What is the best brigade for Marine divisions?

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Artillery, when fully upgraded, is always better, actually, and it gives no mallus, that is incorrect; attached brigades give no maluses to units as they are essentially supplements to stats, they dont count as units.
 
Artillery, when fully upgraded, is always better, actually, and it gives no mallus, that is incorrect; attached brigades give no maluses to units as they are essentially supplements to stats, they dont count as units.
Brigade_modifiers.csv rather disagrees with that :) Besides, multiple brigades make division slower.
 
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[...} gives no mallus, that is incorrect; attached brigades give no maluses to units as they are essentially supplements to stats, they dont count as units.

Are you serious and sure about this?
So all the shown stats for brigades concerning landscape, river, fort and shore attacks are wrong?

dh-art.png
 
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Marines with Engineers are total beast mode in the marshes. Engineer increases their terrain stats, but a Special Forces brigade makes them the SeALs romping on Charlie in Vietnam.
 
Are you serious and sure about this?
So all the shown stats for brigades concerning landscape, river, fort and shore attacks are wrong?

dh-art.png
Speaking of that: how should I read these numbers? Are they multiplier? Like artillery is 5% stronger than usual when it attacks forts and it uses only 85% of his power when doing shore attack?
 
I stand corrected. Even so, i still go with arty for marines, though amphibious armor works better, from what i read
 
Speaking of that: how should I read these numbers? Are they multiplier? Like artillery is 5% stronger than usual when it attacks forts and it uses only 85% of his power when doing shore attack?

Well, I am no modder or expert in DH and thus one can always surprise me with things running completly different than I thought, as far as I understand and see it...
dh-inf-data.png

In the above image we have an infantry with an artillery brigade. If you hover your mouse within DH over the area I marked with circles, small windows pop up with the following data:
1) unit data for the infantry alone
2) unit data for the brigade alone
3) hovering over the small circled cross you get the combined values

Comparing those 3 data with each other it seems that the values of the infantry and artillery do NOT get multiplied but added (somehow) with the main unit (infantry) being the base.

Example for shore attack:
infantry: 40%
artillery: 0.85
So the base is 0.4 and for the artillery the difference between 1 and 0.85 gets subtracted:
0.4 - 0.15 = 0.25
So the value infantry/artillery for shore attacks is 0.25 which again is the multiplier for soft/hard attacks.


Some examples for the intial question: Best brigade for marines in shore attack?
(Values taken from a running game, playing III. Reich year 1940, so they will differ from your game but the direction should be nevertheless consistent, considering only maximising soft attack and leaving out everything else.)

Mar-3 (shore: 0.8, soft-attack: 10)
Amph-1 (shore: 1.1, soft-attack: 3)
together: shore: 0.9, soft-attack: 13 => 0.9 x 13 = 11.7 soft attack

Mar-3 (shore: 0.8, soft-attack: 10)
Art-10 (shore: 0.85, soft-attack: 4)
together: shore: 0.65, soft-attack: 14 => 0.65 x 14 = 9.1 soft attack

Marine with even the very first researched amphibious brigade is highly superiour.
In case no amphibious brigades were researched, what's better: Artillery or Engineer?

Mar-3 (shore: 0.8, soft-attack: 10)
Eng-5 (shore: 1.1, soft-attack: 0)
together: shore: 0.9, soft-attack: 10 => 9 soft attack

Artillery is only slightly better than an engineer brigade. But since artillery comes with a whole lot additional goodies and the higher price is irrelevant (when it comes to special attacks like shore invasion), I'd definetly choose Marines/Art.


If you have no marines researched (rather the usual than the unusual case when eg playing Germany), next best base unit would be airborne or mountain units which both have a shore attack value of 0.6 (in comparison to infantry with a lowly 0.4). Nevertheless those special units are allowed to have only 1 brigade with a limited choice (eg Mtn can't equip Amph-brigade) while infantry may be equipped with 2, can choose from all researched brigades and is usually your best researched unit. Let's see what's better...

First figuring out what the best Mountain + brigade combination is (as mentioned above brigades for Mtn are rather limited, so no amph):

Mtn-11 (shore: 0.6, soft-attack: 12)
Art-10 (shore: 0.85, soft-attack: 4)
together: shore: 0.45, soft-attack: 16 => 0.45 x 16 = 7.2 soft attack

Mtn-11 (shore: 0.6, soft-attack: 12)
Eng-5 (shore: 1.1, soft-attack: 0)
together: shore: 0.7, soft-attack: 12 => 0.7 x 12 = 8.4 soft attack

Mmmh, that's probably a bit surprising. Due to the better shore attack value the engineer brigade is superiour to artillery even without any own soft attack value. Now to infantry: my choice of what to compare will be a amph/eng combo (best shore attack values) vs LArm/MArm (best soft attack values).

