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It's generally 20 for most types of divisions, 10 for low supply areas/lovely countries, 40 for big boy tank divisions. In general, you should be fine with 20 width on everything.
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Nov 3, 2018 23:36
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10 width units will take significant casualties from anything larger due to how the combat system works. This is mitigated somewhat or almost entirely on the defense, as entrenched infantry on a mountain fort don’t give a poo poo about your guns and numbers. 10 width is a good choice for holding rough territory or a long line of forts, especially if you’re looking at an early defensive war. If you build up your forts in Czechoslovakia, for example, you don’t need anything bigger than width 10 infantry with no support until you’re looking to go offensive/around the time the Soviets decide you look tasty, as the east is much less defensible. As Nationalist China, you’re holding mountains and hills, often behind rivers, and some ports. Your supply sucks hard, so you’d often have logistical problems supplying 20 width units anyway, especially in the deserts and mountains. Later on, 20 width is fine, maybe even 40 with Mass Assault. You just can’t afford to start there as many minors.
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Nov 4, 2018 00:17
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10 width is for pure defensive infantry, especially if you go mass assault. Your massive reinforce rate means as long as you can keep feeding fresh troops into the grinder your line will never break (your infantry also recover faster to help with this) while you hopefully have ground attack to do the actual damage or your main attack force is somewhere else taking advantage of the situation. Alternatively, superior firepower to take advantage of as many support artillery as you can. Your line is going to be a little bit more brittle as a trade off. It does not mean leaving the same amount of divisions on the line, in both cases you should have sufficient divisions to fill the frontage if supply allowed (so in actuality twice as many divisions as 20 width template). 40 width division saves on support equipment and is usually gear more towards offensive, especially early on because they are really expensive. Higher breakthrough and more concentrated attack will hopefully allow you to overpower enemy division's defense. They can also get quite specialized like 5inf/10arty breakthrough division or some kind of monster armor division.
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Nov 4, 2018 01:00
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The problem I've found with 40 width in our current MP game is that if you're fighting on a narrow front there is a tendency for your defending divisions to retreat at the same time or close enough so that they can't be reinforced. So no matter how many divisions you stack in a province, they can get pushed out even if your battle icon is still showing green in the 80s. In the later game when there are a lot of divisions fielded on all sides you really start to see 20 width with signal companies becoming very effective, offensively and defensively.
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Nov 4, 2018 01:20
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bees everywhere posted:The problem I've found with 40 width in our current MP game is that if you're fighting on a narrow front there is a tendency for your defending divisions to retreat at the same time or close enough so that they can't be reinforced. So no matter how many divisions you stack in a province, they can get pushed out even if your battle icon is still showing green in the 80s. In the later game when there are a lot of divisions fielded on all sides you really start to see 20 width with signal companies becoming very effective, offensively and defensively. Yeah I've found this issue with 40 width divisions as well. They work fine on assault because you can force a wide front there but when defending they have a habit of just blocking reinforcements from showing up and then all retreating at once.
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Nov 4, 2018 01:32
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This sounds kinda good, since there seem to be ups and downs to all of them. I'll probably stick with 20 then though just since that's what I know.
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Nov 4, 2018 01:46
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JerikTelorian posted:What's the current consensus on division width? I usually like 20 because it seems about right, but I've seen posts saying 10 and others saying 40. It's all over the place. those are the three good numbers. there are good reasons to go with one or the other, depending on your situation, but 20 is never a bad choice even if it isn't the strictly best one.
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Nov 4, 2018 14:12
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Nothing wrong with a reliable 7/2
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Nov 4, 2018 16:55
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nah it's not all that effective with arty nerfs during, uhhh, tiger? I mean. it's okay. it's not efficient tho.
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Nov 4, 2018 18:52
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Just play as a country with a lot of men, like China, the USSR or America and just cram as many mens as you can into a division. yes, I'm bad at the game, what of it?
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Nov 4, 2018 19:03
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In my last game as Germany I knocked out Russia from a summer 41 invasion with a 10.7 million to 160k loss ratio in my favor using just 20 width divisions. The most important thing for doing well is knowing how to encircle troops with tank divisions.
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Nov 4, 2018 20:31
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Totalist/NatPop/PatAut/etc. routes in KR should have more Pelleyite America-esque "here's how everything around you is going to poo poo and your country is becoming a hellhole" flavor events. I elect to be an rear end in a top hat, I want to see assholery being done! 
