Are most brigades completely useless

[Kanitatlan]

This is bound to be a controversial subject but after doing some analysis I seem to be coming to the conclusion that brigades are mostly nearly completely useless. This came to me after doing some brief analysis in the combined arms thread. Anyway here is what I've worked out.

This analysis will take the form of a series of model combats between different combinations of units. I have chosen to use constant manpower as a measure of the alternatives within a brigade building model. If two builds take the same manpower then we only need compare IC costs, TC cost and effectiveness. For convenience I am going to compare models based on the year 1940. This will inevitably introduce some bias but the results remain valid for other years.

My first example is an analysis of artillery brigades. These are used in combination with infantry divisions with the relevant models being 1939 inf and improved artillery. To keep equal manpower I have 10 inf+art versus 12 inf.

inf HA 2 SA 12 Def 18 Org 30+?
inf+art HA 4 SA 18 Def 22 Org 30+?

If I have these two groups fight against each other then the inf+art has an attack of 180 versus attack of 144 giving the artillery a clear advantage. But if we look at how you win battles then we can see that what counts is attacks per target as you need to eliminate org across all the opposing units. In this case the InfA gets 15 per target whilst the inf gets 14.4 per target. These figures are remarkably close together and the artillery advantage has nearly disappeared. If I selected the previous artillery model then the figures would be 17 SA, 170 total and 14.16 per target. This combination would therefore actually lose a battle to a plain infantry build.

If I move forward to 1941 inf then I have inf at 16.8 per target and InfA at 16.67 per target. In fact it turns out that starting from 1939 the year 1940 is the only one where the current models provide any advantage to InfA in terms of winning a battle. This result has to be looked at quite carefully. What we are seeing is the additional divisions built instead of brigades are providing additional org and ability to absorb casualties which more than compensates for the artilleries advantage in firepower. The comparison yields the following statements about building pure inf instead of using Inf+Art

1. Your units will move faster (25% faster than inf+art)
2. You are more likely to win battles in a campaign
3. You will win battles more slowly
4. You will suffer more casualties
5. You are more likely to 'win' the campaign
6. Your maximum concentration of force (for attack) is lower
7. You use less supply and less overload on TC

The TC issue is worth a quick discussion. The overall impact of TC consumption in terms of combat adjustment can be estimated by assuming that the lower TC build does in fact use up all TC (they can always use attack supply to exploit any surplus) and the overload by the higher TC attracts a penalty. If we compare the 1940 InfA versus Inf then the InfA build uses 22 TC and the Inf use 12 TC. Translating this into a combat penalty we get 54.5% TC availability giving a 77% ESE and a 11.5% combat penalty. This would reduce the effectiveness of the InfA to the point where the Inf would win. In fact having an artillery brigade inflicts the equivalent of 11.5% of that units strength as a penalty spread very thinly across the entire army. It is importatnt to understand this principal as an improtant element in unit appraisal.

This leaves me in the position of considering artillery brigades to be pretty much worthless. The only benefit is that they might reduce my casualties. In this analysis I haven't given any consideration to IC costs, I have only considered manpower and TC. Given the expense of artillery brigades (cost nearly 50% of an Infantry division) I can see no use for them except to improve the stacking limit where this is really important, i.e Marine divisions for amphibious landings and Paratroops (if your not too embarrassed by the implausibility).

Lets now try InfAT and Inf builds to resist the attack of several armoured divisions. Again I have 10 InfAT or 12 Inf. The 1940 date gives me

inf HA 2 SA 12 Def 18 Org 30+? XA 5
inf+AT HA 7 SA 12 Def 21 Org 30+? XA 8.5

XA is the effective attack strength against a 30% softness target using the formula (.3xSA+.7xHA)

The 12 Inf have a total attack of 60 against 85 for the InfAT. If we assume each group is attacked by a number of armoured divisions equalling their own number then both groups would be defeated equally quickly since their ability to resists the attacks and their org would be equal on a divison by division basis. Note that this number of armoured divisions would be significantly below the defensiveness of both forces. If you are worried about defensiveness then bear in mind the INf can resist 216 shots per round whereas the InfAT can only resist 210. However to make it fair I will have both groups attacked by 10 armoured divisions. With the above considerations the Inf have 6 shots per target and the InfAt have 8.5 shots per target BUT the Inf have 20% more ability to absorb casualties before breaking and therefore can fight 20% more rounds before losing giving an equivalent rate of 7.2 shots per target. This leaves the InfAT in the lead for fighting a pure armoured force. A few more calculations show the Inf gain the advantage when the average hardness of the enemy force falls to 56% or lower. Note that a combined arms force of 2 arm and 1 mot has exactly this hardness (!!!).

