Post Demo Feedback Here

[GrimReaper]

I have some doubts about the 'reorganize before attack' thing.

Although it is necissary for infantry, I am not sure if it should apply to tanks or mechanized units, as blitzkrieg itself stipulates that the advance of the tanks must never stop.

I don´t like the concept of german tanks in 1940 advancing one province, then wait for a few days, then attack again.

Was it not Guderian who said about his tank crews that "If they are tired they say they need to refuel"?

 

[Lotus Lo]

I also noticed:

Surrounded Allied 6 units, sent in the finishing force, won the battle, and those units retreated... however, they just stayed retreating for the rest of the game. Should they have been destroyed? I have the feeling that if I could have saved and reloaded, that they would indeed be gone. I kept a small Inf group next to the prov incase they actually went to another prov, but never did.

Playing a 2nd game as the Allies, I got to experience more of the Air game... I like it

 

[Inbrainsane]

Anyone tell me pleasehow to win this with allies?

I also dont know how to regroup airforce.. doesnt work.

 

[Wittmann]

In final version, resolution, can be changed, no? in mi tft 17" the demo is unclear at 1074 (i suppose) i use 1280 resolution.

 

[unmerged(12303)]

3) Now this feature I love, it's way more realistic than marhcing all the time TO battle. In real life, opposing troops are uauly very close together. The frontlines were not too far apart. Maybe 40m, sometimes 100m it just all depends, but not far. That is why battles initiate instantly, because troops are already facing each other. Their trenches, foxholes, possitions are opposite each other, less than 500m apart at most times.

That is why these battles happen right away, and the marhing after. You engage your opponent, you defeat him, eject him from his defensive possition, forcing him to withdraw. Now your troops have to move in and secure the spot.

As for Armies in provinces supporting. Same concept. Don't think of it as the whole division moving off to support the attack. It doesn't. YOu have to remember, their lines link with it's neighbors, so the neighboring divisions lends its artillery and any troops that are close enough to help. They basicly provide supporting fire with artillery. They don't really move off.

Make sense now?

4) I didn't really experience that. I mean I organized my units into Krops and Armees. Now I had a 9 strong Panzer Armee that I sent to attack Liege. When they won, they advanced into Liege all 9 of them together.

I am guessing you mean, if you have say 3 stacks, and you schedule them to attack a province at 9am on the 15th. And are to arrive there on the 17th at 9am. The 3 stack arrive at different times?

Well, it's realistic, not fair in game, but real. A province only has so many roads. And say your 1 stack (in real life) is in the forward area and is the fast moving one. The other being infantry, ofcouse your tanks and motorized are going to be faster and will move ahead. This happened in real life.

But I see what you mean. You want control, you want your units to arrive at the same time. I would like that too, but again this is realistic. In real life, when the vanguard divisions of an armee advanced, the enemy at times will counter-attack the leading units of an advance. Thus pushing them back, allowing the enemy to re-take it's original possitions. This happened a lot of the eastern front.

Think about it, a 9 stack armee, is what about 90,000 men. How are you going to have all those men, be in one place at the same time, you can't. The fast moving divisions are always going to be upfront and arrive faster, but that also means them being possibly counter-attacked and thrown back.

I actually like this feature, to me it's realism.

I dont understand why you see that an army thats 150 km away can support an army thats doing an attack - whilst you explain to yourself that opposite troops are 40 m to a 100 m of each other??

Furthermore the MAIN problem (Johan will kill me for battering his baby )with move is attack is the fact that there is NO delay after you issue the order to attack. IIRL (if we want to use this way of explanation) no army stands at EVERY boarder in the territory. Furthermore if an order is issued combat does not happen the next hr (generally). So I would suggest that you issue an order, the units start moveing for an hr or 2 (maybe a percentage of the time it would take to enter the province), then the battles would commence - STILL WITHIN THE MOVE IS ATTACK CONCEPT (which is okay IMO). This would stop the sillyness of issues like me attacking with one army - moveing an hr, seeing that its doing crap and assigning another army from a far away terriotory to help in the attack the next hr.

As to moving fast units into a terrain, who got ahead of the stack and got blasted by enemy units that were originally sent to support that defenders. You wrote that

Think about it, a 9 stack armee, is what about 90,000 men. How are you going to have all those men, be in one place at the same time, you can't. The fast moving divisions are always going to be upfront and arrive faster, but that also means them being possibly counter-attacked and thrown back.

I actually like this feature, to me it's realism.

So how do you have 480 000 (lets say 2 stacks of 24) moveing into that terrain engaging the little 2 unit stack that went ahead of the line - just because you have NO WAY of making them move together like in HOI1 . If a 48 stack can do it a 9 stack should be also no??

F

 

[Krikke100]

Demo looks very cool, 2 remarks tough.

