How To Use Human Waves/Masses of Infantry

[Twan]

Hey all

What are some strategies for using massive amounts of infantry units, or even militia? Usually when my perfectly organized command structure completely breaks down and gets separated days into a war

I usually play as Russia, and try to make a huge number of somewhat weak infantry divisions (two brigades of infantry per division) early to guard almost every single territory on my perimeter (quite a huge task). It seems this at least deters most of the AI so I don't have to worry about it.

Then I like to create massive amounts of standard infantry divisions (triangle, with three infantry brigades per division) to secure territory later on.

I also usually have plenty of medium and heavy armor divisions but for now let's focus on the infantry.

What about militia? They don't really seem worth it, even though they are cheaper than infantry, they are much less effective. Leadership might be an issue. Maybe I should use militia on the perimeter instead of infantry, is that scary enough to the AI?

Thanks

 

[jimbob100]

You really don't need to garrison every border province as Russia, just the front facing Europe and the front facing the Japanese, none of the tiny central Asian nations are going to attack you, and even if they did they are so incredibly weak it wouldn't even matter.

 

[Twan]

Oh, alright thanks

So since that frees up my production to produce an even more massive amount of troops for the front since I don't have to worry much about the rest of the country, how should I go about using these?

 

[Wraith11B]

Three words: Defense in Depth.

Stack the grunts along every river, in the mountains and in cities. Not so many that the Germans never launch against you, but also not so few that you're losing the war.

 

[Makje]

Actually, if you go crazy building infantry as the Soviets you can and will be out of manpower when you mobilize at the start of the war... Even if you get 3500 additional manpower when you lose 20% of your victory points, that only happens when you actually loose 20% of your victorypoints and that may not happen if your defense is (just) strong enough.

Besides that, if you build that many brigades you will need a lot of officers as well and leaderships is one of the scarcer commodities for the soviets, pre war at least.
Build more IC intensive artillery, that will make your infantry divisions much stronger. Besides building high IC tickets as armor and airplanes. If you want a go at the allies later on you need to get some practicals for ships too.

(actually a H-ARM + 2 INF + ART division still needs a lot of manpower to build, don't go crazy on them either)

 

[thexmassteam]

It's also a good idea to have some AT brigades in some of your div. You'll need piercing to fight against German armoured divisions. So having one 2xInf+Art+AT per Corps, or/and a corps div with Inf+Art+AT is useful

 

[Kovax]

MIL can work, but you need to mass assault from multiple directions in every attack, and maximize the available frontage without incurring stacking penalties. That may mean moving your army in complete Corps, rather than controlling individual divisions, but not attacking with every division in the Corps against the same target province.

There are many ways to arrange your forces, but the simplest is probably 3xINF+ART for most of the army, with 2xINF+ART+AT for at least one division per Corps to deal with opposing armor. I typically run about 10-15% Motorized and Armored units, and the rest Infantry. Note that you only need ONE Armor brigade to gain the Piercing and Armor stats for the entire division, so building 2xARM+other stuff is a waste of IC unless you're trying to create a couple of super-Hard divisions that are practically unaffected by Soft Attack. People have taken over the world using only MIL, or even CAV, but combined arms provides a few bonuses and makes things easier. Ultimately, all the percentage bonuses in the world don't help much if your base stats are abysmally low, though. 1000x nothing is still nothing.