Moving on to TC the Inf total remains 12, InfAT total is only 14; This ives a 93% ESE for the InfAT or a penalty of a mere -3.5%. AT brigades cost as much as artillery brigades and again I must consider them to be not worth having. They are actually useful if the average enemy hardness is 60% or higher but it hard to see how a slow moving InfAT can hope to expect to engage that level of enemy hardness unless it spreads across the whole army. AT brigades are much more plausible in conjunction with motorised infantry as an intercept force for enemy breakthroughs.

An interesting further comparison here is to look at InfAT versus InfArt. 10 InfArt have an XA of 8.2 which is only very slightly lower than the infAT. In fact InfArt are very nearly as good as InfAT against armour and better for lower hardness targets. The cross over from InfArt to InfAt comes at a hardness of 67%. If the TC load and corresponding combat penalty is allowed for then InfAT overtakes InfArt at 58% which is below the threshold where Inf retain their advantage.

So far my calculations have all assumed that the objective is to win battles rather than achieve the best casualty ratio. I mention this again to emphasise the point that this may not be what you are looking for in a unit in which case this analysis is not quite right for you. However, I believe that most losses to the enemy will occur as a result of you winning the campaign rather than as a result of direct battle and therefore that winning battles is the key to winning the game. This is an important assumption with the logic of this analysis and needs to be borne in mind whilst reviewing this analysis. Also this analysis is about the game, I am not saying anything about the real life value of attached artillery etc. so please focus on the game when responding.

Moving on now to other brigades I can quickly cover the performance of a few others. Rocket artillery is sufficiently similar to artillery to say that it can be treated similarly. The main difference is that it is cheaper but still not cheaper than the infantry and suffers and even greater TC penalty (-13% combat adjustment). This makes rocket brigades appear to be a poor man's artillery but on the other hand vanilla infantry is an even better poor man's artillery.

Next I will look at engineers. These are a difficult subject because they depend on special bonuses to justify their value rather than direct combat ability. A good start point though is to look at how much benefit an engineer brigade has to acieve to make it better than the vanilla infantry option. If we look at 10 InfEng against 12 Inf on a similar mission then the Inf have 20% more fire power and 20% more org giving a 44% better battle winning capability. Engineers don't give this scale of benefit through any of their special abilities. They aren't actually 44% better at river crossing or 44% faster. I haven't even looked at the TC difference which is however minimal offering a -1.9% penalty for the InfE. It is hard to see how engineers are a good investment of manpower and IC unless you start looking at critical manoueverability. If you simply need some troops that are that bit faster to carry out a strategic mission then they may be worth it but I am not exploring that issue in detail as it cannot be quantified.

The next brigade is police. This is simply a specialist unit for partisan suppression and I will give it minimal attention. The only combat benefit is to add 3 org which is clearly significantly below the org obtainable from 20% of an infantry division (as long as your infantry has at least 15 maximum org).

Next are armoured cars. This brigade is begining to get us onto the more mobile brigades but for now, like with the Eng, I am going to stick to attachment to infantry divisions. Further on I will explore the issue of brigades with other divisions. The AC brigade gives us a mixture of benefits, +2 SA, -5% softness and +3% org. Plugging these figures into the model we get

