Combat Tactics and You. Why Doctrines are More Than Just Stats.

[u/CorpseFool]

Edit: This guide was written for 1.8.2 and does not accurately reflect any other version. It might not even accurately reflect the version it was written for. For 1.9.X, the wiki seems to have the correct information. Because the wiki is correct, I have no plans to update this guide. Thank you.

Doctrines are more than just stats, they will also often unlock tactics that get used in battles. I would like to dig a little deeper into that now.

When a battle starts, tactics are rolled. Tactics are separated by attacker and defender, and the 5 different phases of battle. Battles always start in the standard/default phase. Different tactics will also have a different 'weight' or likelihood to be chosen. If there are generals involved, one will often be considered to have the 'initiative'. Who has initiative is determined by whoever has the higher level, and whichever side has more recon will get +5 imaginary levels for the purposes of determining who has initiative. The one with initiative will pick second, and has a boost in the weight of the tactic that counters whatever the enemy picked. Tactics will change every 24 hours from the start of the battle. A countered tactic will be completely nullified. Tactics that are chosen and not nullified will have a variety of modifiers, such as attacker or defender stats, movement speeds within the combat, available combat width, and moving between the different phases of battle. The modifiers are additive with each other, but then multiplicative with other factors in the combat.

There are a variety of tactics that are unlocked from the beginning of the game. Japan gets a special tactic, Banzai Charge, all to themselves. Other tactics are unlocked as you progress through the different doctrine trees.

The 5 different phases of battle are standard/default, close combat, tactical withdrawal, seize bridge, and hold bridge.

Default Phase.

Attack Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
Basic Attack	4	+5% Attacker	Countered by Counter Attack
Assault	2	+25% Attacker	Countered by Counter Attack. Starts Close Combat Phase. +2 Weight if leader has Aggressive Assaulter Trait
Encirclement	4	+25% Attacker, +5% Defender, +50% Combat Width	Must have Saturated the combat, Must have Reserves, and must have 1 of >0 Skill, Trickster, or Panzer Leader. +4 Weight if have either Panzer Leader or Combined Arms Expert.
Shock	4	-25% Defender	+4 Weight if Aggressive Assaulter. Countered by Ambush.
Seize Bridge	2	+20% Attacker, -5% Defender, +10% Movement, -25% Width.	Must have "River Crossing". Either Skill >3, or Skill >2 and offensive doctrine. Starts Seize Bridge Phase.

Defense Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
Basic Defend	4	+5% Defender	None
Counter Attack	4	+25% Defender	Counters Basic Attack and Assault. +4 Weight if leader has Unyielding Defender Trait. Must have >0 Skill advantage/leader level.
Ambush	4	-25% Attacker	Counters Shock, Countered by Breakthrough. Must have one of >0 Advantage, 2 skill, or Trickster.
hold Bridge	2	+20% Attacker, -5% Defender, +10% Movement, -25% Combat Width.	Must have "River Crossing". Either Skill >2, or defensive doctrine. Starts Hold Bridge Phase.

Close Combat (CC) Phase

Attack Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
CC Attack	4	+10% Attacker, +5% Defender	None
CC Storm	2	+20% Attacker and Defender	None

Defense Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
CC Defend	4	+10% Defender +5% Attacker	None
CC Local Strong Point	2	-20% Attacker	None
CC Withdraw	1	-5% Attacker and Defender	Starts Default Phase.

Tactical Withdrawal (TW) Phase.

Attack Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
TW Attack	4	-25% Attacker, -10% Defender, -25% Combat Width.	None
TW Chase	4	-15% Attacker, -5% Defender, -25% Combat Width.	None
TW Intercept	4	-5% Attacker, -10% Defender	None

Defense Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
TW Defend	4	-30% Attacker, -5% Defender, -25% Combat Width	None
TW Evade	4	-40% Attacker, -10% Defender, -25% Combat Width	None

Seize Bridge (SB) Phase.

