Changes to discourage large grouping of units and more strategy.

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    • Changes to discourage large grouping of units and more strategy.

      This game is starting to get boring. The reason is more and more players are forming large unit groups and just moving through a country to destroy the infrastructure. They have no intention of keeping the new territory at first. Their goal is to simply destroy the economy first. Once the economy of the opposing player is destroyed they simply out produce their opponent and then then take over all of the land. There is no penalty to this strategy. The attacker does suffer attacking penalties but, those penalties are so minimal is has not stopped this practice. In real life wars are not won by one large army just marching through a country. Wars are fought using large fronts and advancing slowly. Armies are massed in areas to provide a break out but when breakouts occur they are then followed by advances on the entire front.

      In order to fix this problem I would like to suggest the following changes.

      1. A penalty to a units defense similar to its offense if more than 5 units of any type are grouped together. My opponent had a group of 10 Heavy Tanks 10 Medium Tanks and 10 Mobile AA. The Mobile AA were only level 1 but because the heavy and medium tanks absorbed so much damage the group was able to defeat over 75 planes grouped in 5 by 5 by 5 fighter, tact, strat. I real life with that many tanks grouped together a blind pilot could have been able to hit a bunch of tanks.

      2. A penalty to units that are cutoff from the rest of the army. Again in real life one way to defeat a larger foe is to cutoff that armies supply lines. If a large tank force does not have access to gasoline then really they are ineffective. So there should be defensive and offensive penalties to units that are in provinces that are not connected to other provinces. This again will stop the one army march to a capital and will make fast units like armored cars much more useful. Of course some units such as commandos and paratroopers are trained to fight behind enemy lines so these units would not suffer the same penalty again making them more valuable.

      3. Flanking - in war another way to destroy a larger force is to flank them. have smaller units attack the larger force from multiple sides at the same time. I once attacked a 3 stack of infantry level 1 with 4 individual infantry units from 4 different directions. Again in real life the 3 stack would have been overwhelmed and easily destroyed with the 4 individual 1 stacks taking minimal casualties. Well maybe the first unit to attack would take heavy casualties. Either way the 4 would always win. In this game the way it deals damage the 3 stack easily wiped all 4 of the single stack infantry.


      Hope this helps.

    • As for number 1, this exists in 1.5 (but for 10 units, not 5). It's called State Based Damage Efficiency, or SBDE, and a version of this exists in 1.0 as well. In 1.0, SBDE applies only to unit types, not total stack size. Forum thread on SBDE goo.gl/HBY9fu
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    • Dinjinn wrote:

      In real life wars are not won by one large army just marching through a country.
      Really? (see: Heinz Guderian, Father of the Blitzkrieg)

      Dinjinn wrote:

      They have no intention of keeping the new territory at first. Their goal is to simply destroy the economy first. Once the economy of the opposing player is destroyed they simply out produce their opponent and then then take over all of the land. There is no penalty to this strategy.
      And the problem is? (see: William Tecumseh Sherman, American Civil War)
      "Es gibt keine verzweifelten Lagen, es gibt nur verzweifelte Menschen" - There are no desperate situations, there are only desperate people.
      General Heinz Guderian (Schneller Heinz)

      Kenny says - You've got to know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away And know when to run

    • dw98 wrote:

      Dinjinn wrote:

      In real life wars are not won by one large army just marching through a country.
      Really? (see: Heinz Guderian, Father of the Blitzkrieg)

      Dinjinn wrote:

      They have no intention of keeping the new territory at first. Their goal is to simply destroy the economy first. Once the economy of the opposing player is destroyed they simply out produce their opponent and then then take over all of the land. There is no penalty to this strategy.
      And the problem is? (see: William Tecumseh Sherman, American Civil War)
      If you think Guderian won the Battle of France alone, you are sadly mistaken. He did not win by just marching through. He marched through and sufficiently disorganized the French line so the rest of the army could catch up.

      True for Sherman.


