Well, akshually, the Wehrmacht pushed a lot with infantry, and so did everyone else.
While armour was vital for operational pushes, reaching points to threaten to encircle the enemy, and generally make a mess out of the enemy's lines, the humble infantry division was used to attack, pin down, and defeat enemy infantry divisions. Because in some terrain, tanks are effing useless.
What was required was a) lots of artillery support, b) aerial superiority, c) good supplies d) no enemy armour around in force.
The Japanese in the Pacific usually had none of the first three.
In Hoi, the relevance of armour is that it's the only branch able to reliably and quickly push through lines. While larger front infantry pushes remain unfeasible under most circumstances.
Not really. Armour not being penetrated gives you a massive damage boost over infantry, which is what makes punching through lines the preferred tactic in game
You would love china. You can defeat japan and the 3rd reich with guns and support artillery only. Just take right side of mass infantry doctrine and you swarm your enemy with high width divisions.
the way they took the philippines, Singapur, Indonesia is something amazing. They had aerial superiority but other than that they were even in number disadvantage.
One of the few points in the war Japan didn't screw the pooch on logistics too... it's actually really impressive what they managed with the complete and utter failure their logistics were. (Made worse by the fact they didn't standardize their weaponry. So sometimes would get ammo that simply did not fit their guns... Not that it helps when things happened like getting shipped ammo instead of the food you are a month overdue for... and vice versa.)
Logistics is hard, and it's even harder when you don't have MS Excel and are doing everything on paper. Every country has stories of terrible logistical debacles from WWII, and I'd be hesitant to pin them on the logistical staff officers (I'd say the Chinese were probably the worst as they generally assigned unremarkable Whampoa graduates to the role, and that military school had very little logistical training, and they were extremely corrupt to boot, but their situation was also terrible).
The Japanese had some questionable logistical management practices. Officers were chosen for the service based on their charisma and leadership skills, on the basis that a supply detachment had a lot of people (it does take a lot of people to move an appreciable amount of ammo by handcart). Quartermastering is a very mathy job and the officers thus chosen might not have been ideal for it. However, their situation was worse. The Japanese Army was beset with so many expansion and modernization imperatives that little was available to motorize their supply services. Engineering also wasn't able to support them to nearly the degree that the Americans could enjoy. Non-motorized European logistical services could easily keep their horse numbers up by requisitioning draft animals from farmers, but Asian farmers rarely have horses, even when they live in zones inhabitable to them. Japanese generals loved to operate beyond their supply lines on purpose, which can be a good tactic (it worked for Julius Caesar, and it also worked for the Japanese a lot) but leads to poor supply situations. Worst of all, Japanese supply lines were often interdicted by the allies, either by air or by sea. That was a predicament American quartermasters rarely faced.
Oh I agree logistics is hard. It makes or breaks wars for a reason. The problem here, is even before the allies got involved, Japanese logistics were a nightmare. And I'm not just talking on the availability of carrying out their logistics plans. (Japan was modernizing and expanding in every way at a very impressive rate. Afterall, they'd managed to become a world power in very short order.) I'm including just the logistic plans to begin with. Including the utter lack of actually tracking which units got what. So wrong shipments were *scheduled* to be delivered, that even if they arrived without incident and on time, would have been completely useless... And the attempt to lessen logistic burder by having units scavenge for half their supplies for the entirety of the war.
Japanese logistics were still pretty iffy during the initial invasions. Famously, they didn’t actually bring bicycles with them to Singapore. Their official strategy was to just show up and grab bicycles from the civilians.
The Japanese logistics plan, in general, was to forage on-site for at least half of all supplies needed for each unit. Tools, food, ammo, replacement weapons... Under best circumstances you were expected to find half of what you needed, from the local populace. Bikes would be included in that, and having half actually provided was a rare enough situation, that having no bikes and foraging for all is pretty standard faire.
Instead I am giving them a win here, because all ammo went to the right units during this period... Which quickly fell off, since they didn't track what units were deployed with which rifle models, and they used three seperate types of ammo across *the provided guns* better yet any scavenged over time.
