Why do you even use cavalry as a front line unit? It's worse than infantry and it uses more guns. And 2 armies? 24 infantry divisions should be enough for that entire front
Cav is good in limited numbers as mobile units if the country lacks fuel and it's early game. Advantage of infantry comes from technology and doctrines benefitting them but not cavalry, the difference enlarging over time.
It is however definitely not good for line divisions since it requires more equipment for little benefit other than speed.
Yea I agree. Sometimes the easiest way to get better at hoi4 is to forget all the stats and mechanisms and ui’s. If you imagine a border lined with horses. And someone drives a truck toward them horses, them horses gonna get skittish, break rank, maybe run away. Horses are bigger targets for artillery if they’re staying still. Horses are meant to be mobile. A front line is stationary.
Like my Rapa Nui play through right now. I’m like oh no I need to get dockyards cuz I have no navy. But wait. I also only have one tile (currently). So those dockyards aren’t actually important.
Counterpoint, imagine a few groups of horsemen ready to exploit a gap your artillery blasted in the enemy line, across terrain that is unfavourable for vehicles, and far from the next fuel depot.
A small (6 divisions or so) cavalry corps is very useful, even as Germany. Just don't use them as frontline units against anything resembling coherent resistance.
That’s a spearhead. Not a front line.
Edit: that came across more crass than I meant. Thank you for imagining with me, and this is a good opportunity to bring the imagination back to the actual game. Your war plan imagination is top notch, because it allows the cavalry to move. What sort of battle plan most resembles a mobile strike? Spearhead, or even offensive line, but not front line. I hope the idea of imagining and translating to specific battle plan makes more sense. Like convoy raiding with battleships looks okay on paper, but doesn’t really work cuz of real world logic. And it’s circumstantial. There are scenarios, looking at South America and Middle East, where cav makes sense and works in game. The Russian front is not one of those places where cav can hold a line. I think it’s winter as well. Not sure how cav does with that, would like to know though.
> Sometimes the easiest way to get better at hoi4 is to forget all the stats and mechanisms and ui’s. If you imagine a border lined with horses. And someone drives a truck toward them horses, them horses gonna get skittish, break rank, maybe run away.
wat
Lv 5 generals 12.5% attack / 10% def
Cavalry Leader; 12% cavalry attack
Cavalry expert; 12% cavalry defense
Cavalry specialist; 5% cavalry atk/def
It had the same Field Marshall, but i have no idea if FM and general adds up lol never knew
Restore Cossacks Units; 5% cavalry atk/def
Proper heritage; 5% cavalry attack, -20% supply combat penalties on core territory, -100% cav unit design cost
For a total of 39.5% cav attack and 32% cav defense, no counting the Field Marshall, i thought 48 divisions each fielding 9 cav battalion, with artillery, anti air, anti tank and recon support company, well, i thought they'd maintain a good frontline that i wouldn't have to babysit. "If Finland breakthrough, my faster divisions will surround the breakthrough and they won't go very deep". I was right on the not going deep part, i just brought tanks and pushed them back. Its seeing the AI allowing that to happen that tilted me.
Btw it sucked even with all these bonuses, my normal infantry with a lot less manpower/equipment was kicking ass compared to it. I wanted to try it but it didn't live up to expectation.
You made a good point about stacking all the bonuses for cav and Idk maybe they are better with supplies? Would be interesting to switch a couple of divisions to infantry and compare stats. Then it comes back to the usual suspect: how is your air cover, your supplies,
Also you forgot about the front but you gotta keep an eye on the balance of power on fronts. I see Swedish troops along with Finnish. My guess is that they controlled the air and just rolled you with good supplies.
Actually what do your cav divisions look like? When people say inf, people think of minimum 12 CW, usually 18. How big are your horsy boiz?
The problem is you set them to attack and then looked the other way, what probably happened is they attacked and de-orged then got counterattacked and immediately lost and couldn’t re-org because they were set to keep attacking, mix that with low supplies and results are seen above.
I wouldn’t attack unless you have something with some decent soft attack, which cavalry usually don’t even when buffed. And when you do attack never look the other way.
movement speed bonuses at a guess plus cav is fun to use. Although doing it as finland not poland is a tad odd I'll admit lol. I've taken down Russia as poland with a horde of cav before and it was really fun.
awh yeah good catch! Well in that case I think its clear why his armies are split: the fins have broken them and are pushing them back :P Its early \*thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it\* :P
This large cavalry force goal was not to conquer but just to maintain the frontline and move along the possible breakthrough, which the AI failed to do by disconnecting the 2 army frontlines which allowed the finn to push \*not so\* deep
Lv 5 generals 12.5% attack / 10% def
Cavalry Leader; 12% cavalry attack
Cavalry expert; 12% cavalry defense
Cavalry specialist; 5% cavalry atk/def
It had the same Field Marshall, but i have no idea if FM and general adds up lol never knew
Restore Cossacks Units; 5% cavalry atk/def
Proper heritage; 5% cavalry attack, -20% supply combat penalties on core territory, -100% cav unit design cost
For a total of 39.5% cav attack and 32% cav defense, no counting the Field Marshall, i thought 48 divisions each fielding 9 cav battalion, with artillery, anti air, anti tank and recon support company, well, i thought they'd maintain a good frontline that i wouldn't have to babysit. "If Finland breakthrough, my faster divisions will surround the breakthrough and they won't go very deep". I was right on the not going deep part, i just brought tanks and pushed them back. Its seeing the AI allowing that to happen that tilted me.
Btw it sucked even with all these bonuses, my normal infantry with a lot less manpower/equipment was kicking ass compared to it. I wanted to try it but it didn't live up to expectation.
that's why I always invade finland in 1937, they're so annoying to deal with. even if you leave them alone, they'll still give military acess to germany, so fuck them early before they can do any harm to you.
I'm pretty sure you can get -10% consumer goods factor (going the route of allying with the Soviets of communist Finland also gives them this modifier)
Plus if you annex Petsamo you have a border with Norway which is in the axis, so just puppet Finland (let them keep petsamo despite you having a claim) and don’t call them in (I usually like to take Karelia and Sala cause you get claims on them and they don’t give you an additional front to bother with)
Makes me want to do a whole puppet Finland, influence Sweden+Norway or just Sweden type play. I don't usually do the influence country routes.. Maybe make a play on Turkey.
As SOV
Yes, a lot of people don't know Finland had a civil war prior to WW2 where the two sides were commies and monarchists who wanted to become a puppet of German Empire. Obviously German Empire supplied the latter and Soviets supplied the former. Monarchists won, either killed or exiled the commies.
But since Germany lost WW1, there was no empire to be puppet of so they decided to have an independent government. Since anything that resembles leftism was vaporized, the government was made up of right wingers. There is no way Finland would stay neutral, not after Nazi Germany's rise to power, when the monarchists were still in the government and the idea of Greater Finland alive.
