The front line has two provinces so the AI cannot ignore the players instruction to position two Divisions in each province similarly the AI cannot ignore the players instruction to attack one enemy province therefore once the plan is activated the AI will either attack with two divisions immediately or it will wait for the other two Divisions to move into the same province and then attack with four Divisions.
In fairness podcat was quickly demonstrating the mechanic but its quite clear to me that unless two arrows were drawn the German army would only attack one enemy province.
What does this mean? What it appears to mean is that an army will only attack where there are arrows so for a large army to attack along a wide front line you will need to draw a series of arrows along that front line so effectively your back to the type of manual control that you have in HOI III
But importantly with the added disadvantage that in HOI IV any Division that is part of an army will still move to whatever attack vector is available so even if the player drew no arrow from that Divisions province it would still move to the nearest one.
Edit: Just realised that Divisions need to be assigned to an attack vector so unless you assign a Division within an army to one of its attack vectors I presume it wont move either way movement within battle plans seems to more complicated and fraught with the possibility of mistakes then HOI III could ever be.
Again, making problems where there are none.
If you are micro-managing the units, exactly the same decision has to be made if you draw up your forces in that way. You have positioned them in two provinces, you want the breakthrough to be aimed at the enemy province on your western flank. But because of the shape of the border the Divs on the eastern flank cannot directly attack the breakthrough province.
Do you:
- before the offensive begins, re-arrange the forces to have 3 Divs (including both Arm) on the western flank, and leave 1 Div on the eastern
- when the offensive begins, the eastern flank advances first to defeat the enemy units in front of them, so that they can't immediately be used in a counter-attack into East Prussia, then they support the advance of the western flank who only attack once the eastern flank is in position to support them. That might also be part of a feint, to get the enemy to assume the main advance will be on the eastern flank, and it may draw some enemy forces towards there to weaken the line in front of the western flank
- when the offensive begins, advance immediately on both west and eastern flanks. While the arrow is drawn through the enemy province on the western, both flanks are in attack mode with a two province front, so the arrow is understood to mean a two province wide Schwerpunkt, which might narrow to one province if the opportunity arises
- before the offensive begins, remove the attack arrow through the enemy province on the western flank, and position it through the eastern provinces
What the arrow means is partly dependent on the order you give in the battle plan - you can see buttons in the UI to choose a Schwerpunkt or a wide advance across the front. But we know from HOI3 AI control, that even with Schwerpunkt and an attack arrow on the western flank, that the AI won't simply leave the eastern flank in place doing nothing. The AI will advance the western flank if it thinks it has the advantage and will win the battle. And it probably won't wait for the eastern flank to get into a position to support the western, it will also attack on the west if it thinks it will win.
The Schwerpunkt/wide front command is probably pretty meaningless when the front is only two provinces wide. It will probably only make a big difference when you have Generals commanding forces of up to 25 units, with a front of 10 provinces. But even then, I do not believe the AI would not advance all across the 10 provinces if it sees weak forces opposing it and calculates it can win those battles. There are a number of buttons in the UI for controlling the plan, and I would expect how aggressive the AI will be should be one decision you can control. If you make it not overly aggressive with a Schwerpunkt then you might see it attack only along the arrow, but I doubt it. The AI will understand the command as place strong forces where the arrow is, but we maintain a front and aren't going to let the strong forces advance too far on their own, or they will get cut-off. And the flank units will say, "Howay guys, we are at war here, look at how weak those forces opposing us are, let's get stuck in as well."
If what happens is not exactly what you expected is this:
- your fault for positioning your breakthrough forces on a two province front instead of just one
- your fault for positioning them at that point on the border, other locations might be more suitable to allow the eastern flank to provide support to the western in the initial attack
- your fault for placing the arrow on the west not east
- dumb AI
- broken game
- stupid battle plan feature
- lack of counters, HOI3-style would have followed your commands better
- lack of OOB, having those 4 Divs attached to a Corps HQ in East Prussia would be better
If you implement the plan as shown, will you:
- learn from that experience in Poland and create better plans in future
- rage quit and fill the forums with 100s of posts complaining about the game
