What will deploying endless swarms of troops do?

[Wimpola]

The Soviets had nearly an endless amount of troops and manpower. Let's say I have 1 million spare weapons laying around and I made 1000 divisions of infantry and spammed them with minimal training to deploy and through them at the enemy. Will the sheer numbers win the battle. or just repulse me with a single division?

 

[LordOfWar16]

Not with a single division, but the trained or even elite divisions from the germans will certainly shred through your untrained horde. You will burn through your manpower really fast and will be on the retreat most of the time anyway. Keep in mind that battles have an combat width and that you cant exceed that. So even if you have 10 times the divisions on the front your enemy has, that wont get you anywhere and just delay the innevitable.

In WWW you can actually see that germany had no problem chewing through the unprepared poorly equipped soviet divisions and that they had over 4 times the losses the germans got in that war and the german divisions didnt even had arty or anti-tank guns at their disposal, let alone air support because daniel doesnt seem to care much about that or simply forgot that, either.

Smaller, well trained, professional divisions will always be the best choice. Throwing everything you have left against the enemy is basicly just an desperate last stand.

 

[Caesar15]

Slowing down the enemy, that will be the main purpose, just as the Soviet's did. Get a bunch of your main army encircled on a large front? Fill in the gaps with under equipped and under trained units. They won't do much and will die in droves but it will give you enough time to train and equip a large force that is capable of holding back your enemy. Now if you're a nation like China, the bulk of your forces have to be undertrained and under equipped, because if you bothered to train and equip every single division, you wouldn't have enough to properly defend the front!

 

[Lither]

It should delay divisions while resulting in harsh casualty rates.
If what we know about the winter in the Soviet Union is correct, it might be worth it in the long run as it could ensure the Germans are stuck away from major cities when winter starts annihilating their equipment and the massive Soviet industrial capacity gets to work.

I'd personally argue against doing it though; it'd be better to dump all that excess equipment onto the Chinese to make sure the Japanese can't invade you.

 

[jamesd]

With an endless supply of poor quality divisions you could keep the enemy under attack for extended periods, preventing him from executing his own plans. Your losses would probably be quite high, but you could potentially impose a delay sufficient to train some other units to a better standard, thus giving you a better chance once you've run out of divisions with enough organisation to keep attacking. If you have a massive superiority in numbers of divisions, you could potentially also try to pin down some sections of the front while huge masses of troops blast holes on the flanks and you try to encircle the enemy.

 

[CharlieFox]

It would cool if the AI would do that when realizing it is about to loose the war.

Let's say the allies are landing in Japan and the Japonese army stationed there is not strong enough to push them back. Then if Japan had a surplus of infantry weapons it could spam hordes of poorly trained infantry to try to turn the tide (or at least delay the invaders until it brings reinforcements from China)

 

[Adonnus]

It would cool if the AI would do that when realizing it is about to loose the war.

Let's say the allies are landing in Japan and the Japonese army stationed there is not strong enough to push them back. Then if Japan had a surplus of infantry weapons it could spam hordes of poorly trained infantry to try to turn the tide (or at least delay the invaders until it brings reinforcements from China)

Volksturm anyone? Yeah this would be great. Personally the thing I am hoping for the most in terms of changes, is a far better, more aware, more able AI in HOI4. I really hope they've devoted so much more time to it than before. I love Pdx games but the AI is usually sadly not all that bright.

 

[D Inqu]

Be big question is frontage. If you have enough troops to fill the entire frontage of the Eastern Front + garrisons, then yes, better troops are the way. If you don't, then it depends on doctrine.

 

[Victor Cortez]

It makes sense if it's a temporary starategy which aim is to buy you time so you can prepare a better force.

 

[jamesd]

Be big question is frontage. If you have enough troops to fill the entire frontage of the Eastern Front + garrisons, then yes, better troops are the way. If you don't, then it depends on doctrine.

Yes frontage was a big problem in HOI3 and it looks to be problematic again in HOI4 from what I've seen. Even large British divisions in mid 1944 could concentrate on a frontage as short as 1 mile, but in HOI3 you could only have 4 divisions attacking from a single province that tended to be 20-40km across. This forces armies to spread out rather than concentrate meaning players and the AI get forced into broad front operations rather than concentrating on a short front to achieve a break through.

 

[FOARP]

The Soviets had nearly an endless amount of troops and manpower. Let's say I have 1 million spare weapons laying around and I made 1000 divisions of infantry and spammed them with minimal training to deploy and through them at the enemy. Will the sheer numbers win the battle. or just repulse me with a single division?

I love quoting this statistic when people talk about the Soviets basically zerging the Germans: Germany in January 1944 had more people in uniform in total than the Red Army did (9.5 million vs. 6.4 million - see p. 545-6 of The Second World War by Antony Beevor).

Germany wasn't so much zerged by the Soviets as zerged by the Allies as a whole, since the 9.5 million figure I've just quoted consisted in large part of people manning AA guns, serving in the Luftwaffe (the Luftwaffe's strength was in excess of a million men at a time when German airpower was largely destroyed) or garrisoning various bits of coast and occupied territory.

