In which phase of the battle is CAS more effective against the armour, during or after? If one can see a Tank division moving behind the enemy lines or along them, and you have the control of the skies, is it effective to attack that unit with CAS? What if that Armour division is among other INF divisions? Does the CAS firepower not spread among all units, which translates into a relative tanks' protection? Is CAS better used against stationary or moving targets? And finally how does a CAS formation achieve maximum firepower: one group of 4x CAS, 2 of 3 CAS, 3x CAS + 1 Ftr. Does adding 1 Ftr to bomber formations not apply the stacking penalty to bombing's efficiency?
CAS is most effective against hard units, so a province with only or mostly tank Divisions of one kind or another will take the most damage. That said, it does a good amount of damage against all but the softest units. Even if a tank divisions is amongst softer Divisions CAS will still be relatively effective, though the firepower does spread. As for when to use CAS, it depends on several factors. If you go all out, and have a lot of CAS relative to front width, you could hit every single Tank Division you can see, whether it's attacking or not. For firepower, it depends how you want to work. If you want to get the most out of every CAS wing send them out 1 at a time, if you want to do the most damage, send out CASx4 or CASx5 (depending on your leader's skill, which counters stacking penalties somewhat), a good middle ground is CASx3. Of course, the risk with pure CAS formations is that they get shot down like flies when they get intercepted by enemy fighters. If you're sure that you'll be able to have Air Superiority, and maintain it, CASx2 or CASx3 is probably the best formation, CASx4 if you have a skilled commander. Adding Ftr to a CAS wing will make the CAS slightly less effective due to the stacking penalty (though this is mostly compensated by Ftr's limited ground attack capabilities), but it will increase survivability, meaning that your mixed CASx2, Ftr or CASx3, Ftr, will suffer significantly less damage when intercepted, and be able to return to action more quickly than a pure CAS wing. An added bonus is that the enemy fighters will take more damage with Ftr in your CAS wing. If you want to fully send it, you could even go with CASx2, Ftrx2, and skimp on interceptors. Those kinds of formations will give the enemy air force, and tanks, a headache as they won't be put out of action for long, and will seriously damage intercepting enemy fighters.
I've been using CASx2, Ftr extensively as the Soviet Union, and this has allowed me to keep my interceptors grounded, and intercept enemy formations as they are spotted. The CASx2, Ftr wings that get intercepted suffer relatively little damage, and are back up and running a day later or so. I save a ton of fuel and supplies, by not having my interceptors flying 24/7. The great thing about CAS is: The harder the unit, the more damage you do. I've noticed that H Arm Divisions are particularly vulnerable.
When to use bombers? Usually I use them only against units that are attacking mine, and use the downtime for them to recuperate. But, if you have excess bomber capacity, or you want to focus on tanks specifically, attacking tanks behind the lines is definitely a good way of wearing down enemy tank forces before they ever get into contact with your troops. In the Winter war, I kept hitting enemy units, even when they weren't fighting, but in the GPW, German units have good AA, and there are always a lot of battles going on, and thus I save my bombers for them to support active battles, and let them recuperated when they don't have a battle to support.
I have seen that the AI combines his Armour divisions to get max. CA bonus. Is this effective? I think that a pure L. Arm, or M. Arm + 1 Eng division will crush any such CA focused divisions.
SP Art are for Minors hard to research, unless they sacrifice something else. Indeed, pairing L Arm with engineers would be a waste of speed. The cheap thing to do is to build exclusive L Arm divisions. Is losing CA bonus so important?
The first tier of the CA bonus is the most effective. As in real life, there is a lot of value in pairing tanks with (mobile) Infantry (15% CA bonus for L Arm, Mot, and 0 CA bonus for L Arm alone). Adding AC is an optional extra (+5% L Arm bonus, only if Infantry is present), but without any Infantry, your L Arm will suffer. If you add a Battle Master commander, he will add another 10% to the CA tally, but only if your unit is a combined arms formation to begin with (ie it has Infantry and at least some different type of unit)
I agree that SP Art might not be worth the hassle. I don't see how exclusive L Arm is much cheaper than L Armx2, Mot, unless you have to research Mot. If you can't easily build Mot domestically, you could go for pure L Arm at first, and then later improve the Division composition as soon as you can get license-built Mot, or even Mech.
By the way, does anybody know what increases the chance of receiving licences, besides joining an alliance? Does Trade suffice for example?
You don't necessarily need to be allied, just closely aligned to the nation you want licences from, that will usually do it.
It might be a subjective impression, but a binary Division, while packing more firepower in the early hours of a battle, it might underperform on a dragging one, because of overwhelmed frontage, unless, of course, you have more divisions involved than the enemy, or you occupy the max. frontage.
Sounds about right. That's what I'm seeing as the Soviet Union, fighting German binary Infantry Divisions with triangular Rifle Divisions. The contrast is even starker as most of my rifle Divisions are Infx3, AT, Art. If both sides are fully organised before the start of the battle, the Germans need 2 of their Divisions to dislodge one of mine, and even then, they tend to take relatively heavy casualties.
Agreed, except I would use AT rarely, preferring the 2x ART firepower most of the time.
That could definitely work, the added soft attack of the Art will probably make up for the 'loss' of 5% CA bonus, especially if you don't have the budget to properly upgrade said AT. If you develop Engineers, it could be interesting to mix in some of them in. Engineers will allow units to dig in more quickly, to move more quickly in bad terrain, to wear down fortifications more easily, and to attack across rivers more easily. They do consume fuel, but with short supply lines, that shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Tanks are really expensive for Minors - including for a relatively strong one -, but without at least up to dated L Arm, you stand no chance of an effective offensive against Majors. Therefore Romania must research tanks.
I don't really agree with that. Yes, you usually need some tanks, or at least mobile divisions, to succeed, but you can buy them with licenses. See, for example
@Bullfilter 's Turkish Army. No significant domestic tank development, but a whole bunch of license-built Soviet tanks in the field, including Arm and H Arm, they're doing real damage. Of course, if you develop your own tanks, you can keep upgrading them, so it's not a bad thing per se to develop domestic L Arm, especially from a historical point of view, but I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary. Just buy licenses once you get close to the war so they're not too out of date when you use the purchased tanks, and keep buying licences throughout the conflict. Good Infantry, with good Artillery, some mobile units, and maybe some special forces. That can be enough to do well, if you add in a powerful Air Force (for a minor) and some paratroopers, you can do great, all without tanks.
Whatever you decide, I look forward to seeing the Romanian army in action.
