Is division spam still a thing?

[pdstanbridge]

Trying a run with Australia and I'm the master of British Malaya. It's late 1942 and I've noticed amongst other things that they keep throwing out 3 brigade divisions. Lots of them. In fact, I requested to use their divisions, and they said I could have 80... As Australia I've got pretty stingey manpower issues, so have only been able to field 10 full strength 20 width divisions, with a surplus of manpower for reinforcement. But with the seemingly endless manpower of British Malaya I now have over 200k men in British Malaya and have pushed the Japanese back right through Siam. What's going on here?

 

[pdstanbridge]

I actually checked the wiki out of curiosity and I was surprised to see that British Malaya managed to field 138,000 men, inc belligerents of course. So maybe this is not too unrealistic. But that said, they don't appear to have issue providing a well stocked army either, with surplus infantry weapons.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Yeah. I think Malaya gets a bit too much from trade of all those resources. Check the resource mapmode and you'll see why they can become powerful
It's ofcourse also pretty silly for them to have 3 times as small divisions, I hope that gets fixed.

But you should be able to have much more manpower & divisions then that though if you want as Australia, by increasing your conscription law and picking one of the land doctrines that boost manpower.

Over 50-100 divisions is totally possible, and if you just make sure to run a negative on equipment ( lots in the training queue ) while at war then your many AI allies ( and some not even in the allies! ) will help you out with Lend Lease.

 

[Ironside121]

Build troops from their population directly- as their overlord you can copy their templates, edit them, then use them using most of their manpower. This is one way to ensure all their manpower isn't wasted on garbage units.

 

[ThuderLizard2]

In my last Germany game I was facing off against tons of divisions from South Africa, Dutch East Indies and British Malaya on the western European front. Something seems wrong about this. In actual fact South Africa only fielded 4 divisions in WW2 and the DEI a handful of regiments and battalions. Somethings not quite right with this mechanic.

 

[Ironside121]

In my last Germany game I was facing off against tons of divisions from South Africa, Dutch East Indies and British Malaya on the western European front. Something seems wrong about this. In actual fact South Africa only fielded 4 divisions in WW2 and the DEI a handful of regiments and battalions. Somethings not quite right with this mechanic.

Well if you want every nation to stick to historical division numbers then you expect the US to not build over 130 divisions? If the nation has the manpower and equipment then they should build more men.. especially if at war.

I think the issue is that many colonial nations divisions are more concerned with fighting in Europe than defending their own territories. As much as I think they should help fight Germany- defending their homeland should be equally- if not more- important.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

In my last Germany game I was facing off against tons of divisions from South Africa, Dutch East Indies and British Malaya on the western European front. Something seems wrong about this. In actual fact South Africa only fielded 4 divisions in WW2 and the DEI a handful of regiments and battalions. Somethings not quite right with this mechanic.

There are multiple issues with why the above occurs. One of the majors is the base game unit sizes do not correspond to their historical counterparts. So the divisions you build, even if they have the correct battalions, don't add up in terms of manpower usage. Hence for the available manpower and using the historical division layout, you can build more divisions than what was actually built. It becomes very obvious when you compare the nations that had smaller division counts, like South Africa or DEI.

But bear in mind this works both ways. Your opponents have more divisions than you think they should, but you are also capable of building more divisions than your nation had.

 

[ThuderLizard2]

I think the issue is that many colonial nations divisions are more concerned with fighting in Europe than defending their own territories. As much as I think they should help fight Germany- defending their homeland should be equally- if not more- important.

ITA. In last Japan game capturing the DEI was way too simple. Nothing was defended and same with British Malaya. DEI situation is somewhat historic but the British had more troops in Malaya/Singapore than Japanese attackers - although it was the most ignominious defeat in British military history.