1) One of my provinces was under attack, I had other units lauch an attack on the province the enemy was attacking from in order to draw away some of his units. But his units never stopped fighting the original battle. So he had his units fighting a defensive battle and an offensive one at the same time. Later I tried to do it again and payed closer attention. The computer had the same leader in command of both battles, with the same divisions fighting them (+ a couple of others in its own attack). I checked their combat %. Where they were attacking I didn't see any sign of them being distracted by the other battle. Where they were defending the got -50% for being flanked. This seems kind of strange to me, shouldn't his attacking troops get a penalty too, or stop attacking to defend first?

2) Is there any efficient way to 'blitz' trough? Right now the only option seems to be to either not have your tanks attack but move to the province as soon as the fight is over, or have them spend a day or so reorganising (often alone in the province) while the enemy can reinforce the new border provinces.

 

[Zuckergußgebäck]

As for the first question: they should still be figting the original battle, however, they should suffer envelopment penalty, if such a thing exists.

 

[vertinox]

3) I don't really get the movement is attack thing, how it works. Fiendix has quite eloquently complained about combat starting immediately. Are troops always hanging around at the borders all the way around? It seems like there should be some delay before combat starts. Maybe variable, short amount of time. Also, the support attack function seems to mean that units up to 100-150 km away are supporting a combat. That is the scale of a province, right? How can that be? I don't get the theory underneath it.

It actually suprised me first when I first did an attack almost expecting it to act just like HoI1 but after the second or third time it made more sense.

In WWII, when armies weren't fighting they were usually bordered to each other, but not all compact within the same block of land. (ie optimal defense was something like 1 division for every 6km or something like that).

So when you did attack the armies were already there and the fighting started as soon as the troops left their trenches and crossed the border (which usually were only 300 ft from the enemies position or seperated only a river...).

Like when Germany attacked Poland, France and Russia... The troops were already there waiting (albeit hidden) and were just given the go command and the crossed the border instantly attacking the troops in defense.

With in that in mind... An army, once crossing the border, would fight every bit of the way until they brokethrough of forced the enemy back inch by inch. That to me is more logical than HoI.

Secondly on the supporting attacks and defense...

All divisions aren't going to be cramed into a small area so hence some divisions are going to be across the whole front. This is rather abstracted in the demo, but it makes sense. A supporting attack is where resources are diverted into attacking but not making a full assault so to say.

That's my take on the movement is attack.

 

[Rommel22]

I dont understand why you see that an army thats 150 km away can support an army thats doing an attack - whilst you explain to yourself that opposite troops are 40 m to a 100 m of each other??

Furthermore the MAIN problem (Johan will kill me for battering his baby )with move is attack is the fact that there is NO delay after you issue the order to attack. IIRL (if we want to use this way of explanation) no army stands at EVERY boarder in the territory. Furthermore if an order is issued combat does not happen the next hr (generally). So I would suggest that you issue an order, the units start moveing for an hr or 2 (maybe a percentage of the time it would take to enter the province), then the battles would commence - STILL WITHIN THE MOVE IS ATTACK CONCEPT (which is okay IMO). This would stop the sillyness of issues like me attacking with one army - moveing an hr, seeing that its doing crap and assigning another army from a far away terriotory to help in the attack the next hr.

As to moving fast units into a terrain, who got ahead of the stack and got blasted by enemy units that were originally sent to support that defenders. You wrote that


So how do you have 480 000 (lets say 2 stacks of 24) moveing into that terrain engaging the little 2 unit stack that went ahead of the line - just because you have NO WAY of making them move together like in HOI1 . If a 48 stack can do it a 9 stack should be also no??

F

LOL. You took my 50m for miles, I am talking meters. M = meters. When you have frontlines, troops are not far apart. They occupy front lines, sometimes close enough to see each others faces.

That is why attacks happen right away, the troops are already there.

And with support attack, the divisions supporting are already there as well, they lend their arty support and any troops that are close. In the end, it's abstract, you don't actually see what would happen in real life.

To me it's perfect, it makes sense. I don't understand how you cannot comprehend this.

I haven't had the problems like you describe, actually. I guess you are just not playing right or something. Because when I attacked with 2 stacks, one being an army the other korps, they arrived at the same time. They attacked at the same time. I was able to select BOTH, and schedule their attack together.

You are doing something wrong.

 

[Grosshaus]

2) Similarly, I do not like how the unit display gives bars instead of numbers for strength and org. I know the tooltip will show the numbers, but I liked being able to tell at a glance what my units' strength and org were. The bars don't tell me that. It's more an issue for org, where 100% can be so different.

Some scenarios are brigade-level, hard to apply sheer numbers there.

