I have thought a lot over the years about stacking limits, and I don't think I have arrived at a rock-solid conclusion about how the apparent realities of warfare in real space and time can or best should be represented in a game in which space is represented in a two dimensional plane of "hexes."
I would enjoy a discussion on the topic here amongst you crusty old grogs if anyone can be bothered. To get the juices flowing, I will quote at length my recent ramblings over at the "Battlegoats" forums, re: the game Supreme Ruler Ultimate, which is a great game, but also a deeply flawed game . . .
If you have not played the game I highly recommend it: basically Civilization meets War in the Pacific.
ENTIRE map of planet Earth (remarkably accurate, though not perfectly so) divided into 16km hexes and with many major communities, resource deposits, and national identities indexed in various databases (depending on the scenario/campaign being played). In this respect and he great detail of the unit database, the game is exceptional (although even in these areas it has its flaws). The fact it has a reasonably competent computer opponent who (as of the latest games in the series, though not so much the older ones) represents a little bit more than just a speed bump is also exceptional.
This is an interesting thread which I discovered in doing a search on "stacking." I cannot say I know the underlying game mechanics well enough to confirm the observed mathematical model. What I will say is: my gameplay observations confirm the model described. So in sum, I tend to agree with the overall point and as far as I can tell, each of the sub-points you are making OP.
With that said: there is another problem which I as a "realism" fetishist observe.
I just watched this video on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As5xJt7NaJ8Not to say this is an authoritative source, it is obviously an allied propaganda piece from ca. 1943 mean to drum up war spirit . . . but, it provides quick reference for scale. Jump to 19:30 and observe the diagrams it provides showing the distribution of French forces in preparation for the German attack. In particular 20:08. The French had 78 divisions along the border with Belgium between the channel and the northeastern edge of the Maginot. The standard size of a division is 10,000 to 30,000 soldiers, with 14,000 to 15,000 being a very common "central value" in WWII.
Now if that video is correct, it means the French had 14,000 x 78 soldiers placed in the gap between the Maginot and the Channel along the Belgian border in spring 1940 (1,092,000 soldiers, or if we use the smaller ~10,000 average value for a division size ~780,000 . . . total CASUALTIES among the allies in battle of France is listed as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France2,260,000 so the number of 1,092,000 for the total size of the French 1st Army seems reasonable.
In game that is a distance of 18 hexes. 78 /18 = 4.333. Which means: in order to fit the actual size of the French forces in that space, there would need to be one of the following:
1. 4.33 x (appoximately) 14,000 soldiers per hex (60,620 per hex), or
2. ~2 x 14,000 soldiers per hex but with a two to three hexes "deep" by 18 hexes long (30,310 per hex)
3, etc. correspondingly fewer soldiers per hex but with a front more hexes "deep" by 18 hexes long.
The "personnel" listed for various "units" in the game varies quite a bit. But just a quick peek at the units in reserve in a fresh Germany 1936 start reveals: around 640 for infantry (foot or mounted) and 1260 for Pioneers. As we all know, a Division does not consist entirely of only infantry and the "support units" (artillery, at, aa, etc.) tend to have smaller personnel counts.
Obviously something is amiss here. Even if we pile in one of the most populace of land units and put 7 Pioneer battalions (either largish battalions or under-sized regiments/brigades, I'm not certain), we can only get to 7 * 1260 = 8860 soldiers per hex, which is enough to constitute an "under strength" division but not the upper end for a divisions size.
With a hard stacking limit of 7 and assuming 8860 as a not unrepresentative upper limit for numbers of soldiers in 7 units, and working from our number of 1,092,000 total soldiers in the French First Army (10 British divisions were sandwiched in there somewhere too, so this is actually an underestimate): 1,092,000 / 8860 = 123.25
Assuming a stacking limit of 7 "units" per hex and a maximum personnel count per unit of 1260, the actual "First French Army" would have taken up ~124 hexes. 124 / 18 = 6.89. So the First French Army would have needed to be piled along northern France consistently for 6+ rows of 18 hexes long. The distance from Paris to the border is 11 hexes so in effect what this means is: with a 7 "unit" stacking limit and assuming a First French Army of ~1.092 million, half of the space between France and Belgium should be stacked full of French units. I don't believe this density of soldiers reflects actual history very well at all.
I don't want to say I'm fully convinced, but I believe that this game is not accurately representing the actual concentrations of soldiers per unit of space in the game, which would mean that rather than a hard-limit of "7 units" the actual stacking limit should perhaps be more like . . . well, I'm not sure. How many guys can fit into a area that is 16km across and still function as an effective fighting force?
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ ... ttlefield/Quote:
A battalion occupying a defense area on the main line of resistance will usually be assigned a frontage of 1,000 to 2,000 yards, depending on the defensive strength of the terrain. When a battalion occupies a vital area having poor observation and poor fields of fire, such as in heavily wooded, broken terrain, the frontage should not exceed 1,000 yards. When the area is more open and affords longer fields of fire, a frontage of 1,500 to 2,000 yards may be appropriate. Exceptionally, when obstacles in front of the position, such as swamps or streams, make a strong attack against an area improbable, a frontage not exceeding 3,500 yards may be assigned.
Also
Quote:
Just to add on, in the Pacific, sometimes things got incredibly compact. During the fighting around Shuri Castle on Okinawa, battalion frontage for the USMC got down below 600 yards. High density trench warfare in WWI was generally around 800 yards, so at Shuri it was exceptionally dense.
This comes from William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness.
A "battalion" is typically in the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion 300 to 800 soldiers ball park, so a "high density" is one in which the frontage for a unit is about equivalent to one soldier per meter (1 yard = 0.944 meters), and a more "normal" frontage is 1.875 meters of frontage per soldier, to a maximum diffuse end of 4.375 meters per soldier.
Referring back to our 18x16km distance from Maginot to the channel 288km = 288,000 meters. So a very sparse coverage of this front would be 288,000 / 4.375 = 65,828.6 soldiers. This number of soldiers divided by 18 hexes gives us 3657 soldiers per hex.
So according to real life military doctrine (as quoted on a Reddit sub-forums!

), and given that units in this game vary from ~240 to ~1260 soldiers in size, "7 units" is, or probably SHOULD BE about the absolutely bare MINIMUM number of units to effectively control a hex, much less the absolute max possible in a hex. If we work with the "large" unit like Pioneers than 3 units * 1260 = 3780 is about enough to control a hex. But for the "640 personnel" of infantry, it would take at least 5.71 "units" to effectively control a hex using the exceptional reference in the quote above
Quote:
Exceptionally, when obstacles in front of the position, such as swamps or streams, make a strong attack against an area improbable, a frontage not exceeding 3,500 yards may be assigned.
If we assume that "stacking limits" must reflect a limitation in which ONLY one "row" of soldiers can fit into a hex then 16,000 soldiers per hex would be a "maximum," which would translate into something like 13 to 25 "units" per hex given the range of 640 soldiers for infantry and 1260 for pioneers.
However the fact that hexes are two dimensional means that it should be possible for multiple times this number of soldiers to operate within a hex without resulting in hindrance. Whether that would be 3, 5 or 7 times "13 to 25 units per hex" (stacking limits of 39 to 75; 65 to 125; or 91 to 175 units per hex) I cannot say.
continued in following post . . .