 

[Denkt]

Experience seems to be the number one factor then it comes to combat performance.

• A green division (untrained) have a -50% combat penalty.
• A trained division (max level you can reach by the free but time consuming off map training) have a -25% combat penalty.
• A regular division (max level you can reach with field exercises have no combat penalty or bonus)
• A sesoned division have 25% combat bonus and a veteran division have a 50% combat bonus (both can only be gained by combat experience)

I would say that you should always go for regular level no matter what country you are. You can only have a limited number of divisions in each combat so you can not swarm an enemy with masses of green divisions and compensate the combat penalty with numbers. Each division of the same type also need the same amount of equipment and the same amount of supplies so from a logistical view experienced divisions are far superior.

The only reason you would not have regular divisions is if you don't have the time but in most cases you should have time to reach regular status.

 

[Wimpola]

I love quoting this statistic when people talk about the Soviets basically zerging the Germans: Germany in January 1944 had more people in uniform in total than the Red Army did (9.5 million vs. 6.4 million - see p. 545-6 of The Second World War by Antony Beevor).

Germany wasn't so much zerged by the Soviets as zerged by the Allies as a whole, since the 9.5 million figure I've just quoted consisted in large part of people manning AA guns, serving in the Luftwaffe (the Luftwaffe's strength was in excess of a million men at a time when German airpower was largely destroyed) or garrisoning various bits of coast and occupied territory.

1 million Germans were kept under AA in Germany to protect against Allied Aircraft. The Soviets had a smaller army than the Germans before 1941. However throughout the war the Soviet army reached a total of 34,401,000 men, however millions of these were killed. This strength thwarted German advances such as the battle of Stalingrad were 1.2 million Soviets were killed, wounded, or captured compared to 750,000 Germans and allies (over 200,000 Germans were killed due to the extreme cold). Even though suffering over a million losses the Soviets replaced these with huge reserves.

 

[Caesar15]

I love quoting this statistic when people talk about the Soviets basically zerging the Germans: Germany in January 1944 had more people in uniform in total than the Red Army did (9.5 million vs. 6.4 million - see p. 545-6 of The Second World War by Antony Beevor).

Germany wasn't so much zerged by the Soviets as zerged by the Allies as a whole, since the 9.5 million figure I've just quoted consisted in large part of people manning AA guns, serving in the Luftwaffe (the Luftwaffe's strength was in excess of a million men at a time when German airpower was largely destroyed) or garrisoning various bits of coast and occupied territory.

Only people here on these forums are smart enough to know that the soviets didn't just spam the Germans, what we are referring to is that they spammed a ton of poorly equipped and trained units early on so they could buy time for actual divisions to be brought up and trained/equipped.

 

[Opanashc]

I love quoting this statistic when people talk about the Soviets basically zerging the Germans: Germany in January 1944 had more people in uniform in total than the Red Army did (9.5 million vs. 6.4 million - see p. 545-6 of The Second World War by Antony Beevor).

Here you are making a mistake.
9.5 million Germans refers to total number people in uniform at that time.
6.4 million Soviets refers to number of people in operational army, and does not count supply troops, rear AA troops, troops in training etc.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

I love quoting this statistic when people talk about the Soviets basically zerging the Germans: Germany in January 1944 had more people in uniform in total than the Red Army did (9.5 million vs. 6.4 million - see p. 545-6 of The Second World War by Antony Beevor).

Not to say that your wrong on calling out the myth of "Germans lose to endless hordes of Russian peasants", but as Opanashc noted, the 9.5 million figure is the total German military, including administrative personnel and a number of other auxiliary things that have little to do with combat while the 6.4 million figure is for the Soviet forces immediately facing the Germans. If you want to compare like-to-like, then the number of total Soviet armed forces personnel from mid-1943 onwards is ~12.5 million.

 

[Chat]

One big question would be the experience that those troops gain out of their combat, and particularly if it would offset the losses taken. If can you throw those 1000 divisions into the meat grinder and end up with 100 regular divisions after a few battles, then it would make it a very costly but efficient time-wise way of getting decent quality troops. Not the best play by any stretch of the imagination, but potentially doable.

 

[Mannstien]

Sounds like a familiar plan.....

 

[calebmarkle]

I would say its best to keep all your troops with full equipment. The purge will weaken all your troops combined with the Germans starting with combat experience from fighting in Poland/France/Balkans/Africa and so on. Even with full equipment you will struggle and your troops will be significantly inferior to the Germans. Add to that a lack of equipment and you will see your troops constantly surrounded and unable to maintain a front. Remember in WWW where the SU was beat down to the point it was pretty much just the Germans marching through Russia without any resistance? That is probably what will happen to an ill equipped army

 

[Caesar15]

Bottom line for the soviets though is, you don't need to spam poor divisions if you can keep the large majority of your army intact when the Germans attack, as in, don't get encircled.