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I have a dumb question for both @GAGA Extrem and @jju_57 :
The number of support (non width/frontage) battalions is fixed. Bigger and smaller divisions can only each have one support version of ART, AA, AT, REC, and so on no matter how big they are.
The actual number of divisions does not seem to matter in combat; only width does. So, given the value of non-width battalions like ART and AT, why wouldn't I build a bunch of 5 width infantry divisions (say, 2xINF/1xAT + [ART/AT/whatever]) to maximize firepower per width? Obviously, their ORG is lower, but I am also going to put 4 times as many 5 width divisions into combat as 20 width divisions.
Back of the envelope calculations with the Soviet Union at 1944 (maxed out mass assault doctrine) show more ORG per width for the 5 width divisions than 20 width divisions, but less strength per width.
Is that the real disadvantage?
The number of support (non width/frontage) battalions is fixed. Bigger and smaller divisions can only each have one support version of ART, AA, AT, REC, and so on no matter how big they are.
The actual number of divisions does not seem to matter in combat; only width does. So, given the value of non-width battalions like ART and AT, why wouldn't I build a bunch of 5 width infantry divisions (say, 2xINF/1xAT + [ART/AT/whatever]) to maximize firepower per width? Obviously, their ORG is lower, but I am also going to put 4 times as many 5 width divisions into combat as 20 width divisions.
Back of the envelope calculations with the Soviet Union at 1944 (maxed out mass assault doctrine) show more ORG per width for the 5 width divisions than 20 width divisions, but less strength per width.
Is that the real disadvantage?
Those look good to me. Personally, I'd switch the support ART to MAIN with all those expensive vehicles, or maybe SIG.
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Can we produce different types of divisions?example two type of infantry division at same time
A few notes.
Stacking penalty
There is a stacking penalty (4%?) for every divisions over 8 attacking from the same province. Which puts the smallest divisional width at 10 (for dense fronts).
Attacking in rough terrain
The provice frontal width is 64 in a forest, 60 in Marsh/Jungle, 53.33 in Hills and 26.67 in mountains. So sending two 20-wide INFs to attack in a mountain province would leave the second one fighting at 33% efficiency. There should be no penalty if the two divisions would attack from two provinces, as the total frontage would be 40.
Optimizing the stack width is about minimizing the "idle" last division in a single combat on head-on one-province attacks. The worst are the 21+ (effective) width templates, as the last division would fight at a very low efficiency in most cases. That last division at that point should better stay back and man the frontline or attack elsewhere.
A width of 14 is also a sweetspot, as it will not have much "leftover width" in any battle. Use it for armored troops, where most of the attack value comes from line battalions, not the support artillery, so the support companies are more effective, and more attack can be squeezed into the command limit.
My interpretation of combat width mechanics might be wrong, so FWIW.
Stacking penalty
There is a stacking penalty (4%?) for every divisions over 8 attacking from the same province. Which puts the smallest divisional width at 10 (for dense fronts).
Attacking in rough terrain
The provice frontal width is 64 in a forest, 60 in Marsh/Jungle, 53.33 in Hills and 26.67 in mountains. So sending two 20-wide INFs to attack in a mountain province would leave the second one fighting at 33% efficiency. There should be no penalty if the two divisions would attack from two provinces, as the total frontage would be 40.
Optimizing the stack width is about minimizing the "idle" last division in a single combat on head-on one-province attacks. The worst are the 21+ (effective) width templates, as the last division would fight at a very low efficiency in most cases. That last division at that point should better stay back and man the frontline or attack elsewhere.
A width of 14 is also a sweetspot, as it will not have much "leftover width" in any battle. Use it for armored troops, where most of the attack value comes from line battalions, not the support artillery, so the support companies are more effective, and more attack can be squeezed into the command limit.
My interpretation of combat width mechanics might be wrong, so FWIW.
Yes. It costs land experience to modify templates, but you can duplicate and modify as many as you like ain as many ways as may be useful. Any of them can be raised if you have the manpower, but without the right equipment they won't be fully combat-ready. IIf you are short on weapons, that reduces effectiveness as you would expect. Battalions can be seapped out - by providing trucks, I just made another leg infantry bn motorized - no change in manpower..
Do look up Training and Exercise in the wiki to think about templates.
I have only read @GAGA Extrem s opening post. But it is lacking alot of stuff that you should include if you ain your guide towards beginners:
How do you create new templates ?