      In any case, megastacks are not really a problem. Yes it will take whatever you oppose it, but in theory there is nothing else to stop you from doing the same to the other guy, and plenty of ways to wear out the megastack due to the fact that it may be 200 units large, there are still only 10 units fighting the same stack.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by Chimere ().

    • Chimere wrote:

      If you think Guderian won the Battle of France alone, you are sadly mistaken. He did not win by just marching through. He marched through and sufficiently disorganized the French line so the rest of the army could catch up.
      neither sad nor mistaken - but true - not really my point that he won it by himself.
      "Es gibt keine verzweifelten Lagen, es gibt nur verzweifelte Menschen" - There are no desperate situations, there are only desperate people.
      General Heinz Guderian (Schneller Heinz)

      Kenny says - You've got to know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away And know when to run

    • DinJinn, I agree with you that there can be some more realistic improvements and I have a few more suggestions to add. Your thinking is not too far outside the box yet refreshing, aside from the fact they recently had a major change to the game, however your opening arguments was not the way to go. Your point number 1 is a red herring at best, but I could chalk it up to inexperienced play. I will get my troll out of the way real quick so I can start agreeing with you again. Your point number one, is, how should I say, pointless (sorry). You have to play within the structure of the game. Your opponent knows that the top 10 units in his stack attack or retaliate and which ones depend on the makeup of the opponents. He covered his bases and added some extra HP for fodder by having so much heavy armor. You on the other hand used stack with 5 each of Ints, TBs, and SBs, when you should have used at least 10 ABs in every attacking airstrike or patrol. Heavy and light armor are what they are for, so, sorry, your fault for ignoring your enemy or failing to gain the intel to prepare you for it.

      Your points 2-3 are very interesting and I think a game could benefit from implementing aspects of that. I can add points 4, 5,6, and 7, but forgive me if redundant becasue I didn't read the whole thread.

      4. Bonus for multiple class types involved in the attack. Ie, Infantry do better with armor support, and even better with ordinance support and air support. Just brainstorming here, but The units could get a 5% damage boost for each class of unit they are using in the attack and have hit within the last 30 mins. So an infantry could potentially get a 20% boost if they have ordinance, armor, air, and naval bombardment. Not sure if we want to include secret lab units as we could just divide them into the other types.

      5. Have a defensive setting for units to entrench like they did in WWII for a reduction in damage. This would not cost resources becasue they would use sand/wood/shovels/rock/terrain to do this and all it would cost is time to entrench and time to un-entrench.

      6. Fortification revamp. Throwing together sand bags, pill boxes, trenches should be fairly quick, use only a few resources, and should be almost mandatory for a successful army durring pauses in their advancement or while stationed for defense. Hardly anyone makes then now becasue they take a long time and are easily broken down. Make the lev 1 fortifications faster and dont have a minimum of lev 1 for there to be some protection (ie if it is 1/3 built, let it shave 5% off the damage. This level of fortification is taking advantage of the low hanging fruit for fast and efficient defensive improvement. You could have an attack order of "attack and fortify" (possibly high command) so you dont have to watch for when your attack is successful.

      7. To stop lone runners from being able to run through territory and magically gain control of the province, you could do something like require them to defeat 1 immobile militia at each province. This would at least make the runner slow down, or require runners to have strong enough units to one shot the militia. In cities it would be 3 militia that spring up. Another idea is that it could be based on morale and milita only spring up if morale is over 50%, or this feature could be reserved for core territory.

    • In fact the lone runners are the prime counters to doom stacks. The DS moves slow, and leaves plenty of room for your own army to evade it. At the same time, his territory is extremely vulnerable because there are no or few units in it (they are all in the DS). So "outflanking" is indeed the way to go against a DS: while they take a single line of provinces, for example in the direction of your capital, you can take ALL their territory.

