I was WRONG about defense in HOI4
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- Опубліковано 20 вер 2024
- I was WRONG about defense in HOI4
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Is this working as intended or is this an exploit???
No idea. Could be either
makes sense that guy who knows how to defent knows how to break that defence aswell as they know the weak points in defence
Working as intended. Definition of breakthrough is defense on attack. Breakthrough is how longer you can attack, hence how good is your defense on attacking. So defensive stat will also boost breakthrough which is defense on attack.
I always assumed that's how it worked as breakthrough is your defence on the attack. So i'd guess it's working as intended, just poorly worded.
Thinking about it a bit more, i think the unyielding defence might have the wrong defence bonus and might be just meant to buff the defence stat and not the defensive states, that or the attack was meant to have and they forgot to add it.
breakthrough reduce damage taken when attacking. So it's working as intended.
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
i think there's 2 solutions to this oddity
1. just call every defensive buffs "Defense" (outside of techs and doctrines ofc)
2. rename it smth like "Defensive Value" (and why not call "Offensive Value" instead of Attack so to better distinguish soft and hard attack when needed)
@@Xfiles781 You mean people have to read more words? Reading is hard, you know.
In my opinion, Breakthrough should be considered as how long a unit can keep on pushing while attacking. That is a different thing than defending, where I just wait for my enemy to make his move. Thus, my verdict is that this is something PDX didn't intended.
Except there is also the unit stat called defense, which is buffed independent from breakthrough by technology. So the same word is used, but means a completely different thing depending on where it's used. I think this is needlessy confusing.
EXACTLY THIS!!!! GIVE HIM MEDAL
A well known proverb: Offense is best defense.
Hoi4: Defense is best offense.
XDDDD nice one. Paradox 5 head time as Always
Weren't there some famous battles in WWII where this was true though? Also, imagine if the Atlantic Wall was properly fortified, D-Day would've been infinitely less successful.
@@MrDoyle-ky4he atlantic wall needed more ATK to repell the landings, not to get bombarded longer before running away.
@@carbonado2432 Watched a video dissecting the whole operation. The wall had a lot of problems. Look up D-Day from the German Perspective by The Armchair Historian. Nazis did not bring their A-game to the wall.
And entrenched soldiers that are meant to man defensive stations are not what I would call an attacking force.
@@carbonado2432 Needed more tanks and capable officers that weren't executed just yet.
Defence = Armour (Kinda).
Less likely that your troops die the easier it is to push.
yeah that makes sense, the less your troops die and get wounded, the more your division overall can breakthrough the enemy division
kinda like how a tank is going to push through an infantry battalion easier than another infantry.
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.
I assume country leaders fall into that list too? Mao with Cornered Fox.
@@Nikolaj11 Yes, leader traits are modifiers
This is so helpful. Thanks a ton man
I've noticed the field marshal breakthrough trait multiplies with the stats, so the total breakthrough in battle looks like base*doctrine*fieldmarshal*modifier.
@@amhowell94 Huh i might have to look into that one
The general who understands how to be good at defense can easily find opportunity's to break through defense of others. Sounds legit.
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.
So kind of like morale vs discipline in EU.
its still odd that aggressive assaulter doesn't add 10 percent attack along with 10 percent breakthrough to counter-act the obvious superiority of unyielding defender
@@troubledhook5106 agreed i think aggressive assaulter should be slightly buffed in some way
Ahh yes, the regular Paradox complexity... Where you'll never completely know everything because its a scramble.
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.
I suspect that unyielding defender was meant to be only defense, not defense and breakthrough. A lot of technologies (all others?) specify defense and breakthrough when they mean that, so if the amphibious technology gives breakthrough I think it would be clearer to specify that
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.
Tell me when you do
wow man, that is a good theory, come here to say if work
It does NOT appear to add any breakthrough.
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.
The Prussians and Germans used that a lot, and the Entente and Allies used it under the name 'bite and hold'
That what I was thinking too
The devs have very clearly stated before that it is working completely as intended and that breakthrough is defense on the offense.