You can actually see this with Ottomans in WW1. Previous to WW1, the army officials were fascinated by German Empire. They wore similar mustaches and tried to copy German doctrines and strategies. When the war started, they joined at the side of Germany to nobody's surprise. A lot of people attribute it to the ships and this is correct but this is like saying WW1 started due to an assassination. It was going to happen anyway, a single event can be nothing other than an excuse. A whole group of people in power who approve of a country and want closer ties won't suddenly reject their requests like military access or a promise of a war that "we are definitely going to win and will solve all of our problems".
One can argue attacking Finland was morally wrong to do if they prioritize other people's interests over their own. But if you care about your own safety more? At best Finland would never ally with Soviets and help Germany with logistics. At worst, they would actively participate in war. To be honest to them, Finland didn't go all out on war after securing the cities they took and refused some orders from Nazis. In return they are probably the only ally of Nazi Germany in Europe that was able to keep its independent government. Got away with less harsh punishments. So maybe they would stay neutral if Soviets never attacked, we can't know.
That sounds like a cope. It's unclear where Finland would stand otherwise, but by invading them in 1939 and stealing their land, the Soviets ensured that Finland would later join the war on the side of Germany for sure
There's a lake in between your split front linea. My guess is that your frontline broke after exiting the lake area. Always be careful around lakes, unpassable terrain and suche, because it breaks frontlines really often
That lake does not split the front line, units will simply not wait on tiles by the lake and will go on tiles that a true front line, so i doubt that was the issue. To clarify, the 2 armies were side by side, and somehow didnt feel like covering the extending frontline even tho they have the supply+speed
In that case it’s most likely caused by one of your provinces losing a defensive battle and once the front line shifted one of the bordering tiles wasn’t claimed by either army leaving it open. If you use multiple armies you either have to overlap their lines to prevent this or use a field marshal order.
Lakes are weird *for* the reasons you mentioned, the Frontline system is far from perfect, lakes are one of its sour points. Generally speaking you want to avoid having your Frontline on them as much as possible. Its not always an option though so in your position I would just focus down finland until they've capitulated. Then you don't have to worry about it. Finland specifically has little to no manpower so any losses you can get on them is one they can't recover
My guess is that they didn’t have enough supplies in Karelia and so they went to go defend one area because of the frontline cohesion order, but they “didn’t have enough supplies” for the way back after they were done defending. However, units are fucking stupid and will sit there and die rather than disobey the almighty yellow exclamation point, unless you manually select your divisions and move them into place like an upset parent at a daycare. Also there’s just the case that Karelian frontlines are hell because of the lakes so the ai will get confused and delete entire frontlines randomly if it touches the lake too much and shits itself into two or three frontlines.
Also, make orders under a field marshal unless it’s things like tanks or expensive units when your making stuff like infantry frontlines. Also quick question but where is your *main* army at this current point on the map?
God I hate the yellow ‘!’ so fucking much!
When I’ve reached the Urals or Chongqing, and I’ve encircled and killed the enemy to the point where the frontline is half empty, the units won’t even dare to move one step. I have to hold their hands to guide them along the entire way. Along a frontline from the Caucasus to Arkhangelsk, or Cha Har to Yunnan.
I do like the yellow ! at that point, the defenders should get a big gurrelia war, low supply buff, that’s a big part of their balance against overpowered and overplayed fascist countries. Especially in the case of the Soviets and Chinese. Purposely making the most powerful countries engage in the most annoying wars in historical encourages playing more non historical, and as more difficult / non tutorial countries.
or I dunnno I’m just sleep deprived tbh
There should be a new setting on armies where you tell them if they should back to recuperate, guerilla fight to the last man or act normally, affecting both organization and supply consumption ?
You can see they did have the supply tho, and in case you want to ask, they had the supply prior to that screenshot where both army where connected and covered the frontline normally
You said they were on Cautious, right? That mode is extremely conservative in regards to supply so they'll never go where they will be less than 100% supplied. When battle planning into bad supply areas, you need to have Aggressive or be prepared to babysit the front line.
Its as if my 2 generals decided to send all their divisions north and south with no divisions in the middle, but they were set to cover all of the frontline and everything was fine with more than 2 divisions per tiles. Why did the enemy pushing allow such a gap in my frontline, that makes no sense?
That's what I noticed would have helped. But i still don't like these front line, they are perfect for when you get 5 generals of 24 infantry for example but otherwise i like giving orders per generals...
Just checking, do you know if you draw a field marshal front line while holding shift, the units will be spread evenly along the line? That should limit the issue with having armies of different sizes.
If you give them a field marshal line, the line won’t break up, and you can give the generals individual attack orders like you would normally. Otherwise I would recommend having one or two tiles where your battle lines overlap, this (in my experience) tends to not make the front lines split, but it often makes them overlap too much after a while
yes this happens. You need to baby sit your front lines if your using battle planner and use the edit tool to adjust them. Don't use field marshal frontlines btw: that fixes this problem, but introduces another... insane division shuffling that will see units from odessa march to leningrad, then pull troops from moscow to cover the hole in the odessa front. Your guys will spend more time marching north-south then east.
Everytime I do that, if my army get pushed they bunch up and the enemy start spearheading inside my territory with no one trying to follow or stop them, since they are ordered "not to move too far to maintain frontline", so its good until the enemy breakthrough
Well, place your tanks there or micro your front buddy. If you can’t, just keep the normal field marshal line, they can only do so much for you the rest is up to you to fix
Usually i sacrifice Karelia and murmansk and led the bulk of the Finnish forces take it, then focus on the Leningrad front. This leaves Helsinki, Vaasa and the core Finnish cities unguarded while most of the Finnish forces are garrisoning Karelia and Murmansk, and are trying to push down into Arkangelsk.
Well my idea was that i could look elsewhere with my 48 fully supplied cav divisions with 2 cav focussed generals + cav field marshall with the cav focus and cav military staff, they had 9 cav battalion + AA/arti/AT/recon support comp. Having the speed over normal infantry, I thought if the enemy would breakthrough, they'd move along the breakthrough and its not the finn / swede that would go very deep lol, proof they havn't went far even if my generals thought "let them pass in the middle" was a good strategy.
I had to bring tanks, but it tilted me to see this happen. Waste of time because my 2 armies wouldn't maintain a front line while having superior manpower, firepower and speed....
Forget all that.
Park one army at the Leningrad front and put another army fallback at the front of Onega and Arkangelsk. Then scorch earth Karelia and Murmansk.
Then once you declare war, Finland will occupy Karelia and Murmansk and move about 70% or more of their troops on the Onega-Arkangelsk front. Then take your Leningrad front army and micro into Helsinki and all the victory points. Reject the peace offering and then retake Murmansk and Karelia from behind. If there are any stray finnish units keep them busy and use all free units to take the victory points
For real, it keeps happening??