      Sure it is a bitch to lose your capital with all the sexy buildings in it, but you'll win the war because he takes even bigger infra damage than you.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • FinnDaddy wrote:

      DinJinn, I agree with you that there can be some more realistic improvements and I have a few more suggestions to add. Your thinking is not too far outside the box yet refreshing, aside from the fact they recently had a major change to the game, however your opening arguments was not the way to go. Your point number 1 is a red herring at best, but I could chalk it up to inexperienced play. I will get my troll out of the way real quick so I can start agreeing with you again. Your point number one, is, how should I say, pointless (sorry). You have to play within the structure of the game. Your opponent knows that the top 10 units in his stack attack or retaliate and which ones depend on the makeup of the opponents. He covered his bases and added some extra HP for fodder by having so much heavy armor. You on the other hand used stack with 5 each of Ints, TBs, and SBs, when you should have used at least 10 ABs in every attacking airstrike or patrol. Heavy and light armor are what they are for, so, sorry, your fault for ignoring your enemy or failing to gain the intel to prepare you for it.

      Your points 2-3 are very interesting and I think a game could benefit from implementing aspects of that. I can add points 4, 5,6, and 7, but forgive me if redundant becasue I didn't read the whole thread.

      4. Bonus for multiple class types involved in the attack. Ie, Infantry do better with armor support, and even better with ordinance support and air support. Just brainstorming here, but The units could get a 5% damage boost for each class of unit they are using in the attack and have hit within the last 30 mins. So an infantry could potentially get a 20% boost if they have ordinance, armor, air, and naval bombardment. Not sure if we want to include secret lab units as we could just divide them into the other types.

      5. Have a defensive setting for units to entrench like they did in WWII for a reduction in damage. This would not cost resources becasue they would use sand/wood/shovels/rock/terrain to do this and all it would cost is time to entrench and time to un-entrench.

      6. Fortification revamp. Throwing together sand bags, pill boxes, trenches should be fairly quick, use only a few resources, and should be almost mandatory for a successful army durring pauses in their advancement or while stationed for defense. Hardly anyone makes then now becasue they take a long time and are easily broken down. Make the lev 1 fortifications faster and dont have a minimum of lev 1 for there to be some protection (ie if it is 1/3 built, let it shave 5% off the damage. This level of fortification is taking advantage of the low hanging fruit for fast and efficient defensive improvement. You could have an attack order of "attack and fortify" (possibly high command) so you dont have to watch for when your attack is successful.

      7. To stop lone runners from being able to run through territory and magically gain control of the province, you could do something like require them to defeat 1 immobile militia at each province. This would at least make the runner slow down, or require runners to have strong enough units to one shot the militia. In cities it would be 3 militia that spring up. Another idea is that it could be based on morale and milita only spring up if morale is over 50%, or this feature could be reserved for core territory.
      Point 4 is overcomplicated. It's not bad, just would never be implemented into the game. Maybe if you simplified it so that bonuses were only applied to units in the same stack it would be considered.

      Point 5 is a good idea. It could be a button added along with the move/attack buttons. Would stop the unit in their tracks and pause them (similar to when they're upgrading) for 20 or so minutes. Once the timer is up they would get a flat bonus to defence similar to when they're on a province core.

      Fortifications have been brought up a lot but honestly there's not much to do there. Fortifications took a long time to establish. The difficult thing is that fortifications were often created in times of peace, or when not directly threatened and there's very little time to do that in-game. It wouldn't be a good idea to reduce build times because it would be totally unfair for someone to construct a fortifcation from scratch in the time it takes your army to reach them.

      7 is a bad point. There's a reason militia are buildable units. Station them in the closer provinces to slow down or halt enemy breakthroughs.

    • FinnDaddy wrote:

      A fair and honest critique, well done.
      I din't mean to burst your bubble. All but #7 are decently fair points, just that I figured I've been around the forum for a while and have seen a lot of ideas for the game, I figured I'd at least tell you why they do or don't work rather than someone being an arse about it.

      I honestly do think there could be some way to improve the way fortifications work in the game, but I've never thought of or heard a viable way that could be implemented.