World War Wednesday stream today (16th) 14:30CET

[BjornB]

Hi guys!

Today's World War Wednesday will be slightly different. Da9L will be playing a Japan single-player campaign so that he can take it slower and go into more detail as he plays. We know a lot of you guys were a bit irritated by the fact you didn't really have time to see what they were doing in the game. So that's what we remedy now.

We'll be back in a couple of weeks with another MP session with more players this time.

14:30CET - Twitch livestream - https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive
VOD available on our ParadoxExtra channel here!

As usual, the stream will be available in the Twitch archives right after. And we'll upload it to Youtube tomorrow.

 

[Da9L]

@Da9L Total newb question, I imagine: In minute 39 of the stream you discussed the standard frontline division and made a comment touching on how they operating on a 3x4 scheme. What exactly does that mean and what makes or breaks an optimum scheme?

It's just my though about a medium sized division, not to large or too small. They will be the base of my army. Either a 3x3 or x4 is usually what I go with (not including any support units).
If it's too small it might break too easily but it's easier to fill up the whole front and they are cheap.
If they are too large they will be strong and not break but can more easily be surrounded since you will most likely not have enough of them because of the high cost, and the amount of supply they will need might be too much for one division per province (making it easy for the enemy to break through).

 

[Da9L]

Although we're certainly going to see in upcoming WWWs, how strong do you find china? Is it going to be like HOI3 where japan can trivially roll over china or is there a lot more of a fight going on that will keep the japanese occupied for longer amounts of time and attrition more manpower and equipment away.

I have actually haven't played HoI4 as Japan for quite a while, I sit as a central Qa at the office and not integrated to any one project and have been focused on stellaris and eu4 for quite a while now, so I don't actually know. Its something we will have to discover together

 

[Da9L]

*fights hard not to unleash inner fangirl* Thanks for answering, Daniel! Additional curiosity: Does it matter how the individual brigades are laid out within the division? Depth versus width? I noticed how some of the specialized divisions were largely confined to the first two columns in the designer and one or two of them weren't even lined up with each other. I guess an easy example of what I'm trying to ask is, does a 3x4 versus a 4x3 versus a 5x2 make a change in how the division fights?

It does not fight any differently but it's restricting what you can have in each division.
If I have 1x5, I can only have infantry battalions in that division template.
If I have 5x1, I can add different kinds of units in the other 4 free rows, each row can only handle one type, Infantry battalions, Mobile battalions or Armored battalions.

 

[Da9L]

Yet another WWW in which Daniel does not bother to trade for the materials he has a shortage of and are available on the market (in this latest episode rubber). Does this mean that both trade and industry need a major rebalance ? Shouldn't he suffer a greater production penalty as at the present levels he just ignores it? Why go to war for raw materials when you do not need them?

Last WWW I would have given 1/4 of my empire for Oil and rubber though nobody that had those resources (in the amount I needed) wanted to trade with me.

I'm currently trading with oil. I don't feel I need rubber for the moment since the only 2 things I'm currently producing is motorized and planes that need it. The motorized is only to reinforce the one motorized division I have, and 3 factories with 45% reduced efficiency is enough for that. For the planes, they are a old outdated version which I soon look to replace and I don't want to spend valuable factories I have so few of to build bad planes. If I focus the extra factories on building more civilian factories I can trade for what I need when I got the new planes researched.

Also why go for war for raw materials I dont need?
Taking China will give me steel, tungsten and chromium and I need all of it. In addition I will also take their factories and a small amount of manpower.

 

[Da9L]

I enjoyed watching this far more then the MP game. It was much slower and better explained and showed off a lot of features at least until the war started and then it got a bit confusing. I know the twitch chat wanted the fighting to start and time was running out on the stream but it was bit too hectic to follow for my liking near the end.

I will go back to a slower pace again for a while during the first part of the stream next week and explain a couple of things that I missed or didn't mentioned last time.

 

[Da9L]

I'm someone who will spend hours setting up "perfect" OOB, naval fleets, build order, and research projects right at the start of a HoI game so I was happy just seeing the tech trees, unit builder, etc... and would of been happy if you had not even started the war.

I got confused when you start reassigning armies on the fly and slightly changed your plan to pocket the northern Chinese divisions. In the end I had no idea what divisions you were using where.

Remember, "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy".

I will take a look on what I did and explain it next session

 

[Da9L]

Are you going to use any tanks as Japan? And are you going to use only this one motorized division, or are you planning at least partial mechanization of japanese army?

Depending on how many sessions we will make of this single player adventure we will see how far I get, but yes, I will try to make a bit of a tank heavy army after or late in the campaign of China.... If I beat them