how do the divisions work?

[jaunco]

I was looking for guides on this and I only found people showing their division templates and none explained the advanced fundamentals of how to do it (there were people explaining the basics, but I know that by clicking on the square I can add a specific type of soldier to the infantry ).
I have several questions:
1: what is the difference between adding artillery directly or adding them as support? (apart from support being capped at 5)
2: what is the difference between adding 2 columns of 3 infantry or 3 columns of 2 infantry?
3: How does it affect where I place the units? (example: tanks on the right and infantry on the left)
4: Does it make any sense to make a pure antiaircraft or artillery division and put it in a group with other normal divisions, or will they all move forward and that's it?
5: Is it better to use few boxes and thus be able to make many divisions or to use all the boxes even if this means making few divisions?
and surely more questions so now I can not think.

[lakupupu]

a. support artillery has 12 units, normal battalion level has 36
b. no difference
c. no difference
d. no sense at all - i use aa support company, but if i get really desperate i might make an anti air tank design and put 2-3 of them into my tank template, or dupe that template and roll the dupe template out with aa
e. depends on the situation, low width (battalions add combat width) means weaker divisions but different types of terrain like plains and mountains have their own width you should aim for - if you want a simple infantry template, 9 infantry 1 artillery is easy to pump out from the beginning if you have a consistent artillery production on.
spice it up by adding 2nd battalion of artillery for extra power later on when you produce enough artillery to justify it

alternatively i've heard of a 6 infantry 1 artillery template that im still testing

[jaunco]

Thank you.
another doubt what is the usefulness of the support artillery if it has less force than normal. for that I always add artillery as normal units.

Though a separate topic. I don't understand why this system of adding units in specific places if it doesn't have any influence. They would have made the creation of divisions a simple list in which you added one type of units and subtracted others and that's it.

[Maximus]

Originally posted by jaunco325:

Thank you.
another doubt what is the usefulness of the support artillery if it has less force than normal. for that I always add artillery as normal units.

Though a separate topic. I don't understand why this system of adding units in specific places if it doesn't have any influence. They would have made the creation of divisions a simple list in which you added one type of units and subtracted others and that's it.

support artillery is very useful since it adds artillery to your divisions (beefing their soft attack) while not being too expensive or adding combat width.

[|H|H| Fr3ddi3]

Support artillery uses less guns / manpower / supplies and is pound for pound one of the most economically viable units to use ... liberally. The added bonus is that does not use combat any combat width either.

[jaunco]

but you can only place one, and it also occupies a limited locker which makes you give up something else that could be very useful to you as well.
What is cheaper is relative, if they made the support one 36 and the unit one 12, there would still be an economic option for those who cannot afford that luxury. so that's not an advantage, it's pretty neutral. the above disadvantages just to get -1 army width, it seems too much to me

[|H|H| Fr3ddi3]

Support artillery is almost universally loved because it really is cheap bang for your buck, there's few support companies which are better than it, there's plenty which are worse.

At the end of the day.

It takes 288 cannons to equip 24 divisions with support artillery.
It takes 864 cannons to equip 24 divisions with just 1 artillery battalion each.

I'm not going to say don't build line artillery ... but I will say that much line artillery comes at the expense of more planes or more tanks, things which are more effective at winning wars.

Both in the ability to build said weapons in the first place, but also in the ability for your supply lines to sustain them as well.

[jaunco]

And if you needed 864 guns to equip 24 divisions with supporting artillery and 288 guns to equip 24 divisions with 1 line artillery everyone would love line artillery. what is the difference??

the only real difference: is that you have 25 line slots that can be repeated. sure that at least one of the units there is repeated several times, if you give up one of those repeated units to put an artillery, you have several more. and the strength that this division lacks, the next division will have.
On the other hand, the support boxes are only 5 and they are unique, the support you give up to put an artillery, the division next to you will not have it

[drewbstar]

One of the main factors with designing a division template is combat width. It's how large the division is and thus how many can fit into a single combat.

Combat width is decided by terrain (and modified by tactic/doctrine).
It used to be that all combat was a multiple of 20/40, making 20/40 width divisions the best. (You could get the most damage in without taking oversize penalties.

This changed with NSB, intentionally making it so that no size fits all battles perfectly. This is where support companies are nice, they modify divisions without adding any combat width.

For your main defensive infantry units, you want them to be cheap but effective. This is where "pure" inf divisions excel: they're cheap to build and they hold the line well. Adding lots of line arty/AT/AA makes them much more expensive to produce equipment for and take up more of your supply lines.

I use pure inf divisions at the start to hold the line, then add support arty/engineers to increase their soft attack and entrenchment. If I don't have air control, I'll throw on support AA. I don't generally feel the need to add line arty/AA, as it often is overkill for what you're trying to achieve. You don't want to be in a production deficit giving you the downsides of expanded divisions (larger combat width) without any benefits.

I rarely use all 5 support slots, and then it's generally only end-game modern tank divisions once I have a stupid number of factories and a mob to grind through.