Planning loss due to player orders

[Officer Crabtree]

In the 1.5.1 patch a new planning modifier was introduced. If you manually move your units you will now suffer 0.08 planning decay per day instead of 0.01. I understand that units performing orders outside the prepared battle plan would have a (much) lower planning bonus IRL, but because the AI isn't very good at conserving manpower when using battle plans this planning nerf seems a little drastic.

I'd appreciate it very much if this value was scaled down (to maybe 0.02 or 0.03) to make using battle plans (with front line micro) more viable for nations with little manpower and/or industrial capacity.

The actual game code (in the defines.lua in the "common" folder in HOI4):

I learned about this change in a video by Aldra Hill:

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I bug reported it and it was confirmed as "WAD". This is despite:

• That the battle planner is still non-functional
• That this effectively penalizes the same troops attacking the same enemies in the same place at the same time (objectively arbitrary penalty in this context)
  
• That this is an undocumented change (does not appear in 1.5 patch notes)
• That you can manually control what attacks where with meticulous plan updates (affording same movement precision as micro at the cost of more inputs)

The 4th point represents that despite the "WAD" claim, there is no coherent rationale to support the present implementation aside from "we just wanted you to do more inputs if you want control over your armies without a penalty". Just about any other explanation for why micromanagement using a simple right click specifically needs more penalty is self-inconsistent (aka irrational/non-credible).

Self-inconsistent reasoning is non-credible, regardless of context or who uses it.

The most sour aspect of this is the sheer number of broken aspects from garrisons, battle planner, and occupying territory in general, some of which are straight-up not even acknowledged.

According to the devs, these are fine:







Despite that there is no sound logic to explain them presented by anybody.

But micromanaging your units because the CPU auto-control doesn't work? NOPE, PENALIZE THAT.

 

[Officer Crabtree]

According to the devs, these are fine:

I've also seen some crazy front line issues, and the AI being utterly incapable of managing a front line actually ruined a really strong Austria-Hungary game of mine (while I was managing a front in Italy the AI put all divisions in Munich and the Germans just rolled right through my territory while all my divisions were being encircled and nearly capitulated me).

 

[Ironside121]

"We want you to have to play as bad as our AI with battleplans so you don't see how bad our battleplanning AI actually is because you're now forced to being equally stupid" -PDX

 

[Officer Crabtree]

There is a rather drastic solution to all these problems; simply don't use front lines at all and manually controll all units. It's a lot of micro, but if you're in a tight spot it will probably be the only thing that can save you. It's not worth using battleplans and if you're not using battleplans there's also no reason to use front lines.

 

[long_fella]

I've even found using FM's to set up fronts to be iffy - two FMs, five generals with 24 infantry divisions each, and a front of fairly arbitrary uninteresting territory tactically (eg no mountains / rivers). The USSR's western front with Germany (ie Balts / Eastern Poland) prior to the outbreak of war is a good example. I'd expect to get those 240 infantry divisions fairly evenly spread across the two fronts, split roughly 50/50 north / south. Instead you get some provinces with three divisions in them, and some with twelve, and some with twenty four.

It's... strange.

It's fairly easy to rejig things (as long as you aren't actually fighting) but I don't understand why it happens in the first place.

 

[Aule_the_creator]

I haven't tried out a long front yet, mostly been ragequitting when the event to reform Austria-Hungary and bring them into the Central Powers bugs out, but could this be due to what the province map looks like on the other side of the border? Is the AI putting 3 divisions into provinces that can only be attacked from 1 province, and 12 into provinces that can be attacked from 3 directions? 24 sounds like overkill, but it would make sense for the AI to put more divisions into provinces where they have to move them into several different provinces as they advance, or where they can be attacked by enemies from several sides.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

There is a rather drastic solution to all these problems; simply don't use front lines at all and manually controll all units. It's a lot of micro, but if you're in a tight spot it will probably be the only thing that can save you. It's not worth using battleplans and if you're not using battleplans there's also no reason to use front lines.

Doing this you forgo a large bonus to your troops when attacking.

If you have DLC you do have the spearhead "DLC right-click", which for a few extra inputs skips the penalty outright.

