It is HOI 4 that sucks as it cannot decide who you as the player is. It is not reasonable that you should be making all of these decisions to be able to be reasonable effective. a country leader depends on others to help out with this.
I've got nearly 3k hours. I'm still a noob. I only have 46 achievements and I got most of them by following guides exactly instead of learning for myself 😭 Most of my time is spent in RT56, OWB, and EaW
0:50 "It's like saying a hammer is better than a screwdriver without knowing the job you need to do" Counterpoint: I can hammer a screw in. I can't screw in a nail.
Actually you can't hammer a screw in with a hammer without damaging the wall, ergo destroying the point of using a screw in the first place.( A screw is stronger than a nail in certain situations.) Also ofc you can hammer a nail in with a screwdriver. You use the butt.
Also here are the timestamps: 1:10 Infantry 5:33 INF 15w 6:56 INF Offense 9:27 Mountain Boys 10:10 Marines A 10:58 Marines B 11:32 Marines C 12:30 Shock Troops 14:40 Panzer A 16:55 Panzer B 17:47 Garrison A 18:15 Garrison B 19:45 Medium Tank Design (I also recommend skipping to these timestamps after watching the whole video first)
@red_seven_ It depends if you want to hold the line or deal damage more. Usually damage is more helpful but for a country that needs a port garrison and doesn't care if they do damage the engineers are better. Especially if you lack tungsten
4:10 Field hospitals also buff the HP of your infantry, which decreases strength lost when losing organization, which reduces equipment (including manpower) lost.
@Awsomeguy1236 you forgot the sacrificial fast battle ship or heavy cruiser (depending on tech) to cover the carriers from hits Just heavy turret AA and Max engine power to keep up
@@Lukey-Dmy navy is: Subs with lots of torpedoes plus max engine Destroyers with depth charges Heavy cruisers with armour and heavy attack Some AA spammed destroyers for annoying air(mostly not) And sometimes, battleships, which I put on light attack on it. Is this trash or good?
I wanted to give a brief explanation for the size of the marines if people are wondering, specifically A and B. Naval Invasions are primary limited by how many divisions you can use, which is usually 10 or 20. What that means is that you want to put as much power into those divisions as is reasonable, so that is why they are bigger than most infantry divisions. Also a question I have is about 40 width, I remember them being meta when the first division guide was made, are they still functional against the AI given how much it struggles, but I am guessing they are too expensive compared to the 35 widths when talking about Mechanized warfare.
40/W are ok in multiplayer for defending on cities, otherwise 30 or 35 widths are better( be aware for 35’s you may sacrifice a bit of armour for AA or AT)
40 width being too expensive is arguable. If you make a really expensive heavy tank you can disperse them in 30 width and have 5/6 divisions, but if you have some average/slighly expensive mediums you could shove them into a 44 width division and go for quick encirclements, even if you could only afford 3 of those divisions. So its just what you are looking for really, do you want to slowly push a 4/5 tiles frontline and get encircle a bigger group of division, or quickly breakthrough 1 or 2 tiles and encircle only a couple tiles, but a lot faster than the heavies could? Since the combat width penalty is only 1% per excess width, if we talk about a few tank divisions where they can all fit, then that reduction doesnt matter too much, especially if you got air superiority.
Iirc, the terrain and supply update which i think was on nsb made the 40 width division not that desirable anymore, too much stacking and terrain penalty, horrendous supply use, and stuff like that made it not really worth it anymore.
@@moriokki2972 i used 44 width heavy tank because it sounded insane and admittedly needing something like 4/5 supply per unit is pretty insane, but nothing other than a mountain or a swamp could stop them. I did need some transport planes in some areas to allow them to function,but with fuel drums it was a lot more maneageble.
Ever since NSB made every terrain type a different width 40 widths have not been meta. I believe they've changed the widths of various terrains a few times since then and will likely change them again in the future. Currently 40 widths will take overstacking penalties on all terrain types if 2 of them are attacking the same tile, which is not ideal but they aren't the worst thing ever.
3 numbers to keep in mind for ground units: org, armor, pen. 30 org is needed for defending, including when you take ground and get pushback. 48 armor beats all ai unit's pen at '40, and 80 armor beats them at '42 and onward. 37 pen beats '40 armored units, and 80 pen does the same in '42. No matter what you're doing, those three numbers will determine your engagements, defensively and offensively.
Field hospitals are op with motorization boosts. Im a minor player and one of my favorites is estonia unaligned, so every body counts, with focus boost i can retain 30% of casualities suffered by time soviets come at me, making effectively my 80k men into 110k plus retaining expirence allows me to defend better. If i go fascist and follow same principle, i have manpower pool of about sweden with all baltics unified.
this, so much this hospitals makes your manpower effectively larger, sure early on it's not by a lot, by maxed out it's silly, and 90+% of the time the ai don't use hospitals, meaning it's basically a free advantage men are expensive, bullets are cheap
Light tanks as facist czechoslovakia is actually quite good. U have a big industri and 20% bonus for Light tanks i think. Together with improved Light tank researched from the start. If u build the light tanks with close support Guns and medium howitsers spg u can get pretty good soft attack. And u can have lots of tank redy early on
@@sgtburden8482 kinda~ but also by war start, improved Art and AA is still very new so not that much in the field (the ai still needs to research and put it in production after all), and you can optimise your design towards more armour (even if it raises the ic cost by a lot) then it's a matter of positioning to maximise cw and bring as much un its into the fight
Adding extra fuel on tanks is also good because the fuel capacity bonus is scalable with the amount of tanks in a division. More fuel = more durable spearhead, and also taking into account fuel consumption reduction from logistic support.
Thank you for being super clear as to what the meta is and how to achieve it. Most hoi4 channels just assume everyone interested kept up with all the dlc and all the meta through the years.
What I'd love to see is how to build up to those units. Yes, as Germany, it's easy, but as a minor? I never know if I should go for thanks or mobile, if so, how many divisions I'd need and so on. Love the content!