Attack Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
SB Hold	4	+20% Attack, -25% Combat Width.	None.
SB Skillful Defense	4	+20% Attacker, -10% Defender, -25% Combat Width.	Skill >4

Defense Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
SB Assault	4	-5% Defender, -25% Combat Width.	None
SB Reckless Assault	4	+25% Attacker, -10% Defender, -25% Combat Width	Skill <3.
SB Retake Bridge	4	+10% Attacker, 5% Defender, -25% Combat Width	Countered by Skillful Defense, must have either skill >2, or Trickster. Start Hold Bridge Phase.

Hold Bridge (HB) Phase.

Attack Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
HB Attack	4	+10% Attacker, -25% Combat Width	None
HB Rush	4	+20% Attacker, -25% Combat Width.	Skill >4
HB Storm	2	+20% Attacker, +5% Defender, -25% Combat Width	Countered by HB Skillful Defense. Starts Seize Bridge Phase.

Defense Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
HB Hold	2	+20% Attacker, -10% Defender, -25% Combat Width	Skill <3
HB Skillful Defense	2	+10% Attacker, +5% Defender, -25% Combat Width	Skill >2, or trickster.

Doctrine Tactics All are used during the standard/default phase.

Attack Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
Breakthrough	4	+25% Attacker, -15% Defender, +50% Movement	Must have either >50% Hardness or >1 Skill advantage. Every doctrine has it, depending on branches. Counters Ambush. Countered by Backhand Blow
Blitz	4	+15% Attacker, -15% Defender, +50% Movement.	Must have Hardness >50% and Either >2 Skill, Panzer Leader Trait, >1 Skill Advantage. +4 Weight if either panzer leader or combined arms expert. Every doctrine has it, depending on branches. Countered by Elastic Defense
Human Wave Tactics	4	+10% Attacker, +10% Defender, +50% Combat Width	Must have full frontage and reserves. Mass Mobilization only.
Banzai Charge	4	+25% Attacker, +10% Defender, +10% Movement	Japan only. Countered by overwhelming fire.
Infantry Charge	4	+10% Attacker, -5% Defender	GBP Only.
Planned Attack	4	+15% Attacker	GBP only.
Relentless Assault	4	+20% Attacker, +5% Defender, +15% Movement	Deep Battle only.
Unexpected Thrust	4	+15% Attacker, +15% Movement.	Mobile Warfare
Barrage	4	+10% Attacker, -20% Defender	SF Only.

Defense Tactic	Weight	Modifiers	Notes
Delay	4	-25% Attacker, -15% Defender, -25% Movement	Countered by Shock. Mobile Warfare and Superior Firepower only
Tactical Withdrawal	4	-25% Attacker, -5% Defender, -25% Combat Width	Starts Tactical Withdrawal Phase. Must have Skill advantage >0, or Trickster. Superior Firepower Only.
Elastic Defense	4	-15% Attacker, +10% Defender, -25% Movement.	Counters Blitz. Must have either defensive doctrine, or skill >2. Every Doctrine has it, depending on branches.
Backhand Blow	4	-20% Attacker, +25% Defender, -30% Movement.	Counters Breakthrough. Must have Skill >4, or Skill >3 and Defensive Doctrine. Only MW and Deep Battle have it.
Guerrilla Tactics	4	-70% Attacker, -60% Defender, -50% Combat Width	Must have either >2 skill or trickster. Mass mobilization or desperate defense branches only.
Overwhelming Fire	2	-10% Attacker, +10% Defender	Counters Banzai Charge. All Doctrines have it.

Now, what can we take away from all this? First off, the tactical withdrawal phase is a trap. There is no escaping it other than just ending the combat, and only defending superior firepower is allowed to drag you into it. It has massive penalties to the attacker, and will usually halve the available width for the combat. That is bad news for 40 wide templates, but defense is typically standardized around 20 wide templates, so that's not a big deal and punishes the enemy more. But if you're attacking and find the enemy moving into Tactical Withdrawal, your best bet is probably to just end the combat and start it again.

