Most OP Support Company? - HOI4 Support Company Tier List
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- Most OP Support Company? - HOI4 Support Company Tier List
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A HEADS UP! Recon from testing is no where as effective as first thought. Update video coming soon! SO drop recon down 2 places. And tank recon down 1 place. YOU'll ALSO find out later ;)
But Dave what about Anti-Air Armoured Recon Companies?
Light armored recon is the 2nd cheapest and gives the highest amount of recon. So maybe they are worth the production cost? Not sure if recon isn't that good, I'll see the update video. From what I see in the military tactics is that the difference in attack bonus is roughly 10%.
One thing that make them good is that they can be paradroped and have the armour so they can’t be penetrated by infantry effectively paradroping armoured division.
Like you say in the video, you can make a specific light tank to use in your armored recon. So you can actually make a light tank with almost equal piercing as support, and its actually cheaper, plus it adds other stats like recon, a little bit of armor etc.
When playing Imperial Britain, I build a tank called "E37" for my marine Duv. Essentially a Matilda on steroids. Tons of armor. Very expensive. But I don't need many. Recon only needs like 24 tanks...
There's a thing with Field Hospitals that none other support company can provide you: The Smug Sense of Moral Superiority!
Hahaha true
*morale
@@simonsloth1306 no-no. "The Smug Sense of Moral Superiority". Once saw that wording in Stellaris from an AI empire I was at war with, and it's best to describe what I feel whenever I go pure autoplan on HOI4 and see 1 to 10 casualties ratio.
@simonsloth1306 just stopping by 7 months later to say he spelled it right.
@@LiberRaider I believe he was also making a joke
I've been trying so hard to prove my beloved field hospitals to be more important than they are but....Nope. I've used them forever and just tried and have been trying an Italy campaign. So far field hospitals saved me about 5,000 troops while taking yugoslavia compared to no field hospital. That is Blisteringly not worth having trucks used for this.
What about xp retention though?
TRUE AND BASED
I love MASH4077, but in hoi4, they have no klinger
Im in the same boat. I want to like FH for the exp retention to LARP as small, but hard hitting Army, but man, it is not worth investing into
I think Field Hospitals are quite useful in the EaW mod, where man/ponypower is much more often your bottle neck compared to vanillia, and where the longer game gives more oppertunitites to use the mega-elite divisions the hospitals net you.
There is a thing with recon. You always needed to look at your templates SPEED. I saw it so many times when guys put horse recon in tank template and reduce their speed to 6.4 km, when tank can go for example 10
It used to be that support companies had no effect on division template speed...
This used to drive me insane when playing imperial Britain. Couldn't figure out why the stock motorized div. were so slow. (Stock mot. has cavalry recon!)
Tank Recon is a really good way to cram a decently powerful tank into a division that doesn't have them otherwise.
@@RedShocktrooperRST all flame and recon tanks can be air dropped , you can paradrop a whole armor brigade in a para dev
I feel like the heavy flame and perhaps even medium flame tanks shouldn't be airdrop-capable at all. Light flame tanks sure, but not the heavies and mediums.
Support companies are kinda like spices, they can make or break a dish because not all spices complement all dishes. I think a video on what combos of support companies for different types of divisions would be a great idea
Nicely said
I love integrated support with heavy tanks.
Absolutely Dave do it
Support AA is a godsend against early light tank spam. It's a lot cheaper than AT, and also puts a decent dent in CAS.
Basically, China can stop Japan in its tracks by properly using AA.
China can't counter u if u don't use planes at all. I had one game where Germany went super try hard building the Navy to contest my Royal navy but shame on him because i deleted my entire surface fleet and just spammed subs. Can't get outplayed if you don't play at all.
@@kk7324 except the AA really puts a dent in most tanks before 1940 at a much cheaper price point. If you don’t contest the air nothing stops the enemy lend leasing some CAS and ruining your divs.
AA in this game is essentially a silver bullet when it comes to defense. Otherwise I guess a normal AT company is fine, but I usually don't use AT.
@@kk7324 cant get outplayed if you're not playing the same game, that poor germany player got fucked :')
Why anti air counters light tanks is a mystery I will never understand
Definitely need more tier list this was amazing
More to come!
@@FeedbackIRL yeah I just got the game and the sub so tier lists for single player would be awesome. I have played eu4 and ck3 so I'm not green to pdx games so I don't need a total noob breakdown just kinda how not to totally suck while I learn the actual mechanics my first few games
Edit: I like how for field hospital you said what the niche use is.
Close air support are the real support divisions tho
I feel like they either need to buff the support companies that need trucks or make a cavalry variant of them with reduced extra stats,so that minor factions with not much industry can afford them,and major nations that can afford better stuff won't build them because they're not as good as the truck variant
They need to make the support companies actually do something. Recon is completely useless, Field hospitals are way too expensive, reliability can go as low as 40% and still not be an issue, and initiative doesn't actually have an impact in a battle. Not when you can get like 40 Soft attack from both arties, air attack from anti air, tons of piercing from anti air and anti tank, and flame tanks. Engineer companies are the only support company in the support company tab that you actually want to put into your divisions. Yes tanks too, Engineers give breakthrough, and a lot of it for a support company.
honestly truck need is negligeable, having even 2 mils on trucks is enough to have thousands on stockpile after a few years
@@cc0767 You need those thousands for logistics tho, so better put like 5 mils on them at least. If you want motorized divisions around 40 to 41, you need even more.
@@VulpeculaJoy No, you dont. Like I said 2 or so is enough for logistics because you just build so damn many. And even 5 is still few compared to other stuff
@@cc0767 true i play with italy and only put 3 truck. Have all my division with high motorization. And i stockpile 5k truck in 1940 where i stop producing it all together and produce mech instead. And in 1942 i still have 4.1k. Its really not a problem.
