feeding replacements to the front

[henri51]

One aspect of the game that requires some skill is getting reinforcements to the front. As units battle,they take casualties, and so they need to get replacements.

The problem is that replacements can only be sent from a HQ by means of rail, so any units not on a rail cannot get replacements from the HQ, and neither can HQs not on rails get replacements.

So there are only two ways to get replacements to depleted units: 1) get the units back to a railroad so that a HQ can send them replacements; 2) replace them by new units.

In my games, I have used both methods, but keep in mind that new units take a few moves to get experience up. Sending them into combat right off the train is asking for heavy casualties.This also applies to replacements: taking green replacements decrease the experience and readiness of units. Ideally units with replacements and new units should be considered as a reserve, and a good planner (not necessarily me...) can rotate units in and out of combat in an optimum manner.

Another even more critical item is the question of new HQs. As the battle develops and the front gets larger, HQs become overloaded and can't be everywhere, so new HQs are required. Not only do those new HQs have low statistics, but they need supplies and staff to control their sub-units. Even more severe is the huge penalty a unit takes when changing HQs - in practice units that change HQs should not be sent into combat for a few moves, but this may be impossible if they are on the front and there are not enough new replacements to take their place. What this means is that one should think in advance about the need for new HQs and about which units will be subordinated to them. A good compromise is to create a new HQ, and to only give it units being rotated out of combat or newly created units that need a few moves anyway before going into combat. Eventually most units can be assigned as they are rotated out of combat.

Given the above considerations, it is not hard to imagine the complications that can ensue when one of your front HQs is destroyed: a whole section of the front can become disrupted when the units have to be assigned to a new HQ, with consequences comparable to being out of supplies. If the enemy has a powerful air force, you can see that it is not a bad idea to protect your HQs with flak, and to keep them out of the front lines.

Henri

[Barthheart]

ORIGINAL: henri51

...
The problem is that replacements can only be sent from a HQ by means of rail, so any units not on a rail cannot get replacements from the HQ, and neither can HQs not on rails get replacements.
...

This statement is not quite correct. If you have trucks or lots of horses in your HQ you can send replacements to any unit anywhere - even if they are not on a railroad hex.

[SSFSX17]

What you have to do is:
- In the transfer interface, click on the unit you want to transfer to
- By default, the game wants to use RAILCAP, which is the third checkbox. You have to click on LANDCAP
- Then, you can transfer using trucks. Beware that this uses oil.

[henri51]

ORIGINAL: SSFSX17

What you have to do is:
- In the transfer interface, click on the unit you want to transfer to
- By default, the game wants to use RAILCAP, which is the third checkbox. You have to click on LANDCAP
- Then, you can transfer using trucks. Beware that this uses oil.

Thanks for the correction; I was using only trains to save fuel, so I guess that is why the landcap did not work. It's good to know however, and it's going to make things easier when I have lots of fuel.

Henri

[Ande]

There are a few useful tricks and mechanics to know about transfers and replacements.

First, if you transfer within a HQ and it's attached nonHQ units, using the trasfered units movement you will not loose readiness. This fact alone tells us that it is better to direct your production where it's needed. If you don't use railcap to transfer your units, they will also have intact AP for the turn. This means you can create a new unit on top of your HQ, transfer SFT's to it and move it as if it been there when the turn started. This allows for a lot of flexibility. Not only does the directed production allow for this, it also spares the need to have lots of trains and trucks in your main HQ.

Second,  a new unit will automatically gain experience at the start of each turn until it has a certain level of experience. This mechanic should not be overlooked. The goal here should be to get maximum number of free experience from the game. Let's consider the following scenario:
You prefer to have your infantry units at strength of 30 rifles and every unit under 40exp will get 2exp per turn (I'm quite sure it is actually a bit more than that). Now lets say that you have two banged up infantry units of 15 rifles with 50 exp and 30 green replacement rifles at 0 experience. If you go ahead and replenish the units you will have two units of 30 with 25 experience. If you wait you will gain 2*30*(40-25)=900 experience. If you instead decided to merge your two damaged units and create a new green unit, you will have this: one unit of 30 rifles with 50 exp and one unit of 30 rifles with 0 experience. If you wait you will gain 30*40=1200 experience.

