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Pandrea

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Jun 18, 2013
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  • Crusader Kings II
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Which are the recommended brigades for each unit?

In my quick and not-so-deep experience with DH I suppose:

Inf: ART! It's basically a marriage in heaven. Which could be a good second brigade? Heavy artillery/tanks if you have to smash fortifications?
Mon: art in defense and eng in attack/landing?
Mar: amp tanks if you afford them, otherwise eng
Cor: other tanks? mobile artillery?
Mot: their main skill is speed and brigades slow them... nothing?
Pre: if I want to defend islands art+aa, police if partisans
Mil: could armored car be good against partisans?

What about ships? AA + radar + floatplane are the best brigades?
 
Which are the recommended brigades for each unit?

Inf: ART! It's basically a marriage in heaven. Which could be a good second brigade? Heavy artillery/tanks if you have to smash fortifications?
Well, if you don't want to "blitz" but to crawl...

I'd say that the usual first question is wether a unit needs a brigade at all. It's a question between cost and man power and the situation.
I use them rather sparingly and for special circumstances or roles in which they can surely help.

Example:
An artillery brigade (ART) costs roughly a third of an infantry but less than a quarter in terms of man power (MP).
So is it better to have 3 INF/art or 4.2 INF?
Depends.
Cost is about equal, soft attack almost, too, inf/art needs around 14% less MP, but 4.2 inf have 40% more organisation than 3 inf/art... as a standard I'd rather go for 4.2 inf over inf/art and my inf would be also 20% faster and that's a lot (ART lowers unit speed at minimum by 1, in some terrains even more, or upto 3 for CAV because ART has only a max speed of 6).

For ART I find it good practice to use them only on units which I expect to be immobile or help to create a local Schwerpunkt which I don't expect to move but to be on a tactical spot vital for attack/defense on/from several regions. Best with one of the rare generals with off and def trait. But due to their speed malus they are bad on units used for mobility warfare. In a Blitzkrieg tactic that would translate into: definetly no ART on the fast moving flanking units but (perhaps) on some (definetly not all because at some time they need to move) of the initially not moving center units used for the blocking part. The "perhaps" is because it often enough creates the problem of good chunks of your infantry falling too far behind your fast flanking units in a longer campaign or already as soon as in the next encirclement.

ART is a powerful brigade but actually quite well balanced because it comes at a price: lowered speed. So think twice and make sure your unit isn't crippled by the lowered speed. The most powerful unit is worthless if it always trails behind.

Some rules of thumb:
  1. A brigade should enhance the units main advantage/role and never cripple it. (Much better than to try to fix the weak points. For example instead of putting anti-air on every land unit... improve your airforce instead... that's the secret why combined arms is so effective).
  2. The more expensive the base unit, the cheaper and more impact the brigade in relation (=Freely put brigades on expensive units but on cheap units only if necessary for a special purpose... otherwise building just another cheap unit is mostly better than brigading.)
  3. It is always a good idea to have at least some ENG and ART, so you can detach/attach them on the units in need of them.
Further reading: Brigade Strategy Guide (a bit outdated because it is for HoI2 and some brigade values changed but some of the general problems and recommendations remain true).

Mon: art in defense and eng in attack/landing?
Mon=Mountain unit? Usually refered to as MTN.
If your MTN is supposed to defend a local point and not to move, ART is surely good. If the role of the MTN is a mobile one, ART is rather counterproductive because you are wasting the speed bonus MTN has in many terrains (comparison Inf-Mtn-Cav).
MTN/eng is the next best thing for landings if you have no marines (best units and brigades for amphibious landings).
Remember that already the very earliest ENG-1 brigade (1911) provides all the boni to river crossings, landings, urban warfare etc. Only from on Eng-4 (1930) you get also a very modest additional morale bonus and with ENG-5 a +1 hard attack which comes at more than double the supply cost as for ENG-1 and quite some research time. See Unit and Brigade values for DH 1.05.

Mar: amp tanks if you afford them, otherwise eng
Yes.

Cor: other tanks? mobile artillery?
What's Cor standing for?

