The AI is not making defensive battleplans

[Vidkjaer]

The whole concept of the Battle Plan system coupled with Planning bonuses is a bit bizarre but you are probably right because without a Defensive Planning bonus comparable to the Offensive bonus any army is at a serious disadvantage.


With regards the AI creating a Counter-Attack Plan I find it hard to imagine that it could, not only would it require the AI to be able to visualise where to create an Offensive Front line it would also require that the enemy would allow the AI the time to gain that bonus.


At its best the AI may be able to create a Plan focusing on a lost Victory Point but even then it must be able to hold the enemy back so its forces involved in the counter-attack can gain the bonus.


As far as I can tell the AI needs to have in place an Offensive Battle Plan a month before there is an actual attack by the Player, if its too early the AI will gradually lose the bonus and if its too late it wont have gained enough of the bonus.

.

Imagine for Barbarossa you had a bonus of 50% for the Germans just for drawing an Offensive Front Line you would annihilate the Russian AI and the more Russian Divisions you could tempt to defend their border the better.

Dig in bonuses are higher than Battleplan bonuses AFIK. Furthermore the attacker suffers terrain penalties, weather effects and so on.

 

[Kubusta]

The whole concept of the Battle Plan system coupled with Planning bonuses is a bit bizarre but you are probably right because without a Defensive Planning bonus comparable to the Offensive bonus any army is at a serious disadvantage.


With regards the AI creating a Counter-Attack Plan I find it hard to imagine that it could, not only would it require the AI to be able to visualise where to create an Offensive Front line it would also require that the enemy would allow the AI the time to gain that bonus.


At its best the AI may be able to create a Plan focusing on a lost Victory Point but even then it must be able to hold the enemy back so its forces involved in the counter-attack can gain the bonus.


As far as I can tell the AI needs to have in place an Offensive Battle Plan a month before there is an actual attack by the Player, if its too early the AI will gradually lose the bonus and if its too late it wont have gained enough of the bonus.

.

Imagine for Barbarossa you had a bonus of 50% for the Germans just for drawing an Offensive Front Line you would annihilate the Russian AI and the more Russian Divisions you could tempt to defend their border the better.

so basically what you suggest is (in the case I am lets say Poland and I know Germany is preparing for the war) to make an offensive plan against Germany and then they attack me, I launch the plan so I have the organization bonus?
Isn´t it a bit weird then if we can get such bonus just by drawing offensive arrows? This should be changeed somehow. I don´t want to drow offensive plans everywhere just to have organization bonus in case enemy attacks me.
BTW should not the "back-up line" (or how is it called- Daniel is drowing that in sea provinces in Croatia-Yugoslavia) considered as a defensive plan? If you make this line, what does it give you?

 

[Vidkjaer]

so basically what you suggest is (in the case I am lets say Poland and I know Germany is preparing for the war) to make an offensive plan against Germany and then they attack me, I launch the plan so I have the organization bonus?
Isn´t it a bit weird then if we can get such bonus just by drawing offensive arrows? This should be changeed somehow. I don´t want to drow offensive plans everywhere just to have organization bonus in case enemy attacks me.
BTW should not the "back-up line" (or how is it called- Daniel is drowing that in sea provinces in Croatia-Yugoslavia) considered as a defensive plan? If you make this line, what does it give you?

You seem to have misunderstood what a battleplan bonus is. It is not an organisation bonus. It is a bonus to your offensive capabilities when attacking (ability to avoid being hit, soft/hard attack values and so on) - not a bonus to organisation.

A fall back line as Daniel drew it is a line that you can fall back to when executed (it is a battleplan in that sence). Your units will fall back to this line in an orderly fashion, is my understanding.
Therefore i dont know why Daniel did as he did. The fallback line would have no effect in my understanding of the mechanic. I would manually have placed units only in harbors under a general (to gain the general bonuses), and not make any battleplan for these units. They would then get the dig in bonus plus the bonuses from the general.
Using the guard command would also in my understanding be at fault here. Units under the guard command can move to attack . and there fore looses dig in bonus. (you wouldnt want to leave your harbor and lose defensive bonuses to attack a naval landing on the province next door. Maybe you would, but then you would like to do it manually and not part of an automatic mechanic that comes from the guard command.

 

[Da9L]

Therefore i dont know why Daniel did as he did.

