as it seems, that you have done this excel sheet for several division-types - would you be so nice and post them all?
Why mass assault is just bad.
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as it seems, that you have done this excel sheet for several division-types - would you be so nice and post them all?
Do you know why this happens? Because the AI play just as bad as a New Player does, and as such it fails to take advantage of the strengths of the other doctrines that requires more finesse ( especially entrenchment, planning and org bonuses which are thrown away with constant shuffling and redeployments in battleplans ). But the AI also does not know how to design templates that fit the lower infantry width in MA which means it will have constant over width penalties in all battles that the other doctrines wont, making it even worse for the AI.
Just like a new player the AI can however take full advantage of the bonus SF gets as these are inherent to all divisions stats.
Have you ever seen an AI pull of a successful coordinated encirclement with tank formations? ( Which is the main strength of the MW doctrines speed bonuses ). My guess is the answer to that is a big fat no.
So I apologize for forgetting to include the AI alongside New players when listing those how have the most to gain from SF doctrine. I'm not saying SF is a bad doctrine, just that it's alot more of a simplistic doctrine which does not require as much finesse or tactics to put to use as the other doctrines do.
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Choice of tactics is one of those things that seems like it should really matter that ultimately doesn’t have a tangible impact. Recon support companies have other advantages, but the recon boost isn’t really worth it, imho.
I asked witch stat was best in this thread. The answer was personal choice, tactics & finesse
To me that seemed nullify the entire thread.
If it's all about country, template, tactics, working with strengths and plain preference than All Doctrine are relatively equal.
To me that seemed nullify the entire thread.
If it's all about country, template, tactics, working with strengths and plain preference than All Doctrine are relatively equal.
That's why I like it. Even in SP, supply region saturation is a real issue.
A good example of how its handy is when you have late arrivals when trying to close a pocket. For whatever reason, Division A arrives in a tile to close an encirclement/take important objective. But other divisions moving with it arrive a few hours later. The enemy counterattacks. Now, because they arrived late, they must reinforce to width. Every hour they don't, Division A is getting hammered by the counter attack. If it retreats before the others reinforce, then the whole stack retreats and you just wasted your time.
While I'm not a big fan of Mass Mobilization, delaying and stalling as the Soviets is a perfectly acceptable approach to the war. This is especially the case in any situation where the Allies have secured Lend-Lease routes and can feed the Soviets equipment.
In MP, there are strategies that revolve around walls of ORG and no-air specifically so the Soviets can afford to bog the Axis down into a quagmire that they can't blitz their way out of. Hell, it's a rare game that the Axis wins where the Soviets hold most of their manpower and IC for 24 months. Who cares if Red Army divisions are taking high losses? As long as they don't lose too much ground, the Soviets can afford the manpower. And infantry kits and AA guns are easy to replace.
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Against the AI, you can use ANY doctrine, or NO doctrine. You can use the META 20w and 40w division templates, or just make up any kind of division your want, the heck with combat width penalties. There is a good chance it will be a "funner" game, because you will be playing the same game the AI is. It will definitely, be a tougher game, but you can still win.
I highly recommend you at least play every doctrine at least once. Also, at least once, play with historical division templates, with no care for combat widths. It is a game and for those who do not like Veteran or Elite difficulty some of the challenge/fun has to be sought out.
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There is one stat clearly define who win the battle: Org. The troop run away with manpower and gun in hand, but no Org.
You can sacrifice everything to win battle to encircle enemy, then you get the investment back and it is big.
Org strategy means: Org, Org recovery rate, Org attack, Org defense (include the piercing and armor bonus here)....
For choices, I put high priority in things that help infantry defense. Because that is when you need them the most to survive. When you are strong enough to attack, then everything can work. The SF-R-R surprisingly have many bonus for infantry defense (attack stats also help defending)
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I don't mean to sound noob, not that anything is wrong with that.
I've tried every doctrine. Historic templates and no exploiting sounds like fun.