I've always thought that a really interesting mechanic and a way to make field hospitals better would be that as you take casualties you loose a tiny bit of war support. Something like 10% for a million casualties or something. Not huge but enough to matter, and field hospitals could like, reduce the penalty, were either you buff them to save manpower or have a mechanic that when you have field hospitals in your devisions your war support doesn't take as much of a hit
This would also make the war just make more sense. Like when AI Germany is in 1944 scrapping the barrel lost millions of men and still on 100% war support. Like half your country has died but everyone back home is still eager for more
Only time where war support is reduced for killing your own men is when you force attack, idk if hospitals reduce that but it would make sense
On the other hand, that is kind of what they did actually do, no? The Germans fought kicking and screaming to the bitter end, just like the Russians were ready to do, the Chinese were doing and the Japanese were willing to do had some of their leadership not seen sense.
@@davidbascom5781 that's exactly what was in germany in real life. Not a 100 % ofc but the germans were with Hitler till the end.
@@mdt105 ok. But it's like that for every single country in the game. Also, why is it that if I kill 8 million Germans they will have more war support than if I sink 1000 convoys
In regards to field hospitals: They used to have a use for countries like France who had good indy but limited MP, but now they're useless. Besides so many focuses in most countries that give either more recruitment or flat weekly MP, Communist countries can literally just add 500 MP a week by picking an officer corp for 35 xp. And that MP never shrinks, unlike recruitment.
I could see it being useful for France in the "literally everything but Communist" paths.
To clarify: While Communist France can get the 500 MP-per-week tick from the Communist perk, other paths can't. They have to basically go Blum-Violette and Encourage Immigration to get rid of the employment debuff. While Commie France can also do this, they can stack it with the weekly manpower and their own manpower buffs from Agricultural Collectivization.
They're pretty useful for south american countries still
The only controversial part is the anti tank (S tier in MP) and engineer companies. Engineers are INSANE and should definitely not be ranked this low because it is good for both attack (against forts, rivers and amphibious landings) as well defense for the entrenchment and terrain bonuses. What matters in the end for a division is stat multipliers and this has everything.
If you go Superior Firepower right path Support Rockets are S tier as they give you one bonus artillery battalion without taking any combat width AND for 1/3 price of a normal battalion. You will be researching artillery anyway, so that's just one more tech to get them.
Rockets require way too much reseach to become effective
@@FeedbackIRL In the scenario hes describing you only have to research the first rocket tech for them to be useful. You can ignore the rest of the techs. Its a mid game boost to your soft attack for very little investment but can only be done by going SF right. Outside of that specific path they are pretty much useless though.
It's not the power of one battalion, but more like 2/3 of a line battalion at the cost of 1/3 of a line battalion.
@@ducesettutamen SF Right is the best doctrine path in the game anyway. If you switch doctrines at all, that's where you'd be going.
Another thing to go for rocket tech is that you can make effective tanks with rocket weaponry that will not need any tungsten to make, meaning that if you're short on tungsten you'd benefit from at least the first tier of rocket tech anyway.
I'd say there is a good reason to use engineers on tanks, as I often feel they lack defense for their high supply consumption, so if you end up with a successful landing in the UK or even US, push a little with your tanks and then get bogged down with the absolute deathstack of late game hoi and (usually) less supply than your enemy, you'd either have to pull out your tanks or defend with them, where the flat defense bonus comes very handy.
It is also super useful against counter attacks for the same reason.
This is where your frontline defensive divisions come in. Backing up the advancement of your tanks.
About the support flame tanks, you could actually make the light tanks so cheap that it's cheaper to get the engineer's buffs from flame tanks than from the engineers.
Pls explain the design I'mma use it every game
@@emin166 Cheapest possible engineer company (worst gun tech) is 124.3 IC. A bacis light tank with just flame thrower added on to it costs 2.4 IC each, adding to 15*2.4=36 IC for each support batallion.
You could bring this cost down to a low 2.1 IC for each tank with adding wheeled suspenssion (-10% production cost) totalling only 31.5 IC for a batallion.
Supply companies have the problem that they use fuel which means that your divisions will be moving at 1km/h without supply. So if you know you are going to fight in an area without supply (examples, Siberia, inland China or Africa) your divisions are actually better without them.
In regards to engineer: You're right they're overrated, but I will say this, you're coming from a SP perspective where their major benefits never shine. Primarily, they're use is offensive; That attack bonus on forts is additive and kicks in if you're attacking or defending on a fort tile. Then you have the entrenchment, which increases offensive stats alongside defensive. This was an 'anime was mistake' moment, because you get a 2% per point of entrenchment modifier on everything. This means a fully entrenched unit on a fort can end up doing 1k attack damage because reasons; Now imagine all those tryhards in MP. They get probing attack on a general and drop level 1 forts every five feet. Now add in flame tanks and dozer blades and it's just become stupid.
All that said, it's a lot of cheesing and mechanics abuse that you'll never use in SP, and honestly shouldn't be a thing in MP either...
I only play SP and I only use engineers for my tanks and port defense divisions, it saves a lot of equipment :)
@@Xinamon98 I didn’t even think about ports, but you are right. You have specific units on ports where they shouldn’t attrition so if you can afford the initial cost for a few units, its extremely efficient on manpower required.
Nearly all of this is incorrect. Engineers are best for the entrenchment and river attack buffs, urban late in the game. You almost never build forts in MP because they're a total waste against a fort buster general who activates siege artillery with CP. If you build forts and the enemy uses SA, the fort is actively penalizing your troops. Against the AI, sure they'll be a potato but in MP you almost never see people build forts.
Also saying that a support company is expensive is pretty false, IMO all non-vehicles are cheap, but trucks don’t need much for support companies
Imagine playing MP
MPs are necessary for every game I've ever played. You can get away with not having it early, but by late mid game or into the late game, it is very much a necessity.
