Infantry in Uncommon Valor Thread - Axis & Allies: Uncommon Valor mod for Axis & Allies

Axis & Allies has always kind of been a game where infantry fall off and out of usefulness pretty quickly and pretty hard. They're marginally more useful and cost-efficient for holding cities and forests, but even in these advantageous situations, even a dedicated AT infantry regiment typically loses versus something like vanilla halftrack AT or artillery regiments. Uncommon Valor goes much beyond this, and in my admittedly somewhat limited time playing this mod I have not come across a single situation where I could consider infantry regiments to be a useful allocation of resources.

The two main reasons for this are as follows:

1. The effectiveness of anti-infantry weapons have been dramatically increased. Artillery, Machine guns and even SMGs now do significantly increased damage thanks to bonus AV tacked on to most of their attacks, which ignores defense and combat efficiency values (the red bar for regiments). The "Improved Machine Guns" tech was also doubled in effectiveness, as was "Improved Mortars". Infantry will now die incredibly quickly even in the most advantageous positions, such as being entrenched and in a city or forest.

2. Infantry are now hopeless versus armor. In the base game, infantry could eventually kill tanks by chipping away at their HP with damage floor level gunfire or grenade attacks, with infantry AT capable of killing vanilla medium tanks in 6 to 7 somewhat fast-firing shots. This is no longer the case, as tank HP has increased massively. A USA infantry bazooka would now take over 2 minutes to kill a single Panzer 1 (420 hp, bazooka does 105 damage every 30 seconds). Anti-tank guns generally fare no better, since they still have low health (150) and most still have short (vanilla Infantry AT) range. For example: A 57mm AT gun would take 6 shots (with 7 seconds reload time) to kill the same Panzer 1. To kill an early war Stug III Ausf A or Panzer III, the number of shots required raises to 10 (so 70 seconds), while the Stug is easily capable of killing the AT gun in 2 shots (14s) thanks to bonus damage, and the Panzer III is not far behind, even without MGs. Even against mechanized/motorized units Infantry AT effectiveness is dubious, since machine guns will shred through infantry very quickly, and the ammo upkeep of infantry AT or ATG units is not far behind that of more effective mechanized options.

This is something I consider a major issue - at least for me, it prevents me from enjoying playing the mod very much. Currently, infantry regiments of basically all varieties must be considered totally disposable from the outset, and outright unusable after the early stage of the game ends because of their intense vulnerability to every other unit type in the game. This approach could maybe still be considered balanced - even if I would still dislike it from a gameplay perspective- but infantry are not cost or supply efficient either. A German "Panzer I/II Regiment" (ger_regiment_tankette) costs 125 money with an upkeep of 10 ammo (the same as an infantry regiment) and 15 oil, but will win 100% of the time versus even an entire division of infantry regiments (250-300 money, 50-60 ammo upkeep).

I personally consider this state of affairs neither balanced nor particularly enjoyable, but I am curious to hear others' thoughts on the matter.

(The last option on the Poll ("Too") was supposed to be "Too Strong". I had decided against making a poll half-way through typing the option out, but ModDB forced the poll in anyway even after I unchecked the box for including it. Unfortunately, I can't edit or remove the poll to correct this mistake.)

Edited by: Wordsarecool

I did an edit so that the last line is "too strong".

I don't really see the poll as a mistake, though.

as for the strength of infantry regiments against tanks, it depends on what types of infantry regiments you're using against what types of vehicles. part of why I increased the number of available division tents is because you generally need numerical advantage to get infantry to prevail against halftracks and vehicles.

one of the main reasons I eliminated the ability of artillery halftracks and artillery tanks to bombard targets at long range is because I didn't like how they dominated infantry, armored cars, tanks, and other units that didn't have the attack range to fight back. the fact that motorized gun carriages like this could fire at long range and retreat before the infantry could reach them was another reason why I got rid of the bombard ability.

