The planning mechanic is bad game design

[Kanitatlan]

I think the most important issue when considering if or how battle planning should be changed is the AI usage aspect. Battle planning as it exists now is absolutely essential to AI game balance, specifically the ability of the AI to defeat the AI. Any modification needs to be done in a way that doesn't impact AI ability to exploit this feature at least as well as it does currently. The ability of AI versus AI offensives has been a long-term balance issue throughout the HOI game series with earlier games having the feature that attack was simply superior to defence as the only way to make the AI capable of effective offensive operations

Personally I feel like that issue of supply build up for offensive operations is not very well modelled but because of the above issues I hesitate to make any radical proposals for change. However, I have suggested previously that supply consumption should vary more due to circumstances than it does at the moment so that supply accumulation and depletion can occur due to activity rather than just supply availability. This would often create the situation where planning would naturally cause supply reserves to rise as well even with less than optimal supply and offensive operations would deplete supply. It does seem odd that a division sitting quietly behind the lines in reserve and a division carrying out a detailed planned offensive operation don't use massively different volumes of supply.

 

[Nephandus]

They could be including doctrine; Grand Battleplan Left provides an extra 30%

Still hard to reach those 75% even with nearly the whole doctrine tree. Please try to use the median and not the extreme in a line of reasoning.

If you could guarantee where a division on a small offensive order would attack (down to the exact tile) this fact would become much more useful. However since they have a tendency to choose to attack an alternate, seemingly random tile (and one that offers a greater challenge) some of the time it isn't as effective as it could be

And you are not able to manually stop and redirect them? The result of a battle is somewhat random anyway due to the battlemechanics.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

a lvl 9 FM + lvl 9 General can give 70 max planning without GBP.

 

[blahmaster6k]

Still hard to reach those 75% even with nearly the whole doctrine tree. Please try to use the median and not the extreme in a line of reasoning.

In a typical MP game you can expect everyone assuming good play to have near the max planning bonus at all times. Skilled players grind their general and field marshal to have high attack stats, pick thorough planner, and stack every bonus including finishing GBP doctrine at the latest before Barbarossa. Staff Office Plan ensures that you can get to max planning whenever you need it on any subset of divisions by splitting them off into a small army and triggering the ability for a low cost.

30	base
10	5 skill General
5	5 skill Field Marshal
10	Thorough Planner
30	GBP-Left
85	Total

You can pretty much expect at minimum all of the above bonuses to max planning in a MP game. The extreme is the norm in games with good players, so I think it's fair to be talking about it.

 

[Nephandus]

a lvl 9 FM + lvl 9 General can give 70 max planning without GBP.

It is still based on planning skill, not General/FM level… and by what game year do younexpect to have these levels?

In a typical MP game you can expect everyone assuming good play to have near the max planning bonus at all times. Skilled players grind their general and field marshal to have high attack stats, pick thorough planner, and stack every bonus including finishing GBP doctrine at the latest before Barbarossa. Staff Office Plan ensures that you can get to max planning whenever you need it on any subset of divisions by splitting them off into a small army and triggering the ability for a low cost.

30	base
10	5 skill General
5	5 skill Field Marshal
10	Thorough Planner
30	GBP-Left
85	Total

You can pretty much expect at minimum all of the above bonuses to max planning in a MP game. The extreme is the norm in games with good players, so I think it's fair to be talking about it.

Ah yes… the ubiquitous MP reasoning… kind of a moot point to discuss on that basis in a single player game with a bolt-on MP mode. Also: in that mode everyone has access to the same mechanic so the advantage is cancelled out.

Honestly, I have yet to see one good reason why the battleplan mechanic is bad game design in this game.

 

[Killer-Cosmo]

Still hard to reach those 75% even with nearly the whole doctrine tree. Please try to use the median and not the extreme in a line of reasoning.

Whilst I respect that mantra, it is still worth mentioning, as OP could be factoring it in their line of reasoning

And you are not able to manually stop and redirect them?

I'm under the impression that manually redirecting them, by selecting them and clicking another tile (or stopping their attack and then clicking the tile) increases planning decay from 1% to 3%, as if you hadn't executed the plan at all. That may work to resolve that specific attack, but more often than not they will attack the tile you clicked, advance to it, then rejoin the battle you just told them not to fight

The result of a battle is somewhat random anyway due to the battlemechanics.

True, however when the battleplan decides that attacking a stacked, fortified mountain across a river that isn't part of the arrow/advancement prediction versus attacking plains with fewer divisions that does fall under the arrow and advancement prediction, you can't help but wonder if it's a little bit broken.

I get that battleplans are meant for great sweeping maneuvers where you are confident of victory, and tactical efficiency is sacrificed somewhat, but I still think there is room for more "pessimistic" planning, where they perform the exact actions you tell them to, with no detours.

