Why/How does Italy start with over the cap limit on Special Forces?

[wildlifeluvr]

Italy starts game with 300 battalions; 5% = 15 so that is not it.

Minimum is 24.

So, why does Italy have 30? I see noting in the strategy guide for Italy from Paradox, I see nothing browsing the internet. I see no national spirits or any SF buff anywhere.

I assume there is no penalty for Italy being over the CAP limit since the game simply does not allow you to train SF when your limit has been reached.

What's the story with the 30 for Italy? What memo did I not get?

[Immortalis]

There is no penalty for going over the special forces cap, aside from the inability to build more special forces. So much so that it is an extremely easy to bypass cap as you could literally have your entire army being composed of marines or mountaineers at no loss whatsoever (except for the increased requirement of support equipment).

That being said, Italy simply starts with more mountain division to represent the historical composition of the italian army, which had been forged just a couple of decades ago on a front that was by and large sitting amongst the Alps.

[wildlifeluvr]

Originally posted by Immortalis:

That being said, Italy simply starts with more mountain division to represent the historical composition of the italian army

Thank you. It begs the question why Paradox, in the division overview, states "You are currently fielding 30 divisions of the allowed 24 Special Forces." One would think the text writers in the software would note that and in their Italy guide, do not note they are allowed 30. Newer players would appreciate more attention by the developers to note exceptions.

Re "So much so that it is an extremely easy to bypass cap as you could literally have your entire army being composed of marines or mountaineers at no loss whatsoever".
Not sure what you mean since the software prevents one from training SF if over the cap so I don't know what you mean "it's easy to bypass".

[Immortalis]

It is not an exception nor it is something that needs to be corrected in that you can go over special forces limit even during the game: you could annex nations and obtain more special forces than you're allowed (Germany through the Anschluss, for example) or you could lose enough normal battalions that the special forces you're fielding are more than you are allowed to have.

The way you bypass the limit is by having a division-template without any special forces in it (for example a single artillery battalion), select all divisions in your army, hit the convert button to that particular division and, before confirming the conversion, modify the template to include as many marines, mountaineers or paratroopers as you want. You could literally turn a full army group of 120 divisions in 120 divisions of marines. No consequences whatsoever.

[Včelí medvídek]

Originally posted by Immortalis:

The way you bypass the limit is by having a division-template without any special forces in it (for example a single artillery battalion), select all divisions in your army, hit the convert button to that particular division and, before confirming the conversion, modify the template to include as many marines, mountaineers or paratroopers as you want. You could literally turn a full army group of 120 divisions in 120 divisions of marines. No consequences whatsoever.

Thats nasty.. but it works:p I am not so much into cheating but think I will use this in owb for bypass PA units limit:p

[mk11]

AFAIK, USSR also starts over cap and it causes problems because if you send mountaineers as volunteers to Spain you can't change their template to add artillery.

[wildlifeluvr]

Originally posted by Immortalis:

It is not an exception nor it is something that needs to be corrected in that you can go over special forces limit even during the game: you could annex nations and obtain more special forces than you're allowed (Germany through the Anschluss, for example) or you could lose enough normal battalions that the special forces you're fielding are more than you are allowed to have.

The way you bypass the limit is by having a division-template without any special forces in it (for example a single artillery battalion), select all divisions in your army, hit the convert button to that particular division and, before confirming the conversion, modify the template to include as many marines, mountaineers or paratroopers as you want. You could literally turn a full army group of 120 divisions in 120 divisions of marines. No consequences whatsoever.

That's cheating, exploiting a design flaw Paradox is not aware of or has not bothered to fix.

re "It is not an exception nor it is something that needs to be corrected"
When Paradox states the limit is 24 yet states a few words before "you currently have 30", a new player takes words as gospel. Yes, they need to fix their wording and correct it.

I don't cheat but thank you for responding.

[Bored Peon]

Why would there be a penalty for having more than allowed?

The amount allowed is based upon your existing army when you trained them.
What if you are losing divisions?
Should you suffer a penalty for them surviving?

