If I may, there seem to be two conflicting points being brought up:
1. The Germans have more expensive equipment.
2. The Germans spend less on an AI selected force than the Americans, Russians and British.
The majority of the tanks they buy are medium tanks and the most common one purchase is the PzKw IVj(+), an 89 point unit at 70 experience for a 4/1945 battle. They also seem to like the PzKw IVh (88pts). The Russians lean heavily on the T-34/85 M1944 model (92pts), the Americans on the M4A1(76) (101pts) or the M4A3(76) (102pts) and the British, well there are a host of them including the Sherman III (72pts), Sherman V (81pts) or the Comet (89pts). When the British have Shermans, each platoon seems to have a Firefly as a gun tank and this pushes the average per medium tank purchased. That explains stuff like below:
Quote:
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1945 ON A (30722, 32255) G(26318, 28074), R(26768, 28398), B(27258, 28793)
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Since the Americans have the most expensive common medium tank, it explains why their typical AI selected core force is higher. Once in a blue moon, the German go heavy on Panther Gs and that skews those numbers all to heck.
As far as heavy units, they tend to buy no more than 12 and they seem to be nine Tigers and three PzKw VIbs. This type of heavy tank purchasing seems to be typical of all countries. What I haven't been able to get the Germans to do is to buy out of the JagdPanther Group, meaning no JagdPanthers or JagdTigers, two of those expensive toys. They don't get Hetzers, Marders or JPz IV/70s, either. I do see Stug IIIgs, but those are coming out of the StuG Group, because they are defined as "Assault Guns" and not "Tank Destroyers". The Americans, Russians and British all purchase tank destroyer type units. One would think the Germans should by some tank destroyers as they were cheaper to produce than tanks. I've tried a dozen times and haven't been able to get them to purchase any allotting the AI 50000 points to use.
I don't know how the force selection code loop works, but if the JagdPanther Group is being skipped or is not included, it would likely cause other units to fill out the 500 unit limit. The vast proportion of those units are much cheaper and it would consequently push down the value of the total core. Out of all this, I'm trying to provide something you can sink your teeth into. Without seeing the code, all I can do is look at output and speculate, but if I am correct it would be a bug.
As far as purchasing large numbers of heavy tanks, I'm not going to step into that one because it seems to be more a factor of personal taste. Seems to me if someone wants lots of heavy tanks, they could go into the OOB (after saving the vanilla version) and start chopping out units they don't want used. If you limit the choices the selection loop has, it will have no other option but to select heavier stuff.