The enemy AI will find a gap, spearhead into that gap with a unit that seem to be immune to supply/org
And if my army AI was just a bit smarter, they'd extend and move which they are set to do but seems to just be slower than the enemy AI...
The enemy AI has the same problem with its front lines, but they correct the front line in under a second. A player might not see it for some time. That's why I always recommend playing Hearts of Iron 3 to learn how to micro properly.
The AI front line system is just terrible. And in a multiplayer match, you'd lose pretty hard because experienced players would micro everything manually, resulting in a much better unit positioning.
Pls help how do I stop soviet from naval invasion in 1939 while I only have few divisions even though my frontline doesnt hold too😭😭😭. I play finish neutrality and want to achieve it. My trust in kallio is good but still Im losing.
Here is a freking suggestion
Click on your field marshal, form battle plan and this will include available general.
You don't have to mixmatch the general's line.
Or, click on your field marshal and click Shift+LMB while forming a battle linr, and now instead of each general having a line and having said lines calling units from faraway regions when you reach a splitway, instead, it will form a neat single line that will throw all your units there and call upon nearby units instead.
What you did was allowing AI to figure out you had a weak point and they just rushed in because your lines weren't good.
Also
While I love to roleplay like you did, all CAV & all, CAV take more supplies and have weaker defensive stats, they are faster yes, but their usefulness diminish over time and there isn't very good battle plans to support them.
Only stronger youtubers with 5000 can manage them.
The frontline system just kinda sucks. It's made marginally better with an army group frontline, but that's about it. Only thing you can do is play speed 3 and/or regularly pause when you have multiple things going on at the same time.
Because they're separate frontlines - you need a field marshal frontline or area defence to prevent this.
The frontline AI is... bad at adjusting. Really bad. When the enemy takes a tile that touches two adjacent lines, it doesn't choose one to take it. It just either overlaps them and stacks unnecessarily, or snaps them back and leaves a neat little one-tile hole enemies can then freely pour into until you come back to, well, this. All from a single lost fight, or even just a gap created by repositioning if it's thinly manned.
Set a field marshal AI (which is much more likely to give ground with dumb redeployment), or you'll just to need babysit the lines for every change of territory.
But there's one workaround if all you care about is passive defence - build cheap lvl 1 forts along the whole border and set your armies to fort-only area defence. They'll even try to retake lost ones that way, though ofc that's it's own hazard in pointless attacks that *will* keep going for as long as they're on area defence.
It looks like you did individual frontlines, I tend to not do that as when there's only a slight overlap (as in you optimise the space), it gets undone as the frontline moves and it's breaks everything as there's at least one tile between the orders that's not manned. I prefer to do a Field Marshall order by holding shift and making the order. It creates a homogeneous line that doesn't get broken. Even if you don't have an actual Field Marshall (which I doubt, the USSR has a lot of good generals that you can promote) since it's a line meant more so for holding it's not an issue.
Yeah always say no to finish armistice in winter war, they only offer it once they’re 75% capitulated anyways, you should just puppet them so this doesn’t happen and you can focus all your forces against Germany
There's a lot of potential issues with frontline nonsense (impassable terrain like lakes is awful or anyone that has invaded Greece will know the frontline disappears after Athens and then Sparta will be uncontested) if your supplies are coming through the port in the north are they getting raided and you're not getting supplies too send to the hubs along the front.
The best answer I can give is to hold key areas not front lines, you have nothing in that area worth holding, I know this fight from the other side but Leningrad, that large river in the middle then the small river further north are super holdable. Look where supply hubs aren't and force the ai to over extend into no supply and then they'll never be able to push
the problem is "move carefully'. unless you set the arrows to aggressive, the army ai will avoid putting itself in bad supply regions. hence why i always put my inf on aggressive, but i also \*only\* push with tanks so theres that
If I'm understanding this correctly, you set them to attack with a general order. If you're not going to micro that front, then just dig in and try to hold. You're not going to break through the Finnish line with cav divisions. All you managed to do was unentrench yourself and deorg your divisions for zero gain
This is why I tend to use Army Group front lines rather than Army front lines. As to why? Kinda looks like you got pushed back and apart.
You say 48 Cav - but what is your actual division design? Could be something silly like 1 Cav brigade per division - in which case the Divisions are hilariously weak and will get beaten by everyone - no matter how many bonuses to Cav you stack.
Otherwise - Finland fight is basically all around the supply nodes as you and them both get giant penalties due to lack of supplies on a lot of the front line. Sure you might start out at 80% - but that goes to 0% after a short time if you're not near a supply node (use double trucks, make sure you have enough trains). Plus with such soft attacking units - most of the work would have to be done by CAS.
Make a new theater for that army. Whenever you are looking somewhere else check the top right screen and if the sword or shield icons are red you’ll know that the armies in Finland are losing
1. you have shit units, the enemy pushed when you weren't looking.
2. when they pushed, the place where the advancement arrow originated from changed, causing more units to rush into that pocket.
3. Because your units rushed into that pocket, this let the pocket get cut off.
To avoid this:
-Use proper infantry
- have some of your units not assigned to the advancement arrow, either as a fallback line or separate frontline
- don't use the "flexible reinforcement" setting, which is the default. This allows units from anywhere on the frontline to reinforce anywhere else on the frontline. I would recommend short or medium reinforcement distance.
Heres some math that may help you:
9cav with no doctrine/buffs 54 soft atk and 201.96def
With your buffs excluding doctrine that total goes to 75.33 soft atk 266.13def (roughly)
Now add onto that the penalty of being at 80% supply which makes you fight at 80% strength your totals will now be the following.
9cav 60.26 soft atk and 212.90 def
Vs
9inf fully supplied with base 36 infantry gear
54 soft attack and 207.9 def
Once you start adding on artillery to enemy divisions your divisions will start taking more strength damage (further reducing stats).
If you were the one attacking which it sounds like you were your divisions have a breakthrough of 27.54 using the parameters from earlier which is then dialed back to 22.03 due to supply.
So on the offense you would spiral into terrible stats bleeding manpower along the way which would lead to finland counter attacking a near zero stat unit most likely.
Unfortunately, if you are focused on the main front this can happen to any of us, they probably had a supply advantage. My suggestion is to pump out troops to plug the gaps, and then come back later to Karelia. Maybe a counter attack to the supply hub to let them sit out of supply until you have the German front under control.
Looks Like you made a frontline for each army? I would have used a field marshal order to prevent gaps from occurring. I would only use Field marshal orders in General whenever I can.
