Nuke Bombers/Rockets, not because they are bad, but because they are so hard to get.

Submarines, the first few games I played I made an entire navy of them, soon I was up against destroyers, and saw them as the ultimate escort.

Nuke Ships, also because they are hard to get, I only made 1 nuke carrier to this day, but when I do make these ships, they are always my flagship.

My least favorite:

1. Militia: Been using it more recently, but it is still slow, as always... Very good in the foothills and forests, but besides those 2 areas, it is just too slow for my purposes

2. Tactical bombers: Takes a long time to get a base ready to produce them. Only useful once you get beyond the first few days, and then they gain relevance over the army, but I don't bother with them by the point they do become relevant. It's an odd thing. To really use them effectively before like day 8 or 16, you pretty much need to make tacts over everything else, and in large quantities. Something I'm just not fond of. Also, tacts are very much hampered by how fast you can build airfields for them, when going on large, sweeping campaigns.

3. Destroyers: No offense, but there is no real incentive to build destroyers until later in the game... Submarines aren't a real threat early in the game unless built in-mass. Cruisers can easily deal with them by themselves, due to having far more health, and moderate anti-sub abilities. Without a carrier and naval bombers to scout out subs, destroyers feel kinda useless. They can't bombard land targets, their speed isn't a huge advantage early-game, and they are easy prey for submarines if they get caught out by themselves.

4. Strategic bombers: Pretty much for all the same reasons Montana said. Besides, a stack of rockets are far more effective at taking out buildings than a stack of strategic bombers, and can be built far quicker, if taking a bit longer to get to the target area via truck.

5. Nuke stuff: Because... Yeah. Takes a while to get to them.

1. Battleships: From what I am told battleships are great at ship to ship combat, but I find that Submarines and Naval bombers slaughter them easily. I ams also guilty of using cruisers or subs to destroy opposing ships.

2. Rocket fighter: Aughtough is decent for air to air defence, it has no range what so ever. by the time the enemy aircraft is in range, it will be too late, since the enemy will have attacked whatever they want, and those aircraft will be leaving. It is just a useless unit.

3. Strategic bombers: Like everyone else, I find rockets and railroad guns more effective for building destruction. these bombers are also extremely susceptible to anti-aircraft fire.

4. Nuclear units: Expensive and not the most useful

5. Aircraft Carrier: Again, expensive and not the most useful

6. Mech. Infantry: Again, expensive and not the most useful

7. All SP units: I find that they end up being too expensive for me, but many people disagree with me.

Least used:

1) Militia. I have always regretted building them when I have, so I never even research them anymore.

2) Ships. I consider surface navy a luxury, not a necessity. If I have an ally who wants to build navy I let them do it and only build subs. I will build a few when needed. A pair of carriers and some support ships maybe.

3) Strategic bombers. Really the only reason to build them is to absorb damage in your plane group.

4) Nuclear anything. Sure it is handy to have one ally with nukes, but it isn't me.

5) Heavy tanks. I have never even researched them to play with, so no idea really. Expensive slow dinosaur is how it looks to me.

All these players dissing Militia makes one wonder how many of them have ever reached the end-game (successfully, that is).

Militia are incredibly useful at this stage, because in the end-game, you often find that your main challenge is no longer fighting and defeating enemy armies, but the game map itself. Morale is always a big challenge, and unless you are using large amounts of gold to make up for your deficiencies, you find that Militia can make a crucial difference. Keeping up with food production is the other problem, which limits the number of army units you can have.