Why I did a fallback line was
1. I wanted units on every province on the coast
2. Much faster than select one unit and right click to go there
3. If the french came, having more units close by would help me push them back

 

[Modestus]

Dig in bonuses are higher than Battleplan bonuses AFIK. Furthermore the attacker suffers terrain penalties, weather effects and so on.

Is the dig-in bonus higher?


Lets assume as Germany I make a Plan to attack Poland and the Polish AI becomes aware of my build up and begins to move its forces opposite mine, do they now start to get a dig in bonus that will be superior to my Offensive bonus, what then is the point of my Offensive bonus as the longer I wait the stronger they will get?

 

[Vidkjaer]

Why I did a fallback line was
1. I wanted units on every province on the coast
2. Much faster than select one unit and right click to go there
3. If the french came, having more units close by would help me push them back

That makes sense when one plays the game as you do with that quick playstyle. I am all for it when you are in a hurry. But from a game mechanic understanding point of view it is confusing for the stream viewers because they dont understand what and why you are doing it.

 

[Da9L]

That makes sense when one plays the game as you do with that quick playstyle. I am all for it when you are in a hurry. But from a game mechanic understanding point of view it is confusing for the stream viewers because they dont understand what and why you are doing it.

Will try to remember explaining it a bit better in the future

 

[Vidkjaer]

Is the dig-in bonus higher?


Lets assume as Germany I make a Plan to attack Poland and the Polish AI becomes aware of my build up and begins to move its forces opposite mine, do they now start to get a dig in bonus that will be superior to my Offensive bonus, what then is the point of my Offensive bonus as the longer I wait the stronger they will get?

I have seen a doctrine tech for the Infantry one (british doctrine - Great Battleplan doctrine???) that dig in bonus can go up to 100%. Engineer support further increases this i think. So yes, defender also gets a bonus from the Dig in bonus. The Dig in bonus gradually builds up from each day. In HOI3 it took 10 days to maximum dig in - which is why you dont want to move units around all the time and avoid the Guard command for key provinces - my opinion.

And yes - it is my understanding that the defensive bonus added to terrain penalties, fort penalties and so on is stronger than a battleplan offensive bonus. That is why the mobil doctrine has the advantage of a faster planning speed (most likely faster than building up dig in bonus (but i dont know that...)

The great battleplan (not sure if the name is correct) doctrine (British doctrine) has a tech for a bigger (and slower) battleplan bonus.
Superior Firepower doctrine tech gets your more firepower and therefore can destroy more before reinforcement comes.
Human wave doctrine provides you with a higher reinforcement rate.
They all in some sort cancel each other out and to use them fully means you would have to play certain playstyles depending on which doctrine you use.

 

[Yorkie-GBR]

It depends. There is historical precedent for being completely unprepared for an invasion.

Gameplay wise, if the enemy has good intel on you it should do defensive plans, or if it's "obvious" that you're going to get hit next somehow. But what qualifies being "obvious", idk. It's something that's easy to see with a human mind but probably not for the AI.

There is also historical precedent for knowing that an invasion / war was about to begin but that information was discarded /ignored.

 

[AOW]

The 50% planning bonus seems way to high. Just because a unit has a plan doesn't make it perform like a unit and a half for the duration of the offensive. Perhaps a 20% bonus that degrades over the course of a few days.
If the 50% planning bonus stays in, Barbarossa could be a routine and boring cake walk. German panzers and infantry slice up the Red Army for a few days due the big planning bonus and then the rest is easy.

 

[Joccend]

Battleplans itself doesn't give any bonus. Making a offensive line will start giving you a planning bonus, and then attacking (not defending) will grant you the bonus. Entrenchment is something you always get when the unit is standing still.



Yes, yes and yea, France retreating was a bug, already reported and actually something that our AI programmer was already working on.
Update: And after talking with our AI programmer most likely already fixed yesterday evening

We love you Daniel!

 

[Jamey]

The 50% planning bonus seems way to high. Just because a unit has a plan doesn't make it perform like a unit and a half for the duration of the offensive. Perhaps a 20% bonus that degrades over the course of a few days.
If the 50% planning bonus stays in, Barbarossa could be a routine and boring cake walk. German panzers and infantry slice up the Red Army for a few days due the big planning bonus and then the rest is easy.

Three things:

1) WW2, especially early, was about unprepared defenders being overrun by prepared attackers.

