Dealing with heavily damaged units.

[mavraamides]

I notice in a lot of my games, after a heavy confrontation with the AI, I end up with a lot of very low strength units. Units that barely survived a major battle and have say a couple rifle and a mortar left over.

I've come up with a few basic ways to deal with them and was wondering what others thought:

1) Use them as throwaway scout units to find the enemy before committing healthy units or as speed bumps at critical intersections to at least alert me to the presence of enemy units right before they are wiped out. (I really don't like this one as it goes against my instinct to protect my troops from needless slaughter.)

2) Merge them into existing stronger units. Has the disadvantage of decreasing readiness in existing unit and chewing up some AP's I think.

3) Consolidating a bunch of them into a rag-tag collection of misfits (Black Sheep Squadron?) that at least has enough combat power to be a viable unit without disrupting my mainline units.

4) Withdraw and reinforce with units from HQ.

5) Disband back to HQ to be used to build new units or reinforce existing ones.

Anyone have any other ideas or comments?

[Westheim]

4) Withdraw and reinforce with units from HQ.

Although sometimes I only use them to make the front a bit harder and thicker, f.e. if I don't have any reinforcements left.

[Barthheart]

Mainly I go with 3 and 4. Their experience makes them valuable enough to keep. I also don't like throwing away troops... bad for morale....

[dave74]

I also go for 3 and 4. Ive just had a few chewed up in my aar game!!

[Twotribes]

I reinforce them in place or a couple steps back off the line. I have also combined units.

[SlowHand]

Dependz.
 
Any of the above according to the needs of the situation.

[freeboy]

ditto on the last on, for instance as jap player in China you may need some smaller units as reear gaurd against partisans.. in that case one may keep as a small unit and dig in along a roadway

[mavraamides]

Those are all good points. Thanks for the feedback. I haven't played a scenario with partisans yet but partisan patrol does sound like a very good use of them.

Make that number 6!

I find in a lot of these build and conquer games that having efficient reclamation of units is like an increase in production.

You know the old saying, a division saved is a division earned!

[seille]

2,3,4,5
 
Depending on the situation. When i have several crippled units in one hex
i send all survivors into one unit mostly and disband the other units.
When i have one crippled unit i send reenforcements from HQ or when this is impossible
and the unit has not the strength to survive the next fight i disband it.

[SMK-at-work]

IMO the concept of "heavily damaged units" is flawed.  "Unit" are only holding groupings for subunits - it doesnt' matter if you have 100 units with 1 infantry in them in a stack, or 1 unit with 100 infantry - both have exactly the same fighting power (at least AFAIK....).  For the 00 x 1 you've spent a lot of PP's to get manouvreability, for the 1 x 100 you've saved 99 PP's that yuo can use elsewhere.
 
So I don't bother amalgamating unless there's a need for PP's...or unless I feel there's nothign better to do.  And if I amalgamate I'll try to transfer troops into the new unit to bring it up to strength anyway.
 
If i'm going to keep the units seperate then I'll move them and THEN transfer troops into them to bring them "up to strength".
 
It all depends upon the situation.

[freeboy]

well, SMK, one thing is troop quality, if you add new recruits the  over all qulaity goes down of the shell, but the subunits goes up.. interesting and realistic imo
 
Interested in seeing War in europe as the Germans and getting STOPPED ? lol

[SMK-at-work]

I'm still working on "acurate" initial OOB's for that scenario
 
sure if you add recruits then experience goes down.....but you've got to do it sooner or later - and adding recruits to existing units means the recruits get the benefit of the experience that is there rather than being in green units all of their own.
 
Historically it's always been more important to ensure that hte bulk of the army is of reasonable quality than stripping the best troops out to form elite units, and then leaving the ordinary units deprived of their best soldiers....Napoleon's Guard notwithstanding, elite troops ahve often been spread around ordinary units to stiffen them.

[SlowHand]

Another good feature of AT: it presents you with the problem of what to do with remnants/cadres/what-have-you's.