Unit Comparison Principles
I don’t know why but it seemed like a good idea to write an essay on unit comparison. To compare different units it is important to understand the properties that units have. Units have a number of important capabilities.
Units have the ability to inflict damage on other units. This capability is represented by the various attack strengths. Which attack strengths are most important depends on what enemy units your unit is going to be fighting.
Next is a unit’s ability to resist having damage done to it. This is represented by the units various defence strengths in combination, for ground combat, with ground defence efficiency. These defence strengths represent the ability to shrug off damage without effect rather than the ability to absorb damage.
Next is the ability to absorb damage. This is identical for all units and is exactly 100 when at full strength. It is a highly important issue that this ability is the same for all units as it acts as a weakness for all the more expensive units. This is an important point for comparing units as it reflects a benefit in creating more units out of the same resources. We have, for example, the odd fact that militia divisions appear to be able to absorb far more casualties for the destruction of the same manpower and material than other more sophisticated divisions. It is only their other weaknesses that makes them such poor value.
Next is the ability of a unit to remain in combat and this is represented by organisation. This is often a highly important property for enemy units but if you are playing using my approach then it is far less important for your own units. As far as I am concerned, no unit of mine will continue to fight a battle in which it is taking heavy losses and therefore the ability to sustain such a fight is superfluous.
These then are the key capabilities of units and can act as a basis for comparison. If we ignore the organisation (which is what I intend to do) then the only variables are attack, defence and numbers of units. This is a significant point about numbers of units. Your ability to absorb casualties relates to numbers of units rather than any other property. My Russian infantry strategy exploits this by absorbing casualties across many infantry divisions it becomes difficult for the enemy to have much impact.
Assuming that I intend to use my units in such a way as to never take heavy casualties the ability to absorb casualties also becomes unimportant. This leaves me with only attack and defence really mattering. This is a point at which other factors need considering. There are a variety of combat modifiers according to weather and terrain which can influence the choice of units. These special circumstances will promote the desire for the use of infantry over motorised troops of all types and, more specifically, a preference for mountain troops and marines for use against difficult terrain. I will leave this as a special case indicating a desire for some mountain troops and a fair number of foot infantry in the army.
Moving on to the more general case, what should my unit preferences be? When fighting an enemy one for one all I need is for my defence to exceed their attack. Any defence strength beyond this is superfluous so this puts a limit on desirable defence strength. However, when fighting in larger numbers I can expect some of my divisions to be under attack at 2:1 or even 3:1. In these cases, because of the dramatic effect of having defence exceeded, it is important to have defence twice the enemy attack and desirable to go even higher. This suggests that the important aspect of defence is its ratio to the enemy’s attack strength.
Now I will have a small aside on brigades to consider how useful they are. All brigade attachments are expensive and often have quite limited effect.
Antitank brigades make infantry divisions 3x as expensive in ICs and only add hard attack capability. They cost an additional 2 manpower which is typical of brigades. The result is that any division with an antitank brigade creates a 20% increase in manpower and 200% increase in IC casualties when in a battle and it only has any benefit if attacking a hard target. This is ameliorated a little for other division types. Motorised are 2.5x ICs, mechanised are 2x, armoured are 1.6x to 1.8x. We have a similar story for other brigades.
Let us consider the most popular ‘attack’ brigade – the artillery attachment. If I build 5 InfA it costs 8525 ICs and 60 manpower. This gives me a potentially significant increase in soft and hard attack but no improvement in defence. Let us consider some alternative builds, I could build 6 mechanised divisions and save 300 ICs. In a typical mid-game situation the InfA may have a bonus of around 5SA for the artillery. Interestingly the mechanised will be very similar in total soft attack to the InfA divisions. On top of this the mechanised have an advantage of numbers which will spread enemy attacks and hence improve the ability to resist. They are high speed divisions. They are ‘hard’ divisions and subject to the enemies much lower hard attack strength. Overall I can see no reason to build these InfA given that I can get mechanised divisions at a lower price.
This analysis can be extended to all sorts of division-brigade combinations by comparing the resulting unit strengths with vanilla versions of other more expensive units. The argument always seems to work out the same, offering more combat capability to the more advanced vanilla units. I have concluded that it is best to avoid brigades until the IC cost has become unimportant. This has some consequences but you can evaluate for yourself from the performance in the AAR.
The next issue is a comparison of soft and hard units. There is always a need for soft foot units for difficult terrain and they are also the cheapest units so these tend to feature significantly in most armies. I will take some mid-war figures that are actually biased against my choice (i.e. the figures are often even more in my favour). Lets take an enemy infantry with 5 HA, 10 SA, 15 GD. If I fight this with infantry with 15 SA, 22 GD; or with mechanised 15 SA, 15 GD; what is the difference. First of all my ability to inflict casualties is identical (in reality the mechanised divisions are likely to have slightly better soft attack). Secondly their ability to inflict casualties is reduced. They need even higher odds to achieve a hard attack superiority against my ground defence and they have altogether half the attack capability. This suggests that when equal numbers of units are involved I will suffer less than 50% of the casualty rate. In reality the soft / hard attack ratio is likely to be even more in my favour. The attack/defence ratio is also critical as hitting the 1:3 ratio neutralises significant casualty risks from large battles.
This shows the significant advantage of mechanised divisions over infantry divisions. The second aspect is the manoeuvrability advantage of mechanised over other units, mechanised are move 10, motorised move 8 and foot move 5. This is significant as the expense of mechanised units means there will be less of them and they must use manoeuvre to engage in battles at good odds. The effect will be seen at its most dramatic during the Russian campaign but that is still a long way off.