybe I'll move away from so many monolithic infantry armies. I'm going to try something like this:

• Army 1 | Infantry | Facing GER
  • Artillery Corps, 2x
    • 4x INF INF ART ART
    • 1x INF INF INF ENG
  • Anti-tank Corps, 1x
    • 4x INF INF ART AT
    • 1x INF INF INF ENG
  • Marine Corps, 1x
    • 4x MAR MAR MAR MAR
    • 1x MAR MAR MAR ENG
  • Motorized Corps, 1x
    • 4x MOT MOT MOT SPART
    • 1x MOT MOT MOT ENG
• Army 2 | Infantry | Facing GER
  • Artillery Corps, 2x
    • 4x INF INF ART ART
    • 1x INF INF INF ENG
  • Anti-Tank Corps, 2x
    • 4x INF INF ART AT
    • 1x INF INF INF ENG
  • Motorized Corps, 1x
    • 4x MOT MOT MOT SPART
    • 1x MOT MOT MOT ENG
• Army 3 | Infantry | Facing ITA
  • Artillery Corps, 4x
    • 4x INF INF ART ART
    • 1x INF INF INF ENG
  • Alpine Corps, 1x
    • 4x ALP/MTN ALP/MTN ALP/MTN ALP/MTN
    • 1x ALP/MTN ALP/MTN ALP/MTN ENG
• Army 4 | Armor | Flexible
  • 3x Medium Armored Corps
    • 4x ARM MOT MOT SPART
    • 1x ARM MOT MOT ENG
  • 2x Light Armored Corps
    • 4x LARM MOT MOT AC
    • 1x LARM MOT MOT ENG

Airforce: 12 INT, 6 TAC and 6 CAS split into wings of 3.

This is probably stretching my MP and IC, if not outdoing it - the opening phase of the war will probably see me underequip the Italian front to redirect resources to the line with Germany, and hopefully Total Economic Mobilization and Service By Requirement will allow me to rectify that before long.

 

[Wraith11B]

Not to weigh down your decisions (and this might be wrong), but most of the "special forces" units (ie, Alpins), much like armor, benefit from just the one brigade in the division. Unless I've been misled (in which case, @Kovax can correct).

 

[roverS3]

Not to weigh down your decisions (and this might be wrong), but most of the "special forces" units (ie, Alpins), much like armor, benefit from just the one brigade in the division. Unless I've been misled (in which case, @Kovax can correct).

Performance of a division in a particular type of terrain is based on the average of the terrain penalty of each of it's brigades.
It's definitely not like armour where the 'armor' & 'piercing' values of the division correspond to the highest 'armor' & 'piercing' values amongst it's brigades and it is preferred to have other brigades backing up the tanks.
Some examples:

A pure Mtn Division has the following modifiers:
Mtns At. -10% Def. 10% Mvmt. -30%
Hills At. 0% Def. 5% Mvmt. -20%

A Mtnx2, Art division has the following modifiers:
Mtns At. -27% Def. 6,7% Mvmt. -40%
Hills At. -10% Def. 3,3% Mvmt. -22%

A Mtn, Infx2, Art division has the following modifiers
Mtns At. -38% Def. 2,5% Mvmt. -42,5%
Hills At. -20% Def. 1,3% Mvmt. -21%

For reference, pure Infantry does the following:
Mtns At. -40% Def. 0% Mvmt. -40%
Hills At. -20% Def. 0% Mvmt. -20%

This is why you should avoid adding support brigades to special forces in all but a few select cases.

 

[Wraith11B]

I was speaking more of a "SpecFor + (relevant regular unit, generally mtn)" arrangement. So, "Alps/Ghurk/All+2MTN" or the "2AB + RNGR".

 

[Rascal Nag]

Composition is working well so far! I had a hunch that going for dual support INF divisions would be IC-prohibitive, so I decided to stretch my MP some more and go for triangle INF. This required me to turn off reinforcements to the Italian front for now, but with the Rhine offensive complete, I will dig in and regenerate some so I can ready that army as well. I also was not able to build the SPART brigades for the MOT corps attached to my INF armies (verifying that I would have been underequipped with dual support divs), and that will be a priority to rectify once the ITA front is fully manned, though the naked MOT triangles performed well given their primary job of helping plug gaps/give INF armies some basic exploitation capabilities. Engineers also proved great in their 1-per-corps quantity, thank you for the advice @Kovax ! My airforce was not fully ready but I was able to use some very limited operations to hasten the initial breakthrough, and after that only used them to occasionally scare off some ground attack missions. I have a bunch of wings in the production queue at the moment, so hopefully by late 1940 I will be able to go on the air offensive, perhaps over Italy. I still have 3 Corps of infantry in reserve on the Belgian border, who will partially relieve my armor so it can be ready to go to Italy when necessary (or perhaps the Ruhr, though I would likely have to act now on that, delaying the reinforcement of the Alps further), and partially to help man the Netherlands when they are drawn into the war.

