Is this working as intended or is this an exploit???

I always understood breakthrough as "defense on offense" because it basically does the same thing that defense does in terms of determining how many attacks it can avoid, so in my mind this makes total sense, though the wording is just confusing

A well known proverb: Offense is best defense. Hoi4: Defense is best offense.

Defence = Armour (Kinda). Less likely that your troops die the easier it is to push.

The general who understands how to be good at defense can easily find opportunity's to break through defense of others. Sounds legit.

Alr ima put a TLDR up here so more people see it: Soft and hard attack always work on defence and offense Defence and breakthrough are the same when it comes from Leaders, Generals, National spirits and high command. Defence and breakthrough are separate when it comes to technology, division design and doctrines. Long version: Breakthrough also increases defence, basically defence and breakthrough are just the same in the world of modifiers (Also attack modifiers add attack when defending, so both attack and defence modifiers give bonuses for offence and defence) AND this only applies to modifiers, which are the things in battle. Doctrines change base stats so defence buff from doctrines only change defence, not breakthrough. The things that give in-battle modifiers are: Generals, High Command and national spirits. Doctrines and techs give base stat buffs and there breakthrough and defence are separate.

Intrestingly, I have a therory that the Devs did intend for the Unyeilding Defender trait to be the way it is as on the medal icon for the trait there is a breakthrough symbol (sword and shield) as a pose to the singluar Shield for defense.

It must be as intended. For example in the naval tree the last tier of invasion tech adds 50% invasion defense. It's meant to make landing divisions more resilient against enemy attack, so pretty much means boosting breakthrough stat. So it's just unfortunate description. Hardly surprising though, going by Paradox track record heh.

Ahh yes, the regular Paradox complexity... Where you'll never completely know everything because its a scramble.

This must be a holdover from the old "Toughness", which was a measure of how well a unit can withstand damage either on attack or defense. "Toughness" was renamed to "Breakthrough", and I had thought reworked.

For my entire hoi4 career I always have been told, believed myself and told other people that defense only applies on defense It seemed like an obvious thing to me that doesn’t need checking and now that I’m watching this, it is making me pissed af

does that mean that the entrenchment bonus adds breakthrough to your units while using Probing attack? I'll have to test this.

My initial thoughts on this is that, and I can't for the life of me remember the name of this doctrine, there was a Prussian strategy where they would invade an area to the most defensible point, then they would allow the enemy to break themselves upon that point before advancing again. If a strong defense softens an opponent to the point where an assault is easier, then that would account for the increase in breakthrough. One has to see this as a chronology and not as a single moment for this to make sense.

Holy shit, this changes A LOT about what I thought was good vs bad traits/strategies. Took me a long time to realize the importance of breakthrough for staying on the offensive, and how much more important it is than having VERY high soft attack for breaking through (heh) enemy lines; even though having high attack is still very important, you will suffer greatly if your breaktrough is garbage. Still learning relevant and important shit about how this 6 year old game works to this day, huh. Thank you Dave for making me a better player and thinker over the years ✌

Another thing to keep in mind is that Hearts of Iron battles in earlier versions and HOI4 are divisional-level combat. There could be brigades or smaller units in a division that are defending was other brigades are attacking even when the division as a whole is "on the attack". Attacking just means "attempting to gain ground" in terms of how the game abstracts combat. So offensive divisions should have some defensive ability.

A couple of points I'd like to address: It is working as intented, in my opinion, because Breakthrough is simply defense, it works in the same exact way as the Defense stat with the only difference of it being used only when your division is attacking. If you look at the icon for Breakthrough during a battle you'll see that it's a shield icon very similar to the Defense stat one. Breakthrough is a defensive stat. Now onto the general traits Aggressive Assaulter and Unyielding Defender; there is simply no reason to compare the two because you'll almost never be able to choose between them. Unyielding Defender is locked behind Inflexible Strategist while Aggressive Assaulter is locked behind Brilliant Strategist; I'm not sure but I think there's like only a couple of generals in the entire game that have both. Now if you manage to get a general with both of those traits then remember that Aggressive Assaulter gives higher chances to get the Assault and Shock tactics; there's a meta about tactics and IIRC those two are actually not the "best" offensive tactics

I made a comment 11 days ago on your tier list video saying you undervalued defense, but not for the breakthrough stats but simply due to the cost effectiveness of maxing entrenchment, building decent defensive infantry and just letting any who try get grinded on your line.