I've had people complain about that... because that was their key to winning the game. spamming artillery halftracks and artillery tanks and crushing the opposition.

I felt that infantry field gun regiments were actually too powerful in the original version of the mod. they could bombard for unlimited periods of time and inflict huge amounts of morale loss and damage. if you protected them behind a screen of bunkers or medium tanks, they could pretty much defeat anything in the game. that's a big reason why I added the self-damaging attack to artillery so that they would eventually destroy themselves and need the unit to get replaced within a friendly supply zone. this way artillery couldn't single-handedly win the game.

when using infantry, you always need a strong economy. you'll need to have complete numerical superiority to have a real chance at winning against adversaries who will eventually have access to tanks. this means you need to capture two or three very easily defended cities and generate money quickly.

if your enemy starts making tanks and has 20 regiments in the field. you're probably going to need 40-to-70 regiments to realistically defeat them.

1. pick terrain that is favorable towards infantry and unfavorable towards tanks. cities, forests, choke points at river crossings and mountain passes. cities give you a zone of supply and an enhanced rate of resupply. crop fields will do this too.

2. invest in technology to maximize your dependence on infantry. if you're playing as the United States make sure that you invest in Combat Medicine, Plentiful Ammo, Foraging, and Mechanical Reliability. these all increase your regiment's ability to heal after a fight. if you're playing with German infantry, for example, you also want to invest in Advanced Armor Training to give your artillery a 3-point attack bonus and increased morale.

2. you'll need engineers to help to reinforce that location with machine gun bunkers, artillery bunkers, anti-tank bunkers. it also helps if you add in obstacles such as dragon's teeth, barbed wire, and minefields. don't be afraid to build an infantry trench or two. you'll need to fortify the forward lines that are going to get attacked as well as the reverse side of the city. don't fight tanks with just infantry. use bunkers and obstacles to help them out.

3. prepare supply depot lines so that if the city comes under siege your infantry can use their faster rate of resupply.

4. the higher health values of tanks is a double-edged sword. German tank regiments now take three-to-four times as long to regain their full strength. use that to your advantage.

5. anti-tank infantry and mortars are probably the best combination for close-range fighting. you'll need mortars to inflict morale damage, and AT infantry to stun the tanks. you'll local numerical superiority in order to win. we're talking about odds of at least two-to-one in your favor to hold a position. if you actually want to win you'll need a numerical advantage of four-to-six times more regiments.

6. Banzai and Goliath infantry have been dramatically improved. most flamethrower infantry now have lingering flame attacks that stay on tanks for several seconds.

a good example would be six Russian medium tank regiments attacking a position.

if you're playing as Japan you'd probably want two six regiment groups of anti-tank and banzai infantry entrenched near some bunkers.

you would support them initially with a light artillery barrage as the enemy tanks approach to lower their morale. light artillery's high rate of fire is probably best at lowering their morale and health before they get within attack range of the infantry. the bunkers should be there to absorb most of their firepower.

when they reach the bunker line, respond with medium artillery. these have a smoke barrage enchantment that slows down the attack and movement speed of tanks that are hit by their shells. this enchantment lasts 2-to-4 seconds. this gives the AT and mortar units more time to inflict damage.

finally, you'll probably need some heavy artillery or a special op to wipe out the enemy tanks. heavy artillery tends to have a slow rate of fire, but higher attack values. wait until the tanks are down on their health and then unleash a barrage from heavy guns and while the medium guns are still firing. you might only get one solid blast on them before they panic and run away, or over-run your position. the combined speed penalties on the attack and movement of enemy tanks will make them even more vulnerable to the infantry. if the infantry regiments are too badly mauled, be ready to use aircraft to drive the enemy tanks away.

the most important thing to remember is that if you're stuck playing with infantry against enemy tanks you need numbers. you'll need to keep those numbers up.

I've had maps where I played as Lithuania and defeated the Soviet Union with nothing but infantry divisions. a lot of it really depends on the tactics that you use and having a strong economy.

