Getting/staying within Command Capacity

[lilnev]

How bad is it to be overloaded? How highly do you prioritize sorting out the command tree, and how do you go about it?

As the Axis, I've been treating Corps and Army overloads as a high priority, to fix in the first few turns. But getting AGC and especially AGS out of overload is expensive. The 2nd Army can be transferred to AGN along with a few Corps. But the only way that I see to sort out AGS is to give all of the non-Germans back to their national high commands. Is it worth it?

Then as additional reinforcements arrive ... should I leave some Corps direct to OKH to keep Armies and Groups within limits?

[Telemecus]

Overloading is very bad - even overloaded by one is making their leaders ratings worse by at least one and then that is multiplied by all the units.

Corps should be your priorities and only then armies - and Panzer HQs are more important to get right first.

Remember that the overloading does not affect morale ratings - so a high morale leader (e.g. Jodl) can still be very good - especially for a command with many units like AGS.

Reassigning an army from Centre to North is useful - although many only do that in the bad weather as there are more important uses for the points you have before then.

Do reassign security units in garrisons and not in combat out of the RHGs and over to OKH say. That is much cheaper than reassigning the RHG. You want your chain of command for combat units not garrison units.

The cost of solving AGS is so prohibitive that I would not bother - wait until the army group splits and it will be solved that way instead.

There are too many German units for the HQs you have - so the only way you can fit them all in is by leaving out some of the levels of command i.e. have some independent corps. Also consider putting them under allied HQs - for example Finnish leaders are very good commanders too and they have the opposite problem of too few units for their HQs. Even a Rumanian HQ is still better than an overloaded German one.

Reducing command overloads is far more effective per point spent on average than appointing better leaders.

[lilnev]

Thank you, that confirms most of what I was thinking. And I won't worry about AGS. Assigning SECs to OKH is a great idea!

[HardLuckYetAgain]

Nada

[thedoctorking]

Doesn't AGS split automatically in 1943 regardless?

[Zug]

Playing as German vs the AI I got the AGS split in October of '41 and immediately set about trying to solve the overloading issue. I was able to cure it at Army Group level and corps level. But at Army level some still exists, particularly in 9th Army. As it seems that no new Army HQ will arrive?, and if I didn't want to assign German units to satellite HQs, my options seem to revolve around assigning an infantry corps directly to the Army Group. What drawbacks are associated with this? How does it affect the corps if they are assigned to an Army or an Army Group?

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Zug

Playing as German vs the AI I got the AGS split in October of '41 and immediately set about trying to solve the overloading issue. I was able to cure it at Army Group level and corps level. But at Army level some still exists, particularly in 9th Army. As it seems that no new Army HQ will arrive?, and if I didn't want to assign German units to satellite HQs, my options seem to revolve around assigning an infantry corps directly to the Army Group. What drawbacks are associated with this? How does it affect the corps if they are assigned to an Army or an Army Group?

I would say inevitably given the quantity of units you have and the number of corps HQs you have this will inevitably happen. Indeed usually if an army has more than four corps HQs, some of them in effect will be wasted unless you bust the army cap. The downside of direct assignment is that you skip one level of ratings checks. But this is a minor loss for the gain of getting an extra level of ratings checks at army level for everyone else without a command penalty. You can also offset this to some extent by keeping these independent corps geographically closer to the Army group HQ and OKH.

[Zug]

Excellent, thanks for the answer. I installed Kluge at OKH as the first thing I did in the campaign, and maybe having him as the second, instead of third level of leader checks (above the corps) would make that move somewhat more meaningful.

If I understand the impact of overloading (and I really don't, in detail anyway) it would be better to have that situation than to have any degree of command capacity overburdening.

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: Zug
If I understand the impact of overloading (and I really don't, in detail anyway) it would be better to have that situation than to have any degree of command capacity overburdening.

Yes indeed. Perhaps one easy way to think of it is to remember that the command penalty affects all of the units in a chain of command. So putting one unit under an overloaded HQ "might" give that unit better ratings - but it will make the ratings of all of the other units under the HQ worse. Even if you do not go through the maths, you can guess that almost always making lots of units worse off to help one unit is not a good idea.

[Zug]

Thanks very much Telemecus. When I first got in to WitE a month ago I spent a lot of time reading threads on this board of course. Countless posts you've made have helped me learn the finer points of the game. Just wanted to say thanks for all of the posts you have made to help folks out.

In the end I have cured overloading at every level, Army Group, Army and Corps. It required several infantry corps to be assigned directly to Army Group HQs, but it's finally done, reinforcements-in-waiting notwithstanding! It was all complete just before the blizzards, and I'm hoping these actions pay off, not just with resisting the cold and counteroffensive, but when operations begin again in the spring.

[A21]

Just seen the point about command penalties not affecting morale ratings and can see now it is absolutely true - but that is in flat contradiction of what the manual says.