Um Cloak did a vid on this. The traits give different value bonuses to certain Tactics that make them more likely to be chosen from a pool of them based on doctrine. "Breakthrough" is the tactic that gets more priority if you chose panzer leader and Offensive doctrine I believe.

Unyielding defender allows for counterattack tactic. The best defenses have always provided the best counterattack offensives.

0:03 - 0:04 , some one in the chat saying " DNA test ?", lol🤣🤣🤣

so this is why panzer expert gives defence, it increases tanks' breakthrough. this changed everything.

The thing is that breakthrough isn't actually an attacking trait, it's your defense value when attacking. Therefore defense stat increasing breakthrough actually makes sense as it increases the defensive stat both when defending: defense and attacking: breakthrough. Also the attack stat itself applies to both attacking and defending as both use the soft and hard attack stats, so it only makes sense the defense stat also applies to both attacking and defending.

This is what happens in EU4, defensive bonuses and pips usually works like breakthrough when attacking. Is possible that is shared design from both games.

If defense had nothing to do with attacking, all war would just be URAAAAAAA charges. Being able to hold ground is important during an assault, thus breakthrough!

This is working as intended, I don't recall which dev diary (I think it was the same one where they talked about pre-NSB piercing and armor stats), but they stated that breakthrough IS a defensive stat applied on the attack. They acknowledged that the wording was potentially confusing but they couldn't think of a better way to word it. As for the Defender vs. Assaulter, I think they confused themselves and forgot that defense boosts breakthrough.

The devs have very clearly stated before that it is working completely as intended and that breakthrough is defense on the offense.

I can’t believe it’s working as intended. I saw a video about that some time ago and thought they’ll fix it immediately. Crazy that it’s still around. So for now that will change the way I play the game.

Breakthrough is how much you can keep attacking before stopping. That`s why breakthrough takes defense in to account

Maybe they are learning how to defend better and therefore know how to counter those defenses and that increases breakthrough.

because you're probably defending with infantry which already have a really high defense bonus, it's kind of funny that the attacking trait (10% attack helps defending armies by doing damage and ending the battle faster) is probably better for defending than the defending trait and the defending trait is probably better for attacking than the attacking trait

Tank designer stats already suggest this behaviour, and it kinda "makes sense" in the sense that "breakthrough" always has meant "defense while attacking" XD (called "toughness" in previous games as I'm reading in a Reddit post). "A unit's ability to avoid damage from enemy fire while attacking".

If that works as intended the decision between aggr. assaulter and unyielding defender is no decision you can just drop it out of the game or change the way how it should work.

It makes sense because it means they have a higher understanding of defending so they would probably know a bit more about beating it

From my understanding Breakthrough isn't purely offensive because high Breakthough seems to just increas how long they can stay in battle ingeneral.

As a programmer, this sounds like someone forgot an "end case" statement after applying defender, and the next thing getting checked and adjusted is breakthrough.

It makes sense tbh, cuz in war when a battle takes place, and a division attacks, the defense in order to win as well must strategically counter attack, not as an overall unit, but rather individual soldiers fight back by advancing the the enemy

I'm glad panzer expert actually has a point now. Before this discovery it didn't make any sense to ever use it because tank divisions have such bad raw defense stats the boost is useless so you were better off always going with the mech trait to make motorized divisions better at defending and covering/holding the ground which your tanks quickly gain when they punch through.

