One tip for those who are just transitioning from infantry to tanks when using your tanks make sure to support their attacks with infantry that id manning the front around them so you can get breakthroughs and win battles
That is only if your tanks are bad, if your tanks are good, increasing the combat width with infantry is pointless since it will make you push more slowly because infantry has less stats, only works if the opponent has few units or you want to get more tanks not infantry into the battle
Yep. Pin the surrounding provinces with inf attacks and maybe have some motorised or mechanised divisions with good defence follow your tanks. Leg Infantry can’t keep up with speed of light or medium tanks, so the tanks might end up encircled while encircling. 🤓
Had this video pop up on my recommended 5 years ago, this would undoubtedly be a game changer. Way too many people on RUclips clickbait with "this meta-changing division is a must-have" or "this division will change your gameplay" or whatever, but never explain why that's the case. Really well broken down video. However, I am really interested in how you treat line artillery in this video. As far as I know, it's something that I considered a bread and butter in my divisions. Looking forward to your future video explaining why that's the case. I get the argument about how it doesn't make much of a difference on a width to width basis, but the whole reason you're adding line artillery is to maximize soft attack without detracting too much from organization. Maximizing soft attack is key because when your divisions have a greater soft attack than the enemy's divisions, the enemy takes four times the amount of damage to their organization. On a combat width to width basis, you're being less efficient on paper, but with how HOI4's combat works, quality vastly outperforms quantity because of the soft attack defense system. Of course I could be wrong. Again, really looking forward to how you explain how line artillery is bad. And yes, I'm aware that typically you shouldn't be pushing with infantry and that should be more of a tanks' job, but I don't think that detracts too much from the point. Still a stellar video and looking forward to more of your content!
Thank you! I am planning on making a full video on the topic, but ill explain it shortly here. The thing you are describing with attack over the enemys is called critting. I think the thing you are missing is that it is ONLY the attack OVER their defense that is affected by this 4x multiplier. What this means is that having 210 attack versus opponents 200 defense average to 200 * 0.1 (from being blocked) and 10*0.4 (from critting). This 20 + 4 = 24. If the last part wasnt blocked it would be 21. Yes, it does help, but critting doesnt suddenly make you deal 4x the damage. Usually its between 1-2x, and closer to 3-4x if you have way more. Part of the reason quality > quantity is a thing is due to targeting, and not due to the extra soft attack. Line artillery has very few upsides. You cant (realistically, no wojtek) get a general with artillery bonus. Artillery advisors are harder to get, and people that use line artillery rarely use any. There are more things im going to talk about, but these are a part of the reason why artillery is a lot worse than people think.
If you are using superior firepower, adding line artillery reduces your soft attack. It does not increase it. Every time you use more width, you can put fewer support companies into combat. For the other doctrines, only grand battleplan gives meaningful benefit to line artillery from many of the doctrine unlocks. MW and MA give practically nothing, while giving other battalion types significant bonuses. You should generally be producing things that take advantage of the doctrine you're using. Players who advocate 9/x or w/e absent context of doctrine are more or less openly advertising they don't know what they're doing :p.
@@sumzer_0 You can even just check it using in-game stats. Damage/width with integrated support shows you're penalized by adding line arty clearly. If you could wave a wand and get it for free, you'd probably use it in other doctrines, but it isn't free. It comes at expense of more infantry, support equipment, tanks, or planes...aka alternative options getting full doctrine benefit. It has a niche with certain positions with terrible manpower where you abuse entrenchment to keep enemies from crits in SP. It is pretty good at "width used per manpower" after all, so if you're stuck as non-aligned as part of a cheevo and need to cover a front like Finland vs USSR, stacking entrenchment onto line arty makes some sense. As a general-purpose division, it's pretty bad despite how ridiculously popular it is. Integrated support in SF really does change division comp too. 6/0 using 5x soft attack focused support companies will climb to over 20 SA/width in '42 to '43 timeframe, with plenty of org too. Only proper MP tank divisions with high hardness can hold up to that; it will reinforce meme literally anything in SP and it will do so quickly.
@@TheMelnTeam If youre not using integrated support the argument sort of falls together, which is why i didnt use it. The point about it coming at the expense of other industry heavy things is really true tho.
@@sumzer_0 If I go SF, I always get an artillery advisor, and I don't find it hard at all. In the early days I choose an officer corp that gives you a 50% for a general with an engineer trait. Recruit a couple of generals and you'll have an engineer. It'll be easy to grind the required skill for him to become an advisor; if you are able to send volunteers you can do it before WW2 ten times out of ten.
@@theextracatori have 2 hoi4 in my computer both pirated and bought, the only reason why pirating is justified in this case is because their dlcs are overpriced as hell
Good video. Straight to the point. Backed up by math and fairly simple examples. Even the length of the video is appropriate. Sometimes I see videos too short like 3 minutes which is not really enough to properly explain anything. On the other hand most of the videos are hour long which are tedium at that point
divisions reinforce quicker. now, if you win you win, if you stall, having some dude joining a day earlier or later wont save the day. its nice to have, but having air cover or some other bonus will go a longer way. using planning for example, is way better bucks for time. you can use planning without investing a penny, just set your attack arrows in advance, let the blue bar charge, then press the arrow to execute attack. initiative is a dump stat, dump there whatever points you have no other use for
Best infantry division has 9 infantry battalions and 1 medium tank battalion withs pioneers and rangers instead of engineers and scout support companies. Since the division is slow you can make the tank design also slow with as much armor as you can.
