Upgrading twice obsolete units is incredibly cheap in 1.3

[Wolfhead]

Yes it's funny that this hasn't been mentioned anywhere, I can't recall reading anything in any readme or manual. I hope this is not some sort of bug/mistake that will be corrected (ruined) in a later patch (or Doomsday).


@John Heidle: I was just going to suggest that you update your wiki article, but just in time I managed to see that you already have done this. That previous info on upgrading is very nice btw.

 

[blue emu]

Do you guys feel that (if you start the game in 1936 and follow a "normal" historical course) is it still quite effective to disband expensive units (such as airplanes or armour) and wait until 1938/39 to build level 3 units than maintain such units throughout 3 entire years?

Without yet analysing the numbers, I would guess that the two options (upgrade or rebuild) are now just about equal... and considering that most countries (including the USSR) have both a good number of Logistics Wizard Generals (-25% to Supply and Oil consumption) and at least one good Supply Minister (either -15% to Supply consumption or +20% to Supply production... or both), there is no longer any real advantage to the disband-and-rebuild tactic.

With the two options roughly equal, I will be hanging on to the starting units instead of disbanding them... and selectively upgrading only those that are two or more 'generations' out-of-date. This will lead to a much more historical Russian Land-Forces OB, with their Infantry and Tanks now composed of First-Line troops (recent builds of the most modern type), Second-Line troops (units upgraded only to the previous generation, but no further), and Third-Line troops (units still awaiting upgrade).

If that is still the case, I feel it would be an added feature to implement to cause some dissent hit upon a unit being disbanded (the military class does not take lightly upon unit reductions or removals...).

I don't see the need to FORCE players to play historically... this change already ENCOURAGES it, without unduly limiting the player's choice of plans. To my mind, no such dissent hit is required... I will be abandoning the disband-and-rebuild tactic anyway, now that it is no longer clearly superior to maintaining a historical force-mix.

This is an excellent change, just as it is... but forcing players to retain obsolete units (by inflicting a dissent hit on disbanding) would be going too far.

Why do you want to 'punish' other players for disbanding units? How can it make any difference in your Single-Player games, whether other players retain or disband obsolete units in their own Single-Player games?

 

[chimney]

stop talking about change change change, new strategy lol

its not new t o1.3

 

[Ex Mudder]

Good to know

Playing as the US, I used to upgrade verything as soon as I could. This change means it's better to join the war and then upgrade everything to '39/'40/'41 standard than start upgrading immediately - which is historical. It also means that upgrading that 1918 Cavalry division is quite cheap, once you get all 4 techs. Might even be worthwhile to keep them around instead of disbanding them.

I never saw any other posts on this subject, unfortunately. Kudos to those who noticed! I had wondered why the upgrade to that GW Lt Arillery brigade was going so fast, up until you get the latest one, which takes a while.

Interesting choice for MP - do you upgrade everything immediately, or wait until the war starts, so the upgrades are cheaper, but may come too late.

 

[unmerged(39280)]

As mentioned already at least twice - it is NOT a new change in 1.3 patch - it was already in 1.2 (if not earlier).
Someone could re-install the game and apply an earlier patch to test it, im too lazy to do that.

 

[Wolfhead]

As mentioned already at least twice - it is NOT a new change in 1.3 patch - it was already in 1.2 (if not earlier).
Someone could re-install the game and apply an earlier patch to test it, im too lazy to do that.

I have a second installation of hoi2, patched only to 1.2, just did a little test there and it seems to have been around at least since 1.2

 

[unmerged(39735)]

I noticed that for level 1 INT and TAC as well and never went through the math. I figured something must have just changed to make the level 2 units extra cheap. Very nice work. Taken to the extreme, this could DRASTICALLY reduce your upgrade costs accross your entire military if you were willing to just stick with units that are 1 level behind your current tech and only upgrade when you're 2 levels behind.

Since the upgrades are done so quickly when you're 2 levels behind you'd never spend much time with anything more than 1 level behind in tech and you'd never have to devote significant resources to upgrading. Since most units don't improve enough in 1 tech advance to seriously outclass a similar unit that's 1 level behind it, keeping your military 1 level behind would not be that bad of a handicap, especially since it would free up a lot of IC for building up to date units. This is especially true for brigaded vs non brigaded units. A '39 INF with a '39 ART brigade is FAR superior to an unbrigaded '41 INF. This strategy would allow you to easily free up enough IC to brigade ALL of your units.