 

[Regaccio]

I think the idea is to force you to choose between the Attack bonus offered by using the planner, or the advantage you gain by using fine manual control. Both ways of controlling offer their own advantages so on paper, it's balanced and both play styles are viable.

The basic problem is that unlike the Attack bonus which is a clearly visible number, there's no easily quantifiable representation of the advantage manual control might give you. So if a player prefers to play with manual control, they feel like they're being punished for it because they lack the Attack bonus. Even if the difference is actually pretty negligible.

There are a few other problems with this system, too.

• The battle planner AI is not perfect. So when it screws up, the player is forced to correct it... Which punishes them with 8x Attack bonus decay, through no fault of their own.
• Grand Battleplan doctrine sinks a lot of its bonuses into stuff related to Planning. But with this change, you have to choose between microing or planning, meaning Grand Battleplan is pretty much out of the question for some players if they want to play optimally.
• One common criticism of the battle plan system when it was first revealed is that it encouraged the player to disengage from combat, and basically boiled it down to drawing a line and pressing the "go" button. I disagree that the battle planner itself is a problem, because it just offers another option to players who don't want or need complete and total control, or for situations where the player can't pay attention to multiple places at once. It just encourages a new way to play and gives you a new option. However, with the addition of the planning decay boost, the system is now discouraging the other way to play. This is restrictive and goes against Paradox's core game design philosophy of embracing player choice, so I'm kind of surprised it was added at all.

 

[Zwirbaum]

In the 1.5.1 patch a new planning modifier was introduced. If you manually move your units you will now suffer 0.08 planning decay per day instead of 0.01. I understand that units performing orders outside the prepared battle plan would have a (much) lower planning bonus IRL, but because the AI isn't very good at conserving manpower when using battle plans this planning nerf seems a little drastic.

I'd appreciate it very much if this value was scaled down (to maybe 0.02 or 0.03) to make using battle plans (with front line micro) more viable for nations with little manpower and/or industrial capacity.

The actual game code (in the defines.lua in the "common" folder in HOI4):
View attachment 346961

I learned about this change in a video by Aldra Hill:

This is from 1.5 not 1.5.1

Also I entered clicked on video - in description: "no one seems to noticed". I freakin' posted it before release of the patch notes of 1.5 - but nope no one noticed

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think the idea is to force you to choose between the Attack bonus offered by using the planner, or the advantage you gain by using fine manual control. Both ways of controlling offer their own advantages so on paper, it's balanced and both play styles are viable.

If that's the idea, it is not reasonable. It doesn't matter even if the devs claim this, it's still a degenerate design decision and I doubt anybody can support it under rational scrutiny (there's a simple way to prove me wrong, but good luck with that one ).

The reason is two-fold:

• The planner has serious documented flaws, so attempting to compel players into using it is at best an attempt to mask poor AI by also giving player units poor AI.
• You can mimic "fine manual control" by simply updating orders

The latter completely upends the credibility of this mechanic change. Rather than right clicking a province, you can instead simply spearhead a province or three and hit "execute plan". Even if this path has nothing to do with whatever plan you had previously, you avoid the 8% decay. "Balanced" indeed. What pdox did here was strictly increase our number of inputs to move our units w/o penalty with no demonstrable design benefit conferred whatsoever (unless you consider gating the ability to do something resembling a right click w/o penalty behind DLC to be a "benefit").

The basic problem is that unlike the Attack bonus which is a clearly visible number, there's no easily quantifiable representation of the advantage manual control might give you.

In the current version of the game, if you spam plan updates the "advantage" manual control gives you is zero in game terms, just fewer clicks. If you play in MP without pauses the advantage is difficult to quantify...but it's asinine to "nerf" something by straight up increasing # of inputs and nothing else.

Anyway since you can spam new plans and doing so is the only way to retain the slow planning bonus decay...rather than hate micro pdox is forcing it down the players' throats if they don't want to take big penalties.

This is difficult for the wrong reasons. I'm reminded of old school Nintendo games with terrible controls. That's what this implementation alongside the battle planner amounts to doing...and it was done intentionally! That's mind boggling. Why not fix the broken mechanics first, then fix the planner, and not worry about players using their own inputs to work around the poor features?