Tank design: "speed suspensions and less engine" is cheaper than using "reliable suspensions and more engine" for the same stats (if you aim at 6,4-10 kmh). Reliable suspensions are like diesel engine, optimal for slow high armor mediums (target is 4kmh).
I've always prefered high armour mediums with high piercing. And having them in my inf divisions. Maybe i should do less of that and more fast and cheap mediums in tank divisions.
@@willholliday3537 a bit i dont play, i can say a single High armor tank really boost stats for infantry. Piercing Is nice, Just nice. hardness and breaktrough wont do much, as it's one tank and many foot soldiers aniway, It Just average down to a point thats not that relevant. Price Is a Better thing to look for. Try many lighter things, i did too, it's fun, Just dont expect It to be meta.
I've been having decent success with light tanks. I find the key is to build them more like support vehicles for your motorized infantry. Make them cheap and fast with a decent gun. Think of them as infantry fighting vehicles like the Bradley and I think they become very good. This leads to motorized divisions with less artillery and more t a n k
Your division templates helped me out tremendously, had a much better campaign as Edward VIII than I ever had, but I made a little oops that I'll rectify on my next attempt
Unpopular opinion: Field hospitals actually can in ceirtan situations save you money - that's how: Field hospitals require only 2 things - support equipment and trucks. Both of them can be produced from the start and don't have any updated versions. At the same time, using Field hospitals reduces your casualties - meaning you can pospone going up in your mobilisation laws, and that's a huge deal when you have a lot of factories, since going past 5% grants you 10% debuffs to your factories output. So in generall, Field hospitals are simply an investment - aspecially if you Play on concentrated industry, and have a better situation with your industry base, than with your manpower base
Ranger support also gives +20% soft attack to your line arty, if you get the doctrine for it. Its the one reason i've been using it with 3 or 4 arty on the line.
This is a very good tutorial, since I suck at division template editing, so this helped me quite a lot. P.S: English is not my main language, so expect writing and grammar mistakes in this comment.
@@somedude2073 Thanks, I'm pretty insecure about my writing, and I don't want to deal with people being angry at me for some reason, so I include a P.S as a reminder of my writing and grammar abilities.
I have been tearing my hair out trying to get Poland to win without ceding Gedansk to Germany, this video is helping me understand part of why I am losing.
I don't think you should put engineers on attacking infantry & mountaineers (pioneer still great for marine) cause they only increase attacks on forts & rivers and AI never builds forts as far as I know, while the speed doesn't really matter since infantry has low speed so you won't increase much. Field hospitals may fit more for atk inf in order to reap some juicy veterans, I remember the experience gained is based on the damage the division deals, field hos can add to that nicely. It also increase inf HP and I like the war support bonus against casualties these attacking inf may take because of lack of armor
I never had problems with my divisions templates. I just make up the one i consider the most role-play. The real grind is in logistics and microgestion.
Id tend to swap the AA on a tank out for maintenance. Not only because you lose less tanks but also because you can steal supplies from all the encircled units. Hospitals are suprisingly good. Yes they can be relatively expensive but the increase to veterancy caused by the offset when used on things like tanks can give a +75% modifier to all your stats very quickly. Its worth considering and is basically always worth it for a country like Germany.
So helpful, learnt so much and got many achievements thanks to your guides! I'd like to see you do an achievement run as France Big Entente. I keep collapsing 😆
Very similar to what I use. For anyone wondering about Space Marines. Replace 1 infantry with medium self propelled AA. Or if want to go even cheaper and fighting very weak opponent (China) armored recon with a light tank stacked on armor also works. Imho. Also Flame tanks are still cool as support if can afford them.
When first designing your tank after researching a new one, pick a speed to aim for, and for all future modification to that model of tank, ensure they reach or exceed that target speed. Tank divisions only move as fast as their slowest division so slowly upgrading the speed of a model of tank over time won't really improve your division speed, as you have to produce enough new tanks to replace all of your old model tanks before the speed increases which might not happen before you have a whole new model. Also pay attention to the speed of trucks and mechanized, as you do not need to be faster than them, since they will slow you down to their speed if your tanks are too fast.
Question/want your opinion: Do you think maintenance companies are worthwhile if you are trying to hold a line while you have a small economy? For that Eq. Capture modifier. I think you did talk about nearly every other support company bar Signal and Maintenance Companies.
Amazing video! Can you do an updated 2024 Miklos Horthy and the Habsburg Prince achievement guide? I’m having a lot of trouble and all the guides I find are out of date. If you could I would greatly appreciate it!
as a newer player it's not so much knowing which templates are good, it's actually getting to them in a campaign while balancing current needs. the timing of when to improve divisions vs recruiting and how quickly to do each one seems different for every nation, but i'm assuming that understanding just comes with hours and experience
Definitely an experience thing, but the absence of an all-encompassing meta means the game has huge replayability :) Every nation will have a different balance of resources, pop, factories, and FT bonuses so effectively every guide is wrong for some nations - and i love it!
I understand everything in this game besides the specific things like making templates, building planes and tanks. Which pretty important. I usually just add a few artillery to my divs and that's about it
As I player who has two days in game, this is incredibly helpful. The fact you have Division for defense and offensive made me really just how much of a massive noob I am 😂. Please more videos like this.
Im quite new to being kinda good sort of at hoi (500h but we dont talk about that) and im playing a germany game rn and following and i just have to say. Wow that invasion of poland was fast.