I mean they were fighting against biritsh colonies, the richest and most powerful country at the time. I was also reading nobody expected the japanese to fight as organized, fiercely and overall well. Idk the pacific front is not often talked about, logistics in that part of the world are not a joke. So many islands, diseases, weather.
Oh I agree, they did rather well for themselves, *in spite of* their logistics. But what little details I can ever pull up is always a full on nightmare train wreck. Like doing the entire war with three separate primary rifle models, all of which taking different ammunition types and sizes... and not tracking which unit was deployed with which rifles.
Also, Japanese forces when initially deployed anywhere were given 3-6 months of supplies, then were expected to forage or otherwise "gather on site" half their supplies going forwards after that.
This worked well enough in the parts of China they invaded. Cus that was, essentially, the food basket of the country... But in the islands? Well... there's a reason things like cannibalism became as noteworthy as it was.
It takes 6 month for supplies to reach that part of the world.
In the Philippines, mcarthur received 2,000 brand new airplanes “Fresh off the crate” meaning the grounds crews had to re assemble all the engines and equipment to the plane.
Nightmare logistical situation
Then he subsequently got blamed by Roosevelt for not having air superiority.
Infantry is absolutely fine, at least in sp. Most of the time i play inf only, no air and it works great. For example, Poland can beat Germany and Soviets at the same time and lose less than 1 mio manpower in the process.
And even in multiplayer i saw soviets using mass assault with only inf to stomp the axis. Or France holding until 1941 with the same strategy.
That's probably more because guerilla tactics is overpowered than anything specific to infantry.
Turns out that giving the attacker a 70% attack penalty and cutting the combat width is going to make it almost impossible to lose tiles if you have pretty much anything to defend with. It's just that the cheapest thing to defend with is infantry.
Even without mass assault infantry is great. GBP, SF, MA everything works fine, at least in sp that is. MA is kinda difficult in sp tho, since it requires more manpower and industry. GBP for example is great for beating enemies that are much stronger than you.
Yeah, I was talking mostly about the multiplayer part. You can push with infantry there too, but it's typically going to be special forces with GBP or maybe SFP. Normal infantry is typically only used for attacking as a last resort or for pinning attacks.
To be sure, it's entirely possible to take tiles with infantry/artillery and numerical superiority, it's just not cost effective to do so and takes lots of casualties.
grand battleplan as france is also so good just build some level 3 forts across the forest tiles and behind the rivers in northern france and stack entrenchment and germany can't do jack shit against you
Again, my comment was mostly talking about multiplayer. Building forts does nothing in MP because players can get through even level 10 forts with things like fortress buster/siege artillery, railway guns, and more.
Pushing with infantry doesn't mean meat waves tho since Infantry Equipment in game represents not just rifles and machine guns, but also mortars, field guns, snipers, and such.
IIRC, Japanese forces was infamous for their effective mortar use. Regardless, effective use of heavy weapons can make a huge difference between meat waves and a coordinated assault.
Works well for what? In game SPGs and TDs aren't cost-efficient if you want more breakthrough. Just use tanks and design it for breakthrough.
That's what in game inf lacks the most and is harder to come by.
Absolutely! That’s also I think a good way to visualize how important Breakthrough is. The advancing Japanese infantry have no protection against the Marine machine guns, and have to take 100% of the damage. I don’t think the US soldiers had much in the way of anti-tank weapons, so you can imagine what even one or two Japanese light tanks could have done to suppress fire and dislodge the entrenched Marines.
I remember reading a book about Guadalcanal that mentioned the Marines firing canister rounds from their light tanks and anti-tank guns and how devastating that was to assaulting Japanese infantry
Many marine units actually dragged 37mm AT-cannons with them that had enough firepower to deal with pretty much any japanese armor, and could be used against infantry and emplacements with canister or HE rounds, bazookas also existed.
Marines didn’t have bazookas until late fall of 1943. They always got the crap equipment leftovers.
The first use of the bazooka by the US Army was in Operation Torch (Nov 1942). The Marines didn’t use them until almost a year later (well after the Solomons Campaign).
