My divisions, an I doing it right?

[Mjrearden]

So I started to experiment with making my own divisions, and I wanted to know what you though of what I had.
So, it is November 1939, I am invading France, I have Denmark, Poland, Norway, Netherlands, and the Dutch.
These are the divisions I was using:
My basic tank division: 3X tanksd, 1X engineer.
My basic normal infantry division: 3X infantry, 1X artillery
Anti-tank infantry division: 2x infantry, 1x artillery, 1x anti-tank
Fort buster infantry division: 2x infantry, 1x artillery, 1x engineer
'mixed bag' division: 1x tank, 2x infantry, 1x engineer
So thats my 'custom' divisions.
Fort buster divisions actually do great against the Maginot line. (only did a short 'test' battle.)
the 'mixed bag' division do great, never lost a battle with them
Havnt had the chance to really test the anti-tank infantry
basic infantry divisions do quite well
Basic tank, well, its standard.
What is your opinion on my divisions?
Are there changes I should make?

 

[Kovax]

All of it looks fine, with two notable exceptions:

(1) Your "tank" divisions. You only need ONE armor brigade to provide the armor and piercing stats for the whole division, since the game only uses the highest value. MOT is a lot cheaper than Armor as a source of Soft Attack (which is what you'll need against 95% of your targets) and defensiveness, while AC is a decent budget alternative to a second ARM brigade. I'd split those Armored brigades up into individual Divisions by adding a lot more MOT, and possibly some AC. I prefer ARM+2xMOT+AC, but ARM+2xMOT+ENG or ARM+MOT+AC+ENG would work.

Note that ENG has almost no firepower of its own, but significantly reduces terrain penalties for the division, and are useful in an ARM division mainly for faster movement in river crossings. If you're attacking in the open, almost ANY other brigade would be more effective, and if you're using them with armor in restrictive terrain, you're using your armor in far less than optimal ways anyway. AC provides the same Combined Arms bonus as ENG for roughly similar cost, lowers the "Softness" of the division, has much better firepower for a "support" unit, and gives the whole division a speed bonus in certain terrain types. My small numbers of Infantry divisions with ENG are worth their weight in gold when I need them to clear out forts, cities, and heavy woods, or for crossing rivers, but they're clearly less effective than my standard divisions in the open.

(2) Your "mixed bag" divisions sacrifice the speed advantage of the armor because of the slow INF. They're not "terrible" as is, but very expensive for what they do. Using slightly slower and cheaper TD instead of ARM would make them more cost-effective against armor, or adding MOT in place of the INF would bring the speed of the whole division up, essentially turning them into another standard Armor division. If you're using them purely for the armor protection, then that's a valid approach as a "specialist" division when you need it, but too expensive for what it does to build in any quantity.

 

[Mjrearden]

OK.
one question, what does AC stand for?

 

[Kovax]

Armored Car

 

[marxianTJ]

Armored Car Edit* Korvax with that hook up

 

[Mjrearden]

lol, thanks

 

[Cavalry]

Anti-tank infantry division: 2x infantry, 1x artillery, 1x anti-tank

I think specialized anti tank division will be best against Germany or USSR only. It should be 1x infantry, 1x artillery, 3x AT and use them to reinforce defense in the crucial points (plain terrain) with other divisions to block enemy tanks attack. Then they will help player to concentrate his tanks for attack elsewhere. The standard division will be 3xInf-Art-AT .By the way Super Firepower doctrine should be rushed, it is very powerful.

In The Finest Hour, Heavy Armor is very important because they cannot be pierced by AT, Armor, TD.. and can kill org very fast. AI will build AT and TD everywhere. Because of the high cost of H-Arm, we should put in the best brigade to maximize the effect. I found Armor is very competitive to Mec to put into the H-Arm division, for example in 1944 my heavy armor div will be:

HArm-Arm-Mec-SP Art or Art-TD

Cost of them in 1944 from the wiki: HArm: 7000 k.ICdays; Arm: 4000; Mec: 3000; TD: 2600, SPArt: 2500, Mot Inf: 1200, AT: 460, Art: 800

 

[Kovax]

If you're making a specialized anti-tank division, then I'd leave the AT guns out of most of the other units. The AT brigade in a standard INF division offers very little in the way of Soft Attack and is mediocre at almost everything else EXCEPT against armor. If you're not using it to fight armor, then there are several better things to put in its place, like more INF or ART. I lean toward one ENG division and one AT division (2xINF+ART+AT) per Corps, and the rest as combinations of INF and ART. Remember that MOST units are "soft", even most of the brigades in an armored division, so SA is a lot more critical than HA in all but the most extreme cases (as in Multi-player, where "extreme" is merely a starting point for even more serious abuse of the game mechanics). One AT brigade provides the piercing stat for the entire division, so the rest is simply a matter of pure firepower, and decent SA can still kill a "typical" armored division as quickly as HA, or faster. I'd NEVER build a division with more than one AT in a single-player campaign.