So militia are useful because
1. You often need to use your armies to keep conquered provinces from rebelling. Building fortifications takes time and uses up a lot of Steel, which you may not always have to hand, especially if you are still actively fighting against an enemy. You can of course use infantry, but these cost three times as much in Goods and Food to build, and use up more Food for their upkeep. Militia takes less Food, and proportionally uses more Manpower which, if you are winning in the end-game, you will have in abundance. So Militia are a very useful means of garrisoning your provinces, because they are cheap to build and keep up. When garrisoning hilly and forested areas, you only need two Militia per province, because they have increased strength in this terrain.
2. You can build them very quickly. Often, in the end-game, you are taking over cities that either belonged to an active player, or an AI that has been around for a long time. These cities invariably have higher level Industry. All you need to do is bang in some Goods and Food and you have Barracks in 90 seconds (or less if all you need to do is repair some damaged barracks). After that, you can probably build Militia in a few hours. You can build three Militia in the time it takes to build one Infantry (at three times the cost of Manpower, but who cares when you have Manpower of 126,000?).
3. They are a great damage absorber. I usually use Blitzkrieg tactics (armoured columns to encircle enemy formations, but which you need to keep out of cities and fortified zones, and infantry and artillery to take those fortified zones coming up behind) for my offensives. Militia are useful for taking a strongly fortified city that your panzers have avoided, but you need to reduce. They have the same number of HP (15) as Infantry, but cost a lot less to build in Goods and use up all that useless Manpower you have accumulating when you have conquered all of Europe. If you stack your Militia along with whatever stronger units you use to take a fortified city, any damage your army takes will be absorbed equally by the Militia. So your stronger units last longer, and continue to make strong attacks, while your damage is absorbed by the cheap and shitty Milita units. They are even better when defending a fortified spot against an enemy who is using expensive units to attack you. You lose cheap and nasty Militia, while your enemy uses up his Tanks and Infantry (which means a lot more resources to rebuild his army will be used up).

All in all, Militia are very useful when used the right way. For garrisoning and for defending heavily fortified spots that may be of strategic importance (like the Suez Canal).

If you are stupid enough to use Militia to carry out major offensive operations, then you only have yourself to blame. After all, the British Army never contemplated using the Home Guard to carry out the Normandy landings, did they?

Actually many of these players have successfully reached the end game without significant amounts of militia and without gold. In the end game, When winning, I'm able to manage morale without significant militia if any and without gold. Usually morale doesn't need to be much above 25 to avoid rebellions. Over 25 morale, has reduced risk of rebellion. If i'm winning, I can often move my capital to a more centralized location which often helps morale a lot.
If food is an issue, I'm not going to be building militia which still have a food upkeep. I'm going to maximize my food production first in cores and then in higher to lower morale non-core food provinces.

1. Tanks, infantry, motorized infantry and mech. infantry prevent rebellions till day change. Usually after day change, you won't need to garrison or will need less of one. Capture provinces and then capture a capital and you won't even have to wait till day change to push on. These units are then available for offensive use.
2. Yes, militia can be built relatively quickly. Again, usually only need to garrison captured provinces till day change.
3. Yes, militia are a damage absorber. Still, I rarely encounter them in the end game. For taking urban areas, mech. inf., motorized infantry, commandos and infantry are usually sufficient. For taking fortified provinces, destroy the defending units with artillery or even better SP artillery or if defended by artillery, you can build a rail gun and just pound away. After defenders are gone, just move on in. With artillery and/or SP artillery, you aren't losing any units unless enemy is also using them. If you are defending a fortified province with militia, I would just pound them with artillery till the defenders are gone or the fortifications are weakened.
4. Militia do have a good strength bonus in hill provinces.
5. When I do encounter militia, I haven't found them much of an obstacle. A superior stack will still destroy them.
6. Militia aren't much good for attacking most units. A militia attacking a defending infantry available at the same day will lose except possibly in hill provinces.
7. Militia are slowest unit in the game (15 kph). After I have captured a province, I have sometimes moved militia in.
8. Sometimes I research militia but I rarely build them.
9. If my enemy is building militia, I like it. They aren't an offensive threat.

I'm talking about the end-game on the historical map, not in the second-rate 50-player maps where capitals are a dime a dozen and the map itself is not that big. You can't just wait for the day change when you are playing Germany or Britain and you are conquering provinces in South America or Southeast Asia, because the day change often hits your morale down because of the distances involved (which give you -39 on morale).