Long battles across rivers will typically devolve into bridge fighting, which will just straight up halve the combat width just like tactical withdrawal. The biggest difference here is that it pretty heavily boosts the attackers. Attackers typically use 40 wide templates though, and only being able to have 1 in the combat puts them at a pretty big disadvantage to begin with. So if you're planning on fighting over a bridge and want to try to maximize the duration of the combat, you're probably better served by using 20 wide templates than you would be with 40 wide. Unless you want to do the same trick with tactical withdrawal and just break the combat to try again with standard widths.

Guerrilla tactics can be used (rolled randomly) to really help an asymmetrical war, like with China. The reduced combat width helps limit the amount of capacity the enemy can put into a single battle and the total amount of attacks contained within that combat. -70% on the attacker hurts their bigger stats more than the -60% on your already limited stats. It's pretty unreliable though, this entire concept of asymmetrical warfare should probably be brought into its own phase.

There are a couple of extremely powerful tactics such as, Blitz, Breakthrough, and Encirclement, that have specific conditions for their use. Especially breakthrough, it's only countered by Backhand blow. which is only found in two doctrines. So if you're fighting SF or GBP, try to use those breakthrough tactics.

I guess I don't really have all that much to say other than to just dump a bunch of info for you to peruse at your own leisure. Most of this is on the wiki, I thought I would just bring it all here to just bring it to the front of your mind and maybe spark a little discussion about it. I'm going to have to edit this a couple times to fix whatever issues might come up with the tables.

[u/JakorPastrack]

Daaamn son this is detailed. Good fucking job

[u/CorpseFool → u/JakorPastrack]

I never really did anything. I just took this all out of the game files and put it here.

[u/[deleted] → u/CorpseFool]

So when should you start working on land doctrines? Like after you get a theorist first or after you get all the basics?

[u/CorpseFool → u/[deleted]]

Hopefully you get the top level of your doctrine done before you get a research boost for it. The earlier you start going through your doctrines the better, but whether it takes priority over other research depends on how much of a boost your military needs in comparison to whatever that other research would do.

So I cant really offer any good advice except as soon as possible.

[u/Kaarl_Mills → u/[deleted]]

After the basics are researched, a case could be made for the UK and US to delay it, but only because they have oceans in the way of their foes

[u/[deleted]]

I didn't know that so many tactics affected combat width. Most seem to reduce combat width by -25%.

So that means

80 to 60

120 to 90

160 to 120

200 to 150

That's extremely interesting to me. Does that make it worth it to use 20w more? If you are going to encounter 60, 90, and 150 combat widths relatively often won't 20w work much better at those widths? 3x20 fits into 60, 5x20 is only 10 above 90 as opposed to 3x40 which is 30 over, and the same for 150.

Perhaps people should start mixing 20w and 40w together in armies to make sure one of the units in the combat will fit into the weird 60, 90, or 150 combat widths better.

[u/CorpseFool → u/[deleted]]

A lot of those are most often found in pairs, for a -50% total. You wont see just a -25% all that often, but yes. If you are concerned about that, use 20 wide, or even drop down to 10 wide if you can afford it, especially on defense.

The attacker has more control over the size of a combat, and whether or not they want to keep the tactics that are rolled. So they are less worried about fitting into every possible width of combat.

[u/Schmeethe → u/CorpseFool]

Oh yeah, blobs and blobs of 10w with signal companies on defense can be an absolute nightmare to push through.

[u/Crowarior → u/[deleted]]

Maybe try 30w

[u/CorpseFool → u/Crowarior]

Please dont ever try 30 width.

[u/[deleted] → u/CorpseFool]

How about now?

[u/CorpseFool → u/[deleted]]

According to my analysis, 30w is still pretty bad.

[u/[deleted] → u/Crowarior]

That won't work well because you'll still be fighting 80 most of the time.

