Well if they all focus on CAS then it should be easy if Germany make a lot of fighters.
great tank divisions?
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UK builds some fighters and if the allies have 4-5k cas then it takes a few months to wear that down, which is basically frances job to simply buy time
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I'm still new to the game, and I was curious.
If I'm working with low resources and I just wanted to add maybe a little hard armor to my normal troops... is that a bad idea? Is armor too dependant on the type of land it's driving over to just add a couple trucks or tanks to your normal infantry division? Maybe if I add the support crew that makes armor more reliable???
If I'm working with low resources and I just wanted to add maybe a little hard armor to my normal troops... is that a bad idea? Is armor too dependant on the type of land it's driving over to just add a couple trucks or tanks to your normal infantry division? Maybe if I add the support crew that makes armor more reliable???
I have yet come across an air situation that has halted my light tanks, but I always enjoy learning new things!
It's not a bad idea. The armor that gets added into your infantry make it difficult for other infantry to penetrate yours. This idea is also called Space Marines
In MP games, I usually put 5 MIC on CAS the moment I research CAS. I just keep those lines running forever. I have plenty of CAS ready by the time the Germans hit France. You don't need thousands of CAS, just a few hundred.
Ask my Axis colleagues how they feel about UK CAS.
Cool, cool, thank you, but just so I'm clear, If i want to add a hard armor unit or two to my basic assault infantry... do I need a maintenance company?
Germany needs to build lots of Cas as well, and 1936 fighters against 1936 Cas would have k/d 1,5:1 and not more. The only counter to Cas is AA right now
We're getting a little off-track from good tank divisions, but I'll say that the advantage of having 1941 medium tanks against France guarantees a win in 1939. There is nothing Allies can field in 1939 that can fight a german concentrated tank force (around 8-12 40 width 1941 medium tank divisions) pressuring a single axis of advance. What Allied airpower does is blunt the force of the attack, and delay it long enough (slower movement and lower breakthrough + bombing damage) for more allied troops to pile in to defend.
You counter this by
1) Concentrating tanks for a rapid breakthrough, hence minimizing fighting time and bombing damage
2) Having sufficient stockpile of equipment to sustain the offensive
3) Manoeuvre to encircle the enemy strength while launching pinning attacks.
4) Having sufficient airpower to contest air superiority.
Using light tanks in 1939 makes winning against good allied players very iffy since you won't have any armor advantage, much lower breakthrough and soft attack, as opposed to using 1941 tanks with maxed out armor and SPART with maxed guns. If you're worried about SOV having too many tanks, consider that it is impossible for SOV to outproduce the Axis if you win in France early in 1939 and sit on all those extra factories till 1941. GER should always have 1943 tanks by the time 1941 comes about if you manage your research boosts well so there should not be any tech advantage.
There is a huge advantage in using 40 width armor over 20 width armor in relative effectiveness on the offensive. Remember that ORG is just a number, and whether you fight with 0.1 or 100 ORG your division fights with full effectiveness. As such, when launching an offensive, having higher breakthrough, soft attack and ORG regain matter more than having a grinding battle with twice the number of divisions (and hence organisation) to throw into the fight. Every point of incoming damage above breakthrough does approximately 4x (not 100% sure on this) more damage. Smaller divisions hence take way more damage on average with less HP to spread this damage, leading to massive bleeding when trying to grind. Furthermore, concentrating your attack also helps in breaking stacks, especially when you deorg Allied divisions faster than they can reinforce (doesn't work against SOV thanks to OP reinforcement chances)
Having 40 width infantry does confer similar benefits, but mainly for the defense, which is arguably irrelevant for a country like GER. Generally, GER can afford to get away with very weak infantry (20 width 7/2 in 1939) as long your tanks forces are on the ball with sufficient air support. In MP you can rely on one or two minors to produce enough bodies to man the coast/garrisons too, so specializing in tanks is an even easier choice.