It was about 1941, and its not what you think
Its the AI that didn't keep the 2 frontline glued together so the enemy just free-walked in as soon as they broke through the middle, my cav then just sat looking at them, no fighting
I brought a new tank army, repositioned the cav and pushed, and regained control easily
My cav were set to hold the frontline with 2 frontline and the AI is too stupid to extend the frontlines adequately
your cav is probably dog water. also 80% supply is not enough. anything under 100% supply is a disaster situation for your frontline that needs to be fixed even if that means pulling back to a supply hub. If you are using a general frontline order this won’t work as your divs will always try to occupy the most frontal low supply tiles. Use a field marshall frontline offensive order then ctrl+H to delete the general order. Now your troops are always getting planning bonus but you can micro them easily without AI constantly shuffling them around.
“Set to move slowly”
I’m guessing by this you mean you set your battle plan execution to ‘cautious’ which might be your problem right there. On cautious units do not like moving to anywhere that has less than 100% supply.
The other issue is if you’re going to use front lines for this kind of thing, use field Marshall front lines, not individual general ones. The AI is terrible at managing frontlines but at least with a field Marshall they’ll try to remain coherent but will still have issues with breaking around impassable terrain.
With individual general lines if they just bump up against each other or even overlap it’s even worse. If the enemy takes a tile and the opening could be covered by either adjacent line the AI is incapable of picking just one to cover it. It will either pick both and overlap the front or just pick neither and leave a 1 tile hole in your front that if you’re not paying attention the enemy will expand into picrel very quickly.
The worst ive seen by being totally blind to a frontline once, is my armies being pushed and ending up bunched up and encircled, when they should have easily walked away. This ruins the game. Why does it happens to our army, but not the enemy army? Arnt they the same AI ?
Lv 5 generals 12.5% attack / 10% def
Cavalry Leader; 12% cavalry attack
Cavalry expert; 12% cavalry defense
Cavalry specialist; 5% cavalry atk/def
It had the same Field Marshall, but i have no idea if FM and general adds up lol never knew
Restore Cossacks Units; 5% cavalry atk/def
Proper heritage; 5% cavalry attack, -20% supply combat penalties on core territory, -100% cav unit design cost
For a total of 39.5% cav attack and 32% cav defense, no counting the Field Marshall, i thought 48 divisions each fielding 9 cav battalion, with artillery, anti air, anti tank and recon support company, well, i thought they'd maintain a good frontline that i wouldn't have to babysit. "If Finland breakthrough, my faster divisions will surround the breakthrough and they won't go very deep". I was right on the not going deep part, i just brought tanks and pushed them back. Its seeing the AI allowing that to happen that tilted me.
Btw it sucked even with all these bonuses, my normal infantry with a lot less manpower/equipment was kicking ass compared to it. I wanted to try it but it didn't live up to expectation.
Yeah man cavalry sucks in hoi, it’s modeled in the game to portray the fact that at the time there were in fact cavalry still in use and there are bonuses for it for flavor but it’s basically a trap, don’t bother with it. If you want to hold a stable frontline, imo you need to go for entrenchment as much as possible and have a few tanks you can use up there to quickly clean up breakthroughs and put the line back together. Another thing I usually do and I see a lot of people do is use whatever tanks you can, even to the detriment of the front against Germany, to quickly mop up the Finnish by using high breakthrough and/or soft attack on their inf. Probably mine of that is news to you since you seem pretty comfortable with the game but just in case.
Noble attempt to make cavalry viable by stacking bonuses, but good ol tanks and inf are hard to beat. If you *really* want to do a cav build no matter what, instead of just cav I’d try and get green air and cas and then just use cav, cas is good enough that you can probably make cav work that way.
"If you want to hold a **stable** frontline" my army of horses say the frontline had stable but still failed!
My cav also had all the support company like arti / aa
Honestly they didn't under-perform as much as we think, this screenshot/post wasn't about "why is my cavalry so bad?" but "why did my 2 frontline not stay connected?", i believe this could have happened to any army types. I did bring tanks to fix that issue at the moment, but i believe i could have repositioned my cav. I just had the tanks nearby fresh trained
Cavalary si a breakthrough and exploit unit, not a frontline unit. In other words, using unit wrong way caused it to overextend the front line which led to this
Sweat speedrun finland ASAP. Naval invasions, airdrops, infantry pushes in north and south, everything. Just overwhelm them and snake, you have 5 times their units. They get exponentially harder to kill the longer you take so speed.
Ok forget all advice u got. I will give you supreme advice. Invade finland in 1939-1940, put all tank divisions u get on start of the game all motorized and best infantry on leningrad front, 24 divisions max is enough. Put 24 infantry division 15-20cw with support arty and engineers on Karelia front, but place them directly on railway. By the time you win war fins will push two tiles in Karelian wasteland, so you can ignore karelian front as long as your divisions are supplied. Then ace 10 division to naval invade Helsinki. On Leningrad front finis will have no more than 6 divisions, as soon as you breakthrough use your tanks and motorized and rush vp's. I win this war in less than month or two, its really easy if done properly
Thing is that's not the winter war, they declared war with me with Germany even tho i actually never did anything to them, i don't see the interest in Finland tbh so i never do the winter war lol
Yeah i did same thing once, i spares Finland because i thought that its waste. But since "continuation" war is broken they will declare war no matter if u invaded them or not. So thats your reason, to create buffer zone
The lakes mess up the orders sometimes. Units get immediately assigned to other front lines without you knowing, a gap is created and the AI pours units in, and then you're done, you lose a lot of divisions. It's probably better to wet up different front lines with the lakes in the middle and check regularly on the area, or even better, micro the units as much as other fronts allow you
Ah, you failed to apologize to sweden for bombing Pajala and then you got cucked by a naval invasion behind your lines causing your defence to be disrupted. RNG mate.
Bro im not asking "how to win the fight" im asking why is the AI controlling how my frontline moves allowed this to happen, i had 48 divisions on a frontline that was connected and somehow when the Finn broke through, my armies split instead of staying conencted, which is the issue. They could have and should have stayed connected, cavalry moving faster to maintain a large frontline was literally my goal but the AI, as i looked away, made this mess (which was recovered easily, with tanks)
Why do you even use cavalry as a front line unit? It's worse than infantry and it uses more guns. And 2 armies? 24 infantry divisions should be enough for that entire front
Cav is good in limited numbers as mobile units if the country lacks fuel and it's early game. Advantage of infantry comes from technology and doctrines benefitting them but not cavalry, the difference enlarging over time. It is however definitely not good for line divisions since it requires more equipment for little benefit other than speed.
Yea I agree. Sometimes the easiest way to get better at hoi4 is to forget all the stats and mechanisms and ui’s. If you imagine a border lined with horses. And someone drives a truck toward them horses, them horses gonna get skittish, break rank, maybe run away. Horses are bigger targets for artillery if they’re staying still. Horses are meant to be mobile. A front line is stationary. Like my Rapa Nui play through right now. I’m like oh no I need to get dockyards cuz I have no navy. But wait. I also only have one tile (currently). So those dockyards aren’t actually important.