 

[Mjrearden]

Ok, thanks all.
One more question:
While playing, I seemed to not be able to gain any units. I would gain some, but I am being heavily outproduced by the SU, I mean heavily.
I heard that it is cheaper (in ICs and time) to make 4 brigades and morph them on the ground instead of making a 4 brigade division at once.
Is this true? Because I cant seem to gain any amount of troops.

 

[Kovax]

Training laws and civilian versus military economy laws have a lot to do with it. At minimal training and reserve status, you can crank out units at a furious pace, but they'll have low starting experience.

One "trick" (I avoid it) is to build your army at Minimal Training and low Reserve laws, then boost those laws to the maximums once you decide to mobilize. There's a one-month bonus for your initial mobilization, so it only costs HALF the normal amount to bring that army up from Reserve to fully manned status, which will also provide a large influx of personnel at the higher training laws to boost the overall experience level. You probably need to put ALL available IC (other than the minimum needed to meet consumer goods demand) into Reinforcement at that point, until they're up to strength.

 

[Mjrearden]

Ok, thanks will test this

 

[HerrBaer]

I would try something very different than you are in forming divisions. Consider this. With each division, you want to maximize its possible Combined Arms bonus and create something as powerful, yet small as possible in IC/MP (so you can build more of them).

Let's compare what you're doing with what you could do:
My basic tank division: 3X tanksd, 1X engineer. (5% Combined Arms)
My basic normal infantry division: 3X infantry, 1X artillery (5% Combined Arms)
Anti-tank infantry division: 2x infantry, 1x artillery, 1x anti-tank (10% Combined Arms)
Fort buster infantry division: 2x infantry, 1x artillery, 1x engineer (10% Combined Arms)
'mixed bag' division: 1x tank, 2x infantry, 1x engineer (10% Combined Arms)

Here's what I would do:
Tank division: Armor (Light or Med)/Motorized INF/TD/SPART/ENG - Combined Arms 20% - Build SPART for the fifth brigade after tech researched
Motorized division: Motorized INF x2 /TD/SPART/ENG - Combined Arms 20% - Build SPART for the fifth brigade after tech researched
Inf division: Inf x2 / Art / AT / ENG - Combined Arms 15% - Build AT for the fifth brigade after tech researched

These will be cheaper than what you're building, allowing you to build more and also maximize their combined arms bonuses. Yes, they will be a little weaker than your basic divisions, but they will be more flexible and the CA bonuses will help cancel out their lack of a third primary brigade. Also, with each of them having ART, AT and ENG brigades, they will be good against everything as well as decent at river crossing attacks.

Give that a try.

 

[Cavalry]

While playing, I seemed to not be able to gain any units. I would gain some, but I am being heavily outproduced by the SU, I mean heavily.
I heard that it is cheaper (in ICs and time) to make 4 brigades and morph them on the ground instead of making a 4 brigade division at once.
Is this true? Because I cant seem to gain any amount of troops.

It is not cheaper. But you get more "practical knowledge" when you produce one kind of brigade, and that help future production and research cheaper. For Germany and SU just don't bother with details like that and build the whole division.

 

[Cavalry]

If you're making a specialized anti-tank division, then I'd leave the AT guns out of most of the other units. The AT brigade in a standard INF division offers very little in the way of Soft Attack and is mediocre at almost everything else EXCEPT against armor. . One AT brigade provides the piercing stat for the entire division, so the rest is simply a matter of pure firepower, and decent SA can still kill a "typical" armored division as quickly as HA, or faster. I'd NEVER build a division with more than one AT in a single-player campaign.