Excellent video, had it in my watch later playlist for some time. I agree with all points. Another thing thats worth considering is the 'dispersed vs concentrated' firepower from IC. By that I mean its drastically worse to have your countrys total ic spread evenly along your fronts units. Better to have 1. tight cheap efficient filler (Low width foot/infantry with a few support companies (Logistics, arty, aa, maybe shovels) 2. smasher divisions (Tanks/special forces/inf+tank Hybrids) supported by 3. speedy filler (pure cav/mot/mech bricks to occupy breaches in the line offensively, or plug them defensively). Rock paper and scissors instead of just a whole lot of rock. I know of you ;)
Pretty good info here. Can't say I particularly learned anything new being 2k+ hours in, but I haven't tried multi-player. I suppose the fact I didn't learn anything particular means I'm at least doing it well-enough lol. I remember when I started playing [2021], didn't look at any tutorials and played the game like it was civ5. What a mistake 😂. Definitely gonna check the rest of the channel out to see if I can find any gems to help me be better at the game. Thanks!
max dmg per width although is a good tell its not the whole story, when you have for example 9/3 your max dmg per width might take hit but you will de-org enemy units faster potentially denying them the ability to reinforce, also you will end combat faster resulting in less manpower loss for you, what i have found out playing against the ai is that its better to have very powerfull infantry divisions that double the number of poor quality (for frontlines)
You can watch my other video on line artillery for more details on why its overrated. The fact that you de-org your enemy units faster might not always matter, since you yourself can get de-orged faster. In the other video i also present alternatives to divisions with line artillery that perform better than for example a 9/3.
could you make a video explaining the why when it comes to tank divisions? the meta in multiplayer seems to be medium or heavy TD's but ive seen other things. i appreciate your dedication to hoi4 and showing us how to design effective divisions. a guide like this, but for tanks would be very very informative
Amazing video and a lot more in depth compared to the big Hoi4 channels. Could you do an explanation on what to focus on or what temples are good for mp. I feel like there’s little to no videos on mp basics and what should be focused on. Either organization, HP, combat width, soft attack, etc. otherwise amazing video and happy to be your 100th subscriber!
You might want to explain a bit more about width and then how smaller division perform better in Africa while Europe supports larger ones. But nice 1st video
Played this game a lot and still do, mainly against AI. I feel like my usual strats go obsolete every time there's a major update. This video was helpful.
Excellent first entry - looking forward to watching the rest and future videos!! I'vew been playing HOI since the beginning and never loked at units this way. Using your metrix I have adjusted all special ops to 16 width, and removed line artillery compeltely from my Marines - HUGE boost doing that. Question, does the stacking penalty of going 16 width factor in to your approach, and if so how much?
Good to hear! There is little stacking penalty on 16ws. The stacking penalty (if we are talking about the same thing), starts at 5 divisions when attacking from one direction, and at +3 for each direction. For plains its -2% from 1 direction, and no penalty for more directions. For urban its more yes, but not by a lot. Stacking penalty is the reason why i prefer 12w over 10w, so yes, it does have an impact just not a lot. Ive made a detailed chart with both combat width penalty and stacking penalty which i use, so it is considered.
I use a very similar division to the "attack" division as a multirole in single player and it never disappoints me, I just keep the support companies at 2: engineers and recon. after 40-41 I add a couple anti tank and anti air. It shreds anything
Took over entire world using combination of 18 width pure inf with support eng, ai, art and rangers + 6/1 inf/art with just eng for low supply areas + 9/3 mountaineers with aa/art/eng/raingers/field hospitals +30 width tanks with just mech and mediums and same support divs as mountaineers. It was a very easy game as soviets with left opposition, capped axis in early 1942 and cleared map in 1949
line arty use less people per width. its good for saving men, if you have industry. also you are spot on for superior firepower, some other doctrines have "better" use for line art.
Line artillery is good, remember that critting exists so the extra SA on the divisions matters a lot more than you expect. Especially on defense you will shred enemy attackers by mixing in line artillery.
@@sumzer_0 I agree with your general message, but not with this. It is very, very common and extremely easy to get SA > defensive values in single player. For one, this happens virtually any time the AI attacks our divisions, where our SA >> its breakthrough. Two, planning bonus + multi direction attack + modifier stacking + support companies can allow player divisions to far exceed AI defenses even while entrenched. Depending on year, doctrine, # of attack directions and other specifics, it is realistic to get somewhere between 2000 to 6000 total soft attack onto a target province using only infantry battalions + support companies. This can often result in crits immediately, and will certainly do so once you knock at least one enemy division out of combat.
@@TheMelnTeam None of this discredits my point tho. Infantry attacking infantry, the attacking side will always have way too low breakthrough, so any extra soft attack wont add anything more significant than if it wasnt critted. Planning bonus is to a minor degree offset by entrenchment, multi direction attack doesnt matter if combat width is still filled, modifier stacking is more realistic on defense due to engineers bonuses, and support companies can be on both sides. Biggest problem is that we are overoptimizing for the AI. If you are guaranteed to crit, you dont need to worry about it, if you know you wont, you dont need to worry about it either. Its only when there is a chance to crit that the extra attack can help by a significant amount
@@sumzer_0 Of course I'm not going to discredit your point overall, since I agree with nearly everything you're saying :p. I think it's fair to be overoptimizing for AI in context of telling players how to build infantry divisions and learning to use them first as beginners; AI will be their opponent for quite some time. It is often the case that CW isn't filled with multi-direction attack. That's probably 50/50 in SP; you can't count on it, but it's common. I'm not sure what you mean by "extra soft attack" above? More SA always means more damage, and even more so when it exceeds breakthrough/def. You always as much damage as you can fit into that fight, until the sacrifices become too great and you can't deal it. Another commenter (incorrectly) suggested that line arty can trade org for faster damage. While that comment was wrong, because line arty isn't that great for SA/w, the sentiment is reasonable; there is real value in stacking as much damage as possible to win combat ASAP, denying opportunity to reinforce and shortening micro windows for opponent. The main problem is just that line arty doesn't give enough stats to actually do it.
The stats alta blinded me. 1 35 width 10/5 division with 1k soft attack looks cool, but replacing it with 2 lower width divisions also gets you near that 1k number. Its just divided by 2 so it looks worse. My only question would be, can you run this through the spreadsheets again but also include special forces cap? Using 2x the marines or mountaineers might yield higher stats but I want to know if the cap to soft attack ratio changes.
Im not sure i understand. A 10/5 would be a bad idea. There are advantages and disadvantages with smaller and larger divisions. How would this be done? It isnt useful to calculate soft attack per cap, because it doesnt tell us anything. Calculating based on cap is generally a bad idea, because its a very variable thing to measure.
