Divisions for Germany

[ddiplock]

I'm keen to get some other players opinions on what makes a good template for Germany's infantry divisions, standard foot infantry, not motorized.

Is it best to fill up as many of the combat slots with infantry, and sprinkle the remainder with a couple of artillery? Since artillery lowers the fighting organization of the overall division, what's a "safe" number to have while maintaining combat effectiveness?

As a test I buffed my divisions up to around 24k troops per division with 4 arty (which meant the division had some 150 artillery guns in it). Had high soft attack value, but I ran in to a brick wall when I came to the low countries, mainly due to supply problems. Embarrassingly I couldn't even punch through Belgium because my troops kept disengaging from combat due to supply penalties, I'd neglected infrastructure in Germany and caused a bottleneck.

 

[Hroppa]

Yeah, your main problem there was simply having too many troops in one region - should spread them out.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Agree. Any region can only have so many units before combat effectiveness drops. You don’t need more than that... ok it’s more like you ruin your ability to move fast if you do try and pack too many units in.

 

[Denkt]

Agree. Any region can only have so many units before combat effectiveness drops. You don’t need more than that... ok it’s more like you ruin your ability to move fast if you do try and pack too many units in.

You can have one division per 10 combat width Before you get the peanlty. So 10 width or more will be fine.

 

[DragonScythe]

As Germany I tend to use infantry divisions as a purely defensive force to hold ground gained by the panzer and mechanized forces. As a result, I fill them to 20 width with pure infantry and assign appropriate support companies. This will maximize their defensive stats and keep organization high, which will make them very difficult to dislodge, even when outnumbered. I almost never attack with infantry divisions unless it's to pin units in place during encirclements or to clean up pockets. This way I can put the vast majority of my production into lavishly equipping my panzer divisions.

Once I start getting excess production I like to create defensive "fire brigades" of motorized or mechanized infantry that I keep behind vulnerable parts of the front and rush them into areas that are at risk of being pushed back. These divisions can be generously equipped with self-propelled artillery, tank destroyers and other goodies as they are not really expected to hold, but to get to an area, reinforce it and blunt the attack with loads of damage, hard attack and piercing.

 

[a_sophist]

First a clarifying question: are we talking about good in the immersive, historical sense, or good in the taking advantage of game mechanics sense? Since you were willing to do a test with 24k troops per division, I'll assume the latter, in which case artillery is never worth it unless you can't build CAS and tanks and/or have low manpower, which applies to few, if any, interesting countries. As to what should actually be in the divisions, unless you're doing Mass Mob 10inf+engineers is fine for holding ground and finishing off encirclements.

Edit: Beaten to the punch by mere moments!