brigades

[sHaeBerle]

i ve got a question.

are brigades worth it?

i dont think so except for engeneers.

building an inf div with art brigade makes it cost double the IC and taking even longer to be built so you ll need in the end the triple IC like vanilla inf. but not only this.
lets say im building inf with art and hes going for vanilla. not only he ll outnumber me 3:1 , he even dont have to go for that art tech i have to go for. he can stop research art after 100mm inf gun and go pumping vanilla. for me it would be best getting at least those rocket artillery to have ca. 22 on soft. this means going for 3-4 more gold techs and maybe about 10 silver. lets say i ll need 30 IC the day for teching (1 gold and 2 silver at one time). and this for about 2 years?
my friend could build about 50 vanillas with those IC. so he outnumbers me 3:1 anyway, he can start pumping earlier, he is saving those ic i need for teching.
ok, some of you will say: "but now, your inf with art will be mcu better than his vanilla" thats a point, but you all know the facts.
his vanilla will have about 10 on soft and about 20 or more defense. biulding art brigs only increases the attack, so my inf with art will have same defense and lets say 20-25 soft attack depending on teching.
my inf with art will according to this win maybe against 2 vanillas.

and this is the point. he ll outnumber me 3:1 plus these 50 divs saving teching and my inf with art only can catch up with 2:1.


please delete this, i doubleclicked the button

 

[unmerged(14035)]

are brigades worth it? i dont think so except for engeneers.

Actually, the only valid reason for anybody to make engineers would be for the extra speed, and this only applies to motorized or mechanized units. For all other unit types, I see no reason at all to make engineers. The extra defence has basically no effect on the units combat performance.

building art brigs only increases the attack

The soft/hard attack of a unit is by far the most important stat, defence is not even nearly as usefull. So saying that it "only" increases the attack is a bit unfair.

The main points about making vanilla infantry seem to be the following:
1) You get more units (3 times as many)
2) You dont have to spend a lot of extra IC to get the tech to make artillery brigades good

Concerning statement 1:
A) Manpower: making 3 vanilla inf divs instead of 1 inf-Art will cost you about 2.5 times the manpower, and it will definately cost you more supplies. During a long multiplayer game, most countries will simply not be able to field the amount of vanilla inf divs that they would wish to due to problems with manpower.
B) Max divs per province: Remember that the game mechanics limit the effective number of defending divs to 24, and the attacking to 24 per direction. If you want to defend a key province, using inf-Art is vastly superior to vanilla inf.
C) Leadership: If you have 3 times as many divisions, you will need around 3 times the amount of leaders. Simply put, all those extra divs will lead to you putting inferior leaders in charge, so those extra divs will not run at the same high efficiency.

Concerning statement 2:
D) saved research?: Your idea seems to be based on the fact that you will not be making any tanks. While this may be possibe for some nations (UK, Italy, Japan, minors), it will not work out for Germany, USSR and USA. You will need to get those gold techs to get the higher-calibre tank guns and the silver tech in the artillery tree that benefits armored divs. Also, you will most likely want to go for artillery brigaded armor divs, so this would actually save you no ICs at all.

On the whole, I think that most "poor" countries (where you may not want to go for tanks, like Itay, UK and Japan) should make mostly vanilla infantry. For UK this may lead to a shortage of manpower. Also, I think that the Russians should make mostly vanilla inf, since they can afford the manpower. However, I think that Germany (and to a lesser degree USA) should go almost exclusively for brigaded infantry, since you will be running out of manpower, and have loads of IC.

For the above mentioned "poor" countries, it may be a good idea to have some artillery brigaded units (like marines) to use as shock troops.

 

[sHaeBerle]

a) i agree with supplies. but in fact, as fr germany for example u can get over 400 divs vanilla till 1940 not running out of manpower.

b) i agree.

c) i agree.

d) i normally tech to tank gun 70mm with which u can equip each type of meduim tank as well es basic heavy tanks. i do build tanks!

engeneer brigades are of course important mostly because of the speed. what made blitzkrieg such succesful? speed! i mean the defense bonus is ok.

 

[unmerged(14035)]

Making 400 vanilla infantry divisions as Germany sounds like a realy bad idea. Even if you would not run out of manpower making them, you sure would a few weeks into Barbarossa when you start taking casualties. I have seen quite a few failed German grunt rushes, as soon as they reach the woodlands inside Russia it all comes to a halt. Then you just sit and wait for those Shermans to come rolling in from the west...

Also, 70mm tank gun is a bit on the low end in the longer run. Sure, this might work against the Polish and French, but vs the Russians I always go for bigger guns.

Your proposed mass vanilla inf and low-tech vanilla tanks is IMHO a bad solution for the Germans. It is a much better idea to use this as Russia, it's almost the way they are supposed to be played (except you might want better tanks than just 70mm).

 

[boromir]

About brigades:

Sometimes having more vanilla hard attack units is useful, due to the fact you can produce much more of those (mostly useful for Russia I think, and maybe for Germany when defending France from Allied invasion):
1) If you have a wide front (like the Eastern front), your elite brigaded units can't be everywhere. If you concentrate them at one point in order to achieve a breakthrough the enemy may do the same somewhere else, at less cost.
2) It's a waste of brigaded units if they just have to hold some backwater part of the front (usually facing more numerous unbrigaded opposition that won't be attacking anyway)
3) You can attack from more sides with more troops, getting large bonuses to attack efficiency and outnumber the opposition.
4) The enemy can't be sure, if the units facing him are brigaded or not if you have armies of both types - this may delay attacks or better still force him to throw too much, weakening another part of the front.

b.