I agree with most of what you said but I think the line artillery theory is a little misleading as you never factored in time, which is very important if you want to actually win a battle, especially when attacking. You may have more potential attack with just infantry but it will take way longer to apply, so divisions which are knocked out of combat will reorganize and return to the battle, then you have to defeat them again, or reinforcements will arrive leading to a very long battle. Some early game inf vs inf battles like in Spain last for months while inf + arty vs inf in the same war can win in a few days. Another big issue is attack/defence bonuses, such as a 10% attack bonus, for example, it would be much more effective on a division which has 400 attack (+40 attack) than a division with 100 attack (+10 attack). When you really start stacking bonuses on a heavy hitting division (naval bombardment, air superiority, rail gun, good terrain etc.) they get insane stats while a low quality division has stats not that much better.
No. The time difference is not that large. It would only matter for critting. Sacrificing org for soft attack also causes yourself to be reinforce memed easier. This is just false. Attack bonuses dont affect high attack units more than low attack units. This is just false. 10% is 10%. 40% is 40%.
Good video 👍 I have been playing HOI for years only won 3 or 4 times with 15,556 hours behind me so I consider my self very poor at it 🤣 So I learnt a few things from you today. Spy’s would be a good tutorial.
I don't believe that line artillery is overrated, you just need to add recon to it for additional effect and keep it in shock troops or quality troops. My cheap infantry seldom has sup artillert though, just shovels and 8 infantry while mountaineers or tanks do all the work.
Line artillery is good but is definitely overrated nowadays after several nerfs, usually it is better to have line anti-air (just because it takes less combat width)
Line artillery is overrated. Adding recon does improve it, but its not enough. "Quality" units usually contain other unit types like special forces or tanks, both of which are definitely worse with line artillery, than without. Like you mention, mountaineers and tanks do all the work. Neither of these divisions should contain any line artillery of any sort
@@bighillraft Line AA has nearly no use. More AA than just support AA will only help shoot down more CAS. AA does nothing else in your division. Even though line AA might have more stats per width, it also consumes more of your divisions organization. Its not something ive exactly tried, but not something i would recommend either.
@@sumzer_0 It depends on whom you fight against, I fìnd abundant soft attack from 2 line artilleries and 7 mountaineers + support recon and artillery melts AI enemy lines while fitting in a neat package of 20 width without consuming too much of manpower or special forces cap. Its economic and efficient, and in my own test pure mountaineer division without any line artillery couldn't match my expectations. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but that's what I observed, its not eficient to put more than two line artilleries, but less than that works great!
@@Finnishnat-conservativedot7126 7/2 with mountaineers (and support companies, including recon) has strictly less maximum damage than 10/0 mountaineer. This wouldnt include the several other bonuses that special forces get, that artillery doesnt. "Economic" isnt correct either, since the two artillery battalions do cost more than the 3 mountaineer battalions would. Do what you want, just telling you the facts.
The way hard attack works makes tanks kinda useless. At least on a SP basis. The AI will never muster spearheads with 90% hardness so you are fine with sprinkling at supp or even just anti air and then go large arty for your divs
So artilley is useless? Can you explain this: I was playing Venezuela bcuz why it has a strong formable and I used 22 9/3 divisions and 2 Mountaineer 9/3 divisions and I completely crushed everyone with an amazing casualty ratio, like 300k+ casualties for the enemy. So I could achieve the same thing without any artillery? Just a flat 9/0 div with support arty engineer and anti air?
Artillery is worse than most people think. 9/1 is still slightly better than 9/0, but that doesnt take into account a lot of other stuff. Generally, dont use line artillery, and if you do, do it before your entire army has gun 2.
The real game winner is not your template but your use of doctrines. You need to plan your divisions according to your doctrine. Generally SF is good for minors to conserve manpower, and using it cheaply is with left-right sides of the divergences to improve your support companies' damage (so that you can need less line arty), and gain flat bonuses to your army with going right in the second section. If you can afford bigger industry, MW with Mobile Inf is a lot more viable than many think. Blitzkrieg side if you are going to use tanks heavily, because tank battalion bonuses it provides are just that big, but it ignores infantry, which is main source of your organization. Blitzkrieg side alleviates the tanks organization hit to benefit from tanks stat, if you have industry but cannot really affort much tanks, go Mobile INF.
@@gildedphoenix Line artillery is 100%, strictly unjustifiable with superior firepower. Out of the 4 doctrines, it is the worst by far relative to support company slots. Even after rangers added the ability to give line arty 20% more soft attack, integrated support still easily out-classes dispersed support. 50% boost to support companies just overwhelms the rest of what that doctrine gives you, even before rocket arty. With rocket arty + arty + other SA stuff in support slots, increasing your width more than necessary for attacking divisions is nonsense in SP. In MP you still go integrated support, but probably airland in 2nd branch to boost your tanks.
Hi! I haven't played in a year or two, and am wondering if its still best to make big divisions (e.g. 40w) to outmatch the opponent's defence stat? I rmb PDX saying something about changing the mechanics to make smaller divisions viable too but can't rmb the details
Smaller divisions have more attack and org, but bigger divisions are less likely to be critted. I'd say that its up to you. In singleplayer, smaller divisions for everything other than tanks is probably best. BTW, dont do 40w. Highest width you should realistically do is 36w.
One of my friends is saying that 18w as Germany is bad and that he has never seen someone win in competitive with less than 25w Frontline infantry. What would you say?
I'd say they dont know what they are talking about. After the most recent updates, exact combat width arguments have become more meaningless. In competitive MP, the meta is actually 12-18w infantry. I havent seen anyone do higher than that for normal infantry except garrisons. There really isnt any reason doing 25w. It fits perfectly into mountains and marshes, but there is not point in doing that. You will fight the majority of your battles in plains and forests.
@@sumzer_0 Thank you for the response, great video btw. Also, do you have a discord server for your channel where one could ask further questions or so?
