Stacking penalty?

[QuestGAV]

I'm playing aod for the first time in many months and have encountered a problem I am having trouble understanding. All my units in combat receive a stacking penalty regardless of the situation. For example, 3 units attacking under a lt gen each get a -33. 12 under a fm get a much larger malus. 24 with a fm with an hq in province gets me a huge negative. Did something change in a patch I applied that I never paid attention to or is there another problem?

 

[Amallric]

It has been so since the beginning, and it's working as designed.

 

[Happy Tyrant]

It's one of the better features of AoD IMO. It represents frontage and congestion. Sending more than a few divisions from a single province would create a logistical problem. There simply isn't enough space for 9 or 24 divisions to bring their force to bear at the same time. Use a smaller force and rotate in fresh divisions as the org levels drop on those in combat.

 

[QuestGAV]

Thanks happy tyrant. It makes effective aggression against a smaller but better equipped German army very difficult.

 

[Rhedd]

Yep. That's one of its major effects. It emphasizes troop quality over quantity.

 

[gapper4]

Although the rationale is sound, the implementation still leaves something to be desired. Sure, it emphasizes quality over quantity, but why should there be a stacking penalty at all if there are, say, only 3 divisions under an LG in one province ? I understand that there should be a SP for having a LOT of divisions in one province. But having only 3 ? This mechanism encourages the use of MGs commanding only 1 division, no ? What is the point of higher ranking generals if their greater command ability gets essentially offset by a stacking penalty that kicks in even at the single LG level ?

Perhaps the game should look a the total number of divisions in a province before deciding what stacking penalty to allocate ?

 

[Amallric]

Perhaps the game should look a the total number of divisions in a province before deciding what stacking penalty to allocate ?

It's based on the total number of divisions involved in the fighting.

but why should there be a stacking penalty at all if there are, say, only 3 divisions under an LG in one province ?

Why not?

I understand that there should be a SP for having a LOT of divisions in one province.

How much is "a LOT"?

This mechanism encourages the use of MGs commanding only 1 division, no ?

2 divisions are still more powerful than 1, it's just that they aren't twice as powerful.

What is the point of higher ranking generals if their greater command ability gets essentially offset by a stacking penalty that kicks in even at the single LG level ?

If you go beyond command limit you get an additional penalty of 75% like in HoI2. This usually means you'll be LESS powerful than attacking with less troops.

 

[Balesir]

Perhaps the game should look a the total number of divisions in a province before deciding what stacking penalty to allocate ?

It actually looks at the total number of divisions involved in the current battle to decide the penalty. The concept is simple - as forces get larger they don't committ all their strength to the fight at once. As forces get larger, the proportion they commit at any one time gets smaller, both because a reserve is kept at each command level and because coordinating thousands of guys to all fight at the same time is hard even if you try to do it intentionally. The results are:

1) Troop quality, terrain and tactical effects have a big effect, since simply overcoming them with numbers is difficult/impossible to coordinate.

2) Battles between large forces take longer than battles between small forces - which allows more time for generals to react to the changing flow of battle, sending in reinforcements, air support, etc.

3) Attackers need more of a superiority to assure victory - which is really part of point (1) but I think is worth stressing with a separate point. This means that massing your best quality troops (and preferably mobile/fast ones) for attacks is worthwhile, especially if you don't want a slow grind of an attack.

All of these results apply to both real life (TM) and AoD.

 

[unmerged(240244)]

I would like to add my 2 cents...

As it is my first post,
First of all I would like to congratulate designers for creating a great game.

I fully agree with the idea of stacking penalty and the arguments given here.

But if the game manual is correct then inside the current combat system such large negative penalties at the end of the day generate not so funny behaviours. As I'm new to the game below may be not correct., So please excuse me.
Quote from the manual:

Attack and defense values must be whole numbers (you can’t partially shoot or partially defend) so any fractions that result from the effectiveness modifiers are ignored. That means that a soft attack value of 5.99999 would restrict a division to firing at a soft target only during the first 5 shots of the round; and that a defensiveness of 5.99999 would allow you to try avoiding a shot only five times during that round.

Say I attack with 21 divs with soft attack 14 and it is night (say -50% combat penalty)

21 div will give stacking penalty -1+6/21=-71.4285....%
So my number of shots should be 14*(6/21)*0.5=2.000-->2
My 21 divs have 42 shots.

Now I add 1 more div, the combat penalty is about -72.036..%
which means I have 1.957 shots --> 1.
Suddenly my 22 div have only 22 shots...

IMHO it is not the most appealing thing for the newcomer to know about the game.
I would prefer in the above example e.g. to have 95.7% chances of having a 2nd shot.
Otherwise pelnty of sophysticated improvement of the designers in the combat system are kind of lost...