3) I don't really get the movement is attack thing, how it works. Fiendix has quite eloquently complained about combat starting immediately. Are troops always hanging around at the borders all the way around? It seems like there should be some delay before combat starts. Maybe variable, short amount of time. Also, the support attack function seems to mean that units up to 100-150 km away are supporting a combat. That is the scale of a province, right? How can that be? I don't get the theory underneath it.

If realism and playability fights, guess who wins? Also in this thread you can find negative comments on the re-organize-after-attack feature, that would be just about the same but to be also before the attack. Would make playing a lot less intuitive if things don't happen as you tell them to.

4) When I send multiple units into an attack, they move to the province at their individual speeds, so they tend to arrive piecemeal. This has resulted in units getting mauled when they have to fight the enemy without their brethren. And HQ units seem to jump into a new province first, where they take the brunt of the enemy's counterattack. I want it like the old way, when if I use the CCB to set up a coordinated attack, that all the units arrive together. I don't want to have to group them all together in one big unit. That will have me changing groupings constantly, and nobody wants to do that.

So if you order a stack of panzer and a stack of infantry to go somewhere how come it isn't logical that the panzers get there first? If you want them to go there at the same time then merge the stacks. If you are attacking from multiple provinces and don't want all of the units attacking go to the province and be eaten piecemeal but just the main bulk of your army then you should set the rest to support attack instead of attack. You have to shrug of the HoI1 mentality on this issue, movement is attack nowadays.

HQs don't really need to be involved in an attack, they give all their bonuses (of which the increased chance to get combat events is propably the most straightforward one) to neighbouring provinces as well.

 

[Rommel22]

Some scenarios are brigade-level, hard to apply sheer numbers there.
HQs don't really need to be involved in an attack, they give all their bonuses (of which the increased chance to get combat events is propably the most straightforward one) to neighbouring provinces as well.

Thanks for clearing that up.
Is there any other bonuses they give? I mean was is the total purpose of an HQ? Do they give supply bonus? Any Modifiers? Does it help to have better commander be in charge of HQs?

 

[Kriegsspieler]

To be honest, I do see the point of Fiendix's criticisms (and this is coming from a beta, mind you!), but to my way of thinking the move-is-attack system represents a compromise between the last iota of realism and playability. In terms of game scale, the system would probably work best in a turn-based game, say weekly turns, where you issue your orders and sit back and roll the dice -- literally, if this were one of those old Avalon Hill games! I have to disagree with Rommel 22 that the units would be 50m (or even 200m!) apart. This is a province-based, strategic game, and in a real-time environment at this level of synthesis, I too have trouble believing that you can issue an order at a certain time and have it begin the next hour.

The compensation, of course, is the ability you have to react to the battle as it unfolds with "support defense", airstrikes, withdrawals and counterattacks. Someone mentioned above that the best way to defeat a multi-province attack is to attack one of the attackers. That's the beauty of this system, the way battles can grown and unfold, and it is purchased at what seems to me to be the small cost of "instantaneous" attack in the "move-as-attack" system..

 

[unmerged(29126)]

No thats added, must be for Sevastopol,( "Maxim Gorkij" and such.)

There was a nice little discussion about this over at the HOI1-forum. My conclusion was that he deserved the FB-trait, but also the Defesnive Doctrine trait. But if you added that too you might just as well have Obi-Wan Kenobi command one of the stacks ... then there's Zhukov, he's also well ... err ... furnished.

Most of the stuff I had trouble with I've come to terms with. It's been a long time since I actually yelled at my PC for doing something that I didn't understand ...

Fiendix has pretty much outlined what I find game-breaking:
The uncoordinated arrival of multiple units in a target province ... allowing for them to be chewed up piecemeal by the counterattack ... maybe there could be a "force simultaneous arrival" check-box and the earlier fast units could wait at ETA-1h for the rest. If the box is left unchecked you can attempt an armoured break-through ...

The insta-support from adjacent I can live with ... the troops could have been pre-positioned accordingly ... what I find hard to believe is that one stack can support an attack on the east-side of a province and then 24h later it can support an attack on the west-side of a province ...

I haven't been able to pull off ONE encirclement yet ... with the current ubiquitous counter-attacks it's felt more like a sumo-match (pushing the other guy back) than a judo-match (levering out the other guys defence).

Did anyone else notice that the divisions hardly lost any strength ? Or was that the auto-reenforce at work ?
Also, did anyone have a combat-event ? I haven't noticed any so far, but that again could be be ...

 

[unmerged(16099)]

Does anyone know if the rules for command limits have changed since HoI 1?

It seems that the basics limits per leader are still the same, but I don't know about the other stuff.

Do Fieldmarshalls still allow for doubled command limits with reduced skill?

Do all stacks defending a single province still have to fall under the command limit of the highest ranking leader?

