To Answer Your Question, I simply didn't know they were. I went ahead and crunched the numbers and can now say you are 99.9999% right about that. In every metric that I did math for, the support battalion was either as efficient or more efficient than the normal battalion, except for soft attack per man power. Knowing this now, I'll definitely start adding it into my infantry divisions. The most significant difference was the soft attack per artillery piece metric, in which the support battalion was 70% more efficient. Thanks for letting me know :)
@@bjoernaagaard for something like small port guard divisions just 10 widths with support arty works fine. It's just that any time you're already using beefier divisions with arty battalions, you might as well use the support arty aswell.
I’ve noticed most famous HOI4 RUclipsrs are mediocre at best. There are some small excellent HOI4 RUclipsrs that do testing etc to back up their analysis and opinions on unit disposition
Really cool video to be honest, i was expecting some rather luckluster templates and such but you knocked it out of the park. You genuinley are a great example for the hoi4 community keep it up man. (never seen such a concise tutorial or explanation in my 1200 hours of hoi4)
I'd like to add, with special forces doctrines marines can be made into jungle experts, which you can use in a 30 width division for the 60 width jungle. This is especially useful in south America which will be the focus of the upcoming dlc.
Your channel is def about to blow up, these videos are the exact type of tutorial I wish I had when I was starting out and are still useful even as a veteran player
The reason we don't use line Artillery anymore is because the soft attack just isn't worth it anymore for the combat width cost. The for every two artillery you can fit three tanks. The three tanks will have way more soft attack than two artillery.
good short video, but 10/15/35 is basically the new meta (with 25 width for mountaineers and such) so it's suboptimal to be building anything that isn't tailored to those combat widths. I use 10 widths for port garrisons, 15 widths for my line troops, 25 widths for mountaineers, and 35 widths for tanks. It's worth nothing that you can and should be adding support arty to every division FIRST, even before you add engineers. Infantry and support arty is literally your bread and butter, and engineers are very good but also expensive for minor powers. Support AA is also very good as it gives you piercing and air attack, which counters both CAS and enemy tanks (at least light tanks/armored cars). You can add AA and anti-tank as whole battalions to your divisions rather than just as support companies as well, so keep that in mind if you want to make a division with exactly 25/35 combat width.
The medium howitzer 2 on medium tank is the best soft attack per combat width in the game. It is so dominant that I think the AA space marine is not worth it if you know you can win air. And it scales so hard when you put more tanks into the div.
@bottle-xz5hp The problem with heavies is that they are 50% more expensive for maybe 20% more armor. And they cost chromium from the start, before you refit to welded armor. And the heavy designer for USA is so bad compare to chrysler's OP production and reliability bonuses. And, in a late game transition, you can't refit your heavies to be 8km and do double duty in a mech/motor division.
Nothing wrong with heavy tanks if you’ve got the chromium. They will outperform medium tanks in combat (and in combat width) but they do come with the drawback of costing far more. So if you’ve got the military factories and resources to spare but not the manpower from the start, I’d definitely consider heavy tanks.
You can make an early version of the ‘space marine’ template in 1936 since the 1st heavy tank tech is in 1934, whereas 1st medium tank tech is in 1938 meaning you’ll have to wait until 1938 to start researching it.
My personal favourite go to is 24 width with just aa and arty support companies at first, and throw on an armoured recon(riveted, wheeled suspension if you want, 9 armour ticks and fuel tanks/ easy maintenance at your discretion) light flamers and logistics. With riveted and 9 armour ticks you’ll get like 7 armour on the division(as armoured recon). Which is more than enough for the early game. With 14 ticks and welded/sloped armour you can reach like 15, or if you swap that out to be a battalion you will hit like 39, or with the first tank about 17 armour. For about 96 divisions you’ll only need 5700 light tanks. Something like 2400 I think if you just have them as a support company. I personally think the armour more than makes up for the lack of soft attack, but even without artillery in the division you won’t be that far behind on soft attack. It’s like 40 at most with the tier one auto cannon, and even less of a difference is you use the close support gun. For two arty battalions you need like 72 artillery, and you can actually make a light tank with a similar amount of armour for around the same cost as tier two arty. But need slightly less of them. And no tungsten. I think taking 50% less org damage more than makes up for less than 40 or so soft attack. But if you aren’t trying to cheese with space marines I can understand why you’d pick artillery.
Imo, the best montaineer and marine templates are 11 mount/marine+ 1 medium tank Its a space marine on the cheap. The medium tank batallion wont reduce the bonuses the mount/marine provides too much If you have full mountaineer upgrade. You can have 14+1 medium tank. Resulting in 24.4 combat width
in my experience 7/2 is always what you want. since the combat rework in whatever patch they changed the way units take damage, bigger divisions die out so fast and cant kill enough, 7/2 always holds. if you want to push use cas + tanks
You might be under estimating the cost effectiveness of support artillery instead of line artillery. It’ll get super expensive trying to build all that arty, when you could build tanks or planes for more value.
