Possibility of making misleading divisions

[Miragu]

So, we all know this game prides itself in giving players the ability to build and customize their own divisions, to the point of naming them and such.

I dunno if it's been asked (did a quick search for 'misleading divisions') but, what's stopping someone on say Multiplayer from purposefully making misleading divisions, such as making an Infantry division that's loaded with tanks (though on the map it'd still just show a helmet), or making tanks that are in reality infantry or motorized?

I'd imagine whoever doing this would do this to trick players (who'd otherwise have to keep track of a whole map worth of battles) into thinking they're doing well when in reality some specific units in that otherwise long front made of just "helmets" actually has a few helmets that are tanks, ready to chew holes in the unsuspecting player's army.

Does the game have some sort of hard-cap or failsafe to keep players from making heavy-armor "Infantry Section"s?

 

[LordOfWar16]

I would get a bit suspicious if an "infantry division" is driving in an massive Tiger I tank through my country, tbh. Or an "Tank Division" is casually walking through it.

 

[77Hawk77]

The first multiplayer game against friends i was going to do, I wanted make a whole bunch of tank divisions with 1 infantry in them. :3

I am guessing intelligence is gonna give it away, and the AI will ignore the icons anyway, so if you have battle plans on it isn't going to matter for the most part i am sure.

 

[Bane5]

I welcome such multiplayer hijinks.

 

[vector1]

The real question here is how the symbols are calculated or prioritized for a division. In HOI3 unit types had a certain order of appearance so INF/ARM would show up as ARM on map. On the other hand with HOI4 brigade style division composition, having 1 brigade of unreinforced armor (could be an unresearched or produced LARM variant)+9 brigades of INF (theoretical on paper) show up as ARM on map would be fairly misleading compared to another division with 6 brigades of medium armor + 3 brigades of motorized. I'm guessing here that symbols will derieve from the theoretical/paper layout of the division and not the actual divisional strength of tanks. So while you could make your INF look like armor divisions by putting in 1 brigade of medium armor and playing with reinforcement priorities to prevent tank reinforcement, I think you can't do the opposite and make 9 HARM + 1 INF brigade look like INF if the priorities are setup correctly.

With regards to specific unit symbols, I'd suspect that the espionage only shows up a fraction of the enemy on map divisions in NATO/HOI4 symbols till the exact unit name is discovered in an attack, then perhaps we'll spot the exact "custom symbol". I saw this behavior in WWW when GER was looking at ENG divisions in ITA. The special tank + lightning bolt sign is only visible to ENG, and GER simply sees a generic medium armor symbol.

Names and custom unit symbols are likely just for flavor, and overall the best way to determine the capability of the division you're in combat with is to simply look at the stats in the battle screen. I'm sure everyone will get a rough idea very quickly how much each brigade type can contribute, and from there extrapolate via your own division designer experiments to guess the enemy unit composition.

What we could do to deceive other players is create a completely new template and deploy a bunch of 1 ARM brigade with 0 reinforcement priority. Mix these babies in with the real tank divisions and hey presto, the enemy border is lined with hundreds of armored divisions which they have no way of distinguishing without an attack.

 

[Miragu]

The real question here is how the symbols are calculated or prioritized for a division. In HOI3 unit types had a certain order of appearance so INF/ARM would show up as ARM on map. On the other hand with HOI4 brigade style division composition, having 1 brigade of unreinforced armor (could be an unresearched or produced LARM variant)+9 brigades of INF (theoretical on paper) show up as ARM on map would be fairly misleading compared to another division with 6 brigades of medium armor + 3 brigades of motorized. I'm guessing here that symbols will derieve from the theoretical/paper layout of the division and not the actual divisional strength of tanks. So while you could make your INF look like armor divisions by putting in 1 brigade of medium armor and playing with reinforcement priorities to prevent tank reinforcement, I think you can't do the opposite and make 9 HARM + 1 INF brigade look like INF if the priorities are setup correctly.

With regards to specific unit symbols, I'd suspect that the espionage only shows up a fraction of the enemy on map divisions in NATO/HOI4 symbols till the exact unit name is discovered in an attack, then perhaps we'll spot the exact "custom symbol". I saw this behavior in WWW when GER was looking at ENG divisions in ITA. The special tank + lightning bolt sign is only visible to ENG, and GER simply sees a generic medium armor symbol.

Names and custom unit symbols are likely just for flavor, and overall the best way to determine the capability of the division you're in combat with is to simply look at the stats in the battle screen. I'm sure everyone will get a rough idea very quickly how much each brigade type can contribute, and from there extrapolate via your own division designer experiments to guess the enemy unit composition.