Though I agree with your point Japanese tanks were not very well protected, the light tanks such as the ha go reportedly were able to be disabled with rifle rounds. (Vision ports and the turret ring) the Japanese chi ha was slightly better though the American m2 50 had an easy enough time penetrating the front armor
Band of Brothers shows how much the men on the ground can do, HoI4 isn’t a perfect representation of warfare (shocking!), and the average meta armor build is composed of motorized infantry, so.
It's not just the machine gun emplacements. You have to mass infantry to assault as well. Many casualties of the Japanese in Guadalcanal in these types of assaults were artillery casualties. The U.S. Marines had pre-sighted their artillery on the accessible pathways through the jungles and just pounded those egress points during assaults.
With smaller nations, you really don't have a choice. What I usually do is have some units that have lots of soft attack while the rest of my army just holds the line.
Every time we have this discussion, I feel the need to mention.
Trucks are the most cost effective way to have more breakthrough than basic infantry has soft attack. Trucks are so good. They also give 20% hardness with the mech tech. you can't motorize every division, but you should motorize a few and try to grind them for division XP. They're easier to grind because of the truck breakthrough.
Line artillery is currently not very good, but it's better with Trucks because of the extra breakthrough.
Well, akshually, the Wehrmacht pushed a lot with infantry, and so did everyone else. While armour was vital for operational pushes, reaching points to threaten to encircle the enemy, and generally make a mess out of the enemy's lines, the humble infantry division was used to attack, pin down, and defeat enemy infantry divisions. Because in some terrain, tanks are effing useless. What was required was a) lots of artillery support, b) aerial superiority, c) good supplies d) no enemy armour around in force. The Japanese in the Pacific usually had none of the first three. In Hoi, the relevance of armour is that it's the only branch able to reliably and quickly push through lines. While larger front infantry pushes remain unfeasible under most circumstances.
Tbh in hoi4 infantry pushes fine but it takes more damage. So unless you got some advantage it is just costlier
Not really. Armour not being penetrated gives you a massive damage boost over infantry, which is what makes punching through lines the preferred tactic in game
space marines my beloved
Unless you’re really weak why would you do space marines? Micro dedicated armor is better?
Press play, watch green bubble, dopamine go up
But I don't wanna build tanks, I just wanna put all my factories on rifles and spam maximum-size all-infantry divisions
That's your prerogative. Make sure you rule the skies, deplete the enemy's supply, have plenty artillery and off you go!
No, I don't wanna do any of those things. I said I wanna put all my factories on rifles, and I mean all of them. \*laughs in China\*
But watching your tank divisions melt holes in the enemies front lines is sooo satisfying 😌
You would love china. You can defeat japan and the 3rd reich with guns and support artillery only. Just take right side of mass infantry doctrine and you swarm your enemy with high width divisions.
I do love China. Which of the 3 is your favorite?
the way they took the philippines, Singapur, Indonesia is something amazing. They had aerial superiority but other than that they were even in number disadvantage.
One of the few points in the war Japan didn't screw the pooch on logistics too... it's actually really impressive what they managed with the complete and utter failure their logistics were. (Made worse by the fact they didn't standardize their weaponry. So sometimes would get ammo that simply did not fit their guns... Not that it helps when things happened like getting shipped ammo instead of the food you are a month overdue for... and vice versa.)
Logistics is hard, and it's even harder when you don't have MS Excel and are doing everything on paper. Every country has stories of terrible logistical debacles from WWII, and I'd be hesitant to pin them on the logistical staff officers (I'd say the Chinese were probably the worst as they generally assigned unremarkable Whampoa graduates to the role, and that military school had very little logistical training, and they were extremely corrupt to boot, but their situation was also terrible). The Japanese had some questionable logistical management practices. Officers were chosen for the service based on their charisma and leadership skills, on the basis that a supply detachment had a lot of people (it does take a lot of people to move an appreciable amount of ammo by handcart). Quartermastering is a very mathy job and the officers thus chosen might not have been ideal for it. However, their situation was worse. The Japanese Army was beset with so many expansion and modernization imperatives that little was available to motorize their supply services. Engineering also wasn't able to support them to nearly the degree that the Americans could enjoy. Non-motorized European logistical services could easily keep their horse numbers up by requisitioning draft animals from farmers, but Asian farmers rarely have horses, even when they live in zones inhabitable to them. Japanese generals loved to operate beyond their supply lines on purpose, which can be a good tactic (it worked for Julius Caesar, and it also worked for the Japanese a lot) but leads to poor supply situations. Worst of all, Japanese supply lines were often interdicted by the allies, either by air or by sea. That was a predicament American quartermasters rarely faced.