My go to infantry division at is a 30 width consisting of 12 infantry battalions and 2 artillery battalions, with arty, mp, engineer, maintenance and Armored car recon support companies
Strip the maintenance, the MP, and change the armoured car to trucks and I'm with you, tho AA is almost always worth it - the rest seems entirely surplus to requirements imo
@@guyincognito3199 I feel you, but let me explain my reason for the Maintenance and MP's. Maintenance allow you to not only loose less of your own equipment (especially artillery), but also to capture enemy equipment, which is very helpful if your economy isnt the strongest, and even if it is will mean you have more mills to put on stuff like tanks MP: these are a must for infantry imo, since wether they are moving into enemy territory or have just gotten pushed themselves, they will be able to go back to fighting much quicker, since the MP's help them recover their Org faster. And on a sidenote, armored cars have the highest recon value and are pretty cheap to make, on top of giving your divisions a little bit of armor which makes them harder to break for regular infantry
@@jokingjoker4964 interesting, I'm gonna have to look into the MP thing. I only ever really use maintenance in OWB, but I do think I've used them as some small countries in the distant past. Still think you'd be better off with arty, rockets, flame tanks, trucks/rangers, and AA for attacking and with only engineers and arty for defending, but I respect the thinking here for sure!
You can use the Proper Heritage for 35 AP to make your free cavalry units. I also make a defensive 10 CW civil guard an 20 CW cavalry division and the full garrison unit + MP, some smaller nations I also make heavy cavalry units of 30 CW with 1a2 motorized, there very strong and fast. This ofc is all for single player
My preferred division Templar is a three by three block of infantry with engineers either cavalry or armored recon (depending on the nation) artillery anti-tank artillery and rocket artillery in support combined with the superior firepower doctrine I have found that this template is nigh unstoppable against AI however I have yet to test it out in multiplayer
"Garrison B" (all the horses) doesn't have to cost much XP. If you pick the officer corps trait "Proper Heritage" it costs zero to add a cavalry battalion. Then after the division is designed, just switch back to a better officer corps trait.
I learned off another video with tank divisions you can make your medium tanks relatively cheap with close support guns but also have one battalion of tank destroyers and build stugs of doom with heavy guns
I was waiting for division template tutorial from u for a long time, i always got totally destroyed by stupid italian ai which cant even defend its own coastline
I've owned this game for years and never really played it. I play a lot of Stellaris and CK2/3 but this one seems so steep. This helps a lot. I'm trying to dive into it on my day off wednesday lol
I'd say that hospitals are great for offensive infantry, because infantry divisions drain your manpower when attacking. So adding hospitals will save you manpower in the long run and you won't drop xp lvls.
I have a few questions about the offensive infantry template : Is rocket artillery / motorised rocket artillery worth it? Are flame tanks useful to get better terrain bonuses? Are Radio / Maintenance support companies too niche? Thanks for the guide bittersteel
rocket arty is usually not worth it since you usually can make regular arty at the very start of the game, flame tanks are very useful on shock troops like tanks and motorized, radio and maintenance is up to you. hope that helped
Trucks for encircling and light tank recon with stacked armor should just allow you to punch through. Basically combine BitterSteel's and Feedback gaming's Japan tactics.
@@Hyde_Hill thanks just one more question is that the holding division with 9 infantry and 1 artilary when i am planning an attack shouls i use them for offence or just keep them still as holders?
@@pduttagupta What the other guy replied and what bittersteel said in the video about Inf+ hehe. However if you ad armored recon to them they can just churn through the Chinese as shown by feedback gaming. As they, the Chinese, lack any pen. Just spec them for armor, reliability and soft attack and ignore the other stats as they only need to keep up with the infantry. The Chinese then can not penetrate your divisions so they do half damage. Then some truck divisions ala bittersteel for encircling and focusing on capturing logistic hubs and collab government and you can just overrun the Chinese. Then you can focus on the British and Dutch (leave the yanks alone for a bit). Once dealt with those can go either Sovjet or US your choice.
I like adding a single Tank Battalion to Motorized infantry. At the cost of having fewer Tank Divisions with the same industry, Motorized Divisions are noticeably stronger.
12,1 infantry are by far the best early infantry template with engineers,cav recon and support artillery is just good overall with 12,2s being a better mid game infantry that can both attack and defend
I’ve been absolutely fuming recently because I have 1500 hours and little understanding of how to build good divisions. Just found this video. Makes more sense noe
Personally I highly recommend slipping SP Artillery into the tank divisions if possible. They provide insane soft attack. Even when I'm just using light tank chassis and medium howitzer I can get 6-800 depending on if I have 2 or 4 battalions in the division. I believe it's possible to even get 1000-1200 (with 4 battalions) if you do MBTs or maybe even mediums with the super heavy howitzers but I haven't tested it yet
From what I've seen, as long as you have Soft-Attack, every division is viable and good. I've seen 5 inf work for Soviets because of how Mass Assault Doctrine works. One Template I want to play around with more is either 8 mech and 4 SP Artillery, or 9 mech and 4 SP artillery as a budget tank division.
Came here and immediately got the answer I needed (that there is no single meta division design). Thank you for that. I think I just need to find a way to play the vanilla version. It was a far better game imo back when it was simply build 20 width division, smash into enemy, win. I know that type of gameplay is not for everyone - I play games to relax after work, not for a mind breaking calculus problem.
If you do the proper lineage doctrine it lets you build horse divisions at no xp cost. Its 35 for the initial purchase but you can from then on design any cav division for no extra xp. Similar thing for special forces as about midway down the tree you get picks that reduce special forces design cost down to 2xp per so i lile to wait until im there before designing divisions. I believe theres other reductions for artillery and tanks so can really save yourself a boatload of xp especially considering if you have to do multiple lines in the designer since the initial cost is 25.
@@Bitt3rSteel This is true, i just find myself in such desperate need of xp early game especially with nations who will be at war early and some really benefit from it like china.
@@Bitt3rSteel Counter counterpoint: You're spending the 35xp to get the better spirit regardless. Since it doesn't cost anymore XP to switch from one spirit to another, it actually only costs 35xp to get the free horsey spirit, make all your horse templates, and then switch out to the one you want. It costs a total of 70xp in the end yes, but since 35 was going to be spent anyway on the combat spirit, it doesn't really count as "extra", thus you do actually save a lot of XP if you're trying to go for a full MP division.
