Assault planning questions

[nhill40]

This is awesome, guys! Really, thank you - this is a big help!

I'm thinking I received some very superficial advice at some point along the lines of "don't assault entrenched infantry with armor", but I'm coming to learn that advice is coming from a much more subtle/nuanced place than I originally recognized.

Here are my thoughts - feel free to correct/elaborate as necessary.

Let's say there is an entrenched enemy infantry position. At my disposal, I have both infantry and armor. There would be nothing inherently "bad" about using both infantry and armor in my assault - in fact, including armor is in all likelihood going to increase the likelihood of a successful assault (i.e., increased likelihood of displacing enemy forces with fewer losses than if the assault was conducted without armor). But, of course, it's not that simple (otherwise these games would just be simple mathematical exercises!) Depending on circumstances, in this situation it may be wiser to perform a pure infantry assault, risking greater losses but leaving the armor fresh to exploit yet-to-be-realized opportunities (like catching enemy infantry in the open, cutting off supply lines, destroying support units, etc).

Put more generally, my thoughts shape up like this. The two main factors that armor bring to the battlefield in droves are mobility and firepower. By choosing to use armor against static/entrenched infantry positions, you are willingly taking your armor's mobility factor off the table. Including armor in my hypothetical assault above *would* be leveraging my armor's firepower, but there are other ways to bring firepower into an assault against a static position (i.e. artillery).