Because in single player against the Ai, support aa will often give your division enough air attack and piercing to deal with what the Ai will through at you. The ai does not make very good tank divisions and rarely suffocates you with air supremacy so line battalions of aa or at are rarely needed.
I'd argue that if you know that you can win air, or even get just enough air to prevent enemy supremacy and air support, replacing AA with SPG will be a lot more efficent with damage. The main downside is that the AA+air will average better on different terrains, while the SPG with no air will be worse on worse terrains, but i dont think its enough of a difference to just ignore the SPG option
34 width is ok if youre getting attacked from one direction in plains, but as soon as theres a second direction you get a pretty nasty overwidth penalty if you have 4 units in the combat (slightly less than 33% overwidth so they still join the fight, and the penalty is about as high as you can get)
if you play superior firepower, then you can do 15w like 7 inf + 1 at and move that art into support companies. your wall will get some AT to hurt rivetted enemy tanks.
whenever oyu can add signal companie support. the increased reinvorcment is SO huge especialy for infantry spam divisions. It makes it very unlikely for oyur enemy to ever push you out bevoer your tanks arive for a counter attack. wich buys you so much time its incredibly valuable. (the math is something like for a 90%chance to reinforce a division, with radio researchd, wich you need anyways for signal comp, its on average 32 hours to reinforce, with signal one its laready down to 19 hours! with ful radio its just 9 hours! for every divison, meaning the more reserve division you ahve the higher the chance one division decides to reinforce!) Also Having that in minde i would ditch engies. They only are usefulli nthe initial attck, bevore oyur junits star to cycle through, because once they start cycling the entrenchment is gone. Only use them if you got Industry levt to spare, wich honestly, I never rely have, There is always tanks or planes that could be built instead and engies are incredibly expensive for the whole inf army, rather use the support equipment for signal companies and field hospitlas (those now give +% HP to inf and mot/mech inf)
What would be your preference for USSR to stop German advance? I tend to have more issues with USSR than any other country. I have stopped AI Germany with France before but not USSR for some reason.
Well the USSR have a lot of army rebuffs you have to get rid of over time, so your units will be less effective even if you have the same tech, doctrine, and template. You’re fighting on mostly plains so go with an 11/4. You need that high org and defense with great bite. It’s expensive but if you have a good enough build you can afford it. Depending on if you built an Air Force or not you’ll need aa. Shovels are a must for the entrenchment. Also prep your supply network in anticipation.
@@fischnoices130 USSR is loaded so they can do expensive. I usually get through all of Stalin items and get the negatives. I was thinking about walls for the frontlines.
This HELPED a lot. I tried the wall for defense and 11/4 for offense (reserve units). Barely lost any territory to Germany and wore them down to the point now that I am driving into Germany. It is barely into 1943 as well. (Keep in mind they didn't even declare on me until 1941. I did seize the Baltics, East Poland, Bessarabia, and Finland prior to the war).
it is never worth it to put any kind of support company on 10 widths due to how materially inefficient they are. For example, those 10 widths with engineer company are eating up just as much support equipment (which is really expensive IC-wise) than a 15, 27, 30, 40 or even 50 width would. If you are going to invest engineers into a template (or any kind of support div) at the very least make them 15 width, no width below that is worth investing support companies into. Even your 15 widths suffer from this issue, with you putting three rather expensive support companies (AA, engineer and recon) which are much better served on larger divs. The general rule of thumbs for 20/21 width and below divs is to never put more than two support companies in them, with the two best ones being support eng and support arty or (if you are going GBT and already have 10 entrenchment from your doctrine) support AA and support arty. As for anything above or equal to 21 div, as long as you keep the org above the mid 40s and don't use dogshit/straight up bad support companies (like recon except very specific cases or hospitals/maintenance support), you should be fine. And a last note that others have pointed out is your lack of support arty. It is the most cost-efficient source of soft attack in the entire game, the fact that you aren't perma-using it on every div above/equal to 15 width shows your knowledge is lacking. I understand the good intentions behind this video, but you really should make sure you're not regurgitating falsehoods/bad advice to impressionable noobs who don't know any better.