I find 18-battallion infantry divisions to actually be really good as a budget division. They have incredible defending abilities making them useful for holding against a stronger enemy, and even have some good soft attack if you stack the right buffs. The thing is in my opinion, you make budget divisions by using budget composition, not budget size. The only reason you want to use low width divisions is if you can't even cover your entire frontline, in which case I would even use bare 5-infantry divisions to cover the line and still have my main force be 36-wide. Assuming you can cover the entire line, less 36-wode divisions is just better than more 18-width divisions in every way. To turn them into attacking divisions, just switch two infantry divisions into tank battallions for breakthrough. I presonally don't use artillery besides the support battalion.
Wet ammunition and slopped armor on medium tank for me is a must, i always do that, and then i try to have a good balance between speed, armor and reliability, i'm fine with 10km/h max because mech i think is 10km/h too
bittersteel I wanna let you know that in terms of holding power, and especially on integrated support of superior firepower (which i also love) cavalry recon provides far more combat power in each combat width per IC than artillery, and i think adds a comparable amount per IC even if you dont count combat width. Look at the numbers and make your own judgement but i prefer recon to line arty
You can make miracles with rangers. Just opened last late-game save. 9:20 template upon upgrade and doctrines (superior firepower + rangers) gives us ~483 soft attack / 131 breakthrough and 535 defense - just to establish a benchmark. If we switch a single line artillery for rocket arty, we end up with 557/137/532. Filling the last support batallion with rocket arty kicks this to 618/144/540.
I've been messing around with different single player setups as Germany and I tend to win very easily with mass production of Panzer 2. Close support gun, easy maintenance, speed as high as possible. By the time I invade Poland and France I can field 24 divisions of 21 width tank divisions, 5 motorized, 5 light tank, one AA truck. Logistics, engineers, maintenance, artillery and recon. Reliability of the light tanks is insane, so I take relatively few attrition losses. By the time I invade Russia I can have two full armies of that and can boost them up to 30 with added tanks, motorized and motorized artillery. Speed is close to 12 so once the Russian line breaks I overrun the entire frontline without having to macro. I find it actually more fun and challenging to go medium tanks to keep it more realistic. As it forces you to micro with fewer tank divisions.
![The Wall Song ร้องข้ามกำแพง | EP.213 | กรีน อัษฎาพร | 3 ต.ค. 67 [1/5]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3KrlLbCsadI/mqdefault.jpg)
“You suck at HOI4”
Even after 1000 hours, that’s a fair assessment.
You should stop sucking at 1936 hours
It is HOI 4 that sucks as it cannot decide who you as the player is. It is not reasonable that you should be making all of these decisions to be able to be reasonable effective. a country leader depends on others to help out with this.
I've got nearly 3k hours. I'm still a noob. I only have 46 achievements and I got most of them by following guides exactly instead of learning for myself 😭
Most of my time is spent in RT56, OWB, and EaW
me too man, me too
Me too, I couldn't even kick Italy out of Ethiopia
I didn’t think Bitter’s content could get any better. First a Japan guide, then a guide for the HRE, now template guide? My man is COOKING.
bro was cooking dinner for his family but forgot to stop cooking when he started playing hoi4
SPEAKING FACTS
"You suck at HOI4."
Why you gotta call me out like that?
Having the content creator imposter syndrome I see
Oh Pravus
Hi Pravus
0:50 "It's like saying a hammer is better than a screwdriver without knowing the job you need to do"
Counterpoint: I can hammer a screw in. I can't screw in a nail.
how do u take the screw out with the hammer
Not with that attitude you can't
Actually you can't hammer a screw in with a hammer without damaging the wall, ergo destroying the point of using a screw in the first place.( A screw is stronger than a nail in certain situations.) Also ofc you can hammer a nail in with a screwdriver. You use the butt.
You can screw the nail by hammering it sideways..
@@markcostello5120 🤣🤣
Also here are the timestamps:
1:10 Infantry
5:33 INF 15w
6:56 INF Offense
9:27 Mountain Boys
10:10 Marines A
10:58 Marines B
11:32 Marines C
12:30 Shock Troops
14:40 Panzer A
16:55 Panzer B
17:47 Garrison A
18:15 Garrison B
19:45 Medium Tank Design
(I also recommend skipping to these timestamps after watching the whole video first)
commenting so i dont lose it
Thank you!
Noice
Thanks a lot, I respect and admire your desire to benift the rest of us 👏👏👏🫡
👍
soft attack is very important for ALL Frontline divisions, because the attacker takes more damage attacking into a higher soft attack division.
But if thw attacker has allot of hardness allot of the soft damage doesent go through tho
@nagayafamm1006 but they probably won't, since it's single player
and that's why the first support company for every division should be artillery and not engineers.
how much soft attack do we need@@JackNicholason
@red_seven_ It depends if you want to hold the line or deal damage more. Usually damage is more helpful but for a country that needs a port garrison and doesn't care if they do damage the engineers are better. Especially if you lack tungsten
i wanna see bittersteel play multiplayerr
Against tommy kay or dankus
Not with them
he's too skinny to join the obesity club
He played with dankus once on dankus channel
He would dunk on them, save the game and make a disaster save video
Sane
your divisions finally got me to survive against the soviets as unaligned finland thank you.
I WON THE WINTER WAR
@@captainobvious238 Good job!
@@captainobvious238 now do "finnish him"
The strats are so different nowadays. I remember the times when if your divisions weren't 10/20/40 width you were considered a lunatic.
4:10 Field hospitals also buff the HP of your infantry, which decreases strength lost when losing organization, which reduces equipment (including manpower) lost.
they also boost my morale knowing not as many men will die
So which divisions would you put them in?
@@jasongarfitt1147 Infantry divisions, especially if you're a country like Poland with some industry but little manpower.
@@Bigzthegreat so engineers, artillery, AA, field hospital?
@@jasongarfitt1147 Yeah, just slap it on an infantry template
This is exactly what I've been missing, could you do an air and navy template guide? Would really help!
He still doesn’t know navy, no one does, but I think he should do air!