If anyone still doesn't know how to game training to farm exp for producing 40 width tanks, upgraded variants and/or fully regular troops before WW2 starts, I refer you to an older reddit post done by my friend when we were figuring out how tobreak the game build large divisions. IMO, this is a good litmus test of how seasoned players are, because if you can get your army to regular you have a 25% advantage over trained, and 66% (125%/75%) advantage over green. Never ever fight with green troops (barring the usual desperate defenses), it's always worth the equipment and time to train them up to regular.
(Link removed)
I have copied Sqwerlpunk's work with his permission into the spoiler below.
You counter this by
1) Concentrating tanks for a rapid breakthrough, hence minimizing fighting time and bombing damage
2) Having sufficient stockpile of equipment to sustain the offensive
3) Manoeuvre to encircle the enemy strength while launching pinning attacks.
4) Having sufficient airpower to contest air superiority.
Using light tanks in 1939 makes winning against good allied players very iffy since you won't have any armor advantage, much lower breakthrough and soft attack, as opposed to using 1941 tanks with maxed out armor and SPART with maxed guns. If you're worried about SOV having too many tanks, consider that it is impossible for SOV to outproduce the Axis if you win in France early in 1939 and sit on all those extra factories till 1941. GER should always have 1943 tanks by the time 1941 comes about if you manage your research boosts well so there should not be any tech advantage.
There is a huge advantage in using 40 width armor over 20 width armor in relative effectiveness on the offensive. Remember that ORG is just a number, and whether you fight with 0.1 or 100 ORG your division fights with full effectiveness. As such, when launching an offensive, having higher breakthrough, soft attack and ORG regain matter more than having a grinding battle with twice the number of divisions (and hence organisation) to throw into the fight. Every point of incoming damage above breakthrough does approximately 4x (not 100% sure on this) more damage. Smaller divisions hence take way more damage on average with less HP to spread this damage, leading to massive bleeding when trying to grind. Furthermore, concentrating your attack also helps in breaking stacks, especially when you deorg Allied divisions faster than they can reinforce (doesn't work against SOV thanks to OP reinforcement chances)
Having 40 width infantry does confer similar benefits, but mainly for the defense, which is arguably irrelevant for a country like GER. Generally, GER can afford to get away with very weak infantry (20 width 7/2 in 1939) as long your tanks forces are on the ball with sufficient air support. In MP you can rely on one or two minors to produce enough bodies to man the coast/garrisons too, so specializing in tanks is an even easier choice.
If anyone still doesn't know how to game training to farm exp for producing 40 width tanks, upgraded variants and/or fully regular troops before WW2 starts, I refer you to an older reddit post done by my friend when we were figuring out how to
(Link removed)
I have copied Sqwerlpunk's work with his permission into the spoiler below.
I did some testing recently, to confirm how exactly training, army xp, and unit xp all come together in order to optimize my build-up in multiplayer games, and thought I'd post my findings here (along with some ideas on how to best utilize it).
Unit Experience:
Unit Experience:
- Experience is tracked by the ratio of manpower to the division's total experience level. It does not track experience by anything within the division, they simply share the total experience level. At 0.1*manpower experience, the division will be Trained, 0.3 for Regular, 0.6 for Seasoned, and 0.9 for Veteran. Experience gained is multiplied by manpower, so divisions will always gain the same percentage of experience at the same rate for Exercise/Combat if all else is equal, larger divisions will simply have higher totals and rate of gain versus smaller divisions.
- Anything in your recruitment queue will gain experience from the starting green up to at most trained, and the rate of this gain is based on the "training time" of the division (varies from 90-180 base), visible in the division designer. Infantry, for example, have a base training time of 90 days, meaning they will gain just over 1.1% of the experience needed for trained each day. Training in the queue is capped by equipment, measured by the sum of equipment available versus total equipment. This is important because it's completely different from how the game calculates this elsewhere. As an example, a division of 10 Infantry (1000 Infantry Equipment) and Engineer Support (10 Infantry Equipment & 30 Support Equipment) supplied with only Infantry Equipment will cap out at 97% in the queue, 3% short of trained (1010 equipment available versus 1040 required).
