Again, because it's very important: infantry

OMG, this question has long been resolved in Supremacy 1914

Edepedable wrote:

K.Rokossovski 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.

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 ...

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

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.

Just take the best of S1914 and CoW

It's really works

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.

• 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 ...

Edepedable wrote:

11 infantry: 14,300 manpower

49 aircraft: 19,600 manpower

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.

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.

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.

Edepedable wrote:

The whole possibility to be bought does not exist for manpower, and so it is more rare.

I agree with nemuritor98 that you can buy manpower with gold. You can also buy other resources with it (e.g. oil, food, etc.). I highly recommend the $29.99 package ...

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 https://weltkrieg2.de/deutsche-kraefteverteilung-1942/

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

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.

All in all we may disagree about some details, but agree on the main points:

1. It is unrealistic and weird that - in COW - Infantry are basically a mistake to build, while they were the mainstay of all armies in WW2.

2. COW 1.0 is far from reaching its full potential (and should not be replaced by COW 1.5)

Would be more appropriate to reduce the food costs for each barracks which is far in excess of the facility.

Further reduce dramatically the TIME it takes to train Infantry and that would also have a major impact on the use of the unit type.

@EZ Dolittle, I answered both remarks already on page 1 of this thread.

See mainly --> this post <-- concerning infantry recruitment duration and --> this post <-- concerning costs of barracks.

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. ressources	prod. manpower	upkeep ressources	upkeep manpower
Militia	650	1300	50	75
Reg. infantry	1525	1300	90	110
Artillery	1550	1000	50	60
Anti tank	1900	1000	70	60
Anti air	1350	750	50	45
Mot. infantry	2410	1300	165	100
Armored car	2400	675	110	0
Light tank	3650	625	125	0
Medium tank	5100	800	195	0
Mech. infantry	3800	1200	190	100

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?

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.

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.

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.

Teburu wrote:

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

Reading me the following day, I realize I sound like I advocate "full infantry". It is not quite true. I advocate a infantry - arty (and when planes start buzzing around - AA) mix, with AT only being built in a few circumstances (and low prio'd in terms of research), rather than a pure no-infantry mix.