Low pop low core stat nations its essential
I found just asking other nations for garrisons is good enough and they only need guns, not good ones so I keep one or two mils on the cheapest guns all game
@@cc0767 If you have allies in a faction with you. Not everyone is in the Allies or plays Germany.
@@jeremiahkivi4256 just make a faction and get allies. So you dont have to research MPs.
@@cc0767 But then I can't conquer them.
Good list Dave, I agree overall but disagree with you slightly on Signal Companies. They have a lot of value in smaller width defensive infantry templates because of the coordination bonus. If you have smaller width units, more of them are likely to be in the engagement, so the coordination bonus means that they are focus firing on the top enemy unit in the list making your defensive fire a lot more effective versus the spread fire of not having them.
- Field hospitals would have to get a massive buff to how much they help with XP to be worth considering. Per below, rocket arty is bad in normal games. But these are worse.
- Amusingly, maintenance can capture CAS if your divisions shoot down planes. This is a legit support company for industry starved minor nations. High % of your rifles/arty/trucks wind up being foreign.
- Terrain modifiers for engineers are eventually great, but it's true that they are a big investment to spam out. You can put a few of these on divisions that attack across water or into forts (along with flamethrower tanks) and take minimal penalties. But putting it on everything? Only when you're very wealthy/finishing up a SP win.
- Support rockets are only there if you're literally playing a road to '56, as in the game is going that late. I put them in the same use case bucket as jet airplanes in HOI.
- Support AT is anti-space marine. If someone wants to put spread tanks out onto infantry divisions and try to armor cheese you, this makes that armor tactics worthless at a fraction of the cost.
- Support AA is excellent. If your average air attack is ~11, you hit the cap of -75% CAS damage. Very useful and carries minors in red air in SP.
I was expecting to argue more, but you more or less put things in the same places I would. The only exception is that you're over-valuing recon, but you've already commented about that too lol.
There are no space marines. They're just marines, astronauts aren't even a thing yet in the game
A thing about field hospitals: they are **extremely** useful when it ends in total trench warfare (like 30% SP runs and about 60...80% MP ones against clever, defensive-stratted Soviets). In such kind of combat, when no one is clearly winning for years - any bit of saved manpower is clearly a godsend, given that it's 1944 and losses are counted well into double digits.
Ideally, a player with field hospitals moves on to all the next stages of the draft later, winning heavily in the industry, in a less ideal case - at least he will reach scrapping the barrel later than the opponent.
So, if it's 1942 for Soviets/1940 for France and there's not even chance of winning this anytime soon - I'd spec into hospitals ASAP, even if i didn't that earlier.
P.S. Yes, trench warfare is very, very likely scenario in current meta, where pure defensive build is basically indestructible when executed properly. You can spend eternity fighting opponent with two layers of bunkers, dozens of heavy infantry armies and 'firefighting team' of mobile AT cannons. The only chance to win this is to either deplete each other manpower in endless attacks and counterattacks, or gain sustainable air fighter superiority, which is barely possible given how equal Axis and Allies economies are.
In such cases games are usually prolonged until 1944...1946, especially if your opponent can construct new layers of defence faster than you can penetrate them, and vice versa.
I've never picked service by requirement or higher as a major nation. Not a single time.
Maybe if field hospitals gave extra defence stat once org goes below 25% it would be cool to see. Or some breakthrough depending on how much org the division has.
Could be explained by saying that people could hold out longer if hospitals were closer to the front and therefore giving faster aid to soldiers. Faster aid could mean that wounded soldiers can return to combat sooner and help hold the line in a non life threatening situation. Or the opposite when on the offensive, to get extra breakthrough.
Or if they increased division recovery rate: since the lightly wounded men get patched up and sent back to the front and thus the division is able to recover its organisation much quicker
Perhaps a bonus to resist attrition for terrain/bad weather/temperatures (lower risk of the general ill/injured event or a faster recovery time if the unit he’s in has hospitals?). Doc is the first to spot and treat everything from frostbite in the tundra to heatstroke in the desert, to malaria in the jungle and swamps, to a twisted ankle in the woods and hills after all.
Thoughts:
- I really think that engineer's attacks bonus on later stages can make a really good difference. They should be buffed to decrease enemy entrenchment bonus when you are attacking, as one of the main task of engineers was to deny enemy strong points and remove defensive obstacles.
-I feel like support art is kinda niche, most of the time you would want to use full art brigades instead. I use them when playing small industry nations or to buff small garrison division (ports, VP and such). They are really strong with small divisions i like to make when fightin in low infrastructure battlefields (africa, SEA, oceanea, etc...)
Entrechment is the best part. If its an attacking divisions there just isn't any point. Support arty is all about adding more soft attack to infantry which is what they need the most
@@FeedbackIRL engineers are basically necessary for attacks over rivers
Support arty gives double the soft attack/production than line arty. So it's good in nearly every division that isn't very large.
support arty is way more efficient than line arty and its not an either or anyway.
@@FeedbackIRL without increasing combat with
What I have found for the recon: Motorized is the best for defense, Armoured Car for any offensive template if you can afford it, light tanks for templates that require high armour values and cavalry the poor man's scouts.
I always try to go for motorized at the minimum if production allows for it.
I personally see engineers as S tier. Yes they are only really good in infantry divs. However the monstrously increase infantry defensive capability and are a must have on nations that cannot build large armies and don’t have large industry.
Also recon tanks can be a complete meme as they can be paradropped. So you can create this godly light tank template and just by making it a recon company it suddenly can be used by paratroopers
I max out the speed and use them to draw enemy troops away from the front and/or just steal all the victory points I can. Stick logistics on them so they last a bit longer before you take a port. IIRC you can do the same with armored cars, and they're even faster. Absolute favorite monarchist Germany strat.