Yeah I’ll admit I wasn’t thinking about ic while drafting these templates 😅. These are all units with solid stats that have served me well in one way or another in past games. It’s undeniable that at the very least they’re a step up from the ones you start the game with 😂. As to your other points, It was my understanding that the recon bonus is significant because it determines the tactics used in battle by a general so affects all stats. Plus it just got the synergy with artillery, so that just gave me another reason to. And yeah i have no excuse for the support artillery, I just didn’t know 😅. Another guy pointed that out so I sat down and crunched the numbers myself and yeah, it is very efficient. Comments like yours are a reason I like making these videos because I learn so much not just in the process of writing the scripts for them, but also from people pointing out details I missed that are worth knowing. So thank you for teaching me something I didn’t know :). I hope to see your name pop up again under my videos because in the end everyone learns if you have a correction or just something to add.
Because Germany has the industrial base to support bigger units, you should shoot for some larger combat width. Alternatively, you could spam out a crap ton of 15 widths and then use tanks to do your pushing. If you want to do an infantry air build, go for a big combat width.
That’s a pretty wack combat width that doesn’t really fit optimally into any type of terrain. The success will come naturally from the artillery and cas, but there are definitely better options out there.
Ok, thanks! I saw a different RUclipsr using them and they worked for him so I started using them. I’ll try some of the ones you suggested and see if there is noticeable difference.
You should be using more support comapnies with your beefier offensively oriented divisions, especially field hospitals and logistics companies. These guys are HEAVY on supply when bunched up and super soft which means they'll bleed away your much needed experience. Me, I'd also swap out the support AA for line AA removing an infantry battalion to add the medium flame tank. Minimal investment for a straight up 10% boost to offense on most terrains. I'd even double and triple down on the armor support benefits by including an armored support company as well and then maxing it out on breakthrough as well. Why? Infantry divisions have absolutely garbage tier breakthrough compared to tanks but with the flame tank company alone you can boost your total count by 25% or more. Add in an armored company and thats 50% of your divisions TOTAL breakthrough from two support companies that cost, you very little in terms of tanks per division but offer massive stat gains.
i really dont like some of your combat widths. 15 is perfect for spam. 30 is good for most offense. 25 for mountains. marines template is good. 20 and 21 width are versatile. but dont forget 18 width is also really good. but 30 and 34 dont really work that great in the defense for plains(where you will struggle to hold, due to no attacker debuffs and no defense buffs.) i dont like 10 widths anymore, due to the increased stacking penalty(more than 5 units in a combat; bevore the chance it was 8) and they dont have that much hp, so u will bleed a bit more. but overall nice and short overview of good templates for beginners. hope everybody starts to understand why those are good and make their own thoughts on the matter, so they can design to their own liking.
Plains tiles have a base combat width of 70 and gain an additional 35 per attack, so 35 is the ideal width. Unless you’re saying it would be better to have more, smaller divisions you can rotate in and out quickly on a plains tile? Oh and I didn’t know the stacking penalty was a thing 😅
Thanks! I see Yugoslavia here in the background: could you please give any advice on how to survive as a neutral Yugoslavia (joining the Allies later)? As a new to this game, I really struggle with it: no time to conquer Bulgaria (they join the Axis faster), and then I get outnumbered on all sides. Lots of bunkers seem not to be enough to protect northern/western borders.
You could try balkanize Yugoslavia. You may lose southern Croatia to Italy at first, but by annexing your country back in 1940-ish you could get extra civs and mils from them. If you also have No Step Back, I'd recommend going SFR with balkanize path, as you'll be able to use karl marx's potrait as free manpower even as Serbia. I usually goes for Bulgaria then either Greece (didn't work for me, but some videos out there do, you should check them out) or Italy with Zara trick.
At least 2 full armies of really solid infantry as well as some sort of elite unit to do damage control with, ie plug holes and counter attack with. Use youre terrain if things start to go poorly, and make sure you don’t run out of guns.
use 20w AA infantry (with engies if you can afford) and pump fighters, try to get best fighter you can(you need around 2k fighters). Then simply add lvl3-4 forts ( if you add forts above lvl5 AI stops attacking). Spies are important since they reduce enemy prep bonus, so it's good idea to have 3 of them in hungary/germany/italy. That's it. This strat will allow to survive against axis no matter what path you take without any offensive actions ( aside from maybe nuking albania when axis declares). Biggest problem yugoslavia has is manpower, so try playing soviet path for bigger manpower pool due to marx/early conscription law. Axis always attacks no matter what in 1940-1941 (scripted). You can however bypass it by getting non agression pact with germany in 1940 and with italy in 1939-1940. They rarely declare if they already fighting soviets, even if it still can happen. If you struggle to get at least 4 divisions per tile, you can try 10w infantry (without support) to fill gaps. It's more important to have more divisions then better ones.
The division you call ‘space marine’ is by far the best division for attacking with infantry. Rest are mediocre at best. IMO if you’re going to do early wars against any human player stronger than the country you’re playing as, you’re going to want early heavy tanks in the same format as your ‘space marine’ template. The formula for 0.4x highest armour battalion is why you can grab heavy tanks early. This is because, you will get higher armour than the piercing of all of the other divisions in this video by having just 1 heavy tank battalion. That means halving all soft attack dealt to your ‘space marine’ division. Low oil cost too compared to a dedicated tank division with motorised infantry.