[Immortalis]

Originally posted by wildlifeluvr:

That's cheating, exploiting a design flaw Paradox is not aware of or has not bothered to fix.

re "It is not an exception nor it is something that needs to be corrected"
When Paradox states the limit is 24 yet states a few words before "you currently have 30", a new player takes words as gospel. Yes, they need to fix their wording and correct it.

I don't cheat but thank you for responding.

I'd argue that exploiting the game isn't the same as cheating (which, in HOI4 would be to use the console commands to "improve" your game experience); the bathub strategy was a way to exploit the game, so is paradropping on VPs etc. Ultimately though, everyone is free to decide how he wants to play, as long as he's not in a multiplayer server where there will be rules.

That being said, you still misunderstand the concept of special forces cap. It is not a hard limit and it isn't tailored to the different nation. By default it is set at 5% of your total fielded battalions (which means that fielding a hundred divisions with a single battalion each or 4 divisions with 25 battalions is the same for this purpose); the default number of special forces battalion you can field however is always 24. Whether you have no divisions or 480 fielded battalions, and anything in between, you'll always going to be able to field at least those 24 special forces battalion.

Still, some countries, due to historical reasons are going to start with more special forces than it is mechanically allowed. Why? Because of historical reasons and the experiences those countries had in certain enviroment. Italy fought the vast majority of WW1 on the Alps and as a result was more finely attuned to mountain warfare than Britain or the USA (and as someone has already pointed out, the Soviet Union starts with many mountaineers as well). Annexing Austria, as either the Germans or Hungary can very easily put you above the limit as well.

Furthermore, there are some focuses, technologies and even decisions that can raise the cap (rather the percentage of regular battalions that are needed to field special forces). Japan, for example, can select the Air Landing forces in the Army - Navy rivalry tab to increase the number of special forces it can recruit.


At the end, though, the cap is not a hard limit nor it is meant to represent any real-world rule of war. It's not like the USA could not train and field more marine divisions until they had gotten a certain amount of regular infantrymen out of basic. It is purely a game mechanic meant to prevent people from fielding exclusively marines and mountaineers, 'cause why wouldn't you when they are just better.

But the only function of the cap is to prevent you from training new special forces (and take note that should you include a single marine in an infantry division that division will be limited by the special forces cap as well) once you've already reached the cap, not to have you disband any division above that cap. As has already been pointed out, the loss of a huge portion of your army might very well lower your cap so much that the special forces you were already fielding "within the cap" would now result in you having gone above the cap.

Now, do as you want with that information but keep in mind that being above cap has no negative consequences for you, except the inability to add more special forces to your divisions.

[mk11]

Originally posted by Immortalis:

Now, do as you want with that information but keep in mind that being above cap has no negative consequences for you, except the inability to add more special forces to your divisions.

False. As I mentioned above, it prevents you changing the template of existing special force divisions even if this change doesn't change the number of special force battalions deployed.

If the reason Italy has more mountaineer battalions is the experience in WW1 why not have a national modifier that increases the cap for Italy?

[Immortalis]

Originally posted by mk11:

False. As I mentioned above, it prevents you changing the template of existing special force divisions even if this change doesn't change the number of special force battalions deployed.

Nope, you can indeed modify special forces division however you like: start the game as Italy, hit the xp command and go to modify your mountaineer division; you can add infantry, artillery, aa, even armored and motorized units and save the division. What you cannot add is an additional battalion of mountaineers because you're already above the cap.

Originally posted by mk11:

If the reason Italy has more mountaineer battalions is the experience in WW1 why not have a national modifier that increases the cap for Italy?

How the heck am I supposed to answer such question? It's a choice made by the devs, it's not like I decided how it works. I am saying that Italy had much more experience fighting in mountains than any other nation during WW1 because that's practically all they ever did (even the Austrians had to split their forces towards the Russian Front) and that's the reason why, IMHO, they start with more mountaineer divisions.

Plus, Italy's revamped focus tree does indeed provide three different focuses that increase special forces cap, under the army tree: bersaglieri (+3%), divisioni alpine and fanti dell'aria (+2% each).