This is quite funny as I always found my defensive builds to be quite successful for me, also it may be working as intended, if you look at the defensive infantry equipment, it DOES also increase breakthrough.

I always thought it like it’s defence against damage. Like it’s resistance to it, which makes you takes less org and equipment loss. I haven’t really looked through the files but that’s just what I thought cause that’s how it is in another game I play.

I don't know what the stats specifically do in game but in my mind breakthrough is an units ability to punch through defensive lines when attacking. So that is kinda the opposite of attacking but you could easily argue that a very defensive general would be able to penetrate an opponents defense since he knows what he is doing.

A video where you stack all these defensive buffs and blitzkrieg with tanks can be good for the main channel

the math is simple, if you know how to defend, you know the right way to attack and break that specific defense

Also the defense from doctrines does not matter. It affects the base stat of the division. TLDR when something affects the base defense of a division, it only affects the defense, when it is a modifier post-base, it affects both defense and breakthrough.

So the take away is even all these years after launch, we still don't know exactly how it works.

I died internally at 3:55. WHAT'S THE PROBLEM PDX, WTF

I'm sure it's working as intended because panzer traits give extra defense, which would make sense in it being breakthrough.

I look at it like this, if you have high defense then this is how well your army can repel enemy counter attacks to try to stop your advance. If your army is advancing but is constantly being pushed back by counter attacks, you can't break through. Its basically a statistic to symbolize the fluidity of front line combat and to show how long battles can actually take without showing us every inch gained or lost.

It actually makes sense I never understood why Panzer expert gained defence. But it makes a whole lot of sense for it to increase breakthrough.

its not defense like entrenchment, but like how good protected troops (or trained, or ue special tactic) so they can survive under fire much longer

It’s the same way with attack increase since it still gives the bonus on defense

To me, it seems it's a game mechanic for buffing defensive nations, like France. You might have a lot of infantry divisions for holding the line who need defense and a few tank divisions for punching through enemy lines, so buff on breakthrough. So defensive nations have a chance of going on assault once they have massed enough tank and armored divisions.

i mean... the attack stat bonuses applies both while attacking and defending, makes sense that the defense bonuses also do.

Breakthrough could easily be characterised as a defensive trait. Front line combat is offensive but leaves you engaging the enemy's front line, you don't move beyond it until the enemy goes down. Switch to defensive upon enemy contact so you can keep moving between and past them, they're still standing and fighting but you went right by defensively and now they have to turn around and run after you before you go rampaging behind their battle line, that's breakthrough. If you're not doing it defensively then you're stuck engaging the front line until they go down. That's not breakthrough, that's simply overcoming enemy resistance with a moving front. Breakthrough probably should be characterised as a defensive trait, although tactically it's a terrific threat if successful.

Aslo the amor stat is for dealing damage On the wiki: "When armored units are in combat against targets with insufficient piercing, the organization dice size is increased to 6, representing the ability of the armored unit to move more freely under fire, obtain better positioning and thus deal more damage. This means an unpierced armored unit on average does 3.5 organization damage per hit instead of 2.5, or 40% more damage per hit. "

This makes sense because attack is used on both defense and offense

This explains why I was doing well in HOI4 - I always prioritized defense and breakthrough with my logic being that once I took a tile, I could never be forced off of that tile making my win an inevitability. Very interesting. I do think its as intended though.

It's certainly weird how it's implemented and not really mentioned. But in some universe it makes sense that units with higher defense are also better at breaking through enemy lines, if you think about it.

So break through isn't just your ability to penetrate the enemy's lines, but your ability to be protected and do so intact? Like the defensive component of successfully making your attack and advance?

Max breakthrough is 800. Anything past that does nothing.

There are several defensive bonuses that add to your attack in your own territory, which is a bit of a confusing naming system.

