In the Arms Race map, all playable territories began with 150 units each, an impressive military yet very resource draining. If you know your Art of War, you know the best way to use them is to not use them at all and let your enemies use theirs against you, or better against each other. And that's what I quite exceedingly did, but just several hours ago I was hit by a sudden realization that it's not as simple as I thought and maybe I'll even be doomed because of it. Some context, but you can skip it to TL;DR at the bottom.
I am MO and there is an enemy coalition nearby comprising of AL, MS, ETX, and WTX. WTX turns out to be a prodigy, and jointly attacked AR with MS, but KS decided to invade WTX. ETX and MS pretty much went AFK soon after, meanwhile AL invades FL. Then the most luckiest thing seemed to happen that TN (AI) gave me RoW, and AL and MS seems to have left their core provinces completely undefended to fight in the front line. I sent a single LT and was able to conquer the whole of AL and most of MS without losing any unit!
But while this was happening WTX managed to defeat back both KS and AR alone, WTX had around 120k casualties in total from both wars, and least 3 of their core cities were damaged including having capital getting captured once. I initially ignored this and did a stupid thing by invading IL, a not yet inactive but AFK player, I managed to take some good provinces and a city with only 1 unit of infantry loss.
Then I saw that MS became inactive and WTX was almost done with only remnants of AR and KS, I managed to pull back my troops from IL without trouble but WTX stroke quickly and attacked me. My spies revealed that WTX has rebuild their armies to an armored based one with some TAC, it's up to 85 units now compared to my slower 156 units, I don't think they're a gold user by the way.
And now, from the west, south, and east my core provinces are surrounded by WTX, remnants of MS--who still has their strong units, and IL. If IL also goes inactive I fear I'll be trapped in 2-front war, but most of my worries are with WTX who surrounded me the most, they're good at tactics and has multiple flanks stationed with very mobile units, plus an air support to block my own mobile units incursions into their territory. I'm besieged and cannot defend my conquered AL and MS territories, and that my resources aren't sufficient for an attritional warfare against all of them. I fear that I'll end up like the Romans in Cannea.
TL;DR someone "wasted" a lot of their troops in the arms race map, but managed to build a better military--as in more armor, more arties, and more TAC--in a short amount of time, while also can replace their losses better due to less consumption on their part--assume gold is not used. Meanwhile, I who saved my troops from getting wasted, can't hardly produce new units due to the maintaining cost, and are stuck with the initial "slow" units.
Next time in another Arms Race map maybe... should I just do what they did and "waste" my troops for the sake of making a better™ military?
Depends on the quality of the troops involved, and of the windows of time.
Maintenance cost is usually around 20% of the initial cost for SOME of building cost, so while in theory losing troops to gear up the economy and than outbuild is possible, it would only work on a fairly long frame of time - something like 3 weeks minimum (with the time to actually build up the economy with the saved resource). And that's assuming not losing the capital.
I suspect gold was involved 
The arms race requires ruthless expansion in the early game. Generally with moderate losses and good investment in core infrastructure during the first few days you will cross a threshold of sustainability when you have conquered 2 other player cores plus a minor Ai.
While I don’t advocate intentionally losing a portion of your starting units, a reduction in unit count and the related upkeep does allow you to invest in other unit types, which may be very effective. A majorly botched operation resulting in significant losses can be a blessing in disguise...if you live long enough to take advantage of it.
Is the inverse also true, where you got too lucky and didn't lose any starting units, something that's going to be a curse later on?VorlonFCW wrote:
While I don’t advocate intentionally losing a portion of your starting units, a reduction in unit count and the related upkeep does allow you to invest in other unit types, which may be very effective. A majorly botched operation resulting in significant losses can be a blessing in disguise...if you live long enough to take advantage of it.
Only if you stop expanding. You need to continue the pace of expanding and capturing provinces in order to grow in the arms race. If you get stuck without any expansion opportunities the size of your army will not be your only problem.
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