I wanted to create a marine division for naval invasions, should i have support artillery on it? And what width should it have? Great video by the way.
it depends on the tiles combat width, i would say 35 Width. You can also go 40 width but you gonna get some depuffs but you can get more in there. if your soft-attack is below 300 go with support artillery. If its above 300 you can still go support artillery but you can also instead go flame tank. 300 + 10%(Flame tank buff) = 330 can be stronger depending doctrine and remember organization
It depends, if were just talking singleplayer id probably recommend 10-12w with support artillery and support rocket artillery and other support companies. Just remember that the divisions are small, so you need more for each tile. If its multiplayer, meta is large divisions like 36w where you try to stack HP. In MP you normally pick field hospital, pioneers, flame tank, tank recon and logi i believe. Just remember, dont do line artillery with special forces
When calculating maximum damage shouldn’t breakthrough also be accounted? because for example putting more mech in tanks technically is better if you for example 8 tank 7 mech but also breakthrough is added not only attack when you add more tanks to division
@@sebastianokon9223 good question. Defense and breakthrough dont scale «linearly» like attack and organisation does. When your breakthrough/defense is higher than the attack received, any more does nothing. It also doesnt really work well when comparing with the effects of critting. Having 30% attack over the defense is a lot more than 10%, meaning the defense does more the closer it gets the attack. Edit: You will need to account for breakthrough/defense independently of the maximum damage when considering different designs.
@@sumzer_0 do you think you can do a video comparable to this but with tanks? I’m not to familiar with how critting works and many other nuances I’m just recently getting into MP
Artillery makes them more fragile though, it shoots their organization down. People filling their divisions with artillery then wondering why they're being pushed the second they're attacked instead of doing the attacking. I do worry about over correction though, line artillery is good at making pushes.
What about AT, line or otherwise. Typically the attacking division would be some sort of tank, but is it worth bringing towed anti-tank if the enemy has a lot of that? Particularly if your a minor who cant reliably make tanks or TD's.
Not really. If youre talking about singleplayer, then support AA will usually be more than enough. If were talking multiplayer, you would either do really cheap mass mob inf with support AT, or tanks. There is no in between in vanilla. Line AT is currently useless.
Why do you dislike line artillery so much? I always try to have line artillery in my infantry templates if I can afford it. Line infantry get one battalion, and if I have assault infantry, they'll get two or three. When fighting ai specifically, soft attack is king. And since you dislike line artillery, what is your opinion on motorized artillery?
I have 2000h in this game and I would say I am really good in this game. But the mathematical method for the division is really great. Thank you I will use it in the future.
I'd say focus on air instead. CAS does so much damage on its own, decent infantry with CAS support will win against (almost) any AI. Special forces is an alternative i mention in the video.
@@sumzer_0 i never tried but i don‘t think that poland can win the airwar against the soviets and the germans while having enough troops. Also you‘d have to build you‘re own rubber and Aluminium is verry limited
@@Spielkind104 If you are fighting both soviets and germans, then you are really struggling with IC (production cost). Special forces would probably be the best way to break out, if not just numbers work.
KInda... It also depends on how experienced your opponent is. The point of the guide is to give a foundation for making a division no matter the circumstance. If you are playing against experienced meta players, then just make cheap infantry and quality special forces like i explained, otherwise you have to resort to tanks.
First of all, your points on motorized and tanks are completely correct, however your "max dmg per width" stat misses two very important variables. The first one is manpower cost and the second one is time to win battles. In a 9/0 division you have to pay around 83 manpower per unit of soft attack, in a 9/3 division that goes down to roughly 50 manpower per soft attack, the pure inf div requires 67% more manpower per soft attack! Now that may not be an issue if you're playing a major with lots of manpower, but if you're playing any of the scandinavian countries, turkey or honestly almost any minor it is a huge cost to pay to save a negligible amount of production cost not producing artillery. As for the second point, if you have more soft attack and less org, even if you do the same amount of damage per width in total, you will win battles faster, that can be the difference between your enemy reinforcing a battle or not or it could decide if you encircle an enemy or not. Taking into account those two variables I would say that line artillery is still the objectively superior choice 98% of the time. The AI is too incompetent to require using special forces in singleplayer so honestly i have no opinion on your last point.
Measuring manpower per soft attack is a completely useless metric. Max damage per manpower is slightly more useful. Im gonna compare a 12/0 with a 9/2, since having equal combat width is more important when comparing quality units. Here i get only a 24.6% increase in max damage per manpower. Now lets do max damage per IC. 12/0 has 8.95, while the 9/2 has 8.29. This is an increase of 7.9%. This does not take into account the several other bonuses that infantry does get, which would make this in favour of infantry. Now, IC is actually more important than manpower, since you can always make more tanks instead of infantry, but you cant magically get more mils. IC is therefore the preferred method of calculating how effective divisions are. If you calculate losses you will see similar numbers. Yes, you will win battles faster, but you will also lose faster. The reason attack is slightly more important than organization is due to critting, and not how quickly the battle finishes. Line artillery is the objectively worse choice 98% of the time, ask any expert... If we are arguing about AI incompetency, than there isnt any point optimizing to this degree.
5:00 if my inf breaks enemy inf and enemy org gets down to 0 before mine does; adding more artillery to my divisions definitely makes it a better division
If you finished watching that part of the video, you will that is what i measure. Going from 9/1 to 9/2 is a very small improvement (with significant downsides), while 9/2 to 9/3 is a decrease. Meaning the extra artillery makes the division worse.
@@karaboga212 9/3 does not have more breakthrough per width (which is what matters), since support companies matter, you actually have LESS breakthrough per width. Also, even if this was the case, the difference is so small since you will be critted either way (opponent has higher attack than your defense/breakthrough). I wouldnt recommend anything higher than a 9/1.
Haha... no. Even though signal company isnt exactly bad, other companies are better. On quality divisions like tanks and special forces, all of your slots will be filled. With cheap divisions, signal is too expensive, and doesnt serve a real purpose either.
@@sumzer_0 Signals are actually really strong for both reinforce rate and faster planning in MP. Soviet players who go down mobile warfare with infantry and tanks should ALWAYS put signals on everything. As for allies, signals on offensive divs are key for faster planning for their GBP left orientated divisions(tanks and marines), and extra reinforcement is key to not get instantly reinforce memed against axis tanks. It tends to be less used by axis due to the need of AA and their overdependence of mass assault right countries providing 100% of the infantry that's used to hold the line.
how can you talk about specialization but then not take into consideration overexceeding combat width, and tailoring your division widths to be optimal for the types of terrain you wish to attack and defend.
@@sumzer_0 I dunno man, attacking into a forest with a 25width can be pretty bad with that massive exceeding combat width penalty. You can lose like 33% attack power. That's a pretty big deal. Don't take this as an attack on the video, i liked it, especially the part where you brought up the inefficiency of going 9/2 or 9/3 over a 9/1. Very helpful.