10 InfAC 2 HA 14 SA 95% soft +3 org
12 Inf 2 HA 12 SA 100% soft

In battle the Inf have an effective attack of 138 or 13.8 per target. A bit of calculating shows that each -5% softness on the target gives the infantry a penalty of -6 attack strength. Note that the first -5% has the same effect as any other -5% so the value of the hardness adjustment appears constant. However, the effect of increasing hardness aginst Inf is to give an escalating ability to survive a longer battle. Looked at from this point of view the benefit relates to the %age reduction of the inf effective attack strength in which case each additional 5% hardness is of greater benefit than previous ones. This means this first 5% from attack AC to Inf is of very little value but would be much more valuable if attached to an already hardened unit. Moving on, the InfAC has an effective attack of 140 or 11.67 per target. This gives the Inf an advantage of 18.3% in firepower per target which the AC brigades are trying to offset with +3 org which clearly isn't enough. Interestingly it is enough if the base org of the infantry divisions is a mere 16 or less. So again we find that vanilla infantry wins and wins rather well. The AC1 model is quite old so to be fair lets try the 1941 model, this gives 150 attack or only 10% more fire power for the Inf and with the +6 org we now have InfAC reaching parity if the base org is 57 or less. This suggests AC2 might be worth while but I haven't brought the TC into it yet and AC are not good for TC. The TC adjustment against the Inf+AC2 is -12.8% combat modifier which now shows InfAC asyet again an ineffective combination. (Note AC brigades are still more expensive than the additional Inf divisions)

The only Inf brigade left is AA. This unit brings very little benefit in ground combat and therefore is not susceptable to this analysis. It is a specialist brigade whose value can only be calculated in the context of air warfare. AA brigades give much higher total AA and AD than the equivalent Inf divisions but their value lies almost entirely in this role.

The other brigades are mobile versions of those already considered and therefore will score worse (due to TC) than their low mobility counterparts. Therefore I have arrived at the interesting conclusion that there are only very very limited reasons for attaching any brigades to Infantry divisions. These possible reasons are as follows.

1. Stacking limit, this only applies in situations where the stacking limit is a genuine limiting factor on operations. This is clearly true for amphibious landing and paradrop but elsewhere is extremely unusual. There is a stacking argument based on the low availability of the best officers which sugegsts that I can have the brigades commanded by better quality officers than I would have to use for the infantry divisions. This is a limited argument and note that it only applies to the extra 2 infantry divisions rather than the base 10. If these two were commanded by a 1 level worse general then the stack as a whole would suffer a -0.83% average combat penalty. Not as significant as you might have expected.

2. Faster movement, it is extremely difficult to put a value on faster movement. Moving faster than the enemy can be turned into a major advantage and InfE in combination with motorised forces may perform a critical role in keeping better with the spearheads. I am not convinced of this as the cost is quite significant and provides no other benefit.

3. Special ability, this really only applies to AA brigades. They may be a good option if you are facing an enemy who has gone to town on air power. I suspect this isn't ever a general situation but that AA brigades may still be useful if combined with special targets, however, so far I am only looking at infantry. Note that the engineer river crossing ability has already been shown as not as effective as numbers from additional divisions.

Thats it. I simply cannot see any other reason for ever building a brigade for attaching to an infantry division.

============================

Moving on now to attaching brigades to non-infantry. First of all it is worth looking at the specialist infantry divisions - mtn, mar, para. The main difference with these divisions is that they are much more expensive than regular infantry. Since I have been ignoring expense and only looking at manpower the argument remains very similar except these divisions are all 10 SA instead of 12 SA. This is sufficient to suggest that they would all benefit from the addition of artillery but actually given the difference in TC load this still remains a rather foolish idea. The only exception is Paras, their 15 manpower makes it always sensible to attach a brigade and given their usual role the most flexible is an artillery brigade. Normally marines will have attached artillery to enhance their stacking restricted amphibious landing role. Mtn on the other hand remains slightly more effective by manpower to leave Vanilla. This is an area where IC cost becomes relevant as the enhanced cost of these units means that brigades can be cheap firepower. Mtn with artillery is probably a cost effective technique for obtaining more bad terrain capabile fire power at a slightly lower cost than vanilla mtn divisions. It does have the disadvantage of being slower.

