Edit: these calculations were incorrect. I'll update once a few multiplayer games with established communities have been played and the meta is somewhat established.
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RIP Special Forces. 2016-2018. You will be missed.
- Thread starter Lord of Beer
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Your argument seems to be that we should be able to have special forces consist of the whole or majority of our army.....lol wut? I for one am glad the days of spamming mountaineers and marines are done with. I personally never did so, but found it extremely annoying in multiplayer.
Have you every tried to take a reasonably defended coastline or island with 24 batallions of Marines ? Have fun.
Yes you can use infantry, but the losses and extra time it would take if at all successful are horrible.
Yes you can use infantry, but the losses and extra time it would take if at all successful are horrible.
The typical arrangement in a multiplayer game was that you would have a division of labour. Romania in the Axis with marines for example, carrying out the naval invasions of the Mediterranean. Their divisions may have been 100% special forces, yes, but when viewed against the faction the % share going special forces was still low.
Now, a nation like Romania will never be able to use special forces, they don't have the mass of infantry to support them, and there is nothing that their teammates can do it about it. Instead, the big countries like Germany will have even more on their plate, having to manage Marines and naval landings as well.
Its not strictly realistic, but HOI4 is a game. Now, conflict will be a lot more stationary, with less movement of territory and more static defense. There will be more reliance on planes to just do the killing that infantry can no longer do. Its a backwards step. Events like DDay are hugely satisfying when they work, but the reality is they rely on masses of marines. Now, most attacks will just flounder at the sea unless backed up by an insane amount of CAS.
44 Widths, Field Marshalls and Special forces were killed off in the name of historical accuracy, fun be damned!
Overthrowing Hitler from inside and Communist Japan were added for fun, historical accuracy... be damned?
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The clue is in the name 'special' forces, for why they should be rare. Plus it makes the game better balanced instead of spamming them in place of infantry.
I'm not so sure. I think they were designated "special" due to their training and skill set not the uniqueness of them. I could be incorrect however.
The only way they could or would be spammed is by a human. If playing SP, that is of your own doing. If playing MP, write a rule.
I love that PDX has to save players from themselves!
Definitely a good change. This is a "historical" war game.
lets just hope they find a way to remove the org exploits of 10 width divisions as well!
lets just hope they find a way to remove the org exploits of 10 width divisions as well!
I think the problem here is that people are expecting to have 24 division which are approximately twice the size of a historical division. No nation on earth had that many amphibious or mountain terrain specialists.
Well probably, otherwise they wouldn't have deliberately nerfed them so heavily. There's no gameplay or interesting decisions about where and when to deploy your Marines or Mountaineers if you can just have dozens of divisions of them.
We get that. Most people are not retarded. But historically you could take a big island with a couple divisions if even that, or land like 5 divisions and call it the DDay invasion (the beach landing itself, not the whole invasion). That is NOT possible in the game as long as the target is reasonably defended.
And THAT is the problem. Even a normal Infantry division takes a massive penalty to amphibious operations. and THAT is why we need at least say.... 50 or so batallions of marines. Just to make them worth it.
i played a US game yesterday. I had 6 divisions of 4 marines each. That can barely break a single normal infantry on a built up island. What the hell.
Edit: How am i supposed to have a real pacific war with that. Seriously.
This is just objectively untrue. They can still make a few. Two or three mountaineer divisions is still statistically better than zero.
Marines with tanks and artillery + having naval bombardment and air superiority.
You can increase the cap with research and only paratroopers need to be "pure" special force divisions. Marines and mountaineers can used together with tanks and artillery or even be filled out with normal infantry (to save on the special force cap).
Special forces have the same problems as normal infantry which is why it make sense to add tanks and artillery to them. The terrain bonus/penalties is just the average of all battalions which mean marines and mountaineers help tanks and artillery fight better on the same terrain as the special forces.
Ok i hadnt realized the research thing. Obviously my Marines always have artillery. Duh. Tanks however are something i usually do not put in. Still, having such a ridiculously low number is just silly.
Special forces are cheap and was easy to overuse before the change. Now you need to plan more how you are going to use the limited special force cap.