NUMERICAL SUPERIORITY IS REQUIRED FOR INFANTRY TO DEFEAT TANKS. YOU'LL NEED ODDS OF TWO-TO-ONE IN YOUR FAVOR TO BREAK EVEN. PROBABLY FOUR-TO-ONE IN YOUR FAVOR TO GUARANTEE A WIN. BE PREPARED TO MANAGE 60 INFANTRY REGIMENTS AT THE SAME TIME TO DEFEAT TANKS.

if you're playing with infantry and want to defeat halftracks and tanks the main requirement has always been numbers. even in the original game I found that if the AI had 20 regiments of tanks or AT mech I would need at least 50 or more infantry regiments to have a chance at winning. infantry couldn't defeat mech and armor without the generous use of bombers and special ops.

OBSTACLES ARE CHEAP AND DISPOSABLE.

one thing to consider is that mines and obstacles can make the difference between victory and defeat. the French did not have ANY anti-tank or anti-personnel mines at the Sedan crossing in 1940. if they had employed minefields, and then used machine guns and mortars to prevent engineers from finding and removing those mines, the German attempt to cross the Sedan river might have turned out very differently.

the Russians buried hundreds of thousands mines at the battle of Kursk. they also had mile-after-mile of barbed wire and anti-tank obstacles. the fact that the original game did not have any obstacles was a big problem. one of the first things that I did any my mod was allow engineers to construct minefields and obstacles. any well-integrated infantry strategy should make extensive use of mines and obstacles.

when Hungary decided to build the Arpad line they realized that they could never match the volumes of concrete and steel that the French and the Germans had employed. they decided to set their defense around the use of obstacles based on the Finnish strategy used at the Mannerheim Line. these obstacles were to prevent vehicles from advancing. the obstacles were protected by both minefields and weapons. machine guns and mortars were used to prevent the obstacles from being removed.

the obstacles and fortifications were part of a larger flexible defense in depth approach that Finland had used to win a negotiated settlement in the Winter War. the Hungarians were able to hold down nearly four times as many Russians for a month at Dukla Pass using this approach. although the Fins ultimately had to settle for negotiations, their use of fortifications was decisive in getting something like a victory.

although you believe regiments are expensive and not worth the trouble. obstacles are pretty cheap and don't put a dent in your economy. you could build thousands of dragon's teeth and minefields and it won't be a problem.

BUNKERS WILL HELP YOU WIN.

in the original game bunkers were considered a waste of time. but here's the thing. the AI doesn't ignore them like players do. that's one of the keys to winning in offline SP missions. use bunkers surrounded by minefields to stall enemy regiments. while tanks are focusing on bunkers you can outflank them and attack them from multiple sides using mortars and AT units.

artillery bunkers have longer ranges and higher attack values now. using concrete machine gun bunkers and artillery bunkers are critical to winning with infantry alone. even if your infantry can't make a base rush to flatten an enemy Corps HQ. consider using a wall of artillery bunkers to bombard the enemy base from beyond a wall of mountains or concrete bunkers.

use your packable/unpackable artillery bunkers to capture cities. then reinforce them with infantry. after that build some bunkers and minefields in that city and move on to the next one. remember that an artillery bunker can't have two states of being at the same time. you need to STOP a bombardment command before you can pack up the bunker and relocate it. if you try to pack up a bombarding bunker you will crash the game.

I feel that Anti Tank infantry are too weak for their roles while non-anti tank infantry are ok. You might need to buff anti tank gun regiments to have 3 guns instead of two or remove some of the basic infantry in an anti tank gun regiment in favor of anti tank, rocket, rifle, grenade infantry to support the anti guns because once the anti tank guns are killed in the regiment, the rest of the unit is no match for any tank units.