"You really can't go without support anti-air, you really can't!"
*Has never in 500 hours played gone with support anti-air*
Personal favourite of mine in NSB has been light tank recon for countries with heavy infantry focus like Japan and Italy. The light tanks add decent amount of breakthrough to your fat infantry/artillery divisions. A stat that is otherwise quite hard to get on inf/art divisions. It may not be much but also single support company wont take much production or fuel. Light tanks are cheap and can be improved with stabilizers you unlock from research tree anyway. Its cheap to produce and takes very little research because gun is from arty line, stabilizers are from research line and rest you can get with first few researches in tank tree.
You can also put armor car + light tank + flame tank companies in a single division
honestly.. If you add entrenchment plate to light tanks . Then they could give even entrechment bonus to infantry
@@tedarcher9120 I thought you can only have one recon company. Did i miss out on something? Can you have armor car and light tank recon both in same division?
@@elraito maybe armored car recon.
and flame light tanks whit plows.
that said I can see that work as company of heroes had the sherman flame tank had the plow not the regular sherman that had the anti tank flail.
Interwar flame tank company is freaking good for all
Ay! I finally got a heart from Dave
With field hospitals: slower xp losses and effectively doubled manpower. Without field hospitals: a couple extra division with the extra production->quicker win, even less losses. It's sadly just not worth it, unless you have the industry for it and you know, you'll be lacking manpower and the war will go on for a long time.
From real world testing it's poo
Haven't tested this scientifically but the equipment capture *feels* like it gives a lot
engineers' higher level actually mitigates nearly all negative terrain modifiers, if you add "makeshift" bridges with engineer companies, your trucks can have a +40% stat bonus from attacking on a river. instead of 200 breakthrough, your divisions get 800 breakthrough on rivers.
I agree. Anti air... piercing and shut down enemy planes... yes please!
New supply makes logistic the king!
Flame tank just is OP.
I am glad you said what you said about engineers. I have slogged quite a way in the game complaining about how much industry I have to divert to support equipment, especially as a minor like Belgium trying to hold the Ardennes.
They could merge feild hospitals and supply companies together to get the trickle back affect and experience loss reduction.
Still poo
@@FeedbackIRL if you had those affect with the supply company it would still be poo? even with the break through, and supply buffs if you throw the trickle back ability into the supply company it would eliminate one company to research and you maintain fighting experience of the unit making them more combat effective in the long run.
All they need to do, to make hospitals viable, is to make countries lose war support/stability, when casualties are taken, especially for democraties
Anything would be a bonus
Defense modifiers currently apply to Breakthrough for some reason, which is why you put Engineers in all divisions. Might be a bug, but right now they're a no-brainer.
What would be cool for field hospitals is they give a buff for stability/war support (ie. home front people are seeing less body bags coming home). Which is basically the whole point of them, since in a video game like HoI the whole "save a life" ethical part of war doesn't really come into play since it's you know a game... So the whole "LOL 38M Soviet casualties" doesn't sink in as much.
I feel like Turkey is also a good choice for field hospitals since it has more or less the same industry as Romania at the start and can potentially snowball a bit by decisions but lack manpower. Thoughts?
Switzerland with its insane buffs for field hospitals?
The one use of field hospitals I've found is for the first war as non-historic US. If you can shake undisturbed isolation early, you have a massive industrial base for a poland sized manpower pool
Beware adding other than cav recon, adds up as fuel usage. I wouldn't recommend other than cavs to infantry divs.
Reconn is poo. Read pinned comment
7:02 well of course, considering as Germany you're going to be capitulating those nations and getting a load of their equipment anyway
It's actually really weird that he put maintenance above engineers. They are equal by cost/usefulness ratio
Love logistics, but like you say, it can be difficult early game to equip on many divisions, due to the support equipment and truck requirements
I tend to integrate my divisions with: engineers, field hospitals or engineers (depends from type of division), signal corps, logistics.
Then infantry, motorized, mechanized and even armored divisions have artillery and anti-tank battalions.
Every divisions, if possible, are maxed out, but generally a keep AA just to Air Force, since I always have a lot of wings in the air.
Divisions like this seems able to resist a real lot on frontline. I had a bunch of divisions like these on a simple front and they advanced by more than 1500 km in less than a year.
As a new player, i find these videos very useful. Not because they tell me whats good and whats not, but because the guy actually explains *why* its good or not.
Anti-tank doesn't require fuel while Tank divisions do. And a large war can quickly get into oil problems, so it's a goto trick up your sleeve to get some hard attack without being screwed on oil.
Hello, new to hoi4 noob here. That roleplay field hospital comment hit right home. Thanks for the video :)
I want to do a Booshie Infanty challenge run. All infantry, stacked with the best non-offensive Support companies. Logistics, Maintenance, Signal, Engineer, Recon, and so on. Streamline my production to just Guns, LOTS of support eq, LOTS of trucks, and of course planes and trains. No Arty, AA, AT, Tanks, Mech, Cars, etc. Just rifles, trucks, and the finest accommodations available! Motorized is allowed if you want, just no armor and no cannons, ignoring airforce and navy of course.
I’ve done this with great success however the difference I had was AA support
I put Maintenence in my support early on, and goddam it was worth it. Not only do you recover equipment from the enemy but you also recover a good part of the equipment lost, i managed to recover like 30% of my entire loss with lv 3 and capture 10% of all the enemy equipment, it essentially made it very hard to ever run dry.
Maintenence is pretty good.
Capturing enemy equipment is only worth a while, if you don't have much better equipment than your enemies.
Never saw good numbers of captures myself, but its still "free" stuff that help fill out your ranks, even if its not all that much on its own (really need to stack up maint + that general trait to get okay numbers).
