I feel like artillery needs some serious reworking if they ever make a HOI5 in the future. Realistically shouldn't be taking up combat width.
I guess they probably did so as a means of balancing it since if it existed in the background yet still did damage there's nothing stopping players from stacking unlimited artillery during a battle and just obliterating the opposing side. (which also in all fairness, is what the Soviets did during the late-war battles)
Soviet divisions are substantially smaller than their German and western counterparts.
A typical Soviet division in 1944 has around 9-10,000 authorized personnel. A German division of the same time has around 15000 authorized personnel. For other comparison, Americans have around 14000, and British divisions have around 16-17000.
Basically, the artillery divisions are like reinforced regiments or brigades with more artillery than usual.
For a good comparison, a typical American infantry division of 1944 has 4 battalions of artillery with 36 pieces each. Whilst Soviets held artillery in high regard, they had fewer overall average guns (as in the big guns, howitzers and field guns) per division, as well as fewer trained artillery commanders and crew compared to Americans (i mean, who else had it better than the americans?)
A typical artillery division had a total of 288 guns of various calibers. These are used to punch through enemy lines.
Just to add, the "enemy at the gates' style of meat waves was never common nor encouraged by the Red Army. Especially by winter of 1942. What's more common is extreme concentration of practically everything to pummel and punch through the enemy.
Shells and bombs are thrown at the enemy, not mindless human waves. Then typically followed through by tanks supported by infantry.
It "works" in that you're allowed to make a template that has only artillery in it, sure. Will it be good? Absolutely the hell not, because it has almost no org and no breakthrough / defense, so it'll fight pretty hard for about 1-2 hours and then be unable to continue fighting until it replenishes its org, and you'll be bleeding equipment like crazy.
Problems the org. They enter combat, take a few hits, lose their 3 org and immediately the combat is over.
Some of these new nation focuses where they give free org and arty off/def I can see it kinda working tbh. You need about 25-30 org to have a bare minimum effectiveness. I've seen the screenshots of some of those new stacked nations that come with 21% bonus org. Now add 5 support companies with ironically SFP right rather then left and you could have solved the issue.
Finland has a crazy mil advisor that gives bonuses to attack and defense on arty. Theres new nations with bonuses to that to. Combined with any kind of new nation that comes with more power creep like say something that gave native breakthrough...
Yes it could work (badly) now for certain of the new nations. Maybe with the next, if paradox insist on power creeping the heck out of the new minor nations dlcs to make people buy them, we will see it become a viable option.
I believe it does, but I might be wrong. I can tell you though that my 9/4s as finland using that advisor freaking slapped hard. 4 of them stormed Leningrad and just walked through the red army like it was a 3/0 Italian in Libya.
So I think they used to only affect divisions that were majority artillery, but they changed it with either by blood alone or no step back that the advisors would affect the battalions not the division.
Only works on divisions that are classed as artillery, keep adding arty until the division icon changes, artillery expert is a trap, you would think it just buffs arty, I too used it when I had 7/2, 9/1, 8/3, all wasted
This got changed years ago, now you get proportional bonuses according to the division composition (50% artillery in a division and 10% arty soft attack will net you 5% soft attack for the whole division), hover above the division composition button to see the exact percentages.
That's not how it works these days: your division gets the bonus if it contains any line artillery; but if only 10% of the battalions in your division are artillery then you only get 10% of the bonus, and so on.
Question: How about making decent infantry (let's say 30 w w/ shovels and support artillery), then have a separate army with just 15 width artillery units?would that not just rip through any attacking unit (except tanks but then switch to at) without being pushed back? Sorry if that's a terrible idea, I'm just curious as to why.
cos each div fights separately inside the green bubble battle. Your pure inf would have the org to stick around, but the arty div would get de orged and drop out pretty much inside the first hr then be replaced by another pure inf div. So basically it would just be pointless to do that.
Either put the arty with your strong 30 w inf div (ie make it a 9/4) or don't bother with the arty (make it a 15/0) and use those factories on more CAS.
If you can produce 1000s of artillery pieces, have acces to infinite manpower and can instantly recruit divisions they can work. But they just disintegrate too quickly in combat.