The next area worth some considerable examination is armoured divisions. This is sufficiently complex to need modelling. The obvious brigades to use with them are TD and SPA so the model is

7 ArmTD 14 ha 12 sa 14def 22tgh 24%soft 11TC
(1941) 16 ha 12 sa 14def 22tgh 23%soft 11.1TC
7 ArmSPA 13 ha 17 sa 16def 24tgh 24%soft 11.8TC
9 Arm 11 ha 12 sa 12def 20tgh 30%soft 9.4TC

From these we can model different combats involving the three groups. Firstly I will look at their performance against infantry (attacking them). Their attacks/toughness are TD=84/154, SPA=119/168, Arm=108/180 with the effectiveness of 10 inf against them being TD=44, SPA=44, Arm=50. The SPA is a clear winner here with even the armour's toughness advantage (7%) being less than the infantry's reduced effectiveness (-12%) against a harder target. The vanilla armour has another advantage though in that it can absorb 28% more damage through it additional two divisions. If I factor this in then the figures for the armour can be increased to 138/231 giving a clear advantage to vanilla armour. This is an interesting result because non-manpower issues are important with these units but, for now, I will continue with the main argument. Next we can look at the TC impact of the different combos, TD=77, SPA=82.6, Arm=84.2, these figures are extremely similar and show the high TC load of vanilla armour. In fact the resulting combat modifiers are -2.1% for Arm and -1.7% for ArmSPA both rather small values.

If increase the hardness of the target divisions then the winner will change as the hard attack becomes more important. Interestingly the pure Armour has a total HA of 99 against 98 for the TD so for 1940 the TD brigade really has very little point at all. If I look forward to 1941 the TD brigade does start having some relevance as ti can achieve 112 HA but if the TD group fights the arm group the hard attack per target is TD=12.44 and Arm=14.14 making the armour the clear winner. In fact since the ArmTD has higher hard attack then soft attack it becomes slightly less effective as softness increases. This leaves us with the conclusion that for manpower analysis vanilla armour is better than armour with attached brigades.

Armoured divisions do, however, need to be looked at differently. From a manpower point of view they are vastly superior to infantry divisions but we can't afford lots of armour as it is really expensive. This is quite different from the infantry divisions where brigades had no IC cost advantage. In fact if I change the above comparisons to be based on IC cost then I can have roughly 9 SPA or TD for the price of 1 armoured division. If I calculate the same figures based on 9 versus 10 then I get TD=108, SPA=153, Arm=133 even after including the 11% advantage to vanilla armour for more durability. Obviously there is a similar change with the TD versus armour equation for armoured battles. Having adopted this new model it is worth noting that ArmSPA just retains its advantage over Arm in a head to head combat against each other with the ArmSPA being superior to ArmTD against all targets up to a hardness of 82%. I haven't factored TC into this which moves things slightly against the ArmSPA but basically ArmSPA is the clear winner against anything but very high hardness levels. In the face of major armoured forces and especially with later models the TD brigade gains some advantage. As long as the enemy has a significant number of non-armoured divisions then ArmSPA is the ideal combination.

As a quick side analysis lets look at ArmE. This combination gives a movement increase at the cost of some supplies and manpower but gives no real combat improvement. This combination is obviously useless from a manpower point of view but from an IC point of view can be a very cheap boost to your armoured forces with the only good argument against it being the lost opportunity for all those economical SPA brigades. Ultimately we are back at the question of how valuable is speed.

Next we need to look at other mobile divisions, principally motorised infantry. These are basically fast moving infantry divisions and in manpower analysis the only thing that changes is the TC load and comparative combat adjustment. This makes artillery for example look quite good value again but the speed adjustment is a problem since this is the only reason to go for motorised infantry. In fact the only plausible step to take with them is to add engineers to avoid applying a speed penalty to armour that is grouped with them. Oddly enough the speed penalty of artillery is less significant (12.5% or 11% reduction) when attached to motorised than when attached to plain infantry (20% reduction). Attaching artillery is an effective method of producing mobile firepower but with units that are slower than the armour they want to accompany. There are also argument for attaching anti-tank brigades as these provide an addvantage against hard targets just like with plain infantry but motorised are far more likely to be meeting high hardness enemy forces.


The general conclusions I am coming to from all this is that i shouldn't bother building any brigades for my infantry divisions as they add nothing to my general campaign winning capability but I should build brigades for all of my mobile divisions. This was pretty much what I had concluded from playing the game but I am actual quite surprised that artillery is effectively worthless even if you ignore the speed penalty.

