Building. This is easily researched by checking the IC requirement to build X unit before a tech upgrade, and then making another one after the tech upgrade. It will increase.
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What is your Officer Ratio? That's the usual culprit if your units are running out of ORG too quickly. You want it to be a 100% at the minimum, and 140% ideally. Above that, it has no additional effect, but the extra officers will be tracked in case of losses or to provide officers for new units as they're deployed. The other thing that determines it would be Land doctrines, particularly "Infantry Warfare" for you basic infantry brigades. "Mass Assault" provides Morale, which affects the rate of ORG recovery while not in combat.
Once your token forces on the border are engaged by the enemy, you'll want to reinforce the combats. That requires either high officer skills at the Corps level, or else the "Grand Battleplan" doctrine, to increase the hourly chance of your reinforcements moving up to the front line, otherwise the whole stack of units in the province will retreat when the weakly manned front line breaks.
Also, the game is generally rather unfair towards the defender. Sure, you get the defence bonus from territory, rivers and such, but you are forced in a passive role, and what's worse: You can't do anything while you are being attacked. Often times, you will lose a defensive battle, that you could have won handily, were you allowed to counter-attack, because of the encirclement bonus. This is why I believe that attack is often the best defense.
If you HAVE to defend, you should look for good defensive positions. One thing that makes a big difference, is to make sure that you province can only be attacked from one other province, to deny the enemy a potential encirclement bonus by attacking from multiple provinces. Sure, this is not always possible, but it helps.
And then, generally, if you can pull it off, try to defend along a line of one corps per provinces, don't stretch them out and build corps that slightly overfill the maximum width (say 13 or so), basically to have one spare division, one more division that can participate in the initial line up.
If you HAVE to defend, you should look for good defensive positions. One thing that makes a big difference, is to make sure that you province can only be attacked from one other province, to deny the enemy a potential encirclement bonus by attacking from multiple provinces. Sure, this is not always possible, but it helps.
And then, generally, if you can pull it off, try to defend along a line of one corps per provinces, don't stretch them out and build corps that slightly overfill the maximum width (say 13 or so), basically to have one spare division, one more division that can participate in the initial line up.
When any unit enters the production queue, the technology for equipment is fixed (it also affects the IC cost). Future tech improvement, like to Capital Ships Armor don't get added, even if the tech finishes before the ship. If that tech is eligible for upgrades (like Infantry.Small Arms), the Updates cost will reflect the cost difference between the old tech and the new at a brigade level. Disciplines (on the Land, Naval and Air tabs) are immediate. Everything that is a one step thing is immediate (Multi-Role Fighters) (FYI I tend to call these 'schematic' techs). Every technology with multiple steps is essentially 'equipment'.
I would question the tech levels that marxianTL mentions -- it would mean putting those 9 BBs (and 36 DDs) into the queue after the main techs were researched (Hull, Armor, Armament). Since you normally don't research 1942 level techs of any kind until 1941 (at least not without substantial penalties), that would indicate that the techs *might* finish around July, and you wouldn't be able to start producing a 1942 BB until around August of 1941, with a probable delivery around April, 1943. The only ship tech that can be upgraded appears to Anti-Air, so whatever the basic techs are when you put it in the queue is what the finished unit will have. I.e., the ship delivery/deployment date doesn't have anything to do with the tech levels on the ship.
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But, thanks marxianTL for the info about Russia. I wonder how 'deep' the border is when the AI checks for 'brigades along the border' for checking when a treaty can be broken. I'd be very much surprised if the code to count brigades for treaty compliance wasn't also used in someway to determine if the AI should attack.
If I put a single unit consisting of 3xINF, ART, AT in each border province along the actual border, with the rest distributed a province or two back, think that would entice Germany to attack? I'm mostly interested in seeing what kind of force composition would stand up to a German assault, not deter the fight altogether.
I would question the tech levels that marxianTL mentions -- it would mean putting those 9 BBs (and 36 DDs) into the queue after the main techs were researched (Hull, Armor, Armament). Since you normally don't research 1942 level techs of any kind until 1941 (at least not without substantial penalties), that would indicate that the techs *might* finish around July, and you wouldn't be able to start producing a 1942 BB until around August of 1941, with a probable delivery around April, 1943. The only ship tech that can be upgraded appears to Anti-Air, so whatever the basic techs are when you put it in the queue is what the finished unit will have. I.e., the ship delivery/deployment date doesn't have anything to do with the tech levels on the ship.
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But, thanks marxianTL for the info about Russia. I wonder how 'deep' the border is when the AI checks for 'brigades along the border' for checking when a treaty can be broken. I'd be very much surprised if the code to count brigades for treaty compliance wasn't also used in someway to determine if the AI should attack.
If I put a single unit consisting of 3xINF, ART, AT in each border province along the actual border, with the rest distributed a province or two back, think that would entice Germany to attack? I'm mostly interested in seeing what kind of force composition would stand up to a German assault, not deter the fight altogether.
I'm not sure if the officer ratio is the issue in this case. I've had an officer ratios of 95 to 125 and been pushed around. I had thought that it was a doctrine issue, where the troops simply weren't in the same class as the Germans. Same problem in France. The Germans attack, the French defenders run out of ORG and never recover. Mostly they never have time to recover, and get pushed from the Maginot Line to the coast, when they aren't simply surrounded or overrun and destroyed.
But it's beginning to look like defense in depth isn't a viable concept in this game -- the scale just isn't right. I'm guessing that defense in depth only occurs in a single province, not across multiple provinces like I'm trying to use it.
But that ORG loss thing is really the issue, I think. There's a big disparity in ORG losses between attacking and defending units. I think the issue is that the unit retreats only when they are out of ORG entirely leaving the unit no chance against any followup attack. The retreat mechanism doesn't give the defense the opportunity to move depleted units out of the way, so you can end up with 1 depleted unit carrying other perfectly good units along with it in headlong retreat.
Unless you can reinforce your attacked provinces and rotate depleted ones out of the line and fresh ones IN (which is difficult without that Grand Battleplan doctrine), defense is difficult.