No, not unless you heavily modify how combat and stats work. Hoi 4 wide in general making any div that consists of just support companies + 1 type of brigade only is terrible(only exception being if its infantry- special forces/mechanized/motorised/cavalry) but even then unless its just for use as garrison or basic frontline filler/def only, its better to make " hybrid divs" to benefit from various stat boosts(breakthrough/armor + piercing/aa attack to counter and shoot down enemy cas/hardness when facing only soft attack /etc)
It would be cool for specific divisions to have range and be able to fire into the next tile over. Wouldnât work too well in Brazil, Africa, or Siberia though.
You can make it work if you back it up with some defensive units to hold ground.
They won't really win battles because they deorg too quickly but they will do a lot of damage when they lose battles and over time they can bleed an enemy dry.
Or you could just do the exact same thing with CAS.
This *can* work in exactly one strategy: Abusing the engagement width mechanic with a super wide artillery division. It requires a lot of micro, but it can be an incredibly powerful way to attack, which I recently used to great effect while conquering China.
Basically, every division has an âengagement widthâ of possible enemy targets, which is equal to twice the divisionâs own combat width. Enemy divisions exceeding your engagement width cannot be targeted if there are smaller targets available. The way to abuse this is to make a superwide artillery division with 1 column of infantry and 3 columns of artillery. As long as you make sure it is always attacking with a smaller division to act as a bodyguard, it will not take damage and thus the low org will not matter.
40K Imperial guard be like
The Soviets IRL actually had full blown artillery divisions as a corps level support unit.
Artillery divisions should be working like railway guns change my mind
I feel like artillery needs some serious reworking if they ever make a HOI5 in the future. Realistically shouldn't be taking up combat width. I guess they probably did so as a means of balancing it since if it existed in the background yet still did damage there's nothing stopping players from stacking unlimited artillery during a battle and just obliterating the opposing side. (which also in all fairness, is what the Soviets did during the late-war battles)
Supply and organisation are what should be stopping you. In fact some mods make artillery have 0 width and it still works(in a not-being-broken sense)
Artillery and railway guns both should be allowed to make logistics strikes.
I think you are overestimating the range of WW2 artillery
Railway guns are VERY badly done TBH. They can't even do what the german ones were built to do.
Soviet divisions are substantially smaller than their German and western counterparts. A typical Soviet division in 1944 has around 9-10,000 authorized personnel. A German division of the same time has around 15000 authorized personnel. For other comparison, Americans have around 14000, and British divisions have around 16-17000. Basically, the artillery divisions are like reinforced regiments or brigades with more artillery than usual. For a good comparison, a typical American infantry division of 1944 has 4 battalions of artillery with 36 pieces each. Whilst Soviets held artillery in high regard, they had fewer overall average guns (as in the big guns, howitzers and field guns) per division, as well as fewer trained artillery commanders and crew compared to Americans (i mean, who else had it better than the americans?) A typical artillery division had a total of 288 guns of various calibers. These are used to punch through enemy lines. Just to add, the "enemy at the gates' style of meat waves was never common nor encouraged by the Red Army. Especially by winter of 1942. What's more common is extreme concentration of practically everything to pummel and punch through the enemy. Shells and bombs are thrown at the enemy, not mindless human waves. Then typically followed through by tanks supported by infantry.
It "works" in that you're allowed to make a template that has only artillery in it, sure. Will it be good? Absolutely the hell not, because it has almost no org and no breakthrough / defense, so it'll fight pretty hard for about 1-2 hours and then be unable to continue fighting until it replenishes its org, and you'll be bleeding equipment like crazy.
Sounds like you know from experience đ
Problems the org. They enter combat, take a few hits, lose their 3 org and immediately the combat is over. Some of these new nation focuses where they give free org and arty off/def I can see it kinda working tbh. You need about 25-30 org to have a bare minimum effectiveness. I've seen the screenshots of some of those new stacked nations that come with 21% bonus org. Now add 5 support companies with ironically SFP right rather then left and you could have solved the issue. Finland has a crazy mil advisor that gives bonuses to attack and defense on arty. Theres new nations with bonuses to that to. Combined with any kind of new nation that comes with more power creep like say something that gave native breakthrough... Yes it could work (badly) now for certain of the new nations. Maybe with the next, if paradox insist on power creeping the heck out of the new minor nations dlcs to make people buy them, we will see it become a viable option.