@@Lukey-D Navy is just death stack as many torpedo DDs and armoured Light cruisers as possible with 4 carriers
@Awsomeguy1236 you forgot the sacrificial fast battle ship or heavy cruiser (depending on tech) to cover the carriers from hits
Just heavy turret AA and Max engine power to keep up
@@Lukey-Dmy navy is:
Subs with lots of torpedoes plus max engine
Destroyers with depth charges
Heavy cruisers with armour and heavy attack
Some AA spammed destroyers for annoying air(mostly not)
And sometimes, battleships, which I put on light attack on it.
Is this trash or good?
I wanted to give a brief explanation for the size of the marines if people are wondering, specifically A and B. Naval Invasions are primary limited by how many divisions you can use, which is usually 10 or 20. What that means is that you want to put as much power into those divisions as is reasonable, so that is why they are bigger than most infantry divisions. Also a question I have is about 40 width, I remember them being meta when the first division guide was made, are they still functional against the AI given how much it struggles, but I am guessing they are too expensive compared to the 35 widths when talking about Mechanized warfare.
40/W are ok in multiplayer for defending on cities, otherwise 30 or 35 widths are better( be aware for 35’s you may sacrifice a bit of armour for AA or AT)
40 width being too expensive is arguable. If you make a really expensive heavy tank you can disperse them in 30 width and have 5/6 divisions, but if you have some average/slighly expensive mediums you could shove them into a 44 width division and go for quick encirclements, even if you could only afford 3 of those divisions. So its just what you are looking for really, do you want to slowly push a 4/5 tiles frontline and get encircle a bigger group of division, or quickly breakthrough 1 or 2 tiles and encircle only a couple tiles, but a lot faster than the heavies could? Since the combat width penalty is only 1% per excess width, if we talk about a few tank divisions where they can all fit, then that reduction doesnt matter too much, especially if you got air superiority.
Iirc, the terrain and supply update which i think was on nsb made the 40 width division not that desirable anymore, too much stacking and terrain penalty, horrendous supply use, and stuff like that made it not really worth it anymore.
@@moriokki2972 i used 44 width heavy tank because it sounded insane and admittedly needing something like 4/5 supply per unit is pretty insane, but nothing other than a mountain or a swamp could stop them. I did need some transport planes in some areas to allow them to function,but with fuel drums it was a lot more maneageble.
Ever since NSB made every terrain type a different width 40 widths have not been meta. I believe they've changed the widths of various terrains a few times since then and will likely change them again in the future. Currently 40 widths will take overstacking penalties on all terrain types if 2 of them are attacking the same tile, which is not ideal but they aren't the worst thing ever.
Its very powerful to include maintenance in your ass-kicking divisions, especially the ones you use to eat pockets
should i use anti air as support or part of the actual division
@@HSE331 support
@@HSE331usually support, if you are in post late game, you can switch it out if you need the support div space for something else
3 numbers to keep in mind for ground units: org, armor, pen. 30 org is needed for defending, including when you take ground and get pushback. 48 armor beats all ai unit's pen at '40, and 80 armor beats them at '42 and onward. 37 pen beats '40 armored units, and 80 pen does the same in '42.
No matter what you're doing, those three numbers will determine your engagements, defensively and offensively.
Mein Fuher, why are we building anti-air units that can pierce through exactly 14.314159 inches of steel?
"I just know"
TYSM as a new player this will help me in my runs. Love your content!
Thanks you mister Steel ! I was looking for something like that for a while and never got any reliable advice until now x)
Any time!
Haven't played in a while, how perfect that my favorite HOI4 youtuber just happened to publish the exact type of video I need today!
Field hospitals are op with motorization boosts. Im a minor player and one of my favorites is estonia unaligned, so every body counts, with focus boost i can retain 30% of casualities suffered by time soviets come at me, making effectively my 80k men into 110k plus retaining expirence allows me to defend better. If i go fascist and follow same principle, i have manpower pool of about sweden with all baltics unified.
Estonia is Scandi can give you millions
this, so much this
hospitals makes your manpower effectively larger, sure early on it's not by a lot, by maxed out it's silly, and 90+% of the time the ai don't use hospitals, meaning it's basically a free advantage
men are expensive, bullets are cheap
Field hospital are so expensive and for me they dont reduse that much men
Light tanks as facist czechoslovakia is actually quite good. U have a big industri and 20% bonus for Light tanks i think. Together with improved Light tank researched from the start. If u build the light tanks with close support Guns and medium howitsers spg u can get pretty good soft attack. And u can have lots of tank redy early on
don't you usually lose the armor advantage by '40 due to AA and ART getting more piercing?
@@sgtburden8482 kinda~
but also by war start, improved Art and AA is still very new so not that much in the field (the ai still needs to research and put it in production after all), and you can optimise your design towards more armour (even if it raises the ic cost by a lot) then it's a matter of positioning to maximise cw and bring as much un its into the fight
@@quentintin1 ok, thanks
Adding extra fuel on tanks is also good because the fuel capacity bonus is scalable with the amount of tanks in a division. More fuel = more durable spearhead, and also taking into account fuel consumption reduction from logistic support.
The intro alone hits really hard. But it's completely true so I appreciate the blunt approach to your tutorial.
Thank you for being super clear as to what the meta is and how to achieve it. Most hoi4 channels just assume everyone interested kept up with all the dlc and all the meta through the years.
What I'd love to see is how to build up to those units. Yes, as Germany, it's easy, but as a minor? I never know if I should go for thanks or mobile, if so, how many divisions I'd need and so on. Love the content!
I'd say go what your country is better at through their focus tree so if you get more research bonus/boost to mobile go mobile if that makes sense
Tank design: "speed suspensions and less engine" is cheaper than using "reliable suspensions and more engine" for the same stats (if you aim at 6,4-10 kmh). Reliable suspensions are like diesel engine, optimal for slow high armor mediums (target is 4kmh).
I've always prefered high armour mediums with high piercing. And having them in my inf divisions. Maybe i should do less of that and more fast and cheap mediums in tank divisions.