[Jack99]

No brigades are not useless, quite trying to find something wrong with the game, first it was Armor and now all brigades.

[Disgustoid]

You already mentioned the stacking limit and then said that that is usually not a problem under normal circumstances. That might be true.

But firstly, not all of us are powergaming. And secondly I can certainly imagine situations where you cannot amass enough units next to a "schwerpunkt" without exposing the rest of your front (mostly against the A.I.), i.e. on the Eastern Front.

An additional benefit of brigades: they allow you to spend some excess-IC between several rounds of a serial build, i.e. when you have 2.0 IC to spend before the completion of a CA or CL, after which you could start another serial of inf. Works like a nice little stop-gap.

For the AT-brigades, did you factor in the higher chance for damage-per-hit that AT and SPAT convey on their parent-divisions ?

I guess a lot of it has to do with how you use your brigades ... I shuffle my brigades a lot between my divisions instead of moving my brigaded divs. And with all the small little missions I have my units carry out (like Gibraltar or other diversionary end-runs) I don't like diverting a lot of REAL divisions, instead I prefer giving them a couple of Art

Bdes are great for atmos They're not there to stand-in for divs, but to give you a small edge ...

Tap two colourless mana
Summon the experts ...

[Beppo]

I never fail to find your posts or AARs interesting, Kanitatlan.

In this case, I generally agree that brigades are inefficient. For that ONE attack or defense that MUST succeed, however, I am not afraid to brigade. So I generally have a very limited number of "elite" brigaded units available to me. I just feel more comfortable that way.

-- Beppo

[CulturalCarnage]

Wow.


So far my calculations have all assumed that the objective is to win battles rather than achieve the best casualty ratio. I mention this again to emphasise the point that this may not be what you are looking for in a unit in which case this analysis is not quite right for you. However, I believe that most losses to the enemy will occur as a result of you winning the campaign rather than as a result of direct battle and therefore that winning battles is the key to winning the game. This is an important assumption with the logic of this analysis and needs to be borne in mind whilst reviewing this analysis.

This is an essay in itself.

"...win battles rather than best casualty ratio..."

Q: Once you've won, does Inf/Arty (or other combinations) do better at holding the ground?

"...most losses will occurr...[by]winning the campaign..."

Q: Pls. clarify? I read this phrasing as 'encirclements.' Just wanna understand.

"...winning battles is the key..."

This is where I'd love to have a cup of coffee with you. I think of it as: Nat'l Policy (I want to...X: that's a win for me) -> Grand Strategy (generate objectives for campaign(s) -> Attain objectives, i. e., win campaign(s)

If I can out-maneuver you and occupy VPs in enough strength & org so that you cannot dislodge me, then I win, right? Call it annexation, white peace, whatever you want, I have achieved (or am in a position to achieve) the political solution that I desire. Brigades and a 'high-tech' approach to the war effort might be useful for the player who wants to out-maeuver his opponent to attain objectives.

BTW, I think you're right; it's hard to design games like these without the users evolving an unbeatable strategy.

[Colonel Warden]

Another strike against brigades is that they require as much research effort as mainstream units like infantry divisions while providing a narrower benefit.

Andrew

[alan_le_cowboy]

Originally Posted by Beppo

I never fail to find your posts or AARs interesting, Kanitatlan.


-- Beppo

I never managed to read one of its post until the end.

[Curious]

Originally Posted by Jack99

No brigades are not useless, quite trying to find something wrong with the game, first it was Armor and now all brigades.

It gives him something to do when he gets tired of actually playing the game. If he put as much effort into discovering an effective way to use brigades as he did into showing that they're ineffective then they would be useful.

CB

[ArcticFox]

I only have this to say:

1: Manpower, it is an issue and must be taken into account.
2: You don´t have enough leaders for the infantry masses you could produce instead. That -75% over command limit is danged serious.

[mld0806]

There are a few things that you overlook, IMHO:

1) You attribute ESE disadvantage, but this assumes TC overrun. In a nation that is tight on TC, mass artillery then definitely becomes a disadvantage. However, if TC expenditure is controlled and a tradeoff is made between other forces, the TC drain on the infantry becomes bearable.