@@Onalot 25w Attacking into forests does not give -33% attack. From one direction it gives 25% penalty. Including the additional stats you get from the overfilling, its now only 6.25% penalty. Averaging over 3 directions with weights of 1-2-1 its about 2.22% penalty. So yeah, its not that important. And... thank you!
Finally a video to explain WHY you don't have to put artillery, instead of only showing "my meta division"
One tip for those who are just transitioning from infantry to tanks when using your tanks make sure to support their attacks with infantry that id manning the front around them so you can get breakthroughs and win battles
That is only if your tanks are bad, if your tanks are good, increasing the combat width with infantry is pointless since it will make you push more slowly because infantry has less stats, only works if the opponent has few units or you want to get more tanks not infantry into the battle
I think @nphax2008 meant pinning „devisions“(it is written wrong)
@@FederationUnabhaengigerSysteme thank you i didnt notice
Yep. Pin the surrounding provinces with inf attacks and maybe have some motorised or mechanised divisions with good defence follow your tanks. Leg Infantry can’t keep up with speed of light or medium tanks, so the tanks might end up encircled while encircling. 🤓
es heißt foederation@@FederationUnabhaengigerSysteme
TLDW: 25 Artillery batallions, Support Companies optional.
Played this game from release, did not know about max damage and how it used soft attack and organization, thank you 🙏
Me the same.
Had this video pop up on my recommended 5 years ago, this would undoubtedly be a game changer. Way too many people on RUclips clickbait with "this meta-changing division is a must-have" or "this division will change your gameplay" or whatever, but never explain why that's the case. Really well broken down video.
However, I am really interested in how you treat line artillery in this video. As far as I know, it's something that I considered a bread and butter in my divisions. Looking forward to your future video explaining why that's the case. I get the argument about how it doesn't make much of a difference on a width to width basis, but the whole reason you're adding line artillery is to maximize soft attack without detracting too much from organization. Maximizing soft attack is key because when your divisions have a greater soft attack than the enemy's divisions, the enemy takes four times the amount of damage to their organization. On a combat width to width basis, you're being less efficient on paper, but with how HOI4's combat works, quality vastly outperforms quantity because of the soft attack defense system.
Of course I could be wrong. Again, really looking forward to how you explain how line artillery is bad. And yes, I'm aware that typically you shouldn't be pushing with infantry and that should be more of a tanks' job, but I don't think that detracts too much from the point.
Still a stellar video and looking forward to more of your content!
Thank you! I am planning on making a full video on the topic, but ill explain it shortly here.
The thing you are describing with attack over the enemys is called critting. I think the thing you are missing is that it is ONLY the attack OVER their defense that is affected by this 4x multiplier. What this means is that having 210 attack versus opponents 200 defense average to 200 * 0.1 (from being blocked) and 10*0.4 (from critting). This 20 + 4 = 24. If the last part wasnt blocked it would be 21. Yes, it does help, but critting doesnt suddenly make you deal 4x the damage. Usually its between 1-2x, and closer to 3-4x if you have way more. Part of the reason quality > quantity is a thing is due to targeting, and not due to the extra soft attack.
Line artillery has very few upsides. You cant (realistically, no wojtek) get a general with artillery bonus. Artillery advisors are harder to get, and people that use line artillery rarely use any. There are more things im going to talk about, but these are a part of the reason why artillery is a lot worse than people think.
If you are using superior firepower, adding line artillery reduces your soft attack. It does not increase it.
Every time you use more width, you can put fewer support companies into combat.
For the other doctrines, only grand battleplan gives meaningful benefit to line artillery from many of the doctrine unlocks. MW and MA give practically nothing, while giving other battalion types significant bonuses. You should generally be producing things that take advantage of the doctrine you're using.
Players who advocate 9/x or w/e absent context of doctrine are more or less openly advertising they don't know what they're doing :p.
@@sumzer_0 You can even just check it using in-game stats. Damage/width with integrated support shows you're penalized by adding line arty clearly. If you could wave a wand and get it for free, you'd probably use it in other doctrines, but it isn't free. It comes at expense of more infantry, support equipment, tanks, or planes...aka alternative options getting full doctrine benefit.
It has a niche with certain positions with terrible manpower where you abuse entrenchment to keep enemies from crits in SP. It is pretty good at "width used per manpower" after all, so if you're stuck as non-aligned as part of a cheevo and need to cover a front like Finland vs USSR, stacking entrenchment onto line arty makes some sense. As a general-purpose division, it's pretty bad despite how ridiculously popular it is.
Integrated support in SF really does change division comp too. 6/0 using 5x soft attack focused support companies will climb to over 20 SA/width in '42 to '43 timeframe, with plenty of org too. Only proper MP tank divisions with high hardness can hold up to that; it will reinforce meme literally anything in SP and it will do so quickly.
@@TheMelnTeam If youre not using integrated support the argument sort of falls together, which is why i didnt use it. The point about it coming at the expense of other industry heavy things is really true tho.
@@sumzer_0 If I go SF, I always get an artillery advisor, and I don't find it hard at all. In the early days I choose an officer corp that gives you a 50% for a general with an engineer trait. Recruit a couple of generals and you'll have an engineer. It'll be easy to grind the required skill for him to become an advisor; if you are able to send volunteers you can do it before WW2 ten times out of ten.
Never played hoi4 in my life, only watched it. This will be very useful for me
I would recommend pirating it and trying it out if you've got 2,000 hours to burn.
@@surjackeroff Relatable
@@surjackeroff pirating paradox games is what makes them not release new content ;(
@@theextracator good
@@theextracatori have 2 hoi4 in my computer both pirated and bought, the only reason why pirating is justified in this case is because their dlcs are overpriced as hell
Best explanation I've seen. It was easily digestible and well done! Got me to return to Hoi4. Keep up the good work.
14-4-1 Space Marines with AA, Arty, Engineer, Log, and controversial: Hospital if you can afford it. Best Infantry division imo.
In my opinion flame tank support works better than hospitals.
what is used in 4-1
Can u explain what all this means ? I just started my first ironman HRE and idk what this all means
@@rivvabear9748 good template only thing I would change is the field hospital I think flame tanks work better.