Essentially: pre-planned micro you can execute at a set time, instead of "Alright men, line up here. When I say go, you walk forward"

 

[marcelo r. r.]

to make planning more realistic.

1-it should be a property of plan itself not individual division.
2-the decay penalty should be applied when borders of the plan redrawed, either by enemy capturing provinces or player redrawing plans.
3-bonus escalated on divisions preparation(org, str), so the "the plan is ok when everyone is fit".
3.a - the prime would be a rare situation when all divisions belonging to plan is fully org and fully str.

 

[RobbiusBossius]

Ah yes… the ubiquitous MP reasoning… kind of a moot point to discuss on that basis in a single player game with a bolt-on MP mode.

Its perfectly reasonable to discuss it because it applies to SP as well, stacking planning is even more powerful in SP if you know what you are doing, like i can stack between a 80-90% planning bonus as japan without much effort for example

Also: in that mode everyone has access to the same mechanic so the advantage is cancelled out.

Depends on if you play with spies removing planning or not, if so then axis get a crushing advantage on barb for example bc they can avoid the planning loss while soviets cant (and that means you die against german heavies)

 

[RobbiusBossius]

I think planning overall is a part of a broader problem this game has of modifier stacking, in the past 3-4 dlc's we've gotten more and more ways to stack modifiers enabling insane stats like 4k+ german hard attack heavies for example, and planning just compounds the power of them all
Look at special forces for example, before AAT, you'd laugh if someone said its possible to get 2k+ soft attack on them, now its very easy to do thanks to modifiers we keep getting

 

[CanterburyITA]

Planning seems fine - it’s the how you get it and how it is consumed that should be improved. Would be great if attack plans could be established off of fallback lines so we didn’t need the garrison bug/feature.

 

[Harin]

Attaching the battleplan to the frontline limits the imagination (and possibilities) of improving the battleplan mechanic.

Why? Because the frontline system is a servant to its own rules, which often causes frontline border gore the developers, and certainly the players, did not intend after the first tile is won, or lost. To attach the battleplan to such an error prone system increases the chance of bad results. The added injury is how the current battleplan system is exploited in ways the game was never balanced around and will never be balanced around. This leaves us with a system that cannot/will not be fixed in its current state. The idea to break battleplans away from frontlines may give the AI cleaner choices to make during the game, since it could create two pools of divisions instead of the current one, specifically, a defensive pool and an offensive pool.

Anyone who has launched an amphibious invasion knows that a battleplan does not have to be attached to a frontline, so breaking them all off the frontline 'should' be doable.

What if: Battleplans were attached to divisions instead of frontlines?

Well, here are a few things that could happen:

1. Divisions could HIDE behind the front lines while building their battleplan bonus. Yea, the AI could do this also!!! Player surprise? Finally!!!!
2. Currently, attacking armies have to man the frontline and attack. This causes the AI to look at those divisions as one pool of divisions with two jobs, defense and offense. It is obvious defense has the priority as we see the AI spread its attacking army across the growing frontline instead of pushing forward with some concentration. With frontline armies tasked with manning the front and divisions assigned to battleplans tasked with attack, the AI can man the front without spreading the attacking force out and killing the attack.
3. Battleplans could be given directions, even paths forward, since the frontline plan/rules would not effect the divisions assigned to the battleplan.

 

[Killer-Cosmo]

Often causes frontline border gore the developers, and certainly the players, did not intend after the first tile is won, or lost

One of my pet peeves regarding this is when you start the war/offensive and make a quick encirclement, then have an absolute mess of frontline orders stacked on top of each other from multiple armies with a few divisions assigned to each. Really frustrating

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Still hard to reach those 75% even with nearly the whole doctrine tree. Please try to use the median and not the extreme in a line of reasoning.

??? do you know all the sources of planning?

And you are not able to manually stop and redirect them? The result of a battle is somewhat random anyway due to the battlemechanics.

you are penalized for doing this, arbitrarily in planning bonus, but also in movement time. also, troops on spearhead are (objectively) bugged and join support attacks rather than executing their actual order.

i haven't forgotten that people have unironically argued this is good behavior for spearheads in the past. words have meaning, so we can disregard that.

Ah yes… the ubiquitous MP reasoning… kind of a moot point to discuss on that basis in a single player game with a bolt-on MP mode. Also: in that mode everyone has access to the same mechanic so the advantage is cancelled out.

??? bad mechanics are bad between game modes. there are multiple reasons planning bonus is unnecessarily input-intensive and tedious.

Honestly, I have yet to see one good reason why the battleplan mechanic is bad game design in this game.

after clicking on this thread, read the op + following posts. it's true you can post in a thread w/o reading it but it's odd.

