How to use Militas.
Disclaimer: if you don't like math you should probably stop reading here.
EDIT:
Troughout the dicussion in this thread it became obvious that Defensiveness can not be neglected. I have added a calculation that takes it into account and yields an easy-to-use formular on the optimal ratio of Militia and INF for any given year, combat eff or constraint. It does not however include MTE. You can find it here.
/EDIT
Short while ago there was thread asking for usefulness of Guerilla Warfare which somehow turned into the question of the usefulness of Militas, but could not be answered in an satisfactionary manner. While the Wiki has good an article about a poor mans army it somehow lacks a analytic answer for my taste. So what i would like to do with this thread is have a look on the usefulness of Milita Units respectively when they can become usefull.
If this has been done before on the forums i am sorry. I welcome any response or further suggestions
When comparing Militas to INF one can easily see several differences. First of all Militas are ~1/3 the cost in ICd, 1/2 the cost in manpower, 1/5 the cost in Supplies or TCload. On the other hand the combat stats of Militas look pretty crappy when compared to INF, exspecially their toughness is virtually non exist ant. This things already point out for whom- if anyone- Militas can be usefull: a manpower rich, IC low nation with a strong defensive component. There are two examples that spring to mind immediately: China and the Soviet Union. While China fights pretty much all the time we can easily take the Soviet Scenario: If everything behaves "normally" the war between Germany and the Soviet Union is going to start in 1940 or 1941 and the Soviet Player will find himself in a position where at least parts of his front are in a purely defensive role. I think its save to consider the 41 standard as the latest INF model, while for MIL its going to be the 36 model. Now that seems to be totally unfavourable for MIL, but lets see what we can do with them:
The number we are considering to compare different setups is Battle Winning Ability (BWA) a number which describes at a basic level how many damage one can do to the enemy before loosing the battle. At least for the defender it will yield a good comparison between different setups, although it does not take into account own looses or the time one can actually hold a position. The formula is (total attack)*(total org).
Now the situation: A player has a certain amount of ICd to spend, say e.g. 2,000 ICd.
He could build 3 INF or 10 MIL from that- or anything between. Considering the low Soft Attack value of Mil one should take into account the Combat efficiency (CE) explicitly.
I calculated the BWA for different mixtures of MIL vs INF (all mixtures costing 2000 ICdays) and different combat efficiencies, one time defending against a soft target, one time defending against a tank (30% soft).
For the soft target i find the following:
The black numbers are the CEs, the x-axis is the number of INF divisions in the setup (non-integer numbers, because one can of cause have more than 2000 IC days).
Or in the 3d plot:
One can clearly see that for low CE the setup with 3 INF per 10 MIL (or 50% of ICdays for Mil, 50% for INF) is optimal, while at higher CE Militas get even more important.
Now Militas have a considerably bad hard attack (0), so whats against a tank?
Here is what i find:
As expected this situation favours INF a little more, but even now we find that a considerable investment of >40% of once ICdays into Militas yields the best results. However one still should note that tanks usually do not make up the main enemy force.
As stated before this takes into account only battles in the defence and completly unbrigaded units, as well as IC as the limiting factors of ones force. I am convinced that a purely INF army is much better in attacking. But even if conducting major offensive actions one might find parts of the front or other areas such as borders (Japanese) or beaches that should only be defended for the moment.
On a concluding remark i want to suggest a little tweak in the usual SOV strategy of IC-whoring in the early years and building INF41 once available. One can start building 2 series of MIL right from the start (they do not need to be upgraded untill in the war), in the first year each will produce ~9 divisions and every year after that ~12 summing up to ~130 Militas at the start of the war. Those can be mixed with INF at a rate of ~1INF/3MIL and deployed along the Japanese boarder or scattered at the German front. One way or the other they free up additional resources for the player. Additionally such a large number of units will speed up autopromotion while the Militas themselves do not really need leaders. In the long run they wont become worthless either, because the 43 standard will make pure MIL forces the best setup for a long time...
