Reorganize existing divisions

[hunter02]

I was curious, when people need divisions with a different brigade composition, do people tend to build extra brigades and merge / reorganize them in or build new divisions whole?

I do the former, Trying to get a sense of whether it's worth it or if there's an easier way (lot of clicking).

 

[Palmerdale]

I do both.

I like to build 'capper units' a 1xINF and 1xART to merge with existing 2xINF units to bulk up the initial forces. I tend to go a bit mad as Italy, merging and updating MIL units and capping them with something else. But, in multi-session games, it exposes me to the whims of my faulty memory (do I need 12 or 13 more of the 1xTD + 1xART caps, and where are these supposed to go)? At that point, I'll just start building the complete 3xINF, 1xTD, 1xART intact. After all, what commander asks for fewer units? Overwhelming force is good, but overwhelming force + 1 is better.

 

[Pugmak]

If it's a new game starting, and there's a crap ton of divs I'm gonna want redone, I just start the game in Custom mode and delete all the divisions and rebuild from scratch.

If it's some divisions that need a brig added, such as arty for inf divs, and there's not a crap ton of them, I'll build the brigs and drop them in to finish up those divs already on the board.

 

[Forster]

You can lose a whole lot of experience mass deleting your original force.

 

[marxianTJ]

It depends, I have this handy notepad beside me when I play and write down my crappy plans and try to figure out how best to manipulate practicals to make it all cheapest so sometimes that means building singular brigades and sometimes that means building quasi-divisions to merge later, or just building new. New full divisions will be the most expensive and time consuming so I do those last lol. Cheapest to build that 1 arty brigade and get the practical from it for all future arty brigades

That's one of my big criticisms of the HPP mod is that so many of the starting divisions have a strange hodge-podge of compositions that make them basically impossible to sort out for the majors if a player prefers a particular division composition.

 

[Nick U]

I used to build full divisions but then noticed that this is a very expensive way of doing it if the individual build times of the brigades are different.

For example, a Motorised Division (3xMOT,1TD) will take something like 192 days to build. But the Motorised brigades on their own take around 130 days. Thus nowadays when I want such a division I build the Tank Destroyer separately and put them together later. Thus I can either delay starting the core brigades of 3xMOT by 60 days or get them on 60 days earlier, either way paying 60 less days in construction IC for them.

The downside is when trying to time them so they arrive at the same time it is easy to forget a component. My TD arrives and I remember I forgot to start the MOTs or my Panzers arrive and I haven't started the Engineer brigade etc.

 

[Pugmak]

You can lose a whole lot of experience mass deleting your original force.

All that extra exp might be needful against human opponents in multiplayer, but against the AI, loosing a bit of exp isn't going to loose you the war.

On the other-hand, having to micro mess with a crap ton of divisions could well keep me from deciding to even start a game.

 

[mattekillert]

I used to build full divisions but then noticed that this is a very expensive way of doing it if the individual build times of the brigades are different.

For example, a Motorised Division (3xMOT,1TD) will take something like 192 days to build. But the Motorised brigades on their own take around 130 days. Thus nowadays when I want such a division I build the Tank Destroyer separately and put them together later. Thus I can either delay starting the core brigades of 3xMOT by 60 days or get them on 60 days earlier, either way paying 60 less days in construction IC for them.

The downside is when trying to time them so they arrive at the same time it is easy to forget a component. My TD arrives and I remember I forgot to start the MOTs or my Panzers arrive and I haven't started the Engineer brigade etc.

It auto balances the IC cost to the construction time. You still pay the same amount of IC days for the brigades.

 

[browd]

But the overall production rate is slowed down to the rate for the longest-to-build brigade, which, as you say, results in a lower per-turn IC rate (for the same overall IC days for the division as a whole), but practical delay continues apace, and you don't get the practicals "re-boost" until the division is finished. Building division elements separately might allow you to optimize your practicals for those brigades (for the truly micro-management obsessed -- I haven't the patience, to be honest).

 

[Kovax]

I used to build full divisions but then noticed that this is a very expensive way of doing it if the individual build times of the brigades are different.

Note that the cost per-day is adjusted to reflect the longest build time. If you build INF and ART brigades together, the game will add up the total IC/day cost of each, then divide that by the build time of the longest in order to get the daily IC cost. Net result is that you pay the same IC/days whether you build them together or independently.

The real savings comes when you build BIG TICKET items, like factories, battleships, and aircraft. Rather than building several together, build one, then start the second one a few weeks or months later. When the first one finishes, the increased Practical bonus will move up the completion date of the second, saving a lot of IC/days, which you would have lost if they completed on the same day. I often start several units together, but rotate a few to the bottom of the production queue where they end up lagging behind due to insufficient IC to go around. On a huge investment like a battleship, I've seen the completion date of the second ship advance by as much as 3-4 months; with factories it's generally a week or two, with each additional factory producing a smaller shift in date.

I regularly drop additional brigades into existing units. In the mid-to-late stages of a couple of games, I made massive changes to the entire divisional structure to make more efficient use of manpower (I had WAY more IC than I needed, but not enough manpower to make optimal use of it), by switching from a 3xINF+ART to a 2xINF+2xART setup for 3 of the 5 divisions in each Corps. To implement this, I built "divisions" of 3xART, moved the entire Corps into the same province as the new brigade, and did a lot of Reorganizing. That left me with a modified Corps, plus 3 INF brigades toward creating fresh divisions (or attaching one or two of those to the HQ to form a 6th division). Multiply that by the number of Corps in the armed forces, and it's a hellish click-fest, but at least it can be implemented gradually. The end result is something like a 20% increase in the number of divisions on the map with only about a 5-10% increase in manpower.

 

[Nick U]

Note that the cost per-day is adjusted to reflect the longest build time. If you build INF and ART brigades together, the game will add up the total IC/day cost of each, then divide that by the build time of the longest in order to get the daily IC cost. Net result is that you pay the same IC/days whether you build them together or independently.

Good to know, thanks.