- Units that are Exercising gain experience at a max of 0.74% per day going from Trained to Regular, if they are fully equipped. Unlike the recruitment training, however, equipment status in the field is calculated very differently, with the game giving equal weight to each type of equipment. Using the same division as our previous example, 10 Infantry and 1 Engineer supplied with only Infantry Equipment, we would have a division at half strength, and thus gaining experience at half the speed (0.37%/day). The only upside to Exercising green divisions in the field versus leaving them in your recruitment queue is that units will go from Green to Trained quicker while Exercising if fully equipped (MAXIMUM 60 days Exercising to go from 10% Green to 0% Trained while fully equipped, versus 90-180 days total in recruitment).
- Finally, there is the interaction between experience and changing templates. Editing an existing template to change a brigade type carries no experience penalty if the total manpower after changes is equal to or lower than the prior to editing, regardless of changes made. Theoretically, it is possible to change a blob of just infantry into Regular armor/motorized/support this way, but the Army XP cost of this is too large to really be viable.
- If you change the template a division uses, it carries a 50% penalty to experience for battalions that change type. It doesn't care if you change Infantry into Mountaineers or Infantry into Heavy Armor, it's just a 50% penalty. What IS important is how this is calculated, and the order in which the changes are made. Any battalion that is changed or removed immediately has a 50% experience penalty applied to the manpower they use, calculated before total manpower use of the division is updated. What this means in practice is that changing a division from, for example, 1 Infantry into 1 Artillery carries the same penalty as changing 1 Infantry into 2 Artillery (as Artillery use half the manpower of Infantry). As such, you should try to avoid changing templates from a division using a great deal more manpower to a division type using much less, as the experience penalty will be harsher even if the majority of the manpower penalized ends up back in your pool. If the division is changed to a template requiring more manpower than the previous, the new manpower will be added with 0 experience, essentially Green (same as replenishing a division from combat with no Field Hospitals).
- Army XP is not gained from any unit within your recruitment window, however the units in your recruitment window do affect XP gained from Exercise.
- Divisions Exercising while at least Trained level of experience or higher generate Army XP based on the total number of battalions in the division, and also modified by the percentage of your army exercising that is at least Trained or better. Any unit in your recruitment window, Green experience level, or not Exercising affect this.
- As an example, if your army is a single division of 25 line battalions and 5 support battalions, you will gain ~0.276 Army XP/day, or roughly 0.0092 Army XP per battalion Exercising. You would gain the exact same Army XP if you had 500 of the same divisions exercising, as long as all divisions are deployed, Trained or better, and Exercising. If you have 2 divisions of the maximum 30 Battalion size, but only one is Exercising, you will gain half that amount as only 50% of your army is Exercising. This also applies if you have 1 division Exercising and are in the process of recruiting a second division of 30 size.
- Thus, it's most accurate to say that Army XP is gained based on the average number of battalions in the divisions exercising modified by the percentage of your army that is currently Exercising and at least Trained level experience. Again, divisions in Recruitment "count" as part of your army for this purpose, and will lower the Army XP gain accordingly (as if they were simply in the field and not Exercising).
- Unlike Unit Experience gain, Army XP gain from Exercise does not care about how well equipped the divisions is, as long as it has at least 10% Combat Strength (required to Exercise).
- Unlike unit experience, I could not, for the life of me, figure out the formula for the rate of XP gain from the defines.lua values. We simply had to test until we figured it out and got roughly accurate numbers. If someone else can figure it out, I'd love to know it for completions sake. Army XP gain being based on battalions/division and percentage of your army Exercising is simply not listed anywhere, and had to be tested to figure out.