If you modify an existing temple , what strategy should you use?
Point out that when you modify an existing temple old equipment goes back into the pool.
What happens with old equipment when you research new versions ?
Take an example. Germany starts with a panzer division with 4 larm and 2 mot and some sup bridgades.
They also start with an ss division with only mot and sup.
If i want to include marm when I research it. Should I just add them to the division or replace them?
You write that you recommend having many artillery bridgades. But as I understand it you can only add one artillery bridgade per division...
Just trying to give you some constructive critisism. This guide you have written is for advanced players. If you call it a beginners guide please include the basics how equipment and divisiontemplates work together.
How do you create new templates ?
If you modify an existing temple , what strategy should you use?
Point out that when you modify an existing temple old equipment goes back into the pool.
What happens with old equipment when you research new versions ?
Take an example. Germany starts with a panzer division with 4 larm and 2 mot and some sup bridgades.
They also start with an ss division with only mot and sup.
If i want to include marm when I research it. Should I just add them to the division or replace them?
You write that you recommend having many artillery bridgades. But as I understand it you can only add one artillery bridgade per division...
Just trying to give you some constructive critisism. This guide you have written is for advanced players. If you call it a beginners guide please include the basics how equipment and divisiontemplates work together.
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Informative guide but I cannot agree on those support brigade recommendations after mid-game. Specialist supports give massive benefits while you can just put those ART/AT/AA as normal brigades. A 40 width division looks like a better option to me to make use of those supports while not inflating division count. Best commanders aren't FMs and leader skills aren't ever gained at the rate they're accumulated.
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This is incredibly helpful. We need either a guide forum or this needs to be added to a sticky.
Or, perhaps just put this into the wiki. I think it'd be incredibly useful if pages had links to associated guides like this one.
Or, perhaps just put this into the wiki. I think it'd be incredibly useful if pages had links to associated guides like this one.
My interpretation is that such a small division is going to take oversized losses from hits to HP relative to ORG. Small divisions have a heavy penalty in terms of overall defense.
BASE_CHANCE_TO_AVOID_HIT = 90, -- Base chance to avoid hit if defences left.
CHANCE_TO_AVOID_HIT_AT_NO_DEF = 60, -- chance to avoid hit if no defences left.
The average chance to hit a division is 10% with defense, and 40% without. This means your smaller divisions are going to get destroyed far more easily in an even contest between equal production cost. There is a twist since you *should* have 4x the number of support brigades which at a glance, could give between 21-50 soft attack per support artillery (more with doctrines) and support rocket artillery which gives between 25-57 soft attack.
Some rough numbers from 1941 tech in my game with bltiz doctrines, which isn't the ideal path for this strategy.
2 INF brigade, 1 AT, support ART/AT/RART
94 soft attack, 46 hard attack, 84 defense, 17 breakthough, 51 HP and 25 org. 480-642 production cost
8 INF brigade, 4 AT, support ART/AT/RART
165 soft attack, 134 hard attack, 289 defense, 44 breakthrough, 203 HP and 48.2 organisation. 1092 -1632 production cost
I have no idea who would ever use 4x AT in the same divisions even if facing HARM but lets run with this example.
Defensively both divisions are pretty decent. Your call of less strength per width is not exactly true if you use an exact 4x copy since support provides minimal HP gains at best. If you can afford it, on the surface using a small width division seems good. The real problem lies in the defense/breakthrough stat. 84 defense is almost always going to be below the average soft attack coming in at a single division even with modifiers. I've seen my panzer divisions get up to 700+ in a good fight with nice modifiers. As such, the smaller divisions are going to be taking an average of 4x the damage relative to the large division once defense runs out. Offensively these small divisions would be even more wrecked by the high defense of the defender, and low breakthrough value making their relatively higher soft attack irrelevant while taking larger losses.
Before wading into the math of min-maxing a way to make soft attack support brigades relevant, I think in most prolonged battles width might be not the largest issue (against the AI, I'm sure people in MP might encounter far more troops). Instead, consider what the divisions are meant to do. I personally think that against a well prepared enemy the only way to breakthrough is using tanks. This is of course due to the oversized penalty of insufficient breakthrough when pitting two otherwise equal divisions against each other. The defender almost always wins.
