Slitherine

I use them as garrisons - the allied ones (Italian, Hungarian, etc) are way too weak to be prancing around in the front lines AND using oil as well (I don't mind using their foot infantry, but using up oil as well would be just plain insulting!!)

The German ones I usually leave in France as anti-commando-invasion troops.

I use them as reserves behind the front line, using any spare rail capacity to shift them forwards.

why wouldn't you fight with them? They are very effective. They are wasted being used on defense.

Because they use oil - vs teh aI I normally play the highest or 2nd highest difficulty level and I'm running out of oil by mid 1942 without having built any extra panzer or motorised units.

In my latest game I'm right adjacent to the Baku oilfields having captured the 2 northern ones, but I've been running out of oil for a few months before getting there.

I normally build a U-boat fleet vs the AI because it makes for a more interesting game (the AI gets lots of destroyers at this level!) and helps delay the loss in manpower quality - I'm on 3rd grade replacements already....but at least U-boats only use a little manpower - building armour or infantry would ahve had me there much earlier

They don't even use that much oil per turn. Air, armor and naval are the true oil hogs imo.

1 or 2 per turn IIRC - it all adds up - there's 5 of them (2 German, 1 each Italian, Hungarian, Romanian?) So that's possibly 5 or 10 oil per turn - about 1/6th or 1/3rd the Axis production every turn. It's not insignificant.

And they're no more powerful than leg infantry nless you get the artillery tech - which essentially means all the allied ones are just the same as leg infantry with the disadvantage that they use oil. Certainly the German ones are more powerful than allied infantry, so they're a bit mroe useful.