One of my pet peeves regarding this is when you start the war/offensive and make a quick encirclement, then have an absolute mess of frontline orders stacked on top of each other from multiple armies with a few divisions assigned to each. Really frustrating

you also can't use "aggressive" to close the pocket in this scenario without your troops attacking 180 degrees away from their order and bleeding casualties as a direct consequence of disregarding their order. however, if you don't use aggressive, the rate at which troops close the pocket is a joke.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

but there is objectively no real representation in game of "supply" in the sense used here, a mass buildup of ammo above the minimum - especially artillery rounds - before an offensive.

There is, it's called "Supply Grace", where a division can have more than 100% supply "stored". For most divisions the limit is 150%, however certain things impact this, such as special forces gaining massive supply grace buffs from special forces doctrine, the "Tip of the Spear" spirit of the army, and the game difficulty setting. I've seen divisions with 350% extra supply at times, meaning they can extend an offensive deeper into enemy territory, most likely up to a supply hub, and still be combat effective until that hub is operational

Edit: I forgot about the "Amphibious" and Paratroopers" general traits, which provide a whopping +240.0 hours of supply grace to marines and paratroopers respectively

Edit 2: 'Just ran a test, and having a general with either Amphibious/Paratroopers, Tip of the Spear selected, and either Expeditionary Task Forces in the marines special forces doctrine or Strategic Air Lift Corps for the Paratroopers special forces doctrine allows a marines to have 583% stored supply, and paratroopers to have 550% stored. I believe there are ways for regular divisions, especially tanks, to achieve this too but I can't test now

i see why you thought this applied to what i meant, but it doesn't. built-up supply grace allows units to push for longer without replenishing their "baseline" ammo/food/whatever, and goes with them as they move but it doesn't impact the intensity of their attack into any given province. IRL, especially in regards to US and Soviet doctrine, mass buildups of munitions - especially artillery - in a specific point for a breakthrough was essential, and actually raised the "attack" of a unit significantly by allowing for increased artillery/mortar/HMG/general suppressive saturation. this was consumed even in "high supply areas," whereas what you describe isn't impacted at all by fighting in zones with sufficient supply points for the units.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

So how exactly did you come up with 75%+ planning bonus? The base max planning bonus is 30% plus 2% per planning skill point of the general plus 1% per planning skill level of the field marshal and 10% if the field marshal has the trait „thorough planning“.

Also the planning bonus is not completely lost if a unit is manually controlled when executing a battleplan but the bonus decay is increased from 1% per day to 3% per day.

I find your line of reasoning in light of this faulty

Normally, I'd agree that there are ideas and theories that are worth discussing and refuting and then there are ideas and theories to which the only reaction is a dismissive wave at best since everything else would be a waste of time and breath. However out of the goodness of my heart I'll elaborate...

First, you misquoted me, I said 75%+ bonus to attack. a unit with 45% increased attack from other factors (incredibly trivial to achieve) will enjoy around 70-75% more attack with just a 50% attack bonus from planning which is easy to get as others have demonstrated... though 75% planning is also totally feasible.

Next, let me explain what I meant by:

do you think it's good game design to reward not taking a random empty province with a 75%+ boost to a division's attack? would the Germans have won El-Alamein if they'd just never moved through an empty "province" southwest of them?

Here's how the scenario (very common one) plays out:

Germany pushes from Marsa Matruh into the tile next to El Alamein, encircling a few British on the way

They try to attack but are rebuffed, as the British mostly have entrenchment and the Germans have little/no planning following their push

The British are then able to support attack the low-org Germans off the tile, but don't advance in, as they can currently both preserve their entrenchment, and develop planning so they can click the Germans if they try to come in again

So, if Rommel thinks planning works in a sensible way, he'll still kill the encircled units and take their tile, right? But look what happens then:

Since he/Italy control it, there is now no way for them to get a planning bonus for attacking El-Alamein, as they would have to move onto its neighboring tile, and the full-planning British can easily click them off it.

Meanwhile, if Rommel is good at Hoi4, he'd know to not take the tile when he kills the encirclement:

That way, he can safely get planning behind the El-Alamein frontline, and can drive to El-Alamein to attack it with nearly full planning!

You see my point? What should make effectively no tactical difference instead is the difference between winning and losing El-Alamein. There are a million similar scenarios, especially for naval invasions, where a battleplan's existence relative to frontlines' existence has nothing to do with where the battleplan is drawn, or how it's drawn, but rather its mere existence. It is incredibly arbitrary and messy, and unrealistic to say that Rommel would be incapable of planning an attack by a unit two tiles from the front, as opposed to one.