Also, USA should get a Hell Cat Tank destroyer regiment to emphasis the speed in early-mid game anti tank play while the Jackson anti tank regiment should require some more tech as the highest tier anti tank destroyer of the allies for mid-late game, discounting the T95 Tank of course as that is useful in specific cases.

one thing to keep in mind is that not all countries have viable anti-tank weaponry. I tried to limit the player options to things that the country had historically available. in some cases I included things that were historically ordered, but not delivered. I also included things that were in development but were not mass-produced.

anti-tank rifles and anti-tank guns are supposed to have an attack range of 20. this gives them the same attack range as medium tanks. I noticed that some of the American AT guns only had an attack range of 12. I took corrective action on that one.

heavy anti tank guns (like the German 88 mm, the Russian 100 mm, or the British 17-pounder) are supposed to have longer attack ranges (25-to-30).

Gizmotron, with respect, all the things you say are required to win with infantry would be better suited to building Armor, or Mech. My contention is not that it is bad that some nations must rely on infantry, but that infantry are basically worthless compared to any other type of regiment, and are not cost or resource efficient against anything else. A reliance on bunkers or artillery would well-suit any other build much better, given infantry in the mod have no staying power.

Most of the armies of World War II, even the "big 5" from vanilla and even the lavishly equipped Western Allies, were made up primarily of light infantry. That is, un-motorized, un-mechanized foot infantry (not carried into battle via vehicles). The US Army even actively de-motorized some of its infantry divisions during the war. But the performance and relative cost efficiency of infantry in this mod is simply not comparable and it is much easier and more effective to simply use an all-armored or all-mechanized force than it was in history, and this will make short work of an equivalent infantry force , in my opinion regardless of fortification (which itself demands additional resources).

On infantry AT, I'm not sure AT guns are worth it at their current abysmal durability regardless of their damage or range. I did some very ugly math in my original post showing just how many hits an AT weapon needs to kill even early war vehicles, and how few they would need to kill the AT gun, and this is without discussing the resources required to field such AT weapons, which is sometimes even more expensive than the tanks they face.

Anyway, this is all just my opinion, my views. It's not my mod to say what's right and what's wrong, but I'd have made infantry more resilient, particularly when entrenched or in terrain, and I also think the tank weight as HP formula is somewhat problematic - it makes ambush AT weapons with long reloads and low durability rather ineffective. A system more heavily weighted towards DV rather than HP would have been what I'd have done, I think, with HP being more arbitrary or role-based (like in vanilla).

Edited by: Wordsarecool

Wordsarecool wrote:

Gizmotron, with respect, all the things you say are required to win with infantry would be better suited to building Armor, or Mech. My contention is not that it is bad that some nations must rely on infantry, but that infantry are basically worthless compared to any other type of regiment, and are not cost or resource efficient against anything else. A reliance on bunkers or artillery would well-suit any other build much better, given infantry in the mod have no staying power.

Most of the armies of World War II, even the "big 5" from vanilla and even the lavishly equipped Western Allies, were made up primarily of light infantry. That is, un-motorized, un-mechanized foot infantry (not carried into battle via vehicles). The US Army even actively de-motorized some of its infantry divisions during the war. But the performance and relative cost efficiency of infantry in this mod is simply not comparable and it is much easier and more effective to simply use an all-armored or all-mechanized force than it was in history, and this will make short work of an equivalent infantry force , in my opinion regardless of fortification (which itself demands additional resources).

On infantry AT, I'm not sure AT guns are worth it at their current abysmal durability regardless of their damage or range. I did some very ugly math in my original post showing just how many hits an AT weapon needs to kill even early war vehicles, and how few they would need to kill the AT gun, and this is without discussing the resources required to field such AT weapons, which is sometimes even more expensive than the tanks they face.

Anyway, this is all just my opinion, my views. It's not my mod to say what's right and what's wrong, but I'd have made infantry more resilient, particularly when entrenched or in terrain, and I also think the tank weight as HP formula is somewhat problematic - it makes ambush AT weapons with long reloads and low durability rather ineffective. A system more heavily weighted towards DV rather than HP would have been what I'd have done, I think, with HP being more arbitrary or role-based (like in vanilla).