This is obviously better but you might say something like it might not be practical to have your unit wait for a whole lot of turns anyway and that it might be better to spread the experience across the whole army. Then let's consider this: 10 experience points will in absolute numbers save the exact same amount of units, regardless of what experience that unit has. having 10 extra experience on a green unit will save exactly as many individuals as having 10 extra experience on a veteran unit. And because the veteran unit is more powerful it is better to keep your experience concentrated and to replace the easily replaced green units.

I will now tell you how I like to manage my replacemants. I divide my production among my tactical HQs. This is a very fluid thing, I will revise my production and the destination of that production every turn. The only thing I produce to the main HQ is supply, PPs, and maybe staff and aircraft. I'm very careful not to build supply to my tactical HQs as it will very easily make them immobile. I sometimes let PPs be produced to the tactical HQs when they don't need the entire production. As HQ of aircrafts doesn't matter, I let them go to the geographically apropriate HQ.

Staff manegment is tricky. Every time staff is transfered it looses experience and is something I want to avoid. The optimal way of doing it is to chose a HQ size and to stick with it, transfering all the staff in one go. Any further growth would require additional HQ's. This is very difficult and I haven't managed to do it yet. What usually happends is that I keep growing the HQ that get mediocre bonuses.

As previously discussed I always merge veteran units and create new ones from scratch. This is a truth with modification as there are seldom only one SFT in a unit. I do the merging on an SFT basis, so there may be a unit with veteran supportSFTs and green units. I don't hold back newly created units as much as I should to let them train but sometimes they're really needed at the front and the do got their readiness so it's not mindless slaughter.

[Frido1207]

ORIGINAL: Barthheart
If you have trucks or lots of horses in your HQ you can send replacements to any unit anywhere - even if they are not on a railroad hex.

Thats what i´m wondering about.
If i understand it correct, horses don´t provide any land transport capacity any longer. See pic below:



@ henri51 & Ande: thx for sharing your thoughts.

[Barthheart]

ORIGINAL: th1207

ORIGINAL: Barthheart
If you have trucks or lots of horses in your HQ you can send replacements to any unit anywhere - even if they are not on a railroad hex.

Thats what i´m wondering about.
If i understand it correct, horses don´t provide any land transport capacity any longer. See pic below:



@ henri51 & Ande: thx for sharing your thoughts.

DOH! You are correct..... (too many games on the go....)[8|]

[henri51]

Andy and Th,

Good advice, but...

Correct me if I am wrong, but sub-HQs need not only staff, but also railcap and landcap to send elements to units away from them.This means that to follow your way of sending production directly to sub-HQs, one must also send them trains and trucks (supplies sent during the automatic computer play do not use any landcap, but sending supplies by hand during your move does). So if during one move, on sub-HQ does not need its landcap, it is lost, whereas if it is in the main HQ, it has a better chance of not being lost. For example, a sub-HQ that has used up its landcap capability for that move cannot send out any more replacements nor carry out any strategic movement, even if the main HQ has plenty of landcap left. The strategic movement could always be carried out by the main HQ, but not the sending of replacements inside the sub-HQ. In addition, spreading out the landcap amon HQs requires more ressopurces, movers are required in each HQ to ensure its mobility while holding supplies and other stuff that could be in the main HQ.

However I do agree that in some cases it is better to send production directly to a sub-HQ for the reasons that you state, and I sometimes do it. But I find that in a large scenario this requires too much micromanagement, so I usually send most production to the top HQ. In fact the loss of XP and readiness is not that serious, since it usually requires a few moves to get to the front anyway, during which the units ramp up.

And with respect to horses, note that although they do not give any landcap, they DO transport units and don't use fuel. A player using only trucks for transport and landcap will soon find his units stranded without oil.

Henri

[Jeffrey H.]

ORIGINAL: th1207

ORIGINAL: Barthheart
If you have trucks or lots of horses in your HQ you can send replacements to any unit anywhere - even if they are not on a railroad hex.

Thats what i´m wondering about.
If i understand it correct, horses don´t provide any land transport capacity any longer. See pic below:



@ henri51 & Ande: thx for sharing your thoughts.

I noticed this too, it feels like a bug to me.