- This is primarily pointed for Multiplayer games, where house rules against extremely early wars are common, but is usable in any situation if adjusted appropriately. This is also just suggestions based on what I do, and is not intended as the end-all be-all for strategy.
- Disbanding useless divisions at 1936 start, such as very Green or very small divisions, is highly advisable. They will penalize your Army XP gain greatly, and there's little point to attempting to turn them into useful divisions until you have the Army XP to fix them. Disbanding returns 100% of their manpower and equipment to your pool, so the only cost to such is the time to re-recruit and train them.
- It is ideal if your entire army is exercising at all times prior to war if you need to farm Army XP. It is NOT ideal to be burning all of your equipment on such activity, taxing your production heavily and limiting the force you can put out by war-time. We can use smart planning and some micromanagement to get the best of all worlds, however.
- It's also ideal that any divisions in recruitment are actively in the process of gaining experience toward deployment. Queuing up 100 divisions when you lack the equipment to recruit 10 will massively penalize your Army XP gain from Exercise in the meantime.
- I like to designate one of my division templates as a "Reserve" template. My ideal template for such is 9-10 Infantry Battalions, and nothing else. Having Engineer support in such a division isn't the end of the world, as 9-10 Infantry + Engineers make pretty ideal port garrisons, but will slow down Exercise unit experience gain by 50%. Initial Army XP from focus or Exercise will go toward setting up this template.
- Every division I recruit begins as a "Reserve" division, and I equip them with only Basic Infantry Equipment (even if I have access to better weapons, I start a line of production on Basic for recruitment and training purposes). This means if they use Support Equipment/Artillery/ect I edit the template to only allow them to be equipped with the Basic weapons. Assuming you have Engineers or something else in there, this means you will need to manually deploy them once they've reached the maximum experience level possible for that equipment in the recruitment tab, and you will want to wait until they've been fully trained in recruitment to deploy. If they do NOT have any other needs, you can actually deploy them as early as possible and being Exercising them to get to Trained status faster, but it's rare you have an appropriate starting template to do this (and sinking Army XP into this division is usually a waste outside of adding an appropriate number of Infantry battalions).
- All these divisions then begin Exercising until they reach Regular level (136 days from Trained for pure infantry being fully equipped, 271 days for infantry + x equipment that they are not supplied with, 406 days for infantry + 2x equipment not supplied, so best to try to avoid unnecessary battalion types as much as possible). The goal here is farming Army XP while avoiding attrition of more valuable equipment, so I'm happy to take a slow train early in the game since Army XP gain does not care about how well equipped they are, and Basic Infantry Equipment is incredibly cheap to throw a few factories to for this.
- Once my "Reserves" divisions have reached Regular level, if I have a template ready for what I intend their final division type to be, I will duplicate that final division template, and set the duplicate to also only use Basic Infantry Equipment. The Reserves are switched to the duplicate template, taking the experience penalty for such a switch (most 20 width divisions end up 8-10k manpower used in total, which is why our Reserves division is set up in that way). They will be grossly under-equipped, especially if changing into an Armor division type or the like, but can still slowly gain experience back toward Regular level while only burning up Basic Infantry Equipment.
- All divisions in my army continue training indefinitely. They're just using Basic Infantry Equipment, and you can gain a great deal of Army XP out of leaving them the way they are. If you fight a limited war against a minor or the like, you can fully equip and deploy whatever forces needed for that while leaving everyone else in the endless Exercise.
- When war is approaching, you should generally switch all these gimped divisions to their fully equipped templates and finish their training quickly. This method of training is only useful in the pre-war build up phase, where saving IC is more important than time. Once the war begins, time taken is far more important and should begin recruiting and Exercising divisions with full equipment, so please don't use this while at war or expecting war to break out soon.
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I am surprised that nobody has yet mentioned the Great War Tank. When it comes to war, the Great War Tank is a really great tank. It says so right in the name.
