Combined Arms

[tinjaw]

I am wondering if there is any difference to keeping units separate.

For example:

Team A: 1 unit with 50 Rifles and 4 Light Tanks
Team B: 2 units -- 1 with 50 Rifles and 1 with 4 Light Tanks

If I move the units together, and attack together, are there any differences? I am wondering because the armored unit won't have any infantry to protect the tanks. When I watch a battle, I see the units separated out. But I don't know if there is any difference in combat resolution than simply having one unit.

[LJBurstyn]

I've noticed that when defending armored and infantry units are together the armored units cannot entrench and prevent the combined infantry from entrenching so it might be a good idea to keep units separated when on defense...

[tinjaw]

ORIGINAL: LJBurstyn

I've noticed that when defending armored and infantry units are together the armored units cannot entrench and prevent the combined infantry from entrenching so it might be a good idea to keep units separated when on defense...

That's good to know.

How about offensive operations? Can you think of anything that would make a difference in that case?

[Vic]

No there is no difference of major consequence.
Entrenchment is actually seperately kept for tanks and infantry in the same unit. So no worries there. Its just that the average of such a unit will be lower than an infantry only unit.

best wishes,
Vic

[tinjaw]

ORIGINAL: Vic

No there is no difference of major consequence.

Thanks for the clarification. Now I will try building "pure" units. This should allow me to use my armor to exploit breakthroughs.

[Ormand]

Yes, in the standard game, there is no real difference, and no need to do combined arms. Indeed, tanks are real hard on infantry.

There is a mechanism to do this though, and I tried to do this in my FourSeasons mod. I am not sure how well I got it to function.

I tried two things:

1) Created a new unit group called Anti-tank. Then I modified the favorite targets. Anti-tank usints priority attach was armor, while for infantry it was Anti-tank and Artillery (Fav=9 and Fav=8 for Infantry). This way, Rifle units embedded with armor units would try to attack the anti-tank units first.

2) Used the Prevent List Property Sheet to allow Rifle units to take a hit for armor from anti-tank units.

I need to investigate the efficacy of this more. But, it is in the right direction since it is well known that armor by itself tends to be very vulnerable to infantry with with anti-tank weapons, such as bazooka or, later, the LAW.