 

[blue emu]

I have a second installation of hoi2, patched only to 1.2, just did a little test there and it seems to have been around at least since 1.2

Well... whenever it was added to the game... it's an excellent idea, and impacts Full-Drafted countries like Russia and the USA in a big way.

I am playing a game as Russia just now, using the above strategy of upgrading ONLY those units that fall two versions behind... and it gives the Russian Army a distinct flavor of their own, as a result of the uneven troop quality.

I have Guards Infantry (my most recent, up-to-date builds), Line Infantry (the mass of units upgraded to remain just one step behind the times), and poorly-armed local levies (those units not yet upgraded to that level).

*********** ************* ************ ********** *********

Edit to avoid a double-post:

One point worth mentioning... under the old upgrade rules (back when all upgrade steps were equally expensive), there was a sharp cut-off in cost-effectiveness of upgrades. For the Russians, for example... with their Domestic Policy sliders set at full Planned Economy and full Drafted Army, a single upgrade step would cost about 63% as much as a new build... so it was NEVER economic to upgrade a unit more than one step. Disbanding and rebuilding was both cheaper and quicker... by more than a 25% margin.

The upgrade formula used now, however, forms a diminishing series...

X = A + A/4 + A/8 + A/16... (with the value of A depending on your sliders)

... which NEVER reaches as high as unity, no matter what slider settings you use, or how many upgrade steps are needed. Even if you had to upgrade a unit an infinite number of times (ignoring rounding errors, of course), it would STILL be quicker and cheaper to upgrade than to build a new unit.

To prove this, double the formula and subtract it from itself, thus rationalizing the diminishing series:

2X = 2A + A/2 +A/4 +A/8 + A/16...
- (X = A + A/4 + A/8 + A/16...)
_______________________________
X = A + A/2

Since even with the WORST slider settings (Full Central Planning, Full Drafted), the constant 'A' can never go higher than about 63%... that means that the Total price of even an infinite number of upgrades can never go higher than about 94% of the cost of a newly built unit.

There is NO LONGER a cut-off in the economics of upgrading... it is now ALWAYS worthwhile to retain old units and upgrade them.

This analysis ignores both gearing and the cost of supplies, of course... but then, on the other hand... I'm assuming that you will have to upgrade the unit an INFINITE number of times, which is a pretty pessimistic assumption...

 

[unmerged(39735)]

BTW dec152000 on the Stony Road forums did some more testing for this and found that the upgrade costs are even further reduced for units that are obsolete by 3 levels. You get around 15% per day. I doubt most people would be willing to let themselves lag that far behind just for the cheap upgrades though aside from maybe the US if they started building huge serial runs of stuff in '36.

edit: nice post Blue Emu, I posted before I read your analysis above.

 

[unmerged(39735)]

The only real problem I see with the new system is that this makes the most efficient build method to do 99 unit serial builds of everything (except ships since they're not upgradeable). There's only 2 cases where it would be an advantage to redo your serial runs. The first is when you max your hawk slider. The other one is when you develop the relevent assembly line tech.

So even after you've discovered the '45 tech for your units it would be better to keep your existing serial runs of '39, '40, or '41 tech units (depending on when you got the assembly line tech) and just upgrade them multiple times.

Most countries would not be able to exploit this to the fullest extent because of manpower and/or TC issues but the US and Russia are obvious exceptions here. Russia and the US could both crank out a ridiculous number of infantry, tanks, etc using this method. The US has the absolute perfect set up for this since they get the max gearing bonus and also have a bonus to both production and upgrades due to max Free Market.

Countries like Germany would run out of manpower or TC long before they could take full advantage of this but both Russia and the US have a bottomless pit of both.

 

[blue emu]

The only real problem I see with the new system is that this makes the most efficient build method to do 99 unit serial builds of everything (except ships since they're not upgradeable). There's only 2 cases where it would be an advantage to redo your serial runs. The first is when you max your hawk slider. The other one is when you develop the relevent assembly line tech.

So even after you've discovered the '45 tech for your units it would be better to keep your existing serial runs of '39, '40, or '41 tech units (depending on when you got the assembly line tech) and just upgrade them multiple times.

Not entirely convinced....