Inf-11 (shore: 0.4, soft-attack: 11)
Amph-1 (shore: 1.1, soft-attack: 3)
Eng-5 (shore: 1.1, soft-attack: 0)
together: shore: 0.6, soft-attack: 14 => 8.4 soft attack

Inf-11 (shore: 0.4, soft-attack: 11)
L-A-8 (shore: 0.88, soft-attack: 4)
M.Arm-4 (shore: 0.87, soft-attack: 5)
together: shore: 0.15, soft-attack: 20 => 3 soft-attack

Now, that's a quite decisive result that inf/amph/eng is superiour to inf/LA/MA.
Note: Infantry alone (4.4 shore soft attack) would fare better than equipped with the heavy hitter brigades LA/MArm (replacing one of those with artillery would make the result even worse due to the lower artillery shore attack value).


And the result of the comparison what's the best unit/brigade combo for shore attacking when considering soft-attack:
1) Mar-3/Amph-1 => 11.7 soft attack
2) Mar-3/Art-10 => 9.1 soft attack or Mar-3/Eng-5 => 9 soft attack
3) Mtn-11/Eng => 8.4 soft attack or Inf-11/Amph-1/Eng-5 => 8.4 soft attack

Misc:
Mtn-11/Art-10: 7.2 soft attack
Inf-11/Eng: 5.5 soft attack
Inf-11/Art-10/Eng => 5.25 soft-attack
Inf-11/Art-10: 3.75 soft attack

Wether it is really smart to invest all the needed research to get Marines with amphibious brigades is, of course, a completly different matter. Note, though, that in the above examples I was comparing upto-date infantry (1939), Mtn 1939 with lowly Marines-3 from year 1931. Uptodate Marines from 1937 or 1940 would be even stronger.

Personally I shy away from the high research costs and usually use Mountain units with engineer brigades (any, level doesn't matter) for shore attacks. Additionally: when you have a limitation on how many units you can use (eg amphibious attacks), the higher org of special units vs infantry has quite its merits. And engineer brigades not only raise the shore attack value, they also speed up the landing process and thus minimize the very dangerous time your transporters are sitting ducks for sea or air attacks... while artillery lengthen this time considerably.

Researching marines, especially when lacking good research teams for it, seems quite costly... but as usual it depends on what country one is playing and what you intend to do: playing the USA and planning to isle-hop to Japan changes the picture (and the available research teams).
 
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Well, I am no modder or expert in DH and thus one can always surprise me with things running completly different than I thought, as far as I understand and see it...
dh-inf-data.png

In the above image we have an infantry with an artillery brigade. If you hover your mouse within DH over the area I marked with circles, small windows pop up with the following data:
1) unit data for the infantry alone
2) unit data for the brigade alone
3) hovering over the small circled cross you get the combined values

Comparing those 3 data with each other it seems that the values of the infantry and artillery do NOT get multiplied but added (somehow) with the main unit (infantry) being the base.

Example for shore attack:
infantry: 40%
artillery: 0.85
So the base is 0.4 and for the artillery the difference between 1 and 0.85 gets subtracted:
0.4 - 0.15 = 0.25
So the value infantry/artillery for shore attacks is 0.25 which again is the multiplier for soft/hard attacks.


Some examples for the intial question: Best brigade for marines in shore attack?
(Values taken from a running game, playing III. Reich year 1940, so they will differ from your game but the direction should be nevertheless consistent, considering only maximising soft attack and leaving out everything else.)

Mar-3 (shore: 0.8, soft-attack: 10)
Amph-1 (shore: 1.1, soft-attack: 3)
together: shore: 0.9, soft-attack: 13 => 0.9 x 13 = 11.7 soft attack

Mar-3 (shore: 0.8, soft-attack: 10)
Art-10 (shore: 0.85, soft-attack: 4)
together: shore: 0.65, soft-attack: 14 => 0.65 x 14 = 9.1 soft attack

Marine with even the very first researched amphibious brigade is highly superiour.
In case no amphibious brigades were researched, what's better: Artillery or Engineer?

Mar-3 (shore: 0.8, soft-attack: 10)
Eng-5 (shore: 1.1, soft-attack: 0)
together: shore: 0.9, soft-attack: 10 => 9 soft attack

Artillery is only slightly better than an engineer brigade. But since artillery comes with a whole lot additional goodies and the higher price is irrelevant (when it comes to special attacks like shore invasion), I'd definetly choose Marines/Art.


If you have no marines researched (rather the usual than the unusual case when eg playing Germany), next best base unit would be airborne or mountain units which both have a shore attack value of 0.6 (in comparison to infantry with a lowly 0.4). Nevertheless those special units are allowed to have only 1 brigade with a limited choice (eg Mtn can't equip Amph-brigade) while infantry may be equipped with 2, can choose from all researched brigades and is usually your best researched unit. Let's see what's better...

First figuring out what the best Mountain + brigade combination is (as mentioned above brigades for Mtn are rather limited, so no amph):

Mtn-11 (shore: 0.6, soft-attack: 12)
Art-10 (shore: 0.85, soft-attack: 4)
together: shore: 0.45, soft-attack: 16 => 0.45 x 16 = 7.2 soft attack

Mtn-11 (shore: 0.6, soft-attack: 12)
Eng-5 (shore: 1.1, soft-attack: 0)
together: shore: 0.7, soft-attack: 12 => 0.7 x 12 = 8.4 soft attack

Mmmh, that's probably a bit surprising. Due to the better shore attack value the engineer brigade is superiour to artillery even without any own soft attack value. Now to infantry: my choice of what to compare will be a amph/eng combo (best shore attack values) vs LArm/MArm (best soft attack values).

