The base is 24 battalions, improving as you expand to 5% of your total battalions. And you can grab tech that boosts the percentage.
RIP Special Forces. 2016-2018. You will be missed.
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The base is 24 battalions, improving as you expand to 5% of your total battalions. And you can grab tech that boosts the percentage.
There is maybe one complaint to be had about new special forces. Trying to build puppet special forces counts against your own total not your puppet's. Seems like a bit of an oversight perhaps?
I agree, and I've been shamelessly building no INF outside Marines and Mountaineers for many positions I play since near the release, though lately that got old and I've been using hybrids with INF or eschewing them entirely.
I like your idea regarding Commando MHC leaders increasing the base, though I think that should also be doubled. France starts with a mere 4 12xMTN divisions and are already double the cap starting with 74 divisions, they'd have to basically double their number of battalions before they built another or got some Marines. How sad is that for positions like Finland or Norway, both with Commando leaders. What could they build, maybe one of those 3-4 battalion generic templates, even with the tech from the tree at the bottom of the INF screen?
I think they should also not make those trees mutually exclusive, you should be able to go through both. That's a huge tech investment, practically the equivalent of a new doctrine tree when you consider the original ones as well, and a lot of it is time-locked and would require researching ahead with no reduction option available if you really wanted to get all you could out of it. Some would increase training time, some reduce it and you could skip one at the end of either tree if you didn't want to make that investment.
If you mean using a puppet's templates as master and equipping them yourself, nope, that is WAD. You are paying for all the training and they go into your divisional pool.
Can't cheese around the cap that way in vanilla 1.5 (but it is easily modded)
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If I was a USMC guy prior to the patch I would be very sad. Amphib landings require so much dominance now due to the convoy mechanic change that they are far less useful. It is probably a good thing since it requires more focus on the totality of the game but it is a huge change.
The leader bonuses and force attack option make up for that "lost" dominance quite easily.
You have to get your convoys there first, that was my point. Wasnt speaking to US Marines specifically as they will always have superior Navy/Air unless you are an idiot.
As a non-sea power (e.g. Germany) that is a nerf. A historically valid nerf but a nerf none the less. It makes you realize how bad the game was before.
Basically saying fixing Sea Lion also makes most any multi zone distance attack far harder, frankly unrealistically so. A handful of troop convoys would not have been caught in the 1930s pre widespread radar crossing say the Med (the English Channel would be a different story). We went from every convoy through to no convoys through.
I know Special Force are supposed to be special and all, but at standard 20 width I could only train 2 as Britain by the break out of the war. I suppose I'm supposed to counteract this by attaching Marine divisions to regular infantry?
That's two more than Britain actually had at the outbreak of war, so I don't really see the problem. IRL the UK hadn't really started rearming it's land forces by September 1939. Of course, it should be possible to build a larger army and therefore more special forces, but good luck winning the air war with Interwar Fighters!
I'm glad to hear you're playing historically; the US only had 6 divisions of Marines in WWII. Nowadays we're down to 3 divisions.
That is another entirely sore subject. I never liked doing away actual transports. Hopefully the next patch fixes all things bad with the naval game.
To be honest, I think the limits for special forces is really dumb, especially since HOI IV is supposed to be able to sandbox play. Placing limits because the old way was not working for MP is a joke. MP games have sets of rules that are agreed to before game play starts. If you want to limit your special forces, it can easily be done then. If someone wants to build his whole army as mountain units in single player, let him. That is what sandbox is about. To me, creating your total army that way would get mighty boring, but I admit, I like to run 3 corps of 3 bn each for airborne and 4 or 5 corps each of marines and mountain units, each with 3 divs. All divs have 9 bn of the appropriate type, not including arty, td or aa. That is just me. I don't think that is excessive. Can't do that now.
Fought that battle back when it was announced in the DD, could have used your help on the barricades.
I have not really missed it, other than a few edge cases where I had to do some template swapping between Mtn and Marines. Sure, it was nice to create entire armies of Marines as Japan. But there was no way to balance for that in MP or for the ai. It hurt a few of my metas, but I can adapt to change.
Plus I can always easily mod it away if I get an itch to go all SNLF Japan again vs a high slider world. Banzai!!
In looking at your reply I noticed I wrote 3 corps of 3 bn for airborne, that should be 3 div of 9 bn each.
Some of us old folks really don't do modding well, so I am stuck until Paradox comes to its collective senses.
Some of us old folks really don't do modding well, so I am stuck until Paradox comes to its collective senses.
I believe it's a difference between "arbitrary" and "sandbox". Sandbox games still have some rules, questions is about "what are we trying to achieve placing this rules".
For special forces we know a reason:
I'm going to go against the grain here and say I don't like the special forces change overall. I can see what the developers were thinking and I don't begrudge them for trying, but after playing with it for 3-4 games I feel the change has reduced strategic choices.