It IS a fine balance, especially with a nation like Germany or Japan where both manpower and TC are considerations. This disadvantage, however, can be overcome in other areas by modulating TC use in other forces (smaller armored component is the first to come to mind).

2) The point you make about concentration of firepower is one of the things I like about packing as much firepower into the smallest formations that I can. Given that autopromote will only promote X leaders to higher levels, across an entire force the one who can keep the leaders at a lower level is one who will enjoy more success due to higher skill levels (both due to not promting leaders and in faster experience gain). A given force with an average skill level 1 higher than their opponent will enjoy a 5% advantage over the enemy, further widening the narrow gap between Inf - Art and all Inf.

The other benefit would be based on leader availability period. For a smaller nation with fewer leaders, the value of artillery will increase in inverse proportion to the number of leaders they have. There is an upper limit (feasibly) in the number of divisions that a given nation can command offensively. Unless a nation wishes to conduct a purely defensive war, packing enough firepower under available leaders can be key to victory or defeat.

3) Modifiers - positive modifiers play more strongly into the hands of the Artillery force. In a no-modifier setup, the edge they have for the same initial MP investment is small, but on the defensive, especially in defensive terrain, this grows quite quickly for the artillery units. Positive modifiers have a stronger effect on a higher base firepower, and as such a defending force can increase the value of Artillery over pure infantry more so than an offensive force.

I also mention leaders above, but it also bears mention in the discussion of modifiers. If you have a base advantage in leadership levels (early war Germany, for example), the artillery increase in value, especially when combined with the lower level leader/maintenance of high skill and advancement.

4) You mention that the all infantry force is going to take higher casualties. This could be an important factor for manpower hungry nations. It is the same initial manpower investment, but as time goes on the higher casualties will play into a disadvantage in manpower. Additionally, in climates that cause attrition, more divisions = more manpower lost. A winter on the Russian steppe or a sweltering summer on some tropic isle take a whole different tune when casualties due to simple attrition are elevated by 20%.

5) Another corrolary to higher casualties is lower combat effectiveness. As damage done per hit is scaled down as manpower damage is taken, the force suffering higher casualties is suffering a higher rate of force degredation as a battle and campaign advance. Even if this isn't a massive 5-10% loss, it can be enough to tilt the balance in favor of the brigaded force over the all infantry force.

6) This one is less one of any tangible values in the game and more one of psychology. Brigaded divisions show up to enemy intelligence as 1 division. Having 12 divisions worth of firepower packed into 9 could cause the enemy to underrate the threat to an area and deploy a lighter facing force. AI wise this is definitely true, but it can be an advantage for the enemy to think, "He's only got 9 divisions there" and attack across a river with what he THINKS will be enough force only to find out that it isn't. With the Statistics screen in game, it's about the only manner of "surprise" you have over the enemy generals.

I spoke only to your Artillery vs. Infantry analysis as this is probably the biggest "trade-off" brigade in the game. The same holds true, to at least one extent or another, for any brigades you can look at. The only other thing I would like to address is your statements on AT.

Damage done is based on a) firing unit type, b) target unit type and c) whether a hard or soft attack is used. The value of AT in Infantry vs. Armor is less in the increase in shots fired, but more in the damage done per hit that is taken by the armor. Without knowledge of the specifics of the damage matrix, it's impossible to do a pure numbers comparisson on Inf - AT vs. Arm or Inf vs. Arm

In the end, a pure numbers analysis shows that brigades, on an MP for MP investment, aren't as good a value as Infantry, but there are multiple factors that can increase or decrease the value of brigades in a less direct sense. Sometimes the value is OUTSIDE the numbers.

[daedalus]

Brigades are not useless:

(a) 3 (inf+arty) kills 3 inf
(b) 3 (inf+eng) outruns/outperforms 3 inf
(c) ...
..
(z) etc.

forget the lab perfect experiments. If an enemy comes to my fully brigade with similar numbers against my plain inf I might as well quit the game.

[mld0806]

Originally Posted by Colonel Warden

Another strike against brigades is that they require as much research effort as mainstream units like infantry divisions while providing a narrower benefit.