(I hope that in fact the above quote is only a remnant from the HOI1-2 instructions)

 

[Count of Reval]

I would like to add my 2 cents...
SNIP

Good and possibly dangerous question (or observation really). At the beginning - as being also new to this series - I tried to obtain a deeper understanding about the battle mechanics (by reading manual and forum), but then I gave up in some point (and chose voluntarily a state of denial and blissful ignorance). Intuition said that calculus that subtracts fractions or rounds input values (i.e. breaks the continuousness of a function inputs by distorting their value) and then amplifies those errors in equations through several operations can't give uncontroversial results. It felt like "it's a great game, no point to ruin it by knowing too much" then.

Concerning your calculations, I wouldn't bet that it's the whole story though. It might be more complicated than that. (And at a first glance, I don't understand how your stacking penalty can be calculated like this.) But it would be nice to have your fair post commented by veterans or developers.

 

[Cybvep]

1) Troop quality, terrain and tactical effects have a big effect, since simply overcoming them with numbers is difficult/impossible to coordinate.

This should be true, but it not always is. You run into low-combat-efficiency battles too often, which renders many of additional modifiers pointless. I really like the concept, but the stacking penalty may be too big ATM.

 

[Amallric]

I think it's too low on the contrary. From a certain level, the penalty does not grow anymore, so the sheer numbers are the only thing that counts.

 

[piratefish]

A pretty major and fundamental flaw of the game mechanics, if you ask me.

"Intuition said that calculus that subtracts fractions or rounds input values (i.e. breaks the continuousness of a function inputs by distorting their value) and then amplifies those errors in equations through several operations can't give uncontroversial results."

Couldn't have said it much better myself.

 

[piratefish]

Attack and defense values must be whole numbers (you can’t partially shoot or partially defend) so any fractions that result from the effectiveness modifiers are ignored. That means that a soft attack value of 5.99999 would restrict a division to firing at a soft target only during the first 5 shots of the round; and that a defensiveness of 5.99999 would allow you to try avoiding a shot only five times during that round.

Yes! Let's all get retarded!

This logic is somewhat flawed. While I'll agree you cannot shoot 5.99999999 times, I completely agree that you have a 99.999999% chance of shooting/defending/attacking a sixth time. Especially if there are multiple small bonuses bestowed by various features throughout the game. (Otherwise, what would be the point to a bonus that gives you only a fractional increase for all practical purposes? Wouldn't that be like coming home from work one day and saying "Guess what, honey, I got a raise of 0.25%, but my company rounds all fractions down before they perform the first payroll computation!"? To which the wife should reply "Congratulations, dear, you're officially retarded - you'll never even see an extra cent on your paycheck.")

With the current game calculus based on flawed logic, you would need to accumulate many, many small bonuses before you ever realized even a tiny increase in your combat performance. (Like the guy in the fictional example above, you would need to accumulate several tiny "raises" before they translated into anything tangible like extra cash on your paycheck).

I still like Count of Reval's quote best (see my post directly above...or better yet, see the Count of Reval's post 4 posts above this one).

 

[unmerged(48743)]

What I miss is takig into account the units' strength. 2 units with 50% STR each should count as one unit for stackign penalty...

 

[piratefish]

Good point, cumi.

I also wish that divisions weren't so generic when it comes to strength, either. What I mean is that each nation had different command structures that created widely varying divisional troop counts. This was often even true between the various service branches of the same nation. A full strength division could be as small as fewer than 10,000 troops, or as large as more than 20,000 troops. So, literally, one full strength division can be more than twice the size of another full strength division. Yet, per the game mechanics, penalties would appply equally for each division size.

IMO, the current oversimplistic approach to the stacking penalty is dreadfully inadequate and skewed. It could definitely benefit from a second look by the developers. For that matter, so could the overall generic approach to divisional structures of the various nations.

 

[unmerged(200423)]

The good news is that AOD is great, but it could be excellent with "minor" modifications (such as stack penality calculations improvement read below).

 

[Lennartos]

This logic is somewhat flawed. While I'll agree you cannot shoot 5.99999999 times, I completely agree that you have a 99.999999% chance of shooting/defending/attacking a sixth time.

And thats exactly how it works in AOD.

The manual is a bit outdated on that end.
Also defensivenes calcs have been changed from initial writing.
Defensiveness now affect GDE (% of shots avoided), and does NOT have a limit like in HOI2.

About the stacking applied to STR i have avoided doing so to recreate logistical and organisatorial issues with lots of half worn out units in stead of one "coherent" divison. (however it has been on my mind a lot )

 

[unmerged(200423)]

good to know, so i should edit my previous statement.

 

[Cybvep]

Defensiveness now affect GDE (% of shots avoided), and does NOT have a limit like in HOI2.

Does Toughness affect GDE, too?