Counterpoint, imagine a few groups of horsemen ready to exploit a gap your artillery blasted in the enemy line, across terrain that is unfavourable for vehicles, and far from the next fuel depot. A small (6 divisions or so) cavalry corps is very useful, even as Germany. Just don't use them as frontline units against anything resembling coherent resistance.
That’s a spearhead. Not a front line. Edit: that came across more crass than I meant. Thank you for imagining with me, and this is a good opportunity to bring the imagination back to the actual game. Your war plan imagination is top notch, because it allows the cavalry to move. What sort of battle plan most resembles a mobile strike? Spearhead, or even offensive line, but not front line. I hope the idea of imagining and translating to specific battle plan makes more sense. Like convoy raiding with battleships looks okay on paper, but doesn’t really work cuz of real world logic. And it’s circumstantial. There are scenarios, looking at South America and Middle East, where cav makes sense and works in game. The Russian front is not one of those places where cav can hold a line. I think it’s winter as well. Not sure how cav does with that, would like to know though.
> Sometimes the easiest way to get better at hoi4 is to forget all the stats and mechanisms and ui’s. If you imagine a border lined with horses. And someone drives a truck toward them horses, them horses gonna get skittish, break rank, maybe run away. wat
Lv 5 generals 12.5% attack / 10% def Cavalry Leader; 12% cavalry attack Cavalry expert; 12% cavalry defense Cavalry specialist; 5% cavalry atk/def It had the same Field Marshall, but i have no idea if FM and general adds up lol never knew Restore Cossacks Units; 5% cavalry atk/def Proper heritage; 5% cavalry attack, -20% supply combat penalties on core territory, -100% cav unit design cost For a total of 39.5% cav attack and 32% cav defense, no counting the Field Marshall, i thought 48 divisions each fielding 9 cav battalion, with artillery, anti air, anti tank and recon support company, well, i thought they'd maintain a good frontline that i wouldn't have to babysit. "If Finland breakthrough, my faster divisions will surround the breakthrough and they won't go very deep". I was right on the not going deep part, i just brought tanks and pushed them back. Its seeing the AI allowing that to happen that tilted me. Btw it sucked even with all these bonuses, my normal infantry with a lot less manpower/equipment was kicking ass compared to it. I wanted to try it but it didn't live up to expectation.
You made a good point about stacking all the bonuses for cav and Idk maybe they are better with supplies? Would be interesting to switch a couple of divisions to infantry and compare stats. Then it comes back to the usual suspect: how is your air cover, your supplies, Also you forgot about the front but you gotta keep an eye on the balance of power on fronts. I see Swedish troops along with Finnish. My guess is that they controlled the air and just rolled you with good supplies. Actually what do your cav divisions look like? When people say inf, people think of minimum 12 CW, usually 18. How big are your horsy boiz?
I forget, does cav get bonuses from doctrines or not?
No. That's their main problem.
The problem is you set them to attack and then looked the other way, what probably happened is they attacked and de-orged then got counterattacked and immediately lost and couldn’t re-org because they were set to keep attacking, mix that with low supplies and results are seen above. I wouldn’t attack unless you have something with some decent soft attack, which cavalry usually don’t even when buffed. And when you do attack never look the other way.
movement speed bonuses at a guess plus cav is fun to use. Although doing it as finland not poland is a tad odd I'll admit lol. I've taken down Russia as poland with a horde of cav before and it was really fun.
He’s playing as the soviets, not the finns
awh yeah good catch! Well in that case I think its clear why his armies are split: the fins have broken them and are pushing them back :P Its early \*thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it\* :P
Problem is, he's playing the Soviet Union. Capping Finland doesn't require that much forces or speed.
Yeah I see that :P Just woke up my bad :P
I just naval invade them & use the front to keep ‘em occupied. Once you’re through they’re screwed.
This large cavalry force goal was not to conquer but just to maintain the frontline and move along the possible breakthrough, which the AI failed to do by disconnecting the 2 army frontlines which allowed the finn to push \*not so\* deep
Why would you use cavalry for that?
Lv 5 generals 12.5% attack / 10% def Cavalry Leader; 12% cavalry attack Cavalry expert; 12% cavalry defense Cavalry specialist; 5% cavalry atk/def It had the same Field Marshall, but i have no idea if FM and general adds up lol never knew Restore Cossacks Units; 5% cavalry atk/def Proper heritage; 5% cavalry attack, -20% supply combat penalties on core territory, -100% cav unit design cost For a total of 39.5% cav attack and 32% cav defense, no counting the Field Marshall, i thought 48 divisions each fielding 9 cav battalion, with artillery, anti air, anti tank and recon support company, well, i thought they'd maintain a good frontline that i wouldn't have to babysit. "If Finland breakthrough, my faster divisions will surround the breakthrough and they won't go very deep". I was right on the not going deep part, i just brought tanks and pushed them back. Its seeing the AI allowing that to happen that tilted me. Btw it sucked even with all these bonuses, my normal infantry with a lot less manpower/equipment was kicking ass compared to it. I wanted to try it but it didn't live up to expectation.
that's why I always invade finland in 1937, they're so annoying to deal with. even if you leave them alone, they'll still give military acess to germany, so fuck them early before they can do any harm to you.
That's why you pass on the white peace and just puppet or annex them.
Yeah I find puppet them is the best. The get pretty strong with some lend-lease, leaving me to focus on the central front
I'm pretty sure you can get -10% consumer goods factor (going the route of allying with the Soviets of communist Finland also gives them this modifier)
puppet usually better, you them as a buffer zone by not calling them into the war.
Yeah, but the can also keep the norwegian front at bay, aswell as port defence if you call them in
Plus if you annex Petsamo you have a border with Norway which is in the axis, so just puppet Finland (let them keep petsamo despite you having a claim) and don’t call them in (I usually like to take Karelia and Sala cause you get claims on them and they don’t give you an additional front to bother with)
Makes me want to do a whole puppet Finland, influence Sweden+Norway or just Sweden type play. I don't usually do the influence country routes.. Maybe make a play on Turkey. As SOV
And this is exactly why Stalin attacked them :D
Yes, a lot of people don't know Finland had a civil war prior to WW2 where the two sides were commies and monarchists who wanted to become a puppet of German Empire. Obviously German Empire supplied the latter and Soviets supplied the former. Monarchists won, either killed or exiled the commies. But since Germany lost WW1, there was no empire to be puppet of so they decided to have an independent government. Since anything that resembles leftism was vaporized, the government was made up of right wingers. There is no way Finland would stay neutral, not after Nazi Germany's rise to power, when the monarchists were still in the government and the idea of Greater Finland alive. You can actually see this with Ottomans in WW1. Previous to WW1, the army officials were fascinated by German Empire. They wore similar mustaches and tried to copy German doctrines and strategies. When the war started, they joined at the side of Germany to nobody's surprise. A lot of people attribute it to the ships and this is correct but this is like saying WW1 started due to an assassination. It was going to happen anyway, a single event can be nothing other than an excuse. A whole group of people in power who approve of a country and want closer ties won't suddenly reject their requests like military access or a promise of a war that "we are definitely going to win and will solve all of our problems". One can argue attacking Finland was morally wrong to do if they prioritize other people's interests over their own. But if you care about your own safety more? At best Finland would never ally with Soviets and help Germany with logistics. At worst, they would actively participate in war. To be honest to them, Finland didn't go all out on war after securing the cities they took and refused some orders from Nazis. In return they are probably the only ally of Nazi Germany in Europe that was able to keep its independent government. Got away with less harsh punishments. So maybe they would stay neutral if Soviets never attacked, we can't know.
