Civs or Mils first? Historical timelines in mind

[Falkius]

I stumbled upon this guide:

TLDW: Build Mils from day 1.


It feels like this goes against the conventional wisdom of civ constructing for a year or two before switching onto mils, with historical timelines with a war mid/late 1939.

The math is WAY above my paygrade. Any takes on it?
Has there been a paradigm shift towards "mils first"?

 

[HmJ_JP]

Excellent channel. I did the same worksheet stuff, and with experience, I can state that... "it depends".
For most players, full MIL is better, because they only play WWII.
My case, especially with countries like France whose economy is weaker, and no PP to quickly switch economy laws, I don't want the risk that around 1940-41 I don't have enough juice to repair damages, import oil/other resources and conduct spy operations. CIC gives me that freedom.
When the country starts with civilian economy anyway, productivity sucks, so focusing on some INFRA + CIC doesn't hurt much, but balloons later in the game.

But, in general, yes MIC is often a better choice, especially powerful countries or factions.

 

[Swamperino]

This is a discussion that has been going on for a long time. If you start building MIL, you will have more equipment until November of 1941 compared to the standard CIV until 1938. Measured in equipment counts, a pure MIL build always wins in all main wars.

The arguments against this build are that later equipment is better and that you need the CIC for things like AA, infrastructure, railroads, refineries and trade.

 

[HmJ_JP]

Yep, and often I do the same game start again, this time with some CIC vs MIC, or concentrated vs dispersed. There's the theory and there's the practice, and sometimes different circumstances change your priorities.

 

[Synicus]

I just mix it up, including shipyards.
If I have or plan on soon having a lot of oil, fuel silos are a good investment.

 

[Gran Strategist]

I have experimented with various methods without doing the math like in the video and i came to the same general conclusion. Interestingly the video didn't study another popular theoretical strategy of building infrastructure to 100% before building factories which i have also experimented with although again not done the math so my conclusions are based purely on how weak or strong i feel at certain points in the game compared to using other strategies.

The short version is that like every military strategy game i ever remember playing the military snowball is key...bigger military gets you more resources which gets you a bigger military which gets you more resources....etc

Playing the long optimum number strategy game in theory will make you better later on but the game can often be over by the time it takes effect if you just go for the military snowball strategy. Particulalry so if you are playing aggressively.


My cut and paste strategy is to queue up

civ
mil
civ
mil
civ
mil
civ
mil
civ
mil
civ
mil

until i have 30 civs building.i.e. can be fully building two things at once.

If navy is going to be part of my game i then start to mix in dockyards
civ
mil
dock
civ
mil
dock
civ
mil
dock
civ
mil
dock

until i have around 45 civ buildings...this is quite variable as you generally gain civs by changing economic laws and lose civs as you need to import more resources as you increase military production.

Once i have 35 factories i tend to start on spy agency as i can be building spy agency stuff and still have 2 full constructions going.

As i get close to war, i start mixing in refineries so i don't need to import so much oil and rubber.

By the time war breaks out i like to have around 45 civs running so i am really ramping up military construction and if needs be i can dedicate some to building railways and airfields. As war ramps up i tend to end up with 60 civs running construction, especially if an agressive nation who is capturing civ factories.

I will only look at converting civ factories if i am running out of building slots and can't increase them easily.e.g. by building infrastructure.

I don't really focus on infrastructure unless a additional resources i am short of can be gained or unless i am running out of building slots.

 

[HmJ_JP]

Mostly sound advise. On the infrastructure note, note that it makes double sense when you have previous resources like tungsten or rubber, that you can also sell if you don’t use. Otherwise MIC are the default choice.

 

[Findell_HOI]

It depends on how strong your countries industiral base is before the war and how much your country is hampered by debuffs/consumer goods.

On Some countries if you build even 1 mil it turns your avaliable civs down to 0 so you really only have the choice to build civs for some time. But overall buildings civs is almost always more useful then mills because they can be traded away for resources and they help buld more things. On some countries you can get the "conversion to mill" cost way down to the point where its almost free which means its always better to build civs upto a point.

 

[DaleDVM]

A pure MIC build and soon you don't have any CICs to build anything. Including more MICs.

Awesome strategy if you want to build an outdated air force, and armor, and artillery, and...

It is also great if you don't want to repair damaged factories you capture, railroads, supply depots, AA, airfields, refineries, etc.