Think about it this way. You can either have a Medium Tank or you can have a Great War Tank.
So why settle for mediocrity when you have greatness at your finger tips?
Alternate paths to greatness for tanks:
1) If you are playing vanilla with un-nerfed CAS, then the best tank is a flying tank. Build as much CAS as possible, recruit a couple thousand or so low width pure infantry divisions (8 width or thereabouts can be good), turn on the battleplanner, and the flying tanks will kill everything that either moves on land, flies in the air, or floats in the ocean. You may also want to build some SPAA with level 5 AA gun upgrade if the enemy has CAS, since that is the only way to shoot it down.
2) If you are playing with a mod that nerfs CAS (or with 1.4 when it comes out), then it might make sense to actually build some real tank divisions. In this case, the best is to use 40 or 45 width (44 if you are playing with a mod that fixes the offensive doctrine combat width bug). The advantage of higher width is you take lower casualties. Another recently discovered hidden advantage is that if you get over supply, you are likely to take little or no attrition with high width tank divisions because of the supply bug. When you are over supply, divisions that need a lot of supply take very little attrition, while divisions that take only a small amount of supply (e.g. 2 width infantry) take extremely high attrition.
The question is, how much motorized and/or mechanized to use in your high width tank divisions? Generally somewhere between 5 and 10 MOT/MECH, but the answer depends on 2 things:
a) how nerfed is CAS? - If CAS is not nerfed much, then you want a high ratio of MOT/MECH to your tanks, or else all your tanks will just get killed by CAS, since your divisions will have low hit points (HP). If CAS is nerfed by more, then you can more afford to have less MOT/MECH.
b) armor/piercing - Having more MOT/MECH helps you take less casualties (and increases ORG), but it also lowers your armor/piercing and also lowers your firepower somewhat. If your piercing is not high enough to pierce enemy tanks, then you may need to use less MOT/MECH. And if possible, you would like to not be pierced by enemy tanks or at least enemy infantry, so you can adjust based on what the enemy is using. You also generally want less MOT/MECH the more you are attacking, and want more MOT/MECH the more you are defending. But even if you are on the offensive, you should expect to get counter-attacked sometimes, and your tanks will sometimes be defending.
Think about it this way. You can either have a Medium Tank or you can have a Great War Tank.
So why settle for mediocrity when you have greatness at your finger tips?
Alternate paths to greatness for tanks:
1) If you are playing vanilla with un-nerfed CAS, then the best tank is a flying tank. Build as much CAS as possible, recruit a couple thousand or so low width pure infantry divisions (8 width or thereabouts can be good), turn on the battleplanner, and the flying tanks will kill everything that either moves on land, flies in the air, or floats in the ocean. You may also want to build some SPAA with level 5 AA gun upgrade if the enemy has CAS, since that is the only way to shoot it down.
2) If you are playing with a mod that nerfs CAS (or with 1.4 when it comes out), then it might make sense to actually build some real tank divisions. In this case, the best is to use 40 or 45 width (44 if you are playing with a mod that fixes the offensive doctrine combat width bug). The advantage of higher width is you take lower casualties. Another recently discovered hidden advantage is that if you get over supply, you are likely to take little or no attrition with high width tank divisions because of the supply bug. When you are over supply, divisions that need a lot of supply take very little attrition, while divisions that take only a small amount of supply (e.g. 2 width infantry) take extremely high attrition.
