Uselessness of Cast Armor

[TheMeInTeam]

Higher width mass mob infantry specifically is great because you stack so much HP that you barely take any losses. You can battle plan into the enemy and win through sheer attrition, even though smaller divisions have more org per width. You also benefit from coordination with larger templates, and are harder to crit when your defense and breakthrough are higher per division.

Higher width also enables you to spam force attack for more stats, while low width will just get strength killed.

this seems to rely on assumptions about enemy setup too though. hp does let you sponge losses, but only to a point in sustained battles if you're taking a lot of attacks. my impression is that even in mp, you're trying to move the enemy off provinces quickly when you are doing an offensive (pin attacks excepted).

as for force attack, if you're looking to breach a line, you're still looking to win quickly. thus if you're using the infantry to straight up push for a hub, i think small width is still better there. adding 25% damage multiplier is more impactful with a higher baseline number. if the fight's lasting so long that strength damage would kill your guys, you're probably short on damage or attacking somewhere you shouldn't be.

on the other hand, you bring up a good point for more standard use of 30+ width stuff: force attacking with these divisions can pin enemy stuff for a long time. for the job of pinning, high width is *objectively* better in this use case. it's hard on command points, but lasting longer is all you want from pin attacks and that is what you will get.

i would be interested to see how much damage coordination really adds in practice. i have doubts. it is sometimes counter-productive even, because doing lots of damage to one guy in the width leaves more time for reserves to replace, and i don't think the in-practice rate of crit increase amounts to much damage. certainly not the ~30% or higher base damage stat difference between stuffing more support companies into a smaller width and using something like 30-36w. similarly, when attacking you only somewhat resist crits, because breakthrough is low regardless and small divisions absorb at least *some* uncoordinated damage onto their low breakthrough.

 

[Kanitatlan]

i think in that game i went against normal advice from me and used line artillery since manpower was so tight, just to use more width and optimize for damage per manpower instead of usual things you'd optimize for (you *usually* want damage per width, but i couldn't actually fill width in this case!).

I think all the arguments about line artillery miss the key point that the argument always depends on width and if you have battle width you haven't filling a 3 width artillery battalion is no different to a zero width artillery battalion. On top of that you get the second issue which is that artillery is more manpower efficient in both build cost and casualties. The traditional 7/2 was very close to the ideal balance for minimising casualties. This means that if you are severely limited in army size then line artillery does make sense but it is driven by not caring about width and having limited manpower.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think all the arguments about line artillery miss the key point that the argument always depends on width and if you have battle width you haven't filling a 3 width artillery battalion is no different to a zero width artillery battalion.

in *most* situations, it is possible to fill combat width without too much trouble, so the advice against it is generally useful/correct. but you are right that in the few cases where you can't fill width (or if it were removed), line artillery is more competitive.

The traditional 7/2 was very close to the ideal balance for minimising casualties.

maybe before wtt, don't remember. it hasn't been practically true since. doctrines aside from gb give it practically nothing too.

another incentive to use it is that the ai loves it so much. when you play poverty nations and use maintenance to capture equipment (especially guns and support equipment), artillery and trucks are also commonly captured. in that case, i don't like it on offensive divisions, but it could be used to help bloat regular infantry. i don't usually bother with this kind of thing unless i'm dread league in the pony mod, where abusing equipment capture is the only way to do anything useful with them.

 

[BurningEGO]

I think all the arguments about line artillery miss the key point that the argument always depends on width and if you have battle width you haven't filling a 3 width artillery battalion is no different to a zero width artillery battalion. On top of that you get the second issue which is that artillery is more manpower efficient in both build cost and casualties. The traditional 7/2 was very close to the ideal balance for minimising casualties. This means that if you are severely limited in army size then line artillery does make sense but it is driven by not caring about width and having limited manpower.

Line artillery can be buffed too. Rangers for instance give +20%. I am generally not a fan of line artillery but it has its uses.

Also:

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Line artillery can be buffed too. Rangers for instance give +20%. I am generally not a fan of line artillery but it has its uses.

Also:

this video uses same support companies regardless of template. it uses the same templates regardless of doctrine. it aims to be realistic, but it is not for that reason.

the problem with +20% attack to line arty from rangers is that it competes with multiple copies of % special forces attack from special forces doctrine combined with + infantry attack and + special forces attack from high command + infantry expert bonus on general + field marshal. bulk of these modifiers can also be applied to support companies. unlike arty, none of these positive modifiers suffer from any terrain penalties.

the practical effect is that unless you are in grand battleplan, line artillery reduces the damage you deal outright in addition to the ic cost. it is more competitive in gb, but still niche.