It is an inflexible strategy geared towards ahistorical early conquests IMHO and the OP emphasized historical dates for the war.

Just say no in this case.

 

[henriqueb1]

Generally I choose a few states to heavily build civilian industry, those are states with resources (iron and/or oil) and good potential for building slots. I then fully build up the infrastructure on the state and then fully build civs, then do the same to the next state. I may queue some mils in resourceless states meanwhile, depending on the need for equipment.

 

[Alexander 'The Grape']

Early mills are stronger for output but CIVs are useful in wartime too

You need "Owned Civs" to trade, upgrade agency and perform spy operations. Meanwhile civs are generally useful to repair and build Airfields/Railways/Ports.

If you look at the video, you see that by mid 41 the Civs -> Jan 37 build is barely behind the pure mill build, but will also have additional construction capacity to build and upgrade strategically important buildings like AA, airfields, railways and supply hubs.

With that said, many new players and players who don't optimise the builds construct waaaay more civs than they should. Unless you're doing very specific strategies on certain nations that revolve around needing a particular civ count to trade with, then almost all nations should either not construct civs or only construct civs until early 37.

Refusing to build mills until 38 or later is almost always a huge mistake

 

[0watcherinthewater0]

Later IC has more inherent value due to higher tech generally being more efficient per production cost.

For an example, let's compare two nations building nothing but infantry equipment. Infantry equipment 1 has a soft attack/ic ratio of 12, infantry equipment 2 has a ratio of 15.5. Let's assume we have two nations of equal factory counts, one (henceforth referred to as 1) just doing all mils from jan 1936, and the other (henceforth referred to as 2) doing mils from july 37.

Assuming that both countries unlock Inf equipment 2 in Sep 1939 for simplicity's sake, and start the game with inf equipment 1, by the historical war start, 1 will have a total of 4,440,000 Soft attack worth of equipment, and 2 3,600,000 soft attack worth of equipment.

What does that look like by the second date, June 1941 though? Adding on the IC between the two dates, and assuming it's all inf equipment 2 (we're ignoring efficiency because we're assuming both nations swap at the same time), 1 will have 10,950,000 worth, while 2 will have 10,730,000 worth. The gap is much smaller than it appears in terms of raw, unweighted IC, 2% vs the 4% using original values. By 1943 it's 18,545,000 to 19,565,000, with the late-civ build gaining a 5.5% advantage vs the unweighted 4%.

The magnitudes will get larger with time and depending on what equipment you measure, but the overall point is that a late-civ build will have a measurable combat advantage much sooner than the basic IC values might imply, because more of their IC is in higher quality equipment.

What strategy you should pursue is ultimately circumstantial, though, with the main deciding factors being front combat width and building slots. If you're in a circumstance where you just need units to fill the line and thus quality matters less, you want more mils. If you are running out of room to build, you also obviously want more mils.

However if you have lots of worthless land to sacrifice, open building slots, and it's unlikely for your opponent to be able to knock you out, or destroy most of your military in 6-12 months, then building civs for longer will likely be more beneficial

 

[HmJ_JP]

All you say is valid. OP point is that if you play an aggressive game, you need basic equipment early, and this will snowball into owning more resources with more CIC and MIC.

But I take your points especially when playing a defensive game, or as democracy when we’re not there for annexing new provinces.

 

[0watcherinthewater0]

Occupying industry is definitely a factor to consider, but the earlier you start building mils the more of a gamble it can be. At some point more basic fighters or more support equipment doesn’t actually help you conquer anything. You want enough that you have at least temporary superiority to roll over France (assuming we’re talking about Germany), but you don’t want to overproduce bad equipment and just have it destroyed later for no strategic gain when you’re fighting someone like the USSR that’s far more of a slog to get through without good equipment.

 

[HmJ_JP]

Also there are advisors: we generally can’t get the civilian factories bonus at same time as the MIC one. That’s why we like to serialize CIC first and then MIC…

 

[kettyo]

I tend to play so that i build CIVs until the point i have the tech i want to base my army on for the war and then i switch to MIL construction to churn out the stuff i gonna use. Of course if i'm going to go to war already in '36 then MIL construction for whatever equipment is available from the get go.