[Frido1207]

ORIGINAL: henri51
And with respect to horses, note that although they do not give any landcap, they DO transport units and don't use fuel. A player using only trucks for transport and landcap will soon find his units stranded without oil.

Henri

Totally true what you´re saying.
At the moment i´m following the strategy to add some trucks to my main HQ´s to be able to send replacements to units that aren´t placed on railroads/roads. My front troops are mainly equipped with horses to mobilize them. I learned this lesson the hard way. In my early test games i let my engineers happily build roads extensively, until i noticed, that every road hex costs 20 raw...

ORIGINAL: Jeffrey H.
I noticed this too, it feels like a bug to me.

I don´t know if i´m completely satisfied with this decision. Maybe Vic should only have lowered the landcap provided by horses.

[Ande]

ORIGINAL: henri51

Andy and Th,

Good advice, but...

Correct me if I am wrong, but sub-HQs need not only staff, but also railcap and landcap to send elements to units away from them.This means that to follow your way of sending production directly to sub-HQs, one must also send them trains and trucks (supplies sent during the automatic computer play do not use any landcap, but sending supplies by hand during your move does). So if during one move, on sub-HQ does not need its landcap, it is lost, whereas if it is in the main HQ, it has a better chance of not being lost. For example, a sub-HQ that has used up its landcap capability for that move cannot send out any more replacements nor carry out any strategic movement, even if the main HQ has plenty of landcap left. The strategic movement could always be carried out by the main HQ, but not the sending of replacements inside the sub-HQ. In addition, spreading out the landcap amon HQs requires more ressopurces, movers are required in each HQ to ensure its mobility while holding supplies and other stuff that could be in the main HQ.

I already adviced against replacing existing units but if you do desperatly to replace some unit and the SFT's own movement is not sufficient for the transfer you're probably too spread out as it is. This is even true for artillery as they are often best put to use at the same spot as the HQ:in the middle of your battlegroup (since your battlegroup should have a target and the center is what pushes for that target). Now I'm not saying thet the need should never arise but that it should only arise occasionly. There is an almost exploit like way of dealing with this: you could keep a fair amount of landcap at your supreme HQ. when the desperate need of landcap arises in your subHQs, you simply transfer some and you will then be able to use that landcap directly, or so I think.

[henri51]

ORIGINAL: Ande
There is an almost exploit like way of dealing with this: you could keep a fair amount of landcap at your supreme HQ. when the desperate need of landcap arises in your subHQs, you simply transfer some and you will then be able to use that landcap directly, or so I think.

I think that is the case (except that the landcap will be reduced because the units being transferred will lose readiness (I think), but why transfer it to the sub-HQ when the main HQ can use the landcap directly?

Henri

[Ande]

ORIGINAL: henri51
I think that is the case (except that the landcap will be reduced because the units being transferred will lose readiness (I think), but why transfer it to the sub-HQ when the main HQ can use the landcap directly?

Becasue the landcap must be located at the same place as the units they transfer and you want to primarely rely on directing producion to your tactical HQs, that way there will not be any units at the supreme HQ that can be transported.

In my current game on a xlarge 1v1 map vs the AI with 33 controlled cities, I make due with 36k landcap in my supreme HQ that resides in one corner of the map and none what so ever in the 14 tactical HQs despite the fact that I'm producing about 1000 infantry every turn. I can do this because I channel the production directly to where it's needed. It is a quite absurd scale where the benefits becomes obvious but the principle applies at all levels.

[lion_of_judah]

you still have to have a lot of fuel though, unless your using trains and horses. I found this out the hard way and was not able to reinforce my front line units and well the rest is history. This is the one thing where I wish ATG and TOAW 3 had in common, where replacements were just automatically fed into your units which need them.

[GrumpyMel]

There are alot of different strategies for how to handle HQ organization and deployment of replacements. This is a subject that was oft debated in AT - Classic and most of those same principles should apply to ATG as well.

I think the optimum strategy to follow varies by individual situation. However, the one I most often employ is some variation of the one below....

I typicaly build 2 differnt types of HQ's...one for recieving production that is relatively immobile and sits at a location that is well connected to the production centers that are assigned to it...and tactical HQ's that are mobile and designed to keep up with the front line troops for providing combat bonuses.

