[2023] Mountaineers vs marines?

Ossiv said: Would marines be a better choice than mountaineers? Looking for advice from those who have used both.

It's a tough call for a number of reasons:

1) Mountaineers require army XP and compete with Mobile warfare.

2) Marines are probably more useful for pushing rivers than mountaineers or their rangers would be for pushing in snow.

3) Marines have the Mechanized Marine Corps doctrine that is incredibly powerful. And while regular MAR and Marine Commandos aren't super useful for Germany outside of Sea Lion, Mechanized Marines provides a ton of bonuses to Amtracs including a price reduction, ORG bonus, and soft attack bonuses. These bonuses make it almost mandatory to slap at least some Amtracs in panzer formations or to create mechanized river crossing specialists if you push Marines this far.

4) Rangers are probably an overall better support company than pioneers in terms of raw stats, but you will probably prefer the bonuses from pioneers.

5) Regular MAR have better stats than regular MTN but the mountain tree has more options for getting more special forces cap (Shared Instructors).

I think Marines are better than Mountaineers. But if MTN had bonuses to fighting in snow (not just rangers having access to those bonuses), I'd probably change my mind. There's a lot of snow in Russia at times.  

Crecer13 said: In the game, amphibious river crossings are not that difficult or important. But in reality, this was one of the most difficult operations, especially considering that Europe has a huge number of rivers. For this purpose, in the USSR in 1944, 11 separate Special Purpose motorized battalions (OMB OSNAZ) were created. They were armed with Lend-Lease Ford GPA or DUKW-353. Their main goal is to cross rivers and create bridgeheads on opposite banks of the river. The experience of the war showed the importance and complexity of river crossings as one of the main factors, therefore, after the war in the USSR, amphibious capability was more important than armor protection.

Sounds like you will want to push to Mechanized Marine Corp then. Both for historical and practical reasons.