 

[BurningEGO]

this video uses same support companies regardless of template. it uses the same templates regardless of doctrine. it aims to be realistic, but it is not for that reason.

the problem with +20% attack to line arty from rangers is that it competes with multiple copies of % special forces attack from special forces doctrine combined with + infantry attack and + special forces attack from high command + infantry expert bonus on general + field marshal. bulk of these modifiers can also be applied to support companies. unlike arty, none of these positive modifiers suffer from any terrain penalties.

the practical effect is that unless you are in grand battleplan, line artillery reduces the damage you deal outright in addition to the ic cost. it is more competitive in gb, but still niche.

You could always run some large divs with dispersed and focus on support companies based more around "utility" instead of "soft power".

But to be honest large infantry divs are generally bad for pushing imo.

And on smaller divs you will run out of line artillery fast. Plus on those you are usually running integrated, if you ever went superior firepower of course. So not only support companies receive extra boost from doctrine, but you will also be forced to choose between AC recon (+10% for support companies) or rangers (+20% for line art), for example. So yeah definetely in most cases its generally bad.

They should decrease the width of line artillery to 2 or 2.5 at least. Probably of SP art as well.

 

[Kanitatlan]

My view is that the problem with artillery can only be properly addressed by completely changing the method for prevention of over-stacking of artillery. The current method, giving a width of three, makes line artillery relatively useless but is also completely unrealistic. I feel like the appropriate solution would be to make artillery zero width and prevent over provision by other methods. That would be much better than simply tinkering with the width. Tinkering width just alters the pay off with a fairly abrupt shift between don't bother and have as much as you can.

You could simply reduce the width. This quickly changes the conclusion to definitely have line artillery with the trade off transitioning to the org/HP issue for controlling how much. This creates weird choices because you would start to see division designs which are about getting around this - the old superwidth artillery division - and stuff like that. I don't wee any sensible change to artillery without a fundamental change in management.

I've made artillery proposals elsewhere so I won't repeat it here but see here if you want to upvote my suggestion.

 

[negro negrito]

no cas. i think in that game i went against normal advice from me and used line artillery since manpower was so tight, just to use more width and optimize for damage per manpower instead of usual things you'd optimize for (you *usually* want damage per width, but i couldn't actually fill width in this case!).

the picture is a year old. my memory of the game is not perfect. i want to say i used mix of 3/0 for to block landings and 3/3 with grand battleplan right to mulch soviet attackers on the line. there were some spots where supply was so bad that soviets would deal practically no damage and i left 3/0s there too.

i do not remember support companies. almost certainly support arty, entrenchment booster, and finnish unique stuff. probably aa since i didn't make planes.

3/3 is a meme division. i don't normally recommend it. but in this case, manpower was so tight and entrenchment so high that i resorted to it. it is *incredibly* fragile when used offensively, even more than 6/0. you can see that in 2nd screenshot where casualties roughly tripled to ~100k. on the other hand, it still reached moscow at ~100k. micro makes a big difference regardless of template...and even on the offensive part of that war, the ai spends more hours attacking than the reverse...but i no longer have massive entrenchment all the time to de org it as quickly.

this is a good example of why player intuitions about templates and tradeoffs aren't always accurate. as i mention in other threads, against the ai the overwhelming majority of casualties you will take comes from it battleplanning into your line, not from the < 5% of time your divisions spend attacking to make a pocket. in this case, i took less damage simply because gb right with entrenchment that high allowed me to damage and de-org them very quickly. then they ran out of equipment and did even less damage. when you win fights sooner, you spend fewer hours taking attacks. this makes ostensibly fragile divisions take much fewer casualties than players intuit because they spend less time taking attacks at all.

it's also why i consider the broad mp consensus of using 30+ width infantry as "offensive" divisions dubious. 30w infantry does not beat mp tanks. 30w infantry beats other infantry more slowly. if you're attacking with infantry at all, it does not make sense to me to boost hp and significantly reduce damage...and 30w infantry reduces damage. there's no way around it. i don't see how the relatively meagre ic savings on infantry kits and support company equipment can justify a substantial decrease in damage stats if you're, say, trying to force a naval landing or attack with special forces in bad terrain.