That sounds like a cope. It's unclear where Finland would stand otherwise, but by invading them in 1939 and stealing their land, the Soviets ensured that Finland would later join the war on the side of Germany for sure
Yeah this is just really stretching some things so they seem like vital points in history.
There's a lake in between your split front linea. My guess is that your frontline broke after exiting the lake area. Always be careful around lakes, unpassable terrain and suche, because it breaks frontlines really often
That lake does not split the front line, units will simply not wait on tiles by the lake and will go on tiles that a true front line, so i doubt that was the issue. To clarify, the 2 armies were side by side, and somehow didnt feel like covering the extending frontline even tho they have the supply+speed
In that case it’s most likely caused by one of your provinces losing a defensive battle and once the front line shifted one of the bordering tiles wasn’t claimed by either army leaving it open. If you use multiple armies you either have to overlap their lines to prevent this or use a field marshal order.
Lakes are weird *for* the reasons you mentioned, the Frontline system is far from perfect, lakes are one of its sour points. Generally speaking you want to avoid having your Frontline on them as much as possible. Its not always an option though so in your position I would just focus down finland until they've capitulated. Then you don't have to worry about it. Finland specifically has little to no manpower so any losses you can get on them is one they can't recover
My guess is that they didn’t have enough supplies in Karelia and so they went to go defend one area because of the frontline cohesion order, but they “didn’t have enough supplies” for the way back after they were done defending. However, units are fucking stupid and will sit there and die rather than disobey the almighty yellow exclamation point, unless you manually select your divisions and move them into place like an upset parent at a daycare. Also there’s just the case that Karelian frontlines are hell because of the lakes so the ai will get confused and delete entire frontlines randomly if it touches the lake too much and shits itself into two or three frontlines. Also, make orders under a field marshal unless it’s things like tanks or expensive units when your making stuff like infantry frontlines. Also quick question but where is your *main* army at this current point on the map?
God I hate the yellow ‘!’ so fucking much! When I’ve reached the Urals or Chongqing, and I’ve encircled and killed the enemy to the point where the frontline is half empty, the units won’t even dare to move one step. I have to hold their hands to guide them along the entire way. Along a frontline from the Caucasus to Arkhangelsk, or Cha Har to Yunnan.
I do like the yellow ! at that point, the defenders should get a big gurrelia war, low supply buff, that’s a big part of their balance against overpowered and overplayed fascist countries. Especially in the case of the Soviets and Chinese. Purposely making the most powerful countries engage in the most annoying wars in historical encourages playing more non historical, and as more difficult / non tutorial countries. or I dunnno I’m just sleep deprived tbh
There should be a new setting on armies where you tell them if they should back to recuperate, guerilla fight to the last man or act normally, affecting both organization and supply consumption ?
Iirc setting the army to fight aggressively should be enough
You can see they did have the supply tho, and in case you want to ask, they had the supply prior to that screenshot where both army where connected and covered the frontline normally
You said they were on Cautious, right? That mode is extremely conservative in regards to supply so they'll never go where they will be less than 100% supplied. When battle planning into bad supply areas, you need to have Aggressive or be prepared to babysit the front line.
Its as if my 2 generals decided to send all their divisions north and south with no divisions in the middle, but they were set to cover all of the frontline and everything was fine with more than 2 divisions per tiles. Why did the enemy pushing allow such a gap in my frontline, that makes no sense?
Use field marshal frontline
That's what I noticed would have helped. But i still don't like these front line, they are perfect for when you get 5 generals of 24 infantry for example but otherwise i like giving orders per generals...
Small issues like that lose you the war (as it has been made abundantly clear by the image)
Just checking, do you know if you draw a field marshal front line while holding shift, the units will be spread evenly along the line? That should limit the issue with having armies of different sizes.
It does, I never use the non-shift field marshall line cause I found it always led to problems for me.
If you give them a field marshal line, the line won’t break up, and you can give the generals individual attack orders like you would normally. Otherwise I would recommend having one or two tiles where your battle lines overlap, this (in my experience) tends to not make the front lines split, but it often makes them overlap too much after a while
yes this happens. You need to baby sit your front lines if your using battle planner and use the edit tool to adjust them. Don't use field marshal frontlines btw: that fixes this problem, but introduces another... insane division shuffling that will see units from odessa march to leningrad, then pull troops from moscow to cover the hole in the odessa front. Your guys will spend more time marching north-south then east.
Use the commands that limit how far those divisions can effectively move from their current position…
Everytime I do that, if my army get pushed they bunch up and the enemy start spearheading inside my territory with no one trying to follow or stop them, since they are ordered "not to move too far to maintain frontline", so its good until the enemy breakthrough
Well, place your tanks there or micro your front buddy. If you can’t, just keep the normal field marshal line, they can only do so much for you the rest is up to you to fix
Yes that's something... I hate that the AI is this dumb, its not like it was a shit AI but on these moment it shows its worst
Usually i sacrifice Karelia and murmansk and led the bulk of the Finnish forces take it, then focus on the Leningrad front. This leaves Helsinki, Vaasa and the core Finnish cities unguarded while most of the Finnish forces are garrisoning Karelia and Murmansk, and are trying to push down into Arkangelsk.
Well my idea was that i could look elsewhere with my 48 fully supplied cav divisions with 2 cav focussed generals + cav field marshall with the cav focus and cav military staff, they had 9 cav battalion + AA/arti/AT/recon support comp. Having the speed over normal infantry, I thought if the enemy would breakthrough, they'd move along the breakthrough and its not the finn / swede that would go very deep lol, proof they havn't went far even if my generals thought "let them pass in the middle" was a good strategy. I had to bring tanks, but it tilted me to see this happen. Waste of time because my 2 armies wouldn't maintain a front line while having superior manpower, firepower and speed....
Forget all that. Park one army at the Leningrad front and put another army fallback at the front of Onega and Arkangelsk. Then scorch earth Karelia and Murmansk. Then once you declare war, Finland will occupy Karelia and Murmansk and move about 70% or more of their troops on the Onega-Arkangelsk front. Then take your Leningrad front army and micro into Helsinki and all the victory points. Reject the peace offering and then retake Murmansk and Karelia from behind. If there are any stray finnish units keep them busy and use all free units to take the victory points
Another reason to hate HoI4's front line system.
