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[creodor]

Friend of mine poked me until I joined this game, so I'm at Rotherham in Great Britain. If anyone near me has about 1-2k steel to spare, I'd be happy to pay you back later on (or trade, if you happen to need small amounts of low end stuff). Trying to get a rail connection up right now though, and my steel plants are a bit slow presently.

[MaximumZero]

Alrighty, I'm going to give this a shot. Wish me luck.

[Paul]

Built 5 trains, gave 3 away so far.

I was going to keep building trains, but with activation looming I decided to build a 20% strength regiment of rocket artillery instead just in case we're attacked - so for the next week I'll be building that. Then I'll either make more trains or more rocket artillery, depending on the situation.

[Sheb]

Great Paul, now I just need to get out of that coal crunch. :/

[Neyvn]

I am down to 124 days before I get the ship now, running out of concrete too. Willing to swap Wood for Concrete. Seem to need that less...
Oh and any other kinds of things that I don't need, Sulfur, Ammo, Clothes, Wool, Horses, Etc...
Just things I don't need at the moment...

[Sheb]

Well, I'd like some steel back as I said. I can send you concret if you send me sompe coal for my train.

[Neyvn]

How much steel do you need???
How much coal do you need???
I have a Million Coal atm...

[Sheb]

Well, loads of coal, since I don't have any left. But I'm building those mines back.

Steel, well, 50k would be nice. I can let you have the rest of it.

[RedKing]

Just sent you a batch of coal, Sheb. Not much but every little bit helps...

Also, I was thinking that it would do us well to replicate something approximating the Home Guard and Territorial Army system of the British Army. There's a "Home Guard" unit that can be produced cheaper than regular infantry (and is cheaper to maintain and supply), but which defends as well or better than an infantry regiment. Each province could have a Home Guard unit assigned to it (and they could even be in a seperate chain of command from the Regular Army) to guard it's city, with perhaps a handful of other Home Guard units to defend harbor and critical sites near the coast. I was planning on researching the 1935 Home Guard tech next, and with our growing research capabilities it should take less than a week to do so. I could also tool up my meager factory capacity to crank HG units out. A Home Guard system (think of them as Garrison divisions in HOI) would free up all those regular infantry units for use overseas, and/or to be a mobile force to respond to incursions while the HG units man the static defenses.

[Paul]

Just sent you a batch of coal, Sheb. Not much but every little bit helps...

Also, I was thinking that it would do us well to replicate something approximating the Home Guard and Territorial Army system of the British Army. There's a "Home Guard" unit that can be produced cheaper than regular infantry (and is cheaper to maintain and supply), but which defends as well or better than an infantry regiment. Each province could have a Home Guard unit assigned to it (and they could even be in a seperate chain of command from the Regular Army) to guard it's city, with perhaps a handful of other Home Guard units to defend harbor and critical sites near the coast. I was planning on researching the 1935 Home Guard tech next, and with our growing research capabilities it should take less than a week to do so. I could also tool up my meager factory capacity to crank HG units out. A Home Guard system (think of them as Garrison divisions in HOI) would free up all those regular infantry units for use overseas, and/or to be a mobile force to respond to incursions while the HG units man the static defenses.

Home guard's soft attack is only 2, compared to regular infantry 4. How is that defending as good as regular infantry? They might die as good as regular infantry, but they aren't going to inflict as many casualties on the enemy during that defense.

The only use I see for home guard would be if you were heavily outgunned and needed to quickly overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers. They deal half the damage of regular infantry, but use half the ammo and take the same amount to kill. So if you were terribly outnumbered in arms and had a large population you could quickly build home guard to get a few extra units out there to try and hold the line (basically as fodder for your more expensive troops like artillery and planes and such). Long-term it's a waste of manpower, but short term it could save you.

-edit- They only get a 20% defense bonus in cities too, compared to 50% for infantry and 60% for the specialized infantry (marines, paratroopers, mountain)

[RedKing]

Looking forward at the 1935 tech, Home Guard units have a resistance of 3, compared to 2 for infantry at 1935 levels. I'm projecting that differential to keep going as we tech up, making them more cost-efficient defenders. Yeah, they're not going to inflict heavy losses on the enemy, but the point of them is to hold ground long enough that somebody can't just land a batch of cavalry and have them race all over the country grabbing key locations uncontested. HG are drastically cheaper with regards to steel and wood, and take about half the ammo to be considered battle-ready. And, if I'm reading the Wiki properly, militia/Home Guard regiments have ZERO recruitment cost (as opposed to $25K for an infantry regiment).

I see now what you're talking about regarding the defense bonuses--which is BS....militia should get roughly the same IMHO. Even cavalry get more, and then motorized infantry only get a 10% defense bonus which makes no sense. if anything, they should have an equal or better bonus than foot infantry, because their jeep and trucks allow them to redeploy more effectively within the city.

I dunno...with that bit of info, I'm not sure if Home Guard units are worth it or not now. The zero recruitment cost, if correct, is a big deal because money doesn't come that easily, and saving it on garrison units means more available for building tanks and big ships.

[Paul]

They're cheap in materials to recruit, but you have to consider the manpower cost. Manpower is what produces the materials, and it's one of the slowest things to produce. You need workers and builders to produce everything, so every bit of manpower you have at home can be building more steel and rubber and money and tanks and etc.

The wiki has charts for all the unit types. Militia get a little bit better resistance than regular infantry, but not as much as the specialized infantry. And their attack power is only half that of the regular infantry. Throw in the defensive and offensive penalties applied based on terrain and you have a terrible unit that will only end up wasting a huge amount of manpower.

The 25k money to recruit infantry is easy to raise. The 1000 workers that a unit of home guard takes, working in level 20 buildings (taking into account the workers needed for the power station/coal etc to keep the bank powered) could produce about 1170 money per hour. The efficiency gets higher at higher building levels, but even at level 20 the troops could raise more than enough money for their own deployment in less than a day.

[andrea]

it should be noted that to get 1000 people in a day, you need 42 per hour. Later in the game, I suppose infantry will be a minor cost in manpower.

by the way, when building my tanks, should I wait until I have 100, or is it better to just make units of 20 tanks?

[Paul]

it should be noted that to get 1000 people in a day, you need 42 per hour. Later in the game, I suppose infantry will be a minor cost in manpower.

by the way, when building my tanks, should I wait until I have 100, or is it better to just make units of 20 tanks?

You can always reinforce them later if you want to start with 20.

As far as it being a minor cost, I don't think manpower will ever be a minor cost. Most buildings scale up at a really fast rate. For most buildings a level 50 building produces 100x that of a level 5. In cities, a level 50 city produces only 13.6 times that of a level 5 city. Later when our buildings are producing far more resources and production points we'll be able to churn out infantry equipment much faster than we can grow the manpower for it. At high building levels, especially once we start getting the production experience, we'll be able to churn out even marines and paratroopers (all resources to produce them + the production points) faster than we can get the men to use the equipment.

[andrea]

what I meant is, the manpower cost of infantry will be minor compared to what is needed to upgrade and run most buildings.