Combined arms
An idea for future patching and tweaking in AOD. You have to read all of this, its exiting
Why is it that each nation’s army irl is composed of and engages battle with dozens of different types of brigades? Why is this preferable if paratroopers and heavy tanks have the best stats and independently perform the best in battle?
The answer is quite simple. Each type of brigade or arms fills an important unique function in the division or army as a whole. All types of brigades engaged in battle fulfill each other’s performance and make one and other better. In mid and late 20th century warfare you will simply not succeed with large scale operations on the battlefield if the balance between your different branch of arms is inadequate.
An army is not only an organization, it’s an organism too. If some part of the organism fails or is missing it will impinge on the performance of the whole organism. Just like a human body or a chess game. In chess, the horse is useless as your only piece left on the chessboard, accompanied by a queen and some pawns though it can be very dangerous. The human body is totally dependent on every organ (with some exceptions) to support its existence, if one of these fail all others is likely fail.
The difference in quality between different arms of a military does not have a hierarchical structure – one cannot rate different types of brigades or battalions by quality from one to five. It would be as meaningless as to rate the importance of the organs in your body from one to five. All organs in your body fill a function and they are all hence inevitable.
We have all seen it. Successful multiplayer campaigns where one of the players only has constructed one type of arms, and have an army compassed of for example merely tanks or paratroopers. Actually, the existence of different brigades in HOI is of more of esthetics than of importance. One can easily conquer anything without a single support brigade. Such madly unbalanced campaigns are not as likely to succeed in reality as in HOI and I’ve already explained why.
This neat thing is totally missing in HOI, it’s yet very important and can be called interconnectivity or interdependence, more precise the interconnectivity/interdependence of/between arms. The Interconnectivity in war also explains why there are no absolute rules of success in war. War is unpredictable. War is chaos.
I started this thread with some questions and I’d like to finish it with some too. Why is it that mixing your arms with different branches of army is not necessary and even not preferable in HOI when it’s done in a very large scale by everyone in real life? Is it a myth that a combined army will perform better than a segregated one in war? Probably not. A mixed army have been preferable to a monotone one since the very beginning of warfare. Notable ancient warriors like Romans, Alexander the great, Persians etc. all took advantage of it. The answer to why combining arms is not necessary in HOI, is of course that there is no combined arms bonus whatsoever during battle. The best brigades are the most expensive ones, but they are indeed the very best in absolute terms.
Yes, there is a doctrine for combined arms but it’s a different matter from what I am talking about. The doctrine is more about increasing an advantage that already exists and can (should have been) be taken advantage of.
Sure, we can discus if a monotone and specialized unit will perform better than a mixed and generalized one in small and isolated operations (Guerrilla War for example). In large scale operations however (like most battles in HOI), with dozens of divisions on each side constituting tens of thousands of men, the mixed and generalized army will most likely prevail.
My suggestion is to implement the combined arms bonus in battle. The more types of brigades engaged and the more reasonable the quantitative balance between them is shared the larger the bonus will be. I’m not sure of how great this bonus should be, but it should be there. Yes, it should be there but it should be implemented with carefulness, speaking of the Winter War and the Vietnam War (guerrilla tactics). You can ask yourself this question however: would the Finns and the Vietnamese have done a better job if they had a broader spectrum of equipment, letting them combine their arms to a greater degree?
Damn, silly generals of some wars makes it such a hard task to make a historic and at the same time realistic war game. You know guys, historic is not always realistic
An idea for future patching and tweaking in AOD. You have to read all of this, its exiting
Why is it that each nation’s army irl is composed of and engages battle with dozens of different types of brigades? Why is this preferable if paratroopers and heavy tanks have the best stats and independently perform the best in battle?
The answer is quite simple. Each type of brigade or arms fills an important unique function in the division or army as a whole. All types of brigades engaged in battle fulfill each other’s performance and make one and other better. In mid and late 20th century warfare you will simply not succeed with large scale operations on the battlefield if the balance between your different branch of arms is inadequate.
An army is not only an organization, it’s an organism too. If some part of the organism fails or is missing it will impinge on the performance of the whole organism. Just like a human body or a chess game. In chess, the horse is useless as your only piece left on the chessboard, accompanied by a queen and some pawns though it can be very dangerous. The human body is totally dependent on every organ (with some exceptions) to support its existence, if one of these fail all others is likely fail.
The difference in quality between different arms of a military does not have a hierarchical structure – one cannot rate different types of brigades or battalions by quality from one to five. It would be as meaningless as to rate the importance of the organs in your body from one to five. All organs in your body fill a function and they are all hence inevitable.
We have all seen it. Successful multiplayer campaigns where one of the players only has constructed one type of arms, and have an army compassed of for example merely tanks or paratroopers. Actually, the existence of different brigades in HOI is of more of esthetics than of importance. One can easily conquer anything without a single support brigade. Such madly unbalanced campaigns are not as likely to succeed in reality as in HOI and I’ve already explained why.
This neat thing is totally missing in HOI, it’s yet very important and can be called interconnectivity or interdependence, more precise the interconnectivity/interdependence of/between arms. The Interconnectivity in war also explains why there are no absolute rules of success in war. War is unpredictable. War is chaos.
I started this thread with some questions and I’d like to finish it with some too. Why is it that mixing your arms with different branches of army is not necessary and even not preferable in HOI when it’s done in a very large scale by everyone in real life? Is it a myth that a combined army will perform better than a segregated one in war? Probably not. A mixed army have been preferable to a monotone one since the very beginning of warfare. Notable ancient warriors like Romans, Alexander the great, Persians etc. all took advantage of it. The answer to why combining arms is not necessary in HOI, is of course that there is no combined arms bonus whatsoever during battle. The best brigades are the most expensive ones, but they are indeed the very best in absolute terms.
Yes, there is a doctrine for combined arms but it’s a different matter from what I am talking about. The doctrine is more about increasing an advantage that already exists and can (should have been) be taken advantage of.
Sure, we can discus if a monotone and specialized unit will perform better than a mixed and generalized one in small and isolated operations (Guerrilla War for example). In large scale operations however (like most battles in HOI), with dozens of divisions on each side constituting tens of thousands of men, the mixed and generalized army will most likely prevail.
My suggestion is to implement the combined arms bonus in battle. The more types of brigades engaged and the more reasonable the quantitative balance between them is shared the larger the bonus will be. I’m not sure of how great this bonus should be, but it should be there. Yes, it should be there but it should be implemented with carefulness, speaking of the Winter War and the Vietnam War (guerrilla tactics). You can ask yourself this question however: would the Finns and the Vietnamese have done a better job if they had a broader spectrum of equipment, letting them combine their arms to a greater degree?
Damn, silly generals of some wars makes it such a hard task to make a historic and at the same time realistic war game. You know guys, historic is not always realistic