Unironically yes to the general point. Like, friction is one of the most fundamental ideas of military operations. Even if you encounter zero resistance as soon as you leave your staging area things will go wrong. Mechanical breakdowns, someone takes a wrong turn, you can't get quite as much traffic through a route as you thought, and on and on. That is unironically how it works. While it's very non-specific planning bonus is probably one of the least abstracted mechanics in the game. Real life isn't as simple as a simple numerical multiplier of course but other than that it's basically how it works.

See above for a clarification of what I meant. I agree that the planning bonus should delay as units attack due to the effect you describe but still, a unit whose staging area is 20km behind the frontline should still maintain most of the benefits of planning that a unit staged 19km behind the frontline (1 province instead of 2) enjoys. Because it doesn't we get a lot of bad scenarios like the one I illustrate.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

Ah yes… the ubiquitous MP reasoning… kind of a moot point to discuss on that basis in a single player game with a bolt-on MP mode. Also: in that mode everyone has access to the same mechanic so the advantage is cancelled out.

Honestly, I have yet to see one good reason why the battleplan mechanic is bad game design in this game.

Like I said, in singleplayer the issue is worse precisely because the AI doesn't have the same advantage, so by employing these very arbitrary and meme-y battleplan tactics like drawing ones with no assignments or leaving tiles open a player can win wars they otherwise wouldn't necessarily be able to. The "one good reason" is that game design rewards those strategies. It's nothing to do with how much bonus you can stack which this thread has gotten a little caught up in, though allowing excessive modifier stacking is another way the game screws over the AI in its design (two identical divisions should not have their "attacks" vary by 500%, period).

 

[pro.gamer.69]

Planning seems fine - it’s the how you get it and how it is consumed that should be improved. Would be great if attack plans could be established off of fallback lines so we didn’t need the garrison bug/feature.

Even this would be an amazing compromise addressing the issue

 

[Secret Master]

a lvl 9 FM + lvl 9 General can give 70 max planning without GBP.

You can pretty much expect at minimum all of the above bonuses to max planning in a MP game. The extreme is the norm in games with good players, so I think it's fair to be talking about it.

Just as a side note to those who don't know, most MP games ban using espionage networks to nerf planning bonus/entrenchment. That means the game does have mechanics to counterbalance these high planning bonus modifiers, but they are not allowed in a lot of situations due to other balancing issues.

The AI is also really bad at using espionage networks to nerf battleplans and entrenchment. (Or just bad at setting up networks in the first place since I really prioritize defense early and often.)

 

[LordWahu]

Just as a side note to those who don't know, most MP games ban using espionage networks to nerf planning bonus/entrenchment. That means the game does have mechanics to counterbalance these high planning bonus modifiers, but they are not allowed in a lot of situations due to other balancing issues.

The AI is also really bad at using espionage networks to nerf battleplans and entrenchment. (Or just bad at setting up networks in the first place since I really prioritize defense early and often.)

It's somewhat ironic that the mechanic to counter a different mechanic doesn't have a counter of it's own

I do hope for a rework of La Resistance some day. But that should come with a US update, and the US is probably two or three DLCs out

 

[CthulhuTactical]

To keep it simple... it's silly and arbitrary how units have to be on a frontline, and also assigned to a general/FM with a battleplan, to gain planning. In MP especially it's often critical to leave certain enemy tiled unoccupied so they can't build a planning bonus on you, or so you can get planning without being on the actual front, or get planning for naval invasions. Why does the game reward this kind of behavior?

I think the easiest fix is to just give units planning while stationary, just like entrenchment. That they can get it for fronts there aren't plans for is silly but fine, it's tedious to constantly draw new plans as the algorithm messes them up anyway.

And don't get me started on the bonus decaying faster when you micro... I get it's meant to simulate improvisation messing up plans, but with the battleplanner as bad as it is you ultimately reward drawing a spearhead for each offensive action which is brainrotting. That's harder to fix, though

Do others have any ideas for solutions to this issue?

We already had a realistic "planning" or rather "command" bonus in earlier game[hoi3] - HQ command range. Since this got abstracted to frontlines and battleplans, we now get this monstrosity system, where players who play manually are punished for not having the mess of frontlines, along with its hideous cluster**k it causes in UI when you do something bigger than capturing latvia.

Get rid of planning all together as it exists.

Planning needs to be a macro thing. Kind of like how you plan invasions or do research or do a focus and get a bonus.

Basically planning should be something done pre-war and something done maybe every 6 months via a decision that gives a bonus. You plan an operation. You execute it. and you get a bonus for a month.

The frontline system is ... a mess really. To do it right I need an army of infantry to hold the line and an army of tanks to do their micro attacks or maybe a spearhead.

I would rather tie it to system of morale, ie. you decide capture points your operation will take in a certain timeline, your troops will start with higher morale, the less points you've designated you capture and the bigger to the closing timeframe, the more morale bonus your troops would lose as you do not fulfil military objectives.