I've seen a number of threads over time discussing the best design of individual units and nobody posting any proper build up of how to compare them. I suspect there is good reason for this as comparing units via mathematics rather than trying them in game is nearly impossible due to the impacts of breakthrough/defence and the concentrated attack effect from unit width. These things make it impossible to compare in a general sense but it is possible to compare on a more limited basis giving genuine insight into the expected consequences of different unit designs.
The basic thing to understand is that if you are comparing two units, imagining that they are fighting each other, then if neither breakthrough nor defence is exceeded the formula is a simple application of Lanchester's Square Law. Even this isn't easy to apply but ...
The above calculations are pretty useless on their own and require a bit more thought to derive something useful. For the purposes of further analysis I'm going to simply look at 2 infantry units, made of purely infantry and artillery, fighting each other with a fixed width (ie same width units rather than same IC or same manpower). I won't bother showing the spreadsheet but we can analyse a number of things for a fixed width division
There are other interesting things that turn up when you do this sort of analysis such as replacing infantry weapons with better ones is far more important that manufacturing newer artillery. 1936 artillery is far from useless even late in the war whereas 1936 infantry weapons are well obsolete (1936 -> 1942 36% improvement in artillery, 100% improvement for infantry weapons)
It is worth considering that my analysis was for a fixed width, in a combat situation where there is scope for stacking more units the material advantage becomes more significant and it would be valid to compare units based on identical material cost. This pushes even more in favour of pure infantry.
The basic thing to understand is that if you are comparing two units, imagining that they are fighting each other, then if neither breakthrough nor defence is exceeded the formula is a simple application of Lanchester's Square Law. Even this isn't easy to apply but ...
- If you are interested in relative %age loss then the formula is Attack x Hit Points
- If you are interested in 'winning' a battle then the formula is Attack x Organisation
The above calculations are pretty useless on their own and require a bit more thought to derive something useful. For the purposes of further analysis I'm going to simply look at 2 infantry units, made of purely infantry and artillery, fighting each other with a fixed width (ie same width units rather than same IC or same manpower). I won't bother showing the spreadsheet but we can analyse a number of things for a fixed width division
- Firepower (soft attack for inf vs inf)
- HP
- Manpower requirements
- Industrial cost
- Relative casualties for a combat - formula is SA x HP / MP
- Relative material losses for a combat - formula is SA x HP / IC
- For minimising casualties a 7/2 division is close to optimal. In actual fact a 4/4 is very slightly better but the actual optimum is a mix you can't construct but 7/2 gets us most of the reduced casualty benefit of adding artillery
- For minimising material losses pure infantry wins hands down
- For org there is a similar trade off BUT the conclusion is massively affected by doctrine bonuses
- More artillery is more firepower and more chances of defeating enemy breakthrough / defence. Divisions with artillery are particularly effective against inferior tech / build enemy units.
- The relative value of artillery declines through the war BUT only with modern equipment
- The only real reasons for mixing artillery into your infantry divisions is to reduce manpower requirements and losses. You need to ask yourself whether this is more useful than building more tanks and/or aircraft. If you have plenty of manpower than why bother.
There are other interesting things that turn up when you do this sort of analysis such as replacing infantry weapons with better ones is far more important that manufacturing newer artillery. 1936 artillery is far from useless even late in the war whereas 1936 infantry weapons are well obsolete (1936 -> 1942 36% improvement in artillery, 100% improvement for infantry weapons)
It is worth considering that my analysis was for a fixed width, in a combat situation where there is scope for stacking more units the material advantage becomes more significant and it would be valid to compare units based on identical material cost. This pushes even more in favour of pure infantry.
- 1
- 1