Posts by Norton

I actually like the way time cost is currently implemented. True, time cost can be lower if provinces have double provinces or barracks, but they can be higher if provinces have low morale (for all unit types, as you mention). But that's not an attribute of the battle, where we want to use standardised metrics. So 12 hours per infantry.

Implementing transport ships other than infantry would improve the usability of the calculator only in niche applications – like deciding whether or not to sacrifice a force in an attempt to destroy a transported railgun is economically beneficial. But in most cases other factors will be more important when making that decision.

On a side note, how is damage distributed among transport ships of different unit types?

Ok. Here is a summary of what I learned from using that tool.

1. Contrary to my previous belief, fort's don't really matter that much in large land battles.

Consider this battle:

What changes if we change the fort level from 1 to 5, but remove the single tank in army A?

Virtually nothing. The single tank is about as relevant to the defence of army A than a lvl 5 fort would be.

Armies with tanks and inf shielding can assault forts no problem. They will tear down the fort in the first few turns of the battle, and still have enough attacking power because only irrelevant inf died. The variance doesn't matter here because of the law of large numbers. It's probably more relevant in smaller battles.

Having more heavy units present is much more important than forts in large land battles.

In my recent game, a huge enemy stack of 200 inf, 3 heavy tanks, decided not to attack my lvl 5 fort with 35 inf, 2 ac, 1 art in it. They would have obliterated me if the attacked. They instead sent bombers. Not a good idea.

(note that they would have won if they had sent in more fighters).

OK, I get it, they didn't know what size of an army I had there. But they were acting under the assumption that they would surprise attack me and force me to divert my main army from elsewhere. Given that situation, they should have attacked with the land force anyways.

2) Naval infantry makes a huge difference.

Consider this battle:

Army A clearly outguns army B but is obliterated. Look at that loss ratio in terms of materials and cash!

What happens if we change the number of transport ships in army A?

Turns out they win the battle if they have just a few dozen more transport ships. They win with 35 instead of 15 inf, and the loss ratio in terms of material and cash quickly turns if you add just a few more.

So this is what I meant when I say that I can make much better tactical decisions with that calculator.

So I've been using this extensively in the last few days, and I must say that it makes a huge difference.

For some reason unknown to my opponents I always make the right calls when deciding which fights to choose and which to avoid.

I couldn't play effectively without it.

I think the current approach to deal with fortresses is not very accurate. In some cases, where there are few buildings other than the fort, the fort will take almost all the building damage. In other cases, if there are few buildings present, the fort will take a small share of damage in the first few rounds of combat, and a large share afterwards. In provinces with a lot of infrastructure, the first phase will take longer.

I'm not sure if there is an easy way to deal with that. One possibility would be to make the user select the share of damage that goes to the fort. Another option would be to input fort hitpoints and other hitpoints separately and work from there.

This is awesome. As far as I understand from the readme, it currently does not model destruction of forts. That would be a useful improvement.