4 withs are the way as the best aggressive divisions with superior firepower, go with support arty, add rockets when you can, maybe even signal company if you struggle with reinforce rate
So you’re telling me because of the support company bonuses if you just load up a 2 infantry battalion division with support companies it’ll have the stats to do stuff? I’m curious to hear the math behind that.
Never use line arty especially for special forces since you get more stats with mt then line arty since line arty is 3w while mt is 2width, basically you get more stats per width if you don't do line arty, tldr: never put line arty on your divs, but support arty is still fine
I crunched the numbers good sir, the first column is a 12 battalion mountaineer division, will the 2nd is an 8/3 mountaineer division: 0 Doctrine 100 sa to 156 sa 300 d to 247 df 58 o to 42 o All superior 134 sa to 195 331 d to 264 78 o to 58 o All mountain w line artilery 108 sa to 170 sa 316 d to 258 d 72 o to 52 o All mountain w holding the line 111 sa to 159 sa 355 d to 264 d 71 o to 51 o Both Doctrines w holding the line 145 sa to 197 sa 384 d to 282 d 91 o to 67 o Both Docptrines w Line artillery 138 sa to 208 sa 331 d to 275 d 90 o to 68 o The choice to have line artillery or not really comes down to, are you defending or pushing? For me, I always prefer to use my mountaineers to push so I would definitely opt for the 8/3 with the line artillery mountaineer doctrine. The choice is between soft attack or defense and org. Also, with the combat width reduction I was only able to add 1 extra mountaineer battalion to the division while keeping it under 25 combat width, the ideal for mountains. So I wouldn’t say that you get more stats per width. I didn’t look at breakthrough for each but the artillery division consistently was like 1 to 5 higher than the only mountaineer division.
@fischnoices130 25 width is the correct width for mt but the overwidth penalty is not real make the mt 30 width, know it sounds a bit outlandish but overwidth penalty is not real.
Some of those templates are so bad. The first one with engineers costing like 30% of the division cost. Why. Actually half of those templates shouldn't have engineers. And why line arty but no support arty
The idea from this is you have to also micro the low org units by cycling them, the idea is when 1 runs out you send another one keeping constant pressure on an enemy unit allowing your way super soft attack stat to theoretically constantly apply to your enemies
Yeah I had 0 doctrines unlocked so all the stats are significantly lower then they would be in a legit play through. I only wanted to show case the templates in this video. I went ahead and compared the stats of a 7/2 with no doctrine to the full superior fire power doctrine being unlocked and the differences are: Org, 38.3 to 55 Soft Attack, 107.8 to 127.7 Hard Attack, 16.3 to 16.8 Defense, 211.6 to 227 Breakthrough, 39.6 to 39.6 You can expect the same degree of difference for the other templates too.Generally speaking any org over 40 is pretty good for infantry tho.
@@fischnoices130 Going down superior firepower all the way and sticking to the right gets me like 54 org with the 8/3 and entrenchment companies and support arty
Is there any reason you aren't using support arty? it's just more efficient than regular arty battalions, no?
To Answer Your Question, I simply didn't know they were.
I went ahead and crunched the numbers and can now say you are 99.9999% right about that. In every metric that I did math for, the support battalion was either as efficient or more efficient than the normal battalion, except for soft attack per man power. Knowing this now, I'll definitely start adding it into my infantry divisions. The most significant difference was the soft attack per artillery piece metric, in which the support battalion was 70% more efficient. Thanks for letting me know :)
Agreed
Support arty is better than line arty when it is bang for the buck.
Just so a rookie like me understand. Add support artillery, and keep the regular number artillery too, or reduce it? :)
@@bjoernaagaard for something like small port guard divisions just 10 widths with support arty works fine. It's just that any time you're already using beefier divisions with arty battalions, you might as well use the support arty aswell.
This is like 90% more useful than any superfamus hoi4 RUclipsrs videos
I’ve noticed most famous HOI4 RUclipsrs are mediocre at best. There are some small excellent HOI4 RUclipsrs that do testing etc to back up their analysis and opinions on unit disposition
@@floridaman4073 can you tell me who, id love to see those but i can only seem to find videos like this.
bittersteel is pretty good
Really cool video to be honest, i was expecting some rather luckluster templates and such but you knocked it out of the park. You genuinley are a great example for the hoi4 community keep it up man. (never seen such a concise tutorial or explanation in my 1200 hours of hoi4)
Thanks for not turning this into a 25 minute video
I'd like to add, with special forces doctrines marines can be made into jungle experts, which you can use in a 30 width division for the 60 width jungle. This is especially useful in south America which will be the focus of the upcoming dlc.
