NSB Barbarossa

[ltccone]

Since Expert AI has been updated for various iterations of NSB I have been playing Germany over and over (and over) again trying to optimze my invasion of the USSR. I was playing on EAI hard setting with dynamic reenforcements. I did NOT use battle plans and had 90% compliance. I had all BS doctrines except the last two, and all land doctrines except Modern Blitzkrieg

My OOB (not including Axis minors): 24 panzer divisons (4 MED TANK, 4 MOT or 4 MECH, 1 TD, 1 SPA), 12 motorized divisons (9 MOT, 1 MOT ARTY), 130 Infantry divisions (9 INF, 1 ARTY), 10 Mountain divisions (6 MTN), 8 Parachute divisions (6 PARA), and 48 Jaeger divisions (5 INF). 7k FTRS, 600 TAC, and 1800 CAS.

The Soviets had about 400 divisions including 12 mountain and 12 heavy tank. The Soviets also have 6k FTRS and a thousand or so total bombers.

I invaded on May 25, 1941 when the weather cleared, and the Soviets surrendered on June 28. They had 81 divisions left and had suffered almost 3 million casualties, and the entire invasion scored me 30 army XP.

What I did: A Carpathian pocket, a Pripyet pocket, and a Baltic pocket. And that was the end of the bulk of the Soviet army. Moscow fell first, then Leningrad. The Soviets surrendered before Stalingrad fell.

In my previous playthroughs for my march eastward I had a FUEL problem with my tanks, more so than a supply problem. I used to have to wait for the RRs to get fixed, and then move forward again, even with no Soviet troops in my way. Panzers with no fuel barely move.

In my latest playthrough I mitigated this issue in two ways.

1) Baltic and Black Sea ports. If your tanks can make it to the ports (Riga, Odessa, Sevastopol, Rostov, Kerch) they can refuel and keep on going.
2) My Jaeger divisons. These tiny divisons were able to keep going east when other divisions were slowed or stopped. There was nothing to fight In previous playthroughs I tried cavalry, bu they are supply hogs.

My biggest frustration with my invasion is that the Soviet AI has no reserves. EVERYTHING is on a frontline somewhere. Once you breakthrough their line and start the pockets, it's "Game over, man!"

If it wasn't for EAI's dynamic reenforcements, Moscow would have been completely undefended...

 

[Secret Master]

I invaded on May 25, 1941 when the weather cleared, and the Soviets surrendered on June 28.

Clarification for me, though: With 90% compliance, did you only need Moscow, Stalingrad, and Leningrad to win? Or did you need to drive past them?

with dynamic reenforcements.

Does this mean they just spawn units ex nihilo?

EVERYTHING is on a frontline somewhere.

Yep.

 

[Sourlol]

Out of curiosity, how many divisions did you have guarding Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, etc.?

how many did you have in the west, how many guarding Norway, how many did you have in North Africa?

The ai committing all their forces to a front line has always been a problem, same with them typically not having a multi province deep frontline with entrench divisions the front line guys can fall back into.

and while as a player v ai we are all reasonably certain we can leave Berlin undefended or W. Europe with just one division entrenched per coastal tile, that does mean we get to bring even more of those forces onto the frontline.

not only does the ai not place reserve divisions in the rear or practice defense in depth, but there is also really no threat to the players back line. This allows the player to overload the front, breaking the aid front more easily and exposing their lack of reserves/defense in depth, because we know the ai won’t exploit our rear as readilly as a human adversary would.

I guess it’s a feedback loop?

either way, v the ai, I try to mitigate this by committing troops to reserves and other guarding/garrison duties as if it were a player.

the ai can and will always need more work, but I think there’s only so much Modders can do, I’m not certain you can code USSR to maintain a fallback line of entrenched units and keep some divisions of potentially threatened VPs to prevent sudden and catastrophic defeats.

I’m not sure you can get an ai to find ways to exploit the players oversights beyond local gaps in their frontline.

I really like hoi4 because of its scale. There’s no other game that lets me control all elements of a country and the entire world.

the best turn based war games don’t have you interacting with the economy or they constrain you to particular theaters. Hoi4 let’s you do it all. But the downside is the ai doesn’t feel intelligent.

if anything I wish paradox would have a slider that affects how often the ai recalculates itself. If you’re on a potato or run at speed 4 you may not want it recalculating every hour—but if you have a 5950x or 12900k and play on speed 1 and 2, you may want the ai to reassess with every game tick.
Idk I’m an idiot so probably don’t know what I’m talking about.

 

[ltccone]

View attachment 853337

Clarification for me, though: With 90% compliance, did you only need Moscow, Stalingrad, and Leningrad to win? Or did you need to drive past them?




Does this mean they just spawn units ex nihilo?



Yep.

View attachment 853340

If you have it set, dynamic reeforcements show up once a month if the AI country is losing, so they only got one batch. Those units will pull equipment from existing stocks, but it will be free if they don't have any.

