How much does artillery help?

@U-505:

Trust me, Froodster. You gotta believe that I’m trying to help when I say that, in most cases, armor’s mobility is overrated. Love artillery and it will love you back.  :-D

What I see about artillery:

Inf/artillery cost more than 2 inf.  They attack the same and defend the same, but cost more.  Inf/art have no mobility advantage.

What I see about tank:

Inf/tank cost more than 2 inf.  Tank is far more mobile.  Tank defends on 3.

–

I believe that art. units are almost exclusively for late game, and even then conditional upon the position.

Trust me.  You gotta believe I’m trying to help when I eat all your cookies.  Chocolate chip is overrated.  Love your oatmeal and it will love you back.  :-D

Screw oatmeal. Thin mint is by far the best cookie artillery out there. Besides owls don’t eat cookies. Stick to mice and tootsie pops.  :-P

What I see about armor:

Tank mobility is rarely useful for anything but Africa. When the Japanese reach the Cauc, Kaz, Novo bottlenecks, armors mobility is nullified because they can’t shift to threaten a different territory without taking more than one turn. On the European front, the frontlines are usually static so armors mobility is also nullified. Armor supports infantry, which is only as mobile as artillery. Armors defensive superiority is offset because you can produce more artillery for your money. And when you are trading territories and you have to attack more territories than you have air units to assist with, the guy trading his artillery for the guy trading his armor will come out ahead.

Trust me. You gotta believe that I’m trying to help when I sink all of your transports. Destroyers are overrated. Love your torpedo and it will love you back. Oh yeah, baby. It WILL love you back. :-D

Tank mobility is rarely useful for anything but Africa

If you say this then I think maybe you’re not using tanks to their full potential.

Yes, Africa generally provides the widest-open spaces for tanks to blitz through and sweep up a number of territories in a round, but their range also means that you can keep them back behind your front lines in position to strike a number of territories.

Put it this way:

An Inf in the Ukraine can reach five territories.

A tank in the Ukraine can potentially reach TWELVE territories.

~Josh

Inf/artillery cost more than 2 inf.  They attack the same and defend the same, but cost more.

what chu talkin’ 'bout willis?

i feel art is early game and as it moves forward with the inf then armor can catch up for the knockout punch with steady columns of infantry feeding new fodder to the slaughterhouse

Big stack of tanks in EE also very nice… as I said before, can strike every single European territory from there, plus Karelia and Archangel. They defend Ger/WE/SE/EE while simultaneously threatening Ukr/Belo/WRus/Karelia and maybe even Archangel

On defence, armor are a better buy than artillery -
20 IPCs on tanks = 4@3 = 12
20 IPCs on armor = 5@2 = 10 (though you get the extra unit to take one more hit, but that’s less important because your Inf are there to absorb the first 1-2 rounds of hits)

But yeah, Inf/Art do attack better than 2 Inf. But Inf/Arm attacks better than Inf/Art, because with your first casualty you only lose an attack of 1, while with Inf/Art you lose an attack of 2.

@U-505:

And when you are trading territories and you have to attack more territories than you have air units to assist with, the guy trading his artillery for the guy trading his armor will come out ahead.

Quote from Critmonster, “i feel art is early game and as it moves forward with the inf then armor can catch up for the knockout punch with steady columns of infantry feeding new fodder to the slaughterhouse”

U505 makes a good point, and it goes along with critmonster’s just after.  trading art in greater numbers (w/ inf) for your opponent’s tanks is much better, because you will have more inf/art than tanks, more than likely, especially when you are fighting over a territory that costs only 2 or 3.  
Art has it’s place, as critmonster said, it is great early to march with the inf and then later the tanks can be more quickly rushed to the front to support, or turned about to counter a threat on the flank.  if you are Jpn, you can load inf/art early into asia and then follow up with the tanks that can catch up.

of course that’s just my opinion, i could be wrong…

I think if you trade territories with anything more than Inf/Ftrs you need to check your head.

@froodster:

I think if you trade territories with anything more than Inf/Ftrs you need to check your head.

i agree frood, but that was the example given, so in that scenario, the art is the better trade.

i’ve been trying to read back through earlier posts, is there a baseline that is being asked about art vs other things?  is it art by itself?  supported with inf?  w/ arm?  fighters?

i’ve been running the 4 arm vs 5 inf on your calc, and art comes out ahead the far majority of the time, defending or attacking.  I gotta say too, the whole aacalc thing is awesome, great job

Thanks. But as I said above, the sim completely ignores the tactical benefits of the speed of armor, which also must be considered. If Armor moved only 1, it wouldn’t be worth the price. But if Armor moved 1, attacked 3/3 and cost 4 IPCs, it would be a lot better than Artillery. Even with Attack/Defend of 3/2 it would be better than artillery, because it would concentrate the punch at the top end of your force. And even at that it would be a better buy than Infantry at 4 IPCs. Not sure of my point anymore…

Also, try this attack (equal IPCs)

5 Inf 5 Art attacking 5 Inf 4 Arm - the Inf/Armor force defending comes out ahead.

Quick link

Actually having the options attack each other is not a good comparison since their attack values and defense values are not equal.

Send both forces against an all infantry defender and it becomes obvious that the INF/ART force is more effective than the same IPC INF/ARM force.

http://frood.net/aacalc/?abortratio=0&saveunits=0&strafeunits=0&mustland=0&aInf=5&aArt=&aArm=4&aFig=&aJFig=&aBom=&aHBom=&aTra=&aLTra=&aCar=&aSub=&aSSub=&aDes=&aBat=&adBat=&dInf=8&dArt=&dArm=&dFig=&dJFig=&dBom=&dHBom=&dTra=&dLTra=&dCar=&dSub=&dSSub=&dDes=&dBat=&ddBat=&ool_att=Bat-Inf-Art-Arm-Tra-Sub-SSub-Fig-JFig-Des-Bom-HBom-Car-dBat-LTra&ool_def=Bat-Inf-Art-Arm-Tra-Sub-SSub-Bom-HBom-Des-Fig-JFig-Car-dBat-LTra&round=1&territory=&battle=Run&rounds=&reps=10000&luck=pure&ruleset=Revised&pbem=

http://frood.net/aacalc/?abortratio=0&saveunits=0&strafeunits=0&mustland=0&aInf=5&aArt=5&aArm=&aFig=&aJFig=&aBom=&aHBom=&aTra=&aLTra=&aCar=&aSub=&aSSub=&aDes=&aBat=&adBat=&dInf=8&dArt=&dArm=&dFig=&dJFig=&dBom=&dHBom=&dTra=&dLTra=&dCar=&dSub=&dSSub=&dDes=&dBat=&ddBat=&ool_att=Bat-Inf-Art-Arm-Tra-Sub-SSub-Fig-JFig-Des-Bom-HBom-Car-dBat-LTra&ool_def=Bat-Inf-Art-Arm-Tra-Sub-SSub-Bom-HBom-Des-Fig-JFig-Car-dBat-LTra&round=1&territory=&battle=Run&rounds=&reps=10000&luck=pure&ruleset=Revised&pbem=

The success rate of the ART/INF force is higher than that of the ARM/INF force.

On defense, the ARM/INF combination actually outperforms the same IPC ART/INF combination.

With this in mind, a cheap bone crushing offense is equal amounts of ART and INF.  A better defending force is ARM/INF.  In the context of the game, buying ART/INF early as offensives are taking place makes sense.  As front lines solidify, ARM/INF becomes a better deal, especially given the ability of ARM to manuveur in response to the enemy.

Not quite what one would expect.

@Baghdaddy:

On defense, the ARM/INF combination actually outperforms the same IPC ART/INF combination.

I disagree.

On defense, I set up the two following scenarios with 60IPC of defenders:

7inf 7arm attacking 12arm: A Survives 54.2%, D Survives 43.6%, Mutual Destruction 2.2%
Quick link

7inf 7arm attacking 15art: A Survives 51.2%, D Survives 47.6%, Mutual Destruction 1.3%
Quick link

The attacking force isn’t really important (as long as it is the same force in both scenarios), but this shows that in this scenario the artillery are clearly better for defending than armour.  However, some scenarios (with a better skew of defensive forces) would perform better defensively with a build of armour.  eg:

7inf 7arm attacking 6inf 8 arm: A Survives 28.2%, D Survives 70%, Mutual Destructon 1.6%
Quick link

7inf 7arm attacking 6inf 10art:  A Survives 36.9%, D Survives 62.1%, Mutual Destructon 0.8%
Quick link

It depends on the scenario.  Sometimes arm defends better than art, and sometimes art defends better than arm.

IT depends on how munch infantry are protecting your art/arm. IF you have allot of infantry, tanks are better. this is because the 3 punch units are saved till the end instead of a equally distribution of loss of punch. this is even more true on offense.

@cyan:

IT depends on how munch infantry are protecting your art/arm. IF you have allot of infantry, tanks are better. this is because the 3 punch units are saved till the end instead of a equally distribution of loss of punch. this is even more true on offense.

Yes.  In all the examples I looked at, I always put at least 1 INF in for each of the ART (one less for ARM since I was keeping the IPC count the same).

Not including INF in these examples really is not of interest to me since I don’t see myself ever attempting to attack or defend with out having made an effort to have about half my force to be INF.  This tends to be a default due to transports.

It might be worth looking at this ratio for the land battles between Germany and USSR but I’m not that bored today.

I worked out a long analysis in another thread like this and the cheapest and most effective ratio is basically a 3:1:1 or 4:1:1.

It is far superior to any other grouping and is not only great at defense but equally as good at taking out any army. (15+ units)

Simply speaking, it you are worried only about defense, then Infantry is all you should buy.  That is a bit unrealistic since you do need to attack at somepoint esp if you’re the Axis.

Of course this is very simplistic but the point is if you have the time some RT are good usually in equal numbers to your ARM with a ton of inf to absorb the initial rds of combat.

An analysis I did in Classic that still holds for revised is that regardless of what units you buy as the stacks get larger (15+ units) you need to outspend your opponent 4:3 in order to take.  I believe that may be ignoring air units.

5:2:1 is my prefered ratio

@ncscswitch:

5:2:1 is my prefered ratio

3:1:1 but it ussaly ends up bieng 10:8:1. harder to apply than come up with.

They are land unit build/combat ratios.

First number INF, second ART, third ARM

I think that somewhere in the 3.1.1 to 5.2.1 is a good call.

After further reflection, we are comparing sims of 5inf/4art v 5inf/4arm or 7/7s v whatever…  i may just want a perfect world on this, but I do not think I’m going to attack 9 inf and arm with 10 inf/art, attacking with only the same amount of units or 1 more than just doesn’t seem like the best odds… maybe if we add int the fighter support.  if there is 7 inf/7arm in a territory, I’m not going into it without at least a 50% number superiority to take losses, whether it’s with fighters or more land units.  Might as well stack and make them do it too while I look for the flank…  Why let them see it coming, of course I might just want it all, that’s the japanese way, or is it the german…hmmm

It’s situational. I wouldn’t use artillery or armor to defend Western Europe just to keep those ratios even. Anything but inf and fig’s there is a waste of firepower.

@froodster:

I think if you trade territories with anything more than Inf/Ftrs you need to check your head.

Unfortunately, that means the Russian player has to check his head every turn.  :lol: With only 2 starting fighters and usually 3 or more territories to trade, it becomes a case of either using art/arm or letting the axis have uncontested IPC’s. Always a tough decision there.