@@spidersaremean8917 4 artilery 1 tank
Great first video. Short videos with the basics about the game are a gem to us HOI noobs. Thanks!
brilliant video for a first video!
Good video. Straight to the point. Backed up by math and fairly simple examples. Even the length of the video is appropriate.
Sometimes I see videos too short like 3 minutes which is not really enough to properly explain anything.
On the other hand most of the videos are hour long which are tedium at that point
Thank you for actually explaining why it works the way it does! Please make more videos like this 🔥
now all I need is a video like this explaining what the hell initiative actually does
divisions reinforce quicker. now, if you win you win, if you stall, having some dude joining a day earlier or later wont save the day. its nice to have, but having air cover or some other bonus will go a longer way. using planning for example, is way better bucks for time. you can use planning without investing a penny, just set your attack arrows in advance, let the blue bar charge, then press the arrow to execute attack. initiative is a dump stat, dump there whatever points you have no other use for
Best infantry division has 9 infantry battalions and 1 medium tank battalion withs pioneers and rangers instead of engineers and scout support companies. Since the division is slow you can make the tank design also slow with as much armor as you can.
Wouldn't it be better to just go for heavy tanks then? Really double up on the slow moving bunker aesthetic.
@@chanachon56 They are more expensive than mediums for not that much difference, so not worth it imo.
Excellent video, had it in my watch later playlist for some time. I agree with all points.
Another thing thats worth considering is the 'dispersed vs concentrated' firepower from IC.
By that I mean its drastically worse to have your countrys total ic spread evenly along your fronts units.
Better to have 1. tight cheap efficient filler (Low width foot/infantry with a few support companies (Logistics, arty, aa, maybe shovels) 2. smasher divisions (Tanks/special forces/inf+tank Hybrids) supported by 3. speedy filler (pure cav/mot/mech bricks to occupy breaches in the line offensively, or plug them defensively).
Rock paper and scissors instead of just a whole lot of rock.
I know of you ;)
spreadsheet user? SUBBED
Pretty good info here. Can't say I particularly learned anything new being 2k+ hours in, but I haven't tried multi-player. I suppose the fact I didn't learn anything particular means I'm at least doing it well-enough lol.
I remember when I started playing [2021], didn't look at any tutorials and played the game like it was civ5. What a mistake 😂.
Definitely gonna check the rest of the channel out to see if I can find any gems to help me be better at the game. Thanks!
thanks for the video bro
Please zoom in on windows and dialogs you are talking about, as the numbers are too tiny and unreadable on mobile devices
max dmg per width although is a good tell its not the whole story, when you have for example 9/3 your max dmg per width might take hit but you will de-org enemy units faster potentially denying them the ability to reinforce, also you will end combat faster resulting in less manpower loss for you, what i have found out playing against the ai is that its better to have very powerfull infantry divisions that double the number of poor quality (for frontlines)
You can watch my other video on line artillery for more details on why its overrated. The fact that you de-org your enemy units faster might not always matter, since you yourself can get de-orged faster. In the other video i also present alternatives to divisions with line artillery that perform better than for example a 9/3.
could you make a video explaining the why when it comes to tank divisions? the meta in multiplayer seems to be medium or heavy TD's but ive seen other things. i appreciate your dedication to hoi4 and showing us how to design effective divisions. a guide like this, but for tanks would be very very informative
Awesome video, great explanation! Looking forward to many more
This channel is very underrated! Can you make a video about tanks?
Amazing video and a lot more in depth compared to the big Hoi4 channels. Could you do an explanation on what to focus on or what temples are good for mp. I feel like there’s little to no videos on mp basics and what should be focused on. Either organization, HP, combat width, soft attack, etc. otherwise amazing video and happy to be your 100th subscriber!
You might want to explain a bit more about width and then how smaller division perform better in Africa while Europe supports larger ones. But nice 1st video
Played this game a lot and still do, mainly against AI. I feel like my usual strats go obsolete every time there's a major update. This video was helpful.
Excellent first entry - looking forward to watching the rest and future videos!! I'vew been playing HOI since the beginning and never loked at units this way.
Using your metrix I have adjusted all special ops to 16 width, and removed line artillery compeltely from my Marines - HUGE boost doing that.
Question, does the stacking penalty of going 16 width factor in to your approach, and if so how much?
Good to hear!
There is little stacking penalty on 16ws. The stacking penalty (if we are talking about the same thing), starts at 5 divisions when attacking from one direction, and at +3 for each direction. For plains its -2% from 1 direction, and no penalty for more directions. For urban its more yes, but not by a lot. Stacking penalty is the reason why i prefer 12w over 10w, so yes, it does have an impact just not a lot. Ive made a detailed chart with both combat width penalty and stacking penalty which i use, so it is considered.
@@sumzer_0 - I look foreward to this video as well!! :)
hi man! cngratz x ur first vide! very good! keep them comming :)
your first video is the best thing i seen today but there is alot of ads
I use a very similar division to the "attack" division as a multirole in single player and it never disappoints me, I just keep the support companies at 2: engineers and recon. after 40-41 I add a couple anti tank and anti air. It shreds anything
Great Video precise and to the point I love it!
Took over entire world using combination of 18 width pure inf with support eng, ai, art and rangers + 6/1 inf/art with just eng for low supply areas + 9/3 mountaineers with aa/art/eng/raingers/field hospitals +30 width tanks with just mech and mediums and same support divs as mountaineers. It was a very easy game as soviets with left opposition, capped axis in early 1942 and cleared map in 1949
line arty use less people per width. its good for saving men, if you have industry. also you are spot on for superior firepower, some other doctrines have "better" use for line art.
Excellent summary. Thanks
Awesome video,
Line artillery is good, remember that critting exists so the extra SA on the divisions matters a lot more than you expect. Especially on defense you will shred enemy attackers by mixing in line artillery.
This has been very helpful thankyou
Great video keep going!
6:23 this discounts the fact that attacks over defense do 4x damage
Which is rarely realistic in only infantry combat, and not something you should rely on since the difference in soft attack is surprisingly small.
@@sumzer_0 I agree with your general message, but not with this. It is very, very common and extremely easy to get SA > defensive values in single player. For one, this happens virtually any time the AI attacks our divisions, where our SA >> its breakthrough. Two, planning bonus + multi direction attack + modifier stacking + support companies can allow player divisions to far exceed AI defenses even while entrenched.
