Again, because it's very important: infantry

Hi @Chimere, thanks for your carefully thought-through and intelligent answer (somehow hadn't seen it so far)! On such a level, it's a good discussion.


That's so totally true. And one of the reasons why I brought up my suggestion, since it would put an end to this by giving manpower importance (the more you have, the more infantry you can recruit - without having to spend much resources) and the role it really had in WW2 (large population -> large army
in contrast to
lots of resources and money -> good equiment and lots of armoured vehicles, planes, ships etc.).

Accordingly, I had already left manpower out of my calculation when comparing infantry with AA/arty/AT. With that in mind, I hold my statement that AA/arty/AT are the better choice:


A good player never runs into food issues, that's correct. But a very good player nevertheless considers his food stocks as valuable as other resources. Because in all games I witnessed, food had a value very similar to goods or steel. Market value recently even tends to be higher. So you should exchange a food surplus into goods, steel, oil and rares, instead of "wasting" it on the - if regarding food&goods&steel&oil as equally valuable - expensive infantry. Either via market or direct trade.


Because there are hardly any other units that require more goods than steel? Also correct. If being low on steel, your choice is limited on fighters, tacs, naval bombers, Commandos... and the four infantry units. Nevertheless, also here: The average market value of goods is very similar to steel, so I usually find someone who trades me steel for my goods surplus. If I don't, I'd still rather neglect most steel-intensive units than go for one of the four infantry units. Admittedly, at that point we come to a point where your playstyle matters. So yes, if you're really desperate for steel AND have a playstyle involving few online-times, then infantry might become an OK choice.



That hardly ever helps as long as your AA/arty/AT cannot catch up. Or do you want to let your infantry walk around alone? Certainly not.
And as soon as you improved your AA/arty/AT to a speed of 25... well, then infantry isn't faster any more.

If I leave my 3-guns-stack just standing there all the time, then yes. On the other hand, if I'm online every 55 minutes and you're not, then I'll possibly even manage to kill the three infantries before they even get in touch.
Still you're right that in ground battle against unarmoured targets (like infantry or ordnance), infantry is a bit better. But the 3-guns-stack has way better defence against air, better denfence against tanks and most importantly is ultimately better at ranged battle. Having in mind that a good player should almost always avoid melee battles on the ground, that's a crucial difference.


That's an invalid argument, because the overall progression that infantry takes throughout the game nevertheless isn't higher than it is for AA or arty. Bit difficult to compare that mathematically, because arty/AA/AT also improve in speed and range, but my feeling says AA and arty improve even more - for infantry the progression is only distributed over one level more. Which definitely isn't an advantage.


OK; bottom line: I have to admit that if your playstyle favours melee battle on the ground AND you are in a situation with extremely few steel, then infantry might be a reasonable choice. But isn't that waaay too seldom? To match reality, it should be the backbone of EVERY army. Should be the default choice as long as you don't have a resource surplus and rather low manpower reserves, which should then make you start building heavy weapons.

It's by now more than two years I first suggested this (in a different thread in German forum) and it's still not done... in spite of the numerous approval on the first page of this thread. Which obviously means I haven't been convincing enough.
So let me use other words:
As CoW1.0 is balanced, even in case manpower is abundant for you, the four infantry types (militia, reg./mot./mech. infantry) often aren't the best choice (I'd even say they almost never are the best choice, while Chimere says you should have a few in the mix... let's leave it to that). This is not only unrealistic, but also makes manpower worthless in most situations (for players with an economy-first strategy even in all situations).
Therefore I still propose the following change:

--------------------------------------------------------



Then increase research duration for every research level of militia and regular infantry except for level 1 by +4 hours.
Also slightly increase research costs for the higher levels of all 4 infantry types.
--------------------------------------------------------

After that change, if you're short on economic resources (food, goods, steel, oil, rares and money) but have spare manpower, the four infantry types would always be the best choice.
This would have the following positive effects:
* Manpower would then be valuable for all players and in all situations (because it allows to build more of that - in terms of economic resource costs - cheap infantry). This would open a new strategic dimension in the game, because you'd then have two layers of relevant resources (the economical, tradeable ones on the one hand and manpower on the other hand). So managing your resources would be more interesting and challenging. Also more satisfying - watching your manpower molding on a big pile without having a use clearly is not satisfying in any way.
* All provinces would thus have a value. Currently provinces without a resource far away from your capital you often don't want to have, because the bit of money you gain from them cannot compensate for the food+goods the population requires. This is also not realistic and also not satisfying. Having to conquer them in late game in order to gather the required victory points feels like a tedious duty. With manpower being valuable, this would change, since provinces far away from your capital give you the same manpower income as nearby ones.
* Manpower (speaking of the CoW1.0 interpretation as available soldiers) would have the role it really had in WW2. Countries with a large population but few steel, oil and/or money primarily had infantry. While countries with a small population but strong economy preferred heavy weapons / mechanized units. With above change, we would see the same in CoW. Which would improve authenticity very much and also open the opportunity to create great historic maps with clear distinction between industrialized and poorer countries.
* It would become an interesting decision whether to leave barracks activated even while not recruiting infantry. Currently this decision is too simple, because the correct answer always is no. This would also in some situations free players of the hassle of having to remember to deactivate their barracks each time after producing an infantry unit.
* Similarly, it would become an interesting decision in which provinces you want to build barracks in order to gain more manpower.
* Players would a bit more often decide to build infantry. This would be closer to WW2 reality, in which about 70% of all military units were from one of the 4 infantry types. Reflecting that 1-to-1 in CoW would harm playability a bit (although Supremacy1914 shows that even that would still be well playable), but getting a step closer to that reality would suit the game very well.
* Building barracks & infantry would no longer be newbie trap #1. I witnessed the frustration of new players who intuitively started with acting like a real leader would... i.e. with building primarily infantry, at least at the beginning. In CoW you first have to learn you're losing with that approach. Definitely not a fun learning experience.
* Cities would become more important, because they produce more manpower than rural provinces. Currently, their value is about the same as of rural provinces (yes, every city has a resource icon, but on the other hand, their food+goods consumption is higher). My proposal would help to give cities the significance they really had.