Would you argue your 3/3 is worth an attempt in multiplayer against, say, ¿a mass mob pure infantry enemy? The kind that do no armor. Your 3/3 seem very impressive and I have never seen anyone do that width, guerilla tactics make the combat width smaller and despite how fragile the 3/3 are, they should trade damage effectively enough to win in guerilla tactics ¿No?, they even come with decent defense so it is not that helpless against enemy infantry counter clicking when you take a tile.

Gonna try a game using them myself, but hoped you would offer some extra insight regarding it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Would you argue your 3/3 is worth an attempt in multiplayer against, say, ¿a mass mob pure infantry enemy? The kind that do no armor.

i doubt it. it worked vs ai because ai spams attacks with battleplan so much. a guy in mp who knows about mass mob --> roaching will probably notice the bizarre division and would certainly decline to attack into it the way the ai does. unless you deplete first, any offensive action would immediately get counter-pinned and punished in trades because once you move stuff and lose entrenchment, i think mass mob would trade favorable in ic. it was melting the ai due to entrenchment. it is a very swingy division.

 

[BurningEGO]

That works because supply is also bad and as a consequence the AI doesn't have enough divisions in place. If it was a better region in terms of supply it wouldn't work because your org would constantly be reduced due to constant ai attacks (with many more divisions) and you would eventually have to retreat those divs (since you wouldn't regain any org at all) and lose entrenchment.

When doing similar things with Finland, I often camped Olonets + Leningrad on the finnish side of the river, and built a few forts. You don't even need Grand Battle Plan. I believe I even went Mobile Warfare (thats correct, big noob mistake, but sometimes things don't go as planned) because I was expecting to annex Scandinavia in an ahistorical start, but at the end of the day I ended up in an early war vs USSR and later Germany and I ended up having to go full infantry mode. Sweden even joined my enemies at some point but I was lucky enough to capitulate Sweden quickly and camp the straits before bigger problems arose. I never got my cores on Scandinavia because Iceland was independent and I ended up creating an alliance with them for the acheviement. But to be honest even with countless errors the achievement merely took time.

Without the DLC I also annexed netherlands and puppeted dutch east indies and farmed them for easy divisions. You can easily recruit over 48 divisions with 9 inf battalions from them, and this before they even change mobilization laws.

 

[negro negrito]

i doubt it. it worked vs ai because ai spams attacks with battleplan so much. a guy in mp who knows about mass mob --> roaching will probably notice the bizarre division and would certainly decline to attack into it the way the ai does. unless you deplete first, any offensive action would immediately get counter-pinned and punished in trades because once you move stuff and lose entrenchment, i think mass mob would trade favorable in ic. it was melting the ai due to entrenchment. it is a very swingy division.

Hey, replying just in case you were interested in the results. Just tried 3/3 offensively against a human player going mass mob and your comment was completely correct (japan vs china), I mixed a good chunk of nomal defensive infantry too to not just intsta collapse against their people bashing into me. To give a few details on the 3/3 performance:
1. At first I could take the initial tile easily, say a 70% chance to win a tile quickly in the beginning of war (if he didn't notice the push and didn't reinforce/counterclick) and later I felt like my offensive chances per tile were 30% in good supply and 0% chance in bad supply/river for me to inflict enough soft attack to cause a reinforce meme (the initial success could also be because it took him a while to get the massive reinforcement from doctrine and guerilla warfare too).
2. However, the counter clicks from the masses were brutal, even if I could hold the tile I pushed, it came at a cost of some hp which translated to a cost of veterancy and overall slowing down offensives.
3. I eventually could not ever push again, not because of lack of equipment but the lack of veterancy and the enemy player counter clicking/pinning (exactly as you mentioned btw) meant eventually I started losing tiles and it became a tug of war that I feel I would have lost. The enemy got massive losses yes but it meant little against the millions.
4. Supply and rivers, the second the 3/3s met any river even in great supply it was like their damage became null and they lost a lot of hp and veterancy. Same for low supply, the second the supply was even a bit dark orange they also could not do anything. I am not as good as you so my guess could be wrong, but I imagine it is because of the lack of breakthrough, and those negative modifiers affecting my breakthrough even further (and the soft attack too not letting me win quickly which is the whole point of the 3/3s, if battle ends quickly, hp and org should not matter in theory) meant the 3/3s really quickly were kicked out of battle 1 by 1.
5. Denfensively, the 3/3s were fantastic. You are really smart, as long as I had entrenchment and the 3/3s were selected for battle the enemy infantry could do nothing at all, enemy deorged extremely quickly and my losses were practicaly 0.

