Why do generals lose ALL their traits upon promotion to FM?

[the_legion]

The real problem I saw from the WWW was a FM commanding 400 Divisions

I think the best thing would be to make a general lose his trait (simulating that FM is something different than general) but making it for generals serving under him easier to get this specific trait (simulating the generals learn from their FM). Therefor you need a basic chain of command however, which isn't included.

 

[KalZakath]

Not sure if I saw it anywhere, but can you demote a FM?

i.e. - An area heats up, you promote your leader, get more units in there, quash whatever the problem was over time, then strip the extra units out afterward. Are you stuck with him for the rest of the game with the higher rank, losing all the smaller traits, even though he is now commanding a smaller number of units again, or if his command goes back down to the number that a lower rank can handle, do his traits swap back to the smaller, tactical ones, as those are the ones that he would once again be able to use in that situation?

I know realistically, should something like that happen, they'd probably ship in a new lower-ranked commander for the area and use the now higher ranked one elsewhere, or swap leaders of the groups so that the higher ranked replacement would take over and then command would shift back to the lower one after the higher ranked one is re-assigned somewhere else, but since you can have infinite units it seems under a single leader, how many do you really need at a time - I didn't see Daniel with tons and tons of them running around as a massive Germany in the WWW.

 

[Denkt]

The cost make it much more interesting to keep your generals as generals

 

[the_legion]

Not sure if I saw it anywhere, but can you demote a FM?

I can't remember any single situation in the period (at all?) when that happened. FMs get killed, retired or captured but not demoted.
Your viewing it from the gameplay perspective but it's just unhistorical.

 

[Katarian]

The cost make it much more interesting to keep your generals as generals

The cost is most definitely an attempt to make the choice of promoting more interesting. In HoI2 I didn't really care who I was promoting I just promoted the leaders with the highest skill. Iin HoI3 it was even worse and I promoted and demoted willy-nilly right at the start of the game and every time I created a new theatre/army/corp, the way the OOB worked meant you had to to it fill up in the "best" way and if there had been a cost I would have been furious even if it had meant a more "historic" OOB.

 

[Number 7]

The cost is most definitely an attempt to make the choice of promoting more interesting. In HoI2 I didn't really care who I was promoting I just promoted the leaders with the highest skill. Iin HoI3 it was even worse and I promoted and demoted willy-nilly right at the start of the game and every time I created a new theatre/army/corp, the way the OOB worked meant you had to to it fill up in the "best" way and if there had been a cost I would have been furious even if it had meant a more "historic" OOB.

i wasnt even aware what the different stars meant in HOI3, i was just randomly promoting and demoting people to maske sure they could command the level i put them in haha. i do remember that part of the hoi3 OOB sillyness. although with all my incompetent meddling in military matters i did get to roleplay hitler fairly well in that regard

 

[Yorkie-GBR]

Market Garden, as a plan is pretty ingenious aggressive and bold.

His actions in stabilizing the situation during battle of the Bulge were not awful.
His actions and execution of the assault across the Rhine were not awful.

Gee if folk only counted Rommel's cock ups at El Alamain and Tunisia, in his account book.....

He also was in overall command of the ground forces in Normandy during the D-Day invasion.

 

[Gethsemani]

Market Garden, as a plan is pretty ingenious aggressive and bold.

That's one way to say it. Another is that Market Garden as a plan was rash, hasty and divorced from reality. It required everything to go perfectly for the Allies while the Germans put up no opposition, failed to react to the situation and basically just bumbled about as if they've never been in a war. Market Garden should be a black mark on its' inventor and executor, because it was awful from start to finish and showed no understanding of the actual situation in favor of a lot of wishful thinking.

His actions in stabilizing the situation during battle of the Bulge were not awful.
His actions and execution of the assault across the Rhine were not awful.

"Not awful" is not the same as "great". Montgomery was a competent commander in many ways, but nowhere near the military genius that British propaganda made him out to be.

Gee if folk only counted Rommel's cock ups at El Alamain and Tunisia, in his account book.....

People generally hold Rommel's actions in Normand and later France against him instead. As well as his totally disregard for logistics all throughout the North African campaign.

 

[Rommel41]

What happens if I demote an FM? Are they then extra-worthless because they've lost all their "general" and "field marshal" traits and a good chunck of skill?

Why you would lose any traits because you are higher-up on the general staff is beyond me. Maybe if you had a Major and put him in command of an army, it would be enough to suffer a near-reset, but a general and FM are already doing much the same job. The grand-strategy elements are for theater commanders and heads-of-state (a la; you). The promotional system shouldn't be so serious if they are leaving us with no real chain of command. Being able to slap any unit mix together, assign anybody to it and give it sweeping orders.

Missing my OOB again. This cluster-fudge is starting to remind me of how armies work in Supreme Commander games.

 

[GhengisKhan]

The simple answer to this question is because generals and field marshals have a completely different set of traits.

 

[Ksyr]

Tl;dr: Don't forget skill level. It is not only about traits when selecting commanders for your armies. I want high skilled FMs leading my large armies, not nobodies.

Just thinking out loud here(and writing it down). Not sure were I am going with this, but hopefully I can give a partial answer to OP.

