Can you fix the Paradrop England exploit?

[acur1231]

Seriously Paradox dev people, make the British actually garrison lots of infantry in the UK. You know, Home Guard? And military units that were kept there for most of the war? Make the Royal Navy keep large forces patrolling the Channel and North Sea, and the RAF in the skies over the UK and the Channel.

It seems rather stupid that you can conquer England so easily, and sort of takes away the feeling of planning a Sealion being a hard task, when you know you can just get a bunch of planes and get the UK to surrender.

Alternatively, make the AIs always keep at least 300-400 fighters in their core territories. It is also a little stupid to see Germany not have defending fighters until after you start heavy bombing on their cities.

[Jaydent97]

I would swear Hoi4 was made by Paradox and not by Eugen.

[acur1231]

Changed lol.

[GoldenTalon]

Originally posted by acur1231:

Seriously Paradox dev people, make the British actually garrison lots of infantry in the UK. You know, Home Guard? And military units that were kept there for most of the war? Make the Royal Navy keep large forces patrolling the Channel and North Sea, and the RAF in the skies over the UK and the Channel.

It seems rather stupid that you can conquer England so easily, and sort of takes away the feeling of planning a Sealion being a hard task, when you know you can just get a bunch of planes and get the UK to surrender.

Alternatively, make the AIs always keep at least 300-400 fighters in their core territories. It is also a little stupid to see Germany not have defending fighters until after you start heavy bombing on their cities.

We'll see if Waking the Tiger fixes any of these AI bugs. Not holding my breadth until March in any case,

[acur1231]

Originally posted by GoldenTalon:

Originally posted by acur1231:

Seriously Paradox dev people, make the British actually garrison lots of infantry in the UK. You know, Home Guard? And military units that were kept there for most of the war? Make the Royal Navy keep large forces patrolling the Channel and North Sea, and the RAF in the skies over the UK and the Channel.

It seems rather stupid that you can conquer England so easily, and sort of takes away the feeling of planning a Sealion being a hard task, when you know you can just get a bunch of planes and get the UK to surrender.

Alternatively, make the AIs always keep at least 300-400 fighters in their core territories. It is also a little stupid to see Germany not have defending fighters until after you start heavy bombing on their cities.

We'll see if Waking the Tiger fixes any of these AI bugs. Not holding my breadth until March in any case,

I do hope so. It is silly for any nation, but particularly silly for the British since they knew that the island was their best bet for avoiding invasion(which would likely have been repelled, but would have caused heavy property damage and civilian losses), and thus deliberately ensured that the Channel and the North Sea were always patrolled by their ships and the skies overhead always had fighters. TBH I think AI use of aircraft and ships needs a bit of a look into.

[acur1231]

Anyone?

[BrowneHawk]

Here we go I love wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army_during_the_Second_World_War

[BrowneHawk]

I think the issue is they try to be to historical sometimes. So the British army was lacking a bit in 1939, also from wiki its says the navy was the largest. So I would also assume that even if its army sucked you would see ships every where. Maybe the Main fleets still patrol the waters of the colonies?

Perhaps its different with an actual human player, playing as england.

[DrUltraLux]

The problem is that if the AI defend against Paratroopers properly, then Paratroopers become worthless. They lose all of their organisation when they paradrop, so if even a single division is in the target province they are completely wiped out, if they are attacked as soon as they land, they are completely wiped out. The only way paratroopers are even useful at all is because the AI does not know how to defend from them.

They need to rework the paradrop mechanics, organisation mechanics so paratroopers can function, and completely remake the AI from scratch so it knows how to defend and makes something vaguely approaching sensible choices.

Right now you have either 100% or 0% and there isn't anything in between.

[acur1231]

Originally posted by BrowneHawk:

I think the issue is they try to be to historical sometimes. So the British army was lacking a bit in 1939, also from wiki its says the navy was the largest. So I would also assume that even if its army sucked you would see ships every where. Maybe the Main fleets still patrol the waters of the colonies?

Perhaps its different with an actual human player, playing as england.

Yeah, but there would be more than enough infantry to defeat a bunch of paras. And then soon after the war begins they will start training large amounts of infantry units(Home Guard), with all infantry and AA, specifically to defeat a paradrop or to hold the line against an invader.

Paradrops are strategic weapons to be dropped behind a frontline, in order to help a subsequent attack. They are not supposed to conquer countries. There is already a sinple enough method to prevent this paradrop England exploit. Just have the British AI garrison large amounts of infantry in all the ports, airfields, victory points etc. And make the AI quickly move to surround and destroy any paratroopers.

Then, paratroopers may be useful in landing a large invasion force(after somehow defeating the Royal Navy), by capturing ports to land troops and supplies, but will not be able to conquer a country on its own.

[frobisher]

Originally posted by BrowneHawk:

I think the issue is they try to be to historical sometimes. So the British army was lacking a bit in 1939, also from wiki its says the navy was the largest. So I would also assume that even if its army sucked you would see ships every where. Maybe the Main fleets still patrol the waters of the colonies?

Eh, in this particular case having a core air force patrolling the waters would be even more appreciated then. Imagine what any historical leaders would do if Germans sent a bunch of obsolete planes into all-or-nothing naval strike (not to defeat Royal Navy, but merely to damage enough ships).

a. take the damage to their fleet stacks and eventually retreat them to repair, sending no replacement whatsoever AND send random-ass air units to "help" their ships while it happens.

b. use their stacks of planes where they are being hurt, then constantly renforce the area to match and quickly erode some obsolete nonsense Luftwaffe throws at them; at the same time reconsider having naval force guarding St Helen Island or whatever;

The problem is, current iteration prefers a. way too often.

Originally posted by Gaiyamato:

They need to rework the paradrop mechanics, organisation mechanics so paratroopers can function, and completely remake the AI from scratch so it knows how to defend and makes something vaguely approaching sensible choices.

Right now you have either 100% or 0% and there isn't anything in between.

Frankly, I think the issue stems from the insistence of having paras as a division in the first place. I know, I know, there were great units of paras in the war, but still, it seems that it causes more issues to the AI that they are worth and the AI can't even use them on its own. They can add a bunch of options to a MP game (and generate a bunch of sself-imposed rules as a result, eh), bt is it worth it?

I wonder whether the concept could be better served by adopting the idea from the older games, where you could direct your espionage efforts into making a province far easier to capture, traverse w/e. Have paras act like that, perhaps emphasize them in such role further (as a bunker-buster) and forget about divisional level?

[ThunderLizard2]

Originally posted by acur1231:

Seriously Paradox dev people, make the British actually garrison lots of infantry in the UK. You know, Home Guard? And military units that were kept there for most of the war? Make the Royal Navy keep large forces patrolling the Channel and North Sea, and the RAF in the skies over the UK and the Channel.

It seems rather stupid that you can conquer England so easily, and sort of takes away the feeling of planning a Sealion being a hard task, when you know you can just get a bunch of planes and get the UK to surrender.

Alternatively, make the AIs always keep at least 300-400 fighters in their core territories. It is also a little stupid to see Germany not have defending fighters until after you start heavy bombing on their cities.

This would be great. Makes game unplayable IMHO