Negative effects:
None.
Well, I could imagine that with a bit more infantry in the game, you might fear the game to become a bit more static (since infantry is stronger on defense). Which I agree wouldn't be positive. If that is your concern, you could give light tanks and medium tanks offensive focus - a change that has proven to make sense in the CoW1.5 test events. Optionally you might also reduce or remove the defensive focus of mechanized infantry.


Bottom line: Since this is a very simple change (you only have to change a few values), why don't you at least give it a chance in front-pioneer games?

Had deliberately left Commandos out. They're a whole different story.
Sure, they're considered infantry, at least in CoW. But they were not those infantry units with big headcounts that were predominantly shaping WW2 frontlines. They're not at all underrepresented in CoW and they already have low food costs (in relation to their strength). So they just don't belong into this topic.

Yaahhh... [sigh], I've been really annoying. Hardly can believe it myself I've become such an enervating, obtrusive jerk repeating the same story 20 times. If there is a spam filter functionality for the forum, I'm sure Bytro put the combination of the keywords "infantry" and "Hans" on top of the blacklist^^.

But then, what else can you do while talking to a wall? Never heard a single word on why this should be kept as badly "balanced"... sorry: unbalanced as it is.
I mean, if I had had some affirmation it has been understood that my suggestion would not only help for making the ratio of infantry units compared to mechanized ones more realistic and give CoW some more WW2 atmosphere, but also improve these 7 other aspects that I listed in my terribly long --> post <-- above... then I might have stopped repeating it after one or two times.
That list of arguments for the change fills more than a screen, at least with my screen resolution. If I'm mistaken with that argumentation, I for sure am hallucinating. Should go back to playing with matchbox cars, then. Perhaps that will also cure me from not considering a steel hull on wheels (like a tank, in the broad sense) to be sexy.

First of all, you should never run a tight economy... unless being attacked by a serious opponent during first one or two weeks, of course.
But well, I know quite a lot of people do, so let's also take this strategy into account: If you're short on manpower, you should build even less units from the four infantry types. Because these have really high manpower requirements - as simple as that. So for such players, it's even more important that my suggested change is being done. Yes, it includes increasing manpower costs for infantry a bit. But the food you save from the reduced infantry food costs can be spent on running barracks in provinces that return a lot of manpower.
Anyhow my suggested change would make you want to produce infantry as long as you have spare manpower that you don't need for other units. That's the way it historically was and how it should be in CoW as well - for all those reasons I gave in my terrifyingly long post a week ago. After my suggested adjustment, you wouldn't ask yourself any more "Shall I produce one of the four infantry units with my spare manpower?", but "When shall I produce more of the four infantry types with my spare manpower? When do I do the call to arms?". You wouldn't want to do it too early, because my proposal also gave infantry high manpower upkeep costs. And you wouldn't want to do it too late, because then you don't have that much infantry produced the moment a serious war starts. In other words you'll have to anticipate when will be the best time to have all your men under arms. Which again would reflect perfectly well this very same decision that all real leaders were facing until around 1960. And which would make the game strategically more interesting. Partly because it would make the number of provinces in which you can produce the four infantry units relevant... since being able to do the "call to arms" quickly would put you in a strategical advantage. So will you invest some of your goods & food in building barracks to increase your ability for a quick call to arms? We currently don't have that question in CoW - would be a new strategical dimension. Which would improve the game a lot (probably also production speed-up bonus of barracks level 2 and 3 should then be increased to make this positive effect of my suggested change work out even better). Is the nineth reason why the change should be done (had forgotten it in my list).

To sum it up: I believe you that some players sometimes run out of manpower. My suggestion would be good for that constellation as well.


I certainly very much like the game mode from your signature. But that's far far away from being the majority of CoW games. So we shouldn't really take that into account when deciding about how to change the game.


I'm well aware that quite a number of players consider infantry to be a worthwile unit. It's also possible that you as a cosiderate player might even sometimes use it successfully. But firstly, this "sometimes" isn't enough to make the role of infantry and manpower realistic and strategically interesting - again see argumentation in my long post a week ago. And secondly, the majority of the players who build a lot of infantry are noobs who go for it in the early days. Who then might defeat one or two neighbours with that approach and afterwards find themselves not having a chance to continue successfully, because they've run out of food, manpower and money (that they used to buy the enourmous amount of food their infantry eats). These then usually quit the game in frustration and don't understand the world any more. Have they done anything wrong? Yes, they've built barracks and recruited infantry. Two deadly sins in CoW. We should help them not to run into that trap. Also for that: my proposal.


Still not convinced, somebody? Ah yes, the NRA.