Mot: their main skill is speed and brigades slow them... nothing?
AC (armored cars) are cheap, no speed limit and work great with motorized infantry (MOT), I put an AC on each.
Cavalry (CAV), MOT, LARM, ARM all have the best def/off vulnerability values. Lowering a MOT's already great defensive vulnerability of 22 by 4 to 18 with a simple AC makes it 18% sturdier, that's a lot... and a lot more than putting an AC on an infantry (35-4=31 or 11%). As a forward unit MOT profits greatly from the additional sturdiness since it gets often enough attacked while on its own for a while.
And nowadays I prefer to give MOT a good general with logistics trait to make them even faster due to the given 10% ESE bonus (which also means better org regain and +5% battlebonus) and the usual 25% less needed supplies/fuel when stopped.

Pre: if I want to defend islands art+aa, police if partisans
Do you mean garrisons (GAR)?
Garrisons are by far the best, most efficient and cheapest way to lower partisan activity. Setting a unit to "Anti-Partisan duty doubles its impact, so a police brigade (POL) should be only added when needed, then great and cost effective.
Otherwise no brigade at all. A second GAR is almost always better and mostly even cheaper in supply usage than a brigade (which on an isle means less supplies need to be convoyed). And yes, garrisons are the most cost-effective way (in terms of production and supply needs) for guard duty of coastal regions/isles.

Mil: could armored car be good against partisans?
A police brigade (POL) would be much better, cheaper and at only 40% the supply/fuel cost as AC.
But I wouldn't use brigades on milita. Militia is too cheap and any brigade would be too expensive in relation. Either use a 2nd militia or, especially if it is vs partisans no militia at all but garrisons.

Militia is usually used for 2 reasons:
# a cheap way to accompy other units adding org and providing an additional target for the enemy (should be used this way only if you have plenty of man power, militia = cannon fodder), see also Militia Strategy Guide
# as a loophole to produce a very cheap unit (militia) to upgrade it to inf, cav, sometimes even garrisons (which altogether is cheaper, sometimes even faster, than producing those units from scratch).

HQs.
Very limited brigade choice for Headquarters (HQs) but anti-air (AA) is fine since they tend to be prime targets for enemy bombers.

(L)ARM (armor, tanks, panzer):
Main role: Fight support unit for MOT, thus it needs to be fast and with fighting power.
Brigade: AC for same reasons as for MOT. If it doesn't impact speed, possible alternative is a medium tank-brigade.

What about ships? AA + radar + floatplane are the best brigades?
If I say "use brigades sparingly and for a special role/mission/reason on land units", it is the other way around for brigades on ships: "use them as much as possible"

Floatplanes (FP) are best, next fire control (FC)... both are nearly mandatory. Enhanced max firing range, better sea attack and some other fine boni... obviously FP and FC are a must. This 2 brigades belong on every light cruiser and stronger ship types.

If you have space for a 3rd brigade... then it depends where and what you are fighting:
Anti-Air (AA) is really good if you expect to see NAV (naval bombers) but utterly worthless in the middle of the Atlantic hunting other fleets (radar would be better then).

Improved hulls (IH) are very expensive. Usually those resources are better spent producing just more ships. But they are probably ok to put on your most expensive and lengthy to produce ships: BBs and carriers.

Destroyers (DDs) are, depending on the situation, good with ASW or AA. On older DDs FC is also intersting to get them on par with the firing range of newer models. You can only choose one brigade for DDs, though. Usually I go with Anti-Sub-Warfare (ASW) for DDs because that's what they are for: defending and fighting subs.

Torps I wouldn't use at all, not even as a present. -5 on your max firing range is really bad.


Edit: Reworked some points and added some links... was a bit tired when initially writing the post.
 
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Reworked my above post a bit and added some links. the brigade question is, after all, as old as HoI. Probably there are a ton more links to good articles and posts I haven't handy right now.

Probably the main point I wanted to make:
First think about the role of a unit, then think about combined arms and wether another unit doesn't fit the role better. Then use brigades in a cost effective way to strengthen the unit in that role. Costeffective = may that be IC/resources, TC/supplies or man power according to whatever is your bottleneck or most precious.
 