 

[The Colonel]

If you don't want to think too hard or plan and test a build, I think the rule of thumb to build civs until 2 years before you go to war is solid. Only real exception is like Japan who can beat China with their starting +focus and/or decision mils and probably should be applying the 2 year rule to actual WW2 (or making dockyards). Germany likewise can probably civ until early 38 bc you annex so many factories and so much equipment pre-war plus your early targets are pushovers compared to the Soviets (and you have MEFO bills).

Edit: Also, it doesn't seem like the video is taking into account new factories from occupation that Germany gets, let alone all the guns you capture, which lowers the % IC gaps by a lot (not sure if he even accounts for the 12 civs from focus or what the assumptions about laws/stab/tech are when it comes to calculating output and construction).

Okay, scrolling back to the start, he does show a lot of these values in the sheet, but it sorta looks like they are constant over the entire like 7 years he covers, and even if you wanna argue they're fair "average" values over the period, it loses a lot of the predictive power, like applying the average of 1936 and 1943 factory output to the period from 1936 to 39 means you overestimate your production achieved by 1939. Not knocking the dude, he clearly put a ton of work into this still, but I wouldn't call the results definitive.

Edit^2: Looking again at his production graphs, the jumps seem to imply he applies the first 2 or 3 industry techs (not sure if disp or concentrated), but doesn't seem to do later ones.

 

[HmJ_JP]

If you don't want to think too hard or plan and test a build, I think the rule of thumb to build civs until 2 years before you go to war is solid. Only real exception is like Japan who can beat China with their starting +focus and/or decision mils and probably should be applying the 2 year rule to actual WW2 (or making dockyards). Germany likewise can probably civ until early 38 bc you annex so many factories and so much equipment pre-war plus your early targets are pushovers compared to the Soviets (and you have MEFO bills).

Edit: Also, it doesn't seem like the video is taking into account new factories from occupation that Germany gets, let alone all the guns you capture, which lowers the % IC gaps by a lot (not sure if he even accounts for the 12 civs from focus or what the assumptions about laws/stab/tech are when it comes to calculating output and construction).

Okay, scrolling back to the start, he does show a lot of these values in the sheet, but it sorta looks like they are constant over the entire like 7 years he covers, and even if you wanna argue they're fair "average" values over the period, it loses a lot of the predictive power. Not knocking the dude, he clearly put a ton of work into this still, but I wouldn't call the results definitive.

I would not say building CIVs for two years is solid, and that’s the point: if you manage to equip a more plentiful attacking force, you may be occupying all that land earlier and yield the benefits faster.

 

[stormsand9]

Refusing to build mills until 38 or later is almost always a huge mistake

I build civs as Soviets until Aug '39... My rationale being that 1. when I want to start getting the mills up I want them going towards my brand new 1940 tanks, mechs, and planes, and 2. The starting spirits (especially for airforce) really dont make me want to build old planes that will quickly be lost. Obviously against AI Germany you can use any strat as long as you know what you're doing, and I myself defeat Germany by about early 1943 without ever losing any territory but I'd like to ask, what time do you start mills as historical soviets?

edit: and I should mention that my strat in-game is to grab all of Europe as puppets in a peace conference (by not capitulating germany and instead myself occupying france, low countries, denmark + norway) so I can do ww3 against Allies, so I kinda need all those civs for things like Rubber... although I've been trying to experminet with forcing coup on DEI or Malaya to potentially secure rubber trade

 

[delta180]

hello, I have had this discussion with numerus people and Civs and Mils always boils down to three factors, Tech, building slots and when you plan on entering the war.

The simple answer is that Civs pay for themselves in about 3 years (1936 civs will be closer to 3 and a bit years, 1939 civs will be closer to 2 and 3/4s years thanks to construction tech). So your biggest power spike comes just under 3 years after you finish constructing civs.

However, you must also consider what your tech goals are, if you really want to win the air war, you might start building mils in 1937 for your 1940 planes, which will come available 200 days after 1940 if you don't have a research buff. Bare in mind however, if you are on dispersed industry (which is generally considered better than concentrated) it takes about 200 days to reach the production efficiency cap (this depends on what your cap and growth is), so planning for retention you might want to stop building civs 200 days before you would on concentrated to get the most out of dispersed industry.

The final constraint is building slots, it might be tempting to build civs as America or Britain for a 1944 d-day, but you will quickly run out of building slots for those countries, just bare in mind those countries are limited, unless you expand massively and you shouldn't build civs after 1937. Going by pure production, like in this video gives you outdated tech and tech is more important than production.