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how realistic is this?

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During my last invasion of the SU as Germany, I had - or at least think I had - too few fast divisions to attempt any meaningful encirclements. Thus I figured I'd do the next best thing.

What I did was attack whole areas (the ones you can target via air missions) from the ground without moving into them, and subsequently target said areas for ground attack missions. Having around 24 to 32 TAC and a couple of STR (not using CAS because their range is ridiculous) bomb the hell out of disorganized armies and the local infrastructure allowed me to wipe out an estimated 200 divisions, give or take a couple dozen.

So far, so good. The controversial part was when what passes for an AI kept reinforcing those constantly bombed areas with fresh armies. I kept this up for a couple of months, I think.


Now this could obviously not happen in a multiplayer game, but how realistic is this historically? Is it imaginable that WW2-era armies could end up so misinformed or unguided as to constantly reinforce already lost positions, essentially performing suicide missions by the myriads?
 
I don't think you can compare what you're doing to a real-life situation. Essentially, you are exploiting HoI's province system. In reality, an enemy army would not abandon an entire province because you defeated them in battle, they would simply retreat a few kilometres and form a new line.
 
Well said, mate. I'm aware of this province system being abstract and arbitrary, so let's compare this to what you said: retreating a couple of kilometers and then trying to attack again. That's exactly what the AI does if you substitute "couple of kilometers" with "province only vaguely corresponding to historical political or administrative bodies", right?

And now that I think of it, this situation reminds me of WW1 trench warfare.
 
But I assume you get most of your 'kills' when the enemy is retreating, because that's when they are most vulnerable to ground attack. (Because they're not dug-in.) In reality, they would retreat for only a few kilometres, but in your case, it might take them days to reach the next province, leaving them vulnerable for a much longer time.
 
But is it still Blitzkrieg if I don't encircle and instead keep bombing them? Because the way it looks on the game map, it reminds me more of trench warfare, but with more and better planes.

That said, I wasn't really asking about the realism of making an army retreat and then bombing it. I was asking about how believable it was that new forces would continually reinforce a previously-lost and still-bombed position. My guess is: "not very", but I could still use your take on this.
 
In any game where humans take on AI, there will be such things as this. AI can't replace a human brain, at least not with technology available now.

The question is, how you react to it. For example, playing as UK, you can strip all armies in India and support France and defeat Germany reasonably quickly. But that makes for a poor game. In reality, there would have to be some troops stationed there, as in Africa, though positioning troops in anticipation of certain countries joining the war at certain times again leads to a poor game, so you try to counter it either via difficulty levels, or roleplay, or a combination of the two.

To sit there setting off mission after mission destroying over 200 divisions via this reinforcing would be boring to me, though of course each plays their own game how they wish.

No it is not realistic that an army would constantly reinforce. In real life, I would imagine runways would be a target with air superiority fought over and a new defensive line established further back. It is a lot to expect an AI to anticipate though in my opinion, at least to maintain some playability via speed.
 
AI strives to match your strength all along the front - You force a retreat from a province the AI sends fresh divisions to shore up the line. I've read a lot of AARs that use this exploit, Kanitatlan's HoI2 Soviet AAR was the first place I saw divisions slaughtered from the air. There's even a nickname for it - Stacks of four CAS with 100 experience and a killer air leader are called "death stars".

Rule #1 at Paradox - It's your game, play it how you most enjoy it.

Actually that may be rule #2 - Rule #1 being Johan's rule on patches.
 
noobermenschen said:
It's your game, play it how you most enjoy it.
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I wasn't exactly looking for permission to play the game my way, thank you very much. What I was interested in was whether this sort of "exploit" was thinkable in real life; based both upon my own meditations on this subject, and on what was posted earlier, I don't think it is.

I asked this because whether or not I can realistically explain a given tactic or strategy is somewhat important to me. I'm not above exploiting the blatant flaws in an AI, but only if I can't win any other way (which wasn't the case here) or if a similar misjudgment could realistically be committed by a human being, which arguably wouldn't make it the AI's "blatant flaw" in the first place.
 
assimilateur said:
I wasn't exactly looking for permission to play the game my way, thank you very much. What I was interested in was whether this sort of "exploit" was thinkable in real life; based both upon my own meditations on this subject, and on what was posted earlier, I don't think it is.
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Well excuse me for trying to be friendly.

If you're looking for a historical example, Try the US Army, which fielded only 100 divisions but produced nearly 300,000 aircraft. US divisions were accustomed to moving forward with air support, and NOT moving forward without it. You could say they couldn't win any other way, no?
 
noobermenschen said:
Well excuse me for trying to be friendly.
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I wasn't trying to be sarcastic or anything; I just consider comments like "play it as you will" pretty redundant (as ultimately I will do what I want, but can't decide yet) when looking for advice, i.e., what you would do in my stead.

noobermenschen said:
If you're looking for a historical example, Try the US Army, which fielded only 100 divisions but produced nearly 300,000 aircraft. US divisions were accustomed to moving forward with air support, and NOT moving forward without it. You could say they couldn't win any other way, no?
Click to expand...

I wasn't worried about the realism of using heavy air support. What I thought was being sploity was the way I lured at least over a hundred Soviet divisions into a province they wouldn't leave alive.
 
assimilateur said:
I wasn't trying to be sarcastic or anything; I just consider comments like "play it as you will" pretty redundant (as ultimately I will do what I want, but can't decide yet) when looking for advice, i.e., what you would do in my stead.



