What is the best Marine template? (2024)

ltccone said:

Playing as Japan I've made my SNLF templates 10-0 with support. I don't know if 40w is better. Japan really doesn't have the factories for amphib armor, so they would have to be 20-0, which doesn't make sense to me.

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What about mixing arty, 17/2, 14/4, or 11/6 style?

Corpse Fool said:

What about mixing arty, 17/2, 14/4, or 11/6 style?

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That will hurt their amphib attack; not sure if the soft attack is worth it.

CrasherZZ said:

40w isn't necessarily better because they will use up your special forces quota faster. Having 2 20w gives you more flexibility too because you could assault or garrison 2 islands at a time instead of only one with a single 40w. The difference with regular infantry is that there is no quota limit for regular infantry like there is for marines.

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I tend to agree...

ltccone said:

That will hurt their amphib attack; not sure if the soft attack is worth it.

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The default penalty is -70%, so you generally only retain 30% of your stats. Full marines with engineers are +75% amph, which pushes them up to 100% stat retention. A 14/4 (or 7/2) has +55, which is 85% stat retention. You can boost that up higher with spies, landing tech, and some other misc things, so you could technically be getting the full 100% stats. In terms of attacks, 85% of a 14/4 is better at every tech level than the pure marines on the online formation designer.

What sort of defender are you expecting to rub up against in these scenarios?

ltccone said:

That will hurt their amphib attack; not sure if the soft attack is worth it.

I tend to agree...

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Corpse Fool said:

The default penalty is -70%, so you generally only retain 30% of your stats. Full marines with engineers are +75% amph, which pushes them up to 100% stat retention. A 14/4 (or 7/2) has +55, which is 85% stat retention. You can boost that up higher with spies, landing tech, and some other misc things, so you could technically be getting the full 100% stats. In terms of attacks, 85% of a 14/4 is better at every tech level than the pure marines on the online formation designer.

What sort of defender are you expecting to rub up against in these scenarios?

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11/6 also comes out marginally ahead, at least at early tech that would be the one used by Japan against China. I even swapped in a HT to make it real space marines, but LT would do just as well for Japan against China. Even a single division had no trouble landing on enemy units and rooting them in short order. 10/6/1 even uses up just as many special forces as a 10/0 does but with much more attack.

Corpse Fool said:

The default penalty is -70%, so you generally only retain 30% of your stats. Full marines with engineers are +75% amph, which pushes them up to 100% stat retention. A 14/4 (or 7/2) has +55, which is 85% stat retention. You can boost that up higher with spies, landing tech, and some other misc things, so you could technically be getting the full 100% stats. In terms of attacks, 85% of a 14/4 is better at every tech level than the pure marines on the online formation designer.

What sort of defender are you expecting to rub up against in these scenarios?

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Mostly US Infantry divisions.

A 7-2 may be better than a 14-4; it would be more flexible.

CrasherZZ said:

40w isn't necessarily better because they will use up your special forces quota faster. Having 2 20w gives you more flexibility too because you could assault or garrison 2 islands at a time instead of only one with a single 40w. The difference with regular infantry is that there is no quota limit for regular infantry like there is for marines.

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Japan has ways to increase its special forces cap, and you can always exploit it anyway by deploying a bunch of 2-widths then converting them to 50w, then converting as many of the 50w to your 40w marines as you need, then disbanding the extra divisions.

That being said, marines aren't for garrisoning, they're for attacking. Using them to garrison islands is a waste whether they're 20w or 40w.

The main difference between 20w and 40w marines is the likelihood of getting reinforce memed. If you can only fit 2 divisions of 40w in an invasion (if you can't land next to the port to open up extra combat width), it's likely that your divisions will run out of org at close to the same time. This means that your invasion can instantly fail even if you have more divisions waiting in reserve. Using 20w for marines helps you cycle divisions better, but if you're using something like mass assault, signal companies, or a field marshal with the reinforce trait it won't matter as much. If you go SF you might want 20w marines so you can fit in more support arty/rocket arty into the same combat width. Or you might want 40w for the breakthrough. It depends entirely on what your preferences are.