Meta Divisions: 🤓
Historically accurate divisions:🗿
I'm obviously joking great video.
Your channel is def about to blow up, these videos are the exact type of tutorial I wish I had when I was starting out and are still useful even as a veteran player
Smooth, fast, clear. A good tutorial.
The reason we don't use line Artillery anymore is because the soft attack just isn't worth it anymore for the combat width cost. The for every two artillery you can fit three tanks. The three tanks will have way more soft attack than two artillery.
Thank you for making the video concise and easy to navigate. I’ve still been using 7/2’s I need to update my templates 😅
Useful and informative- thank you!
good short video, but 10/15/35 is basically the new meta (with 25 width for mountaineers and such) so it's suboptimal to be building anything that isn't tailored to those combat widths. I use 10 widths for port garrisons, 15 widths for my line troops, 25 widths for mountaineers, and 35 widths for tanks. It's worth nothing that you can and should be adding support arty to every division FIRST, even before you add engineers. Infantry and support arty is literally your bread and butter, and engineers are very good but also expensive for minor powers. Support AA is also very good as it gives you piercing and air attack, which counters both CAS and enemy tanks (at least light tanks/armored cars). You can add AA and anti-tank as whole battalions to your divisions rather than just as support companies as well, so keep that in mind if you want to make a division with exactly 25/35 combat width.
True true, each different combat width is tailored for a certain terrain tho but flexibility is invaluable.
You make the best hoi4 tutorials out there. I have 400 hours and I’m learning a whole lot
I have been using 7/2 for awhile now thanks for showing me these space marine things they work well
The medium howitzer 2 on medium tank is the best soft attack per combat width in the game. It is so dominant that I think the AA space marine is not worth it if you know you can win air. And it scales so hard when you put more tanks into the div.
Shoot bet, duly noted sir
@bottle-xz5hp The problem with heavies is that they are 50% more expensive for maybe 20% more armor. And they cost chromium from the start, before you refit to welded armor. And the heavy designer for USA is so bad compare to chrysler's OP production and reliability bonuses.
And, in a late game transition, you can't refit your heavies to be 8km and do double duty in a mech/motor division.
Nothing wrong with heavy tanks if you’ve got the chromium. They will outperform medium tanks in combat (and in combat width) but they do come with the drawback of costing far more.
So if you’ve got the military factories and resources to spare but not the manpower from the start, I’d definitely consider heavy tanks.
You can make an early version of the ‘space marine’ template in 1936 since the 1st heavy tank tech is in 1934, whereas 1st medium tank tech is in 1938 meaning you’ll have to wait until 1938 to start researching it.
My personal favourite go to is 24 width with just aa and arty support companies at first, and throw on an armoured recon(riveted, wheeled suspension if you want, 9 armour ticks and fuel tanks/ easy maintenance at your discretion) light flamers and logistics.
With riveted and 9 armour ticks you’ll get like 7 armour on the division(as armoured recon). Which is more than enough for the early game. With 14 ticks and welded/sloped armour you can reach like 15, or if you swap that out to be a battalion you will hit like 39, or with the first tank about 17 armour. For about 96 divisions you’ll only need 5700 light tanks. Something like 2400 I think if you just have them as a support company.
I personally think the armour more than makes up for the lack of soft attack, but even without artillery in the division you won’t be that far behind on soft attack. It’s like 40 at most with the tier one auto cannon, and even less of a difference is you use the close support gun.
For two arty battalions you need like 72 artillery, and you can actually make a light tank with a similar amount of armour for around the same cost as tier two arty. But need slightly less of them. And no tungsten. I think taking 50% less org damage more than makes up for less than 40 or so soft attack. But if you aren’t trying to cheese with space marines I can understand why you’d pick artillery.
For mountaineers its better to have 23 width. You can fit 3 of them on hills and there are 10x more hills in the game than mountains.
Imo, the best montaineer and marine templates are 11 mount/marine+ 1 medium tank
Its a space marine on the cheap. The medium tank batallion wont reduce the bonuses the mount/marine provides too much
If you have full mountaineer upgrade. You can have 14+1 medium tank. Resulting in 24.4 combat width
Ah I’ve never thought of that, imma try that.
in my experience 7/2 is always what you want. since the combat rework in whatever patch they changed the way units take damage, bigger divisions die out so fast and cant kill enough, 7/2 always holds. if you want to push use cas + tanks
Very useful infos and very practical templates. I liked them.
very underrated channel
You might be under estimating the cost effectiveness of support artillery instead of line artillery. It’ll get super expensive trying to build all that arty, when you could build tanks or planes for more value.
He’s right about the support artillery thing. If you’ll check my reply to the pinned comment I explain how I crunched the numbers.
Im new to the game, why no one recommends use air defense and and anti tank batalions in any templates?
Because in single player against the Ai, support aa will often give your division enough air attack and piercing to deal with what the Ai will through at you. The ai does not make very good tank divisions and rarely suffocates you with air supremacy so line battalions of aa or at are rarely needed.
I'd argue that if you know that you can win air, or even get just enough air to prevent enemy supremacy and air support, replacing AA with SPG will be a lot more efficent with damage. The main downside is that the AA+air will average better on different terrains, while the SPG with no air will be worse on worse terrains, but i dont think its enough of a difference to just ignore the SPG option
You are not the first to say this 😅
@@fischnoices130 Oh i didnt realise, guess someone else beat me to it ahahahah
I just discovered your channel, lov u
34 width is ok if youre getting attacked from one direction in plains, but as soon as theres a second direction you get a pretty nasty overwidth penalty if you have 4 units in the combat (slightly less than 33% overwidth so they still join the fight, and the penalty is about as high as you can get)
you got a sub bro
what im missing is the AA medium tank template used but i think yoj could manage to pull something off just with that
good vid!
if you play superior firepower, then you can do 15w like 7 inf + 1 at and move that art into support companies. your wall will get some AT to hurt rivetted enemy tanks.
whenever oyu can add signal companie support. the increased reinvorcment is SO huge especialy for infantry spam divisions. It makes it very unlikely for oyur enemy to ever push you out bevoer your tanks arive for a counter attack. wich buys you so much time its incredibly valuable.
(the math is something like for a 90%chance to reinforce a division, with radio researchd, wich you need anyways for signal comp, its on average 32 hours to reinforce, with signal one its laready down to 19 hours! with ful radio its just 9 hours! for every divison, meaning the more reserve division you ahve the higher the chance one division decides to reinforce!)
Also Having that in minde i would ditch engies. They only are usefulli nthe initial attck, bevore oyur junits star to cycle through, because once they start cycling the entrenchment is gone. Only use them if you got Industry levt to spare, wich honestly, I never rely have, There is always tanks or planes that could be built instead and engies are incredibly expensive for the whole inf army, rather use the support equipment for signal companies and field hospitlas (those now give +% HP to inf and mot/mech inf)
this was really useful, but I'm gonna stick with my 18 widths + art, aa, and shovels because i can't be bothered to learn how to play more efficiently
What would be your preference for USSR to stop German advance? I tend to have more issues with USSR than any other country. I have stopped AI Germany with France before but not USSR for some reason.
Well the USSR have a lot of army rebuffs you have to get rid of over time, so your units will be less effective even if you have the same tech, doctrine, and template. You’re fighting on mostly plains so go with an 11/4. You need that high org and defense with great bite. It’s expensive but if you have a good enough build you can afford it. Depending on if you built an Air Force or not you’ll need aa. Shovels are a must for the entrenchment. Also prep your supply network in anticipation.
@@fischnoices130 USSR is loaded so they can do expensive. I usually get through all of Stalin items and get the negatives. I was thinking about walls for the frontlines.
This HELPED a lot. I tried the wall for defense and 11/4 for offense (reserve units). Barely lost any territory to Germany and wore them down to the point now that I am driving into Germany. It is barely into 1943 as well. (Keep in mind they didn't even declare on me until 1941. I did seize the Baltics, East Poland, Bessarabia, and Finland prior to the war).
Hey happy to hear it man!
To defeat Japan as China all you need is 10-width infantry with support artillery, which lol.
it is never worth it to put any kind of support company on 10 widths due to how materially inefficient they are. For example, those 10 widths with engineer company are eating up just as much support equipment (which is really expensive IC-wise) than a 15, 27, 30, 40 or even 50 width would. If you are going to invest engineers into a template (or any kind of support div) at the very least make them 15 width, no width below that is worth investing support companies into.
Even your 15 widths suffer from this issue, with you putting three rather expensive support companies (AA, engineer and recon) which are much better served on larger divs. The general rule of thumbs for 20/21 width and below divs is to never put more than two support companies in them, with the two best ones being support eng and support arty or (if you are going GBT and already have 10 entrenchment from your doctrine) support AA and support arty.
As for anything above or equal to 21 div, as long as you keep the org above the mid 40s and don't use dogshit/straight up bad support companies (like recon except very specific cases or hospitals/maintenance support), you should be fine.
And a last note that others have pointed out is your lack of support arty. It is the most cost-efficient source of soft attack in the entire game, the fact that you aren't perma-using it on every div above/equal to 15 width shows your knowledge is lacking.
I understand the good intentions behind this video, but you really should make sure you're not regurgitating falsehoods/bad advice to impressionable noobs who don't know any better.
