Best early light tanks template

[JanMayenOP]

What's a good early in game template for light thanks that I could use to take on France aand UK as Germany?

[Sohei]

The earliest effective light tank template I think is 5 light tank, 5 horse cavalry. While you sacrifice a lot of top speed they are still faster than foot infantry while requiring few or no trucks. This allows you to focus production on light tanks and build enough of them to create several divisions very early. You can swap templates later on once you have plenty of trucks. A side beneift of this template is that it has low resource and production costs.

With lots of trucks available 5 light tank, 5 motorized infatnry is better. Bear in mind that you will need quite a bit of oil and rubber for them and you start with not enough of either and no easy access to them in quantity. You will also need excess production to cover significant battle and attrition lossses.

Another option is to double the size of a few early divisions to use as volunteers if you prefer to delay going to war yourself. For 40 width divisions you could go with 10 light tank, 10 horse cavalry or 10 light tank and 10 motorized infantry. These maximize the punch you can deliver with a limited number of allowed divisions to send as volunteers.

Going 50/50 on tanks and infantry in the early game provides the best compromize between armor, breakthrough, and organization. Later in the game you may have enough org bonuses to go 60/40 if you like but by that point you will more likey be using medium tanks and need higher armor to keep up with enemies with improved piercing and hard attack.

If you are playing some other country with low production or you want to improve your existing early infantry then you can try 1 light tank, 9 horse cavalry or 1 light tank, 9 foot infantry. These are supported infantry divisions, not full tank divisions. In the very early game infantry have terrible piercing so even a slight amount of armor provides enough to get the significant combat bonus. This advantage will go away fairly soon and you will need to switch to medium or heavy tanks if you want to maintain getting the bonus at least some of the time. You will not always get the bonus but when you do it will make a large difference.

For support units engineers and recon provide good bonuses with low production investment. You will want to add maintenance and hospitals when you have enough trucks and support equipment. You can add support artillery once you have produced enough of them. If fighting in areas with very low infrastructure then using a logistics instead of one of the others is an option. The llght tank/horse cavalry combination is also good for reducing logistics needs.

[~_Athena_~]

what about the support ? with the 5 light tanks 5 cav?

[Citizen X]

How early?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3223735049

Here is an example of a Tank I use as Italy against United Kingdom in Africa. Its very mediocre, but it gets the job done. Some tank is better than no tank

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3223740833

Using that template, I can still squeeze out 1600 Breakthrough.

Playing Germany, I would put around 5 mils onto the Panzer 2 and Mass Produce them. Research Engine and Radio, and upgrade the design. At some point, swap your production line to Refit all the older tanks you produced over the years.