@@willholliday3537 a bit i dont play, i can say a single High armor tank really boost stats for infantry. Piercing Is nice, Just nice. hardness and breaktrough wont do much, as it's one tank and many foot soldiers aniway, It Just average down to a point thats not that relevant. Price Is a Better thing to look for. Try many lighter things, i did too, it's fun, Just dont expect It to be meta.
I think it would be great to follow up with a guide on air and naval templates and perhaps on how to use your navy in different situations.
I've been having decent success with light tanks. I find the key is to build them more like support vehicles for your motorized infantry. Make them cheap and fast with a decent gun. Think of them as infantry fighting vehicles like the Bradley and I think they become very good. This leads to motorized divisions with less artillery and more t a n k
Your division templates helped me out tremendously, had a much better campaign as Edward VIII than I ever had, but I made a little oops that I'll rectify on my next attempt
i played for 1k hours and still didn't know how to make decent templates, thanks bro
This is exactly what I needed as a returning player. A naval version of this video would be great
You are awesome! I didn’t even know I could add stuff to my tanks, you’ve taught me so much about this game and I can’t thank you enough!
How does it work, I can't do it :(
Unpopular opinion: Field hospitals actually can in ceirtan situations save you money - that's how:
Field hospitals require only 2 things - support equipment and trucks. Both of them can be produced from the start and don't have any updated versions.
At the same time, using Field hospitals reduces your casualties - meaning you can pospone going up in your mobilisation laws, and that's a huge deal when you have a lot of factories, since going past 5% grants you 10% debuffs to your factories output.
So in generall, Field hospitals are simply an investment - aspecially if you Play on concentrated industry, and have a better situation with your industry base, than with your manpower base
3:02 that's basically my standard unit too I just add an artillery and a anti tank or anti air unit depending on the situation
Thank you for making this, I've been swiping the divisions you've made for a while so this is great.
Ranger support also gives +20% soft attack to your line arty, if you get the doctrine for it. Its the one reason i've been using it with 3 or 4 arty on the line.
5:20 bitter hitting us w/ the "e-shports alta" has made my day
This is a very good tutorial, since I suck at division template editing, so this helped me quite a lot.
P.S: English is not my main language, so expect writing and grammar mistakes in this comment.
Your English is really good, there's no mistakes in that sentence. I probably would've written it nearly the same way.
@@somedude2073 Thanks, I'm pretty insecure about my writing, and I don't want to deal with people being angry at me for some reason, so I include a P.S as a reminder of my writing and grammar abilities.
I too find myself sucking at division templates, sometimes I just get my phone and copy the division templates I had saved in there
I have been tearing my hair out trying to get Poland to win without ceding Gedansk to Germany, this video is helping me understand part of why I am losing.
Can you do a guide on how to touch grass pls
NO.
Dude, he said 14:10 - “The majority of Europenis forest - the green….”
How much more green do ya need? :p
I don't think you should put engineers on attacking infantry & mountaineers (pioneer still great for marine) cause they only increase attacks on forts & rivers and AI never builds forts as far as I know, while the speed doesn't really matter since infantry has low speed so you won't increase much. Field hospitals may fit more for atk inf in order to reap some juicy veterans, I remember the experience gained is based on the damage the division deals, field hos can add to that nicely. It also increase inf HP and I like the war support bonus against casualties these attacking inf may take because of lack of armor
Thank you for this video, I have ever wished such guides :) Please make more of these, like naval, air and so on :)
I never had problems with my divisions templates. I just make up the one i consider the most role-play. The real grind is in logistics and microgestion.
Ah yes, the masochists of hoi4, must be fun when you do barbarossa
1:04 Rules of the guerrilla. "Rule 9: Always use the right Tool for the Job." ~Juan Cortez
Id tend to swap the AA on a tank out for maintenance. Not only because you lose less tanks but also because you can steal supplies from all the encircled units.
Hospitals are suprisingly good. Yes they can be relatively expensive but the increase to veterancy caused by the offset when used on things like tanks can give a +75% modifier to all your stats very quickly. Its worth considering and is basically always worth it for a country like Germany.
Man wth this guide is pure gold. Its not posted anywhere???
So helpful, learnt so much and got many achievements thanks to your guides!
I'd like to see you do an achievement run as France Big Entente. I keep collapsing 😆
Bro described me and i thank you for the tutorial
Thank you so much,been struggling with this stuff!
Happy to help!
500 navy exp, 500 airforce exp, 370 land troops exp spent on templates on January the 1st 1936, "this is single player only" :D
I obviously used console commands to get the template designs. I'm not sting a full campaign just to show templates 😅
@@Bitt3rSteel Totally, I don't blame you, just found it amusing.
By the way, your templates are crushing the Soviets right now, so thanks a lot :)
Very similar to what I use. For anyone wondering about Space Marines. Replace 1 infantry with medium self propelled AA. Or if want to go even cheaper and fighting very weak opponent (China) armored recon with a light tank stacked on armor also works. Imho. Also Flame tanks are still cool as support if can afford them.
When first designing your tank after researching a new one, pick a speed to aim for, and for all future modification to that model of tank, ensure they reach or exceed that target speed. Tank divisions only move as fast as their slowest division so slowly upgrading the speed of a model of tank over time won't really improve your division speed, as you have to produce enough new tanks to replace all of your old model tanks before the speed increases which might not happen before you have a whole new model. Also pay attention to the speed of trucks and mechanized, as you do not need to be faster than them, since they will slow you down to their speed if your tanks are too fast.
Love the Futurama clips!
Question/want your opinion: Do you think maintenance companies are worthwhile if you are trying to hold a line while you have a small economy? For that Eq. Capture modifier. I think you did talk about nearly every other support company bar Signal and Maintenance Companies.