With 90% compliance I didn't need Stalingrad. The Soviets surrendered shortly after the Crimea was captured and Rostov fell.

 

[ltccone]

Out of curiosity, how many divisions did you have guarding Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, etc.?

I had 50 Ersatz-Divisions (12 x INF) in Germany.

how many did you have in the west, how many guarding Norway, how many did you have in North Africa?

I had plenty of divisions in the West. I had 24 Sicherungs-Divisions (5 x INF plus Support Arty) guarding ports. I also had 39 RK divisons (Exp. Forces) and an army of 24 9-1 Infantry divisions in reserve in the Paris area.

I only had one of my RK divisions in Norway. For some reason Italy decided to garrison my ports for me there.

The ai committing all their forces to a front line has always been a problem, same with them typically not having a multi province deep frontline with entrench divisions the front line guys can fall back into.

and while as a player v ai we are all reasonably certain we can leave Berlin undefended or W. Europe with just one division entrenched per coastal tile, that does mean we get to bring even more of those forces onto the frontline.

not only does the ai not place reserve divisions in the rear or practice defense in depth, but there is also really no threat to the players back line. This allows the player to overload the front, breaking the aid front more easily and exposing their lack of reserves/defense in depth, because we know the ai won’t exploit our rear as readilly as a human adversary would.

I guess it’s a feedback loop?

either way, v the ai, I try to mitigate this by committing troops to reserves and other guarding/garrison duties as if it were a player.

the ai can and will always need more work, but I think there’s only so much Modders can do, I’m not certain you can code USSR to maintain a fallback line of entrenched units and keep some divisions of potentially threatened VPs to prevent sudden and catastrophic defeats.

I’m not sure you can get an ai to find ways to exploit the players oversights beyond local gaps in their frontline.

I really like hoi4 because of its scale. There’s no other game that lets me control all elements of a country and the entire world.

the best turn based war games don’t have you interacting with the economy or they constrain you to particular theaters. Hoi4 let’s you do it all. But the downside is the ai doesn’t feel intelligent.

if anything I wish paradox would have a slider that affects how often the ai recalculates itself. If you’re on a potato or run at speed 4 you may not want it recalculating every hour—but if you have a 5950x or 12900k and play on speed 1 and 2, you may want the ai to reassess with every game tick.
Idk I’m an idiot so probably don’t know what I’m talking about.

 

[Harin]

What kind of tanks did you use? You must have burned through the Russian divisions very quickly.

 

[ltccone]

What kind of tanks did you use? You must have burned through the Russian divisions very quickly.

Here is is:

 

[Corpse Fool]

Here is is

How much less would the breakthrough be with a 2 person turret? 20 from the turret, 2 from the armour, 4 from the gun, 11.25 from armour ups, seems like 37.25, and losing 4 from the turret to be a bit cheaper and faster doesn't seem like much of a drop, only about 8%.

 

[ltccone]

How much less would the breakthrough be with a 2 person turret? 20 from the turret, 2 from the armour, 4 from the gun, 11.25 from armour ups, seems like 37.25, and losing 4 from the turret to be a bit cheaper and faster doesn't seem like much of a drop, only about 8%.

A two man turret reduces breakthrough from 75 to 66.9, and a speed increase from 7.6 to 8 km/h.

 

[Corpse Fool]

A two man turret reduces breakthrough from 75 to 66.9.

Do you think that amount of difference in the breakthrough would matter? It's about 10.7% which is more than I expected. But 300 or so breakthrough with 56% hardness seems like it should be able to handle itself, I just figured we could cut IC/fuel costs and up reliability a bit by turning down the turret and the engine ups.

 

[ltccone]

Do you think that amount of difference in the breakthrough would matter? It's about 10.7% which is more than I expected. But 300 or so breakthrough with 56% hardness seems like it should be able to handle itself, I just figured we could cut IC/fuel costs and up reliability a bit by turning down the turret and the engine ups.

The fuel usage did not go down; it stayed at 2.45. The reliability didn't change either.

 

[Corpse Fool]

The fuel usage did not go down; it stayed at 2.45. The reliability didn't change either.

Did you lower the engine upgrades? Which is what I meant by "turning down the... engine ups". Because presumably you're willing to accept that level of speed or perhaps something a bit closer to 8kmh of mek1, making the turret smaller would give you more base speed so you'd need less +% from the upgrades to reach whatever your target is.

 

[DarkSpiryt]

Troops are distributed evenly so when you mass tanks on 1 part of front you will easily make pockets. When you start destroying enemy units instead of pushing out you will deplete their strength realy fast.
Main innovation of this war was blitzkrieg with schwerpunkt tactic. AI will not do it, because its still in ww1 concept of attacking entire front. So using pockets tactic means victory style like fall of france in 1940.

 

[Kazakk]

Buff expert AI to the very max, and buff the AI to the max in the game menu aswell at the screen when you pick a country.
It's fun because you gotta encircle them over and over and over and over and over (...) until they capitulate, it's basically an endless stream of enemy units.