Axis Minors?

[stormbringer3]

I'm just learning the game system and I have a general question about the Axis Minors. In WitE you could cherry pick battles the Minors could win and thus increase their fighting abilities. Is it worthwhile in this title to try and increase their abilities in that or any other way? Whenever I play an East Front game if there is a way to try and increase the Minor's abilities I always try to do so.
Thanks for any info.

[Grotius]

Hmm. On the one hand, in this game, units can and do gain a little experience if they are successful in battle. On the other hand, there's often incentive not to use the Minors in any dangerous engagement, as Minor casualties can hurt your political standing with their governments, which in turn leads to fewer replacements and reinforcements. If casualties get really bad, or if the war goes very badly, the Minor governments will abandon you altogether.

Another interesting facet of the Minors in this game is that you have to keep a majority under their own national command. In some circumstances, you even have to ensure they have their own national Army command. Very interesting set of rules.

I tend to use the Minors in defensive and support roles, asking them to hold parts of the line while German troops do the encircling and attacking. But inevitably, sometimes you do have to call on the Minors to fight. And of course, the Sovs have some say in the matter; they may pick on the Minors, as they did historically.

Hope this helps some.

[alex0809]

I actually wanted to open a thread about this as well to discuss this...

It's IMHO a very interesting and innovative (at least I haven't seen it like this before) inclusion in game - the game encourages you to NOT throw away the units of the axis minors because for every 1 % losses they lose 1 % morale. The higher their morale, the higher the replacements they will send. Morale also increases if you are on the strategic offensive.
On the other hand, if the morale is high the axis minors want to keep their forces under their command, but the officers are way worse than the German officers.

It's a tradeoff between actually using them in combat or just keeping them as defenders of less important front sections. The thing about this is - if you use them in combat, they contribute something to the success of the operation, but you will receive less replacements - if you keep them out of combat they will receive more men, but what is the use of these men when you don't actually use them - even worse, if their morale is high enough they will want to have their troops under their own command, so they might actually fight WORSE with all these replacements but under Romanian/Italian/Hungarian command than they would with less replacements but under German command[:D] Definitely a very interesting dynamic with no "best" solution.

[aspqrz02]

Minors are weaker in artillery and support elements and, I am pretty sure, much stronger in Infantry at the start of Case Blue than was historically the case (see the OOB/TO&E info for them in the OOB/TO&E Thread) ... but, as I note there, they had real difficulty replacing that infantry ... especially after Stalingrad

The Romanians, for example, amalgamated several divisions to make one slightly stronger one in a couple of cases I have seen records of ... with Regimental strengths down to 100-300 and the disestablised divisions down to 500 or so (for a "new" Division strength of 2-3000, tops) ... from a nominal Infantry Division strength of 13-17000.

Was this a loss of will because of the loss at Stalingrad? Or simply that they never had much will in the first place? I suspect that they always had replacement problems ... and go with the latter. YMMV.

Phil