There are 2 disadvantages I find with sending production directly to frontline HQ's. Firstly, it can be very difficult to provide such HQ's with enough transport to be mobile, especialy if you are building any surplus of equipment/supply. With a tactical HQ you can always insure it has enough transport to keep up with the troops it commands. Secondly, a skilled human oppponent can and will take advantage of the situation to try to cut your HQ's off from thier production facilities. Especialy if they are able to drop para units onto rail lines somewhere....or blow bridges with bombers.

As far as replacements, idealy you don't want to throw freshly built recruits straight into the meat-grinder, thier combat effectiveness isn't nearly as good as troops that have had a chance to build up some xp. Sometimes this can't be helped, but usualy you want these troops sitting in a replacement pool somewhere along your command chain. Freshly formed units, you can hopefully let take a few turns automated training before moving into the line.

If you have veteran units that have taken a small number of casualties...bringing in small numbers of replacements each turn usualy doesn't have too adverse an effect on the total unit XP. However, watch out if a veteran unit has taken a mauling. Units can only gain a certain amount of xp through training, the rest is gained by actual combat expereince. If you get a mauled veteran unit and you pump it full of replacements from your replacement pool, then you've just waisted the hard earned combat experience of it's troops. What you may want to do instead, is break the unit up and use it to fill up replacments for other veteran units that have taken losses...that way you can keep some units that have experience well above that which can be gained through training.

Another trick about tactical HQ....if you can afford the PP's to build alot of small HQ's rather then a couple big ones...is that allows you to avoid alot of the readiness loss involved in switching forces between one area of the front and another. Instead of reassigning individual units to a new HQ....assign a subordinate HQ (and therefore all it's units) to a new front/theatre HQ....and none of it's units will take a readiness hit.

Finally, remember to take units that are on rear area garrison duty, etc...out of your tactical HQ's and assign them to a rear area production HQ. That way you can keep the number of staff needed to support your frontline HQ's at full combat bonus to a minimum. While rear area garrison units which aren't expected to see much combat can usualy get away without much staff bonus.

Anyways, that's the general tact I tend to follow, YMMV.

[lion_of_judah]

if horses no longer provide transportation points, then what is the point in building them

[Frido1207]

ORIGINAL: lion_of_judah
if horses no longer provide transportation points, then what is the point in building them

Mobilizing your (Infantry-)troops, without wasting your rare oil resources. That way you have more oil available to move your tanks & planes around the map.

[Ande]

ORIGINAL: th1207

ORIGINAL: lion_of_judah
if horses no longer provide transportation points, then what is the point in building them

Mobilizing your (Infantry-)troops, without wasting your rare oil resources. That way you have more oil available to move your tanks & planes around the map.

Well, horses moves the same at infantry. They're only really useful for cheap mobilization for artillery.

[henri51]

ORIGINAL: Ande

ORIGINAL: th1207

ORIGINAL: lion_of_judah
if horses no longer provide transportation points, then what is the point in building them

Mobilizing your (Infantry-)troops, without wasting your rare oil resources. That way you have more oil available to move your tanks & planes around the map.

Well, horses moves the same at infantry. They're only really useful for cheap mobilization for artillery.

Unless I am reading the tables wrong, in random games horses move further than infantry in most terrain, and on roads move 33% further.

[schwaryfalke]

ORIGINAL: henri51

Correct me if I am wrong, but sub-HQs need not only staff, but also railcap and landcap to send elements to units away from them.This means that to follow your way of sending production directly to sub-HQs, one must also send them trains and trucks (supplies sent during the automatic computer play do not use any landcap, but sending supplies by hand during your move does). So if during one move, on sub-HQ does not need its landcap, it is lost, whereas if it is in the main HQ, it has a better chance of not being lost.

In Classic at least sending production to the sub-HQs requires overall less landcap,than sending it from a central HQ(and also less supplies due to no readines loss). New units would be created on the same hex as the sub-hq which requires no landcap (from a main HQ it would require landcap to send it to that hex),and gives them a few turns before they are in the front-line.For the occasional direct reinforcing only a little landcap was needed since the distance is shorter.
Often Landcap that was in HQs was not used,but i would not consider it lost since imo the alternative is wasteing production on putting excessive Landcap in a main HQ to achieve the same effect as sending production directly to sub-hqs