After the thread about doctrine specific stacking penalties, I started investigating the Battle Winning Ability (BWA) of militia under the new mechanics.
I tried changing the equations used in this thread to reflect the new combat mechanics. (I multiplied the BWA from the original equation by the (√ (# of militia + infantry)/(# of militia + infantry))
The numbers weren't good. It seems like adding militia to combat with infantry actually reduce BWA. I play Nationalist China so I ran the numbers based on a fight with Japan and calculated the BWA of adding Militia to varying numbers of 1918 infantry.
This is the graph of the Firepower of the stack.
Essentially, adding any amount of militia to a stack of 1918 infantry is a drop in the pot. It won't help very much but it won't hurt and it might just soak up some damage.
That being said, only China starts with large amounts of 1918 infantry and they certainly aren't going to stay that way. So I ran the numbers again to see what happened when militia were added to stacks of 1936 infantry.
Wow... firepower takes a dive in every single case. If I add 24 militia to 24 1936 infantry that's 4800 IC days and 120 manpower that drops my firepower by 8.4.
That's firepower though. The drop in firepower should be made up by the increase in strength and organization.
Indeed when I calculated the actual BWA by multiplying by (total # of divisions) x (50 org) all the graphs went up. Militia will make the stack more effective.
Then I wondered how that compared to the BWA of a stacks consisting of only one type.
So I calculated the BWA of pure stacks for 1918 infantry, 1936 infantry and 1936 militia.
1918 infantry has about 3 times the BWA which is as it should be given militia's supply cost, IC day, and mp cost. But they seemed to be really outclassed by 1936 infantry.
So I made some graphs that showed the cost of each additional unit. (i.e. the 22nd infantry in a stack actually adds to BWA differently than the 2nd.)
Militia are marginally better than 1918 infantry in IC days and supply. Yay.... When compared to 1936 infantry, they are entirely worthless. There is no category in which they are more cost effective. None. Militia used to be the best bang for your buck MP wise but now they are the worst. In fact, it's cheaper in terms of manpower to disband all of your militia and rebuild them as 1936 infantry. They can certainly help but everything else you can build will help a lot more for the same price. Smoke em if you got em, but by no means should anyone ever build one. They are crap now.
Known problems with my methodology.
1) I assumed that the org of all units was 50. This is actually too high for China and correcting to the real value would make militia worse.
2) When calculating the over defensiveness penalty I used the unbrigaded soft attack of 1936 infantry (10). Japan is going to be using brigades, so my militia will be less effective. (when calculating the combined BWA, I used the soft attack of whatever the militia were with so 10 if they were stacked with 1936 infantry or 5 if it was 1918 infantry.
3) I haven't corrected for command limits. China starts the game without any HQ units nor the ability to build them. This makes militia even more worthless on the offense.
4) This is only comparing three models. However, if militia are this bad when compared to 1936 infantry the numbers are going to be astronomically worse if they have to fight 1939 or 1941 infantry (militia upgrades only once with the 1943 infantry tech.)
5) I thought there might be some sort of TC bonus for militia to represent that they are light infantry of a sort, but they require just as much as normal infantry do.
6) I didn't calculate the cost of retooling into the required IC days. If those numbers were added, militia cost effectiveness drops even further.
Also, if anyone wants to dispute the data, (please do) I attached the excel file.
This is my first time doing the massive BWA calculations so I probably made a mistake somewhere. I really hope that someone who knows what they're doing can go through and show me that I'm wrong.
I tried changing the equations used in this thread to reflect the new combat mechanics. (I multiplied the BWA from the original equation by the (√ (# of militia + infantry)/(# of militia + infantry))
The numbers weren't good. It seems like adding militia to combat with infantry actually reduce BWA. I play Nationalist China so I ran the numbers based on a fight with Japan and calculated the BWA of adding Militia to varying numbers of 1918 infantry.
This is the graph of the Firepower of the stack.
Essentially, adding any amount of militia to a stack of 1918 infantry is a drop in the pot. It won't help very much but it won't hurt and it might just soak up some damage.
That being said, only China starts with large amounts of 1918 infantry and they certainly aren't going to stay that way. So I ran the numbers again to see what happened when militia were added to stacks of 1936 infantry.
Wow... firepower takes a dive in every single case. If I add 24 militia to 24 1936 infantry that's 4800 IC days and 120 manpower that drops my firepower by 8.4.
That's firepower though. The drop in firepower should be made up by the increase in strength and organization.
Indeed when I calculated the actual BWA by multiplying by (total # of divisions) x (50 org) all the graphs went up. Militia will make the stack more effective.
Then I wondered how that compared to the BWA of a stacks consisting of only one type.
So I calculated the BWA of pure stacks for 1918 infantry, 1936 infantry and 1936 militia.
1918 infantry has about 3 times the BWA which is as it should be given militia's supply cost, IC day, and mp cost. But they seemed to be really outclassed by 1936 infantry.
So I made some graphs that showed the cost of each additional unit. (i.e. the 22nd infantry in a stack actually adds to BWA differently than the 2nd.)
Militia are marginally better than 1918 infantry in IC days and supply. Yay.... When compared to 1936 infantry, they are entirely worthless. There is no category in which they are more cost effective. None. Militia used to be the best bang for your buck MP wise but now they are the worst. In fact, it's cheaper in terms of manpower to disband all of your militia and rebuild them as 1936 infantry. They can certainly help but everything else you can build will help a lot more for the same price. Smoke em if you got em, but by no means should anyone ever build one. They are crap now.
Known problems with my methodology.
1) I assumed that the org of all units was 50. This is actually too high for China and correcting to the real value would make militia worse.
2) When calculating the over defensiveness penalty I used the unbrigaded soft attack of 1936 infantry (10). Japan is going to be using brigades, so my militia will be less effective. (when calculating the combined BWA, I used the soft attack of whatever the militia were with so 10 if they were stacked with 1936 infantry or 5 if it was 1918 infantry.
3) I haven't corrected for command limits. China starts the game without any HQ units nor the ability to build them. This makes militia even more worthless on the offense.
4) This is only comparing three models. However, if militia are this bad when compared to 1936 infantry the numbers are going to be astronomically worse if they have to fight 1939 or 1941 infantry (militia upgrades only once with the 1943 infantry tech.)
5) I thought there might be some sort of TC bonus for militia to represent that they are light infantry of a sort, but they require just as much as normal infantry do.
6) I didn't calculate the cost of retooling into the required IC days. If those numbers were added, militia cost effectiveness drops even further.
Also, if anyone wants to dispute the data, (please do) I attached the excel file.
This is my first time doing the massive BWA calculations so I probably made a mistake somewhere. I really hope that someone who knows what they're doing can go through and show me that I'm wrong.
Last edited:
