Again, because it's very important: infantry

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    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      Hmm, kinda hard to describe the dynamics of a 100p map to someone who never played it... but I guess I' ll try.A 100p map has 4 core cities. I' ve upgraded IC' s to 5 there, infra to 1, two have barracks (2 and 3) and two have airfield-2. 5 resource provs are in the process of upgrading to infra-3. No other IC' s built in core.
      I think I played my last 100p map about 2 years ago.


      K.Rokossovski wrote:

      That means I control about 7 former major' s territories, and some minors. Landing in Africa now, but no significant ground there yet.
      At this point, most smaller maps would be ove at this point. That means you would control around 1/3 of the map in a 22p map.

      It seems to me that the dynamics of the smaller versus largest map is quite different. Different enough to make my commentaries about what @Hans A. Pils said about changing infantry invalid. Though for the maps I tend to play, the smaller and medium sized maps. The suggestion @Hans A. Pils makes would make absolutely no sense at all.


      K.Rokossovski wrote:

      I wonder why you exclude commando' s from your " 5 infantry types" , they function like inf in many ways!
      The 5 infantry types (infantry, militia, moto inf, mecha inf and paratroopers) have something in common that commandos do not have in common with them. They all cost 1300 (mecha cost 1200) manpower and have relatively high upkeep costs while their power output is quite low.

      Commandos cost much less manpower, give a very big power output in return for manpower invested for far less upkeep than the 5 infantry types. They are well worth the manpower they cost while this is not the case with the 5 infantry types. Also, their being able to be built only in the capitol caps their strength quite enough. So commandos are just to much of a different breed to include among what counts as infantry (imho).

      So you have 49 aircraft in interceptors and tacs combined and only 11 infantry. Their initial manpower cost look like this:

      11 infantry: 14,300 manpower

      49 aircraft: 19,600 manpower

      The 11 infantry have 35.75 worth of planes in them in terms of manpower.

      Now I am quite sure that it is quite simple to see that in terms of damage output, infantry is not a very good investment manpower wise.

      Also, the 11 infantry have 165 HP when in full health. The 35 (rounded down) aircraft would have 700 HP. So in terms of HP, manpower is again not very well invested in infantry.

      You could do the same when comparing them with SP arty. Having 11 infantry means you did not build 28.6 SP artillery. Again growing the same amount of manpower into more HP and power output. This time with a mechanic that lets you avoid damage all together.

      Even if you add the food and oil consumption to this, the oil expenses are well worth the damage output and extra HP.

      Infantry is just never a good investment for your manpower. So, making them cost more initial manpower when training them is not a good thing.
    • Edepedable wrote:

      Infantry is just never a good investment for your manpower. So, making them cost more initial manpower when training them is not a good thing.
      Again, you continue to pretend that all other resources except manpower are free. It's like saying that infantry has infinite power-per-oil, because it has zero oil cost, so that it is infinitely better to build than tanks or planes. It is true, but also highly misleading.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.
    • On the other hand, I often find myself low on oil because my heavy use of tanks, SP AA, air and naval units ... Finished my first 7 games undefeated (2 solo, 5 coalition wins) in 22-player tutorial board with a strategy of initially developing economy and a high tech mobile army ... The resource issue seems to get worst as you conquer other provinces. I wish they boosted productivity up a notch from 25% to 30%. Many players that seem to go inactive because of the lack of resources issue, which often requires gold purchases. Thus I find myself fighting AI managed countries most of the time ... :tumbleweed:
    • To those suggesting a separate research tree for each map: OK, indeed many units are a bit more useful on some maps than they are on others. I was simplifying that a bit in my last post. But separate research trees would for sure require bigger implementation and balancing efforts and also blow up complexity of the game in a unlovely fashion for a rather small benefit. So let's keep thinking about easier improvements.

      To Edepedable: My proposal would make infantry more common also on smaller maps. Only not with your playstyle (not meant in an evaluative way). But that's not bad in my eyes: If a country invests more resources on unit production than on economical buildings, it's realistic it can effort to produce heavy weapons (at least AT, AA or artillery guns) for all it's soldiers for a while. My proposal would reflect that.


      war-play wrote:

      this question has long been resolved in Supremacy 1914
      It's true this aspect is working better in S1914 than it does in CoW. In S1914 you need only manpower (although I know it's called differently) to produce infantry and no resources at all. My proposal would push CoW a bit in that direction, without the need to change game mechanics.
    • Hans A. Pils wrote:



      war-play wrote:

      this question has long been resolved in Supremacy 1914
      It's true this aspect is working better in S1914 than it does in CoW. In S1914 you need only manpower (although I know it's called differently) to produce infantry and no resources at all. My proposal would push CoW a bit in that direction, without the need to change game mechanics.
      My proposal is more simply.
      Just take the best of S1914 and CoW :thumbsup:
      It's really works :D

    • BMfox wrote:

      Going back to the original subject of the thread.