Inf-11 (shore: 0.4, soft-attack: 11)
Amph-1 (shore: 1.1, soft-attack: 3)
Eng-5 (shore: 1.1, soft-attack: 0)
together: shore: 0.6, soft-attack: 14 => 8.4 soft attack

Inf-11 (shore: 0.4, soft-attack: 11)
L-A-8 (shore: 0.88, soft-attack: 4)
M.Arm-4 (shore: 0.87, soft-attack: 5)
together: shore: 0.15, soft-attack: 20 => 3 soft-attack

Now, that's a quite decisive result that inf/amph/eng is superiour to inf/LA/MA.
Note: Infantry alone (4.4 shore soft attack) would fare better than equipped with the heavy hitter brigades LA/MArm (replacing one of those with artillery would make the result even worse due to the lower artillery shore attack value).


And the result of the comparison what's the best unit/brigade combo for shore attacking when considering soft-attack:
1) Mar-3/Amph-1 => 11.7 soft attack
2) Mar-3/Art-10 => 9.1 soft attack or Mar-3/Eng-5 => 9 soft attack
3) Mtn-11/Eng-5 => 8.4 soft attack or Inf-11/Amph-1/Eng-5 => 8.4 soft attack

Just for curiousity reasons and to bring in only mainstream research units (= without marines, Mtn, airborne nor amph)
Inf-11/Art-10/Eng-5 => 5.25 soft-attack

Wether it is really smart to invest all the needed research to get Marines with amphibious brigades is, of course, a completly different matter. Note, though, that in the above examples I was comparing upto-date infantry (1939), Mtn 1939 with lowly Marines-3 from year 1931. Uptodate Marines from 1937 or 1940 would be even stronger.

Personally I shy away from the high research costs and usually use Mountain units with engineer brigades for shore attacks. Additionally: when you have a limitation on how many units you can use (eg amphibious attacks), the higher org of special units vs infantry has quite its merits. And engineer brigades not only raise the shore attack value, they also speed up the landing process and thus minimizing the very dangerous time your transporters are sitting ducks for sea or air attacks... while artillery lengthen this time considerably.

Researching marines, especially when lacking good research teams for it, seems quite costly... but as usual it depends on what country one is playing and what you intend to do: playing the USA and planning to isle-hop to Japan changes the picture (and the available research teams).

This is a great analysis. I know researching Marines and the unit itself is time consuming, but each lever of Marine increases your amphibious assault values by 5 percent for all units. Even if you don't build any Marines, it's still a good idea to research them for the improvement in amphibious assaults.
 
I'm still sticking by engineers for pre-special forces, and once SF is unlocked, then SF. Germany and the USSR, and pretty much every other major has so many chances to put marines in an environment where they excel at, marshes, jungles, and areas that get tons of rain constantly. Actually Germany and the USSR is far more limited in that regard than the UK, Japan, and USA. Now you don't want to use only marines in those environments because they won't gain great experience if their strength is being depleted constantly. If you can micromanage a few brigades of marines to exploit hq manuevres, and to keep them away from great harm by retreating them individually, they'll be beastmode and be great exploiters in hundreds of possible provinces. Leave the Iwo Jimas to the grunts though.
 
I thought the terrain penalties for mountain apply during the landing as well.

They do but although it might be a bit weird, it seems that tanks as brigades on their own have no malus in mountain terrain, only a very slight -5% move malus.
Marine and infantry units, though, get reduced to 63% attack, mountain units to 73%.
 
Using Altruist's cool numbers, it's a guaranteed strategic victory to use marines landing on marshy or jungley beaches. Also, Germany certainly has the time to research one if not two marine techs starting from 1933. I recall that large pocket of marshes south of Minsk with terrible infrastructure being a great place to have low level marines act as garrison with engineer brigades for greater terrain bonus and backed by infantry-artillery. Keeping those forces static to provoke an attack from the Reds could become a great area to sink a lot of red forces in an encirclement.
 
What is this special forces attachment everyone keeps referencing? Is this from some mod? I have not played vanilla DH Full in some time but I do not remember any such unit.
 
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What is this special forces attachment everyone keeps referencing? Is this from some mod? I have not played vanilla DH Full in some time but I do not remember any such unit.

It's in the Cold War Tech Tree. Mods that use it are All In One, The Grand Campaign, and I think EOD and Fatherland among others. Personally, I don't build them because they're overpowered.
 
It's in the Cold War Tech Tree. Mods that use it are All In One, The Grand Campaign, and I think EOD and Fatherland among others. Personally, I don't build them because they're overpowered.

Very typical... anything involving 'elite' forces has to be better than anything else.
 
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