The real question to ask is at what point does the extra soft/hard attack overcome the increased losses taken to end the battle faster (hence minimizing losses). In the above example, we see a rough increase in firepower per 20 width by approximately 94*4 / 165 for 2.3x soft attack firepower. In exchange, you have about 1/4 the HP and organisation per division (I believe organisation damage is to total rather than averaged organisation if it works like HOI3 but is averaged for display reasons). Given the same attacker hitting both, I think we'd see the small divisions dropping out much faster over time and taking higher losses as they do so. This could of course be different with better doctrines (+50% support company soft attack) but there are many disadvantages to using small divisions outside of the increased firepower per width metric. Lasting power, defense/breakthrough, and cost all play a part in determining a suitable path for your country to take.
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Each support unit reduces ORG. There are some doctrines in the Superior Firepower tree that help but a 5 width unit will still fall out of battle way too fast due to org losses. They aren't glass cannons they are more like tissue paper cannons at 5 width.
Question: for mobile divisions, like a MOT/LARM mix, when would I want to add SPART instead of support ART? Support brigades don't seem to effect speed and SPART only seems like it would be worth it if I wanted to add a lot of ART to a mobile division.
Because SPART does a ton more soft attack, has armor, increases hardness, or the support slot can be used for something more valuable. Everyone has reasons but those are why I have played exclusively without artillery so far. To be fair, I play extremely aggressively so my focus is always on the tank divisions, with infantry existing to hold the line/help flanking only.
Defensively, I imagine ART is a much superior choice given how cheap it is to spam around.
Defensively, I imagine ART is a much superior choice given how cheap it is to spam around.
I read there is a limit on the number of BNs of ARTY, AA or AT that can be in a brigade or division. Is that wrong? E.g., having bns of arty, aa or AT
Seems to me like you want to minimize support on a tank division, perhaps just maintenance. They reduce organization and armor. Tanks also don't really need the firepower from support artillery as desperately as infantry.
Heavy armour seems like it would be a good idea to mix one with the rest as mediums, to do the arrowhead thing, adding the first bumps up the armor on a medium armor division by alot more than adding the second one. Alternatively make an uber panzer division with just heavy tanks to try and max out armor value and force concentration.
Heavy armour seems like it would be a good idea to mix one with the rest as mediums, to do the arrowhead thing, adding the first bumps up the armor on a medium armor division by alot more than adding the second one. Alternatively make an uber panzer division with just heavy tanks to try and max out armor value and force concentration.
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I argue that you want to maximize support on tank divisions. Some of the bonuses become really valuable on tank divisions. Logistics reduce their consumption significantly, field hospitals help reduce your menpower loss on the divisions that will see the heaviest fighting and maintenance is broken. Recon and engineers may be optional but they help a lot in assaulting bad terrain.
Heavy armor is significantly slower and much more expensive than medium tanks. I haven't tried them out yet because the math doesn't really work out when I haven't even seen an AI division capable of piercing my medium tanks ahead of time. In multiplayer it may be viable, but you can bet players will see it coming and produce MTD with increased piercing. I personally always build a reserve just in case but I haven't seen the AI getting armor advantage just yet.
I assumed that the actual tutorial cover this.
(Not that I played it
)He actually talks about *minimizing* - which actually makes sense for MARM and HARM, since these benefit a lot from armor.
As for HARM in general: Way too costly for the minor benefits you get. Just spam medium TDs instead.
Hmm, well you could go for a light tank division with recon and engineering support and just avoid running into tank guns I suppose. While a heavier tank division that depends more on having a higher armour value than the enemy AT can penetrate, you want to skip supports and add in at least one heavy tank in a mix of mediums, to try and get the right balance of a high armour and cost. Which is better depends I think on if the enemy tries to hunt you down with TDs or has AT gun sprinkled on all the infantry.
I wouldn't depend on getting an armor advantage as a cornerstone to any plan because 1) Boosting armor is expensive and 2) HARM is easily countered with MTD if the enemy knows it's coming.
Instead, treat it as a side effect when you run into infantry, and instead look at maximizing soft attack + breakthrough. Those are stats not so easily countered and in my opinion much more valuable in general given the lack of breakthrough for infantry based divisions.
Instead, treat it as a side effect when you run into infantry, and instead look at maximizing soft attack + breakthrough. Those are stats not so easily countered and in my opinion much more valuable in general given the lack of breakthrough for infantry based divisions.