 

[lazuka12]

This is probably one the things that annoys me the most with HOI4. I don't exactly know what is the aim of punishing players who want to micro their troops without using the AI is. The battleplan system is there to help new players who lack micro in order to make life easier for them in game. You can argue that this is to improve the playability of the game but when you punish people who do not use battleplans it seems just like they are trying to lower the overall skillcap so the game is more enjoyable for a wider audience. Can the aim also be to buff the AI performance so that is has better performance againts the player, essentially creating an AI vs AI situation on the frontline?

You have to remember that your generals do not gain XP without battleplans anymore so the planning bonus is not the only thing you lose now and it creates an even larger handicap for people who use no battleplans. The battleplan system could be cheesed before by deleting the plan in order to give bonus to naval invasions etc. which was not intented because the planning bonus did not decay as fast. But this current system is going in a direction where people who can micro their troops manually which would usually give them an advantage vs battleplan users(players or AI) are now getting handicaped so badly that they are almost required to use it.

 

[Zwirbaum]

This is probably one the things that annoys me the most with HOI4. I don't exactly know what is the aim of punishing players who want to micro their troops without using the AI is. The battleplan system is there to help new players who lack micro in order to make life easier for them in game. You can argue that this is to improve the playability of the game but when you punish people who do not use battleplans it seems just like they are trying to lower the overall skillcap so the game is more enjoyable for a wider audience. Can the aim also be to buff the AI performance so that is has better performance againts the player, essentially creating an AI vs AI situation on the frontline?

You have to remember that your generals do not gain XP without battleplans anymore so the planning bonus is not the only thing you lose now and it creates an even larger handicap for people who use no battleplans. The battleplan system could be cheesed before by deleting the plan in order to give bonus to naval invasions etc. which was not intented because the planning bonus did not decay as fast. But this current system is going in a direction where people who can micro their troops manually which would usually give them an advantage vs battleplan users(players or AI) are now getting handicaped so badly that they are almost required to use it.

Do not spread misconceptions. Leaders gain XP perfectly fine without being assigned to battleplan - with the exception of the organizer trait, which increases planning speed - but even then, for Organizer you only need to be assigned to battleplan, you do not need to activate it. However other traits are perfectly earneable without it. Proof is here - randomly generated leader who got two level ups, and two traits (Engineer, Urban Assault Specialist).

 

[Denkt]

I have two questions:

1. What is considered to be a manuell order that give the planing penalty?
2. Do generals get XP penalty if they command more than 24 divisions as the screenshoot above use a general to command 30 divisions?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The battleplan system could be cheesed before by deleting the plan in order to give bonus to naval invasions etc. which was not intented because the planning bonus did not decay as fast.

Ironically, this sort of thing is still possible. They literally just increase the number of inputs required to do the same task w/o penalty for nothing. There is no balancing factor, no legitimate gameplay benefit to the change. Just an arbitrary inconvenience because reasons, as it is presently implemented.

What is considered to be a manuell order that give the planing penalty?

Move something by right clicking a province.

You can delete the previous order, make a spearhead order, and execute that to get exactly the same engagement without the penalty, which is why this is so inane.

 

[Zwirbaum]

I have two questions:

1. What is considered to be a manuell order that give the planing penalty?
2. Do generals get XP penalty if they command more than 24 divisions as the screenshoot above use a general to command 30 divisions?

1. Anything that isn't done by AI - whatever you will order to do. So move, relocate, attack - as long as it was ordered by you.
2. I haven't checked how the XP gain works exactly now (it was changed in beta), but afaik there is no penalty to XP gain for bigger armies. General just gets penalty to his 'abilities' - so the boni he confers is less effective.

 

[Denkt]

1. Anything that isn't done by AI - whatever you will order to do. So move, relocate, attack - as long as it was ordered by you.

That is pretty harsh but at the same time it rewards people who spend times into making careful plans.

2. I haven't checked how the XP gain works exactly now (it was changed in beta), but afaik there is no penalty to XP gain for bigger armies. General just gets penalty to his 'abilities' - so the boni he confers is less effective.

So if you want to train a commander, give him as many divisions as possible and just fight a long but easy war?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That is pretty harsh but at the same time it rewards people who spend times into making careful plans.

It does not (see above). It rewards extra inputs to do the same thing.