A few points:

1) The Russian Doctrine tree (Human Wave) by about late 1941 or early 1942 also gives excellent Infantry discounts (peaking at -20% cost and time, which is a -36% discount in IC-days... which is nearly equal to your accumulated Gearing Bonus... 45%... anyway). You might want to re-do your serials at that point... and perhaps at intermediate points as well.

2) After 1939, Russia's Hawk and Interventionist sliders are maxed-out anyway (it only takes four moves, 1936-39, plus the scripted events, to max both of them out), and starting in 1940 many players (including myself) start moving towards Standing Army... which reduces the Gearing Bonus even if you DON'T restart the serial run... so you will lose less by restarting it.

3) Assembly lines apply to the newly restarted serial too... so you only lose the Gearing, which is dropping by 2% per year anyway (after 1939), as you move towards Standing Army.

4) One must also bear in mind the "opportunity cost" of not having modern units for a year or two after gaining the Tech. It's hard to put a number to it... but there is certainly a drawback to having to work with an obsolete army for most of the game.

What I do agree on is that the three build strategies (disband and rebuild, build plus serial restarts, build obsolete with no serial restarts) all give much more convergent results now than they ever did before. All three methods are now viable... choosing a build strategy now becomes largely a matter of personal preference, instead of one method being CLEARLY superior.

Personally, I now keep my obsolete units and upgrade them, and restart my serial runs as I get new Techs and new Doctrines. This seems the most historical approach... and is no longer heavily penalized by the game mechanics.

 

[unmerged(39735)]

Good point. I forgot about the discounts from doctrines.

 

[Mithel]

In case anyone wants to know the math, the discount is the square of the number of models you are behind. Thus one model behind means normal upgrade costs; two models behind is 1/4 the cost, three models behind is 1/9th the cost.

 

[unmerged(12544)]

Yes of total upgrade cost, but working on time by cutting it. That's probably, why most people (including me) have missed this feature.

 

[unmerged(5892)]

Effectively this aids the Soviet Union most significantly.

Keep your 1918 inf as they are until you get 1941 inf tech. (Let's assume most competent players get it in mid 1940 or thereabouts). It would certainly negate the negative slider effects. Having said that, playing MP, I always move my standing army slider towards professional army by at least 2 or 3 moves by 1941, so this aids the Soviets even more.

I think overall this makes sense, but combined with the increased skill levels of the Soviet Unions tech teams as of 1.3b, it tends to kill MP off with an uber-strong USSR. A balancing counter of some kind could be warranted in 1.4 methinks...

(Mind you, in my current MP group game I'm playing the Soviets so if I get beaten I reserve the right to edit this post).

 

[juv95hrn]

It's not only the upgrade cost involved, as mentioned before. The '18 INF saved from 36 to mid 40 or later do cost supplies for a long time. Newly built inf will get a gearing bonus. These factors make it hard to judge which solution is the best for USSR to keep its inital forces or disband them.

 

[Kanitatlan]

It's not only the upgrade cost involved, as mentioned before. The '18 INF saved from 36 to mid 40 or later do cost supplies for a long time. Newly built inf will get a gearing bonus. These factors make it hard to judge which solution is the best for USSR to keep its inital forces or disband them.

I suspect I did an analysis in Edge of Darkness if you are interested.

 

[AxxeBlitz]

So it seems to me that twice obsolete upgrading takes a quarter of the time of single obsolete upgrading and triple takes half of that and quad obsolete half of triple. :wacko: Does that correspond to your findings? If so then I think I'm pretty clear over how this works.

But in that case it don't seems to be as simple as the upgrade_time_factor values are cumulative? Then it should start out with 1/2 the time and not 1/4? At first I thought they made it work that way. Jeez...thinking at 4.20 in the morning isn't a good idea, I'm off to bed.

LOL, thats funny

I my self find that 4:20am can be a real challange for the ppl with a half brain at that time of day, I'd be one of them lol! (need sleep then I have a full brain)

 

[richie]

Don't know if anyone noticed this, but light armors are exception from possible late upgrade strategy. This is because III L-Arm upgrades to III Arm, but since this is a special case (III Arm is not a new light armor type!) rules for extra upgrade speed for second level obsolete unit do not apply
In other words, light armour can be expensive trap - especially for all this central planning and drafting army countries. If you happen to have an II LArm division you'll have to pay normal upgrade costs twice to get the IIIArm - ouch
BTW, I wonder if this is WAD or a bug.