WWW: Show pincer pocketing & mop-up battle plans in action

[Sir Garnet]

After reading recent discussions about the uses of battleplans in the forum, I know less than when I started.

Can a single general's troops under command include
- two groups of motor/mechanized armored troops with battle plans (separate, I expect) to pincer some enemy provinces with a city and troop concentrations, then move on
-one group of infantry following to complete the encirclement to release the mobile troops and wait out the enemy
-other troops with individual orders or no current orders

-can troops in an active group be player-ordered to remain in place?

I assume the arrows could be drawn to go around the pocket area without assaulting it, or are there options to designate provinces in some areas as no-go for a battle plan so they avoid unwise assaults and simply bag the enemy?

As the design vision was - like arrows on a military map of multi-phase operations.

Thanks

 

[MonkeyFuzz]

-one group of infantry following to complete the encirclement to release the mobile troops and wait out the enemy

To knit-pick: historical German encirclements don't end with just surrounding or cutting off enemy divisions/armies and then waiting them out to starve. The Germans would then launch aggressive attacks into the pocket, likely while the surrounded forces were desperately trying to counterattack and make a breakout or while outside forces were attempting to reconnect inwards. The encircling forces would launch concentric attacks from all sides, moving quickly with armor, mechanized infantry, and especially artillery to annihilate resistance in the pocket and achieve huge numbers of prisoners.

 

[Sir Garnet]

To knit-pick: historical German encirclements don't end with just surrounding or cutting off enemy divisions/armies and then waiting them out to starve. The Germans would then launch aggressive attacks into the pocket, likely while the surrounded forces were desperately trying to counterattack and make a breakout or while outside forces were attempting to reconnect inwards. The encircling forces would launch concentric attacks from all sides, moving quickly with armor, mechanized infantry, and especially artillery to annihilate resistance in the pocket and achieve huge numbers of prisoners.

Yes, but the point of the scenario is that the first wave of infantry is to encircle but NOT expend troops and equipment in an immediate assault (and the mobile forces are especially not to exhaust themselves after making the initial closure of the pocket without fresh orders. Ideally they and the first wave of infantry divisions close the pocket but treat the pocket area as a no-go area to be harassed, probed, softened up and above all contained unless it is already broken and only needs mopping-up.

My question is how these events are reflected in the mechanics of the game and the battleplan system.

Then, Phase 2 is the assault to wipe out the pocket, with a second phase of the initial battleplan to be activated when ready, or a separate plan, or a separate group under its own orders or being micro'd to break the pocket along with coordinated artillery and air support. It might even be after a handoff rotation of the surrounding force from the first wave to second wave divisions so the first wave can head elsewhere.

Would like to know which options are available.

 

[Mannstien]

Have to wait a week and to be honest not sure I'm going to be watching the streams or just counting down on the release by then

 

[Modestus]

A single General can have as many offensive front-lines as they have Divisions so you can assign different Divisions to different offensive front-lines which means you could have a number of motor/mechanized armoured troops with separate instructions within a single Generals Battle Plan.

Technically there is no such thing as separate groups under a single General you create them by assigning Divisions to different offensive front-lines.


It depends if offensive front-lines all belonging to the same General can be activated separately, I don’t know but I think they cannot.


If you want part of a Generals army to remain in place do not assign them to an offensive front-line or assign them to an offensive front-line that is their actual front-line (jump off position) but that could be risky as the AI could still move them.


Arrows are an axis they are only a guide and do not specify exactly which provinces Divisions will move through.


Divisions will attack the Pope if he is in the way to an offensive front-line.

I never saw a no go tool I assume there is none.

 

[Aismov]

I am going through a Barbarossa campaign as GER right now in TFH on Hard with full manual control. Went well with something close to 50 dvisions encircled and eliminated and Leningrad and Moscow controlled by early Novemeber. There are two things that jumped back at me after not playing for a while

1) There is a massive amount of micro to launch a good operation, almost painfully too much at times
2) I have no idea how AI can get anywhere close to what I can do manually

From what I've seen/read the AI in HOI4 will "generally" follow your battle plan but decide what units to use, when, and how to use them, and that it does not necessarily target specific individual provinces. In some cases I think this would work just fine, for example if you have a massive army and are just planning on a steamroller/attrition campaign. But in my playthroughs I usually have small armies of highly advanced units (above mention playthrough I had 65 infantry division, 6 mountain, 3 para, 3 marine, and 16 panzer), and the only way to worked was because of obsessive planning and focusing on a very small number of key provinces that if you don't get the whole plan falls apart.

I'm not making any calls on the AI until I see it myself, and I think in some cases it will be a welcome addition, but I just can't see how the AI can run an operation at any level of capability that a human can. At the end of the day I guess I just prefer to micro it.

 

[Sir Garnet]

A single General can have as many offensive front-lines as they have Divisions so you can assign different Divisions to different offensive front-lines which means you could have a number of motor/mechanized armoured troops with separate instructions within a single Generals Battle Plan.

Technically there is no such thing as separate groups under a single General you create them by assigning Divisions to different offensive front-lines.

Helpful, thanks.

I'd call the General's group an Army or Army Group and the divisions on the same front line a "group" for lack of a better term, but in the game there should be something less cumbersome than GroupofDivisionsOnTheSameFrontLine.

It will probably wind up being called a corps informally and unofficially, being a short and familiar term and approximately the right concept for groupings of divisions for a purpose defined by a front-line, even though it could be 1 or 100 divisions in practice.

 

[Modestus]

Helpful, thanks.

I'd call the General's group an Army or Army Group and the divisions on the same front line a "group" for lack of a better term, but in the game there should be something less cumbersome than GroupofDivisionsOnTheSameFrontLine.

It will probably wind up being called a corps informally and unofficially, being a short and familiar term and approximately the right concept for groupings of divisions for a purpose defined by a front-line, even though it could be 1 or 100 divisions in practice.

A Front-line Group? But more then likely people will just use more Generals and create their own unofficial Corps.


An off map OOB is really needed so you can organise your forces under a single General better and also activate parts of the same Plan separately.

 

[Frosted Vert]

Off map OOB would be a Godsend. If we have an off map OOB... off map corps and army-level units would be a nice addition after that.

 

[Sir Garnet]

A Front-line Group? But more then likely people will just use more Generals and create their own unofficial Corps.

Well, then it would be an "ARMY" as defined in the game.

Using the term "group" as common English is obviously a mistake even though the context is clear, as is to mention "corps" which sound like OOBish.

The question is how the set of units assigned to a front line (the "SetAssignedtoFrontLine" or lSAFL for short) works and what orders and limitations for its behavior can be given by the player and the AI.

The example above has pincers consisting of two armored SAFLs, a broad first-wave infantry SAFL to solidify the ring, and other SAFLs and unassigned units within the General's ARMY possible waiting or doing other things.

 

[Number 7]

adding my voice to this. Battle planner is a key feature and so far Daniel hasn't been playing nations capable of executing a complicated plan (early yapan in '36 was just trying to keep infantry equipment supplied, hungary was pure infantry until very very late, and the Dan vs Johan WWW had a combination of no pause button, a very weak USSR, and johan only holding some key locations)

If in the next WWW we see something like USSR going off Daniel's quote about it likely being communists next because people are asking for it. I'd love to see some proper plans drawn up for a counter attack on the germans once he manages to stop the offensive (which sounds like it will be hell with the 50% planning bonus! so excited to see the war in the east)