I suspect that unyielding defender is a mistake and it should only be defense, not defense and breakthrough
@@Septimus_ii nope, according to the devs it is the behavior they want.
They should improve wording imo. Even if this is 100% their intended behavior the tooltips should say +x% defense and +% breaktrought to be clear, because defense and breakthrough are different stats in divisions hence it creates confusion. This should be applied everywhere in the game including techs ideas etc. so to increase clarity to the user
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.
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!
**Attaches bayonet**
_URAAAAAAA!_
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 ✌
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.
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
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.
so this is why panzer expert gives defence, it increases tanks' breakthrough. this changed everything.
Unyielding defender allows for counterattack tactic. The best defenses have always provided the best counterattack offensives.
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".
The issue is not about the concept of having a "defense value when attacking" but it's about the terminology. We have two stats called, defense and breakthrough, if you add a modifier named "defense" it stands to reason that it would only affect the defense stat and nothing else.
@@lukebeich I didn't say it wasn't confusing 😅 but being honest, the people that get to learn how the stats work to this degree, will also find out about this caveat (not to even mention that Paradox will probably make some change to make it less confusing).
@@benitollan but the problem is the modifier, not the stats. There is nothing wrong with how the stats work. I personally think it's wrong to have the modifier working like that instead, it should either affect only one stat or have a different name entirely. That's just bad design.
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.
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.
Except you can still influence it by simply picking a preferred tactic on a general, field marshal or globally.
And in this case feedback was talking about the breakthrough stat, not a tactic.
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.
Could be
Breakthrough is how much you can keep attacking before stopping. That`s why breakthrough takes defense in to account
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
I disagree. Generally on the attack you want to end battles quickly, which attack gives you, and on the defense you want to drag out, which defense gives you
@@Septimus_ii my argument is that if you're using infantry then your division's defense will already exceed your opponent's soft attack and therefore adding more defense is useless. I didn't say this randomly, I said it because I know the actual game mechanics. also the defense doesn't want to drag out the battle either, the longer you're in battle the more damage your units take the more guns you have to build to replace the ones destroyed in battle. adding defense and breakthrough only help you if they aren't already exceeding the enemy divisions attack values.
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.
From my understanding Breakthrough isn't purely offensive because high Breakthough seems to just increas how long they can stay in battle ingeneral.
the math is simple, if you know how to defend, you know the right way to attack and break that specific defense
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.
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.
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.
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. "
It makes sense because it means they have a higher understanding of defending so they would probably know a bit more about beating it
A video where you stack all these defensive buffs and blitzkrieg with tanks can be good for the main channel
So the take away is even all these years after launch, we still don't know exactly how it works.
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 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.
Breaktrough works exactly the same as defense. Each point of breaktrough reduces one of the enemy attack(soft/hard) hitchances down from default 40% to 10%.
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...
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.
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.
Maybe they are learning how to defend better and therefore know how to counter those defenses and that increases 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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
I'm sure it's working as intended because panzer traits give extra defense, which would make sense in it being breakthrough.
i mean... the attack stat bonuses applies both while attacking and defending, makes sense that the defense bonuses also do.
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.
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.
iirc: in each round of combat every attacking division chooses a defending division. For each defending division, the attack of the divisions attacking it is added (weighted average of soft and hard) and compared to the defending division's defense. That is what determines the HP and org damage done in that round, with a big penalty if the attack is smaller than the defense. Then the same is done with the defender's attack vs the attackers' breakthrough.
Max breakthrough is 800. Anything past that does nothing.
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.
Breakthrough IS a defensive stat. It's how much damage you take while attacking. Breakthrough is the stat that opposes the defender's attack.
Which explains how much better my infantry has performed since I started adding a couple medium tank brigades focused on armor and breakthrough.
this still makes zero sense because aggressive assaulter trait gives breakthrough and an opposite trait gives exactly the same amount of defense, which means there's absolutely no reason to ever pick the first one.
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?