The bonus reliability from maint can help a fair bit in recovering your own losses tough, as long as you win your engagements (if you lose a fight you cannot recover/steal anything at all). From a little testing i did gave 50%+ german tanks losses recovered when i was fighting poland with 90% (+10% from maint so 100% total) reliability on the designs iirc. Results had a fair bit of variability. Sometimes i recovered every single losses, often just ~20%.. i guess its a dice roll rather than a set percent? No idea.
I like to think maintenance pays for itself pretty quickly due to all that saved equipment, but i havent had the time to check the numbers in more details.
@@Twadfire Don't forget that when you research the 2nd tier of Maintenance companies, it unlocks a 20% reliability module (for no extra production, just design cost) you can use in the tank designer.
@@jarink1 Imagine using tanks, lmao.
REALLY IMPORTANT!!! Support companies now affect the overall speed of the division based on the equipment they use. Meaning that Cavalry recon companies make the division move at 6 km/h even if it's a light tank division, and flame tanks need to be at least as fast as the slowest tank in your division otherwise they will slow it down.
That's been how it's been for a while
@@josephdedrick9337 well I didn’t realize, but however the point still stands that you can’t just make the cheapest light flame tank, you have to increase the speed until it is as fast as the more advanced tanks in the division.
There are 2 nations that can use Field Hospitals for me : UK and Germany. They both have insane industry, but can struggle with manpower because of their entanglement in so many different theatres.
@@sovietdavemustaine8682 And yet Germany is fighting way bigger manpower pool than it has access to (both Russia and the Allies out-manpower Germany) so manpower is a weakness.
And it usually has an economy strong enough to be able to afford hospitals.
I disagreed with the perspective on field hospital, because I believed that in special forces divisions (my favourite) it made logical sense to keep them at veterancy for longer and reinforce better. I understand now, it CAN help, but it is too little to be significant for the resource cost it tacks on. Very excellent considerations by this video and the community comments.
I will say you now changed my mind on engineers as essential, I have always used them where the cost was inappropriate. It makes sense why I felt I needed so many more resources to fight equally as an opponent. Super cool insight, cheers everyone.
18:20 Reminds me of what Allied soldiers said about the German 88mm Flak:
"It's an anti-air gun, it's an anti-tank gun, it's an anti-infantry gun, IT'S AN ANTI-EVERYTHING GUN!"
Dave: "Field Hospitals are rubbish, maintenance great"
Me on every game playing a minor: "Lets steal enemy stuff and conserve manpower..." so 50% hit rate :D
1:01 "it does supply drugs" i think i misheard it, but i like the panzerschokolade explanation for the +5 breakthrough
The thing with motorized recon is that adds the most speed bonus from all recon companies, so is amazing for light tank tamplates
You can create fast light recon tanks and it will be better then trucks
@@maksimkuskov1400 thats not how it works. Motorized give better speed stats when you hover over them.
maintenance companies are now nerfed btw. Notice that the equipment capture mechanic will only kick in when you're attacking and not when youre being attacked (so as Russia that pretty much takes away any incentive to add them since youll be defending from Germany most of the time)
Even after seeing your analysis of field hospitals, I would still say that would be good for special forces. That extra skill can go a long way
Instead of field hospitals, they should replace it with "Medic station" or something like that.
They provide half the buff as field hospitals, but only require support equipment.
Would be useful for small nations as they wont need as much resources for them.
Perhaps they could make it similiar with recon (Cavarly/motorized/armored car)
We could switch between Infantry medics / Motorized medics and so on.
Maybe that changed in the last 6 months but I don't get the impression that people use engineers offensive, heck, the game itself often puts them on the standard infantry divisions.
I think most people are quite aware that this is a defensive support company.
Agreed a few of these have changed. A patch came out not long after this video Thet moved recon around and flamers
@@FeedbackIRL
I really appreciate your answers!
Field hospital is essential for small countries that focus on land forces, especially against larger enemies like the uSSR.
I think field hospital is not about saving the whole manpower of a country, but to save manpower of your divisions. Let's say you are on a continuous push to overrun you enemy, you need to get your pushing divisions sharp to have an edge, the sharpness is bascially their experience, strength and recovery speed. Field hospital can give you some edge for the first two, think about this, manpower of a division is very slow to be restored, for instance if you change your template to bigger size it takes quite long to reach full manpower (that's why you only do it when they are not fighting), and combine with engineer trait/maintenance company for more equipment, you get much more durable divisions, which could be decisive to can you overrun your enemy or not.
another point about engineers and forts. I noticed on wiki terrain page there's a small note right below that says: "25% fort defense bonus with engineers DOES NOT WORK".
"Holding front lines, niche"
Who dropped this guy on his head
Yeah, he must play crazy agressive or something. I guess with Germany or the USA it makes sense, since when you have to start holding the line you've basically lost, but with basically any other country just no. Imagine playing france and not caring about holding the line...
@@jaspermooren5883 Yeah - and even with Germany it's not uncommon to bleed the Soviets to deal with their superior manpower.
Field hospitals would be great if they slightly reduced penalties from extreme hot or cold weather conditions by a few percent. The combination of trickle back XP, conservation of manpower, and marginal reduction of weather penalties would be decent in general but also help in special contexts. This would give field hospitals a completely viable niche for divisions entrenched in defensive positions grinding XP, for minor countries with low base manpower, and for armies fighting in difficult terrain like marshes, jungles, tundra, mountains, snow, or deserts where temperature and weather fuck with your stats especially during summer and winter seasons in harsh climates near the equator and the poles.
I believe that field hospitals should be a passive bonus. It is assumed that all armies have some sort of hospitals, so I don't really see the point. That way, you can get the bonuses via research, and increase them over time, without using a support company. To compensate, I would change units so that they use support equipment by default, and make the number needed bigger as the bonuses increase.