Maybe its that knowing the defense helps you breakthrough defense

Very interesting and unexpecting, they probably did it to buff defense because it was pretty useless against an all out attacking foe. You would be purely defending and losing territories without any bonuses of attack to retaking it back and just be dead. This allows for the grand battleplan style of playing, along with further defensive and breakthrough buffs as you progress through the doctrine. Which is good because Britain wasn't always on the defensive during the war, GBP allows for either your tanks to have more breakthrough or your infantry depending on which path you take. If they wanted to make aggressive assaulter more viable now, they should switch it to 10% attack and leave it at or get rid of the 10% breakthrough.

When you hear defense is also increasing breakthrough therefore Sun Tzu saying, "Attack is the secret of defense; defense is the planning of an attack" is correct.

The wiki essentially states that breakthrough is defense for attacking, whilst defense is defense for when you're being attacked. Basically both counteract attack depending on circumstances, so it might be that devs consider it a form of defense. The nomenclature is prob confusing

This has always been something I've kind of felt awkward with regarding the description of Defense when you hover over it, and how strikingly similar it was to breakthrough.

I think it would be better called positioning. As that is kind of what breakthrough does in the game, it is about moving into positions that compromise enemy defensive positions, causing them to move and lose organization. Similarly on the defense usually the position is the most important factor.

Attack: Overall strengthens your army. You and your enemy die QUICKER. The frontline therefore moves faster. Defense: Overall strengthens your army. You and your enemy die SLOWER. The frontline therefore is more rigid. My take: If you're a country that would want to end the war as early as possible, like Germany, get attack. If you're a country that benefits from prolonging the war, like France or the Soviets, get defense. Since this makes sense, it's probably intended. For the general traits, the Assault and Shock tactics are actually pretty effective. Also, it should just be straight up called damage resistance, because that's what it is. The more you have it, the less damage you take. In the code it's probably something about avoiding attacks, but it's effectively damage resistance in most players eyes.

its working as intended (in most cases at least, its not in unyielding defender) but they REALLY need to make them separated and distinct in the tooltip, or use a new terminology when the defense applies to both breakthrough and defense (maybe something like "universal defense"?)

extra attack defense or logi/planing on first officer core is still better then anything else as that 50% is "extra" ontop of commander levelup , so each levelup commander has 50% chance to gain extra attack , this gets quite mad op as last one adds both logistics and planing (who reduce supply use and add extra planing) when i seen this it made me completly rethink entire game , leveling up field marhals and generals from lv1 becomes mad op , i once had general who by point he reached lv5 he had 9 planing and 10 logi it even outweights political loyalty despite its also mad OP as you can reach 100 stability as facist during war or nonaligned i also had general who got 8 attack on lv 4 when i played belgium

i mean, maybe the defense trait helps in breakthrough because for example: tanks can break through something easier if they have more armor or a defensive formation. Or the defensive stat itself counts to breakthrough, because breakthrough is kind of your defensive stat as attacker

in my mind breakthrough isnt a stat showing their offensive power but instead their ability to understand and counter the defenders tactics in the fight and being able to penetrate and disrupt them. that being said it would make sense that a defence minded commander would be better at said combat tactics

If this somehow makes 'probing attack' broken by letting you add entrechment defense as an insane breaktrough buff. Then i'm just convinced that the devs did this for shits and giggles...

the Assault and Shock tactics are pretty good, you should look it up

It doesn't make sense, until you realize that knowing how defense works makes you an expert at breaking enemy defense. And also from a game design perspective, tying some added stats to defense helps you avoid getting into a deadlock where you specialize all into defense and then cannot break the enemy line.

With defence and breakthrough bonuses being applied from Officers and High Commanded similarly, I think the importance difference between Agg. Assaulter and Unyielding Defender is the tactics choice. They'll both give you the +10% breakthrough on attack, but if you are the one initiating pushes, you get extra chances for Assault and Shock, where Unyielding defender will only give extra tactics chances for defensive tactics when you're getting attacked. So even though the stat + to breakthrough is the same, if you were China for example, you'd want Unyielding since 90% of the war is getting push spammed by Japan, even though you'll eventually be doing counter attacks. Where as Japan would want Agg. Assault because they'd be constantly taking the initiative on pushes. Either way, casual play doesn't usually revolve around tactics chances as more than an afterthought until mid to late game when you have at least 5+ points in your doctrine, but the extra chance for them is nice early regardless.

