To reinforce or not?

[edge14]

How much difference is there in experienced units versus a full strength unit? For example, I have a Corp with 1 bar of experience and an 5 strength. If I reinforce past 7 I lose the experience bar. Should I go to the 10 strength and lose the experience bar or keep it at 7 with the one bar? Are there any tables or rules of thumb?

[Blashy]

I've sorta wondered about this as well.

When you re-inforce with over 30% loss in experience is when I've noticed the bars start to get a hit.

What do the vets have to say?

[Terif]

Thats pretty easy:

if you decide to reinforce, then if possible always reinforce to maximum strength (sometimes you dont have the mpp/time to reinforce, thats a different story ).

There is the possibility to save a bit of experience by reinforcing point after point. But by doing this, you will loose a lot of time - time that your unit could use to collect much more experience in combat. Not to forget if you do it right your units are always busy: either they are in combat or marching/operating to the next battlefield. If you dont reinforce them in one, then you will loose time and mpps.

If you leave your units understrength, chances are high they will not survive the next combat and experience has no use any more for a dead unit...

BTW:

the experience bars are only an optical indication to give you a rough idea of the current experience. But internally the game calculates with the exact values - so only reinforcing until your units loose the next part of their medal to keep experience doesnt work .

[ May 25, 2004, 01:25 PM: Message edited by: Terif ]

[edge14]

Well, that makes sense, but there are times when your units are either waiting for action or too weak to attack with. Another example is the fighters in England. Usually during BOF and during BOB, your British figthers get knocked down to 4's and 5's. But they have experience bars. So I wondered if leaving them at 7 or 8 with those experience bars makes them just as strong as a 10 without the bars?

So bottom line is this:

Is a unit with an 8 strength and 1-2 experience bars equal to a 10 with no experience? And is they some type of table to relate this?

[Terif]

It depends on the situation: Supply, HQ Support, which unit types are involved in combat...

There is no table to relate this - at least not that I know.

But in the end it is more or less an academical question: In the game you simply dont have much choice - sooner or later you have to reinforce or you will loose your unit. If you leave it understrength, it is always a risk and usually you will loose more than you can gain by taking this risk - and in critical situations or if you want to make breakthroughs you need full strength units or they will be destroyed in the counterattack.

BTW: it is better to collect experience with full strength units than with understrength ones - they still loose strength points in combat and you have to reinforce them to a minimum strength from time to time where they then loose much more of their experience than if you had reinforced them earlier.

Bottom line:

If you dont reinforce your experienced units they are approximately nearly equal in combat power to reinforced units. But understrength units are much more likely to be destroyed by the enemy so in the end it is usually better to reinforce.

[ May 25, 2004, 02:34 PM: Message edited by: Terif ]

[Col. Gen. Guderian]

Originally posted by Terif:

BTW:

the experience bars are only an optical indication to give you a rough idea of the current experience. But internally the game calculates with the exact values - so only reinforcing until your units loose the next part of their medal to keep experience doesnt work .

Yup, it's the experience loss percentage that one should be concerned about, not the medal.

[Feldtrompeter]

The medal is a visualization of the experience. You can roughly determine the experience of your unit by looking on the medals.

For some units it may be wise to reinforce them step by step. Especially if you have a high tech level and a highly experienced unit. You can thereby safe a lot of experience.

Experienced Carriers i.e. that get damaged later in the game should only be reinforced at once if you need him badly, IMHO. Otherwise you can safe a lot of experience if you reinforce him over the period of three or four turns.

[Curry]

"Listen to Yoda young Luke"

Thanks Terif, always still learning from the master I am.

[reiver]

May the (air)force be with you.