By the time you reach the end-game on the Historical Map, most or all of the AI have already been swallowed up by active players, so your easy way out of just grabbing a capital and then moving on after a morale boost is no longer easily available. Often, you will be fighting on a continent on the other side of the globe, so you start off with a massive hit to morale anyway.

About the only way to hold your conquered provinces is to build massive fortress complexes, but this takes time and a LOT of Metal. So while your fortress complexes are being built, you have no choice but to garrison provinces with units. Yes, I know you can garrison provinces with tanks and infantry, but how much do these cost to upkeep. The point is that in the end-game (at least in the historical map), you DO need to garrison provinces until you can build up enough fortifications to hold your conquered provinces, and militia are the cheapest option for doing this (in terms of resources). They may move slowly, but if you plan ahead, you will always have ample time to move up your garrison troops to garrison newly conquered provinces before the day change, which frees up your more expensive units for offensive operations.

With regards to damage absorption, you are missing my point. Some of the most rewarding battles I have had are watching a large stack of Tanks and Infantry bash their heads against a bunch of Militia and a single anti-tank unit, stacked up in a level 2 fortification. Yes, I lose the position, but my opponent loses three tanks and four infantry while I just lose a whole lot of Militia and a single anti-tank regiment. Verdun in reverse.

And I never move my capital to a more central location, because moving your capital out of your core means that you drop resource production in your core provinces (where your original capital would have been located) while increasing it in the non-core area you move to. So, for example, if you are Britain and move your capital from London to say, Rome, to make it more central, you will lose production in your core provinces in Britain, while boosting it in Italy, where it is all non-core. That is just retarded. Much easier to use cheap shitty militia to garrison them and pay the extra cost in Food and Manpower.

So I am not saying that Militia are superior to any other unit, just that different units have different strengths and weaknesses and can be used in different ways, and that in the end, the player who knows how to use a good balance of units for different purposes will always do better than the one who thinks it is all about researching light tanks as high as possible and spamming them.

And yes, the comment about how many of these people have reached the end-game was tongue in cheek. Anyone can reach the end game when playing against a bunch of noobs. Easy peasy. The challenge is to reach it playing against guys who know what they re doing.

"I'm talking about the end-game on the historical map"
MartinB, you didn't qualify your original statements about militia to mean on the historical maps. On historical maps, militia can be useful.

@freezy, I'm not sure if you're already following this thread, but I think you should.

My tentative list:

1) TANK DESTROYERS!!!
This unit is a big frustration unit for me. Potentially, it's a great unit. They should be mobile defensive units, capable of quickly closing gaps when the enemy tries to blitz you with an LT army. Its combat stats reflect this role: great on defense against armor, not too good at anything else. Exactly the role they were used for in reality. A truly GREAT unit!
But now, the frustration part. It lacks one vital stat to perform this role: speed. It can barely keep up with towed units, and rushing to a threatened province is right out of the question. This condemns it to a static role, defending only a single province. But... ah, wait... don't we alrady have a unit for this? Ah yes, AT guns! They don't use oil, don't require infrastructure, are faster and cheaper to build... so, you need the TD's like... never!

Roko's advice: increase speed to halfway between MT and LT.

The speed problem of this unit was overlooked in the last balancing round... now we've moved on another half year, and the TD still isn't used by anyone in any significant numbers, for exactly this problem. @freezy, PLEASE don't forget a drastic speed increase for this unit, and if possible, sooner than a general rebalancing round! Don't make us wait another half year before doing something about it!


2) NAVAL BOMBERS!!!
It is not true, this isn't really one of my least used units. I try again and again, but I just can't get them to work. And in a long history of playing this game, I have seen only ONE person to operate them with great effect. I'm not talking about their sub scout role now, it is tentatively useful for that; I'm talking about its combat role against surface ships.
Again, the combat stats aren't really bad. A full stack of them could engage a medium-sized fleet and win (well... barely). There's two problems with this though.
First, there is a HUGE investment involved in both time and resources to GET this stack. The research cost is one of the most expensive around, L2 air bases are always scarce and competing for a lot of other stuff (tacs and L2 rockets, both VERY useful units), and unit cost is also high.
Second, you need to find and engage your opponent. For an empire that can afford a full-sized stack, the coast line is probably long and the enemy navy can pop up in many places. Now the NB's problem is its range. Air bases are expensive, and likely tailored to fighter range. NB's range is below that, so it usually just can't fly to the place where it needs to be. More AB's you say? Sure. We all have endless amounts of res lying about, don't we?