The specialized anti-tank division would only work with other divisions that has an AT as well because it is quite vulnerable against other division. For example, when 5 division, one of them is armor, 4 other infantry attacked a province with 1 anti-tank division and other division. The anti tank division have only 1/5 chance to meet the enemy armor each hours, and other divisions without AT will suffer. The anti tank divisions role is to enhance hard attack equivalent to 2 other division that also has an AT, or 4 other division that don't have AT, at a cost less than an regular division . In real life the Soviet High Command has AT regiments as strategic reserve to block armor attack or counter attack.

AT brigade is the cheapest combat brigade, cheaper than INF and ENG, and they will give 5% combine arm for the whole division. One game I played as Italy and switch to Germany in 1944 to rescue them, the Soviet has a lot of armors of light, medium, and heavy and a lot of TD, Mec, Motorized... So it is worth to build them all for late game.

Another specialized division to consider is Anti Air. The anti air is cheap, but with low land combat stats so one may prefer other more powerful support brigades. To protect the precious Heavy armor division, one can use Mot-Mot.AA x 4 to go with them. One AA will have air attack equivalent to 20 other brigades!

 

[SirArthur]

you mean tactical reserve ?

 

[HerrBaer]

There is some merit to building each brigade of a division separately and then forming them on the map manually. The biggest thing is that you'll get practicals faster for brigades that build quickly. That will then help other brigades of the same type you're building as well as research that depends on said practicals. It just takes a lot more effort when you're a major country and building tons and tons of divisions.

 

[Secret Master]

Division building is such a complicated topic that I devote a significant portion of the strategy guide to discussing it: https://www.paradoxplaza.com/hearts-of-iron-communist-campaign-in-karelia

I will say this: Always consider the mission a division is expected to perform when deciding what brigades it needs. It appears you are already doing that, so you are on the right track conceptually. But also be aware that hyper-specialized divisions maybe difficult to utilize on a huge front (like Barbarossa), so when it comes to infantry formations, a distinction between anti-tank infantry and regular may not be that useful. It might be easier to just immunize the entire army from armor by giving all infantry divisions AT guns.

 

[Sir Garnet]

Inf division: Inf x2 / Art / AT / ENG - Combined Arms 15% - Build AT for the fifth brigade after tech researched

These will be cheaper than what you're building, allowing you to build more and also maximize their combined arms bonuses. Yes, they will be a little weaker than your basic divisions, but they will be more flexible and the CA bonuses will help cancel out their lack of a third primary brigade. Also, with each of them having ART, AT and ENG brigades, they will be good against everything as well as decent at river crossing attacks.

Having flexibility against various threats within a division is one reason I like the HPP mod approach of enabling the player to build Arty, AT, AA, Armored Cars into multipurpose support brigades So one support brigade meets those critical needs, and it doesn't take 5 brigade slots. Engineers are separate brigades. A brigade of foot soldiers and a good support brigade can make a small core division that nonetheless has artillery plus defense against armor and and planes and can be built up with additional brigades.

Gamewise, this takes away the possibility for players min-maxing strange force compositions and match-ups, which is fun at times but an area of play that takes advantage of the AI's limitations. With correspondingly rationalized tech paths, similar fun comes in planning support brigade tech development (and chagrin as well, when troops intended to use soft attack against Japanese with little armor end up facing German armor and piercing potential). With a multitude of divisions, it also saves time and fiddling around and reassembling a lot of situationally-tailored divisions.

 

[DeclaredYuppie]

All of it looks fine, with two notable exceptions:

(1) Your "tank" divisions. You only need ONE armor brigade to provide the armor and piercing stats for the whole division, since the game only uses the highest value. MOT is a lot cheaper than Armor as a source of Soft Attack (which is what you'll need against 95% of your targets) and defensiveness, while AC is a decent budget alternative to a second ARM brigade. I'd split those Armored brigades up into individual Divisions by adding a lot more MOT, and possibly some AC. I prefer ARM+2xMOT+AC, but ARM+2xMOT+ENG or ARM+MOT+AC+ENG would work.

Wait is this true? it's useless to have more than 1 brigade of armor in any division?


edit- I ask in part because the wiki seems to suggest generally building your armor divisions with 2-3 armor brigades.

 

[Cavalry]

In The Finest Hours, One armor is enough to provide both piercing and armor to the whole division. But with Heavy Armor division where you will want maximum power, Medium Arm is very competitive against Mec. So you may want a division with H-Arm, Arm, Mec, SpArt, TD. See my post #7 above.

That is for battle in the open, if you put more infantry in a tank division, it will be better at battle in the city or forest.