[Charles22]

I think a lot of people get into large core forces, simply because the starting default 3000pts is enough for a large force in the early years.

I play with between 3000-3300 points starting off. With Germany, I would play just 3100, but I have to get 2 88's into the force as early as possible, so they can get more experience. I generally don't even fire them in a given battle, but they're there for when things are quite a bit rougher, such as French tanks or early USSR tanks. In any event, I play witha 200X140 map, so playing with a large force is VERY important.

I suppose most people wouldn't dream of playing 200 hexes high with just the 100-115 core units I pick, but that's my main criteria for a core force, how many units there are. I know what kind of game to expect since I'm used to it, and with that much map height you get yourself a real late Eastern Front sort of game, where at least half your armor is busy reacting to the latest enemy surprise location. If I added any more units to the amount of units I pick for both core and support, there would be no holes in my defense, therefore making it not as interesting generally.

Playing with a large force, as well, often gives the AI some pretty good vareity to choose from, thereby making the game more interesting from that point of view. IMO, if you start picking a much larger force, as I have done for experimentation's sake some time ago, I find the AI picks way too much artillery to make the game very interesting. Spending two thirds of the AI's turn in artillery dropping all over the place, can get boring pretty fast.