Those are common Axis practices that usually led the players I advised to success.
Axis have expensive units, which makes the economy the main early game concern. In this build order you prioritize economy early game. I recommend reading the forum guides or Wiki first if you're new.
Please don't start the game before reading the guide carefully.
Day 1
If food prices are under 6 per unit, buy 5+k food.
First, you check your country carefully and see how many non-city (rural) provinces produce each resource. You will boost oil and food with industry. If there is a resource that none of your rural provinces produces, boost that as the 3rd resource; boost metal as 3rd otherwise.
But first, you need to build production buildings. There are two resources you won't be boosting; in one of their cities, build Barracks (and upgrade to lv2 ASAP). If you managed to buy 5k food build a second barracks lv1 in the other. In the oil city, build Industry straight away (do it in the food city instead if no rural province produces food and two produce oil).
While two are busy with Barracks and one with Industry, you build aircraft factories in the two remainings. Once the lv1 air factories are complete, start building Industry.
Also, build Local Industry in all core rural (non-city) provinces that produce any resource.
At the start of the game, the only you research is infantry, motorized infantry, attack bomber and interceptor. Do not research anything else till day 3.
Produce infantry (4 max), but make sure the barracks are idle when mot infantry is researched, so you can produce as much mot infantry as possible (use queues if you can). One air factory will produce Interceptors, the other attack bombers.
Split the 2 armoured cars out and send them to merge with the mot infantry. There mustn’t be any other unit split out with the armoured cars, check the bar at the bottom to make sure.
Choose a player country (not an AI!) you’ll attack on day 2. Check the (i) button on players in Diplomacy to see their stats and try not to fight a high-level player (if you don’t understand this, just choose any opponent that has 5 cities).
Send all your troops to one province far from the border with the player. Don't move the troops already at the borders with your target, just not to look active or dangerous.
Day 2
By the end of day 2, you should have 5 mot infantry at least and 2 AC with them. Send all your Infantry to one border province with the target. If you’ve got more than 10 Infantry, the extra infantry should go to the border provinces with the enemy to defend against attacks. All Anti Air guns must be sent to protect the border provinces (AA guns are slow, so useless for attacks, but can add extra HP to the defending infantry).
Make sure you built an airstrip very close to the borders if there isn’t one already, and when you’re active, send the attack bombers there (to reveal enemy armies and destroy tanks as soon as you see them, don't direct attack the light tanks, patrol over them. It’ll work as long as you’re already at war. Make sure your attack bombers are all in a single army, also with interceptors if those have enough range.)
Make sure the 5+ mot infantry and 2 armoured cars are ONE army on the map, same about the 10 infantry.
The 10 infantry go forward and capture the nearest cities. Set waypoints so you don’t forget your infantry idle during the invasion.
The 5+ mot inf and 2 AC should go around and capture the furthest cities. Capture the capital as the last city.
If daychange is about to happen soon (within 5 hours) do not capture any of the cities, just leave the 10 infantry waiting very close to one city and the mot inf+AC waiting close to the far cities. Capture all of them through a single in-game day, the capital being the last one.
If you captured the capital first, the still enemy cities wouldn't get the bonus, if it wasn't through a single day, revolts would already happen at daychange. Following this advice, the morale bonus will remove the revolt chances. That’s useful as you’d need to leave units otherwise, and having a smaller army is an exponential disadvantage (X times smaller army=X*X times less instant strength).
Day 3
As soon as you defeat the player country, send some armies home. You should conquer two AI countries, to gain morale from capturing the capitals.
When fighting AI, have 1 Infantry in every border province with them except the one you’re attacking from. The main army should be at least 6 units. If their units are moving towards yours, stop your units in their way, let them ram into you and fight, and don't do anything. This way you’ll only be defending and gain a large advantage, assuming you’re using Infantry. Which is recommended, as you need mot infantry against difficult opponents.
You should have Industry lv2-3 in your oil, food and 3rd resource cities at this point. If not now, then once you do, start Industry in the two Barracks cities as well. Also, as soon as your manpower goes under 12k, start building recruiting stations in your core rural provinces that don’t produce a resource. The first wave should be 4-5 recruiting stations. You’ll have to cease food spending on mot inf, research medium tanks (MT) and produce them.
Also, build any new factories in non-core cities, not to slow down the economic buildup. Go all the way to industry lv5 in all core cities and local lv3 in all core rural provinces with resource production.
Later
If you have 10+ mot infantry, it’s worth researching lv3 and upgrading to there directly from lv1.
Produce units in such a balance to spend abundant resources; keep researching higher levels of the key units, and upgrading their factories. That way you can get a powerful army quickly. It’s recommended to add SP Artillery and Interceptors. If you want to add a new unit to the composition, consider building 3-4 lv1 factories for them and producing a lot of lv1’s quickly. Then, research higher levels and when your research is 6-10 days (of availability) ahead of lv1, upgrade all the lv1’s. For example, if lv1 is available from day 2 and your currently researched level is from day 10, you’re 8 days ahead.
To do this properly, choose the level X you want to direct-upgrade the lv1's to. Then, plan the research in such a way that, mainly, level X is complete as early as possible, but with lv2 being complete as late as possible (to give more space to the lv1 production).
Watch your terrain. If it’s very mountainous, it’s a good idea to focus on artillery and planes.