Agreed, I can only think of a few AT units worth the cost and those only come from the big 5. Also Banzai infantry should be able to attack buildings so they can breakthrough heavy fortifications with enough manpower.

Edited by: Thelazarus

Goliath infantry and Banzai infantry are supposed to be capable of attacking anything in the game except aircraft and boats... but, I'll have to double-check my codes.

I changed the Banzai infantry code so that they have lower attack values. (100 instead of 250). the difference is that now Banzai infantry inflict a 5-second stun property on enemy tanks that are affected by their attacks. pinning down tanks for 5-seconds was supposed to help make Banzai infantry a bit more useful. although Banzai attacks very rarely destroyed enemy tanks, they were capable of knocking them out of action for long periods of time. since it took time to repair and wash up the tank... that's something that I wanted to have reflected in the game.

well, let's talk about some ideas then.

reduce ammo consumption. in the original game infantry consumes 10 ammo units. I could ignore rifles as a unit of measure. the CO and rank-and-file infantry would be eliminated from ammo consumption. MGs = 1, mortars and anti-tank rifles = 2, AT guns and light artillery = 3, heavy AT guns and medium artillery = 4, heavy artillery = 5.

that would give us a vanilla infantry regiment that costs $50 but only consumes 2 units of ammo. this would dramatically reduce the economic burden of using infantry when compared to vehicles. mortar regiments would generally stay around 4 to 6 units of ammo.

I was experimenting with a spreadsheet that would determine tank regiment prices on formulas based on historical price tags. but that got a little too complicated and tended to drive the regiment prices way up for Germany, while making US and Russian prices cheaper. the original intention was to force players to think more carefully about the regiments that they recruited. it was also intended to discourage heavy tank spam. I ended up not using it, because I was starting to get price tags that I knew players would openly reject. if a King Tiger regiment cost something like 425 dollars players would complain [Germany doesn't have that good of an economy! for that sort of money, you could have bought an entire infantry division worth of recon regiments.]

I'm already committed to eliminating the Waffen SS tank divisions and Guards tank divisions.

exploit existing attack bonuses: since Uncommon Valor AT units have a built-in attack bonus against halftracks... (varying from 75 to 250 points) I could try adding the halftrack property to the light tanks. if those light tanks are now suffering from an additional 250-points of gunfire damage with each AT hit that's got to leave some sort of impression. the trade-off would be that a lot of light tanks could also use the Mechanized Advance enchantment.

another possibility is to use the higher health values of tanks AGAINST them. I could double, or even triple, the resupply time required for a regiment to be fully restored. this means that badly damaged tank regiments would have to retreat and wait even longer before they could be put back into action. [I already experimented with something like this on the new Polish SP campaign mission where Polish light infantry is stuck defending against swarms of Soviet T-26 tanks.]

part of my confusion stems from the fact that it's rare for me to lose a game while playing this mod. even when I'm stuck playing Lithuania vs Russia. I've even found ways for Dutch KNIL or Iraqi troops to defeat Great Britian in random skirmish maps. so, I dunno, it just feels weird hearing that people can't win using infantry... or, that they consider infantry to be useless. I have some infantry regiments that get as much as 1000-to-1500 experience points throughout the game.

maybe it's because I have also simply gotten used to the fact that I might lose 60% of all of the regiments I've recruited by the end of the game... now I'm thinking that maybe I should include some additional training missions or something.

the assertion that infantry are not cost effective, and that players should ignore them and focus everything on building tanks is a complaint that I've heard about this game from the very beginning.

the usual advice on the old Atari Axis-and-Allies forum reduced every game (which was inspired by online play) to SPAM SNIPERS! SPAM ARTY MECHS! SPAM AT MECHS! SPAM HEAVY TANKS! USE BOMBERS! you were expected to lose all of your infantry in battle (or disband them) before the end of the game and then just move over to spamming AT mechs and heavy tanks to win the game.

