Matrix Games Forums

Hey gang,

I am learning as a I go but I finally figured something that was difficult to understand until it just all clicked and now it's extremely simple.
Hopefully this helps someone.


As you can see below, it consist of multiple units. Clicking on unit organization , you can see that we have 5 units located in Girona ( 4 + 1 HQ). There are some units that aren't part of this organization but to make things easier, I have selected the one where most of the units are located in Girona and one is Palamos.
I have renamed the HQ to testing and 1 infantry under them as testing #2, for easier visuals and no need to remember those Spanish names. I want them to be organized under a large unit, less clicking for me, less micromanagement, these guys have 1 objective, to capture Palma and I want them to move as a unit.

Ensuring that you have at least 1 unit within the same Hex as the HQ, you should see ' Try Rebuild Unit if you click on the HQ ( this will ensure that every single unit in that hexe that is under that HQ , will auto merge with the HQ), or if you click on one of the units reporting to that HQ,
you will see '' Try rebuild Parent'' . I assume the reasoning for that is, maybe you have 1 particular unit that you still want to micro manage or maybe they are logistic and you want to keep them in the back, whatever reason.

For simplicity, here is the HQ and you cans see the button I am talking about :
Once you click on it, you will merge all units under them.

Now you can see that this 1 HQ unit now has all of their sub units in one giant blob.

Can only post 4 pictures so here is me continuing it.


You might now see 1 giant blob, however, do not fear, for if you click on unit organization, you will see this:
As you can see, all of them are still broken down into sub units, you can actually click on each of those units , give them specific combat orders.

However for the sake of less micromanagement and just having a more powerful unit.

You now have that 1 unit within the hexe rather than multiple units.

Please see picture of hexe in Girona:

If you look at the previous picture , there was 8 units, now there are only 4, the 1 representing all of those units combined and the other 3 are reporting to other HQs and I have to move them to where their HQ is located to repeat the same thing.

Bonus, here is an example if you click on the sub unit rather than the HQ, you will see '' Try rebuild parent'' rather than '' Try rebuild unit''
I really hope this helps someone as I did not properly understand it till someone almost had to draw me a picture.


Now I have no idea if there is a way to switch units to report to different HQs so that way my unit in Paloma can just stay there and have him re-organized to report to the HQ located in Paloma, but this is where we are at now.

Sergey45 wrote: Sun Jan 25, 2026 8:04 pm

Now I have no idea if there is a way to switch units to report to different HQs so that way my unit in Paloma can just stay there and have him re-organized to report to the HQ located in Paloma, but this is where we are at now.

I believe there is a way to move HQ units between higher level HQs, but I believe it's a rather exhausting process, might even require a toggle in preferences but I can't recall.

I've advocated for an OOB structure that would allow for easier command and control options. I wonder if the devs kept it intentionally rigid to maintain some aspect of historical accuracy. Maybe down the road we'll see some changes. Keep asking!

Peeling back the kimino !

Its more "rigid" in WIS, because the Game Designer decided to make it so.

Game Designers for our engine (those who gather the raw data and transform it into game data, and do art and sounds and such) have 2 choices:

(1) Rigid i.e. historical assignments of subordinate units to the higher level elements

OR

(2) Creation of units as "ad hoc" battle groups, allowing battalions to switch between brigades and such.

==

For WW2 perhaps a Game Designer would choose to represent the German Army as Ad Hoc regiments and divisions to display their organizational flexibility, whereas most other nations might have their divisions and regiments with the rigid structures to reflect their lessor organizational flexibility.
Its a game design choice - the engine supports it either way.

The WIS designers choose the rigid approach. You could mod the game and use the ad hoc approach if you like !!!

I do believe that there is a setting in the preferences that allows what you want to do.

For the moment I prefer the "Rigid" structure as it is today, because that kind of teaches me the historical context I didn't know about alot of the units

It is starting to get tedious, however, to track down all the little elements and get them back with their "Parent". I can see this starting to drive me crazy after a few months and wondering why I can't use a generic Infantry Battalion, instead of a very specific Infantry Battalion that is currently 400 miles away

It's already extremely tedious in just getting the units to be within the same hexe, god I don't want to learn to start finding ways of detaching units and remerging them with other HQs.

Also, the possibilty of creating your own custom companies, division, brigates or even modify current ones with other equipment or types of units is already insanely detailed enough and has more than enough to keep me busy.