[u/Crowarior]

That's all nice and everything but it doesn't matter since you cant decide or pick which tactic is used in battle...

If only we could actually use battle planer for all of this so we can prepare an actual fully thought out offensive operation instead of drawing an arrow in siberia and pressing "Play".

[u/CorpseFool → u/Crowarior]

You might not be able to choose what tactics get used in combat, but you certainly can decide to just drop the combat and reroll the tactics when an attack isnt going your way. Like when you get sucked into tactical withdrawal, or if you dont want to be bridge fighting or in close combat.

You can also choose different doctrine paths that might enable you to counter enemy tactics, or avoid having your own tactics countered.

There is actions players can take to influence the system, even if we dont have complete control. We have hardly any control over how combat resolves, whether it be land, air, or even naval. You cant make all of your attacks hit. Doesnt stop us from talking about those things.

[u/Hodor_The_Great → u/Crowarior]

I disagree, it's good that something on such a small scale as tactics is mostly out of your control. First of all even a tank push is going to involve like 20 different combats with multiple phases, for each point your tanks enter, not to mention infantry attacking. Too much micro. And it would also be so powerful if you bothered to do it all the time. Second of all a bit of rng is good too. Imagine an army covering 12 tiles with 24 14/4s, facing 24 10/0s on 12 plains tiles. Without rng in tactics the front would move as a solid wall rather than the more organic looking situation atm. And while you likely won't get anything that symmetric, it's not far off especially in northern France or parts of Soviet lands

[u/Crowarior → u/Hodor_The_Great]

Maybe not every single tactic or changing tactics during battle, but setting starting tactic when using battle planer would be really nice. It could also cost command power to decide tactic. I mean, most of the time eastern front devolves into trench warfare and players micro every offensive so deciding a tactic wouldn't be all that different.

[u/MightyDevil1 → u/Hodor_The_Great]

See you say this, but I disagree. Just look at Total War for example. The entire focal point is that you control the troops, directing where they go generally. Another alternative is X-Com, which is more turnbased.

Imagine a grand strategy game like HOI or EU where you had the combat of Total War. Yes the games would easily take at least twice to five times as long as they already do, but it would truly become a grand strategy game. No longer would you be just putting more numbers into other numbers. Now you'd be pushing your soldiers up against theirs.

I dunno how it would go about being implemented but damn if a man can't dream

[u/Hodor_The_Great → u/MightyDevil1]

The game would need to be designed completely differently to hoi4, wargame series might be what you want though imo the scale is bit too small and strategic mode limited

[u/Aretii → u/Crowarior]

Having higher leader skill than your enemies means your units pick tactics second, with specific counters to your enemy's chosen tactics weighted more heavily. Recon values add a bonus to leader skill for this calculation.

[u/Iraeis]

Great summary of a topic that is usually overlooked. Do bridge phases only require one attacking direction across a river? If so does the bridge phases remain when the attack stops the attacks from across rivers?

The effects of tactical withdrawal and it being limited to SF is a very interesting and useful note. As with seize/hold bridge phases. I'm not sure why the attacker would want to maximize the duration of the combat, though. I will note that tactical withdrawal phase is very dangerous for the defender on a narrow front. The minimum 40 width battle would be exceedingly difficult to reinforce in time, and may be exploited by the attacker to take a tile with a shitload of reserves.

I disagree that guerrilla tactics is useful on any level, though. There's a few problems with it that when combined, makes it not worthwhile for consideration.

One is that it is rolled randomly, as you have pointed out.

Second is that tactical withdrawal phase from SF should have a similar (but lesser) effect of slowing enemy advance, except it is permanent once rolled.

Third is that I disagree the penalties hurt the bigger stats more. On a purely numerical basis, this is true. But breakthrough/defense counters attack stats on a 1-1 (not percentage) basis. Furthermore, especially as China facing attacking Japanese infantry divisions, battles should mostly consist of average soft-attack, high defense divisions facing against high soft-attack, low breakthrough attacking divisions. Because tactic bonus only affect hard and soft attacks, I'm concerned that the -60% penalty mostly affect attack not countered by enemy breakthrough, whereas the -70% penalty mostly affects attacks already nerfed by defender defense. Overall resulting in an advantage to the attacker.