Yeah I’ll admit I wasn’t thinking about ic while drafting these templates 😅. These are all units with solid stats that have served me well in one way or another in past games. It’s undeniable that at the very least they’re a step up from the ones you start the game with 😂.
As to your other points, It was my understanding that the recon bonus is significant because it determines the tactics used in battle by a general so affects all stats. Plus it just got the synergy with artillery, so that just gave me another reason to. And yeah i have no excuse for the support artillery, I just didn’t know 😅. Another guy pointed that out so I sat down and crunched the numbers myself and yeah, it is very efficient.
Comments like yours are a reason I like making these videos because I learn so much not just in the process of writing the scripts for them, but also from people pointing out details I missed that are worth knowing. So thank you for teaching me something I didn’t know :). I hope to see your name pop up again under my videos because in the end everyone learns if you have a correction or just something to add.
As abig country like germany what is the ideal combat width for most places ? Should i always use 15 ?
Because Germany has the industrial base to support bigger units, you should shoot for some larger combat width. Alternatively, you could spam out a crap ton of 15 widths and then use tanks to do your pushing. If you want to do an infantry air build, go for a big combat width.
02:15 no reconnaissance?
How good are 10/2s? I’ve been using them recently, and mixed with CAS they do decently well. Just curious if there’s a more efficient template.
That’s a pretty wack combat width that doesn’t really fit optimally into any type of terrain. The success will come naturally from the artillery and cas, but there are definitely better options out there.
Ok, thanks! I saw a different RUclipsr using them and they worked for him so I started using them. I’ll try some of the ones you suggested and see if there is noticeable difference.
You should be using more support comapnies with your beefier offensively oriented divisions, especially field hospitals and logistics companies. These guys are HEAVY on supply when bunched up and super soft which means they'll bleed away your much needed experience. Me, I'd also swap out the support AA for line AA removing an infantry battalion to add the medium flame tank. Minimal investment for a straight up 10% boost to offense on most terrains. I'd even double and triple down on the armor support benefits by including an armored support company as well and then maxing it out on breakthrough as well. Why? Infantry divisions have absolutely garbage tier breakthrough compared to tanks but with the flame tank company alone you can boost your total count by 25% or more. Add in an armored company and thats 50% of your divisions TOTAL breakthrough from two support companies that cost, you very little in terms of tanks per division but offer massive stat gains.
rule of thumb is 1 arty for every 3 inf.
Really? To me that sounds very overkill, I think the most I ever do is 9:2
for single player @@crunch.dot.73
i really dont like some of your combat widths.
15 is perfect for spam.
30 is good for most offense.
25 for mountains.
marines template is good.
20 and 21 width are versatile. but dont forget 18 width is also really good.
but 30 and 34 dont really work that great in the defense for plains(where you will struggle to hold, due to no attacker debuffs and no defense buffs.)
i dont like 10 widths anymore, due to the increased stacking penalty(more than 5 units in a combat; bevore the chance it was 8) and they dont have that much hp, so u will bleed a bit more.
but overall nice and short overview of good templates for beginners. hope everybody starts to understand why those are good and make their own thoughts on the matter, so they can design to their own liking.
Plains tiles have a base combat width of 70 and gain an additional 35 per attack, so 35 is the ideal width. Unless you’re saying it would be better to have more, smaller divisions you can rotate in and out quickly on a plains tile?
Oh and I didn’t know the stacking penalty was a thing 😅
Thanks! I see Yugoslavia here in the background: could you please give any advice on how to survive as a neutral Yugoslavia (joining the Allies later)? As a new to this game, I really struggle with it: no time to conquer Bulgaria (they join the Axis faster), and then I get outnumbered on all sides. Lots of bunkers seem not to be enough to protect northern/western borders.
You could try balkanize Yugoslavia. You may lose southern Croatia to Italy at first, but by annexing your country back in 1940-ish you could get extra civs and mils from them.
If you also have No Step Back, I'd recommend going SFR with balkanize path, as you'll be able to use karl marx's potrait as free manpower even as Serbia. I usually goes for Bulgaria then either Greece (didn't work for me, but some videos out there do, you should check them out) or Italy with Zara trick.
At least 2 full armies of really solid infantry as well as some sort of elite unit to do damage control with, ie plug holes and counter attack with. Use youre terrain if things start to go poorly, and make sure you don’t run out of guns.
use 20w AA infantry (with engies if you can afford) and pump fighters, try to get best fighter you can(you need around 2k fighters). Then simply add lvl3-4 forts ( if you add forts above lvl5 AI stops attacking). Spies are important since they reduce enemy prep bonus, so it's good idea to have 3 of them in hungary/germany/italy. That's it. This strat will allow to survive against axis no matter what path you take without any offensive actions ( aside from maybe nuking albania when axis declares).