Baseline: for IC low nations: use 3 Milita + 1 INF for Defence
Disclaimer: if you don't like math you should probably stop reading here.
EDIT:
Troughout the dicussion in this thread it became obvious that Defensiveness can not be neglected. I have added a calculation that takes it into account and yields an easy-to-use formular on the optimal ratio of Militia and INF for any given year, combat eff or constraint. It does not however include MTE. You can find it here.
/EDIT
Short while ago there was thread asking for usefulness of Guerilla Warfare which somehow turned into the question of the usefulness of Militas, but could not be answered in an satisfactionary manner. While the Wiki has good an article about a poor mans army it somehow lacks a analytic answer for my taste. So what i would like to do with this thread is have a look on the usefulness of Milita Units respectively when they can become usefull.
If this has been done before on the forums i am sorry. I welcome any response or further suggestions
When comparing Militas to INF one can easily see several differences. First of all Militas are ~1/3 the cost in ICd, 1/2 the cost in manpower, 1/5 the cost in Supplies or TCload. On the other hand the combat stats of Militas look pretty crappy when compared to INF, exspecially their toughness is virtually non exist ant. This things already point out for whom- if anyone- Militas can be usefull: a manpower rich, IC low nation with a strong defensive component. There are two examples that spring to mind immediately: China and the Soviet Union. While China fights pretty much all the time we can easily take the Soviet Scenario: If everything behaves "normally" the war between Germany and the Soviet Union is going to start in 1940 or 1941 and the Soviet Player will find himself in a position where at least parts of his front are in a purely defensive role. I think its save to consider the 41 standard as the latest INF model, while for MIL its going to be the 36 model. Now that seems to be totally unfavourable for MIL, but lets see what we can do with them:
The number we are considering to compare different setups is Battle Winning Ability (BWA) a number which describes at a basic level how many damage one can do to the enemy before loosing the battle. At least for the defender it will yield a good comparison between different setups, although it does not take into account own looses or the time one can actually hold a position. The formula is (total attack)*(total org).
Now the situation: A player has a certain amount of ICd to spend, say e.g. 2,000 ICd.
He could build 3 INF or 10 MIL from that- or anything between. Considering the low Soft Attack value of Mil one should take into account the Combat efficiency (CE) explicitly.
I calculated the BWA for different mixtures of MIL vs INF (all mixtures costing 2000 ICdays) and different combat efficiencies, one time defending against a soft target, one time defending against a tank (30% soft).
For the soft target i find the following:
The black numbers are the CEs, the x-axis is the number of INF divisions in the setup (non-integer numbers, because one can of cause have more than 2000 IC days).
Or in the 3d plot:
One can clearly see that for low CE the setup with 3 INF per 10 MIL (or 50% of ICdays for Mil, 50% for INF) is optimal, while at higher CE Militas get even more important.
Now Militas have a considerably bad hard attack (0), so whats against a tank?
Here is what i find:
As expected this situation favours INF a little more, but even now we find that a considerable investment of >40% of once ICdays into Militas yields the best results. However one still should note that tanks usually do not make up the main enemy force.
As stated before this takes into account only battles in the defence and completly unbrigaded units, as well as IC as the limiting factors of ones force. I am convinced that a purely INF army is much better in attacking. But even if conducting major offensive actions one might find parts of the front or other areas such as borders (Japanese) or beaches that should only be defended for the moment.
On a concluding remark i want to suggest a little tweak in the usual SOV strategy of IC-whoring in the early years and building INF41 once available. One can start building 2 series of MIL right from the start (they do not need to be upgraded untill in the war), in the first year each will produce ~9 divisions and every year after that ~12 summing up to ~130 Militas at the start of the war. Those can be mixed with INF at a rate of ~1INF/3MIL and deployed along the Japanese boarder or scattered at the German front. One way or the other they free up additional resources for the player. Additionally such a large number of units will speed up autopromotion while the Militas themselves do not really need leaders. In the long run they wont become worthless either, because the 43 standard will make pure MIL forces the best setup for a long time...
Baseline: for IC low nations: use 3 Milita + 1 INF for Defence
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