This unit has a third problem. Let's say we invested all these huge amounts of res and effort, and have a full NB stack now, escorting fighters, an air base network tailored to them, the whole shabang. Sadly, the enemy doesn't come by sea. You have this huge big expensive NB stack, and can't use it on anything. Period. Completely useless in any other role. Yeah, shit happens.

Roko's advice: I think this units needs several GENERAL boosts rather than one stat increase. Upgrade range to fighters of the same level; decrease research cost by AT LEAST 50% (actually I'd say 75%) and time by 33%, then decrease unit cost by 20%.


3) INFANTRY!!!
This is also not true; they aren't really one of my least used units, simply because of the bunch you get when you are born; then I build another round of them as they are the only practical units you can build on the first day. But after that... no, I never build them. And it's not because I think they are bad... it's because they are expensive.
What, infantry? Expensive? Hell, yes! Contrary to any war ever fought in history, infantry is one of the most expensive units around. In the early game, manpower is scarce and vital, and a staggering 1,500 of it makes them more expensive than, say, two light tanks. And when the manpower problem is over, the food problems usually start... so, guess what? Infantry is expensive AGAIN! I'm really fond of the infantry I get at game start, sometimes they survive a very long time and I put them to really good use, but build new ones? No, thanks.

Roko's advice: well, actually, a quite drastic one for consideration... increase all manpower income by 50%, and decrease build time for infantry to 33%. In this way, everyone could build the sexy units without any MP problems; and all the excess of it would be converted to infantry. Yes, the battlefield would be swarming with infantry, like it does in all wars. This would probably raise some more balancing issues... well, lets discuss them. But that's the general idea.


4) ARMORED CARS!!!
Again, you get some at game start; but after that I never build them. Inferior in all respects to LT's.

Roko's advice: specialize them even more: more speed, more visual range, so they're obviously BETTER than LT's in these respects (speed in particular).


5) Medium and heavy tanks.
Heavies were already mentioned a few times, I'd like to extend that to mediums as well. By the time they become available, long-range firepower also becomes abundant (arty, planes, rockets) and melee combat is on the way out. LT's are simply better in the remaining role, land conquest. Well, for my play style, anyway.


6) Some of the usual suspects that should objectively be higher up on this list: militia, strat bombers, nukes, rocket fighters.


PS - if someone asked me a week ago which unit would NEVER be on anyone's list, I'd have said "tactical bombers" without blinking an eye... I was very surprised that they popped up!

Tank Destroyers to me are a great for my tactic against an LT spammer. Take a province, load the province with TDs, the enemy will try to take the province back with LTs most likely. Just keep loading the province with TDs and send a large attack force to the other side of the country.

I have 1 Naval bomber for every 1-3 interceptors in my carrier force in the first few weeks, when I research carrier based Tac bombers they replace half of the NB force, but I still use them for taking out subs.

Mid game I have 1 MT for every 5 LTs and late game I have 1 HT for every 20 LTs, the HT are useful to me for the tactic of drawing Anti Tank defenses away from one side of a country and attacking that same side with LTs. MTs are sort of a main tank with LT escorts.

Hi, the stuff mentioned in this thread was considered. Some things may be touched soon, but not everything, as we always have to look at it from many different angles (and there are many different opinions out there). So don't be disappointed

Sorry, yes I should have specified. I prefer playing on this because it feels more 'realistic' (at least to the extent achievable in this game'. Usually lose, of course, but when I do win the main challenge is always keeping your empire together while trying to hit the target, which is not easy. Garrisoning troops are really useful in this situation.