Challenge: how many times did Dave say 'niche'. I think that's HoI4 idea, everything is niche. There is no recepie or instruction set of which type of support divisions, or more generally, division composition, it all depends on the specific circumstances any particular game has. It can change from one playtrough to another even if you play the same nation over and over.
And... I don't think field hospitals are useless. Sure, countries with large manpower don't really need them, and they are expensive for small countries. But factories and equipment can be captured, even lend leased if you have big allies. Manpower on the other hand is never gained as fast as it's lost in combat, the only way to really gain manpower through expansion is coring territory and just a handful of countries have that option on their focus tree.
Niche
Based and nichepilled
Please find me ONE SINGLE PERSON who doesnt add engineers/support artillery to every division.
Me me
Now I want to play a US game using "pure" infantry, with:
1) Artillery companies
2) Rocket Arty
3) Flame tanks
4) AA
5) Logistics because of supply, man
Tank divisions. What are those.
Dave said ," Listen up, I am going to break this shit down Barney style for you all "
😩
For an armored recon meme add dozer blades to make it a support engineer company too!
Same goes for flame tanks, you can also stack the result. Eng+armored recon+flame tanks, and maybe grand battleplan 😂
@@12gark have a light tank template with some mechanized for hp/Def and you might just merge with the ground you get so dug in.
@@brianjentzen2335 redeployable Maginot Line 😂
@@12gark LMAO
When I was a baby HOI4 player, I did a imperial germany run with 20 width infantry and every support company. I got completely rolled by the soviets.
I don't know how to synthizie this information.
MP is, thanks to its stats, a free infantry brigade, except it's not taking a brigade slot. Especially handy if you go Mass Assault, as it further adds up amount of troops you can cram to the frontline
Support AT is good for destroying anyone trying to snake around with lights/armored cars.. Its useless, but its important that it exists, just like heavy fighters are only good for shooting down strat bombers and for pacific island hopping.
Logistics I'd put in A. It doesn't replace just building docks or depots and many times it still suffers shortages even using it.
Also hospitals would be nice if it lowered supply by 2.5% per level. That or Manpower capture rate at same %.
Maintenance is the goat. Most reliability is around 80% base line. So maxing it out lets your stuff basically never break. Also with cap rate I almost never run out of inf so long I run Maintenance regardless of my size. That lets you field more troops which lets you over power the other side more aggressively. Any reason that Logistics is good, Maintenance is better
Also Rocket trucks are better tier 1 but when you get them you have T2 arty. How ever you never upgrade Rocket trucks and reset build rate, arty often times by the time you have T3 for everyone the game is over. Rocket as a support equip is sorta weak even for the rocket truck stat. It's better just to make T2 Arty but only a few mils as you go harder into rocket trucks. Basically saving a support slot so you don't need either.
I feel like the only country that can deploy enough heavy flame tanks properly is the USA. Maybe late game USSR and Germany too.
True, the only time I use Field Hospitals is when I play unhistorical Hungary trying to make Austria-Hungary. The industry you have with Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia and half Romania is pretty good, but manpower keeps being an issue.
light tank recon is the stuff I only put on my paratroopers so my paratroopers are even more beefed up
but to be frank, I'd stuff the heavy flamers on there if i could (don't have the dlc), and the rocket artillery lmao (but thats too late into the game)
Light tank recon can be better than support AT, will add nearly as much hard attack, more soft attack, a decent amount of breakthrough, and can be about the same cost as support AT.
Just use a high velocity cannon, 3 person turret, no special slots used, wheeled suspension, gasoline engine, and boom. Super cheap tank you can slap on to infantry to buff their stats a lot more than a support AT would... Additionally, you could add the recon **and** an AT company to get essentially double the effect.
As for using them in proper tank divisions, you can easily get *+60-100 breakthrough* on your division by completely decking out the light tank with armoured skirts, radios, maxing out the armour, etc. And, if you say that this would be way too expensive, the recon company gets 50% attack and 80% of the breakthrough of the listed stats whilst using 40% the equipment that you'd use in an actual frontline brigade. Therefore, when shooting for mass breakthrough stats on it, it is still going to be cost effective because the cost per breakthrough is buffed massively.
Lastly, if you use Superior Firepower doctrine, you can easily deck out the thing with additional MGs, a secondary cannon, and whatever gun you'd like and add a very good amount of both soft and hard attack to a division, if that is the goal.
Basically, I think armoured recon is a MUST HAVE on any division you'd classify as one of your 'good divisions', whatever that division type is.
One little tip for Maintenance Company. You don't have to put it on your whole army, creating a duplicate of a defensive line unit and adding the maint company creates a farming mechanic.
Example: Bejing in China, or the Maginot line as France, if you have a spot that is just a meat grinder make sure your divisions have the maint company. It's ridiculous how much equipment you can farm off static defense.
A field hospital is useful when your a small nation receiving aid from large Allies. All those free trucks comming in and supplies. Phillipines fighting off Japan for example.
Field hospitals need a rework. Maybe having casualties affect war support and thus incentivises the use of them to keep war support.
While I generally agree that rocket artillery support is strictly worse than regular artillery, there are edge cases where you might want to add both. An example would be paratroopers; inline artillery can't be dropped, so adding both artillery supports to stack soft attack can be considered. Would I spin up the extra production line for that? probably not, unless I am using rockets somewhere else, which makes it an edge case within an edge case. Not useless, just completely outclassed.
while i like the additional support companies, there is damn near as many recon support divisions as the og support divisions the fk....
field hospitals need a buff, mb an organisation buff or a terrain defence/attack stat buff for the entire division to simulate some sort of a morale boost, maybe reduce the chances of ur general falling ill by half, n maybe a decent army exp boost to account for the experienced war veterans that were saved
4km Recon tanks with high armor are really good against ai because they often dont build anti tank/high piercing units. Tank also adds more movement speed in terrain. Flame tanks obviously can do the exact same thing. Light tank recon is mostly amazing for if you declare a very early war.