      I think it's a good change that food is used instead of goods for research. In the early and mid game i had to sell my food to buy goods. Prices of goods spiking up leaving me empty handed with no more cash to spare. Now there is a good balance between the use food and goods which leaves your money untouched and usable for other purposes. On top of it players who don't know to build an economy will be forced to do it know because if not they will be in the red very soon.

      The biggest disadvantage is that the use of infantry will be more difficult to use and producing mechanized infantry will become more challenging. Then again, players who take the time to invest in an economy will pluck the fruits of their labor and have an important advantage.
      After some period of inactivity for external reasons, first chance to check on the new research system and its' impacts. I specifically chose a 2-food country in the 22 map in order to check, and the results are very predictable:

      • As BMFox says, the market picture is dramatically different. Food has practically disappeared from the market, as also happens with Metal. This obviously depends on the number of active players in the map, but in the small maps it doesn't need so many of them in order to extinguish all small AI quite fast - then no chance to see Food in the market.
      • That takes us to the second point. No matter what economy you build (and trust me, I am quite good at it) with a 2-core Food there is simply no chance to dream of building infantry. MI are completely and utterly out of the question, unless you want to completely be left backwards in research. Not only that, even "ordinary" infantry-class units become much more of a consideration (due to maintenance cost).


      Overall the change is very interesting (I can say that it changes the game, which is a challenge that I like), but seriously I believe this is a distortion of war-gaming at that time.
    • I agree with Atreas about food becoming scarce in small maps. Currently playing 25 player 1939 scenario, and the price of food in the market is going thru the roof. Wonder if map should be revised to show better food production in third world countries ... :tumbleweed:
    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      Edepedable wrote:

      Infantry is just never a good investment for your manpower. So, making them cost more initial manpower when training them is not a good thing.
      Again, you continue to pretend that all other resources except manpower are free. It's like saying that infantry has infinite power-per-oil, because it has zero oil cost, so that it is infinitely better to build than tanks or planes. It is true, but also highly misleading.
      No I do not. Its just that the other resources exept manpower are at least buyable. Sure never in the quantaties and the price you want, but at least its an option. The whole possibility to be bought does not exist for manpower, and so it is more rare.

      Edepedable wrote:

      Even if you add the food and oil consumption to this, the oil expenses are well worth the damage output and extra HP.

      Infantry is just never a good investment for your manpower. So, making them cost more initial manpower when training them is not a good thing.
      That is not true at all, it is very easy to see that the additional HP and damage output planes and tanks do DESPITE their cost in oil, (and any other resource for that matter) outweigh their advantage. Its hard to reduce the specifics to only manpower because of course not every resource is spent equally for each unit. Though despite this, infantry is to costly in terms of initial manpower.

      I really do not understand how you can argue for making infantry more expensive in additional manpwoer. They used to be 1500 and no one ever built them. And if you do favor an ''economy first'' type strategy then every unit needs to be as strong as possible, so you still won't make any infantry even if you have the manpower to build them.
    • There will come the day when it will be decided whether CoW1.5 shall replace CoW1.0 or not. On that day, 1.5 will be compared with a CoW1.0 that doesn't reach the potential it has. Because the change from this thread wasn't done. Which is such a big missed opportunity.

      I'll soon have my 16th game finished (all map sizes). And I still never recruited a single infantry (militia, reg. infantry, mot. or mech. infantry) unit. Success gives me right - I was never defeated, always finished 1st or 2nd after an ally. In other words: Producing infantry in CoW1.0 as good as always is a mistake. It's nothing but a newbie trap. Discrepancy to reality couldn't be bigger. If anyone doubts this, please look up of what armies in WW2 consisted of, for example on the following page for total numbers of German forces 1942 (in earlier years percentage of infantry divisions was even higher): weltkrieg2.de/deutsche-kraefteverteilung-1942/


      Repeating my proposal so you don't have to read this entire thread (grey numbers are current values):

      prod. foodprod. manpowerupkeep foodupkeep manpower
      Militia50 (250)1500 (1300)40 (50)85 (75)
      Reg. infantry150 (500)1500 (1300)75 (90)115 (110)
      Mot. infantry100 (350)1500 (1300)75 (90)115 (100)
      Mech. infantry50 (250)1400 (1200)75 (90)115 (100)

      Paratroopers...250 (500).....1500 (1300).....75 (90).....120 (110)......

      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.

      If you're not convinced of how positive this change would be, please read my argumentation in the first two posts of this thread.
      And I want to add: It would make it an interesting strategic decision in which provinces you want to build barracks and where you keep them running even while not recruiting infantry. Because after this change, manpower will always have some value - for all players with all strategies and in all phases of the game. Currently, it only is a limiting factor for players who tend to build many units already in early game and for these also only until they have conquered their first two or three major countries. In mid or late game, manpower piles up uselessly for everyone. And for players like me, who focus on economy first and only raise a large army after about day 10 or 15, manpower ALWAYS is abundant. Saving manpower or producing more manpower NEVER influenced any of the decisions I made in my games so far, because I always had much more than I would ever need. So currently in CoW1.0, you should ALWAYS deactivate your barracks while not recruiting (even if we don't look at the fact that you should never build barracks or infantry anyways). After my proposed change, this wouldn't be an easy decision any more.
    • One optional addition that would make this change work out even better (but not so sure whether it could also be implemented very easily): Make manpower income dependant on morale - just like resource income is dependant on morale. And in return, so manpower wouldn't become too rare: Increase the manpower reserves that countries have at the start of the game.