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Nov 5, 2018 06:49
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Randarkman posted:I don't think there are any non-aligned democracies in HoI 4 for instance, they are basically all dictatorships or monarchies. The Finnish Mongol Republic cries a single tear 
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Nov 5, 2018 09:06
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Hey guys, I made a Division calculator so you can theorycraft and build divisions without having to boot up the game. You can check it out here It's still very much an alpha version as it doesn't support different tech level and some of the number may be wrong because I don't know how certain bonus stacks. I am looking to get tech level working, show the number of equipment you need for the template as well as how many factory to allocate in each equipment type. Then I'll work on comparing tool.
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Nov 5, 2018 11:16
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Randarkman posted:I don't think there are any non-aligned democracies in HoI 4 for instance, they are basically all dictatorships or monarchies. kemalist turkey?
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Nov 5, 2018 14:16
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I find artillery valuable on infantry. If you’re defending a river, mountains or forts, you want to be inflicting as many losses as you can. Air superiority paired with swarms of CAS is obviously preferable for inflicting losses, if you can afford it. This is brutal against the AI because they are constantly running low on equipment as it is.
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Nov 5, 2018 17:30
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pedro0930 posted:Hey guys, I made a Division calculator so you can theorycraft and build divisions without having to boot up the game. line artillery has more width then it should
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Nov 5, 2018 17:36
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Gamerofthegame posted:line artillery has more width then it should I see it as 3, which it is in game. SHISHKABOB fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Nov 5, 2018 |
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Nov 5, 2018 17:51
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SHISHKABOB posted:I see it as 3, which it is in game. 7 inf + 2 arty = 7x2 + 2x3 = 14 + 6 = 20 regular Artillery is right at 3 width and AA is right at 1 width but line AT should also be 1 width but is currently 3 width also it'd be nice to be able to add higher tier equipment as an option because there's a big gap in performance between great war tanks and a 1936 light tank
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Nov 5, 2018 17:54
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pedro0930 posted:Hey guys, I made a Division calculator so you can theorycraft and build divisions without having to boot up the game.
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Nov 5, 2018 17:57
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pedro0930 posted:Hey guys, I made a Division calculator so you can theorycraft and build divisions without having to boot up the game. The icons for medium, superheavy, and modern self-propelled AA & AT are reversed - you pick the SPAA, the icon shows the SPAT but stats show SPAA.
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Nov 5, 2018 18:55
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Two suggestions: * The "clear" button should probably reset the doctrine choice. * You should be able to set up a division then link to it Really cool tool, though. Should probably link to it on the HoI4wiki page once you're happy with it.
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Nov 5, 2018 19:36
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sloshmonger posted:The icons for medium, superheavy, and modern self-propelled AA & AT are reversed - you pick the SPAA, the icon shows the SPAT but stats show SPAA. Related, I'd appreciate an alt-tag for the icons, since I haven't played this game enough to distinguish light/heavy/modern tanks and their variants on sight.
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Nov 5, 2018 19:58
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pedro0930 posted:Hey guys, I made a Division calculator so you can theorycraft and build divisions without having to boot up the game. Something weird is going on with the Reconaissance stat. It seems to never reduce the score when you delete part of the template, so playing around with your division build a bit give you a hugely inflated number.
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Nov 5, 2018 20:11
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I made a huge post comparing the war industries of the real powers in WW2 to their military factories in HoI4 in a thread about France vs Italy, so I thought I'd subject you guys to it too. TL;DR: USA is hugely nerfed, Italy and Japan are hugely buffed. ----- I'm a fan of the chart of 1937 "Total Warmaking Potential" from The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers which looks at things like population and steel, coal and automobile production to show the industrial power of the seven major powers, expressed as a total of global warmaking potential: USA: 41.7% Germany: 14.4% USSR: 14% UK: 10.2% France: 4.2% Japan: 3.5% Italy: 2.5% Seven Powers (Total): 90.5% Allied Total: 56.1% Axis Total: 20.4% Comintern Total: 14% So if we use Italy as a baseline, with its 19 military factories, France should have something like 32 military factories at game start, since they're about 70% stronger. Instead they have 6 military factories, about a fifth of what they should have. ----- Let's see how the powers would stack up if we gave them military factories according to the real percentages given above: USA: 317 Germany: 110 