I've definitely created a scenario where the traditional infantry zerg rush at a Corps HQ is almost guaranteed to fail without support from artillery units and bombers. but, if you destroy the artillery bunkers before you attack the Corps HQ you should do okay. if you're selling off all of your bunkers for extra money (as is traditionally the case) in random skirmish maps that's a bad habit from the original game that will come back to haunt you later.

I'm prepared to take these criticisms seriously... and I'm definitely going to do some experiments. but, I'm not sure that I can overcome a problem that seems to be built into the very game engine itself.

* * * *

I played through a three-hour game at 400% speed last night to see how it would turn out. playing as the United States I found that two of my four allies were quickly annihilated. I was stuck fighting four adversaries while my remaining ally twiddled their thumbs and did nothing. I lost a ton of infantry regiments and things started to look hopeless. I had to switch over to tanks and mechs. even then I was getting thrashed pretty badly and had to resort to special op bombs, bombers and heavy artillery. finally, after around 90 minutes I was able to use my tanks as a defensive line and gain experience points. after I got them all up to around 750 points of experience I turned to the offensive. while I was using my armored spearhead to smash into the main enemy line of resistance, I still used infantry to guard cities from getting stolen. as the heavy tanks were clawing their way through hundreds of enemy tank regiments, I also recruited more infantry to attack lightly defended cities on the outer regions of the map. light infantry was able to capture four cities and a factory in the last 30 minutes of the game. they were also crucial in exploring the enemy rear as they fled from my tanks. infantry ended up accounting for almost as many destroyed regiments as the tanks. the number one regiment destroyer was aircraft. (if I hadn't invested in atomic bombers and B-29s I'm pretty sure I would have lost to that four-army coalition.) even so, I figured... if the guy who designed the mod could barely win that scenario, and had to destroy over 500 regiments to win, what would a normal player do? they'd probably throw their hands up in despair.

I tried out a couple of things this morning.

I added the halftrack property to tanks with defense values of 2 or lower (this means that they had 30 mm armor or less). that automatically plays to the built-in attack bonus against halftracks for nearly all anti-tank guns. that bonus ranges from 50-to-250 points. what this meant in practice is that while Panzer I and Panzer II tanks can destroy infantry regiments... they suffer much higher losses while doing so. just one or two hits can knock them out. what this means is that the mechanized infantry, light tank, and tankette regiments aren't going to be nearly as effective as they used to be.

I also experimented with replacing the basic rifle gunfire damage with armor piercing damage. I only did this with one dedicated anti-tank regiment, though. the reasoning for this was that some armies gave out armor piercing rifle rounds to their troops.

this made a big difference. however, what made it a bit disappointing was that I could use two French anti-tank regiments armed with nothing but 47 mm guns, 25 mm guns, and a bunch of rifles to annihilate a single German King Tiger regiment after they had gained some experience. that shouldn't really be possible. I had a whole bunch of infantry shooting 24 points of AP damage every 3 seconds. that meant that every 3 seconds the regiment could dole out 144 points of AP damage in addition to the 72 points of damage from each 47 mm gun.

this seemed like it was TOO powerful. two 47-mm AT guns, three 25-mm AT guns, and eleven soldiers firing armor piercing rifle rounds shouldn't be able to destroy a King Tiger regiment so easily.

so, then I changed the attack back to the regular gunfire damage and then included a secondary attack bonus that provided 10 AP damage to tanks and halftracks. that meant that as the regiment gained experience their anti-tank effectiveness remained the same. this would make them fantastic at wiping out light tanks and medium tanks. but would mean that they struggled against the heavier tanks (as they should!)

