As Germany, is armor even worth it?

[Harbaugh]

In WW2 the germans had a huge problem with their motor pool - they had a bewildering array of over-engineered vechiles and a darth of spare parts by which to service them (the furher himself gave the directive to focus on the production of new vehicels vs. the creation of parts to preserve those already in the field, this over the advice of guys like Speer).

It feels like even in this game creating tanks overly complicates the production lines. One can easily field massive armies of infantry divisons supplemented with lots of artillery and heavy Tank Destroyers. Using firepower doctrine, I find myself getting combat values of 900+ whereas the AI infantry is at like 90/100.

You cant do the huge encirclements, and the drive into Russia is long and slow, but it's inevitable as your armies are all but indestructible.

This is of course single player. Do MP players use armor still?

[Mikey]

armour is very useful for germany.

Germany has awesome bonuses towards armoured warfare. Armour itself is best used offensively due to it's high breakthrough and speed. Pair them with mobile or mechanised infantry to keep the speed up.
I don't see why they shouldn't be worth it.

Tanks themselves are complicated to build.
You need a lot of industry to pump them out but they save you a ton of manpower down the line as the AI is notoriously bad at fighting against tanks.

[Kaisha]

Sadly armor in this game is never worth it. They fcked the battle algorithm up so badly that armor is always worse to field (even if you have infinite resources and production) than infantry.

The problem is that armor has low HP, which due to the screwy way in which dmg is done, means any dmg taken at all pretty much guanantees unit loss. So while you can punch deep and fast through enemy lines (at least early game) you'll bleed out men.

Granted they are fun, and spamming infantry + arty is boring, but they are sub-optimal. Not that it matters as the AI is so utterly retarded you can beat them with pretty much anything... But unlike IRL, in HOI4 armor sucks bad.

I have no idea in MP...

[BrigadierBill]

I've generally found success with armor, so long as I keep it simple (mostly medium tanks, with a few light tanks, only after I have enough infantry, artillery, support equipment, motorized, and fighters). Motorized infantry don't necessarily need armor to work though, since armor provides two bonuses and one is already covered by mobile infantry: speed. The other value of sheer offensive firepower is hard to overstate, though.

Mobile warfare, by definition, has less firepower than superior firepower or grand battleplan, but trades this for maneuver and shock. If you're going for straightforward plans, the other two doctrines are based on attrition or more plodding combat; mobile warfare is based on massing your production efforts into a single area (not just tanks, but artillery and aircraft) and making up for the weaker overall effort through massed quality and speed. It's comparable to a cavalry charge in a medieval game; cavalry are expensive and a big target, but people use them anyways because the impact of a cavalry charge can often have a disproportionate effect. Mass your tanks in one area, and you'll see their effect far more spectacularly (it also helps to micromanage the crap out of them).

It also depends on your theatre of operations. Eastern Russia is good for armored warfare because it's big and mostly flat, but it has its own terrain hiccups (particularly the Pripet Marshes and a bunch of rivers in the west). For the west, you can do just fine with infantry, but the speed of an advance through Belgium with armor is hard to match with just infantry (although you can do it with motorized infantry, if you're just going for speed alone). Fighting in Siberia, the Carpathians, the Alps, or other mountainous or low-infrastructure regions doesn't suit armor much (although light tanks are still probably cheap enough to be helpful, more common since you start with a bunch and probably capture even more, and are less-penalized than medium tanks).

[GoldenTalon]

Originally posted by Mikey:

armour is very useful for germany.

Germany has awesome bonuses towards armoured warfare. Armour itself is best used offensively due to it's high breakthrough and speed. Pair them with mobile or mechanised infantry to keep the speed up.
I don't see why they shouldn't be worth it.

Tanks themselves are complicated to build.
You need a lot of industry to pump them out but they save you a ton of manpower down the line as the AI is notoriously bad at fighting against tanks.

Agree - it's invaluable for rapid break throughs and encirclements especially agaist Soviets. Also a good counter to Soviet armor as alternative to tank destroyers or in combination

[IamKnight]

Low hp for tanks does make sense. Bloody things had a good chance to break just from moving. Armour and shock value with wheel is their calling. Off topic, but Valkyrie Chronclies is fun if you want to play a rpg with a tank.

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by Kaisha:

Sadly armor in this game is never worth it. They fcked the battle algorithm up so badly that armor is always worse to field (even if you have infinite resources and production) than infantry.

