Serious issue with frontlines

[CriticalMissEnjoyerNearTheDoor]

The new update has a lot of cool stuff but man the combat is painfull and I feel like doing pure pacifist runs until a hotfix arrives.

The frontlines seem to disappear constantly and reshape themselves and not changing even after editing the frontlines. I had a front line in Swizerland and on the French border as Italy. The AI decided to go on a skiing holiday on the Alps and death stacked 40+ divisions on a single tile and left the entire French-Italian border undefended and the Allies just walked over the border. I had to manually command the units to actually man the frontline and they still tried to go back to their Alpine death stack skiing adventure so it made using frontlines almost impossible.

Also the navy seems to bug out at the worst times like on this video at around 12 min mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqoRVQLeVOk&feature=youtu.be&t=12m16s

[Mack]

Who knows with the Navy, this game has so many bugs and problems that just pop up randomly and never fix unless you reload.

The frontline stuff is garbage especialy before wars start, you still can't order a frontline to cover multiple nations (like, the baltics, or Poland & Romania if you're the Soviets) unless you're at war.

And impassable terrain issues constantly stuff up lines at Sibera, North Africa, Middle Africa and parts of Asia and I assume South America.

[Whalespy]

If you use seperate "breakthrough units" it gets even worse. I tend to use tank armies as spearheads, micromanaging their movement to do encirclements and go for cities etc. What I've noticed is that whenever I broke through an enemy line with a tank army, the frontline of my infantry army would stretch as my front got longer, but only for the army group directly behind the breakthrough. So the front gets much longer, but only for one single group of 24 divisions, which means that the part of your line manned by this 24 division group gets weaker or even filled with holes, which the AI will (to its credit) mercilessly exploit.

You can fix this by selecting the field marshal responsible for the front line and deleting (all the) front line commands and setting it again, but that will shuffle your whole line, leading to divisions losing organisation as they move.

[CriticalMissEnjoyerNearTheDoor]

The thing is I never had such issues before, this is some derpy AI level stuff when your own army just randomly leaves the frontline empty which might be extremely costly if you're focusing on some other fronts at that time and assume your units know how to put themselves in a line and stay there.

It also creates a lot of frustrating micromanagement from having to babysit your forces.

Also the garrison command seems to bug out from time to time and the units deathstack themselves on one area instead of protecting ports and coastline for example.

[el cid]

i got the same issue aswell, and also japan is bugged it is not doing anytthing

[Mack]

I assume there's a mod that turns the game back to the old way. Most frontlines would work just fine with a single field marshal. The Russian Front would work fine with either 2 or 3 of them.

[CriticalMissEnjoyerNearTheDoor]

Originally posted by mack:

I assume there's a mod that turns the game back to the old way. Most frontlines would work just fine with a single field marshal. The Russian Front would work fine with either 2 or 3 of them.

Haven't tried the mod but I guess i have to give it a shot, I have a bad feeling this isn't an issue with the force size itself but something else. The Italian French front is pretty small at first and definelty doesnt require a huge amount of divisions so the deathstack and frontline abandoning might not have anything to do with the size of the frontline.

[MeDaDaddy]

Originally posted by SweetrollWerfingInAGoodSpot:

Also the navy seems to bug out at the worst times like on this video at around 12 min mark:

That's not a bug ...the player recalled the fleet from repair (cancelled the repairs) and didn't change the stances to engage targets & repair. So the fleet went into battle then immediately tried to go to port and repair....'cos that's what the player had set the conditions to :)

If they'd allowed the repairs to complete, the fleet would automatically re-adopt the engage stance.
If they'd adjusted repair priority first, then there would have been no issue either.

Learning to play issue or oversight 'cos they were rushing.

EDIT: If you manually change where divisions are, and they have an order you gave them via the frontline tool, then they will obviously return to the order after they go where you manually sent them.
You can bypass this by using the button that removes certain units from the Army order.
But yeah, frontlines have always been an issue. In SP you can just pause and make sure the troops are where you want them. In MP it can be more tricky & best to manually draw the line sometimes & then select what units you want to give that order to.