The question is, how much motorized and/or mechanized to use in your high width tank divisions? Generally somewhere between 5 and 10 MOT/MECH, but the answer depends on 2 things:
a) how nerfed is CAS? - If CAS is not nerfed much, then you want a high ratio of MOT/MECH to your tanks, or else all your tanks will just get killed by CAS, since your divisions will have low hit points (HP). If CAS is nerfed by more, then you can more afford to have less MOT/MECH.
b) armor/piercing - Having more MOT/MECH helps you take less casualties (and increases ORG), but it also lowers your armor/piercing and also lowers your firepower somewhat. If your piercing is not high enough to pierce enemy tanks, then you may need to use less MOT/MECH. And if possible, you would like to not be pierced by enemy tanks or at least enemy infantry, so you can adjust based on what the enemy is using. You also generally want less MOT/MECH the more you are attacking, and want more MOT/MECH the more you are defending. But even if you are on the offensive, you should expect to get counter-attacked sometimes, and your tanks will sometimes be defending.
I
I have read that reddit post, and it's probably a good strat for Germany, but for others why not just training 1 div for a year and a half to get like 60 exp or so?. Also you can't max gun and engine on 1941 meds in 39 as Germany and even if you could that would be just a waste of time since you get Panthers in winter 40.
But overall your post is great!
@vector1 direct links to Reddit are not allowed. Please remove it from your post asap or I'll have to remove it all.
Maxing it on 1941 tanks is trivial because you can easily gain the experience necessary to max the panthers once the war starts.
You can easily get your gain up to 0.15~0.2 experience a day with a minister if you're training all your divisions properly (which you need for unit experience anyway). This gives at least 100-150 experience before the war starts, not counting any extra gains from lend leasing equipment or farming the Spanish civil war. All you need, is to max out armor for tanks as a priority, next guns for SPART ( and modify your divisions to your final template. This should be doable ignoring reliability (if you lack sufficient xp) in my experience. Reliability is overrated when you're going on the offense. If you win fast and easily, you save far more equipment than if you get stuck in a grind especially against Allies. You can then bring reliability up later for fighting in the East.
Incidentally for the min-maxers with us. It's interesting to calculate the ROI on investing experience in a template to farm experience. You gain roughly 0.0092 xp per day per battalion added. So if you invest 5 xp in a battalion, you get the xp back in 543 days, which means it's always worth it to build up and train your divisions earlier for experience gain purposes.
The problem is that once scw starts exercising would make almost no sense and if scw is long than you would have much less exp than needed. Not to mention that the whole strategy is very complicated and the only real advantage is enough exp for all the templates (I still don't see many benefits from spending exp to upgrade tank which will be produced less than 1 year)
Also I heard that Smth was done to basic equipment, so it's now better to produce INF eq1 in all the cases, is it true?
They may have made the cost-effectiveness of basic equipment worse, but it's still very effective for 1) training and 2) for troops that never fight (garrisons and port guards) since it's still cheaper, just not cheap to the point where it makes equipment 1 onwards useless. Exercising during SCW gives your units experience towards regular status and generates some constant army experience. Where is the lack of sense?
You may find the whole strategy very complicated, but this is pretty much the state of MP, where the smallest advantage will give you a decisive win later on. This is a strategy that provides that small measure of extra efficiency in your early game build-up, and it's a strategy with mostly up-side (army experience and trained units) and a small downside (losing basic equipment during training). You can certainly win without it, but the little things matter if you play to win
.Generally, the 1941 tank will be your workhorse throughout the entire campaign if you decide to rush it. You can get 1939 mediums by mid 1936, 1941 tanks by end 1937 and 1943 tanks in early 1939. You can decide if having an early advantage with upgraded 1941 tanks in 1939 is worth investing the experience since that will be your workhorse till early 1940 at least. Furthermore, in 1939 you should have all the experience to upgrade variants as much as you like once the war starts so you should feel free to dump excess experience into tank upgrades.
There is another trick in MP that I use to prepare my divisions. Consider this quote from Sqwerlpunk cited earlier.
Generally, your divisions don't need to have their final composition before the war starts. You just need them to have 1) sufficient manpower in division and 2) sufficient equipment to reinforce them instantly. When the war starts, they can go from a blob of INF with only basic equipment to a balanced INF/ART division, or more importantly, armor divisions with only a few battalions of light armor and a massive spam of MOT into a fully equipped 6 ARM/4 SPART / 8 MOT division.
