Brigades

[kunadam]

Also, reducing the manpower costs of brigades to 1 MP means that they do not represent brigades at all...

I like Wobbler's idea of brigades representing extra equipment rather than extra men (except for the engineers) very much.

this suggests that you feel that the current Paradox system needs to be completely replaced, not just tweaked.

No way. I would like to change as little as possible. And I feel if I change anyting it should be IC/contruction time/manpower and not their fighting abilities.

The question that I would be examining would be "How much ORG should the different brigades add?"... and I would hope to balance it so that brigades were a net plus for Countries that follow the Grand Battle Plan and Superior Firepower doctrines, fairly neutral for Human Wave, and a slight minus for Spearhead.

I might get it wrong. You suggest that for example UK (Grand BP) or Hungary (Sup Firepower) should have brigades, USSR sometimes and Germany never?

And of course the calculation can be remade in order to accomodate different doctrines.

 

[Borsook]

I might get it wrong. You suggest that for example UK (Grand BP) or Hungary (Sup Firepower) should have brigades, USSR sometimes and Germany never?

Germany used a lot of small independent units - e.g. heavy tanks were used as separate batallions.

 

[zeeter]

Not to bring up a long done thread, but I've just come to some conclusions about brigades. Maybe they've all been mentioned before, but I often need to see and experience things to really trust them.

I played a game as the USA last month. Brigaded everything. Kept running out of manpower and IC time.

Started a game last week with the following:

Brigaded all elite troops with ART or AT
Brigaded my first run of 54 INF w/ART
Brigaded about fifteen of my first of 36 armor.
Did not brigade my next run of 48 INF
Did not brigade my next run of 15 armor
Brigaded my next run of 48 INF with RArt
Did not brigade a single unit after that except for a few more mountaineer divisions.

What I found was that I was able to build far more troops. By 1948 I had around 450 infantry/garrison/elites and 89 tanks.

While the soviets had over 500 INF, they only had 27 tanks. Plus they likely did not have the added burden of building a navy.

I was never under 400 in Manpower. Usually I was up around 900 or so. It seemed to be pretty quick; by the time my run of infantry was done I was pretty much back where I started, plus or minus a few.

My only drawback in this game is that I failed to build a large air force. Indeed, I built two NAV groups, two Fighter groups, and two Strat groups. I got four Tacs and two INT's, along with an extra Strat to start the game.

I brigaded the elite troops because for one, they're a bit more expensive and time consuming to build, and two, they usually have mission critical jobs. When invading, the marines have to succeed or the rest of the invasion force can't get to the port. Airborne - same thing. They're there to capture a coastal city with a port that maybe doesn't have a beach. If they don't succeed they can be toast. Mountaineers? They're the first ones to get into the mountains - even beating the armor. So they need to defend against a counter attack. A lot of times the rest of the force is disorganized by the time they get into the mountains and can be quickly driven back.

I saw the war against the Russians being one of attrition, so I trashed the game. It's never any fun when they've conquered all of Europe and you're stuck there with Japan as your only ally. (no, I didn't join the Allies).

Interesting factoid that I just found out. If you do an airdrop onto a coastal province and lose, but have a transport offshore, the airborne units will automatically evacuate onto the transports instead of just being lost. Didn't know that.

 

[unmerged(60182)]

Mechanized Infantry is an alternative to Armour: it has higher soft attack, uses less TC and is cheaper in terms of IC-days, but is also considerably softer, costs more manpower and has slightly lower hard attack - in other words, more IC-/TC effective but less MP-effective. It counts as a hard unit when configuring Combined Arms formations.

And MOTs counts as soft unit?

 

[unmerged(63575)]

Numbers are numbers, and Blue Emu use them pretty good. I'm ok with your results except in two items:
- Leader Bonus (you can't have 80000000 skilled leaders for your plain inf)
- Stacking penalty (when we're talking about hundreds of divs in a certain frontline and 32 vanilla inf cannot attack at a time)

Both parameters are almost impossible to take part in the calculations because every country is a diff world. So starting with this idea i dont see anyone giving enough arguments (in numbers) stating the opposite.

Once again, chapeau for Blue Emu

PS: I use...