I like anti-air support because not only does upgrading it go towards making the support unit better but also the static air defence
The Hog Rider card is unlocked from the Spell Valley (Arena 5). He is a very fast building-targeting, melee troop with moderately high hitpoints and damage. He appears just like his Clash of Clans counterpart; a man with brown eyebrows, a beard, a mohawk, and a golden body piercing in his left ear who is riding a hog. A Hog Rider card costs 4 Elixir to deploy. Strategy His fast move speed can boost forward mini tanks like an Ice Golem in a push. At the same time, he can also function as a tank for lower hitpoint troops such as Goblins as he still has a fair amount of health. Most cheap swarms complement the Hog Rider well, as they are nearly as fast as him and usually force more than one card out of the opponent's hand. The Hog Rider struggles with swarms, as they can damage him down and defeat him quickly while obstructing his path. Barbarians in particular can fully counter him without very strict timing on the defender's part, though be wary of spells. A Hunter can kill the Hog Rider in 2 hits if placed right on top of it. However, if you place something in front of the Hog Rider, the Hunter's splash will damage the Hog Rider and hit the card in front of it more. The Hog Rider in conjunction with the Freeze can surprise the opponent and allow the Hog Rider to deal much more damage than anticipated, especially if the opponent's go-to counter is a swarm, or swarms are their only effective counter to him. Skeletons and Bats will immediately be defeated by the spell, while Spear Goblins, Goblins, and Minions will be at low enough health to be defeated by a follow up Zap or Giant Snowball. However, this strategy isn't very effective against buildings as the Hog Rider will take a while to destroy the building, giving the opponent ample time to articulate another counter. Against non-swarm troops, it can deal a lot of damage during the freeze time, but this can allow the opponent to set up a massive counterpush. For this reason, players should either only go for a Hog Rider + Freeze when they have other units backing it up from a counterattack, or if the match is about to end and they need to deal as much damage as possible. It is not a good idea to send in a Hog Rider simply to destroy a building, especially if it is the only building targeting unit available, as defeating Crown Towers becomes substantially more difficult. Spells or simply waiting out the lifetime of the building are more effective. The exception to this is an Elixir Collector placed in front of the King's Tower. If a Hog Rider placed at the bridge, he can destroy the Collector for a positive Elixir trade, though the damage from both Princess Towers will usually mean he does not survive to deal any damage to them. However, if the opponent sends in defending troops, it can be an opportunity to gain spell damage value. In a deck with several low-cost cards, it might be worth it to simply send the Hog Rider against one building. These decks shuffle their card rotation quick enough, that they will arrive to their next Hog Rider before the next building arrives in the opponent's card rotation. Long-ranged troops like Musketeer and Flying Machine can snipe those buildings, preserving some of the Hog Rider's health, possibly allowing it to get some Tower damage. When there are buildings placed in the middle to counter the Hog Rider, understanding the placement of the Hog Rider and the type of building placed can help the Hog Rider to bypass certain buildings. Passive buildings such as spawners and Elixir Collector have a larger hitbox than defensive buildings; which means that if a passive building was placed 3 tiles away from the river in the middle of the opponent's side, then it is impossible for the Hog Rider to bypass that placement as the Hog Rider will get pulled to that building. Defensive buildings have a smaller hitbox than a passive building, which means if that if a defensive building was placed three tiles away from the river in the middle of the opponent's side, a Hog Rider placed at the very left or right side of the Arena may be able to bypass it due to its smaller hitbox. If the player has a building already placed down in the center of the arena, and the opponent tries to bypass it with a Hog Rider at the edge of the arena, they can use certain air troops to push the Hog Rider towards the building as it jumps over the river, effectively denying the bypass attempt. They must be already hovering over the correct placement, as very quick reflexes are required to correctly perform this technique. For Bats, Skeleton Dragons, and Minion Horde, they should be placed right in front of the Hog Rider as soon as it is deployed. For Minions, Skeleton Barrel, Mega Minion, Flying Machine, Electro Dragon, Baby Dragon, Inferno Dragon, Balloon, and Lava Hound, stagger the above placement one tile to the right if the Hog Rider is placed on the left side of the arena, and vice versa. They can also use ground troops to achieve the same result. Something like an Ice Golem deployed at the Hog Rider’s landing spot will obstruct his path and force him to go around the unit, which causes him to be closer to the building instead of the Crown Tower. The Hog Rider can kite Very Fast non-building targeting troops due to his own Very Fast speed and building only targeting if he is placed on the fourth tile from the bridge, slightly into the opposite lane. He can also stall grounded units when placed right at the bridge. He will pull them towards him while deploying, and then be untargetable by them when he jumps over the bridge. After landing, he will pull them back. This can be useful when the player needs to deal damage in the same lane they are defending. It will also help separate troops behind a tank in a large push. A Tornado placed on the second tile front of the player's King's Tower and staggered two tiles towards the Princess Tower will activate it without any damage dealt to the Princess Tower, helping them in defending future pushes. This can also be a method of mitigating all damage dealt to a Princess Tower, but doing this more than three times may result in the King's Tower's health being low enough to be targeted directly, opening up the possible threat of a back door three crown. A better alternative is to pull the Hog away from the Princess Tower into the attacking range of all three Crown Towers, which will negate all damage as long as none of them are already distracted A very powerful combo is the Hog Rider, the Musketeer, and the Valkyrie, typically referred to as the Trifecta. The Musketeer will defend against most troops, while the Valkyrie can protect her and the Hog Rider from swarms or high damage units. The Hog Rider is used to deal damage to the tower. This can be effectively countered