Previously, marines/mountaineers were a slight quality improvement for an extra cost in guns, XP, and research. The cost was more than people realize and it was hardly a no-brainer for smaller countries. It was also an interesting decision on whether to use marines, mountaineers, or both. The two types obviously excelled in different areas, and there were decisions to be made on which one to use. Alternatively you could try to use both, in which case the decision was whether to split your army 50/50, or to make your entire army one type, then convert to the other when necessary.
The nerf to special forces was allegedly done because they were overpowered and unrealistic. I don't believe they were overpowered relative to their cost. I also don't buy the "unrealistic" argument for 3 reasons:
Previously, marines/mountaineers were a slight quality improvement for an extra cost in guns, XP, and research. The cost was more than people realize and it was hardly a no-brainer for smaller countries. It was also an interesting decision on whether to use marines, mountaineers, or both. The two types obviously excelled in different areas, and there were decisions to be made on which one to use. Alternatively you could try to use both, in which case the decision was whether to split your army 50/50, or to make your entire army one type, then convert to the other when necessary.
The nerf to special forces was allegedly done because they were overpowered and unrealistic. I don't believe they were overpowered relative to their cost. I also don't buy the "unrealistic" argument for 3 reasons:
- A lot of people latch onto the "special forces" label when it's not really accurate. When I think of special forces, I think of US army rangers or SAS commandos, not mountaineers. The way special forces are represented in HoI4 is more from equipment than it is from needing exceptional physical condition.
- Many smaller countries used special forces more heavily then the limit would allow. Why should Switzerland be limited to only a few percent of its army being mountaineers?
- You can put every soldier you have in a tank if you have the production to do so. That's hardly realistic either, but it wouldn't improve the game if an arbitrary limit was placed on the number of armor units too.
Played the first 33-player multiplayer game with 1.5.0 on the Commonwealth Server and can report on how Special Forces are going.
Firstly Army XP is now completely abundant due to the attaches. One divisions training is now redundant. Overall I think its probably a good change, and you can just make whatever division templates you want. So the concern about Special Forces not being worth the Army XP to make the template when you only will use a few divisions is not the case.
Mountaineers are definitely dead. They might have a niche role with the Raj in defending their mountain line, integrated as a single battalion into the broader infantry division. But if you have the special forces capacity, marines would be more versatile, and there's not really anywhere else in the world where you have a big mountain line to defend except for Raj anyway.
Marines still saw some use by Brazil and others in very targeted naval invasions.
Paratroopers were completely absent, probably because the server rules enforced a minimum 20 width division size, and paratroopers cannot paradrop with artillery and so must be a pure 10 battalions of paratroopers. You might be able to get out 3-5 divisions of paratroopers I suppose.
Overall the biggest effect was a huge weakening to the soft attack and breakthrough of attacks across the world. It really slow combat down a lot, each tile must be fought over very hard, and defending divisions take a long while to crack even with the odds stacked against them. Our multiplayer game lasted about 2 years longer than it would have, and Russia was just impossible to push through due to the exhaustion of the Axis players in slogging through tile after tile of 20width+engineers pure infantry mass mobilisation.
Humorously people were complaining that infantry divisions composed entirely of special forces were unrealistic. But the meta is going to shift to divisions composed almost entirely of artillery
Firstly Army XP is now completely abundant due to the attaches. One divisions training is now redundant. Overall I think its probably a good change, and you can just make whatever division templates you want. So the concern about Special Forces not being worth the Army XP to make the template when you only will use a few divisions is not the case.
Mountaineers are definitely dead. They might have a niche role with the Raj in defending their mountain line, integrated as a single battalion into the broader infantry division. But if you have the special forces capacity, marines would be more versatile, and there's not really anywhere else in the world where you have a big mountain line to defend except for Raj anyway.
Marines still saw some use by Brazil and others in very targeted naval invasions.
Paratroopers were completely absent, probably because the server rules enforced a minimum 20 width division size, and paratroopers cannot paradrop with artillery and so must be a pure 10 battalions of paratroopers. You might be able to get out 3-5 divisions of paratroopers I suppose.
Overall the biggest effect was a huge weakening to the soft attack and breakthrough of attacks across the world. It really slow combat down a lot, each tile must be fought over very hard, and defending divisions take a long while to crack even with the odds stacked against them. Our multiplayer game lasted about 2 years longer than it would have, and Russia was just impossible to push through due to the exhaustion of the Axis players in slogging through tile after tile of 20width+engineers pure infantry mass mobilisation.
Humorously people were complaining that infantry divisions composed entirely of special forces were unrealistic. But the meta is going to shift to divisions composed almost entirely of artillery