USSR: 106 UK: 78 France: 32 Japan: 27 Italy: 19 Seven Powers (Total): 689 Allied Total: 427 Axis Total: 156 Comintern Total: 106 ---- Ingame, the countries have this many military factories at game start - I've put their percentage of the global total in brackets after the number, assuming that the seven powers make up 90.5% of the total as the original chart did: USSR: 36 (24.7%) Germany: 28 (19.2%) Japan: 19 (13%) Italy: 19 (13%) UK: 14 (9.6%) USA: 10 (6.8%) France: 6 (4.1%) Seven Powers (Total): 132 (90.5%) Allied Total: 30 (20.5%) Axis Total: 66 (45.2%) Comintern Total: 36 (24.7%) It's interesting that the Axis have exactly the same number of factories as the Allies and Comintern combined. It suggests that the game was balanced to give the Axis a 50-50 shot at winning each game, assuming they fight both other factions simultaneously. ----- Now that we can compare the two charts directly, we can give each country and faction an "Overpoweredness rating", indicating how well their ingame military production stands up to their production in reality. Italy: 520% as powerful in game as in reality. Japan: 371% as powerful in game as in reality. USSR: 176% as powerful in game as in reality. Germany: 133% as powerful in game as in reality. France: 98% as powerful in game as in reality. UK: 94% as powerful in game as in reality. USA: 16% as powerful in game as in reality. So, Italy and Japan receive gigantic buffs, USSR gets a fair-sized one, Germany gets a small buff, UK and France are about right, and USA is a shadow of its real-world self. ----- Looking at the topic of this particular thread, as well as the maths above, it definitely seems like France is too weak industrially and its opponents are too strong industrially compared to history. Ingame France faces 47 military factories dedicated to her destruction at game start. She has 6 of her own to fight back with, and 14 from the UK, so her enemies have 235% as much industrial power as she does. Using the historical numbers, France's enemies should only be 117% as strong as her and the UK combined - a far more even playing field. Now, this analysis is pretty flawed - there are an absolute ton of omissions in it. I don't think about resources - the Allies have lots of resources, while the Axis tend to have large areas of shortages. I don't think about naval dockyards, which are certainly military production, or the Allied advantage in civilian factories which allow them to build faster. On the other hand I don't think about how the Axis have more warlike governments, so can build up their war industries faster that way. Axis countries tend to have better focus trees, with Germany's straight-up gifting them entire countries, or giving them alliances with minor European nations who are also ahistorically strong industrially. Non-Axis nations, on the other hand, have horrible focuses like the Great Purge, or bad National Spirits they need to get rid of, like France's huge penalties to land doctrine and political power, or the USA's Great Depression. However, in spite of all the omissions, it's pretty clear that the Axis countries in general have been heavily buffed, and Italy in particular has received gigantic buffs, which completely skews the 1939 playing-field. The USA has been extremely heavily nerfed compared to reality, which skews the entire game and facilitates weird stuff like Mexico or Japan successfully invading them in 1936. I haven't seen the devs post any real reason why they chose to make the USA so weak and Italy and Japan so strong - I can only presume that they balanced the game with the intent of giving the Axis an at-least 50% chance of defeating both other factions, and that they also wanted to make every participant in WW2 feel powerful and worth playing. They may have begun with a historically-powerful Italy and decided that they just felt irrelevant compared to the deluge of Allied industry. I'd quite like to play a Hearts of Iron 4 with historical levels of industry. A historical Axis sandwiched between the USA, UK and USSR should feel hopelessly doomed. The USA should have endless supplies of tanks, artillery, planes and ships to throw at the Axis. If it gets old that the superpowers crush the Axis once they all join the war, then I can always use the "Buff this country" sliders to change that. But I feel that simulating history should be the default, rather than the odd balance situation we've currently got. Gort fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Nov 5, 2018 |
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Nov 5, 2018 21:03
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im fairly sure the nations are like this so the game is remotely fun that said a lot of minors (especially outside of europe) still could use some buffs in terms of resources to make the game both more historical and fun
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Nov 5, 2018 21:21
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I don't think a Hoi4 where Italy is actually weak enough for the Greco-Italian war to play out as it did would be very interesting.
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Nov 5, 2018 21:32
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Davincie posted:im fairly sure the nations are like this so the game is remotely fun Is your notion of fun in games directly linked to the power level of Italy or something
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Nov 5, 2018 21:38
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dear paradox interactive, i lost the ability to feel human when i discovered that italy was not made as absolutely worthless as they were in real life
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Nov 5, 2018 21:40
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Gort posted:Is your notion of fun in games directly linked to the power level of Italy or something Just lol if you don't personally channel Benito Mussolini when playing historical strategy games.
