Axis early game for active players (advanced)

Just as a reminder, AC vs. mot inf damage values:
vs Inf: AC 3.5 attack, 5.3 defence; mot inf 7.8 attack, 5.2 defence.
vs LA: AC 1.2 attack, 1.8 defence; mot inf 3.5 attack, 2.3 defence.
Also, mot inf is about 25% faster.
Research costs inf lv1+mot inf lv1 are 4.3k food, 1.4k goods and 600 oil. So 6.3k resources altogether.
It's 3.2k altogether for AC research.
For both, the production building costs 3.6k resources.
Light armour and infantry are the main targets, so the defence and attack against them is the factor. We add that up, getting 11.8 damage for AC, 18.8 for mot inf. Not considering that against LA the damage is lower, so the difference more significant and mot inf does even better, and is faster on top of that.
This means, you need 147.5 resources to get 1 damage with AC, but only 97.8 resources with mot inf.
3.1k:49.7=62.4
62.4*97.8=6 102.78 - is how many resources you have to spend till mot inf pays off.
If we consider the damage the enemy deals back to you, it's 7.8*1.7=13.26 attack for mot inf, 3.5*3.5=12.25 for AC. AC would be far better defensively (about 2x) if calculated this way. However, a truly active player doesn't care about efficiency only. The speed which you can get into the enemy economy with is very important. That's why I see mot inf as a far better early game option - AC takes too long to get through with.
One could consider early tactical bombers and artillery. Say, we have an enemy stack of 5 inf with 5 arty behind and 5 tac bombers patrolling over it. 12 mot inf will one-shot the 5 inf, receiving 61 damage total. The AC will need two attacks, and so will receive 80 damage. One could consider the damage efficiency and losing units, which is not included, as it'd favour the mot inf, because the AC would then need 3 shots. At 25% higher speed, mot inf proceeds the same distance within 20% less time. So, after the artillery is annihilated (which, again, would be easier with mot inf, which could one-shot even after the losses from the first engagement), the mot infantry receives exactly 30% more damage per distance (from the tac bombers) than AC. This is the only part that helps AC make any sense at all, but, due to its heavier damage, it may get slowed down and lose even that.
You could argue that mot infantry costs a lot of food. However, economy development is key for Axis. It's still just far better to spend food and invest oil/metal in economy, than directly invest oil and metal, forcing you to exchange food for them, which is rarely a bargain (the difference between selling and buying courses is so large that it's better to invest any resource directly, expect if comparing food and cheap rare materials). Also, AI only make offers once a day and they get harsh once you lose popularity, so preferring to spend oil and metal and compensate with food selling just makes no sense to me, if you can spend food directly.

As Axis, mot inf lv1 research is available at day 1 and takes 8 hours, so, if you had a lot of resources and the main concern was time (which is rather resources for skilled active players like Ivan), you could argue to already have two AC produced by the time the enemy starts producing mot inf. That's a large advantage (more numbers is an exponential one), but as I said, you rarely have enough resources, so the time isn't nearly as important unless the fight takes place like... the first 12 hours of the game.
I see a reason for you adding extra AC to yourself, but comparing to AC lv2 doesn't make the slightest sense to me. Both mot inf and AC have their elite level available from the same day (Axis) and the subelite is earlier for mot inf, as it has more levels. So, if anything makes sense, it's adding an extra level to the mot inf. Though yes, one should factor in the AC having shorter research times, it does not make it be one level ahead (as that's a whole different scale).


True, I'm not used to fighting scout units with scout units, I usually use planes to get rid of them.

Agreed, I rarely use mech as I play against tank users all the time. However, building a tank plant at day 1 is a waste - especially oil and metal are so worthy at that time, that you are far better off building a tank plant at day 2-3, even if that forced you to build an extra barracks at day 1 (you can only sell food by end of day 1 anyway, and if you don't have any to sell, it's still better than having it and selling it to get the oil and metal amount you spent on TP, and AC production.)
I agree that light armour is the best class for resisting planes late game. However, in the armour stacks as you mention, the AC is rather useless as it gets countered by the same units as the tanks. Mot inf is better there, as it gets rid of the tank's counters (or resists attack bomber strikes). Yes, AC holds provinces for reinforcements to arrive better, while mot inf is amazing at picking off the enemy's reinforcements and raiding. In case your enemy goes heavy on tacs, you still have your interceptors to destroy them, and you could also research strategic bombers if you anticipate the enemy reaction. AC on the other hand, are painfully weak against armour, so they just get chased down by LT, or just blocked by defensive units, and then need more support from your other units to break through, causing a loss of numbers advantage in the key fights.
Check mot inf vs AC values, AC is just a pain in offensives. Agreed, better at defending large fronts off (stalling the fight for bombers and land forces to take care of it).

Edit:

True that Ints are enough to be safe. But, keep in mind that bombers are primarily used to seek amazing engagements (having a stack of 10 bombers pick off 1-3 unit armies, which is very painful for the enemy). So, you would mass attack bombers up by day 2-3 rather, when many players tend to build AC, LT and Axis even MT already. After some scouting with my att bombers, I attacked an AC player (with Ints as well) and the ACs tried to escape but got all destroyed. He didn't have AA (would slow him down extremely ofc), nor MT (couldn't afford oil I guess), but he did have Ints, which lost their AC protection and got sniped with the mot inf, though they did considerable damage to my bombers.
Also, attack bombers have half the anti-ship values of naval, so they can take care of surprise landings, which I see as a sometimes large advantage.

If enemy bombers are out of the mid- to lategame picture, it actually favours the mot inf, which would get killed by tacs, while the AC is equally resistant to both tac and attack. They could split into 10's and do full damage, I know, but that can backfire if you still have some airpower around - you can focus them down, or if the bombers aren't so high-level and receive considerable damage from the AC, then the fact they multiply the damage the AC deals to them gets important and bad for them.
I think that the bomber aspect is in favour of the AC. So they'd probably get better in wars where you both focus more on bombers to destroy each other's forces and snipe airports occasionally.
I fully agree with "build only what you need, go deep, not wide".