Special Troops: Mountaineers, Marines

[noxmortem]

Are those units really worth it? They are a lot more expensive (30-50% more cost on production cost and equipment) and the bonus of 1%-3% on specific terrain seems not to outweigh the costs at all.

What am I missing?

Especially since a single pioneer support brigade gives a 25% bonus. Thats about the worth of 8 marine units?!

[Yaldabaoth]

I'm sceptical about marines as ports are usually not well defended anyway. But mountaineers are awesome. I wouldn't go into turkey without them.

[Adam Apples]

Originally posted by Yaldabaoth:

I'm sceptical about marines as ports are usually not well defended anyway. But mountaineers are awesome. I wouldn't go into turkey without them.

Ugh, turkey - I learned this the hard way.

[noxmortem]

But do they pay off? A single pioneer support brigade costs about the same, gives a 25% bonus while a mountaineer costs 30% more than an infantry unit and brings only a 3% bonus. Wouldn't it be way cheaper to just send 25% more infantry units with a single pioneer instead of mountaineers?

I ask again because I do feel like I am missing something.

[Sohei]

Terrain modifiers make a huge difference once you have a full division of them. Each regiment adds bonuses together so if you have ten of them you get ten times the bonus. You can add the same support to these units and the effects stack. I would defintely invest in some support for them. Engineers is one of the first to add.

Marines can get huge amphibious landing bonuses (I tend to get about+75% with mine) but have good bonuses when crossing rivers and in some other terrain as well. Marines also have noticeably better organization and slightly better offense with slightly worse defense compared to infantry.

Mountaineers can get large defense and decent offense in mountains and hills when combined with their terrain bonuses. If you are fighting in areas with that terrain then having some of them will be significantly better than normal infantry. They are best at holding a center line in rough terrain while you flank around with other units.

They lose a lot of combat and movement bonus if you mix them with some armor though so it is debatable whether you should do that with them or not. For Marines I would say it is definitely worth it but for Mountaineers perhaps not so much.

The vast majority of your forces should still be infantry but I would always get at least 10 divisions of Marines and possibly that many Mountaineers as well. The Marines should stick together for landings but the Mountaineers can be mixed in with other divisions in an army. Give the Marines a general with commando if you can and some logistics support since they will be cut off from supply sometimes.

[Dragonblade]

Originally posted by noxmortem:

But do they pay off? A single pioneer support brigade costs about the same, gives a 25% bonus while a mountaineer costs 30% more than an infantry unit and brings only a 3% bonus. Wouldn't it be way cheaper to just send 25% more infantry units with a single pioneer instead of mountaineers?

I ask again because I do feel like I am missing something.

25% more Infrantry would mean 25% combat width..

[ilcuggino]

If you can afford the infantry equipment they are really good, in my France campaign I built 20ish mountaineer for the Italian front.
I had way more equipment then manpower so I gradually switched all leg infantry to mountaneer.
The thing is I was already in Warsaw in '41 so I had time to covert only half of the leg inf division.

But it's pretty situational

[Sohei]

I wouldn't switch over absolutely all infantry even if you can afford it. Normal infantry is a little bit better than Mountaineers for certain tasks such as fighting in urban areas. For static defense in mountains though they are great. At least if you modify the templates. The default ones are not very good.

[Illyrien]

How do you use the mountainers effectively? If I add them to armies, will the AI commander correctly use them in rough terrain, rather then the normal infantry?

[Sohei]

Originally posted by Illyrien:

How do you use the mountainers effectively? If I add them to armies, will the AI commander correctly use them in rough terrain, rather then the normal infantry?

Yes, but not always. It depends on how far away they are and other factors when deciding which units to place in an area. Units with terrain advantages will tend to be placed in that terrain for defense. Units may still get rotated out with fresh units with worse terrain advantages if they are at low organization, strength, or supply. The AI is not as good about choosing them for offense in an adjacent target area where they would have a bonus during the attack. Mixing a few in with a lot of normal infantry in an army is a good use for them as the AI will take advantage of them at least some of the time. Of course put them in armies in the theaters with the most hills and mountains. A small army composed mostly of Mountaineers to defend a stretch of mountains is another way you can use them.

[noxmortem]

@Illyrien, What I have found to be the best thing to allow the AI to make good decisions is to have many fronts and many armies each with very small fronts and always only make small steps forward with short attack vectors. When you have very large fronts the AI can do some incredibly stupid stuff which can break the whole war, like swapping two almost equal units from one end of the front to the other leaving both fronts undefended, your army with low organisation because of strategic redeploy because of the long distance and suddenly you are cut off and die. The smaller the subproblem the AI has to solve is the better it does work and for small tasks it works incredibly well.

Also it is good to have only a single attack front per army because the AI will sometimes try to merge them and then stuff can go crazy. Like you have planned two attack fronts in a single army and because of a merge your whole army in front A leaves the front and joins B because its attack vector now counts as "successfully achieved" and is removed. When those two groups are in different armies the group which is done will simply hold the front but don't make something super stupid.

Disclaimer: With "many" I mean: Not one single front as Japan against china but at least 3 for northwest, west, south and likely another army for naval landings.

[Exarch_Alpha]

Originally posted by Illyrien:

How do you use the mountainers effectively? If I add them to armies, will the AI commander correctly use them in rough terrain, rather then the normal infantry?

If your question is if they will use divisions with mixed infantry and mountaineers more in hilly terrain that the pure infantry divisions, I have no idea.

Frankly to make things easier, for yourself too, just put mountaineers in specific divisions so you know who is doing what. Trying to figure out which infantry division is attacking what is too much trouble.

Then assign the mountaineer divisions to fronts that have mountain/hill terrain. Done.

[gyzbug]

Depends on the national bonuses and your needs. If you have a commando specialist you can get +15% to all specialist units. If you are constantly using naval invasions and taking islands in the pacific they are helpful. Also special units have higher base orginizaton and get another +10 as well as combat bonuses from higher tier versions.

[8mm Solutions]

They payoff if you need them they are specialists you don't build your entire military with them or around them you have a few for when you need them. You can avoid using them if you want but you will take way more losses in manpower and equipment than you would have spent just training a few units in the first place. I'd agree that marines aren't as important but you want mountain troops for mountain fighting no question. Attacking dug in troops in mountains with regular infantry is a headache you should avoid.

[deadsanta]

In a game where most things increase by a small % increment, every little bit matters. As you upgrade the mountaineer tech, they get better, whereas infantry stay the same. Stacking engineer and recon on mountaineers is the way to go, faster movement to get in/out/around those areas is key to pushing fronts.

Make a dedicated mountineer army for places like Greece/Turkey/Afghan/Western China and Tibet, assign it the most mountainous routes in an invasion, that way the AI general can't mess it up. 6-12 division army is really all you need for most of these parts.

[Wolff]

Special forces are op. I will use them in all my games. Just love planning for marine invasions, airborne assualts and mountain troops are king. How can you play without them?