- MP in garrisons.
- AC in Arm
- SP/Art or AC in MOT depending on my budget.
Other brigades are always disbanded

Cyaz

 

[James Mason]

Forgetting about research aspect

Another problem with brigades is that you have to research the techs for them. I think you really have to pick and choose, especially in VH/F games. You simply cannot have everything you want and still succeed. You need to decide what NOT to research so you can be ahead of the game in things you care about, and catching up in areas that you don't really care about.

I guess what I'm saying is the "cost" of a brigade includes the research necessary to get it, as well as the opportunity cost of NOT researching something else.

As a result, my German navy is usually pretty weak, almost limited to subs (for flavor) and what amounts to a "coast guard".

I focus on my Air Force, especially the doctrines as they are what makes them worth anything, not the most advanced planes but just getting adequate numbers at historic technological levels.

For the rest, brigades are usually reserved for elite and motorized units. Armor is usually already pretty good and doesn't need much help, but their accompanying motorized need the boost. I am on the fence about equipping the Mtn troops - I don't want to slow them down, but they are the elite troops and if you've already made an investment in them, you might as well go all the way. Not sure about that aspect.

Jim

 

[blue emu]

Armor is usually already pretty good and doesn't need much help...

True as far as it goes, but there are a couple of other factors involved that make brigading your Armor very attractive:

1) The Softness reduction granted by SP-Art (or TD, or AC) brigades makes a far bigger difference to a Division that is already fairly Hard than it does to a Soft Division. A brigade with a -5 Softness modifier will boost the survivability of an Armored Division by 1/6th (30% Soft => 25% Soft), while the same brigade only boosts the survivability of an Infantry Division by 1/20th (100% Soft => 95% Soft). Attaching the brigade to Armor gives you more bangs for the same buck.

2) Since brigades cannot be deployed alone, but only when attached to Divisions, the proper way of evaluating the cost/benefit ratios is by comparing brigaded vs unbrigaded Divisions, not by examining the brigades alone. The brigade represents a much smaller fraction of the overall cost of an Armored Division + brigade, compared to its fraction of the cost of an Infantry Division + brigade. In short... brigades are much more affordable as attachments to Armor than as attachments to Infantry.

In my view, brigading your Armored Divisions is as close to a no-brainer decision as you can get, given the controversial nature of brigade discussions.

 

[James Mason]

Thanks - I wasn't thinking of it in that way. I have seen the argument before, but it never really struck home until now. Makes sense.

Jim

 

[zeeter]

In my view, brigading your Armored Divisions is as close to a no-brainer decision as you can get, given the controversial nature of brigade discussions.

Interesting conclusion. My initial take on the topic would be that Armor are pretty good already, but if I brigade my infantry, then they'll be pretty good, as well.

Looking at your numbers, however, what's the difference between 100% and 95%? Not much. Especially considering how many times during a combat the unit will do a soft hit. This means that nineteen times out of 20 the soft hit will still be effective, versus 20 out of 20 without the brigade.

Meanwhile, with armor you have five times out of twenty versus six. Not that much of a difference, but since there will often be far less armor than infantry, I'd prefer them to be ready for combat more often rather than sitting there reorganizing/gaining strength.

I'll still brigade my elites, though.

 

[blue emu]

Looking at your numbers, however, what's the difference between 100% and 95%? Not much. Especially considering how many times during a combat the unit will do a soft hit. This means that nineteen times out of 20 the soft hit will still be effective, versus 20 out of 20 without the brigade.

Meanwhile, with armor you have five times out of twenty versus six. Not that much of a difference, but since there will often be far less armor than infantry, I'd prefer them to be ready for combat more often rather than sitting there reorganizing/gaining strength.

One way of looking at it:

For each 100 successful hits that an unbrigaded Infantry would have suffered, a brigaded (-5 Soft) Infantry will suffer 95 instead.

For each 100 successful hits that an unbrigaded Armor would have suffered, a brigaded (-5 Soft) Armor will suffer 83 instead.

The same (-5 Soft) brigade simply offers the Armor more protection than it offers to the Infantry.

Add to that the fact that the brigade itself makes up a far smaller fraction of the cost of the Armor+brigade than it does of the Infantry+brigade... and so represents a smaller relative investment for Armor... and the choice is pretty clear.

I also agree with brigading elite Infantry (such as Marines), but on somewhat different grounds: those of cost-effectiveness, limited stacking and limited numbers of top-quality Commando leaders.