Some minor changes to battle-planner could improve SP experience a lot

[icedlemon]

Hi,
So, in recent weeks I have tried some max difficulty SP campaigns as Germany (max slider. max Expert AI buff etc.). It was a very fun experience and I have learnt a lot during the trials and errors. One flaw I noticed about the AI is its lack of depth on the defense. This is probably very obvious for most of us here. On max buffs, the AI has a lot more divisions, and with buffs to planning speed, I have seen the AI conduct actually threatening counter-offensives from time to time. However, in such scenarios, its lack of protection to supply depots becomes a really salient weakness. The same issue popped up again when I tried to automate the defense in a minor theater myself. There's a lack of (easy) options to set up a more dynamic defense in depth.
When looking at the battle planner, I realized that some minor tweaks could help with both problems:

1. separate the last option of area defense into "guard supply hubs" and "guard railway". Most of times I don't want to spread my divisions along the rail lines but in most cases I do want to be able to auto-guard supply hubs and ports as I'm microing somewhere else. It would also help the AI a lot if they could be scripted to assign a larger portion of their army to specifically guard supply hubs and ports in areas near frontlines and hostiles borders.
2. make "Area defense" command entirely passive. In contested areas, I'd like to see divisions assigned to area defense only defend tiles of designated types instead of trying to push or counter-attack to try to claim the entire area. Besides, when a contested area is lost, the divisions assigned to defend that area should be moved to adjacent area automatically.
3. Please let us designated portion of an army on area defense and remove the 300% buff to command limit.

I'm aware that AI is already trying to do some of the things mentioned above, and I'll admit I'm not very familiar with how the AI behaves behind the scene. These are just some thought coming from my specific playing experience mentioned at the beginning. Thoughts and comment?

 

[General Tao]

I think your point 2) would be a welcome addition. Right now the desire to reclaim the whole state makes this tool pretty worthless in my experience - I just use it to set up the divisions and then cancel the order to have them remain stationary, which means not being able to get the 300% buff anyway.

 

[Fatallight]

The AI's willingness in general to just throw away a 40% entrenchment buff to do little more than shuffle around is always frustrating. I've been trying to play around more with operational reserves and defense in depth and it feels like you're fighting your own generals sometimes.

 

[Fixer1140]

To add a bit of AI behavior. Seems the whole concept is broken:
1. Area Defense Guarding Ports.
2. Invasion happens.
3. Not half of the troops is relocated automatically to the landing sites, most stay stationary.
4. The nearest guarded ports are left to counter the attack.
5. Two Divisions in the port right next to the landing site reallocate to a near free port, freeing the port to be protected.
6. No other Division is relocated to the now free port, enemy can conquer it without fight.

Workaround:
Manually set front lines, once the landing is happend, and assigning the troops.
Once fight is over, reset Area Defense to the ports.

Weird.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

which means not being able to get the 300% buff anyway.

if you want to preserve it, delete the order once the units are set up, then create a new one in some guaranteed neutral (at least to you) country like costa rica

 

[TheMeInTeam]

fallback lines are more legit port defense than area defense selecting port. stations adjacent provinces too and prevents moving huge distances w/o strat redeployment and other awful moves

i would like garrison to be useful for more than extending general cap too but right now it's not worth it

 

[Fanstar1]

if you want to preserve it, delete the order once the units are set up, then create a new one in some guaranteed neutral (at least to you) country like costa rica

I did this all the time as Nationalist China when setting up port defenses, though I'd always choose Switzerland as the neutral to create the area defense order in.

 

[Gort11]

I'd like to see lots of checkboxes on the battle-planner. Stuff like:

• Don't attack across a river
• Don't attack into certain kinds of terrain (EG: mountains)
• Don't attack unless the target province is empty

You could also have stuff like "keep the frontline 3 provinces wide" so your narrow-front tank offensive doesn't spread out into uselessness as it advances.

For stuff like port, supply hub and city defense, I'd like to see cheap "garrison" units that cannot move or attack that you can use to guard important points and give you time to bring a response to paratroopers or naval invasions without needing to leave regular army units there permanently.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You could also have stuff like "keep the frontline 3 provinces wide" so your narrow-front tank offensive doesn't spread out into uselessness as it advances.

this is possible with spearheads if you don't need to do pinning attacks to support them (which breaks the spearhead order). if set to aggressive, tanks won't cover their path and you'll need a 2nd army assigned to a line to cover as you go. unfortunately it's reactive only, but still mostly works if you spam b to strat redeploy or have mot which is faster than your tank designs.

unfortunately if you use aggressive you can't use 90 degree turns on 2nd spearhead order or the tanks will ignore your orders after first spearhead and move directly away from 2nd spearhead line. you have to drag the arrow to force a single spearhead to turn. no multi orders with aggressive.

 

[Gort11]

I might need to do some reading up and experimenting - I've never seen spearhead act differently to a normal attack order.