@Cavalry I don't understand the investment back vs encircle. Don't you not get equipment from destroyed divisions?
The rest is helpful though.
I've tried every doctrine. Historic templates and no exploiting sounds like fun.
@Cavalry I don't understand the investment back vs encircle. Don't you not get equipment from destroyed divisions?
The rest is helpful though.
@Cavalry I don't understand the investment back vs encircle. Don't you not get equipment from destroyed divisions?
The rest is helpful though.
I mean we can pay more casualties than the enemy to encircle him. Then reap the rewards.
For example someone complain CAS dying like flies vs AA. But if these CAS help winning battles, then it is good. I turn on my limited CAS/Fighter only when I start my encircle attack. My air force is built to win land battles, not fighting other air forces.
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Ahh ok.
I'm single player though and manually attack/push to avoid heavy casualties and reap the most equipment, unless I'm out numbered by heavy divisions.
I lose at least 10x more manpower activating a battle plan, often lose time as well.
I'm single player though and manually attack/push to avoid heavy casualties and reap the most equipment, unless I'm out numbered by heavy divisions.
I lose at least 10x more manpower activating a battle plan, often lose time as well.
I think it'd be a more valid strategy if the evacuation decisions moved a bigger chunk of your industry out to the Urals then they currently do (which would also be historically far more accurate). As it stands, I find one of two things usually happen:
- Either allies D-Day by 1942, or
- Germany will break through the Stalin line at some point (once they're done repairing and can truly use their tanks...) and then it's quite hard/near impossible to stop them and you'll lose your manpower and IC...
There's a strategy to build all your mils in the Urals beyond, from the word go of course, but doing that means starting off with a much lower industry in the first place due to slower build speeds given the infrastructure is lower. I've not seen anyone pull it off - perhaps I'm just in the wrong games.
I wish it were possible to use the more historically accurate MA, believe me. I just find it doesn't work in a real game, whether SP or MP against a competent Germany. Some of the mods of course address this, so that's a different debate.
Lol - all right, agreed on the AI - though do try AI 4.0 mod, it does a decent job of trying to play more like an experienced player. It's not perfect, but it's a bit closer to MP game in terms of build and templates (though not in terms of doing encirclements, etc, granted).
I do take issues with the idea that MW is faster - the speed bonuses are nice, but what really determines your speed is air superiority. For me MW is useful primarily for org, you can drive a tank from Berlin to Moscow in one go...
In any case, I've tried to make you (and everyone) see the light and failed. Perhaps one day we'll cross paths on opposite sides of a MP game and find out who's right...
While having faster reinforce to offset a bug is nice, it would be nicer if the bug were fixed.
I hate when units have identical arrival hours (smallest unit of time in the game), and do not arrive at the same time when traveling from the same province. This is some kind of Pdox engine deficit, it's an annoying bug with "attached" armies in EU 4 too. Watching "attached" units die in separate battles is not what "attached" means, and having units arrive in provinces at different times is not what an identical arrival time means.
Defense > sum of attacks placed on the unit is wasted.
Attack stats help defending because it kills the attacking divisions. Doing damage is important, because it's what reduces opponent's org. Having 60 org against opposing 45 does not help if opponent does 4x the damage. Org is also dubious if damage is being taken quickly, as its ability to buy time is greatly reduced and it bleeds more equipment.
This is yet another reason SF tends to outperform MA even/especially on IC-strapped nations. The IC required to deal more damage is lower, and you still get defense boosts. Also, entrenchment looks good until you're forced to rotate units to sustain org. The instant units move, you no longer get the defense/damage bonus from entrenchment. This makes always-available bonuses like those in SF even more attractive.
If you do have the chops to actually push for encirclement with fast units, MW is way better than MA too, since it lets you get away with compositions that would otherwise have too-low org effectively and speeds up the rate of said encirclement.
