Engineers

[unmerged(14991)]

Havent played in over a year. Some quick questions. TIA.

How do you make the best use of Engineers in v1.6?

The movement bonus is gone?

Does the entire stack need engineer brigades to remove the river crossing penalty?

 

[unmerged(18043)]

Engineer's are Great on Defense that's about the only use I have for them.

 

[unmerged(14102)]

Havent played in over a year. Some quick questions. TIA.?

Welcome Back!

How do you make the best use of Engineers in v1.6??

For countries with no ENG leaders, you got no choice for rivers ...

The defense bonus also helps for countries that are MP poor ...

The movement bonus is gone??

Yes ... did not really make sense. Actually, with all their hardware, you could make a good case that they slow you down ...

Does the entire stack need engineer brigades to remove the river crossing penalty?

Yes ... there have been several threads talking about how to allow them to help more units, but no real concensus ... yet. maybe HOI2?

 

[Matt_the_king]

Yes i do fund engineers very useful for the last stand in sudentland if i fail to achieve my goals as germany fast enough and get steam by the rest of the world. They do wonders when they are in mountions with +6 lad forts

 

[unmerged(18043)]

So they DO help with Rivercrossings and Forts?

 

[unmerged(6766)]

Yea, engineers are great on defense... mine have 62 in the middle of '43. I think that's compared to about 40-50 for regular INF.

Is their speed bonus still gone? Seems to still have speed 6 compared to 4 for regular.


I play CORE...

 

[LewsTherin]

Engineers help immensely with rivercrossings. An engineer brigade ONLY affects the division to which it is attached. Thus, within a mixed stack, not all divisions get the reduced penalty for a river crossing, only the ones with engineer brigades.

By the way, I think that brigades can speed up the movement of units, considering their special equipment for crossing rivers, blowing up obstacles, etc.

 

[Svend Karlson]

The speed bonus does still exist under the latest version of CORE. It's the primary reason I build engineering brigades.

 

[unmerged(3221)]

check out Fiendix's Land efficiency 1.06 comment thread - FAQ posted on 5.29.2004

In standard 1.06:

Eng. bde benefit only the div not the stack/unit.

The two river crossing techs enable inf. to cross without any penalty regardless of whether they do or do not have an eng. bde

Motor, mech, and Pz with eng bde get zero penalty for river crossing while they get a -30 penalty even with all research done without an eng. bde

While eng bde benefit defense, they generally do not help as much as an arty bde would. Combat consists of two parts. One part compares attack to defense values. If attack is > defense, then a lot more damage is done as the defense is unable to block part of the attack. If defense is = or > attack, however, then a small percentage of the attack gets thru.

Most units in standard 1.06 can end up with a defense around 24 which with an eng. bde increases to around 32. Most attack values, however, are 24 or less. Only high end Pz div (advanced heavy 100) have attack values high enough to be greater than an normal inf. div. defense. Units with an arty bde will also be higher than 24 for soft attack if all the arty research is done.

So in a typical situation, a div without an eng bde will fight almost as well as a div with an eng. bde Only when faced by an attack value between 25 and 32 would an eng bde benefit most units which have def 24 without an eng bde.

The primary benefit then would be for your mobile units. Pz motor and mech get no river crossing penalty with an eng bde while without one the best that they get is a -30 penalty. Motor and mech div also get +2 speed from eng bde.

As noted by others, CORE uses a very different system for this. I used to build a lot of inf-eng before but I'm not going to do it anymore. They add too little for their increased cost.

 

[Executor]

So in a typical situation, a div without an eng bde will fight almost as well as a div with an eng. bde Only when faced by an attack value between 25 and 32 would an eng bde benefit most units which have def 24 without an eng bde.

There's a flaw in your analysis. Most battles consist of more than one division on each side. What if multiple divisions attack a single division? Then you'll need all the defense points you can get.

 

[unmerged(3221)]

There's a flaw in your analysis. Most battles consist of more than one division on each side. What if multiple divisions attack a single division? Then you'll need all the defense points you can get.

I don't think combat is modeled that way in HOI which is what I was discussing.

See this thread page 2
quality v quantity / inf v mec... and read Mediator's and Mikel's explanation.

I think the way that combat works is that each div gets one attack on one random enemy div. Then the enemy fights back. So it's always one on one.

In the situation where you describe, whether your single div has an eng bde or not will only slightly change the outcome. Multiple divisions will beat one div.

When GD > attack values, the extra GD is unused and "any unused GD is worthless." If you have 24 GD without an eng bde and 32 GD with an eng bde, only when the attack values of an enemy div are in the 25-32 range will you see any significant difference between having and not having an eng bde. And there are very few div with that high of an attack value unless they are very advanced tanks or have arty bde.

 

[unmerged(25977)]

New guy here. I understand the benefits of adding engineer brigades on defense and river crossings, but is there any advantage to adding them to mountain troops on offense?

 

[unmerged(3221)]

New guy here. I understand the benefits of adding engineer brigades on defense and river crossings, but is there any advantage to adding them to mountain troops on offense?

NO. Mountain troops do well by themselves and especially well in bad terrain suited to their special abilities. Eng bde would not add to their offense.

Terrain modifiers for mountain div in standard 1.06 HOI with some research:

blizzard_attack = 10
snow_attack = 10
frozen_attack = 10
rain_attack = 10
storm_attack = 10
muddy_attack = 10
night_attack = 20
desert_attack = 25

mountain_attack = 25
hill_attack = 25
forest_attack = 25

jungle_attack = -15
swamp_attack = -15
urban_attack = -15

river_attack = 50
shore_attack = 50
paradrop_attack = 50
fort_attack = 5

blizzard_defense = 10
snow_defense = 10
frozen_defense = 10
rain_defense = 10
storm_defense = 10
muddy_defense = 10
night_defense = 13
desert_defense = 25
mountain_defense = 50
hill_defense = 25
forest_defense = 10
jungle_defense = 30
swamp_defense = 10
urban_defense = 10

blizzard_move = -70
snow_move = -35
frozen_move = -25
rain_move = -10
storm_move = -25
muddy_move = -20
night_move = -5
desert_move = -5
mountain_move = -5
hill_move = -5
forest_move = -15
jungle_move = -33
swamp_move = -33
urban_move = -33

 

[unmerged(25977)]

This is GREAT! Thanks!!

 

[unmerged(18435)]

How I work with Engineers:

For offense-
I creat 3 Divisions of ENG (Stacked). I make enough to attack each province in the beginning of an invasion.

For defense-
I use 9 Divisions of ENG (Stacked). I simply just defend the border.

I do not have any problems with crossing rivers, in fact, I completely ignore rivers. There was one game where I had maybe 3x 9 Stacked ENG Divisions, and I have to admit, they kicked ass! Their were very little casualties in each battle.

 

[Soapy Frog]

I think the way that combat works is that each div gets one attack on one random enemy div. Then the enemy fights back. So it's always one on one.

Not quite... several divisions can gang up on one division either by picking the same random target or becuase that si the only available target.

In this case, the attack points of the attacking divisions are added together... if the defender does not have sufficient GD, all excess attack points are automatic hits.

So you can see that if your GD is low, in situations where you face multiple opponents, or even just by accident in large battles, you can suffer badly if more than one division happen to hit you.