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Nice overview!

How about self-propelled artillery on MOT/ARM divisions? Too expensive?

In my first games, I put engineers on MOT/ARM, as recommended in some Germany after action report, and I guess this helps a bit in some blitz cases, but most of the time no rivers are crossed, so don't know if it is worth it.
 
How about self-propelled artillery on MOT/ARM divisions? Too expensive?
Splendid brigade for ARM, kind of a cheaper medium armor brigade in production cost and supply needs but almost on par with its abilities. Only downside, it becomes available only in 1940. And one thing more to research.

For MOT, though, no good: max speed is 18. MOT's most important and unique feature is the speed of 26 (later 27). I wouldn't slow down my MOTs.

In my first games, I put engineers on MOT/ARM, as recommended in some Germany after action report, and I guess this helps a bit in some blitz cases, but most of the time no rivers are crossed, so don't know if it is worth it.
An engineer brigade for ARM is a decent choice. Apart from the river crossing bonus (and vs forts and urban), it also provides, depending on terrain, between 3-7% more speed. Doesn't sound much but AC/SPart/Marm all have a rather small malus on terrain movement. So in a best case scenario for eng, the difference in speed between ARM/eng and ARM/ac or Marm might be upto 12% or 2.1km/h for a neglectible price in production and supply need.

I'd prefer AC, SPart or Marm, though, mainly for their modifiers to defensiveness, toughness and combat and, in the case of Marm, also a noteworthy modifier to softness of -5. Since TC-load and IC never seems to be enough, nowadays I usually go for AC (dirtcheap, lowest supply need, but with the best toughness modifier) and in the beginning I used Marm (the lure to make the precious tanks the very best tanks). One of those ARM/Marm needed as much supplies and fuel as 13 infantry or 25 mountain units. By now I'd rather take the 25 mountain units, no ARM and improvise with MOT instead (at least as long as there is enough man power).
 
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Nice overview!

How about self-propelled artillery on MOT/ARM divisions? Too expensive?

In my first games, I put engineers on MOT/ARM, as recommended in some Germany after action report, and I guess this helps a bit in some blitz cases, but most of the time no rivers are crossed, so don't know if it is worth it.
Self-prop is great with Usa, because Firepower give a bonus to any artillery
 
Does anyone have any tips about the Special Forces brigade added in the NWO2 mod? Seems like a no-brainer for Marines and other special forces.

Also, what to attach to MEC? I usually go with SPART but I didn't actually know it had such a dramatic speed cap compared to MOT. Thought it was a no-brainer for any mobile army.
 
MEC are slower than MOT, I suppose that L-ARM could be a nice option without slowing them
MEC (1942) come with a speed of 22, raised with each further research upto 25.
L-ARM brigade has a speed cap of 19 (at its highest research 20, or as low as 7 in the very beginning). So L-ARM does slow down MEC. And I guess the main reason for producing expensive MEC is their speed. Seems counterproductive to reduce the speed then.

The exception: If you generally use your MOT or MEC not separately but only in combined ARM/MOT or ARM/MEC stacks, the speed is that of ARM anyway and already lowered.

Not that I would recommend it, though, because tactically you are wasting a third or quarter of the speed of MOT or MEC. Using MOT and MEC separately allows full usage of their speed for encirclements or overrun tactics, albeit at greater risk for MOT and MEC but that's the role of MOT and MEC: advance units which need to reach/occupy a spot asap and with the ability to hold out there until ARM comes to its support. Which means AC (armored cars) as brigades: no speed cap and while AC gives no fighting power bonus it gives MOT or MEC the hold out ability due to the defensiveness/toughness bonus. Perfect fit for the role... and cheap.
 
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Is the -1 to infantry speed really that bad? They're slow as molasses anyways and I use them as a largely static, creeping line that I move strategically if I need them to do anything but advance 1 tile over. If I need to do serious maneuvers I have MOT, MEC and ARM. Infantry just needs to hold while they do their thing and the massive soft attack bonus + much needed hard attack buff fit them perfectly.
 
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