Depending on year, doctrine, # of attack directions and other specifics, it is realistic to get somewhere between 2000 to 6000 total soft attack onto a target province using only infantry battalions + support companies. This can often result in crits immediately, and will certainly do so once you knock at least one enemy division out of combat.
@@TheMelnTeam None of this discredits my point tho. Infantry attacking infantry, the attacking side will always have way too low breakthrough, so any extra soft attack wont add anything more significant than if it wasnt critted. Planning bonus is to a minor degree offset by entrenchment, multi direction attack doesnt matter if combat width is still filled, modifier stacking is more realistic on defense due to engineers bonuses, and support companies can be on both sides.
Biggest problem is that we are overoptimizing for the AI. If you are guaranteed to crit, you dont need to worry about it, if you know you wont, you dont need to worry about it either. Its only when there is a chance to crit that the extra attack can help by a significant amount
@@sumzer_0 Of course I'm not going to discredit your point overall, since I agree with nearly everything you're saying :p.
I think it's fair to be overoptimizing for AI in context of telling players how to build infantry divisions and learning to use them first as beginners; AI will be their opponent for quite some time.
It is often the case that CW isn't filled with multi-direction attack. That's probably 50/50 in SP; you can't count on it, but it's common. I'm not sure what you mean by "extra soft attack" above? More SA always means more damage, and even more so when it exceeds breakthrough/def. You always as much damage as you can fit into that fight, until the sacrifices become too great and you can't deal it.
Another commenter (incorrectly) suggested that line arty can trade org for faster damage. While that comment was wrong, because line arty isn't that great for SA/w, the sentiment is reasonable; there is real value in stacking as much damage as possible to win combat ASAP, denying opportunity to reinforce and shortening micro windows for opponent. The main problem is just that line arty doesn't give enough stats to actually do it.
This is interesting video, I just picked up the game again and my Reich campaign was an absolute shitshow, now I know why
Very well explained thank you 👍
Good start 😊
Thank you very much!
And could you please make a navy designs video
Maybe in the future, but not currently planning on it.
Ok just let me know please
But what about the buffs from doctrines ? Did you count in them for the artillery ?
Had no idea about max damage. Danke schoen
The stats alta blinded me. 1 35 width 10/5 division with 1k soft attack looks cool, but replacing it with 2 lower width divisions also gets you near that 1k number. Its just divided by 2 so it looks worse.
My only question would be, can you run this through the spreadsheets again but also include special forces cap? Using 2x the marines or mountaineers might yield higher stats but I want to know if the cap to soft attack ratio changes.
Im not sure i understand. A 10/5 would be a bad idea. There are advantages and disadvantages with smaller and larger divisions.
How would this be done? It isnt useful to calculate soft attack per cap, because it doesnt tell us anything. Calculating based on cap is generally a bad idea, because its a very variable thing to measure.
@@sumzer_0 Short version: should I put line arty in special forces divs?
It lowers terrain bonusses but increases soft attack and combat width.
I agree with most of what you said but I think the line artillery theory is a little misleading as you never factored in time, which is very important if you want to actually win a battle, especially when attacking.
You may have more potential attack with just infantry but it will take way longer to apply, so divisions which are knocked out of combat will reorganize and return to the battle, then you have to defeat them again, or reinforcements will arrive leading to a very long battle. Some early game inf vs inf battles like in Spain last for months while inf + arty vs inf in the same war can win in a few days.
Another big issue is attack/defence bonuses, such as a 10% attack bonus, for example, it would be much more effective on a division which has 400 attack (+40 attack) than a division with 100 attack (+10 attack). When you really start stacking bonuses on a heavy hitting division (naval bombardment, air superiority, rail gun, good terrain etc.) they get insane stats while a low quality division has stats not that much better.
No. The time difference is not that large. It would only matter for critting. Sacrificing org for soft attack also causes yourself to be reinforce memed easier.
This is just false. Attack bonuses dont affect high attack units more than low attack units. This is just false. 10% is 10%. 40% is 40%.
Very well done.
very high quality for a first video
Good video 👍 I have been playing HOI for years only won 3 or 4 times with 15,556 hours behind me so I consider my self very poor at it 🤣 So I learnt a few things from you today. Spy’s would be a good tutorial.
Space marines are good too
They are the meta really. 18w with a high armor medium brick.
I don't believe that line artillery is overrated, you just need to add recon to it for additional effect and keep it in shock troops or quality troops.
My cheap infantry seldom has sup artillert though, just shovels and 8 infantry while mountaineers or tanks do all the work.
Line artillery is good but is definitely overrated nowadays after several nerfs, usually it is better to have line anti-air (just because it takes less combat width)
Line artillery is overrated. Adding recon does improve it, but its not enough. "Quality" units usually contain other unit types like special forces or tanks, both of which are definitely worse with line artillery, than without. Like you mention, mountaineers and tanks do all the work. Neither of these divisions should contain any line artillery of any sort
@@bighillraft Line AA has nearly no use. More AA than just support AA will only help shoot down more CAS. AA does nothing else in your division. Even though line AA might have more stats per width, it also consumes more of your divisions organization. Its not something ive exactly tried, but not something i would recommend either.
@@sumzer_0
It depends on whom you fight against, I fìnd abundant soft attack from 2 line artilleries and 7 mountaineers + support recon and artillery melts AI enemy lines while fitting in a neat package of 20 width without consuming too much of manpower or special forces cap.
Its economic and efficient, and in my own test pure mountaineer division without any line artillery couldn't match my expectations.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but that's what I observed, its not eficient to put more than two line artilleries, but less than that works great!
@@Finnishnat-conservativedot7126 7/2 with mountaineers (and support companies, including recon) has strictly less maximum damage than 10/0 mountaineer. This wouldnt include the several other bonuses that special forces get, that artillery doesnt. "Economic" isnt correct either, since the two artillery battalions do cost more than the 3 mountaineer battalions would.
Do what you want, just telling you the facts.