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
0:03 - 0:04 , some one in the chat saying " DNA test ?", lol🤣🤣🤣
I died internally at 3:55. WHAT'S THE PROBLEM PDX, WTF
This makes sense because attack is used on both defense and offense
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.
It’s the same way with attack increase since it still gives the bonus on defense
I mean you can stack 100+ entrenchment as the Soviet union
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
Should be called "toughness" or something
So Radio for tanks adds breakthrough via defense stat and than additional breakthrough? Like wtf???
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.
Maybe its that knowing the defense helps you breakthrough defense
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.
In my mind, a "defense" that works on attack AND defense would be armor, but armor is already its own stat 🤔
Or maybe resistance, which also has its own stat. Or toughness, which was the old name for breakthrough.
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: ua-cam.com/video/CvIZ-9ILL8U/v-deo.html
*Friends Sees This Video*
*Friends Look At Me* "You Were Right...."
*chuckles* "You Called Me A Madman"
So defence bonus also applies to breakthrough but not not the other way around.
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
There are several defensive bonuses that add to your attack in your own territory, which is a bit of a confusing naming system.
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.
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 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.
So, this is why Panzer Expert is so OP. I rarely choose that. But when i choose, somewhat the general is doing better in offense combat. Know i knew the reason.
I mean that's how it should be, right? When you're good at defending, you're also good at finding enemy weaknesses and counter-attacking - which is part of every defense.
ah so panzer expert in the traits tier list is back to s tier
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
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.
Attack also improves Defense (because the Defenders shoot back)
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
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.
I mean, defense expert know how to build defenses right. So he should know where weaknesses of said defense are as well. So yeah, at first glance it doesn't make sense and I thought defense only increases defense as well but adding to breakthrough on second glance makes sense.
Does this mean that Probing Attack allows you to stack entrenchment onto breakthrough? That would be nuts.
knowing how to make your defense stronger probably implies you know how to take apart the enemies' defense well?
because you built a defense, you know what to do to take it apart again, and its weaknesses.
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.
Italy is now even more op. get italian tanks with panzer expert messe and field marshal badoglio with unyelding defender. Ggggg
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"?)
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
This can't be intended, why would they make unyielding defender and aggressive assaulter mutually exclusive, if UD gives 10% defense (which buffs both defense and breakthrough) and Aggr gives 10% breakthrough? It makes no sense to make them mutually exclusive if they are both basically the same traits but one's just simply better.
Here would be a more understandable wording change for bonuses to choose from:
1. "Cover Usage" applies to both Breakthrough and Defense.
2. "Breakthrough" only applies when attacking from a tile (except perhaps when simultaneously attacking from and defending a tile).
2. "Defense" only applies when defending a tile (except perhaps when simultaneously attacking from and defending a tile).
Hearts of Iron 4 has had a history of mediocre user interface. Sometimes, it only takes a wording change to make a real improvement in user interface. If some bonus improves both Breakthrough and Defense, then the term "Cover Usage", or some roughly equivalent phrasing, should be used instead of "Defense".
Kind of funny the mp hist community knew about this for ages 🤷♂️
Breakthrough is your defence on attack, so it makes sense.
The way i see it, the more knowledge you have for defense, the easier it is to "break" the defenses. For me this works as intended
then why does the defensive trait give the same breakthrough as the assault trait? it's clearly broken bro
My two cents: defense traits are harder to grind. You get a bonus to the counter attack, in a way, as opposed to getting the bonuses to attack and breakthrough which are trying to press an advantage as hard as you can for as long as you can before you lose the momentum.
I think breakthrough acts as Defense against enemy Defense.
So the defenders Defense is higher than your soft or hard attack, you would loose.
But because your Defense against that Defense aka breakthrough is higher, you can push the enemies division.
Breaktrough and defense both reduce enemy soft/hard attack hit chance. One point of breaktrough/defense will bring down hit chance of one soft/hard attack from 40% to 10%. Every attack exceeding breaktrough/defense will have the default 40% hit chance.