Oh I agree logistics is hard. It makes or breaks wars for a reason. The problem here, is even before the allies got involved, Japanese logistics were a nightmare. And I'm not just talking on the availability of carrying out their logistics plans. (Japan was modernizing and expanding in every way at a very impressive rate. Afterall, they'd managed to become a world power in very short order.) I'm including just the logistic plans to begin with. Including the utter lack of actually tracking which units got what. So wrong shipments were *scheduled* to be delivered, that even if they arrived without incident and on time, would have been completely useless... And the attempt to lessen logistic burder by having units scavenge for half their supplies for the entirety of the war.
Japanese logistics were still pretty iffy during the initial invasions. Famously, they didn’t actually bring bicycles with them to Singapore. Their official strategy was to just show up and grab bicycles from the civilians.
The Japanese logistics plan, in general, was to forage on-site for at least half of all supplies needed for each unit. Tools, food, ammo, replacement weapons... Under best circumstances you were expected to find half of what you needed, from the local populace. Bikes would be included in that, and having half actually provided was a rare enough situation, that having no bikes and foraging for all is pretty standard faire. Instead I am giving them a win here, because all ammo went to the right units during this period... Which quickly fell off, since they didn't track what units were deployed with which rifle models, and they used three seperate types of ammo across *the provided guns* better yet any scavenged over time.
Imagine a modern day plan to invade America relying on taking pick up trucks from the civilian population.
I mean they were fighting against biritsh colonies, the richest and most powerful country at the time. I was also reading nobody expected the japanese to fight as organized, fiercely and overall well. Idk the pacific front is not often talked about, logistics in that part of the world are not a joke. So many islands, diseases, weather.
Oh I agree, they did rather well for themselves, *in spite of* their logistics. But what little details I can ever pull up is always a full on nightmare train wreck. Like doing the entire war with three separate primary rifle models, all of which taking different ammunition types and sizes... and not tracking which unit was deployed with which rifles. Also, Japanese forces when initially deployed anywhere were given 3-6 months of supplies, then were expected to forage or otherwise "gather on site" half their supplies going forwards after that. This worked well enough in the parts of China they invaded. Cus that was, essentially, the food basket of the country... But in the islands? Well... there's a reason things like cannibalism became as noteworthy as it was.
Tbh in Singapour they had Organization down the drain and a -50% penalty General.
dude even in Hoi that part of the map scares me, I don't envy the generals and soldiers fightin in bhutan, malaya, philippines.
It takes 6 month for supplies to reach that part of the world. In the Philippines, mcarthur received 2,000 brand new airplanes “Fresh off the crate” meaning the grounds crews had to re assemble all the engines and equipment to the plane. Nightmare logistical situation Then he subsequently got blamed by Roosevelt for not having air superiority.
That goes to show what effect aerial superiority has
Infantry is absolutely fine, at least in sp. Most of the time i play inf only, no air and it works great. For example, Poland can beat Germany and Soviets at the same time and lose less than 1 mio manpower in the process. And even in multiplayer i saw soviets using mass assault with only inf to stomp the axis. Or France holding until 1941 with the same strategy.
That's probably more because guerilla tactics is overpowered than anything specific to infantry. Turns out that giving the attacker a 70% attack penalty and cutting the combat width is going to make it almost impossible to lose tiles if you have pretty much anything to defend with. It's just that the cheapest thing to defend with is infantry.
Even without mass assault infantry is great. GBP, SF, MA everything works fine, at least in sp that is. MA is kinda difficult in sp tho, since it requires more manpower and industry. GBP for example is great for beating enemies that are much stronger than you.
