Though admittedly I am very new to this game and have had little chance to test out its unit balance, the more I look at the stats, the more it looks to me as though tanks and armoured cars are very overpowered in this game.
Firstly, tanks and ACs (collectively known as armoured fighting vehicles, or AFVs) are comparatively cheap to build and maintain - if I had the factories in my current game, I could spawn nearly twice the number of medium tank units than of infantry units, because of the infantry manpower cap. On top of which, the tank units do not have a manpower upkeep. So the game appears to heavily favour the production of AFVs by comparison with infantry (which is, incidentally, a total reversal of the historical situation regarding these arms).
Secondly, looking at the actual combat stats, AFVs appear to have a massive advantage over infantry. A level 2 infantry unit has a defense of only 1.5 against an AFV, while a level 1 medium tank has an attack of 4.0 when attacking infantry - 6 if on open terrain! In other words, tanks attack infantry at odds of between 2.66 to one and 4 to 1, depending on terrain. The only terrain in which they fight on a more or less equal basis is if the infantry unit is in a city province. The odds when infantry attack tanks are even worse for infantry. And as if all that were not enough, AFVs also have a lot more hit points!
To put it another way, infantry look pretty useless in this game. They are hard to build, and only effective against other infantry. Why bother building them at all?
To restore the balance a little, I would like to suggest a game mechanic that has been employed in countless wargames over the years and very successfully. In real life, tanks were quickly found not to be all-conquering units - they are actually highly vulnerable when attacking infantry without support, because their visibility is very limited and infantry can readily ambush them. Tanks need friendly infantry to protect them from infantry attack. So the mechanic I propose - successfully proven in countless wargames - is as follows: an AFV unit unit attacks and defends at half strength against infantry units unless stacked with a friendly infantry unit. To illustrate how this would work, in a stack where the ratio of infantry to AFVs is less than 1:1, the excess AFV units that cannot be paired with an infantry unit would attack at half strength and the rest will attack at full strength.
The advantage of this game mechanic would be that not only would it help restore some balance between tank and infantry units, it would also force players to ensure they built plenty of infantry units to stack with their AFV units rather than just spamming tank units. Players who failed to build enough infantry units to accompany their AFVs would find themselves taking much heavier losses, and fighting much less effectively, than players who built a more balanced army.
Firstly, tanks and ACs (collectively known as armoured fighting vehicles, or AFVs) are comparatively cheap to build and maintain - if I had the factories in my current game, I could spawn nearly twice the number of medium tank units than of infantry units, because of the infantry manpower cap. On top of which, the tank units do not have a manpower upkeep. So the game appears to heavily favour the production of AFVs by comparison with infantry (which is, incidentally, a total reversal of the historical situation regarding these arms).
Secondly, looking at the actual combat stats, AFVs appear to have a massive advantage over infantry. A level 2 infantry unit has a defense of only 1.5 against an AFV, while a level 1 medium tank has an attack of 4.0 when attacking infantry - 6 if on open terrain! In other words, tanks attack infantry at odds of between 2.66 to one and 4 to 1, depending on terrain. The only terrain in which they fight on a more or less equal basis is if the infantry unit is in a city province. The odds when infantry attack tanks are even worse for infantry. And as if all that were not enough, AFVs also have a lot more hit points!
To put it another way, infantry look pretty useless in this game. They are hard to build, and only effective against other infantry. Why bother building them at all?
To restore the balance a little, I would like to suggest a game mechanic that has been employed in countless wargames over the years and very successfully. In real life, tanks were quickly found not to be all-conquering units - they are actually highly vulnerable when attacking infantry without support, because their visibility is very limited and infantry can readily ambush them. Tanks need friendly infantry to protect them from infantry attack. So the mechanic I propose - successfully proven in countless wargames - is as follows: an AFV unit unit attacks and defends at half strength against infantry units unless stacked with a friendly infantry unit. To illustrate how this would work, in a stack where the ratio of infantry to AFVs is less than 1:1, the excess AFV units that cannot be paired with an infantry unit would attack at half strength and the rest will attack at full strength.
The advantage of this game mechanic would be that not only would it help restore some balance between tank and infantry units, it would also force players to ensure they built plenty of infantry units to stack with their AFV units rather than just spamming tank units. Players who failed to build enough infantry units to accompany their AFVs would find themselves taking much heavier losses, and fighting much less effectively, than players who built a more balanced army.