As written above.

Primarily, OOB was developed and focused on the historical variant.
So a somewhat stricter concept....

But the game has other broad possibilities.

Sergey45 wrote: Mon Jan 26, 2026 5:04 am It's already extremely tedious in just getting the units to be within the same hexe, god I don't want to learn to start finding ways of detaching units and remerging them with other HQs.

Also, the possibilty of creating your own custom companies, division, brigates or even modify current ones with other equipment or types of units is already insanely detailed enough and has more than enough to keep me busy.

Hey, Welcome to the forum. Nobody seems to of said that so I will. ....GP

btd64 wrote: Tue Jan 27, 2026 1:52 pm

Sergey45 wrote: Mon Jan 26, 2026 5:04 am It's already extremely tedious in just getting the units to be within the same hexe, god I don't want to learn to start finding ways of detaching units and remerging them with other HQs.

Also, the possibilty of creating your own custom companies, division, brigates or even modify current ones with other equipment or types of units is already insanely detailed enough and has more than enough to keep me busy.

Hey, Welcome to the forum. Nobody seems to of said that so I will. ....GP

Hahahaha, thank you buddy

... I finally figured something that was difficult to understand until it just all clicked and now it's extremely simple ...

Well said, of just about everything new I learn !!

I will offer feedback...

Having just finished my first "real turn" yesterday after several days of poking and learning, I'm finding the dispersed OOB + rigid system to be very tedious. I understand the design choice, and accept it, but it is still tedious none the less.

An assumption that I'm working with is...

...at the war continues (grand campaign), the need for force concentration will get higher. This will result in Bats/Cos being less effective as tactical elements. My experience in WITP is that larger formations performed better than equal amounts of AV in smaller units. With that said, the player REALLY needs to commit resources and time into merging all the dispersed units together to maintain effectiveness as the war progresses. This is a tedious and taxing effort.

This dispersion of the LCUs doesn't appear to improve as reinforcements come in. Cursory reviews of Unit Organizations appear to leave many subordinates spread all over the map.

It would be nice if there was some mechanism to move *some* units to different parent units, so if there is that one Battalion stuck on an island somewhere that you really don't want to move (for strategic reasons), you can at least switch its parent unit to something local.

Obviously, not all units as that would break the design intent of dealing with the organizational chaos of early SCW. However, some capability to reorg your units a bit could go a long ways towards keeping my full head of hair.


This being said, I do find the current system very powerful and a huge leap forward from WITP, just tedious. (...this coming from a guy who literally enjoyed WITP pilot micromanagement)

In reply to last poster, I am finding the same thing. In WITP-AE, there was some of this (some of the Japanese Infantry Divisions were broken down initially into micro-units, but in that game it was relatively easy to bring them together). In WiS, there is alot more unit dispersion, and just alot more units.

I guess this will just be a very slow evolution of both armies, as they both did evolve over time into larger and larger formations

In reply to the last 2 post.
Not to mention having to assign them to a general that is at least within their proximity.

But like the last person said, they become more organized as the war drew closer to an end, remember that the war lasted almost 3 years, each turn is 1 day, that's over 1000 turns.

The AI doesn't "rebuild" their units, though they may group together. So, I doubt the performance of a "rebuilt" unit would be superior, which would otherwise give the AI a real disadvantage throughout. My guess is the "rebuild" mechanic is simply a QOL feature for the player later on in the campaign(one of the very few we got). Perhaps this aspect does create some tedious gameplay, but it does because it was developed with a singular purpose(my guess anyway).


Edit: I will further add that the player can utilize the "attached to" function found at the bottom of the unit screen. Utilize Division HQs more and just treat regiments/brigades as separate logistic/support units. At least until your ready to start rebuilding units.

the modelling needs some method of dealing with the political fractures of the Republicans. The labor union units, the anarchists, the Troskyites, the communists were all bitter rivals and sometimes fought each other. It's more like the Hungarians and the Romanians on the Eastern front than like units of the same country at certain times of the war. And the divisions were not reliably geographical, though different groups predominated in different areas.

Making you stick the historical units together is a rough and simple way of modelling it.

How would you simulate that in this game? Morale hits to certain unit types on historical dates? Like may 1937 when communist and anarchist forces started fighting in Barcelona.