The Russian heavy tanks are very powerful, and don't seem to have any real opposition. Are you planning on adding Tigers or Panthers anytime soon?
yep, *soon*, but not as soon as next version I'm afraid.
with v.6/v.7 use Stuka (give them land and armor promotion), that should damage without too much attrition on your side
I was playing on settler difficulty to get a feel for the mod and see its features, and it seemed like Italy was doing absolutely nothing even with the troops it had. I know this is probably due to the low difficulty, so what difficulty do you recommend for a civ newbie (I was thinking around the 4th or 5th, but I may give diety a shot to see how the AI behave)?
4th of 5th sound good, I've set the default to deity to compensate the IA difficulty in combat, I think 4-5th is good for beginner, but as always the best level is the one you find fun to play
The materials production for Germany seems kind of off at the start. Using only my starting army + a few bombers, I noticed that I wasn't really producing enough materials to resupply my units and cities until I had conquered all of France, all of the Baltic states, and some of Russia. I know I didn't have a factory in every city but some cities have amazingly slow production and factories are kind of expensive to buy.
The low material production is wanted, I want attrition warfare to play a big part in the mod, with v.8 I'll include a bonus from your friends and allied CS, and in later stage (not *soon*) the inclusion of resources and new buildings will help the materiel production.
You have to use your troops wisely, knowing than more advanced tanks will use more material, that heavy units use material at double rate, and that some promotions will give you bonus when the unit is healing. Note that since v.6 the reinforcements needed for an unit is shown in the mouseover tooltip of the build menu.
As a concrete example, in my latest tests, well promoted Stuka received 1 HP of damage when attacking french B1, dealing 7-8HP damage to the heavy tank at each run.
To heal one Hit Point, a unit need 20 unit of personnel and reinforcement (there's a ratio for each unit)
So to heal this HP, the Stuka need 17 materiel and 3 personnel. (materiel ratio is 8.5 for stuka)
to heal 7 HP, the B1 need 7*18*2 = 252 materiel (double materiel needed for heavy units) and 7*2 = 14 personnel (materiel ratio is 9 for heavy tanks)
As you see KV-1 or char B1 may seems impressive (and are...), but you need a strong production to be able to use them at full health...