Biggest problem yugoslavia has is manpower, so try playing soviet path for bigger manpower pool due to marx/early conscription law. Axis always attacks no matter what in 1940-1941 (scripted). You can however bypass it by getting non agression pact with germany in 1940 and with italy in 1939-1940. They rarely declare if they already fighting soviets, even if it still can happen.
If you struggle to get at least 4 divisions per tile, you can try 10w infantry (without support) to fill gaps. It's more important to have more divisions then better ones.
The division you call ‘space marine’ is by far the best division for attacking with infantry. Rest are mediocre at best.
IMO if you’re going to do early wars against any human player stronger than the country you’re playing as, you’re going to want early heavy tanks in the same format as your ‘space marine’ template.
The formula for 0.4x highest armour battalion is why you can grab heavy tanks early. This is because, you will get higher armour than the piercing of all of the other divisions in this video by having just 1 heavy tank battalion.
That means halving all soft attack dealt to your ‘space marine’ division. Low oil cost too compared to a dedicated tank division with motorised infantry.
No 9/1s??
I like how Yugoslavia can't equip any of those good divisions
Only true Yugo players know that pain
Could you make a 40 width?
4 withs are the way as the best aggressive divisions with superior firepower, go with support arty, add rockets when you can, maybe even signal company if you struggle with reinforce rate
So you’re telling me because of the support company bonuses if you just load up a 2 infantry battalion division with support companies it’ll have the stats to do stuff? I’m curious to hear the math behind that.
Never use line arty especially for special forces since you get more stats with mt then line arty since line arty is 3w while mt is 2width, basically you get more stats per width if you don't do line arty, tldr: never put line arty on your divs, but support arty is still fine
I crunched the numbers good sir, the first column is a 12 battalion mountaineer division, will the 2nd is an 8/3 mountaineer division:
0 Doctrine
100 sa to 156 sa
300 d to 247 df
58 o to 42 o
All superior
134 sa to 195
331 d to 264
78 o to 58 o
All mountain w line artilery
108 sa to 170 sa
316 d to 258 d
72 o to 52 o
All mountain w holding the line
111 sa to 159 sa
355 d to 264 d
71 o to 51 o
Both Doctrines w holding the line
145 sa to 197 sa
384 d to 282 d
91 o to 67 o
Both Docptrines w Line artillery
138 sa to 208 sa
331 d to 275 d
90 o to 68 o
The choice to have line artillery or not really comes down to, are you defending or pushing? For me, I always prefer to use my mountaineers to push so I would definitely opt for the 8/3 with the line artillery mountaineer doctrine. The choice is between soft attack or defense and org. Also, with the combat width reduction I was only able to add 1 extra mountaineer battalion to the division while keeping it under 25 combat width, the ideal for mountains. So I wouldn’t say that you get more stats per width. I didn’t look at breakthrough for each but the artillery division consistently was like 1 to 5 higher than the only mountaineer division.
@fischnoices130 25 width is the correct width for mt but the overwidth penalty is not real make the mt 30 width, know it sounds a bit outlandish but overwidth penalty is not real.
@@fischnoices130 also the doctrine you used was gbp yes?
There is no penalty to stats but they just can’t fit into the battle. And I used the right path of the superior fire power doctrine
you are missing the most important stats: HP artillery is just a 3w battalion, it would be great if it was 2 width.@@fischnoices130
😂 how about full heavy tank division
10 infantry batalions 1 aa batalion 21w with no support cheap af good for defense
Line artillery is bad.
Some of those templates are so bad. The first one with engineers costing like 30% of the division cost. Why. Actually half of those templates shouldn't have engineers. And why line arty but no support arty
isnt organization so low? :/
Shouldn't matter because defence and soft attack are good
The idea from this is you have to also micro the low org units by cycling them, the idea is when 1 runs out you send another one keeping constant pressure on an enemy unit allowing your way super soft attack stat to theoretically constantly apply to your enemies
doctrines also increase org
Yeah I had 0 doctrines unlocked so all the stats are significantly lower then they would be in a legit play through. I only wanted to show case the templates in this video. I went ahead and compared the stats of a 7/2 with no doctrine to the full superior fire power doctrine being unlocked and the differences are:
Org, 38.3 to 55
Soft Attack, 107.8 to 127.7
Hard Attack, 16.3 to 16.8
Defense, 211.6 to 227
Breakthrough, 39.6 to 39.6
You can expect the same degree of difference for the other templates too.Generally speaking any org over 40 is pretty good for infantry tho.
@@fischnoices130 Going down superior firepower all the way and sticking to the right gets me like 54 org with the 8/3 and entrenchment companies and support arty
Dont do 34 width or 10 width
engineers are no nobrainer.
often not worth it