Tl;dr. 3/3s offensively good at first, if enemy figures them out they stop suiciding into them and counterpinning effectively (like you predicted), eventually 3/3s can't take a tile tho because of being pinned and even losing after they have no entrenchment/planning or the battle lasts too long because of reinforce rate (low breakthrough and org meant the 3/3s with a long enough battle eventually stopped winning even if it was very favourable at first) . Defensively they are really good even against a META massive infantry attack, I was really surprised. You are a genius for already knowing exactly what would happen btw but your 3/3 division did stop the massive infantry 30+width effectively in favourable defensive conditions, however those 30+width still seem like the best offensive thing if you have no tanks/special forces, alas, the 3/3 could not make artillery as a batallion the new secret super powerful meta division despite my hopes.

A quirk that I think you may find interesting: when I had to defend, we noticed that the game prioritized my normal infantry divisions to send them into battle instead of the 3/3 despite my 3/3s having signal companies (which would mean the initiative for them to be prioritized but no?), it happened many times and we still do not know what caused it. This meant most defensive battles half or more of my 3/3 could not even do their massive soft attack damage due to being in reserve. I am not sure if just making the entire army 3/3s would have worked better. I had 30 3/3s at the start of war, the rest were normal infantry, just to give total numbers. I feared he would just battleplan me to death, that's why I didn't make that many 3/3s. Again, I don't know if a pure 3/3 army would have changed anything. I had air too.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

A quirk that I think you may find interesting: when I had to defend, we noticed that the game prioritized my normal infantry divisions to send them into battle instead of the 3/3 despite my 3/3s having signal companies (which would mean the initiative for them to be prioritized but no?), it happened many times and we still do not know what caused it. This meant most defensive battles half or more of my 3/3 could not even do their massive soft attack damage due to being in reserve. I am not sure if just making the entire army 3/3s would have worked better.

i read somewhere that the game picks which divisions go into combat based on defense (defending) or breakthrough (attacking). i am not sure if this is true, but it would track with what you describe; infantry have more defense per battalion than artillery (23 vs 10 at 1936 tech).

i don't think entire army of 3/3 is good in mp no matter how you slice it. against the ai it's great; once it bleeds out equipment (which it does very fast), a lot of the problems a human player presents are gone; counterattacks are a lot less scary when enemy has 50% strength due to lack of equipment. however, if you do use it, don't mix it with things that will be prioritized more highly.

4. Supply and rivers, the second the 3/3s met any river even in great supply it was like their damage became null and they lost a lot of hp and veterancy. Same for low supply, the second the supply was even a bit dark orange they also could not do anything. I am not as good as you so my guess could be wrong, but I imagine it is because of the lack of breakthrough, and those negative modifiers affecting my breakthrough even further (and the soft attack too not letting me win quickly which is the whole point of the 3/3s, if battle ends quickly, hp and org should not matter in theory) meant the 3/3s really quickly were kicked out of battle 1 by 1.

this is among the things i meant when i call it a "swingy" division. its org and hp are low, so it relies on winning quickly. when it can't, it suffers greatly. artillery takes terrain penalty from crossings and that makes things worse.

you can offset the terrain penalties using some combination of adaptable + makeshift bridge + pioneers, but there's no offset for getting counter-clicked!

 

[Stolen Rutters]

i read somewhere that the game picks which divisions go into combat based on defense (defending) or breakthrough (attacking). i am not sure if this is true, but it would track with what you describe; infantry have more defense per battalion than artillery (23 vs 10 at 1936 tech).

i don't think entire army of 3/3 is good in mp no matter how you slice it. against the ai it's great; once it bleeds out equipment (which it does very fast), a lot of the problems a human player presents are gone; counterattacks are a lot less scary when enemy has 50% strength due to lack of equipment. however, if you do use it, don't mix it with things that will be prioritized more highly.


this is among the things i meant when i call it a "swingy" division. its org and hp are low, so it relies on winning quickly. when it can't, it suffers greatly. artillery takes terrain penalty from crossings and that makes things worse.

you can offset the terrain penalties using some combination of adaptable + makeshift bridge + pioneers, but there's no offset for getting counter-clicked!

Ooh! This makes me want to try out a glass cannon strat run too! I haven’t tried that in almost a decade (whenever the release year was). I’m in the middle of a slow (summer = less indoor play time) achievement run so it will wait, though.