The Allies: Please don't make me fight WW2 by myself

[Nilmerf]

Don't like that idea, feels too forced and it doesn't address playing as a Commonwealth minor.

Paradox has teased that battle plans will actually be followed in game by your own country's AI in HOI4. I really think the solution to the Western Allied problem is just to have your allies follow through with your own battle plan as an overall plan. Imagine how cool it would be to set a specific date for D-Day as the UK, and then have the Canada and USA AI send troops and engage on that day.

Paradox, please make this happen! If you can't, give us some form of ally control.

 

[plasticpanzers]

Just having allies show up will mean nothing if they don't act in concert with other Allied troops in a theatre. Look how crazy it
can get already with Canada invading on its own or US forces starving in a UK run Southern Italy. Minor nations should provide
a minimum force to an overall command like SHAEF depending on the countries abilities. They fought under a unified command,
not as 'hi guys! were going to attack Berlin on our own. See ya there sometime!'.

 

[Scarstone]

I hope HOI4 will have a better Allied experience that feels like WW2. If the AI is unable to cope, or even send a healthy number of expeditions forces, we need the option to take control of allied units again.

As the OP stated, I hope we can have some form of control to steer our allies forces in the strategic combat.

 

[Marcus]

I hate when I play Germany and my allies don't fight along my front, thanks for all the help there Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, you really are great for helping fight the Soviet Union....useless idiots.

Seconded here, getting your *cough* 'Axis Partners' to do anything remotely useful was a nightmare in HOI3, whereas in HOI2, combined forces ITA, VIC, HUN, ROM, FIN and whatever else you could throw together could actually do something useful.

A 'request Expeditionary Force consisting of 5 INF, 3 MOT and 2 INT' button/option would be ideal, so that the Ai can keep their troops guarding their own borders and I can use some of their troops to hold stopgaps or non-vital parts of the Eastern Front / Atlantikwall.

 

[CommonCanadian]

Other than all of the random debates, I always play as Canada in HOI3 (And have my own AAR, check it out!) and I can say that Canada does fight wwII by itself until 1943, as thats when USA invades italy in most of my games. So I support this.

 

[Dalwin]

I can certainly understand wanting to play one of the CW minors, but it feels a lot less right to be giving control of significant portions of the alliance leader's forces to a subordinate. Playing as Canada and controlling British efforts in north Africa probably wouldn't feel right to you either.

 

[Nilmerf]

North Africa isn't a problem though, we can win that solo. I also have tried many Canada games (home country) and they always stalled out. You can take Sicily and start going up the boot, but then Germany comes with tons of armoured divisions and stops your advance. This also makes them less effective in Barbarossa, so you're actually hurting the Allies in comparison to the Comintern by taking any initiative. Control of units makes the most sense if you're the UK and using Commonwealth divisions, I agree. But as Canada you should be able to design an operation that the other AI Allies will follow, or if not that then at least be notified of your allies' plans so you know when and where to help. Just looking for a better and more realistic Western Allied experience here.

 

[plasticpanzers]

Many minor powers in the game are overstrong in my opinion. They can build and support far too strong of forces. It may make
them less fun to play but its a heck of a lot more accurate historically.

 

[Lordof]

Canada was only a minor power with a couple of ships in their navy at the start of the war and turned into a great power with one of the strongest navy in the world. So I don't think it's historically inaccurate

 

[plasticpanzers]

There is a wide difference between Canada and Iraq as small nations. They need to be tweaked to more accurately represent what they
were truly capable of historically.

 

[Spruce]

I think it would be wise to advance on the HOI3 system - but make 2 options

- already existing - you give objectives to your allies on provinces, perhaps this system needs further optimisation,
- you take control of the AI, you select some of their brigades, you create corps structures - their officers and the corps is transferred to your oob, you can do with them what you want, give specific orders, or integrate them into your army structures

Example one would be more like - "guard your beach please please"
Example two would be more like - "I take your infantry corps into my oob for d-day, thank you for the canon fodder"

 

[RickInVA]

From my experience the only thing that ever allowed the Allies to act like allies was Military Control. True to a lesser extent for the Axis. I have never understood why people oppose it.

 

[marcasino]

Ideally, I hope that taken complete control of your allies won't be needed. It's a bit unrealistic to have complete control of every single one of your allies divisions.

I think though that there are two things which key though for better allied cooperation in HOI4.
1) Ability to see allied armies (number of divisions, where they are, strength, org, leaders... In short, you should be able to see as much detail as you can with your own army)
2) Ability to give instructions to your allies through battleplans, which they actually follow (e.g. hold here, defend this line, attack here on x date)

This would seem to be the most logical way of allowing for allied cooperation, while remaining broadly realistic. You would be able to instruct your allies to perform certain tasks, without taking complete control. For example, if you were Britain attempting a D-Day style landing, you would be able to see all US and Commonwealth troops available in the Theater. You could then create a battle plan, which would have US troops landing in one province, Canadians in another and British troops on a third. On D-Day itself, you would then have to manually attack with your troops, but the US and Canadian AI would automatically start attacking where you asked them to.

I appreciate that this fails to model the fact that all allied battleplans were a product of negotiations between the commanders of the different countries; but it does solve the major issue.