I wasn't worried about the realism of using heavy air support. What I thought was being sploity was the way I lured at least over a hundred Soviet divisions into a province they wouldn't leave alive.
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he says you play it however you want, then you ask if what you are doing is gamey/exploiting dumb ai. Of course it is (your origonal scenrio of 24 tac bomber wings is so ludicrous in real life that for it to be even practicle in a game makes it rather obvious that it is not exactly an intended tactic). What are you expecting for an answer except play it how you want?

Are you asking us to decide how to play? if so make a poll. For most people however it makes no difference to us how you play. if you can't decide flip a coin or something the result is going to be just as legit as asking us how you should play your game.
 
lordgoof said:
What are you expecting for an answer except play it how you want?
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lordgoof said:
Are you asking us to decide how to play?
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When I ask about realism I literally ask about realism; I don't ask you to become invested in how I play the game, I ask you to help me decide by sharing your knowledge. What I'm asking is close to someone's questions about the usefulness of brigades or infrastructure, the only difference being that I'm more interested in realism than effectiveness (due to already having established the latter).

I thought this would be obvious enough and I don't see why you're being so difficult.

I expect input exactly like this:

lordgoof said:
24 tac bomber wings is so ludicrous in real life
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You see, not being really all that interested in military history, I literally had no idea how ludicrous or realistic that sort of thing is (I don't even know how many planes are in an air division).
 
assimilateur said:
But is it still Blitzkrieg if I don't encircle and instead keep bombing them? Because the way it looks on the game map, it reminds me more of trench warfare, but with more and better planes.
Click to expand...

Blitzkrieg is not about encircling. Encirclement can be done with or without Blitzkrieg, and Blitzkrieg can be done with or without encirclements.

Regarding the OP: In the contest of WWII, anihilating entire armies with air power was not realistic. There were not the means nor the doctrines to do so. Tactical airpower was mainly directed from higher headquarters against pre-determined targets, like infraestructures or great concentrations of troops. But hardly ever against troops tactically deployed. CAS missions were a rarity in WWII!

24 TACs destroying the Soviet Army, would require the latter to stay put in their barracks and assembly areas while being bombed, and this is not very likely.
 
assimilateur said:
When I ask about realism I literally ask about realism; I don't ask you to become invested in how I play the game, I ask you to help me decide by sharing your knowledge. What I'm asking is close to someone's questions about the usefulness of brigades or infrastructure, the only difference being that I'm more interested in realism than effectiveness (due to already having established the latter).

I thought this would be obvious enough and I don't see why you're being so difficult.

I expect input exactly like this:



You see, not being really all that interested in military history, I literally had no idea how ludicrous or realistic that sort of thing is (I don't even know how many planes are in an air division).
Click to expand...

your question had been answered already...this is


assimilateur said:
But is it still Blitzkrieg if I don't encircle and instead keep bombing them? Because the way it looks on the game map, it reminds me more of trench warfare, but with more and better planes.

That said, I wasn't really asking about the realism of making an army retreat and then bombing it. I was asking about how believable it was that new forces would continually reinforce a previously-lost and still-bombed position. My guess is: "not very", but I could still use your take on this.
Click to expand...

pdBravo said:
In any game where humans take on AI, there will be such things as this. AI can't replace a human brain, at least not with technology available now.

The question is, how you react to it. For example, playing as UK, you can strip all armies in India and support France and defeat Germany reasonably quickly. But that makes for a poor game. In reality, there would have to be some troops stationed there, as in Africa, though positioning troops in anticipation of certain countries joining the war at certain times again leads to a poor game, so you try to counter it either via difficulty levels, or roleplay, or a combination of the two.

To sit there setting off mission after mission destroying over 200 divisions via this reinforcing would be boring to me, though of course each plays their own game how they wish.

No it is not realistic that an army would constantly reinforce. In real life, I would imagine runways would be a target with air superiority fought over and a new defensive line established further back. It is a lot to expect an AI to anticipate though in my opinion, at least to maintain some playability via speed.
Click to expand...


After that there were people informing you that the tactic was still used because its available to you in game. Then you seemed to think you were too good to get advice like play it how you want. Your initial question had already been answered and you didn't seem to pick up on it. We had all assumed that you had realised by then that your initial question had been answered about it not being realistic, but you were still asking whether you should play like that still. So we then assumed you were asking about whether it was alright to play using a tactic that was obviously not available in real life.

So to summerize. Our misunnderstanding has been caused by you not reading a reply (or discounting it or ignoring it whatever), acting nice and polite is hardly difficult especially when you are in the possition of seeking information.

To add some content. i believe that a squadren of planes represents 100 planes. I don't think that any airfield in russia could support that number let alone coordinate any meaningful attack with it. I believe the stacking penalties in hoi3 have been modified to make this more pronounced. I think that a lot of mods also change stacking penalties or reduce the max command limits of the leaders.
 
lordgoof said:
Our misunnderstanding has been caused by you not reading a reply (or discounting it or ignoring it whatever)
Click to expand...

You are right in that I should have replied to pdBravo's post (I assure you I had read it before), but the suggestion to play the game whichever way I choose is still patronizingly redundant no matter which way you look at it.

Maybe this is a cultural thing, but whenever someone whom I asked for advice tells me "you should do what you want" I'm close to blowing a gasket. When I call this sort of advice no advice at all (i.e., redundant), it's about as restrained as I can get in this context. If this is impolite then I apologize.
 
Usually someone will reply to a request for advice with "you should do what you want" when they either don't care, or it doesn't matter either way. In this scenario it was the latter.

Again i am stressing this as it seemed to us that your question was already answered and you wanted to know if you should still do it or not. Anyway i'll stop posting now as it seems we have come to a nice happy conclusion to the matter.
 
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