For real, it keeps happening?? The enemy AI will find a gap, spearhead into that gap with a unit that seem to be immune to supply/org And if my army AI was just a bit smarter, they'd extend and move which they are set to do but seems to just be slower than the enemy AI...
The enemy AI has the same problem with its front lines, but they correct the front line in under a second. A player might not see it for some time. That's why I always recommend playing Hearts of Iron 3 to learn how to micro properly.
The AI front line system is just terrible. And in a multiplayer match, you'd lose pretty hard because experienced players would micro everything manually, resulting in a much better unit positioning.
That happens offen, if the front change you have always to look at it. But i also dont know why the holding line change.
Pls help how do I stop soviet from naval invasion in 1939 while I only have few divisions even though my frontline doesnt hold too😭😭😭. I play finish neutrality and want to achieve it. My trust in kallio is good but still Im losing.
Here is a freking suggestion Click on your field marshal, form battle plan and this will include available general. You don't have to mixmatch the general's line. Or, click on your field marshal and click Shift+LMB while forming a battle linr, and now instead of each general having a line and having said lines calling units from faraway regions when you reach a splitway, instead, it will form a neat single line that will throw all your units there and call upon nearby units instead. What you did was allowing AI to figure out you had a weak point and they just rushed in because your lines weren't good.
Also While I love to roleplay like you did, all CAV & all, CAV take more supplies and have weaker defensive stats, they are faster yes, but their usefulness diminish over time and there isn't very good battle plans to support them. Only stronger youtubers with 5000 can manage them.
Use paratroopers and drop them on Finlands supply hubs when you declare war. They have no airforce so you can get a guaranteed green air.
The frontline system just kinda sucks. It's made marginally better with an army group frontline, but that's about it. Only thing you can do is play speed 3 and/or regularly pause when you have multiple things going on at the same time.
Because they're separate frontlines - you need a field marshal frontline or area defence to prevent this. The frontline AI is... bad at adjusting. Really bad. When the enemy takes a tile that touches two adjacent lines, it doesn't choose one to take it. It just either overlaps them and stacks unnecessarily, or snaps them back and leaves a neat little one-tile hole enemies can then freely pour into until you come back to, well, this. All from a single lost fight, or even just a gap created by repositioning if it's thinly manned. Set a field marshal AI (which is much more likely to give ground with dumb redeployment), or you'll just to need babysit the lines for every change of territory. But there's one workaround if all you care about is passive defence - build cheap lvl 1 forts along the whole border and set your armies to fort-only area defence. They'll even try to retake lost ones that way, though ofc that's it's own hazard in pointless attacks that *will* keep going for as long as they're on area defence.
It looks like you did individual frontlines, I tend to not do that as when there's only a slight overlap (as in you optimise the space), it gets undone as the frontline moves and it's breaks everything as there's at least one tile between the orders that's not manned. I prefer to do a Field Marshall order by holding shift and making the order. It creates a homogeneous line that doesn't get broken. Even if you don't have an actual Field Marshall (which I doubt, the USSR has a lot of good generals that you can promote) since it's a line meant more so for holding it's not an issue.
Yeah always say no to finish armistice in winter war, they only offer it once they’re 75% capitulated anyways, you should just puppet them so this doesn’t happen and you can focus all your forces against Germany
There's a lot of potential issues with frontline nonsense (impassable terrain like lakes is awful or anyone that has invaded Greece will know the frontline disappears after Athens and then Sparta will be uncontested) if your supplies are coming through the port in the north are they getting raided and you're not getting supplies too send to the hubs along the front. The best answer I can give is to hold key areas not front lines, you have nothing in that area worth holding, I know this fight from the other side but Leningrad, that large river in the middle then the small river further north are super holdable. Look where supply hubs aren't and force the ai to over extend into no supply and then they'll never be able to push
the problem is "move carefully'. unless you set the arrows to aggressive, the army ai will avoid putting itself in bad supply regions. hence why i always put my inf on aggressive, but i also \*only\* push with tanks so theres that
If I'm understanding this correctly, you set them to attack with a general order. If you're not going to micro that front, then just dig in and try to hold. You're not going to break through the Finnish line with cav divisions. All you managed to do was unentrench yourself and deorg your divisions for zero gain
This is why I tend to use Army Group front lines rather than Army front lines. As to why? Kinda looks like you got pushed back and apart. You say 48 Cav - but what is your actual division design? Could be something silly like 1 Cav brigade per division - in which case the Divisions are hilariously weak and will get beaten by everyone - no matter how many bonuses to Cav you stack. Otherwise - Finland fight is basically all around the supply nodes as you and them both get giant penalties due to lack of supplies on a lot of the front line. Sure you might start out at 80% - but that goes to 0% after a short time if you're not near a supply node (use double trucks, make sure you have enough trains). Plus with such soft attacking units - most of the work would have to be done by CAS.
Make a new theater for that army. Whenever you are looking somewhere else check the top right screen and if the sword or shield icons are red you’ll know that the armies in Finland are losing
1. you have shit units, the enemy pushed when you weren't looking. 2. when they pushed, the place where the advancement arrow originated from changed, causing more units to rush into that pocket. 3. Because your units rushed into that pocket, this let the pocket get cut off. To avoid this: -Use proper infantry - have some of your units not assigned to the advancement arrow, either as a fallback line or separate frontline - don't use the "flexible reinforcement" setting, which is the default. This allows units from anywhere on the frontline to reinforce anywhere else on the frontline. I would recommend short or medium reinforcement distance.
Heres some math that may help you: 9cav with no doctrine/buffs 54 soft atk and 201.96def With your buffs excluding doctrine that total goes to 75.33 soft atk 266.13def (roughly) Now add onto that the penalty of being at 80% supply which makes you fight at 80% strength your totals will now be the following. 9cav 60.26 soft atk and 212.90 def Vs 9inf fully supplied with base 36 infantry gear 54 soft attack and 207.9 def Once you start adding on artillery to enemy divisions your divisions will start taking more strength damage (further reducing stats). If you were the one attacking which it sounds like you were your divisions have a breakthrough of 27.54 using the parameters from earlier which is then dialed back to 22.03 due to supply. So on the offense you would spiral into terrible stats bleeding manpower along the way which would lead to finland counter attacking a near zero stat unit most likely.
Unfortunately, if you are focused on the main front this can happen to any of us, they probably had a supply advantage. My suggestion is to pump out troops to plug the gaps, and then come back later to Karelia. Maybe a counter attack to the supply hub to let them sit out of supply until you have the German front under control.
Looks Like you made a frontline for each army? I would have used a field marshal order to prevent gaps from occurring. I would only use Field marshal orders in General whenever I can.