In this sense, you can afford to prepare divisions by ensuring manpower is > manpower of the final division form (generally ~16k for a 40 width armor division), dump all your experience into variants, then within the first week of war, get enough experience to completely convert your armies into the right divisional composition. Knowing how many divisions you can equip comes with experience and practice. This saves your valuable army experience early game for variants and prevents you from burning tanks/spart pre-war during training.
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You don't, and few would in a division with only a few elements of expensive heavy equipment unless it is a striking force that needs to keep in top shape.
Even for a division that would clearly benefit from Maintenance, it might be bumped off the support company list by other priorities or made less useful by engineering for reliability or relying on an ample flow of replacement equipment through the supply chain.
The US Army learned the value of including an armored element in infantry divisions, and if you are playing Americans with Superior Firepower (integrated) doctrine those support companies actually boost ORG so are effectively more valuable. As Americans, you can expect to have a lot of equipment to service as well.
They may have made the cost-effectiveness of basic equipment worse, but it's still very effective for 1) training and 2) for troops that never fight (garrisons and port guards) since it's still cheaper, just not cheap to the point where it makes equipment 1 onwards useless. Exercising during SCW gives your units experience towards regular status and generates some constant army experience. Where is the lack of sense?
You may find the whole strategy very complicated, but this is pretty much the state of MP, where the smallest advantage will give you a decisive win later on. This is a strategy that provides that small measure of extra efficiency in your early game build-up, and it's a strategy with mostly up-side (army experience and trained units) and a small downside (losing basic equipment during training). You can certainly win without it, but the little things matter if you play to win
Generally, the 1941 tank will be your workhorse throughout the entire campaign if you decide to rush it. You can get 1939 mediums by mid 1936, 1941 tanks by end 1937 and 1943 tanks in early 1939. You can decide if having an early advantage with upgraded 1941 tanks in 1939 is worth investing the experience since that will be your workhorse till early 1940 at least. Furthermore, in 1939 you should have all the experience to upgrade variants as much as you like once the war starts so you should feel free to dump excess experience into tank upgrades.
There is another trick in MP that I use to prepare my divisions. Consider this quote from Sqwerlpunk cited earlier.
[quote Finally, there is the interaction between experience and changing templates. Editing an existing template to change a brigade type carries no experience penalty if the total manpower after changes is equal to or lower than the prior to editing, regardless of changes made. Theoretically, it is possible to change a blob of just infantry into Regular armor/motorized/support this way, but the Army XP cost of this is too large to really be viable.
Generally, your divisions don't need to have their final composition before the war starts. You just need them to have 1) sufficient manpower in division and 2) sufficient equipment to reinforce them instantly. When the war starts, they can go from a blob of INF with only basic equipment to a balanced INF/ART division, or more importantly, armor divisions with only a few battalions of light armor and a massive spam of MOT into a fully equipped 6 ARM/4 SPART / 8 MOT division.
In this sense, you can afford to prepare divisions by ensuring manpower is > manpower of the final division form (generally ~16k for a 40 width armor division), dump all your experience into variants, then within the first week of war, get enough experience to completely convert your armies into the right divisional composition. Knowing how many divisions you can equip comes with experience and practice. This saves your valuable army experience early game for variants and prevents you from burning tanks/spart pre-war during training.[/QUOTE]
Yea I used the wrong words, it's not that I'd doesn't make sense it's just that it becomes 3-4 times less cost-efficient and generally I would like to try this strat, but it's a lot of calculations to be done since I don't want to end up with huge stockpile of basic inf and after war begins I would want to use it for mps only. Considering the time spent to cooperate with my allies (sometimes actually telling everyone what to do) it's really hard to do for the first 10 times or so.
I also prefer to have Panthers as my working horses (not very historical though) because France can be taken even with panzer 3's but invasion of ussr requires Panthers.