Andrew

Each level of brigade research provides a proportional increase in output to the investment. Moreover, they come in gaps BETWEEN infantry historical years, and as such provide a constant slope improvement to firepower levels rather than a stepped improvement.

[Drescher]

The real question is:

Are most of these threads completely useless?

[Kanitatlan]

Originally Posted by Jack99

No brigades are not useless, quite trying to find something wrong with the game, first it was Armor and now all brigades.

It wasn't me trying to find something wrong with armour. It think it has a key role but only as manouever force around the main bulk of the army which is infantry.

In this case you are correct in that I do believe I have found something wrong with the game. The mechanics of the game, as illustrated in my post, show that brigades are an ineffective investment of both ICs and manpower. This should not be the case and it is something that is relatively easy to fix.

[Jack99]

Originally Posted by Kanitatlan

It wasn't me trying to find something wrong with armour. It think it has a key role but only as manouever force around the main bulk of the army which is infantry.

In this case you are correct in that I do believe I have found something wrong with the game. The mechanics of the game, as illustrated in my post, show that brigades are an ineffective investment of both ICs and manpower. This should not be the case and it is something that is relatively easy to fix.

Take off your blinders, brigades are not useless, and if you would listen to reasonable arguments like mld's then you would see this, but you don't so you are not worth listening to or even arguing with.

[Kanitatlan]

Answers for CulturalCarnage

Q: Once you've won, does Inf/Arty (or other combinations) do better at holding the ground?

A: Winning battles is the same in defence as it is in attack. There is no effective difference and hence the same arguments apply.

"...most losses will occurr...[by]winning the campaign..."

Q: Pls. clarify? I read this phrasing as 'encirclements.' Just wanna understand.

A: I have never fought a campaign where victory was determined by actual losses in battle. Victory is always through the destruction of enemy units by giving them nowhere to go or through the capture of key territory resulting in the surrender of the enemy nation. (This is actually a lie, the Soviet meatgrinder strategy is exactly that, victory through battlefield losses)

"...winning battles is the key..."

[Kanitatlan]

Originally Posted by ArcticFox

I only have this to say:

1: Manpower, it is an issue and must be taken into account.
2: You don´t have enough leaders for the infantry masses you could produce instead. That -75% over command limit is danged serious.

Manpower equality was the basis of the comparison so that has definitely been taken into account.

I have never run out of leaders for the infantry masses. You may have to promote a few and suffer a few leadership penalties through having lower skill but the -75% penalty can be very easily avoided. Generally autopromote will provide you with the leaders you really need.

[Gwalcmai]

A: Winning battles is the same in defence as it is in attack. There is no effective difference and hence the same arguments apply.

Even if you factor in the normally high effectiveness levels of defending forces? Those can be well in excess of 100%, I think. A 120% effectiveness would give a higher increase of shots/target to the force with the most firepower. And stacking limits might start playing into the equation more.

[mdw]

Just as in the issue of "do you even need tanks and planes at all when building nothing but hordes of vanilla infantry will win the game", I, personally, don't play the game to find the "best" way to beat the game, but rather for the "flavor" that the act of playing provides me.

Why on earth would I want to play a WWII game if I wasn't going to get an opportunity to play with all the really cool toys? I might as well be playing a game of cave man battles with clubs and stones!

For me, it will NEVER be a question of how few toys I can beat the game with, but rather, how many different toys can build and intercombine in new and creative ways to get the maximum enjoyment from commanding them!

In war, just as in life, the JOURNEY is far, far more important than the destination!

[robw963]

I think it's clear that the game can be beaten, particularly playing a major power country like Germany, US, SU but can even be beaten by smaller countries as well. I concur with mdw, i don't go into this game wondering "hmm...I wonder if I'll lose"...i go in thinking..."oh boy, i can't wait to try a different way to win!" this time with a naval approach...next time with a a-bomb approach, etc. To me, brigades are toys to play with. They add a layer of atmosphere to the game that while based loosely on reality....IS NOT REALITY. Imposing a stricter standard of realism in this game than already exists can only add further layers of complexity and micromanagement which get in the way of my primary purpose: to have fun. I love reading your Mr. Spock analyses of the game man...but I really wonder sometimes....are you having fun?