 

[unmerged(12303)]

LOL. You took my 50m for miles, I am talking meters. M = meters. When you have frontlines, troops are not far apart. They occupy front lines, sometimes close enough to see each others faces.

I did take them for meters, not miles.... read my reply again.

That is why attacks happen right away, the troops are already there.

they can be everywhere at the same time ... some of them actually have to pack up an move you know?

And with support attack, the divisions supporting are already there as well, they lend their arty support and any troops that are close. In the end, it's abstract, you don't actually see what would happen in real life. .

so why dont the units that are moving into the territory, to support the 1 unit that is getting beat up by the stack of 48 which all fits on the same road? If its abstract dont use Real Life arguements.

To me it's perfect, it makes sense. I don't understand how you cannot comprehend this.

same can be said from my side... It makes no sense that armies can attack within hrs of issueing orders and using the same force and be in every place at the same time. Its an exploit. As you dont have to plan even 4 hrs ahead since you can do something in the next hr. In the way I suggest you have to decide where you place your reserves or commit your forces. In the way its now you dont have to do that. Its a stack battle..

I haven't had the problems like you describe, actually. I guess you are just not playing right or something. Because when I attacked with 2 stacks, one being an army the other korps, they arrived at the same time. They attacked at the same time. I was able to select BOTH, and schedule their attack together.

I think you should play more... others seem to encounter the same problem.

F

 

[unmerged(12303)]

Does anyone know if the rules for command limits have changed since HoI 1?

I am working on a faq..

It seems that the basics limits per leader are still the same, but I don't know about the other stuff.

yup - but there are more modifiers

Do Fieldmarshalls still allow for doubled command limits with reduced skill?

no they dont - hqs do that now

Do all stacks defending a single province still have to fall under the command limit of the highest ranking leader?

nope the hq can double the limit. Now we can have max 48 units defending a provice with no stack penatly. (hehe I played all night

F

 

[unmerged(16099)]

Also, did anyone have a combat-event ? I haven't noticed any so far, but that again could be be ...

I was getting tons of combat events. You have to be looking at the detailed view of the battle to see the event. The combat summmary screen will show an exclamation point in a combat summary box when an event occurs.

 

[Rommel22]

I did take them for meters, not miles....

they can be everywhere at the same time ... some of them actually have to pack up an move you know

so why dont the units that are moving into the territory to support the 1 unit that is getting beat up by the stack of 48 which all fit on the same road? If its abstract dont use Real Life arguements.

same can be said from my side... It makes no sense that armies can attack withing hrs of issues orders and using the same force and be in every place at the same time. Its an exploit. As you dont have to plan even 4 hrs ahead since you can do something in the next hr. In the way I suggest you have to decide where you place your reserves or commit your forces. In the way itsnow you dont have to do that. Its a stack battle..

think you should play more... others seem to encounter the same problem.

F

Some troops do have to pack and move, but they are already there. I can't see how you do not comprehend that. So are you saying you wan the HOI1 system back. YES because that is wayyy better and more realistic than this. Yes, please go back to HOI1.

To me, this is a major improvement over HOI1, yes, it's not perfect, but I like the way it's implemented. It makes sense. Your forces engage in combat right away, as they should. If your forces are in the province. They are ready to fight, they are facing the enemy. Lot of things is abstract when fighting.

You have troops moving up when fighting, which again is abstract. Troops assault towns, possitions, farm so on, but you don't see that. You have an army occupying 150km of land. So say say division 1 engages divison 1E (e = enemy). But then down the line, divisions 2 engages divisions 2E as well. All of them have an opponent to face, to battle. That is why it happens instantly. They are opposing each other.

And during the battle lot of things happen, which you do not see. Like the random events in the battles. Encirlements, assualts and so on.

I still don't understand why you do not like this system. I love, it is a huge improvement over the ancient system of HOI1. It makes perfect since why units engage in battle before moving off. But I guess I just understand it better than.

Maybe you need to read more books on WWII or battles period.

 

[herm]

HQs don't really need to be involved in an attack, they give all their bonuses (of which the increased chance to get combat events is propably the most straightforward one) to neighbouring provinces as well.

Could you clarify this for me; say I have a HQ in a province, in the neighbouring province I have my attack force. Do the province I attack have to be next to the province that my HQ is in or is it enough that my attack force is neighbouring my HQ?

 

[unmerged(16099)]

nope the hq can double the limit. Now we can have max 48 units defending a provice with no stack penatly. (hehe I played all night

F

Wow. How does that work out? Like this?

A field marshal is in the province - command limit 12

An HQ is within range - the field marshals command limit is 12 or 24 with no skill bonus.

The HQ is located in the same province as the field marshal - command limit is 24 or 48 with no skill bonus