Hotspots effectiveness

[HellBoyz77]

Greetings,
i'm playing around with the hostspot trying to figure out how they work and their effectiveness when the army is managed by the AI (Full).

I started a game in 1936 with Iran.

First of all i've played with setting hotspot in my territory to understand how many units and which type of units related to the various configuration.

Considering that my total land force was 60 units at beginning i had these results:

Size:
Very Heavy: 7-9 units
Heavy: 4 - 6 units
Medium: 3 - 5 units

Mission:
Attack: Will bring Mounted and Tracked type unit.
Assistance: Same as attack. What should this mission do?
Battle support: Artillery and AA units
Supply: Supply truck
Land transport: Supply truck, maybe there are also other type of truck with cargo and without supply, i don't know because the Iran had only supply truck. I don't noticed anything that this mission do in particular.
Defense: Several type of units including tank, artillery, cavalry. I noticed that in this case the units seems to go outside the town to attack the incoming units, resulting generally in disaster.
Garrison: Mounted and unmounted units, not tracked so far. Units entrech in town more frequently.

Consider that the units never stay static, AI always swap units from multiple hotspot or between hotspot and other location by his choice.

To see these hotspot in actions i declared to Afghanistan. All the settings for theatre and battle zone are in default.

After taking the first two city near the border without combat using the attack hotspot, i pointed a new hotspot to another distant city that is supposed to be problematic because the low supply and garrison built.

So i set an Attack hotspot on the city with Very Heavy size and max priority. 3 hex rear i setup a Very Heavy size Battle Support hotspot to bring in artillery, in a city around 10 hex distant i've setup a Supply hotspot to bring in the supply truck to support.

It was a disaster. First the AI send unit one at time and not in a stack, resulting in a continuous boucing of damaged unit between the nearest barrack and the target without destroy a single garrison unit.
The artillery at 3 hex Battle Support hotspot does not fire, the artillery range is 2 hex, i supposed that the AI will move it to fire, but it didn't happen.
The Supply Truck go to supply unit but frequently choose the path that bring them adiacent some enemy city and got killed a lot.

I think that in this way the AI can win only if tech superior and with excellent supply lines, but maybe i'm doing something wrong.

Anyone have some ideas or experience to share?

Thanks.

Regards.

[evildari]

be aware that if you set your AI army initiative to full - they will also automatically set hotspots
unless most of the hotspot were chained almost linear, your troops will usually divide (and not conquer)
Best way to use hotspot is:
1. if you have a lot of units 300+, for a region you mentioned (iran and afghanistan)
2. use only a few hotspot, with max force and support
3. use them like waypoints (just in case your ai-blob of doom manage to conquer your hotspots in seconds)
4. use only attack (Supply only if your units got stuck somewhere and your supply planes never show, but then i would rather send supply planes by hand there to be sure)

played as afghanistan in 36 - ussr declared war - they lost 5 units and then never came back for a decade...
since they were at war in europe with quit a lot of nations , i guess that their 1 or 2 hotspots that the ai may set for afghanistan were nothing to the amount set up everywhere.

[HellBoyz77]

be aware that if you set your AI army initiative to full - they will also automatically set hotspots
unless most of the hotspot were chained almost linear, your troops will usually divide (and not conquer)
Best way to use hotspot is:
1. if you have a lot of units 300+, for a region you mentioned (iran and afghanistan)
2. use only a few hotspot, with max force and support
3. use them like waypoints (just in case your ai-blob of doom manage to conquer your hotspots in seconds)
4. use only attack (Supply only if your units got stuck somewhere and your supply planes never show, but then i would rather send supply planes by hand there to be sure)

played as afghanistan in 36 - ussr declared war - they lost 5 units and then never came back for a decade...
since they were at war in europe with quit a lot of nations , i guess that their 1 or 2 hotspots that the ai may set for afghanistan were nothing to the amount set up everywhere.

Hi Evildari,
so you suggest to use Initiative to High? To be honest i rarely see my army using blob style advance, but maybe because i don't have a large amount of unit. In fact, during the Afgan war a lot of troops stay in capital and at border in Iran.

Have you used hotspot to manage defense of a large empire? This is the most important thing to me, i can manage to attack a country by micromanaging but i need the AI to manage defense around part of map that i rarely see.

What about Air and Sea unit? It's good to leave the initiative to the AI?

I'm really trying to avoind micromanaging all the stuff, but trust the AI is hard if i don't understand how to configure it properly.

[evildari]

i would use initiative only at "high" (just to prevent the cluttering of auto-hotspots and the issues)

depends how large your defense line has to be and your opponents:
as with attack the less HS you have the higher the force and almost same important the faster it gets there in force.
vs. ai usually Garrison is enough and HS only vital targets (you can use them as rally points to get faster to nearby breaches)
I used only the attack HS with lots of units: had a frontline attack HS if that got conquered i leaved it for now, deleted the older HS from previous phase line, then add new attack hotspot, so i have 2 line of HS 1 attacking and 1 attack hs thats a rally point and defends (just in case)

and yes you will need LOTS of units to see a good effect

air: with HS i leave it usually at high - just to prevent them being put in reserve by minister, you may still need to rebase if you think some battlezone has not enough airpower
sea: and ai is almost hopeless: i usually try to scrap almost all starting sea unit, except a few good subs and amhip landing ships, so i set sea to NONE, and if i have to control myself the few sea units i have.

[HellBoyz77]

i would use initiative only at "high" (just to prevent the cluttering of auto-hotspots and the issues)

depends how large your defense line has to be and your opponents:
as with attack the less HS you have the higher the force and almost same important the faster it gets there in force.
vs. ai usually Garrison is enough and HS only vital targets (you can use them as rally points to get faster to nearby breaches)
I used only the attack HS with lots of units: had a frontline attack HS if that got conquered i leaved it for now, deleted the older HS from previous phase line, then add new attack hotspot, so i have 2 line of HS 1 attacking and 1 attack hs thats a rally point and defends (just in case)

and yes you will need LOTS of units to see a good effect

air: with HS i leave it usually at high - just to prevent them being put in reserve by minister, you may still need to rebase if you think some battlezone has not enough airpower
sea: and ai is almost hopeless: i usually try to scrap almost all starting sea unit, except a few good subs and amhip landing ships, so i set sea to NONE, and if i have to control myself the few sea units i have.

Thanks for the suggestion!