Long way to go but all the advice has paid off, thanks guys. Will post more pics as the campaign progresses.

 

[roverS3]

I was speaking more of a "SpecFor + (relevant regular unit, generally mtn)" arrangement. So, "Alps/Ghurk/All+2MTN" or the "2AB + RNGR".

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/comparison-of-elite-units-tfh.637043/

The elite brigades have (some) slightly better terrain modifiers than the 'regular' MTN/AB brigade but also more organisation and Morale, but they are limited in number. The question then becomes whether you want to have a few crack divisions or whether you want to give all of your Mtn/Par divisions a boost by mixing in an elite brigade in all of those divisions. (or as many as possible anyway)
To return to my previous post, you could also apply this question to whether you should add a support brigade to a Mtn Division. In some situations, this can be advantageous despite the reduced terrain stats. For example, you could add a much faster support brigade like AC, which will not slow your unit down despite worse movement modifiers because it's base speed is so high and in some situations, when fighting in hills for example, that's going to be more powerful than pure Mtn. I would also like to note that a division moves at the speed of the slowest brigade, including terrain & weather modifiers.

Composition is working well so far! I had a hunch that going for dual support INF divisions would be IC-prohibitive, so I decided to stretch my MP some more and go for triangle INF. This required me to turn off reinforcements to the Italian front for now, but with the Rhine offensive complete, I will dig in and regenerate some so I can ready that army as well. I also was not able to build the SPART brigades for the MOT corps attached to my INF armies (verifying that I would have been underequipped with dual support divs), and that will be a priority to rectify once the ITA front is fully manned, though the naked MOT triangles performed well given their primary job of helping plug gaps/give INF armies some basic exploitation capabilities. Engineers also proved great in their 1-per-corps quantity, thank you for the advice @Kovax ! My airforce was not fully ready but I was able to use some very limited operations to hasten the initial breakthrough, and after that only used them to occasionally scare off some ground attack missions. I have a bunch of wings in the production queue at the moment, so hopefully by late 1940 I will be able to go on the air offensive, perhaps over Italy. I still have 3 Corps of infantry in reserve on the Belgian border, who will partially relieve my armor so it can be ready to go to Italy when necessary (or perhaps the Ruhr, though I would likely have to act now on that, delaying the reinforcement of the Alps further), and partially to help man the Netherlands when they are drawn into the war.

View attachment 853602

Long way to go but all the advice has paid off, thanks guys. Will post more pics as the campaign progresses.

Thats a pretty impressive breakthrough right there. Glad the composition is working. That Tank Army is working as intended.

 

[Rascal Nag]

It appears the war enters a stalled phase if you prevent the progression of Fall Gelb... just became us staring at each other across the Rhine for years. Maybe that was some bad luck in that Italy never joined, but without them onboard offensively, I wasn't about to draw in the rest of the Axis to bring them in myself, which meant there would be no opportunity to stretch the front to Italy with a renewed armored thrust. So, I think I will run it back to an earlier save and do anything I can to achieve 140% officer ratio BEFORE the war. This will maximize my ability to overrun German divisions facing the Maginot and potentially secure the left bank a week or more in advance of the pace I've managed with <90% officer ratio. I should even be able to secure the left bank of the Ruhr, since Germany really is only able to muster a capable defense of that region a week or so into October. I may even make a run at the Neckar River and Stuttgart, as between it, the Rhine, and the Ruhr, I would deny Germany at least 43 IC - not going to bring us to parity after Anschluss and the annexation of Czechoslovakia, but it would go a long way to it.

 

[Kovax]

Looking pretty good on the first attempt. The one point to consider is that while you'll be denying IC to GER by advancing into their industrial heartland, you won't get much use out of it yourself, since it's not French core territory.

 

[Rascal Nag]

Looking pretty good on the first attempt. The one point to consider is that while you'll be denying IC to GER by advancing into their industrial heartland, you won't get much use out of it yourself, since it's not French core territory.

Yes, one of the reasons it would only make a dent rather than provide parity. I'd be at ~105 base IC while Germany would have ~145. Although, if I was willing to muck around with politics beyond just keeping ARV for some IC benefits, it would be possible to put Action Francaise in power, and I believe that would allow access to harsher occupation rules to gain more of that IC. But they don't have the IC boosting ministers, so just a funny thought. Furthermore, the difference between -80% and -60% is, in practice, about 9 IC for the territory I would take and far from worth the partisan headaches on my supply lines.