 

[plasticpanzers]

I don't think the AI could handle just giving orders to subordinate nation's armies. they need simple control of a portion of them. A corps
or two from Canada, a division from Australia and NZ and Brazil. Not their entire army but based upon what they could historically offer.
The commanding nation would be required to use their shipping to bring them over so you don't have to risk the entire TR of New Zealand.
Spread this out over a period and you would have a better game overall. Again...There was ONE command in all theatres of the war, not
a group of individual minor nations controlling their own forces in an Alliance beyond what they used for home defence/training.

 

[marcasino]

I don't think the AI could handle just giving orders to subordinate nation's armies. they need simple control of a portion of them. A corps
or two from Canada, a division from Australia and NZ and Brazil. Not their entire army but based upon what they could historically offer.
The commanding nation would be required to use their shipping to bring them over so you don't have to risk the entire TR of New Zealand.
Spread this out over a period and you would have a better game overall. Again...There was ONE command in all theatres of the war, not
a group of individual minor nations controlling their own forces in an Alliance beyond what they used for home defence/training.

We don't know what the AI can/can't handle seen as it hasn't been built yet. I don't see why it would be too hard for the AI to give orders in this way, but then I'm no expert.

You're right that the was ONE command in all theatres. This however did not mean that one country/individual had supreme control over all the forces. Think about the Allies during 1944-5. Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander. He coordinate everything. He didn't however have supreme power to do absolutely what he wanted with every single division.

Take Operation Market Garden (the Allied offensive to take key bridges in the Netherlands). The British (led by Montgomery) were in charge of the airborne operation to seize the bridges. It was the Americans job to punch through the German lines with their armour, to join up with the paratroopers. Both countries worked together, under a coordinated plan, but kept operational independence at the same time.

As a player, I should not be able to take full control of my allies armies. I should however be able to draw up battleplans, which includes them, and which they follow.

 

[NapoleonComple]

To be honest I think the player should be able to take the choice to create a "united Allied command structure" commanded by the player. This is after all what happened after the Americans got involved and a good bit before that; the British, Commonwealth and various Free forces worked together in a unified command chain (forgive me if I'm simplifying or even outright wrong).

 

[plasticpanzers]

The UK had most control to begin with everywhere but in the Eastern Pacific. Later on the US, due to its naval strength commanded much
of the Pacific but the UK controlled the India/SE Asia area. It was a very flexible command system.

 

[jamesd]

Playing as an Axis Poland, I used "Set Allied Objective" when fighting against Russia and had some German & Italian units turn up to do their own thing (and disappear entirely when a partisan uprising occurred in France, even though there were plenty of combat division sitting in France not doing anything). There needs to be a better way to coordinate allied operations. I think that for the Allies in single player games, there has to be the opportunity for the human player to assume total control of units (not production). While there were some vigorous debates about emphasis, by and large they operated as an integrated team.

For the Axis, maybe Germany should control all Axis units that aren't in their home territory from 1941 (except Japanese) and all Axis units from 1944 (except the Japanese).

Generally with regards to Puppets, the controlling power should be able to take full control of the puppet units.

 

[No idea]

In honour of D-Day I decided to load up a UK game of HOI3 I had saved. As someone who usually plays Allies and always plays single player, the problems with having any sort of help from the AI during war have always been there. Obviously this is most readily apparent with the Allies, because we have lots of ocean between us and tons of different fronts.

Having fought and mostly won in Africa, Italy, the Balkans, Southeast Asia, and Northern France, the only contribution from other Allies has been a single Marine division gifted as expedition from Australia. One division. The rest of their armies sit around at home despite any wistful attempts to use the Allied Objective button. A human USA or UK can mostly do alright by themselves, but that's neither fun nor historical. Nevermind playing someone like Canada. It always ends up being you versus the entire Axis, and time is of the essence as the Soviets close in on the other side. That ties into another point as the Allies, where you ironically want Germany to do its very best against the Soviets, never daring to hurt them in any (non-naval) way or distract their units until Barbarossa is deep.

I hope HOI4 will have a better Allied experience that feels like WW2. If the AI is unable to cope, or even send a healthy number of expeditions forces, we need the option to take control of allied units again.

I agree. It has happened to me several times, and it is rather frustrating knowing that you could win if you got some help but you arent getting it because the AI thinks London, or Washington is under an "inminent threat".

 

[fillap]

I have state my dislike of the workings of the Allies before. The key things for me were the failing to model the increasing importance of US forces altering the balance of control over the course of the war and general lack inter allied co-operaton. This is more true for the allies than the other alliances but I think there is a solution that also models the increasing control Germany assumed in the axis. Each alliance shares it's theatres. Within those theatres army groups are assigned tasks, the control of an army group is assigned to a nation, be it AI or human. This would require a periodic screen where the army groups commanders and objectives are set. At this point nations within the alliance would also be called on to asssign units to appropriate army groups. Finally the ability affect this screen would depend upon the spending of points which are aquired by meeting objectives or assigning troops to fighting fronts. So the more involved a nation the more control it has of the war effort. In this way, Australia or Canada could maintain control of their home front but forces sent overseas are likely to be under another nations command, unless they are willing to send many troops or are particularly agressive in which case they may end up in control of a more minor front, be it Italy or New Guinea. It would also model the increasing importance of the US as more commands will invariable fall to US control over time.