If I ever promote a FM it is because I need someone to command much more than 12 divisions. I'm not going to promote one for 13 or 20 or maybe 30 divisions. I can just use more generals. Sooner or later I will run out of generals, but I assume that by that time I also have many divisions so I can make one big FM army and several small general armies.

What will my army composition be? All panzer? Can I win with that? All mountaineers? No. I want lots of (cheap) infantry to hold the line and some smaller groups of specialized troops like armor, mot and special forces to handle the difficult cases. This is how I did it in HOI3, but how can I do it in HOI4?

Lets use Germany as an example.
I want two big FM controlled armies with the majority of my armed forces. One on the western front and one on the eastern. I also want several general controlled armies with panzers and mot. Maybe an army with paras and one with mountaineers as well.

Lets say the FM armies have 1/3 of my armed ground forces each. (Counting an average of manpower, fighting power, industrial production cost, whatever else)

That leaves 1/3 of my ground forces under the leadership of competent high skill+traits generals.

Now if I do what has been suggested and promote "nobodies with second hand combat experience" to the FM positions then 2/3 of my forces will be incompetently led.
Why would I want that? I wouldn't.

I can't find information about how much a skill point does, but I am pretty sure I want 2/3 of my ground forces to be led by skill five FMs rather than nobodies with skill one. Here I am assuming max skill is six and that skill five is better than skill one. I know there is a big focus on traits for some people, but please don't forget that skill level is involved as well.

Does anyone know what the skill bonus is and what the max level is? And how strong/weak is it compared to the trait bonuses?

One other thing: If I have a large(50 divisions?) army under a FM, how many of the troops will benefit from different traits? I'm not putting them all in mountains, or in hills. I think... How many will need the panzer leader trait? None, because my panzers are in smaller armies.
I'm not saying the general traits will be useless, but I can easily imagine how the FM traits concerning logistics and planning will be relatively better.

 

[hkrommel]

People generally hold Rommel's actions in Normand and later France against him instead. As well as his totally disregard for logistics all throughout the North African campaign.

Honestly I don't fault him for that either. After Crusader when Cruewell screwed up all the DAK could do was delay the inevitable, and in Normandy, Operation Overlord may as well have been named Operation Overkill for how much of a foregone conclusion that was. There wasn't much he could do there either, especially with OKW.

His actions and execution of the assault across the Rhine were not awful.

Except that the Allies would have likely crossed the Rhine more quickly and easily had Market Garden not occurred.

 

[LordOfWar16]

I have another screenhot for you guys, i sniped from the World War Wednesday Videos.

I guess an 50% Attack and an 50% Defense Bonus for an 5 Skill General/Field Marshal is justification enough to promote competent leaders instead of morrons.

 

[Number 7]

taking a general all the way to skill cap (5? 6? whatever it is, i know in HOI3 it was higher than 5) then promoting him to field marshal sounds like a pretty good way to leverage some YUUUGE bonuses in that case. although if your nation starts with a skill 4+ field marshal with a slew of positive traits, it might be worth just keeping them as is.

hard to make the call where more pure offense and defense is better than the trait bonuses until the game is out and theres been some experimentation, but its cool that everyones favourites can be trained up and put into field marshal positions without sucking (*cough* rommel and guderian *cough fanboy mode*

 

[griffor]

i think it more for balance than anything else

 

[Munin]

I think for gameplay purposes its not a great thing to do to make you lose all progress, people might be hesitating to promote their best generals like rommel & guderian.

In world of warships they do it differently: they allow you to regain those traits over time, maybe it would be interesting if traits from a general wouldn t dissapear but would convert in one of the FM traits

 

[uglyduckling81]

Just promote a heap of generals as field marshals at the start of the game. Let them gain XP and skills as field marshals and don't worry about ever losing skills later on. I don't really understand why there is even a limit on generals when everyone is just going to promote everyone before they unpause the game at the start.

 

[Nelfe]

Just promote a heap of generals as field marshals at the start of the game. Let them gain XP and skills as field marshals and don't worry about ever losing skills later on. I don't really understand why there is even a limit on generals when everyone is just going to promote everyone before they unpause the game at the start.

Because FM and generals don't have the same skills available. Generals have skills purely focus on the warfare (bonus depending on the terrain, if you're attacking fortresses, if you have tanks...), when FM have skills more focused on "logistic" (less supply consumption, bonus on planning battleplan, etc).
The only skill they share is "Old Guard".

 

[fabius]

Just promote a heap of generals as field marshals at the start of the game. Let them gain XP and skills as field marshals and don't worry about ever losing skills later on. I don't really understand why there is even a limit on generals when everyone is just going to promote everyone before they unpause the game at the start.

Yes this. My guess is somebody thought that it would give players a decision to be made. But there looks like no real decision to be made.

 

[Ksyr]

Just promote a heap of generals as field marshals at the start of the game. Let them gain XP and skills as field marshals and don't worry about ever losing skills later on. I don't really understand why there is even a limit on generals when everyone is just going to promote everyone before they unpause the game at the start.

I disagree. A general with the right traits will still be better in some cases.

Example: 12 armored divisions led by a general with fortress buster and armor traits attacking a fortress. The army will get the skill bonus+double trait bonus in this particular case.

Looks like FMs will be needed for the masses and generals needed for the small special stuff.

Promoting everyone to FM also sounds like a bad idea because all your leaders will start at one skill level less.