Assuming the presence of TFH, that's really important. Nowt to do with softness, but critical in that version of the game.Remember all units within a division, share the highest "armour" and "penetration" value within the division.
MartinD: register your game so we can see by the little icons what version you're using. It'll give you access to the tech support (I think it's the tech support) forum too.
I don't believe that's true. There's zero advantage that I know of for having a full frontage. Having more line brigades makes your force last longer, but putting 2 lots of 5INF in, just to fill the frontage, if you could put 4 lots of 2INF/2ART would be a surefire way to gimp yourself, solely on consideration of number of brigades brought to bear. It becomes even more of a useless generalisation if you start to consider factors like softness, CA and AvP, not to mention the different strengths of units and the fact that if you spread your Divisions out, you may well be able to attack from multiple directions and get a benefit, while increasing the frontage by far more than the Divisions you're throwing in from the flank. If you started with "All other things being equal..." it becomes more true, to the point of being a truism.And also, in a straight up fight, there is a width of 10, and its always better to fill that width than not fill it.
There might be some worth in being able to massively overfill the frontage available, in that if you micro closely enough, you can exploit a flaw in the battle flow charting and have "spare" Divisions that have somehow avoided being "pinned" conduct a counterattack, forcing some or all of the opposition attackers to fight two battles. I'm not sure that's doable in TFH any more, though, or how to ensure that it works in your favour.
Not to mention the terrain and supply suckiness of such a division, and its low combat density.The most perfect division, would probably just be X5 Heavy Armour or SHARM, but that would be so appallingly expensive, it would be impossible to field enough divisions to man the whole front. Theres a compromise that needs to be struck.