That makes it sound like it is balanced-ish. I am sure there are edge cases where org wall would be overboard, human waves and massed infantry tactics was not unheard of in context of WW2, wasn't it?
is 10 width inf divisions still viable?
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This tactic is the pinnacle of min-maxing, and it's the most cost efective way to fight because air is overpowered right now, so you get this hammer and anvil kind of army that will cause huge industrial loses to anyone facing it.
You can build SPAA, sure, but unless you mass produce them you are going to run out of them anyway.
You can build SPAA, sure, but unless you mass produce them you are going to run out of them anyway.
We are totally assuming here that the 10 width spammer can
a) Outproduce the attacker in both fighters and CAS
b) Avoid a strategic breakthrough that will destroy his army because he can't counterattack
If I were facing someone I knew would spam 10 width + CAS, I'd build very little CAS of my own, pump fighters, and add some AA. So I'm outproduced in total on planes but I have more fighters and I chew through his air force.
a) Outproduce the attacker in both fighters and CAS
b) Avoid a strategic breakthrough that will destroy his army because he can't counterattack
If I were facing someone I knew would spam 10 width + CAS, I'd build very little CAS of my own, pump fighters, and add some AA. So I'm outproduced in total on planes but I have more fighters and I chew through his air force.
To take a specific case, if you put all Soviet starting factories on guns from day 1 and delete/retrain the starting army you can easily have 1k 10 widths with tens if not hundreds of thousands of guns left over for lend lease and even more spam. Once you start building mils in '39/'40 you just put them all on fighter 2's and the only potential bottleneck is aluminum and then rubber if Japan does its job. Once you've got enough to become competitive in the air you can start on CAS if you want. Also a strategic breakthrough is difficult when you have units in every province across the front 3-4 rows deep.
Well if one wants to play like an AI they can lose like an AIYeah, but a strategic reserve 4 province deep is kind of a lot of micro...
Let's say Germany spams only fighters in the air. They have more breakthrough on typical units than USSR has on attack. Even if Germany only gets a marginal air superiority advantage, how many millions of casualties can USSR take before this approach fails? Won't be long before attacker gets increasingly larger advantages in experience too.
For clarity, are we talking about versus Vanilla AI, competent opposition, or both?
This just highlights the core issue of combat, that the air war determines everything. If you're going to stipulate that the Axis can remain competitive in the air for as long as it needs, what Soviet strategy would hold up long term? That being said, 150+ factories on fighter 2's with operational integrity from the Soviets along with whatever the UK builds means that the Axis are going to have a hard time unless you get an ideal division of labor and production efficiency (in the macro sense, not literally the game mechanic).
Since you can safely achieve 30:1 casualties or better vs vanilla AI using nothing but cavalry, support stuff, and planes, let's leave vanilla AI out of this
.Yes, air war is dominating. The real question is which ground army is better operating under the assumption that you have equal or superior air. Show me a decent comp that *doesn't* fail when you have so much air superiority that you can allow CAS to reliably attack stuff in battles.
Better is contextual. The Germans need an army that can capitulate countries quickly. The Soviets need to not die. I think the most cost efficient and reliable not dying build is inf spam. You don't get to choose where the enemy attacks so if you're going to specialize divisions you need hundreds of them or they risk being irrelevant. Then there's the opportunity cost of putting factories on various artillery and support equipment that could have been on guns or planes.
The ORG bug that makes 1 infantry battalion as good of a damage sponge as 20 battalions is absolutely ridiculous and needs to go. I get that Paradox probably balanced the whole combat system not realizing how messed up their base mechanics were, but it's just silly and will always lead to dumb stuff like minimal width spam if kept in.
In any case, surely the best strategy is to not attack at all (since CAS don't do anything unless a battle is on, and if the 10-width tries to attack it gets massacred) while the German player spams interceptors and strategic bombers?
In any case, surely the best strategy is to not attack at all (since CAS don't do anything unless a battle is on, and if the 10-width tries to attack it gets massacred) while the German player spams interceptors and strategic bombers?
Time isn't on Germany's side if they don't attack. Japan forcing reallocation of forces or naval invades are more promising. Paratroopers would have been great but even Germany can't really carpet drop them with enough division strength now, plus doing that implies the kind of air superiority that would let you easily win 20:1 trades anyway.