Tbh this makes perfect sense from a game design perspective, it gives you flexibility to both attacking and defending, in a game that highly favors aggression. The main hiccup is just that the tooltip referencing "defense" should probably just say "defense and breakthrough" imo

"Fritz Schulz" man the polish general (aka no one) had the initiative wtf Btw dave, the 5% country bonus to poland was because of war support

Good catch on traits but what about combat tactics they provide? Defensive and breakthough bonuses well but it only unlocks defensive combat tactic

I think the difference is with tactics selection. Agressive Assaulter has more chance to select a good attacking tactic while Unyellding Defender rather picks defensive tactics. And that matters a lot. You have hard time breaking trough if all your attacking tactics are countered.

So the whole defense buffing breakthrough is only for General and Field Marshal stuff. Any research or doctrine bonuses to defense does not get applied to breakthrough apparently. Source from 71Cloak: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/edx5jZBqrrKwaIk.html

This is news to me. I had thought there was a possibility that the 'defense' bonus affected both defense and breakthrough, as that would allow the defense advisor to actually be worth a damn, but I didn't know and therefore took the attack bonuses over it every time because attack is always good whether defending or attacking. This was further reinforced in my mind by the aggressive assaulter trait since why would you make an either or with defense giving a bonus to breakthrough if what you were giving up was that same amount of breakthrough. One thing can be said for sure, aggressive assaulter is now obselete.

Reminder that breakthrough is basically just your defense on an offense as it nullifies your enemies attack, which is what defense does. You are definitely right that some of the wording is t quite right but whatever, paradox is paradox lol

This is the way it's always worked Dave

It makes me think defense/breakthrough is more like "toughness" which does make sense to me since that is relevant in attack and defense.

Attack also improves Defense (because the Defenders shoot back)

But a unit that is attacking is always attacking and defending. But interesting the Unyiel vs Aggres

From a military perspective, speaking as a vet, it makes sense. If you understand how to defend a position, then yes it does give you a better understanding of how to attack and exploit weaknesses in an opponent’s defenses. Exploiting openings and breaking through their lines is the heart of the concept of a “breakthrough” which that stat is reflective of. So I’d say it’s functioning as intended.

So Radio for tanks adds breakthrough via defense stat and than additional breakthrough? Like wtf???

Italy is now even more op. get italian tanks with panzer expert messe and field marshal badoglio with unyelding defender. Ggggg

So defence bonus also applies to breakthrough but not not the other way around.

In regards to panzer expert. Doesn’t it look at the ratio of tanks in your division and scale the buff to it? (So if half the division is tanks, you’d gain half the buff) The same with combined arms expert. The way I understand it is that combined arms expert can buff the breakthrough on tanks this way.

ah so panzer expert in the traits tier list is back to s tier

i still take agressive assaulter as japan versus china.

I mean you can stack 100+ entrenchment as the Soviet union

*Friends Sees This Video* *Friends Look At Me* "You Were Right...." *chuckles* "You Called Me A Madman"

Wait, is this why my zero armor tank/mechanized divisions that stack defense and breakthrough have such unbeatable breakthrough? EDIT: grand battle plan offers huge bonuses to breakthrough because *planning* offers huge bonuses to breakthrough. Planning bonuses are not useless, they can easily double stats and paradox made it easy to stack both planning speed and max planning amount.

It's probably something like a base value for every x defense you have you get y breakthrough

Breakthrough IS a defensive stat. It's how much damage you take while attacking. Breakthrough is the stat that opposes the defender's attack.

The first step to being able to play this game is not pretending to know how to play this game, and just doing whatever it is that turns the funny bubbles green

Breakthrough is your defence on attack, so it makes sense.