The problem is that armor has low HP, which due to the screwy way in which dmg is done, means any dmg taken at all pretty much guanantees unit loss. So while you can punch deep and fast through enemy lines (at least early game) you'll bleed out men.

Granted they are fun, and spamming infantry + arty is boring, but they are sub-optimal. Not that it matters as the AI is so utterly retarded you can beat them with pretty much anything... But unlike IRL, in HOI4 armor sucks bad.

I have no idea in MP...

Armor is always worth it. Infantry + Art is far, far better for holding the line, so that's what you use it for. You use Armor to break through the enemy line and cause pockets. Armor isn't supposed to be a front line unit trading punches, it's supposed to overrun enemy infantry and let you pocket, and completely destroy, enemy divisions.

[fakemon64]

you're probably not using the armor right if you think it sucks. i think the guy above me and brigadierbill made very decent points so i dont have to go into detail.

the only problem i really see is that you need to micro them a little more (dont send them into adverse terrain). but they can be invaluable if used correctly.

[Kaisha]

Originally posted by Zsrai:

Armor is always worth it. Infantry + Art is far, far better for holding the line, so that's what you use it for. You use Armor to break through the enemy line and cause pockets. Armor isn't supposed to be a front line unit trading punches, it's supposed to overrun enemy infantry and let you pocket, and completely destroy, enemy divisions.

Destroy enemy divisions? The AI just runs its entire population at you, then runs out, then you walk over it. You don't need to encircle anything. Prior to it running out of men there's no point in attacking, you'll just take needless losses for 1 or 2 small provinces, and after it runs out cavalry could walk over it. At no point was armor necessary or optimal.

The fact that armor can beat the AI doesn't mean anything, apart from the AI is terribad.

I get that the idea of armor is cool, and was highly effective IRL. But in this game, its sub-optimal. There's no requirement or reason to build arpart from 'its cool'. That's it, that's the only thing armor has going for it.

There are a few exceptions, like putting 1 or 2 heavy tanks into an infantry group (if you have the resource/factories to burn) for the armor boost. SPGs as well (again if you have factories/resources to burn) aren't terrible. But tanks as a whole are underpowered and far too costly. Its simple math.

[Mighty Poo]

Originally posted by Kaisha:

I get that the idea of armor is cool, and was highly effective IRL. But in this game, its sub-optimal... Its simple math.

Do you understand how the breakthrough stat works?

Sub-optimal is wasting manpower using low-breakthrough infantry divisions on the offensive.

[Mack]

Rush to 1942 Medium & use 500 XP to increase it's reliability and armor to maximum. Then it's okay.

Alternatively, you just spam infantry and let the AI throw millions of men at entrenched defensive positions (build fortlines with rivers in front of them) held by your own infantry until the AI's awful production AI means they have no weapons and/or they run out of manpower. And then rollover them.

[[HPC] Crplsteve]

It reminds me of my Playthrough as Facist Poland against the SU (With Support from the Allies and Axis... it was one of those games) I new I couldn't build enough tanks to make it worth while with my lack of resources so I just build HT's and used my uber infy to sit and eat soviet divisions that attacked. (9 mountain, 4 arty, 1 HT, FH, ENG, SUPAT) In the end I lost close to 1 mil the SU lost 21 million against 51 divisions.

[Murphy]

In single player you can just spam infantry and you'll be fine, particularly with how OP Germany is in this game. The AI mostly spams out poorly equipped binary divisions and then does human wave attacks so you can just grind them out. But if we're talking about "how the game is meant to work" Armour is vital because it's the only thing that can punch through lines and create encirclements, which leads to a far quicker victory and less losses then having a WW1 type slugging match.

That said, with the current AI you can pretty much get away with the slugging match.

[Popeye]

Make a standard infantry template of 20 or 40 width divisions, assign all of these to a field marshall and order them into a frontline. Never tell them to attack, never give them orders. Just let the ai automatically fill in the front.
Make armored divisions of 40 width armor - pure armor. That's 20 armored brigades. You make 24 of these divisions and give them to a general, give them a very small portion of the front and advance aggressively and watch as you never lose offensive combats involving your tanks, and never lose defence combats involving your infantry.

In the real world, Germany may have had difficulty with their motorpool but this is HOI4. Many things are streamlined. For instance, the M3 Lee has the exact same performance as the Panzer III because they are both 'Medium Tank I'.