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Nov 5, 2018 21:43
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Gort posted:Is your notion of fun in games directly linked to the power level of Italy or something italy is already worthless ingame, they don't really need to be downgraded to the reality of being a nation that shamelessly fields cv-33s
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Nov 5, 2018 21:45
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The Italy focus tree rework will fix things to make Italy sufficiently worthless.
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Nov 5, 2018 21:49
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Gort posted:I made a huge post comparing the war industries of the real powers in WW2 to their military factories in HoI4 in a thread about France vs Italy, so I thought I'd subject you guys to it too. TL;DR: USA is hugely nerfed, Italy and Japan are hugely buffed. Honestly this is a cool analysis, thanks. It would be interesting to see a mod with "realistic" factory numbers--I'd expect it wouldn't be too hard to make. Regarding the US specifically, maybe the best way to balance it would be to give it all civilian factories with very few military? Then it has to convert or build military factories to prepare for war.
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Nov 5, 2018 21:56
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I think Italy absolutely needs some kind of Nat China system that hinders their military and can be gradually removed by expending political power/experience. Give the player a way of making Italy not poo poo, but the default state of Italy should be poo poo.
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Nov 5, 2018 22:02
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Didnt Italy have the largest air force at the start of the war? It was mostly biplanes and poorly trained pilots but it was still numbers. How did they have so many if their industrial output is so poo poo? It definitely seems like civilian factories should be factored into the maths for balance of factory power. I also think that the soviets have far too many factories at start. It would be interesting if the Democracies started with more factories but were locked into producing certain items for a certain while because of government contracts that they cant break. Like, yeah, the USA has a billion loving factories but at start your ability to change what you build is limited because they are all already building the 1936 Infantry Equipment. AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Nov 5, 2018 |
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Nov 5, 2018 22:04
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I appreciate the analysis and it's neat seeing how the game setup differs from the real world, but I also understand why it does and I don't think creating more disparity between the nations would be beneficial to the game. It's still a video game that's balanced to be fun if you play as any of the major powers. It's not a war simulation.
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Nov 5, 2018 22:05
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Didnt Italy have the largest air force at the start of the war? It was mostly biplanes and poorly trained pilots but it was still numbers. How did they have so many if their industrial output is so poo poo? Italy wasn't subject to any restrictions because they ended ww1 on the allied side. So most of their airforce was produced from the 1920s onward. Basically they had a head-start on Germany, but were producing outdated stuff. AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:It would be interesting if the Democracies started with more factories but were locked into producing certain items for a certain while because of government contracts that they cant break. Like, yeah, the USA has a billion loving factories but at start your ability to change what you build is limited because they are all already building the 1936 Infantry Equipment. This would be an interesting way to simulate differences between planned and free economies. The free economies are stronger, but the government can't just tell everyone what to produce until they switch into war economy. Whereas the Fascists and Communists can tailor their production to exactly what they want, but will be overall less productive. Dramicus fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Nov 5, 2018 |
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Nov 5, 2018 22:08
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The US is always hard to balance. In the very first game, they had like 1300 factories and the gameplay in a 1936 scenario was just building an unstoppable army of tanks and mechanized infantry from scratch. Between having to ferry all your armies across the oceans and the fact that the game isn't very hard as the Americans, the US isn't all that fun, its the most boring busywork of any great power.
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Nov 5, 2018 22:09
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Gort posted:
A historically strong France stops Germany at the border and holds them there for two years until it has finished gearing up and then beats them, unless we specifically code a French AI that leaves huge holes in its frontline (but that's just the regular AI ohohohohoho). A historically strong Japan is zero threat to the US. We'd need to simulate properly the utter unwillingness of people in the Allies to actually utilize their war-making potential first, and even then people expect the historical chain of events to play out, even if historically that relied on huge blunders that the player simply will not make. Just as an example, the new US focus tree allows an early interventionist path. this locks the US out of all their free factory focuses but allows them to intervene in the war earlier than usual. A skilled player can use this to stop Germany cold at the Polish border. Now imagine if we gave the US its historically accurate industrial strength. To put it bluntly: the US as it is in game right now is already horrifically overpowered and should be nerfed even further. Finally, we felt that "if you play most of the countries in the world at your very best you will be not completely worthless trash" is not a good pitch for a strategy game where you can play any country in the world.
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Nov 5, 2018 22:10
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I think it's possible to give the US their historical production capacity, just implement artificial limits on how much they can use at a given time. Maybe tie production to war support, so the us starts with almost 0% war support and therefore can't pump out millions of tanks until something like pearl harbor bumps it up.
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Nov 5, 2018 22:14
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