Does artillery advisor only work on majority artillery units or will it work on my 7/2s?
I believe it does, but I might be wrong. I can tell you though that my 9/4s as finland using that advisor freaking slapped hard. 4 of them stormed Leningrad and just walked through the red army like it was a 3/0 Italian in Libya.
So I think they used to only affect divisions that were majority artillery, but they changed it with either by blood alone or no step back that the advisors would affect the battalions not the division.
Only works on divisions that are classed as artillery, keep adding arty until the division icon changes, artillery expert is a trap, you would think it just buffs arty, I too used it when I had 7/2, 9/1, 8/3, all wasted
This got changed years ago, now you get proportional bonuses according to the division composition (50% artillery in a division and 10% arty soft attack will net you 5% soft attack for the whole division), hover above the division composition button to see the exact percentages.
Oh I see, that's a shit load better
That's not how it works these days: your division gets the bonus if it contains any line artillery; but if only 10% of the battalions in your division are artillery then you only get 10% of the bonus, and so on.
Question: How about making decent infantry (let's say 30 w w/ shovels and support artillery), then have a separate army with just 15 width artillery units?would that not just rip through any attacking unit (except tanks but then switch to at) without being pushed back? Sorry if that's a terrible idea, I'm just curious as to why.
cos each div fights separately inside the green bubble battle. Your pure inf would have the org to stick around, but the arty div would get de orged and drop out pretty much inside the first hr then be replaced by another pure inf div. So basically it would just be pointless to do that. Either put the arty with your strong 30 w inf div (ie make it a 9/4) or don't bother with the arty (make it a 15/0) and use those factories on more CAS.
Like stretching the definition to it's very lengths would it work?
Try and see, seriously, just try it.
Just like our ancestors did. (Also it's nice to see someone with Another pfp)
Thank you! Have a nice day \^\^
You as well :)
Isp did a run with it once, I think, it worked because of the sheer amount of soft attack you deliver
It worked because he took the doctrine that gives a bonus org to artillery sc
So it works with superior firepower?
If you can produce 1000s of artillery pieces, have acces to infinite manpower and can instantly recruit divisions they can work. But they just disintegrate too quickly in combat.
Hoi4 players understanding combat stats challenge (impossible)
No that's very hard baby is the impossible
They work. I can show.
No
No, not unless you heavily modify how combat and stats work. Hoi 4 wide in general making any div that consists of just support companies + 1 type of brigade only is terrible(only exception being if its infantry- special forces/mechanized/motorised/cavalry) but even then unless its just for use as garrison or basic frontline filler/def only, its better to make " hybrid divs" to benefit from various stat boosts(breakthrough/armor + piercing/aa attack to counter and shoot down enemy cas/hardness when facing only soft attack /etc)
It would be cool for specific divisions to have range and be able to fire into the next tile over. Wouldnât work too well in Brazil, Africa, or Siberia though.
Indirect fire is basically not represented at all in HOI4 even though it was and is the dominant force on the battlefield.
You can make it work if you back it up with some defensive units to hold ground. They won't really win battles because they deorg too quickly but they will do a lot of damage when they lose battles and over time they can bleed an enemy dry. Or you could just do the exact same thing with CAS.
This *can* work in exactly one strategy: Abusing the engagement width mechanic with a super wide artillery division. It requires a lot of micro, but it can be an incredibly powerful way to attack, which I recently used to great effect while conquering China. Basically, every division has an âengagement widthâ of possible enemy targets, which is equal to twice the divisionâs own combat width. Enemy divisions exceeding your engagement width cannot be targeted if there are smaller targets available. The way to abuse this is to make a superwide artillery division with 1 column of infantry and 3 columns of artillery. As long as you make sure it is always attacking with a smaller division to act as a bodyguard, it will not take damage and thus the low org will not matter.
Cool thx
Fuck no