Adding armor to infantry divisions

[Garudazeno]

So is there any reason besides production capacity not to just add a heavy or light armor batallion to an infantry division? I've read that it gives bonus armor, is that to the entire division?
Opinions, experiences?

[Lukkyb]

it slows doen the divion to the slowest unit that would be the tank but that is mainly it i think

[Garudazeno]

Originally posted by LukkyB:

it slows doen the divion to the slowest unit that would be the tank but that is mainly it i think

Yeah but if you stick heavy with leg infantry, medium with mechanized and motor with light that shouldnt be an issue right?

[lukas]

I guess these units would need more supply... can't say how much more though.

[EthanT]

Adding armor to infantry is a good idea for several reasons.

1.] It increases their hardness by A LOT. Higher hardness = less damage since the AI is almost always lacking in armor penetration capability.

2.] Damage. Self explanatory. The tank adds alot of combat power to the division.

3.] Speed isn't really an issue. infantry are slow already, so adding in a tank wont change that. To keep it from affecting your mobile divisions, mix in light tanks to keep the speed of your breakthrough forces while adding the dmg and armor.

[equinox1911]

Originally posted by EthanT:

3.] Speed isn't really an issue. infantry are slow already, so adding in a tank wont change that. To keep it from affecting your mobile divisions, mix in light tanks to keep the speed of your breakthrough forces while adding the dmg and armor.

The speed of light and medium tanks is wasted though, so the only suefull tanks in a leg infantry setup are heavy tanks (and their variants) or medium/modern tds. I add the latter because tds batallions only take half of equipment than a full armor briogade does and i would argue that the wasted speed is worth the investment because of the high armor and piercing values it adds.

[donalddawkins]

It's a great strat for armies that can field the required production costs. I reccommend this strat for japan and america, but wouldny do it for germany or russia due to the large fronts they figbht on that require more divisions and therefore demand more resources,

[joshb91]

ideally add heavy tanks or tds to leg infantry .. spare your medium tanks and mech and motorised infatry for the break through

[PhallicMetaphor]

It greatly improves the average hardness of the entire division. I'd recommend using SPGs since you're likely going to be using artillery anyway, that way you don't tip the combat width over any critical thresholds.

[Lonestar]

I have found great success with adding a few tank divs to an all foot soldier army's if, but I do not mix tank battalions in to my foot soldier templates. I have templates for strictly foot soldiers with arty sitting behind the soldiers in the template with all the support battalions needed and strictly mobile and semi mobile templates and I have a tank template with 3-4 mobiles thrown in. I have found mixing my foot soldiers divisions with mobile and semi mobile and about 3-4 tank dvis and 3-4 mountain works great for me as an army composition for a foot soldier armry.

I also have 1-2 mobile infantry army that has a couple support divs of tanks and a Tank army with some tank divs but I do not put divs like mountain in with those as it slows them down. I am playing with the blackice mod so the SS divs are not part of the vanilla game but you could use mot inf instead.

One other thing of note though is I have all my templates with as close to a 20 combat width as I can get and never go higher then that, I do not use 30 or 40 combat width armies but you will get bad return in your battles if you do not modify your combat width to stay in the 20-30 or 40 range.

I also only play as Germany, I love German armor and tech and thus only play these type of games as Germany. hehe

[Nappi]

Adding 1 heavy tank batallion to a infantry division is great. They gain the 50% organisation bonus due to the lack of anti-tank capacity of the most enemies.

[Garudazeno]

Originally posted by Nappi:

Adding 1 heavy tank batallion to a infantry division is great. They gain the 50% organisation bonus due to the lack of anti-tank capacity of the most enemies.

How does this work, do they get bonus organization when fighting only? is it visible?

[Nappi]

U can see it in a fight , the armored unit with the effect has a shild.
The wiki says: Higher armor than the enemy's pierce will also increase the number of unit attacks in combat and change the organization damage dice roll per attack from 1d4 to 1d6. .

[Deez_Noots]

Canadian infantry start with tanks in their template, since the AI is awful at piercing it effectively doubles the effectiveness of all your infantry

[Just James]

Your organization would be horrible, the armor would lose their speed, and it would make it a bit harder to spearhead an operation.

[Dimitriy]

For leg infantry, especially when fighting soviets, you NEED motorized rocket artillery. Other than that, heavy AA works very well, (stats just as good as tanks with less cost to produce for some reason)