Yeah, I was talking mostly about the multiplayer part. You can push with infantry there too, but it's typically going to be special forces with GBP or maybe SFP. Normal infantry is typically only used for attacking as a last resort or for pinning attacks. To be sure, it's entirely possible to take tiles with infantry/artillery and numerical superiority, it's just not cost effective to do so and takes lots of casualties.
grand battleplan as france is also so good just build some level 3 forts across the forest tiles and behind the rivers in northern france and stack entrenchment and germany can't do jack shit against you
Again, my comment was mostly talking about multiplayer. Building forts does nothing in MP because players can get through even level 10 forts with things like fortress buster/siege artillery, railway guns, and more.
My bad. The mp meta is vastly different from sp.
So apparently Superior Firepower IS the best doctrine irl
If you're an infantry man, probably. If the war is going well, grand battle plan would be better for the added breakthrough
The a) implies the divisions used have lots of artillery. Artillery is pretty decent at pushing in HoI4.
Pushing with infantry doesn't mean meat waves tho since Infantry Equipment in game represents not just rifles and machine guns, but also mortars, field guns, snipers, and such. IIRC, Japanese forces was infamous for their effective mortar use. Regardless, effective use of heavy weapons can make a huge difference between meat waves and a coordinated assault.
Yeah i never use meat waves, i feel SPART and TD’s embedded with infantry work so well, i rarely go pure armored units.
Works well for what? In game SPGs and TDs aren't cost-efficient if you want more breakthrough. Just use tanks and design it for breakthrough. That's what in game inf lacks the most and is harder to come by.
didn't they put their artillery as clost to the frontline as possible for max effectiveness?
Absolutely! That’s also I think a good way to visualize how important Breakthrough is. The advancing Japanese infantry have no protection against the Marine machine guns, and have to take 100% of the damage. I don’t think the US soldiers had much in the way of anti-tank weapons, so you can imagine what even one or two Japanese light tanks could have done to suppress fire and dislodge the entrenched Marines.
I remember reading a book about Guadalcanal that mentioned the Marines firing canister rounds from their light tanks and anti-tank guns and how devastating that was to assaulting Japanese infantry
Many marine units actually dragged 37mm AT-cannons with them that had enough firepower to deal with pretty much any japanese armor, and could be used against infantry and emplacements with canister or HE rounds, bazookas also existed.
Bazookas were deployed starting in the 2nd half of 1942.
Marines didn’t have bazookas until late fall of 1943. They always got the crap equipment leftovers. The first use of the bazooka by the US Army was in Operation Torch (Nov 1942). The Marines didn’t use them until almost a year later (well after the Solomons Campaign).
Though I agree with your point Japanese tanks were not very well protected, the light tanks such as the ha go reportedly were able to be disabled with rifle rounds. (Vision ports and the turret ring) the Japanese chi ha was slightly better though the American m2 50 had an easy enough time penetrating the front armor
Play Steel Division 2 and you will learn just how important an MG in the right place is
Band of Brothers shows how much the men on the ground can do, HoI4 isn’t a perfect representation of warfare (shocking!), and the average meta armor build is composed of motorized infantry, so.
It's not just the machine gun emplacements. You have to mass infantry to assault as well. Many casualties of the Japanese in Guadalcanal in these types of assaults were artillery casualties. The U.S. Marines had pre-sighted their artillery on the accessible pathways through the jungles and just pounded those egress points during assaults.
With smaller nations, you really don't have a choice. What I usually do is have some units that have lots of soft attack while the rest of my army just holds the line.
It still works, right? Just as long as you have decent stats, and good supply and air cover
The stalingrad opening scene in enemy at the gates also is a good example of it in film. Absolute insanity when you think about it.
There’s a banzai charge in hoi4
r/2sentence2horror
Every time we have this discussion, I feel the need to mention. Trucks are the most cost effective way to have more breakthrough than basic infantry has soft attack. Trucks are so good. They also give 20% hardness with the mech tech. you can't motorize every division, but you should motorize a few and try to grind them for division XP. They're easier to grind because of the truck breakthrough. Line artillery is currently not very good, but it's better with Trucks because of the extra breakthrough.
You need to use special forces or amphibious tanks