Supply costs daily?

[Rich Oliver]

Just to check, I presume the army supply costs or rather their resource needs are given as daily figures.

I was doing some (literally) back of envelope calculations and I reckon it only takes Infantry about 80 days at at 100% slider to equal their build cost, so 160 days at 50%. And that's in 1936. Build costs remain the same, while supply costs only go up.

Units have a deterrence effect on the AI I believe, but if you don't need deterrence and you're not using them it seems best to get rid of units and rebuild for war.

 

[luitzen]

Usually such situations happen late in the game and then you don't really need the money anyway. Late game I usually keep my army maintenance slider at 100%, so if I wanted to save money I would start there.

Another issue is that rebuilding your forces can take quite some time, especially when you have large forcelimits and is a hell of micromanagement. When I have large forcelimits I usually stay far below them because I don't need the troops and I don't want to deal with the micromanagement.

 

[Rich Oliver]

I guess its the early game that I'm concerned about when money is extremely tight. I agree after a few years army maintenance is not a problem.

 

[Kovax]

The other factor is that your military spending feeds your military factories, and employs your pops. If/when you get into a war, your military supply needs are fully covered by the well-manned factories. If you've got the positive income balance to afford it, keeping your military maintenance budget high can be a good thing.

 

[Woifee]

What about the military score? Having an army might make the difference of beeing a secondary power ir a great power.

 

[luitzen]

I guess its the early game that I'm concerned about when money is extremely tight. I agree after a few years army maintenance is not a problem.

The problem with early game is that there are a lot of under strength soldier pop and disbanding your forces would mean you'd lose them forever. My army/force limits in early game often look something like 15/4 (soldiers/force limits). And as you said, the effect is the least important in early game. And having somebody attack you because you appear to be weak and then spending several months to rebuild your armies and have the provinces they're coming from sieged while you could put military maintenance down is not a good thing.

 

[grimkm]

Not withstanding that the supplies may not be available if some of the larger armies and countries are at war.