Because you only specify categories in the division template, not specific models. For example, you only include Light Tank or Artillery or Motorized. You don’t specify “1936 Light Tank” in the division designer.
Look at this image:
You tell the game you want 2 artillery and an AA brigade in this division. You don’t say you want 1936 artillery or 1939 artillery. As you produce the newer 1939 artillery, it will filter in to all divisions that have artillery in their template.
EDIT: Mike already answered this, but just wanted to include a screenshot.
Your template will just say “medium tank battalion”. To equip the medium tank battalion, any medium tank will do (e.g. Pz III, PzIV, Panther). Some battalions will need multiple types of equipment (like motorised needs infantry equipment and trucks). Usually divisions prefer to get the newest equipment if they can but you can prioritize that a bit.
When you assign a factory to a production line, it starts out at low efficiency and builds over time. When switching the equipment the line is producing, it also drops the efficiency of all factories on that line, but not by as much, depending on how similar the new equipment is to the old. The average efficiency of the line is displayed as a green bar (starts off mostly red).
But in the division designer you specify which specific equipment you want them to have. Isn’t that doing something different than what you’re saying here? I think I’m close to grasping this :)
When the notification for the Spanish Civil War happens, go to the diplomacy screen for Republican Spain and you should see the option for Send Volunteers. Then you get to choose the 2-3 divisions or so that can join.
OK so I think I got this? See if this is right. In production those are “production lines”. And there are factories scattered all over (military only I assume?) assigned to them. Every tiny factory icon has its own production efficiency that goes up as it stays in the exact same “production line”. The green/red bar is average of all the tiny factory icons assigned too it. If I remove one tiny factory icon and move it to another “production line” it starts from scratch and the “production line” overall efficiency will take a small hit as it’s an average of all the factories. BUT… if I re-assign a tiny factory icon to another production line of the same class that factory won’t take as much of a production efficiency hit?
In the screenshot of the designer, you just specify Artillery. But there’s old WW1 artillery, 1936 artillery, 1939 artillery, etc. That’s not specified anywhere here in the designer. When the division is trained or suffers casualties and needs to replace equipment, it will take whatever is available in your stockpile from the old leftover WW1 crap to the newest stuff coming off your assembly lines.
Say your entire army is equipped with 1936-era artillery. 1939 rolls around and you research the new artillery type, and start producing them in quantity. As you start training new divisions, you likely won’t have enough of the newest artillery to outfit the entire division. Instead, maybe they’ll grab the 10 new artillery units available in your stockpile, but the other 40 will be filled out with the stock of 1936-era stuff you have available. As the game goes on, and you have more and more 1939 artillery, new divisions trained will be able to start out with all the new stuff. As you build up your stockpile, existing divisions out in the field will also start trading in their older equipment for your new 1939 variants. This is all handled automatically and doesn’t need player input. You can actually examine a particular division out in the field and see exactly what it’s equipped with, if that helps!
Same thing holds true for infantry weapons. There are a lot of new infantry equipment you research as time goes on but in terms of the division designer it’s always just infantry brigades, not “Infantry brigades with Thompson submachine guns”.
Unfortunately, if you reassign a factory between production lines, it’s efficiency starts at scratch. The only way to retain efficiency if to change what the production line is building.
So say you have a PzIII line going at full efficiency. If you design a PzIII variant with an improved gun, you can switch the line to produce that variant at a small hit to efficiency (5-10%? IIRC). If you switch to a PzIV or something like a tank-destroyer you take a larger hit to efficiency. If you assign the line to start building rifles, you are basically back at square one (though there are techs that improve the starting efficiency).
By default a division can use all equipment of types that it needs. If you open that dialog, however, you can restrict what exact models of equipment it uses.
How exciting! Really starting to grasp this. OK, so if I’m making a Panzer III on one line and Panzer IV on a second line, if I re-assign one of the tiny factory icons from one production line to the other, it will start it’s efficiency over from scratch? ie. the only way changing production anything where you don’t start over from scratch is within the same production line, changing it to another class of the same type of weapon ie. going from Panzer III to Panzer IV?
I believe so. They COULD do something behind the scenes where the pool of unassigned MIL factories “remembers” which ones had efficiency in which equipment, but I don’t think they have. It would make some things a bit easier for sure. I don’t know if they had something that allowed you to split a factory line in two? Sometimes suggestions and things they actually do get mixed up in my head.
Civilian Factories vs. Military factories. Can Civilian factories make everything? Or everything except weapons and units?
When you start out it is really hard to figure out what kind of split you should have between civilian and military so I’m not sure how one gets there. As Russia you’re missing so much equipment I thought every new factory you built should be military. But in this video this guy said to build all civilian at the beginning. Confused!
I’m watching Youtube guides at 1.75x speed lol. I do not have the patience to sit through these long things at normal speed.
MILS make military equipment. Naval dockyards build ships. CIVs are used for a large variety of things (but never building ships or equipment). So you can use CIVs to:
Trade for resources
Fill your required consumer goods quota (which scales with total factory count)
Build fortifications, airfields, naval bases, state level AA
The critical thing is that you need free CIVs to expand your economy. Each CIV you build gives you a fraction of a free CIV to build more stuff. Each MIL you build costs you a fraction of a free CIV in consumer goods maintenance.
So you can either build a lot of CIVs now to grow your economy, then build a lot of MILs to have a big army later. Or you build a lot of MILs now to have a stronger army sooner, and hope to conquer more factories.
Yeah, Civilian factories do everything except produce equipment and naval units. You use Civilian factories for building additional factories, infrastructure, radar installations, ports, forts, you name it. Whenever you import resources, you trade away 1 civilian factory per 8 resource needed, in increments of 8. If you have a steel shortfall of 14, you need to use 2(x8) factories which will bring in 16 steel. Note that you also gain civilian factories in this way. Everyone that imports resources from you grants you their civilian factories to work with. You can view the totals on this in the construction screen (where you choose to build factories, infrastructure, etc).
If you’re playing the USSR, you’ll have a lot of thirsty nations around the world importing resources from you, granting you additional Civilian Factories to work with and build up your own economy.
WHOA. That is cool and I would have never figured that out. So basically when I trade because I need something I am giving them one extra civilian factory with which they can build their own stuff?
Is there a way I can “offer” to trade my raw resources away if they haven’t asked? Back to the scenario start, even though I will be supplying lots of resources, will I still want to dedicate every single new factory to civilian at game start as the Russkies?