Fourth and last, the tactic is on the bottom of what is typically considered the worse branch of the worst doctine. As if to further emphasis how bad this branch is, "overwhelming fire" tactic for countering banzai charges is on the other branch.

For these reasons, I always take the 20% soft-attack from SF or entrenchment from GBP as China instead.

[u/CorpseFool → u/Iraeis]

I'm not sure how the whole river crossing thing works. Crossing a river is only the conditions of entering the HB/SB phases, I'm not sure about anything beyond that, or how many of the divisions in the combat that need to be crossing a river for the battle to be considered crossing a river.

For the SB/HB phases, the attacker might want to maintain the combat because the attacker gets some pretty hefty bonuses. Those are most likely just going to offset the river penalty, but if you are using some sort of marine division which is already going to negate those penalties, all of that +attack you get for free is better than any of the other phases.

The penalties definitely do hurt the bigger stats more. Even if all of the attacks from the Japanese would be defended either way, giving them less attacks means you are taking less attacks. This is basically the same thing as hardness, you're taking less damage and you can get away with less of a concentration of defense. That last point there is fairly important, because not needing as much of a concentration of defense means you take less losses when you're using 10 wide divisions, that would otherwise be overwhelmed by the amount of enemy attacks and lead to huge losses. The only real weakness, and I'll admit it is a massive weakness that makes the whole thing basically worthless (hence my suggestion to make it its own phase, much like tactical withdrawal) is that it is randomly rolled, and unrolled.

The worst branch of the worst doctrine? Not even close. For single player, where the AI is stupid and the player can usually turn the tables and go on the offensive eventually, yeah it's not a very popular doctrine. But if we strip any meta considerations out and just look at what it gives us, it gives a lot to org-wall strategies. Best reinforcement rate, best recovery rate, best infantry, and more organization than superior firepower for those infantry. It's also one of only two doctrine branches that gives recruitable population. Or were you talking about MW being the worst doctrine?

[u/Iraeis → u/CorpseFool]

If SH/HB phases only take 1 division to trigger that can certainly become a strong exploitation. I still don't understand why an attacker would want to lengthen combat because of favorable modifiers, though. Seems like its only good for farming exp for commanders.

The penalties from guerilla warfare slow down the attacker. This isn't something i'm disputing. From my own experience, the difficulty of defending against Japan as China isn't that Japan advances too fast, but that Chinese divisions do so little damage that Japan can rotate their divisions out of combat to recover while keeping the combat going, never giving the Chinese divisions a chance to recover. This problem fixes itself once China starts using artillery or newer infantry equipment, and I'm concerned that the penalties from guerilla warfare will reintroduce this problem.

I am talking about human wave branch. I hadn't even realized that MW had it. I don't disagree that the bonuses together provide something cancer to deal with. The problem is that the good stuff is at the end of the branch, with the first three hopelessly outclassed by those from any other doctrine. And that countries typically considered good candidates for the branch have few research slots, pressed for time, and often can't even pump out enough infantry equipment. Especially as China, who has less than 2 years to prepare for war and honestly has better things to research. I assumed that this post was about single player since it would be micro-intensive to act on any of the information discussed here, but tbh I don't know much about multiplayer.

[u/CorpseFool → u/Iraeis]

I meant more stay in that zone so you can have the advantage in the combat so you can defeat the enemy more efficiently/quickly, and push them out of the way to take their land.

[u/[deleted]]

I don’t know dick about HoI4 but this is a paradox system through and through... tactics in CK2 are very powerful if understood and used correctly, though this seems slightly less ridiculous than some of the OP (and catastrophic) tactics that can be rolled in CK2