Question about number of staff

[Philo32b]

I wonder if someone could answer a question about the "staff" metric on the commander screen. I had never noticed this box before, and I usually have staff in the 150+ range for a particular army's commander. Then I noticed the "staff" box. The tooltip message says that the number in the "staff" box indicates the "staff individuals that can be commanded effectively" by this commander. The number is usually less than 80 or so. I assume that my 150 staff armies are suffering a penalty. Does anyone know what the penalty is? I might have to trim down the size of my armies a bit if the penalty is high enough.

[ernieschwitz]

There is no penalty for going over the staff number. The bonuses that the officer gives are the same for staff levels above that number. You might say that his bonuses only apply to the number of staff that the number indicates. Above the number there are no bonuses.

[Strategiusz]

But no full bonus is like a penalty. I have noticed that it is very easy to overload officers with staff.

[Josh]

I agree with both Ernie and Madlok here, there's no penalty for going over the Officers staff limit but it also feels like a "penalty".
So sometimes I create an HQ with the Staff needed for a decent size fighting force, that would be about 150 Staff, much more than a new Officer can have (usually in the 40-80 range for a new Officer).
And sometimes I create a new HQ where that Officer has the Staff he's allowed to, so about 50-60 Staff. In the latter case that means a much smaller fighting force, sometimes as small as 1 Inf unit, 1 Armoured unit and 1 Artillery unit. Ofcourse with each promotion that Officer receives his force gets reinforced.

So there's two ways to approach it and I haven't found out yet which one is the most efficient.

[Philo32b]

It would seem that much of the time one almost needs to do the bigger force/150 staff group that Josh describes, in order to get concentric attack bonuses. (The attacking units must be from the same army, if I remember correctly.) So being somewhat inefficient will be a necessary evil for many armies, although one that is lessened a bit as the commander gets more experienced.

The smaller army structure that Josh describes could be useful for a stormtrooper "army," which is used to assault cities or other strongpoints. Because of their specialized function, those armies wouldn't need to take up staff points and concentric frontage space with other normal army units: artillery, engineer, armor, recon. They could then max out on the bonus from being within the staff allowance.

[Whydmer]

You will still get concentric attack bonuses, they may just be slightly smaller. a 20% bonus as opposed to a 30% bonus for example.

[Josh]

Yes you still get the concentic attack bonus but the bonus is halved. Still, better than nothing I guess.