Combat Width - can someone explain it?

[Firefly]

Can someone please explain what Combat Width is? I've played 500 hours of HoI IV and I still don't know what it means yet I see most YouTubers referring to it and being concerned about it. Is less CW good? Is more better? Does it decide battles?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[Mikey]

Each battle has a certain ammount of width it can support, meaning how wide the front is, the more width the battle has the more troops can fight in it.
Battles have a basic width of 80 with another 40 added for each extra flanking attack (attacking from 2 provinces will make it 120, from 3 it's 160)
The basic width is modified by terrain and tactics so it isn't always constant.

Each division has a set ammount of width meaning how much of that front it will occupy
The more width an individual division takes up the fewer other divisions will take part in the actual fight. Any division not able to join due to width constraints will remain in the reserve pool ready to jump in once there is room.
You will want to make division templates that give you an edge to those effects, the most common are 20 and 40 width divisions. Width of a template can be seen in the stats part of the template.

[spike2071]

The rule of thumb is that you want a combat width of 10, 20, or 40.

When you attack from a single province, the combat width is 80. That means you can have any number of divisions whose total combat width doesn't exceed 80 actively fighting. Once you exceed 80, all other divisions must wait in reserve until an attacking division retreats. So attacking from a single province, you could have 8 10-width divisions, 4 20-width divisions, or 2 40-width division. If you make 45-width divisions, then only one can join the battle, no matter how many you have in reserve.

Attacking from an additional province will expand the combat width by 40 per province. So attacking from 2 provinces will mean a combat width of 120, 3 = 160, etc.

The only caveat to this is a Field Marshall trait that reduces your divisions' width by 10%. So if you're going to use that trait, you can build 11, 22, or 44 width divisions, as they will fight as 10, 20, or 40 width, respectively.

Does that make sense?

[Firefly]

Thanks for the quick responses. That has definitely made it more clearer. I have often sat here wondering why I had so many Divisions in reserve and not committed to the battle, but now it makes sense - because of the Comabt Width of the province and the amount my Divisions were carrying. Will certainly help me carry out my battles. Thanks again!

[Ryan]

Only a certain number of men can fight on a battlefield at a time. Here's a simplistic analogy: say you want to move 100 people down a hallway. Only two people at a time may fit down the hallway at once, so they have to line up. Your combat width would be 2. Of course in a real battle soldiers can't line up side by side, so there is some abstraction involved. If combat width is 40, and you have divisions with combat width of 30, and the enemy has divisions of combat width 20, then only 1 of your divisions will be in the fight against 2 enemy divisions. The enemy will have more troops in the fight than you. They will have more soldiers shooting which will give them an advantage.

[Srpskislav]

Originally posted by Firefly:

Thanks for the quick responses. That has definitely made it more clearer. I have often sat here wondering why I had so many Divisions in reserve and not committed to the battle, but now it makes sense - because of the Comabt Width of the province and the amount my Divisions were carrying. Will certainly help me carry out my battles. Thanks again!

Yeah also here’s a link to a video that can help not necessarily with combat width but creating good divisions https://youtu.be/ePP-UXpVh-k

[Justin]

Originally posted by Firefly:

Thanks for the quick responses. That has definitely made it more clearer. I have often sat here wondering why I had so many Divisions in reserve and not committed to the battle, but now it makes sense - because of the Comabt Width of the province and the amount my Divisions were carrying. Will certainly help me carry out my battles. Thanks again!

Having divisions in reserve is not necessarily a symptom of poor combat width, though it can definitely be one of them.

Say you have two divisions (Alpha and Bravo) fighting one (Charlie)

If both Alpha and Bravo attack simultaneously on Charlie, they will both enter normally. No one enters the reserves.

If Alpha starts the battle first, and then Bravo joins, Bravo will be stuck in the reserves. Bravo must then roll dice every hour to see if it joins the fray. By default this chance is 2% per hour (avg of 34 hours of not shooting the enemy)

Researching the Radio tech increases Bravo's chances to 7% (9.5 hrs avg).

Signal companies add up to 56 Initiative, which the game divides by 4 to get an additional reinforce rate.

This stacks with the radio's 5% plus the default 2% for 21% chance to reinforce per hour, averaging just under 3 hours.

If you're having trouble with divisions being in reserves, ensure they all attack together, that there's combat width to support them, and if you wanna just throw resources at the problem, equip signal companies.