Whats there to plan ? like 80% of the nations simply go with marines. MTN are just not worth it IMHO. Mountains can still be attack reasonably well without mountaineers, not taking an invasion target quickly, or efficiently has WAY more risks than not taking some Mountain province. They can be killed by planes, subs or ships in general, in addition to combat damage. I would always go with marines myself.
Can you actually explained how its better balanced? If you were using them 100% in single player, well that's on you. If you were abusing them in multiplayer, well the host could set a minimum width for them of 20. Why did Paradox have to completely kill them like this? Do we expect events like DDay to actually work any more?
At least if Marines and Mountaineers were buffed to make up for this new system, I could see the point. But right now they are barely worth bothering with.
Artillery has been nerfed, special forces nerfed, yet planes remain completely OP. This will just encourage people to abuse planes even more - now thats unbalanced!
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Marines are also good at taking rivers. Paratroopers are tricky to use but can be really powerful when used in a good way. Mountains may be easier to fight in than amphibious assaults but mountains tend to follow with more mountains while amphibious assaults tend to be more like do it once kind of thing so in the end the difference may not be all to big. Also the dangers and requirement to do amphibious assaults also can limit the usefulness of marines while mountaineers tend to be useful as long as you have some mountain in the way.
Can I borrow your math?
24 divisions of 14 Marines and 4 Non-Marines (Arty presumably) would be:
336 SF battalions and 96 battalions. Assuming somehow we don't get any support units. Basically it means that with 1 support unit you will get additional 24 regulars, 48 with 2, 72 with 3 , 96 with 4 and 120 with 5. Let's say we go with 4 support units. That means those 24 divisions already contribute 192 regular battalions towards SF cap.
For 336 SF cap you indeed need 3360 regular battalions (if you want go more numerical route).
7/2 division also probably will include support units (let's say 3) for a total of 12 battalions. (9+3=12).
3360 - battalions is achieved then by 280 divisions 7/2 with 3 support units. (I'm not even sure how you got that 480 divisions there...)
And it seems that 24 divisions also will provide extra 19.2 SF cap
So yeah, your math is quite off.
Sounds like someone is having a bad day because his meta to rule MP games was nerfed.
Special Forces are just that. This was discussed at length when first revealed in a DD. Heck, if you read the thread, I was one of the loudest against the idea at first. But I came around to agreeing.
Space Marines WERE ridiculous, as were whole armies of them. Bringing the allowed totals of Special Forces down to approximate historical levels made sense from a balance perspective. And for those nations that wish to build them, there are techs which increase the amount you can field.
The thread title should be RIP Space Marines Exploit, and good riddance.
Special Forces are just that. This was discussed at length when first revealed in a DD. Heck, if you read the thread, I was one of the loudest against the idea at first. But I came around to agreeing.
Space Marines WERE ridiculous, as were whole armies of them. Bringing the allowed totals of Special Forces down to approximate historical levels made sense from a balance perspective. And for those nations that wish to build them, there are techs which increase the amount you can field.
The thread title should be RIP Space Marines Exploit, and good riddance.
Not enough that his point becomes invalid though.
Nothing else is on historical levels strictly speaking, So having historical special forces makes them far weaker than they should be impactwise.
Im saying that, and i dont even play competitive MP.
Nothing else is on historical levels strictly speaking, So having historical special forces makes them far weaker than they should be impactwise.
Im saying that, and i dont even play competitive MP.
Can I borrow your math?
24 divisions of 14 Marines and 4 Non-Marines (Arty presumably) would be:
336 SF battalions and 96 battalions. Assuming somehow we don't get any support units. Basically it means that with 1 support unit you will get additional 24 regulars, 48 with 2, 72 with 3 , 96 with 4 and 120 with 5. Let's say we go with 4 support units. That means those 24 divisions already contribute 192 regular battalions towards SF cap.
For 336 SF cap you indeed need 3360 regular battalions (if you want go more numerical route).
7/2 division also probably will include support units (let's say 3) for a total of 12 battalions. (9+3=12).
3360 - battalions is achieved then by 280 divisions 7/2 with 3 support units. (I'm not even sure how you got that 480 divisions there...)
And it seems that 24 divisions also will provide extra 19.2 SF cap
So yeah, your math is quite off.
Thanks. I didn't realise that support companies were counted as battalions.