WE GETTIN OUT THE ENCIRCLEMENT WITH THIS ONE ‼️‼️💯💯📈📈🥶🥶
We’re so fucking BACK
Fr
Amazing video! Can you do an updated 2024 Miklos Horthy and the Habsburg Prince achievement guide? I’m having a lot of trouble and all the guides I find are out of date. If you could I would greatly appreciate it!
Super interesting, gonna start a new round with all the things i just learned from your video!
You did a good job explaining
as a newer player it's not so much knowing which templates are good, it's actually getting to them in a campaign while balancing current needs. the timing of when to improve divisions vs recruiting and how quickly to do each one seems different for every nation, but i'm assuming that understanding just comes with hours and experience
Definitely an experience thing, but the absence of an all-encompassing meta means the game has huge replayability :) Every nation will have a different balance of resources, pop, factories, and FT bonuses so effectively every guide is wrong for some nations - and i love it!
I understand everything in this game besides the specific things like making templates, building planes and tanks. Which pretty important. I usually just add a few artillery to my divs and that's about it
I have 1800 hours and I've still learned a lot from this video. Thank you so much!!!
That was a very helpful video. The only thing my less competent self would add is that I love fuel drums on my tanks. Hate running out of fuel.
This video is going to be super helpful next time I play.
Only game where I have more hours watching tutorials rather than playing :D
As I player who has two days in game, this is incredibly helpful. The fact you have Division for defense and offensive made me really just how much of a massive noob I am 😂. Please more videos like this.
Perfect video!
Next, pls make division templates, which first priority is the terrain.
Im quite new to being kinda good sort of at hoi (500h but we dont talk about that) and im playing a germany game rn and following and i just have to say. Wow that invasion of poland was fast.
allies capitulated march 2nd 1940
People be like:Bro I played 100 hours and still suck at HOI4! Me:Bro I have 1500 hours and still suck this game is insane!
My go to infantry division at is a 30 width consisting of 12 infantry battalions and 2 artillery battalions, with arty, mp, engineer, maintenance and Armored car recon support companies
Strip the maintenance, the MP, and change the armoured car to trucks and I'm with you, tho AA is almost always worth it - the rest seems entirely surplus to requirements imo
@@guyincognito3199 I feel you, but let me explain my reason for the Maintenance and MP's.
Maintenance allow you to not only loose less of your own equipment (especially artillery), but also to capture enemy equipment, which is very helpful if your economy isnt the strongest, and even if it is will mean you have more mills to put on stuff like tanks
MP: these are a must for infantry imo, since wether they are moving into enemy territory or have just gotten pushed themselves, they will be able to go back to fighting much quicker, since the MP's help them recover their Org faster.
And on a sidenote, armored cars have the highest recon value and are pretty cheap to make, on top of giving your divisions a little bit of armor which makes them harder to break for regular infantry
@@jokingjoker4964 interesting, I'm gonna have to look into the MP thing. I only ever really use maintenance in OWB, but I do think I've used them as some small countries in the distant past. Still think you'd be better off with arty, rockets, flame tanks, trucks/rangers, and AA for attacking and with only engineers and arty for defending, but I respect the thinking here for sure!
I needed this so bad. Thank you so much. keep up the great work
You can use the Proper Heritage for 35 AP to make your free cavalry units. I also make a defensive 10 CW civil guard an 20 CW cavalry division and the full garrison unit + MP, some smaller nations I also make heavy cavalry units of 30 CW with 1a2 motorized, there very strong and fast. This ofc is all for single player
My preferred division Templar is a three by three block of infantry with engineers either cavalry or armored recon (depending on the nation) artillery anti-tank artillery and rocket artillery in support combined with the superior firepower doctrine I have found that this template is nigh unstoppable against AI however I have yet to test it out in multiplayer
Good to know I've been building my tanks right. I will diversify my infantry templates from now on. Thanks for the guide.
Internet: Show hand. Bitt3rSteel:
"Garrison B" (all the horses) doesn't have to cost much XP. If you pick the officer corps trait "Proper Heritage" it costs zero to add a cavalry battalion. Then after the division is designed, just switch back to a better officer corps trait.
That's still 70 XP tho
I learned off another video with tank divisions you can make your medium tanks relatively cheap with close support guns but also have one battalion of tank destroyers and build stugs of doom with heavy guns
I was waiting for division template tutorial from u for a long time, i always got totally destroyed by stupid italian ai which cant even defend its own coastline
I've owned this game for years and never really played it. I play a lot of Stellaris and CK2/3 but this one seems so steep. This helps a lot. I'm trying to dive into it on my day off wednesday lol
I needed this video so much, thank you Bitt3r, this is so helpful!
Bittersteel should try playing as Napoleon France
I'd say that hospitals are great for offensive infantry, because infantry divisions drain your manpower when attacking. So adding hospitals will save you manpower in the long run and you won't drop xp lvls.
I have a few questions about the offensive infantry template :
Is rocket artillery / motorised rocket artillery worth it?
Are flame tanks useful to get better terrain bonuses?
Are Radio / Maintenance support companies too niche?
Thanks for the guide bittersteel
rocket arty is usually not worth it since you usually can make regular arty at the very start of the game, flame tanks are very useful on shock troops like tanks and motorized, radio and maintenance is up to you. hope that helped
@@ImaginaryProud1 doesn't the flame tanks reduce the speed of your tanks divison? thanks for the tips!
not really as you can design the flame tanks yourself and put speed on the flame tank(if you have the no step back dlc)
@@ImaginaryProud1 ohh ok, thanks
I really needed this, god damn thank you!
I suck so much when playing as japan i couldnt even push to beijing till 1943😢
Trucks for encircling and light tank recon with stacked armor should just allow you to punch through. Basically combine BitterSteel's and Feedback gaming's Japan tactics.
@@Hyde_Hill thanks just one more question is that the holding division with 9 infantry and 1 artilary when i am planning an attack shouls i use them for offence or just keep them still as holders?