2) Whether the planning bonus is too big depends heavily on how big the corresponding defensive bonuses are. Entrenchment, river crossing, and forts could easily be larger.

3) The Germans did overrun the Russians in Barbarossa, surrounding them, forcing the surrender of hundreds of thousands of men and capturing huge territory. The Russians then kept throwing more troops at them, Daniel style (untrained troops with insufficient equipment thrown into battle) until they got better organized.

 

[Quivis]

If I remember correctly, the bonus diminishes while you progress, so 50% is only the initial bonus, and not permanent until you reach the Ural Mountains.

 

[Gort11]

Battleplans itself doesn't give any bonus. Making a offensive line will start giving you a planning bonus, and then attacking (not defending) will grant you the bonus. Entrenchment is something you always get when the unit is standing still.

Do you know if the Austrians, Czechs, Yugoslavs and Romanians made any offensive lines inside your territory before the war? There were quite a few times where their units attacked yours and if they didn't have a plan they'd have been doing a lot worse than they could have been.

AI divisions seem to have consistently under-performed compared to yours and I've been trying to puzzle out where the AI is going wrong from the streams we've seen so far. If it's not battleplans, it might be doctrine, or badly-equipped divisions.

 

[Xsio]

As I understand some doctrines gives you even better bonuses for planning. Can someone clarify, for how long battle plan bonus will last? For first battle? One day? Permanent?

 

[Gort11]

As I understand some doctrines gives you even better bonuses for planning. Can someone clarify, for how long battle plan bonus will last? For first battle? One day? Permanent?

It's somewhere between one day and permanent while being neither.

The Grand Battleplan Doctrine is the one that grants a higher maximum planning bonus. Funnily enough, this might actually make it better than mobile warfare doctrine for taking over small countries (since you can make a hugely powerful plan while at peace, and the war will be over before it has decayed).

 

[AOW]

Three things:

1) WW2, especially early, was about unprepared defenders being overrun by prepared attackers.

2) Whether the planning bonus is too big depends heavily on how big the corresponding defensive bonuses are. Entrenchment, river crossing, and forts could easily be larger.

3) The Germans did overrun the Russians in Barbarossa, surrounding them, forcing the surrender of hundreds of thousands of men and capturing huge territory. The Russians then kept throwing more troops at them, Daniel style (untrained troops with insufficient equipment thrown into battle) until they got better organized.

1. Agree mostly, ... but to the point where 2 divisions were as effective as 3 divisions??

2. Agree again. But WWW has shown that the planning bonus is way higher than the entrenchment bonus. Forts and rivers SHOULD make an attack difficult. Planning bonus nearly neutralizes those defensive advantages.

3. Tactics and leadership and doctrines accounted for the German success not some arrows drawn on a map.

I like the idea of a planning bonus. I just think it is way overpowered. If you really believe that drawing some arrows on a map can make 10 divisions fight like 15 divisions then we have a fundamentally different view of how combat worked in WW2.

 

[GsusNSV]

Can someone clarify, for how long battle plan bonus will last? For first battle? One day? Permanent?

The bonus ticks down per hour, and not by distance.

How long it will take, nobody knows yet.

 

[jalapen0]

I have to disagree the the AI should have created battleplans and counterattacked Daniel during the war. All 4 countries he attacked, Austria, Czech, Yugoslavia, and Romania were outgunned and outmatched. The first 3 lost the war before it was even started with Romania about to lose. You cannot counterattack when all of your troops are fighting and you are being pummeled, unable to hold the line, and being overrun. Perhaps some kind of orderly fallback but none of these countries had much to fall back to. It needed more troops, not better planning. The only improvement I could see would be the AI reacting to Daniel's actions before the war with a larger military buildup to counteract any attack. Maybe we'll see that, the AI isn't done of course.

Overall, I'm very happy with what I see. Looks like alot of fun and I am jealous these guys get to play it.

 

[Jamey]

I like the idea of a planning bonus. I just think it is way overpowered. If you really believe that drawing some arrows on a map can make 10 divisions fight like 15 divisions then we have a fundamentally different view of how combat worked in WW2.

I think that making a good plan is a force multiplier.

I also think that there are a lot of bonuses in HOI4, and that until we put our hands on the game and really play it, it is premature for us to call a particular bonus OP.