What we could do to deceive other players is create a completely new template and deploy a bunch of 1 ARM brigade with 0 reinforcement priority. Mix these babies in with the real tank divisions and hey presto, the enemy border is lined with hundreds of armored divisions which they have no way of distinguishing without an attack.

Yeah I'm assuming Intelligence will eventually reveal what exactly you're up against if not the game will bar you from making a 90% tanks "Infantry section" or a Pure Motorized "Mechanized" division.

It would be a good thing to limit custom icons to the player who set them only. I was worried that players could exploit custom symbols such that "Oh, I'll just purposefully set all my icons to Airborne to hide my real Airbornes" or other annoying tricks. Sure, it sounds cool and one or two instances of this can realistically be argued for as "deceptive operations", being able to base a whole army or strat on this would just kill the game. I mean, what's the point of the Battleplan system if you can't even trust that all the enemy "helmets" are "Infantry"? You'd have to go in and manually check every battle.

I like the '1 ARM' decoy idea though. Instead of trying to fool people that infantry == tanks, it tries to fool players with the idea that there are many more forces than there really are. I'm guessing the downside is those brigades take tanks away from real brigades and only help to 'cover more ground'?

 

[ausfatcat]

your presuming both players will see the same icon.

 

[rjohansen]

your presuming both players will see the same icon.

Yes, I believe I have read that only the player that chooses the icon will see it. The others will se standard icons for that division.

 

[GsusNSV]

Yes, I believe I have read that only the player that chooses the icon will see it. The others will se standard icons for that division.

Makes sense. Some time ago podcat said also, that pure art mods won't change the checksum. So I could create a mod with only custom division symbols and still play a MP with someone who only uses the base game. (Without him having to use my mod.)

 

[vector1]

Yeah I'm assuming Intelligence will eventually reveal what exactly you're up against if not the game will bar you from making a 90% tanks "Infantry section" or a Pure Motorized "Mechanized" division.

It would be a good thing to limit custom icons to the player who set them only. I was worried that players could exploit custom symbols such that "Oh, I'll just purposefully set all my icons to Airborne to hide my real Airbornes" or other annoying tricks. Sure, it sounds cool and one or two instances of this can realistically be argued for as "deceptive operations", being able to base a whole army or strat on this would just kill the game. I mean, what's the point of the Battleplan system if you can't even trust that all the enemy "helmets" are "Infantry"? You'd have to go in and manually check every battle.

I like the '1 ARM' decoy idea though. Instead of trying to fool people that infantry == tanks, it tries to fool players with the idea that there are many more forces than there really are. I'm guessing the downside is those brigades take tanks away from real brigades and only help to 'cover more ground'?

It helps prepare a feint if needed. You don't even actually need to reinforce those 1 brigade templates, because you can set them to dumpster level priority. Also, you can deploy with 10% brigade strength/equipment, so technically you could appear to have 10x divisions for the cost of 1 fully reinforced armor brigade. I'd imagine this would be good for keeping ENG guessing whether GER is planning to attack France via Belgium, Maginot, Swiss Alps or Italian front. Just deploy a bunch of diversionary armor divisions near Aachen, and send the rest to the Swiss Alps. The Allies then need to decide where they want to concentrate their advanced TD divisions, or be forced to spread them out evenly and try to reinforce via strat redeployment later. I have used strategies like that in HOI3 MP quite a lot, sometimes hitting Wissembourg/Italian-France border with 20 divisions of HARM and breaking through even before reinforcements can come down from Belgium. Same applies to Barbarossa, where armor has an even larger front to cover.

your presuming both players will see the same icon.

Go look at the WWW streams, in Italy when GER is looking at ENG ARM division, they only see the standard ARM symbol without a lightning bolt. ENG on the other hand sees the custom icon. I presume that it might not be shown at all to other players.

 

[The Albatross]

The first multiplayer game against friends i was going to do, I wanted make a whole bunch of tank divisions with 1 infantry in them. :3

I am guessing intelligence is gonna give it away, and the AI will ignore the icons anyway, so if you have battle plans on it isn't going to matter for the most part i am sure.

Sadly, according to these posts, Intelligence is just a vague and unimportant smudge on the horizon.
If these posters are correct, it will play no real part in gameplay.
Aerial recon is not represented.
SIGINT, HUMINT + TECHINT will be likewise.
Counterintelligence OPS, like FUSAG will likely go the same way.
....well, until a mod is produced, perhaps.