@@pduttaguptathey are best used to reinforce attacks by your offensive units or pin enemy divisions
@@pduttagupta What the other guy replied and what bittersteel said in the video about Inf+ hehe. However if you ad armored recon to them they can just churn through the Chinese as shown by feedback gaming. As they, the Chinese, lack any pen. Just spec them for armor, reliability and soft attack and ignore the other stats as they only need to keep up with the infantry. The Chinese then can not penetrate your divisions so they do half damage. Then some truck divisions ala bittersteel for encircling and focusing on capturing logistic hubs and collab government and you can just overrun the Chinese. Then you can focus on the British and Dutch (leave the yanks alone for a bit). Once dealt with those can go either Sovjet or US your choice.
Pretty good, only thing missing is something like a desert division. From what I’ve seen smaller tends to be better
gud luck bitt3rsteel
I like adding a single Tank Battalion to Motorized infantry. At the cost of having fewer Tank Divisions with the same industry, Motorized Divisions are noticeably stronger.
12,1 infantry are by far the best early infantry template with engineers,cav recon and support artillery is just good overall with 12,2s being a better mid game infantry that can both attack and defend
Hey Bittersteel could you do an updated naval guide specifically for how you build up your ships in singleplayer
And then, there is me who had no idea why i got myself in stagnate battle on western front
I’ve been absolutely fuming recently because I have 1500 hours and little understanding of how to build good divisions. Just found this video. Makes more sense noe
Personally I highly recommend slipping SP Artillery into the tank divisions if possible. They provide insane soft attack. Even when I'm just using light tank chassis and medium howitzer I can get 6-800 depending on if I have 2 or 4 battalions in the division. I believe it's possible to even get 1000-1200 (with 4 battalions) if you do MBTs or maybe even mediums with the super heavy howitzers but I haven't tested it yet
I've never felt so attacked by something i completely agree with.
From what I've seen, as long as you have Soft-Attack, every division is viable and good. I've seen 5 inf work for Soviets because of how Mass Assault Doctrine works.
One Template I want to play around with more is either 8 mech and 4 SP Artillery, or 9 mech and 4 SP artillery as a budget tank division.
Haha we all know we’re going to stick with our 9 infantry and support artillery divisions
Came here and immediately got the answer I needed (that there is no single meta division design). Thank you for that. I think I just need to find a way to play the vanilla version. It was a far better game imo back when it was simply build 20 width division, smash into enemy, win. I know that type of gameplay is not for everyone - I play games to relax after work, not for a mind breaking calculus problem.
If you do the proper lineage doctrine it lets you build horse divisions at no xp cost. Its 35 for the initial purchase but you can from then on design any cav division for no extra xp. Similar thing for special forces as about midway down the tree you get picks that reduce special forces design cost down to 2xp per so i lile to wait until im there before designing divisions.
I believe theres other reductions for artillery and tanks so can really save yourself a boatload of xp especially considering if you have to do multiple lines in the designer since the initial cost is 25.
Counterpoint. It's actually 70 XP, because you pay 35 to switch to the spirit and then another 35 to switch back to one focused on combat modifiers
@@Bitt3rSteel This is true, i just find myself in such desperate need of xp early game especially with nations who will be at war early and some really benefit from it like china.
@@Bitt3rSteel Counter counterpoint: You're spending the 35xp to get the better spirit regardless. Since it doesn't cost anymore XP to switch from one spirit to another, it actually only costs 35xp to get the free horsey spirit, make all your horse templates, and then switch out to the one you want. It costs a total of 70xp in the end yes, but since 35 was going to be spent anyway on the combat spirit, it doesn't really count as "extra", thus you do actually save a lot of XP if you're trying to go for a full MP division.
@@Garmbrael you are also missing the opportunity cost of not taking professional officer corps as early as possible
I find 18-battallion infantry divisions to actually be really good as a budget division. They have incredible defending abilities making them useful for holding against a stronger enemy, and even have some good soft attack if you stack the right buffs. The thing is in my opinion, you make budget divisions by using budget composition, not budget size. The only reason you want to use low width divisions is if you can't even cover your entire frontline, in which case I would even use bare 5-infantry divisions to cover the line and still have my main force be 36-wide. Assuming you can cover the entire line, less 36-wode divisions is just better than more 18-width divisions in every way. To turn them into attacking divisions, just switch two infantry divisions into tank battallions for breakthrough. I presonally don't use artillery besides the support battalion.
Wet ammunition and slopped armor on medium tank for me is a must, i always do that, and then i try to have a good balance between speed, armor and reliability, i'm fine with 10km/h max because mech i think is 10km/h too
Only reason i use light tanks is to put them in my offensive infantry for the armor bonus
bittersteel I wanna let you know that in terms of holding power, and especially on integrated support of superior firepower (which i also love) cavalry recon provides far more combat power in each combat width per IC than artillery, and i think adds a comparable amount per IC even if you dont count combat width. Look at the numbers and make your own judgement but i prefer recon to line arty
You can make miracles with rangers. Just opened last late-game save. 9:20 template upon upgrade and doctrines (superior firepower + rangers) gives us ~483 soft attack / 131 breakthrough and 535 defense - just to establish a benchmark. If we switch a single line artillery for rocket arty, we end up with 557/137/532. Filling the last support batallion with rocket arty kicks this to 618/144/540.
I've been messing around with different single player setups as Germany and I tend to win very easily with mass production of Panzer 2. Close support gun, easy maintenance, speed as high as possible. By the time I invade Poland and France I can field 24 divisions of 21 width tank divisions, 5 motorized, 5 light tank, one AA truck. Logistics, engineers, maintenance, artillery and recon. Reliability of the light tanks is insane, so I take relatively few attrition losses. By the time I invade Russia I can have two full armies of that and can boost them up to 30 with added tanks, motorized and motorized artillery. Speed is close to 12 so once the Russian line breaks I overrun the entire frontline without having to macro. I find it actually more fun and challenging to go medium tanks to keep it more realistic. As it forces you to micro with fewer tank divisions.
Steiners gonna be reconquering all of Europe with this one 🗣️🗣️🇩🇪🇩🇪🔥🔥