Average armies?

[MiloMilo]

So, I send a few of my super duper tank/mech inf. armies across the sea to wipe up some german panzer doo-doo. These days I tend to load my armies with 2 tanks and 2 mech inf. I find it makes for a good balance of offense and defense: you rarely need more than 2 tanks worth of firepower to take down another unit, and sometimes you do need that double defense (anyone whose taken on 80 panzers on their own turf, an ocean away from reinforcements, knows why).

Anyway, I happened to look at the unit display, down in the bottom right of the screen, and it shows my ADM as 14/13/2. Which, in case you don't want to do the math, is the average of the tanks' and mech infs' numbers. I thought an army would use the best attacker or defender available, which would make it effectively 16/18/2. Does anyone know what the real deal is--do armies average ADM scores, or is what is shown on the screen a fluke.

I hate to think that by putting my tanks into an army I actually make them less effective on attack than they normally are.

[Catt]

I had the same question some time ago, and I and others concluded that armies attack with the highest "A" value and defend with the highest "D" value - no "averaging" of stats. This was under 1.29f, not PTW, but I guess I'd be surprised if it changed.

See the following two related threads:

Question on Mixed Army Stats

and

How do armies handle damage?

Catt

EDIT: Fixed links.

[Egbert]

Re: Average armies?

Originally posted by MiloMilo
These days I tend to load my armies with 2 tanks and 2 mech inf.

How do you get 4 units into an army? I have not been able to get more than 3 units into my armies.

[Cyclotron]

When you build the pentagon small wonder, army capacity expands to 4.

[MiloMilo]

Thanks Catt. The answer I inferred from that thread is that the attack and defense values of the individual units within the army are used; the values are not averaged, as the screen suggests. This seems to be reflect what I've observed in the game (such as when the two tanks fail to get the job done, and I see a mech inf start attcking--that's always a bit worrying).

Zachriel's numerical analysis suggests that it's not a big deal, but I submit that it actually is: like you, I noticed that you rarely need more than the first two attackers to take out a given defender. So, for all intents and purposes, a 2 tank/2 mech inf army is just as powerful on attack as a 4 tank army, but MUCH better in defense. If the values were in fact averaged, this would not be true.

I thought about posting this in the strategy forum, as you did; I admit I was hoping for a reply from theseus. But I've seen him here on the general board too.

On a side note, a bit in response to the "why does the poor AI" thread over there: in this game, the germans, after taking over 80% of their own continent, made a well excuted invasion of the neighboring continent, leaving the russians with only 5 cities there. And the russians acted as a human might have in similar circumstances, loading the cities on the front with defenders while leaving the insulated cities in some cases entirely undefended. I had to try to pare back the germans with tanks against panzers, during their golden age, on foreign soil, outnumbered militarily maybe 2 to 1. Quite a challenge, and very enjoyable. There's nothing like smacking down 5 4-panzer armies in 3 turns.