My divisions, an I doing it right?

[DeclaredYuppie]

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.

Well that changes a lot of my early game plans

So a good '39-'40 breakthrough division would be something like Arm/AC/Eng?

 

[SirArthur]

You should consider your combat width. In my opinion 3xarm, 1xinf is just too much.

 

[Cavalry]

Well that changes a lot of my early game plans

So a good '39-'40 breakthrough division would be something like Arm/AC/Eng?

AC & Eng is both support type for combine arm, so they should never go together.

A 1939 breakthrough division: Arm-Mot-SpArt-any (prefer AC for low cost and more soft attack, and low softness)
SpArt and TD is quite expensive compare to the slow version Art and AT, and Mot is the most bargain so you can use more Mot instead of SpArt or TD at early time, and build more medium armor.
Note that cost of every kind of armor is increase much in The Finest Hours, so think twice before put 2 armors in a division.

After the breakthrough, you will pour in mobile infantry to hold the land and relieve the expensive breakthrough divisions. that is Mot with AC/EnG/ or sometime TD.

Mot is the key to save manpower later with its low softness. I end up upgrade infantry to Mot everywhere even for guarding town.

 

[Kovax]

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

Not "useless", but too expensive for the little bit of benefit it provides. MOT is substantially cheaper both to build and to supply, yet has similar SA and only a little less HA than Armor. As long as you have one Armor brigade to provide its Piercing and Armor values to the entire division (only the highest brigade counts), the only benefit to a second armor brigade (aside from lower Manpower cost) is slightly reduced Softness and some extra HA. Combining ARM, MOT, and AC or ENG provides 3 different types of units for a better Combined Arms bonus. Early on, I'll use ARM+2xMOT+AC, but later I can build ARM+MOT+SPART+AC, which provides even higher SA, lower frontage, and a better CA bonus, but is a bit less resilient.

Late in the war, Manpower may become an issue, so using more than one MOT or MEC per division may not be ideal. At that point, HARM+ARM+MOT+AC or SPART may be a viable approach, where the HARM is providing the Piercing and Armor, and the second armor brigade is being used only as a lower-manpower source of HA and SA. In such cases, I'll spin off one MOT from each existing division and replace it with SPART or ARM to conserve manpower, then add those previously built MOT brigades to newly created armor divisions built without their usual MOT.

 

[HerrBaer]

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.

It is not useless to have more than 1 brigade type in a division, it may though be inefficient.
Consider the alternatives of having 2 Arm brigades in a division:

Pros:

• Division will have a low softness value, since such is an average of all the brigades in the division
• Division will have larger toughness and overall stats since it has an extra "main" brigade

Cons:

• Division will cost more than having 1 Arm brigade and another non-Arm brigade (such as ENG, SPART, TD)
• Division will have a lower Combined Arms bonus by having two brigades of the same type, instead of one of each (Arm, Mot Inf, TD, SPART, ENG - for full 20% bonus)
• Division will most likely cost more to make in IC/MP due to having a second main brigade (Do some calculations, would you prefer 10 2-Arm divisions, or 13-15 1-Arm divisions?) It depends on your playing style and whom you're playing in the game.

I tend to prefer more divisions with each having a higher combined arms bonus. To me, having two Arm brigades in a single division is inefficient.

 

[Mjrearden]

Thanks for all the help, I hope my next game goes better

 

[pins0099]

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.

Yes it is true.
The 2nd Armor brig does nothing except to improve HA and Softness% of the division. The Armor and Piercing stat only needs the 1 brigade.
The wiki is old information based on pre-TFH, i.e. before the Piercing mechanic and Armor mechanic were introduced.

Also, no CA bonus without some form of INF in the division, which is also a TFH mechanic, where prior it was merely the 'softness' of a division that determined CA potential. That's why in TFH all combat Armor divs should include ARM and INF of some description.

 

[Sir Garnet]

That's why in TFH all combat Armor divs should include ARM and INF of some description.

Meaning Motorized or Mechanized Infantry if technically and economically practicable, or the much cheaper Cavalry since it also counts as infantry but does not slow the division down so much.