      Reasoning behind this is that at the moment, you don't have a big manpower surplus during the first one or two weeks of the game, while afterwards everyone except Edepedable has an extreme/unlimited surplus. Which is a consequence of resource but not manpower income being reduced by low morale and the fact that the average morale in your country becomes lower the longer the game lasts and the further your conquests are away from your capital. After the change I proposed in this thread, this high increase of manpower income during the game would lead to players building very much infantry in late game, which would be ahistorical. Realistic would be armies developing from majorly consisting of infantry to more and more mechanization. This would be achieved by making manpower dependant on morale (in addition to the infantry cost changes from previous post).
      Also this addition itself would already add a bit to realism: Of course it is easier to recruit soldiers from a population with high morale. In CoW you can recruit large armies from provinces which you just conquered and where the people hate you to a degree they're revolting. Try that in reality. Good luck.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by Hans A. Pils ().

    • Hans A. Pils wrote:

      Reality: About 70% of all military in WW2 was from one of the four infantry types (militia, motorized, mechanized or regular infantry).

      CoW: There are only two very seldom edge cases in which I can imagine recruiting infantry might be the right choice: Either you don't have a single gram of steel (a situation that every skilled player knows to avoid) or a good human player attacks you during the very first days and you have to defend by building militia in every province.
      Apart from that, recruiting infantry is always a mistake.
      The following table shows that - assuming all ressources have the same value on the long run and cost 5.0$ on the market (note that I calculate the food consumption of barracks in a province with IC level 3):


      prod. ressourcesprod. manpowerupkeep ressourcesupkeep manpower
      Militia65013005075
      Reg. infantry1525130090110
      Artillery155010005060
      Anti tank190010007060
      Anti air13507505045
      Mot. infantry24101300165100
      Armored car24006751100
      Light tank36506251250
      Medium tank51008001950
      Mech. infantry38001200190100


      For example compare 3 regular infantry with 1 artillery + 1 AT + 1 AA: Both are similarly useful and have practically the same production costs. But upkeep for the infantry is 60% higher. So why should I ever build infantry?
      You summoned me from another thread, but I believe you are very wrong on infantry.
      Before I even get into the detail, let's be clear on one thing : by mid-game manpower is not an issue any more, you have more than enough (especially if you are not building infantry in your case). So any calculation based on manpower should be discounted.

      So pros :

      1. They don't cost steel (nor oil). Finding oneself out of steel is not a rare situation -
      1a. I have found myself in many, many games where food was not an issue, especially when you play as part of a coalition.
      1b. Your economy is perfectly managed when you lack of more or less everything at the same time (eg you optimized your production given what you have), and for that purpose building infantry is critical.

      2. Infantry is marginally faster

      3. Arty + AT + AA is in total 25 HP, 3 infantry is 45 HP so almost twice as much… for the same price in ressources and significantly more in maintenance, but maintenance by HP favors the infantry.
      3 infantries beats your 3-guns-stack without problem, actually 2 infantries might beat it as well.

      Artillery is cool because it allows pretty nasty tricks and is probably one of the best units in the game for cost /quality… but it has 5 HP and costs steel. The infantry has 15 and it does not.

      4. Often ignored : infantry can go up to level 6, while the other units go up to level 5.

      I have played quite a few games with mostly infantry and have been happy with it. Motorized infantry also has its advantages, though the price of 500 oil makes it lose one of the key advantages of normal infantry (but it can happen that I am shorter on steel than I am on oil). Mechanized infantry is extremely circumstancial.

      Note that AA is a pretty cool units in terms of time/cost-to-produce-HP, second only to militia, but it is faster than militias so you can use it to follow your units in counter-attack and it is not totally pointless when the emergency is behind youbecause, well, AA (whereas I see militias as only cheap 15 HP to buff-up defense)

      I have played around the same number of games as you did and won almost the same ratio as you did, so well I also did my calculation.

      The post was edited 4 times, last by Chimere ().

    • Infantry can make for a nice meatshield; especially when mixed with other stuff, it also scales quite well in terms of damage tho their upkeep in manpower is quite expensive when compared to other units
      while it doesnt really play any significant role in combat its kinda a "nice to have" unit

      Chimere wrote:

      I have played around the same number of games as you did and won almost the same ratio as you did, so well I also did my calculation.
      trying to justify something by using stats is just ... weak :D
      Teburu

      GER/EN Forums
      Conflict of Nations Veteran
      I suck at COW
      idk what else to put here :D
    • Hans A. Pils wrote:

      One optional addition that would make this change work out even better (but not so sure whether it could also be implemented very easily): Make manpower income dependant on morale - just like resource income is dependant on morale. And in return, so manpower wouldn't become too rare: Increase the manpower reserves that countries have at the start of the game.
      Sounds reasonable to me ... 8)