I changed the recruit times: infantry = 15 seconds, halftracks = 30 seconds, tanks = 45 seconds. this same value was applied to their entrenchment rates. I reduced the defense bonus to entrenched vehicles to 2 DV instead of the original 4. I changed the resistance bonus for entrenchment so that tanks have improved resistance to armor piercing and gunfire damage at the cost of 20% more vulnerability to high explosive damage. vehicles will take longer to entrench and gain only half as much benefit from it.

obviously, the original game has some problems with regards to infantry - otherwise the RoWar mod might not have used single-unit tank regiments!

I can't do that for Uncommon Valor because there are several special ops that would enable players to wipe out an entire armored division for a mere 500-600 XP.

having NEVER played online games I've probably developed a highly personal and idiosyncratic style that goes against all of the conventional gameplay wisdom built into this gaming community. I never try to win a game using just one type of unit. I always plan out my attacks. I start off an attack against a Corps HQ by eliminating the artillery bunkers with airpower, artillery, or tanks. the new artillery bunkers almost guarantee that unsupported infantry rushes will end in disaster. once those artillery bunkers are gone then I can use waves of infantry to make an attack and have the armor chase down enemy regiments. the use of saboteur regiments, goliath mines, and other dedicated units to help destroy buildings help out a great deal. bunkers could stop a base rush dead in it's tracks if you don't give them some support.

the extra artillery bunkers surrounding the Corps HQ probably play a significant part in the feeling that infantry is useless.

even if I can't use regular infantry regiments in offensive roles, I can use them to help screen against enemy bombers by putting them in guard positions in front of my Corps HQ and division tents. since vanilla MG units can shoot down bombers if you have enough of them close to each other... infantry can be critical in thwarting paratrooper landings by shooting down the bombers. if the enemy regiments successfully land, they can fight it out and prevent them from causing too much damage.

personally, I think the infantry match-up isn't too bad... provided that you use them as part of a combined arms strategy. the original game made aircraft, tanks, and artillery far more effective than they could ever be in real life.

however, I am trying to take criticism seriously and I am testing out new ideas.

I could be wrong... but I'm getting the impression that the idea is that infantry is "useless" as a categorical statement. in other words, players shouldn't have to be forced to recruit them and move directly to mechs and tanks?

or, is it that infantry is useless after the enemy gains access to mechs and tanks?

or, that vanilla infantry regiments are useless and players have to invest heavily in specialized infantry regiments... and that vanilla infantry regiments should have more staying power?

in the original A&A game infantry was typically "useless" after about 30 minutes or so. since you could only have 20 regiments... the basic pattern was to have your infantry get wiped out and then replace them with mechs and tanks as slots opened up.

in the original game if you spammed a bunch of regular infantry regiments they could eventually destroy tanks with nothing but rifles and grenades. I felt this was part of the larger problem. the benefit of recruiting AT infantry wasn't worth the added cost. why spend $125 on a motor pool and $180 on three AT regiments when you could have six regular infantry regiments that might do almost as well?

I'm not sure agree with the idea that hordes of vanilla infantry regiments should be able to destroy large clusters of light and medium tanks with nothing but rifles and grenades. that's part of why people insisted that anti-tank infantry in the original game was "worthless" and that you should recruit tank-destroyer mechs instead. one of my goals was to find a way to make every single unit in the game useful; to offer an ability that no other unit had.

y'know, I was planning to apply the 'infantry escort' enchantment specifically to the new recon infantry regiment... but here's an idea. what if ALL infantry provided a temporary +2 defense value and 10% AP resistance. let's suppose that enchantment lasts 40 seconds.

with the new recon/forward observer regiment that figure could be +4 defense and 20% AP resistance. the recon enchantment would last 20 seconds. [the recon regiment will still provide temporary enchantments to nearby artillery units via the CO infantry unit.]