To protect yourself against airstrikes/artillery, add (SP)AA, and mainly, meatshield units. Those are lv1 militia for example. A large amount of them drastically reduces the damage other units receive, so the units will survive far longer and deal more damage. However, out of mountains, you don’t have so much time to fire with artillery and bombers before the enemy army can reach your stack, so slow large stacks get ineffective. Especially as Axis, which is pretty good at focusing on upgrading fewer units to max and getting a very effective army. Also, rocket fighters, however great the Axis buff is, aren’t very useful on large fronts or in offensives. They are a great defence against concentrated air push, though.
Axis has fairly fast units (esp. mot infantry and medium tanks). Consider adding high-level strat bombers, for long-range scouting and destroying the enemy factories quickly. When you attack the enemy, send all the land units (mot inf+MT) forward, and first, find the armies whose strength against attack bombers is the smallest compared to their strength against mot inf+MT. Attack those armies with attack bombers. If there are multiple, target the ones which are the closest to merging into a strong army first. If none of them are, target the smallest ones first. Again, planes to be stacked into groups of 10 planes per plane type (eg. 10 attack + 10 Ints, don't do with strats).
It's important to learn combat mechanics and check stats of the enemy units to determine which ones are the most dangerous. Target their factories with the strat bombers. Also, remember not to research too many units (submarines, naval bombers, attack bombers, interceptors, mot infantry, medium tanks is enough). For a non-coastal country, replace the naval bombers with SP Artillery which is great on land, many 10-stacks of them can create concentrated firepower to destroy large stacks. With strat bombers, Ints and activity, you'll be mostly able to destroy all enemy airforce. Be especially cautious with SP arty, which would get punished the hardest for no AA cover.
The followup, I feel, isn't considered early game anymore.
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Going for inf is a waste of ress. Att bombers are somewhat usefull, but not in early game. All you need in the start are ints to defend and secure air dominance. Ac is better then mot, so go for ac. Tanks are tricky, i would mostly go for td. But as axis mt can be an option.
infantry is a top notch unit mate. I think your confusing 1.0 meta to 1.5 in 1.0 building infantry was useless but now they actually have their uses. While you're right Acs do have their benefits using them alone is suicidal. what will they do against enemy anti tanks and artillery. since you don't have any motorized to counter these units your screwed
Maybe, or maybe you dont see the weakness in inf. Ppl forget that research time is also a res. So dont waste it on inf. All doctrines exept allays need to chose carefully what to research. Since killing inf is rasy i would rather go fore something else, harder to kill. Counters are arty in any form. Not inf
you can use still use infantry and have enough resources to fully research the rest of your units. And plus while infantry might be squishy if you add things like tanks to it it can have a decent healthpool. Also you haven't answered my question how will you deal with anti tank and artillery using only armoured cars
Never combine fast and slow troops. And moto inf in a tank stack dies fasr as the only soft target.
of course you never combine slow units together that's a fast hard rule. Also your acting has if healthpool is the single most important factor when creating a stack. while it is important to some degree. there are other things to consider like a stack cheapness and of course the most important thing is balance infantry creates balanced stacks . and its not like it takes away research as i said you can have fully researched army while using infantry.
Play vs the good players ynd then tell me hiw much i f is worth. At best it has a situational value, not enough to justefy research most of the time.
lol i think we can do this all day. I am going to say it once more infantry creates balanced stacks. If you can somehow convince me that you can use axis doctrine. which is probably the top 2 tank doctrine in the game WITHOUT infantry support then I will back you.
Just as a reminder, AC vs. mot inf damage values:Ivan Bukovec wrote:
Going for inf is a waste of ress. Att bombers are somewhat usefull, but not in early game. All you need in the start are ints to defend and secure air dominance. Ac is better then mot, so go for ac. Tanks are tricky, i would mostly go for td. But as axis mt can be an option.
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.
You should compare lvl2 AC vs lvl 1 mot.inf., beacause lvl1 mot. inf. is tier 2 weapon.
Ac kills moto inf at same level, most of the time ac is a level above moto. Ac needs tank plant, which can be used for the armor you chose to build. Baracks can build mech. Mech is luxury and weak vs armor. So i save on infra. Most planes are good vs soft targets, so moto has a hard time. Ac is more resistant. Role of scout is to take unprotected province, not to fight. Ac can defend if needed and stall until reinforcements arive, moto a lot harder. Ac hides well in armor stack, moto dies fast there. Only thing that goes for moto is a little higher speed, not teally worth it.
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.Ivan Bukovec wrote:
Ac kills moto inf at same level,
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.)Ivan Bukovec wrote:
Ac needs tank plant, which can be used for the armor you chose to build. Baracks can build mech. Mech is luxury and weak vs armor.
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.Ivan Bukovec wrote:
Most planes are good vs soft targets, so moto has a hard time. Ac is more resistant. Role of scout is to take unprotected province, not to fight. Ac can defend if needed and stall until reinforcements arive, moto a lot harder. Ac hides well in armor stack, moto dies fast there.
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.Ivan Bukovec wrote:
Att bombers are somewhat usefull, but not in early game. All you need in the start are ints to defend and secure air dominance.
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 you build mostly int, you should be able to have air supwriorety. So enemy bombers dont matter. Build only what you need, go deep, not wide.
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.Ivan Bukovec wrote:
If you build mostly int, you should be able to have air supwriorety. So enemy bombers dont matter. Build only what you need, go deep, not wide.
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".
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