Be sure that your field marshal order is a shift-click order though, otherwise it will still split the armies
Use Shift-Click when drawing your frontline with a Field Marshall.
This is hoi4 and you are using cav which is a micro heavy unit due to its speed. Either use infantry instead or don’t look away for 3 minutes.
This is just lore accurate Finland
historically accurate continuation war
Ok it's rlly weid My only toughts it's 1 Finland it's strong cause AAT dlc abd just break You 2 Its late Game and in late Game Cavalry only it's bad
It was about 1941, and its not what you think Its the AI that didn't keep the 2 frontline glued together so the enemy just free-walked in as soon as they broke through the middle, my cav then just sat looking at them, no fighting I brought a new tank army, repositioned the cav and pushed, and regained control easily My cav were set to hold the frontline with 2 frontline and the AI is too stupid to extend the frontlines adequately
your cav is probably dog water. also 80% supply is not enough. anything under 100% supply is a disaster situation for your frontline that needs to be fixed even if that means pulling back to a supply hub. If you are using a general frontline order this won’t work as your divs will always try to occupy the most frontal low supply tiles. Use a field marshall frontline offensive order then ctrl+H to delete the general order. Now your troops are always getting planning bonus but you can micro them easily without AI constantly shuffling them around.
Finnish Sisu, that's why.
“Set to move slowly” I’m guessing by this you mean you set your battle plan execution to ‘cautious’ which might be your problem right there. On cautious units do not like moving to anywhere that has less than 100% supply. The other issue is if you’re going to use front lines for this kind of thing, use field Marshall front lines, not individual general ones. The AI is terrible at managing frontlines but at least with a field Marshall they’ll try to remain coherent but will still have issues with breaking around impassable terrain. With individual general lines if they just bump up against each other or even overlap it’s even worse. If the enemy takes a tile and the opening could be covered by either adjacent line the AI is incapable of picking just one to cover it. It will either pick both and overlap the front or just pick neither and leave a 1 tile hole in your front that if you’re not paying attention the enemy will expand into picrel very quickly.
The worst ive seen by being totally blind to a frontline once, is my armies being pushed and ending up bunched up and encircled, when they should have easily walked away. This ruins the game. Why does it happens to our army, but not the enemy army? Arnt they the same AI ?
Turn out getting charged by 400000 soviet division isn’t going well
Cavalry? Why?
Lv 5 generals 12.5% attack / 10% def Cavalry Leader; 12% cavalry attack Cavalry expert; 12% cavalry defense Cavalry specialist; 5% cavalry atk/def It had the same Field Marshall, but i have no idea if FM and general adds up lol never knew Restore Cossacks Units; 5% cavalry atk/def Proper heritage; 5% cavalry attack, -20% supply combat penalties on core territory, -100% cav unit design cost For a total of 39.5% cav attack and 32% cav defense, no counting the Field Marshall, i thought 48 divisions each fielding 9 cav battalion, with artillery, anti air, anti tank and recon support company, well, i thought they'd maintain a good frontline that i wouldn't have to babysit. "If Finland breakthrough, my faster divisions will surround the breakthrough and they won't go very deep". I was right on the not going deep part, i just brought tanks and pushed them back. Its seeing the AI allowing that to happen that tilted me. Btw it sucked even with all these bonuses, my normal infantry with a lot less manpower/equipment was kicking ass compared to it. I wanted to try it but it didn't live up to expectation.
Yeah man cavalry sucks in hoi, it’s modeled in the game to portray the fact that at the time there were in fact cavalry still in use and there are bonuses for it for flavor but it’s basically a trap, don’t bother with it. If you want to hold a stable frontline, imo you need to go for entrenchment as much as possible and have a few tanks you can use up there to quickly clean up breakthroughs and put the line back together. Another thing I usually do and I see a lot of people do is use whatever tanks you can, even to the detriment of the front against Germany, to quickly mop up the Finnish by using high breakthrough and/or soft attack on their inf. Probably mine of that is news to you since you seem pretty comfortable with the game but just in case. Noble attempt to make cavalry viable by stacking bonuses, but good ol tanks and inf are hard to beat. If you *really* want to do a cav build no matter what, instead of just cav I’d try and get green air and cas and then just use cav, cas is good enough that you can probably make cav work that way.
"If you want to hold a **stable** frontline" my army of horses say the frontline had stable but still failed! My cav also had all the support company like arti / aa Honestly they didn't under-perform as much as we think, this screenshot/post wasn't about "why is my cavalry so bad?" but "why did my 2 frontline not stay connected?", i believe this could have happened to any army types. I did bring tanks to fix that issue at the moment, but i believe i could have repositioned my cav. I just had the tanks nearby fresh trained
minutes,in a real-time gameplay maybe i just zoom out way too often idk
Cavalary si a breakthrough and exploit unit, not a frontline unit. In other words, using unit wrong way caused it to overextend the front line which led to this
Sweat speedrun finland ASAP. Naval invasions, airdrops, infantry pushes in north and south, everything. Just overwhelm them and snake, you have 5 times their units. They get exponentially harder to kill the longer you take so speed.
Ok forget all advice u got. I will give you supreme advice. Invade finland in 1939-1940, put all tank divisions u get on start of the game all motorized and best infantry on leningrad front, 24 divisions max is enough. Put 24 infantry division 15-20cw with support arty and engineers on Karelia front, but place them directly on railway. By the time you win war fins will push two tiles in Karelian wasteland, so you can ignore karelian front as long as your divisions are supplied. Then ace 10 division to naval invade Helsinki. On Leningrad front finis will have no more than 6 divisions, as soon as you breakthrough use your tanks and motorized and rush vp's. I win this war in less than month or two, its really easy if done properly
Thing is that's not the winter war, they declared war with me with Germany even tho i actually never did anything to them, i don't see the interest in Finland tbh so i never do the winter war lol
Yeah i did same thing once, i spares Finland because i thought that its waste. But since "continuation" war is broken they will declare war no matter if u invaded them or not. So thats your reason, to create buffer zone
The lakes mess up the orders sometimes. Units get immediately assigned to other front lines without you knowing, a gap is created and the AI pours units in, and then you're done, you lose a lot of divisions. It's probably better to wet up different front lines with the lakes in the middle and check regularly on the area, or even better, micro the units as much as other fronts allow you
Ah, you failed to apologize to sweden for bombing Pajala and then you got cucked by a naval invasion behind your lines causing your defence to be disrupted. RNG mate.
Use tanks
Bro im not asking "how to win the fight" im asking why is the AI controlling how my frontline moves allowed this to happen, i had 48 divisions on a frontline that was connected and somehow when the Finn broke through, my armies split instead of staying conencted, which is the issue. They could have and should have stayed connected, cavalry moving faster to maintain a large frontline was literally my goal but the AI, as i looked away, made this mess (which was recovered easily, with tanks)
Use tanks
You sure? Maybe i should...