my other line of questioning is this: does that "ugly math" include the start-up costs required to bypass infantry with the current build order? only looking at unit-vs-unit is just part of the larger picture. the cost of the unit isn't merely how much the regiment costs to buy... how much money did you have to spend to create the opportunity to deploy it. the start-up costs for mech and armor are considerable. moving straight to mech or tanks requires you to spend $250 on an Infantry HQ that you're not going to use. then you spend $300 on a Mech HQ where all you can deploy are halftracks, armored cars, and tankettes. any one of those is going to cost $100 each. if you sell off your Infantry HQ that gives you money to buy one more regiment... while this is going on the AI is probably already deploying five infantry regiments and capturing cities. is it really more cost effective to spend money on mechs and tanks at the expense of capturing cities?

now, I do seem to recall that some players actually hate cities... and want games where they aren't a factor. I'm not one of those players. cities and resources are pretty much why most wars have been fought since the dawn of time.

my idea of using regular infantry to enchant tanks isn't going to work for the five original nations.

the problem lies in that the performer component is duplicated in both the infantry unit and the amphibious infantry unit.

a simple work-around for every new nation is to simply create a separate file for the regular and amphibious infantry units.

I can't create an alternate tgi file for the original nations because it conflicts with the original RWD data files

another snag is the friendly enchantment leads friendly units to focus exclusively on friendly units. this means that for the recon regiment to work correctly I need the enchanters to be in the rearguard positions, NOT the frontline. since the supporting unit has to be the targeting mortars, that means the forward-observation/recon regiment needs to be a bit larger to perform all of the functions that I wanted it to have.

FORWARD OBSERVER/RECON REGIMENT

1. Infantry CO (enchants nearby artillery by adding 10-points of attack value for about 30 seconds)

2. regular infantry (front)

3. regular infantry (front)

4. regular infantry (front)

5. radio infantry (spell-casting rearguard #1, +2 DV, +20% resist AP and gunfire damage)

6. radio infantry (spell-casting rearguard #2, +2 DV, +20% resist AP and gunfire damage)

7. null

8. targeting mortar (flank, enchants enemy units with -2 defense value, and reduces resistance to gunfire and AP damage)

9. targeting mortar

I'm guessing that I'll need to look at the use-wait code or priority code to get the spell-casters to stop focusing exclusively on friendlies. with the current layout, however, even if I can't solve that the regiment should still be functional.

having spent a week or two testing out new ideas.... and playing through RoWar through a couple of times. I think part of the disconnect is that we have diametrically opposed styles of gameplay.

RoWar, for example, focuses on small maps and less than 30 regiments engaging in fast-paced and short battles with a heavy emphasis on light infantry. tank regiments are smaller than they were in the original game as an attempt to balance things out. I appreciate RoWar for it's fun, fast-paced gameplay. it has smaller regiments and generic units that are all fairly close to each other in terms of health and damage output. there is no interest in historicity because it's trying to recreate a fun, non-historical gaming experience.

it is the exact opposite of what I created for my mod.

Uncommon Valor tries (for better or worse) to focus on historical units and match-ups.

this means that in some scenarios one side will be outmatched and outclasses. having spent decades playing on flight sims where players will have to periodically fight uphill battles against seemingly impossible odds... this was something I tried to include in the UV mod. there isn't a single map in the new SP campaigns that I haven't played through three or four times and found a way to win. those might be costly victories where I lose far more regiments than my AI adversary... but every mission can be won.

while RoWar is fast-paced and UV focuses on lengthy, large-scale engagements. some missions might have 400-to-1000 regiments destroyed before the map is won.

it probably doesn't help that I carefully engineered the mod to discourage every single one of the original "win the game ASAP strategies" that I read about in multiple online forums.

I went with a combination of health and defense variations because... honestly, there needed to be some reason to justify having so many different historical units. with the mechanics used in the original game (and RoWar follows this tradition) there would be absolutely no reason to use multiple models of tanks and halftracks. they would all essentially be interchangeable. and that's great. it just didn't make sense for what we were trying to do with this mod.

right now, the only thing I can do quickly is to reduce the ammunition consumption for infantry regiments. the other ideas I wanted to try are too complicated to implement before the end of the year.

Edited by: Gizmotron