by Lightning, one-shotting the Musketeer and severely damaging both the Valkyrie and Hog Rider. The Minion Horde is also effective, but the enemy can Zap them and the Musketeer will one-shot them all. Even if the Musketeer is defeated, the Hog Rider and Valkyrie will have enough time to severely damage the Tower. The Hog Rider should be placed behind the Valkyrie to give it a boost so that it stays in front of the Hog Rider, protecting it. A Hog Rider combined with a Goblin Barrel can be awkward for the opponent to defend against. Timing it so that the Hog Rider is tanking the tower shots for the Goblins is the most effective way to deal damage. However, a Barbarian Barrel can shut this down with minimal Tower damage for a positive Elixir trade, as long as the Goblin Barrel was placed directly on the Tower. Pairing the Hog Rider with the Balloon can deal devastating damage. If executed properly, the Hog Rider will act as a tank while the Balloon threatens to deal massive damage. The Hog Rider can also destroy any buildings attempting to slow down the combo. However, this combo is very vulnerable to swarms and anti-air cards as neither of the troops target anything but buildings. Additionally, they are easy to separate, due to the disparity in move speeds. Alternatively, the Hog Rider and the Balloon can be played in different lanes to spread the opponent's defenses thin. However, a building or Tornado can bring them back together for an easier defense. The Hog Rider can be paired with the Lumberjack as both a swarm bait and damage combo. It is a very fast combo with an extremely high damage output potential, so the enemy will likely try to counter it with a swarm. If this happens, use a spell like Arrows to render the opponent defenseless. If they manage to defeat the Lumberjack, the dropped Rage will make the Hog Rider even more dangerous than it normally is. A fast and deadly combination is the Hog Rider and Mini P.E.K.K.A. combo. Both units are fast but the Mini P.E.K.K.A. does much more damage and does not attack only buildings so the Mini P.E.K.K.A. can deal with troops like the Executioner and Musketeer. However, this combo can be defeated with swarms like Skeleton Army, which will defeat both of them since neither of them can deal area damage. They are also unable to target air troops, so the Minion Horde can stop this easily. A risky play is to deploy the Hog Rider at the bridge as soon as the match starts. If the opponent does not react fast enough, the Hog Rider will deal a significant amount of damage to the Princess Tower. This can also allow the player to quickly scout the opponent's deck if they happen to react to him fast enough.
I do agree that engies are a bit overated in single player but in mp they are quite literally required because those terrain bonuses once you max them out go a long way on your tanks.
There's a difference between a niche and a specialization.
A niche is something you can use, but that is basically secondary and can be ignored.
A specialization is a role that said thing (here support company) excels in, but that is also part of regular gameplay.
Whe it comes to the engineer division, defense and holding the line are not niche aspects in the sense that they are part of the core gameplay : You can't always be on the offensive, and you will need to push back enemy assaults. That makes the engineer division a specialized division, not a niche one.
As years go by Rocket Arty eventually overtakes Arty in destructive power. However that is not why I would build it, I would do so if you are playing in a nation with more tungsten than steel.
Note on Maintenance company - It is funny investment as Poland if you decide to fight USRR then Germany. Before No Step Back I could field around 120 divisions of 20/40 width Cavs and build enough stockpile of soviet guns to cover my shortage. Also at some point I had like 800 light tanks recovered which was more than I produced my own light tanks at that point.
Hospitals aren't great but I can't get to 4/5 experience level on my infantry without it.
Lol, Field Hospital can be pretty strong because of the Xp loss reduction.
I always use the same five on my standard infantry divisions - logistics, armoured car recon, field hospitals, artillery and engineering.
I like the MP support, the extra defence and soft attack, hidden gem if your making garrison / port units to defend boarders and ports from AI
Granted, most of the time I played with Hungarian Flavor mod, but even with vanilla, when playing with Hungary I always found that while I have a decent enough industry for my size, manpower is still an issue. I imagine that quite a few other European minors are in this situation, for these countries Field Hospitals are essential.
MP is best taken advantaged with a full cavalry division (50 something width), and you can use the army spirit that allows zero cavalry cost, to save army xp.
I have seen many wrong videos, where they put 1 cavalry with MP for garrison, this results on enormous ammount of supplies needed for MP,
If for example you need 10 divisons of 1 horse with MP for garrison, your paying the full price of 10 MP, but if you put instead 0.4 (aprox. Not exact) divisons of 25 horses with MP, you are only paying for 0.4 MP and NOT 10!!!
Excellent…now for follow up, do a video showing which division types to use which on. Just ranking is great but it’s better to know, “put these companies on this type of division because…”
I have my theories from this video and my experience but it would be nice to see it laid out that way.
For defensive infantry, putting AA on the line instead of support frees up a support slot and appears to give better stats.
another argument against field hospitals is that if you need to rely on that 20-% fewer casualties to have enough manpower to win a war... you should reconsider your strategy in general
You are flat out wrong on rockets. And you kinda gave that away yourself by placing support artillery in A tier.
Rockets are quite similar to artillery (which is arguably one of the best support companies) and they are therefore essentially a 2nd artillery support company. And you only need to research 4 extra techs to make them roughly as good as maxed out artillery (you get both in 1943 if you not research ahead of time), the other techs under "experimental rockets" will just make them even better.
The only real disadvantage is that you have to produce the equipment separately in its own military factories.
"only" they require 1946 tech to be maxed out. That 1 is a biggie
@@FeedbackIRL
Sure, and it doesn't even make a lot of sense to really go after the experimental rockets techs in a normal play through because they are so late.
However, they only require 1943 tech to be as good as maxed out artillery and that is my entire point they are a 2nd support artillery company with 1943 tech.