Well, that is also just me. And it is more based on my old experience from before the balance patch months ago, so it's kinda cloudy in that regard. I'm still getting back into the game, so my tactics are likely to change in the coming months, but Tacts really do not feel all that useful, for me. I can not spare making a level 2 airbase when all the other construction projects are considered(infrastructure, naval bases, barracks, others). Back before the addition of a single fighter at the start of the game, I would have never contemplated building tacts until day 24, if research wasn't already given to me. Now I am, but only after day 8, far behind the 'curve' of what most people using tacts would be deploying them by. And again, if Tacts are the backbone of your force, your advance will be halted in it's tracks a couple provinces in if you either don't conquer a province with an airbase already on it, or build one on the next furthest province point. Compared to just building an army, which allows you to advance deep into the enemy without anything to worry about except what is being thrown in front of them. It is the one problem I have with planes. They require a building to operate. In static shooting wars, this isn't a problem, but it is a major issue when you are conquering someone who doesn't use planes, and going on a large campaign stretching 10's of provinces in depth. I love airplanes, and I think tacts are essential to a good campaign against another country, but I usually lose out on the airforce(I rarely even build interceptors. Yeah...), because, while it has appeal in that it is fast paced, I can not be bothered to utilize them fully, and hence why I neglect them completely. Again, will probably change in the future, but I still prefer my ground forces, either way.

For what it''s worth, here's my two cents...

1. Tank Destroyers
Have to agree with Rokossovski on this one, this unit is too slow. The level 1 TD only has 24 kmh, which is slower than infantry. Having said that, if you level it up, the speed does come up a little, and it is a bit faster than the Heavy Tank, so I guess this unit was designed as a counter to those, but since few players actually build Heavy Tanks, the TD itself turns out to be a bit useless. I get that it has its uses, but only in specific situations. So if you are playing the USSR and you are anticipating Barbarossa, it can come in useful (specially if you know the German player is an LT spammer). The only time I found this unit of use was when I was Germany, and the French player launched a massive attack against the Siegfried Line while I was trying to conquer Poland.

2. Self-Propelled AA
Never researched these and never built them. Again, I get that they have their use, which is to stack with your armoured formations for air defence. But in practice, if I have lost air superiority, I'm not going to be trying a massive blitzkrieg wave anyway, so I figure there is no point using up your research slot for this. If trying to win back air superiority, I usually focus production on interceptors rather than trying to launch armoured columns.

3. Nuclear Rockets
Never researched these before.

4. Rocket Fighters.

5. Nuclear Battleships and Carriers.
Not sure if these are useful. If anyone out there thinks they are worth researching, please post a rebuttal and explain why you want to use your resources to build these.

1. Militia: slow, defensive, has niche in hills

2: Tank destroyers: too slow to move between provinces to counter tanks; anti-tanks serve this function without consuming oil; heavy tanks work as a better tank destroyer. Heavy tanks have almost as good defense against attacking tanks. Heavy tanks have better attack against medium or light tanks.

3, Battleships: expensive; vulnerable to artillery, even more to special artillery, railgun, and/or naval bombers.

4. Strategic bomber: (same as Montana); rarely build

5. nuke stuff: too expensive

6. rocket fighter: not enough range (moving between provinces becomes a problem); not versatile enough; can be used to patrol providing defense against air attack; too slow to catch incoming air craft; not effective against incoming ground units

You know what is funny?

you and I are the only ones who even the rocket fighter. I am sure it would have made everyone's list if they remembered.

Actually I do make the RF for defense. They patrol the mainland while the Interceptors are on the front lines.

Mine are as follows:
1. Armored Cars- worthless past like day 2
2. Mech infantry- Barracks 3 and time makes it not worth it
3. Rocket fighters- Waste when you could just be making rockets
4. Railroadgun- one of my favorites, but expensive and slow.
5. Nuclear Naval Units:
-To late in game to make due to resources
-Game ends early so you can't get it
-Great, but you can't get it about 80% of the games due to it ending