[Spudra]

I was playing as communist China, and I only had to beat China itself. Was going fine, but all of the sudden troops left certain frontlines and bulked up on smaller areas, causing China to go completely around my front lines and take the capital.... Frustrating

[CriticalMissEnjoyerNearTheDoor]

Originally posted by Spudra:

I was playing as communist China, and I only had to beat China itself. Was going fine, but all of the sudden troops left certain frontlines and bulked up on smaller areas, causing China to go completely around my front lines and take the capital.... Frustrating

Combined with the increased aggression the AI takes advantage of gaps in a frontline that must have been painfull to notice.

[el cid]

Originally posted by SweetrollWerfingInAGoodSpot:

Originally posted by Spudra:

I was playing as communist China, and I only had to beat China itself. Was going fine, but all of the sudden troops left certain frontlines and bulked up on smaller areas, causing China to go completely around my front lines and take the capital.... Frustrating

Combined with the increased aggression the AI takes advantage of gaps in a frontline that must have been painfull to notice.

i had this too happening to me, luckily i always save before going to war

[SupremeLeaderPie]

tried to play as china, had very similiar issues. Ai just moving troops randomly leaving gapping holes in my line. Ive never had issues like this with this game until now. Its pretty much unplayable.

[rhettrongun]

Same problem. I don't recall this being as glaring an issue prepatch.

The AI cannot manage front lines worth ♥♥♥♥ now. Invading the USSR and UK mainland now. Anytime I leave it to its own devices in Russia for a week or so, I come back to find that the lines that I painstakingly drew out not long before have all shrunk down and in some cases there are now gaps...

WTF, this is annoying as hell.

[Jtgam]

I ran into a major problem with the new frontlines last night. I got through Italy and France as the new modern Germany. Then, when I wanted to take nationalist Spain down, the AI began to derp.

I assume this is happening because of all the wars and battles going on. There were 3 major conflicts going on, in a 3-sided war, Europe vs Russia + Communist China vs Japan (Italy got eaten by Europe)

There were major attacks going on at both of Russia's nation. In the west, they were fighting Japan. In the east, they were fighting my allies + Poland's faction.

What happened was first, the Spain AI completely derped and failed to set a frontline against me. I managed to walk over the Catalonian mountains without even a shot fired. A failure at the AI on that level.

Then, when Spain finally got their act together and formed a front line, my frontline AI derped. No matter what I did, with changing the others, deleting, recreating, nothing worked. My armies REFUSED to move forward. I set them to all attack, and they stand around doing nothing. I tried to manually tell them to attack, and they would CANCEL the direct attack orders I gave them.

The AI also kept leaving gaping holes in my frontline. It would assign one 24-man army more than 24 tiles, and then it would assign another 24-man army to ONE TILE.

Please fix. Thanks.

[MeDaDaddy]

You know you can give individual armies in an Army Group their own frontlines.
And that the lines can change when you encircle groups of troops or when borders change etc.

Can't say I've come across these issues mentioned above myself, yet, *fingers crossed* except when I've made a derp myself!

[Jtgam]

Originally posted by MeDaDaddy:

You know you can give individual armies in an Army Group their own frontlines.
And that the lines can change when you encircle groups of troops or when borders change etc.

Can't say I've come across these issues mentioned above myself, yet, *fingers crossed* except when I've made a derp myself!

If the new field marshals are incapable of setting the individual group frontlines, it's useless and still needs to be fixed. At that point, they are only good for boni.

At this point, they are inferior to old Field Marshals. At least back then, they could form a united front. There weren't nearly as many gaps, and the units were roughly spread out alongst the line. With the current system, you have to rely on luck or a very small army to get that.

As an example, try playing as Germany and setting your armies on the French border. You'll notice one army will get the tile next to Luxembourg, one will get one tile next to the Swiss, and the other army gets everything in between. (Remember to make 3 24-unit armies) That's very bad.