Any doctrine with good pinning micro can routinely encircle the AI, but I'm not seeing how MA helps you do this against either AI or humans more effectively than alternative choices. It seems best suited to sponging/infantry rotations, albeit not IC efficiently. I could see it with something like USSR if they somehow managed air superiority (probably only possible with allies' help).
That's because you see it the MW way. With mass cheap tank you can attack on the whole section and find a hole, probably not the province you intend to get at first. Or you can railroad 20 tank divisions to a weak section of enemy and start attack 1-2 day later, with Mass Charge or Encirclement on your side. The MW cannot do that. MA-R can use the mass manpower and stacked infantry to have a solid and cheap defense line, MA have little in department of defense.
Yes, MW is very good on tank attack. But MA-R help you survive in the critical moment, and then use number advantage to break through.
I let some MA-R templates here for someone to try. Just look at the Org, Org recovery rate, defense and the COST... Sure you will need some time to make the best use of a 67 Org tank division!
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You must be using top tier tech, otherwise I'm not sure how you're getting 150 AA from just to MSPAA, with assumedly +5 gun, but I usually ignore combat stats anyway.
The organization on that first template *should not be that high*. You're using 20 infantry that have 75 org at best out of 30 total battalions/companies, and the 3 tanks should only have 12 org each. The org should only be 52.87, not 67.
Your use of motorized recon, or recon at all, upsets me. Its not like infantry speed really matters that much so the primary benefit you're getting here is +20 or so defense. Which doesn't matter, you're a 40 wide division composed mainly of infantry which is apparently supposed to be attacking.
Having both support artillery and support rocket artillery (and engineers and recon) is going to swing these styles of division far in favor of SF doctrine right/X for org and attacks.
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I used code to change tech of a save game, because I don't have time to find a MA save. It can be bugged, but the idea is the same. The original SF template I actually use cavalry instead of infantry.
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You got time to waste giving us useless screenshots of divisions that aren't even real, though.
It is bugged, but the idea is very much different. Your entire argument hinged on having a magical, 67 org division, when in reality it is a full 14 points less than that at only 53 or so.
Do you mean the recon company, or do you mean that you actually replaced all of the infantry in the template with cavalry (less the 3 or 5 that to bring it down to 40 width) when you when an SF doctrine version of the same style of template?
For the former, that makes including the recon at all a lot more suspect. You aren't even getting the defense anymore, you are literally spending more IC and manpower and dragging down your recovery and org for a pittance of speed and combat stats. For the latter, I imagine that SF division based on cavalry performs better. It is faster, has similar cost, similar/improved org, more attacks.
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Yes, that's my cavalry in line battalion. They have double speed in Russian snow forest vs trucks, 2km/h vs 1.
Cavalry don't have more attack than stacked infantry. The cheap tank divisions can be doubled as anti tank divisions or elite defenders.
Sure, having more infantry might give you that little bit more attacks by the nature of just having more infantry. But the SF doctrine isn't just getting attacks from their infantry, they are getting more attacks from the support artillery, support rocket artillery, engineers, recon, the tanks, and the cavalry.
At top tier, an infantry battalion is offering 13.8 attacks. 20 of them is 276 soft attack. 16 battalions of cavalry with SF right/right are offering 16.2 attacks each, 259.2 attacks total. The extra infantry is only adding 16.8 attacks, before we even get into the support companies. The support companies themselves under SF R/R is going to be 136.1 attacks, while under MA-R it is only 77.3, so the SF doctrine is getting +58.8. Subtracting the 16.8 advantage that the cavalry had, we get +42 attacks for SF. That is before we even get into the tanks and such. Using https://taw.github.io/hoi4/ set to 1950 tech, SF is getting around +60 attacks
The SF division using infantry (to compare like with like) costs less manpower, IC, and supply. It has more org, more attacks, basically the same breakthrough and a bit less defense (which is helped by having more hardness). It has less HP and recovery, but if we're going to be talking about having less HP meaning they take more losses, you have to factor that in to how much more expensive the MA division is to begin with, to get a window where even despite its increased losses, it is cheaper than the alternative.