Please air templates next, as you said air and inf works best
Hi mate, your video really helped me and i think you have a really good future as a streamer and i was thinking if we could play together.
dont forgot the backgruond music . you can use the hoi4 songs
The way hard attack works makes tanks kinda useless. At least on a SP basis. The AI will never muster spearheads with 90% hardness so you are fine with sprinkling at supp or even just anti air and then go large arty for your divs
So artilley is useless? Can you explain this: I was playing Venezuela bcuz why it has a strong formable and I used 22 9/3 divisions and 2 Mountaineer 9/3 divisions and I completely crushed everyone with an amazing casualty ratio, like 300k+ casualties for the enemy. So I could achieve the same thing without any artillery? Just a flat 9/0 div with support arty engineer and anti air?
Unlikely, the line arty hate is misplaced AF
Artillery is worse than most people think. 9/1 is still slightly better than 9/0, but that doesnt take into account a lot of other stuff. Generally, dont use line artillery, and if you do, do it before your entire army has gun 2.
The real game winner is not your template but your use of doctrines. You need to plan your divisions according to your doctrine. Generally SF is good for minors to conserve manpower, and using it cheaply is with left-right sides of the divergences to improve your support companies' damage (so that you can need less line arty), and gain flat bonuses to your army with going right in the second section.
If you can afford bigger industry, MW with Mobile Inf is a lot more viable than many think. Blitzkrieg side if you are going to use tanks heavily, because tank battalion bonuses it provides are just that big, but it ignores infantry, which is main source of your organization. Blitzkrieg side alleviates the tanks organization hit to benefit from tanks stat, if you have industry but cannot really affort much tanks, go Mobile INF.
It is possible to do better than 10:1 casualty ratios against Germany with only infantry as line battalions. As Austria.
@@gildedphoenix Line artillery is 100%, strictly unjustifiable with superior firepower. Out of the 4 doctrines, it is the worst by far relative to support company slots.
Even after rangers added the ability to give line arty 20% more soft attack, integrated support still easily out-classes dispersed support. 50% boost to support companies just overwhelms the rest of what that doctrine gives you, even before rocket arty. With rocket arty + arty + other SA stuff in support slots, increasing your width more than necessary for attacking divisions is nonsense in SP. In MP you still go integrated support, but probably airland in 2nd branch to boost your tanks.
Subbed for spreadsheet
thanks :3
In europe 30 width works well but in my asia experience 20 width and 21 width divisions are superior
Doesnt matter that much since AAT. Also depends if you micro or not. I might make a video on combat width, but its pretty complex
16w for line inf 36w for attacking in Europe 33/32 for attacking in asia
It used to be so simple to manage combat width when it was 80/40 everywhere.
On the other hand, it is now more easy to get away with making mistakes.
Then there are the 10width marine divisions for spamming small islands and trying to overwhelm countries with lots of coastlines.
@@OldSchoolGM94they work well in the pacific
Hi! I haven't played in a year or two, and am wondering if its still best to make big divisions (e.g. 40w) to outmatch the opponent's defence stat? I rmb PDX saying something about changing the mechanics to make smaller divisions viable too but can't rmb the details
Smaller divisions have more attack and org, but bigger divisions are less likely to be critted. I'd say that its up to you. In singleplayer, smaller divisions for everything other than tanks is probably best. BTW, dont do 40w. Highest width you should realistically do is 36w.
sumzero 1v1 me in cic i eat you
bro is cooking
One of my friends is saying that 18w as Germany is bad and that he has never seen someone win in competitive with less than 25w Frontline infantry. What would you say?
I'd say they dont know what they are talking about. After the most recent updates, exact combat width arguments have become more meaningless. In competitive MP, the meta is actually 12-18w infantry. I havent seen anyone do higher than that for normal infantry except garrisons.
There really isnt any reason doing 25w. It fits perfectly into mountains and marshes, but there is not point in doing that. You will fight the majority of your battles in plains and forests.
@@sumzer_0
Thank you for the response, great video btw.
Also, do you have a discord server for your channel where one could ask further questions or so?
Good video
11:48 the production cost
The best inf div is mass assault right 10 infantry battalions with support aa 😊
Oh so my 9'4 marines suck. Great to know
nice video
So basically just commit combined arms and win?
norsk?
I wanted to create a marine division for naval invasions, should i have support artillery on it? And what width should it have? Great video by the way.
it depends on the tiles combat width, i would say 35 Width. You can also go 40 width but you gonna get some depuffs but you can get more in there.
if your soft-attack is below 300 go with support artillery. If its above 300 you can still go support artillery but you can also instead go flame tank.
300 + 10%(Flame tank buff) = 330 can be stronger depending doctrine and remember organization
It depends, if were just talking singleplayer id probably recommend 10-12w with support artillery and support rocket artillery and other support companies. Just remember that the divisions are small, so you need more for each tile.
If its multiplayer, meta is large divisions like 36w where you try to stack HP. In MP you normally pick field hospital, pioneers, flame tank, tank recon and logi i believe. Just remember, dont do line artillery with special forces
When calculating maximum damage shouldn’t breakthrough also be accounted? because for example putting more mech in tanks technically is better if you for example 8 tank 7 mech but also breakthrough is added not only attack when you add more tanks to division
@@sebastianokon9223 good question. Defense and breakthrough dont scale «linearly» like attack and organisation does. When your breakthrough/defense is higher than the attack received, any more does nothing. It also doesnt really work well when comparing with the effects of critting. Having 30% attack over the defense is a lot more than 10%, meaning the defense does more the closer it gets the attack.
Edit: You will need to account for breakthrough/defense independently of the maximum damage when considering different designs.
@@sumzer_0 do you think you can do a video comparable to this but with tanks? I’m not to familiar with how critting works and many other nuances I’m just recently getting into MP
Idk mate having no artilarry battalion sounds like divisions gonna be super fragile
Artillery makes them more fragile though, it shoots their organization down. People filling their divisions with artillery then wondering why they're being pushed the second they're attacked instead of doing the attacking.
I do worry about over correction though, line artillery is good at making pushes.
What about AT, line or otherwise. Typically the attacking division would be some sort of tank, but is it worth bringing towed anti-tank if the enemy has a lot of that? Particularly if your a minor who cant reliably make tanks or TD's.
Not really. If youre talking about singleplayer, then support AA will usually be more than enough. If were talking multiplayer, you would either do really cheap mass mob inf with support AT, or tanks. There is no in between in vanilla. Line AT is currently useless.
Why do you dislike line artillery so much? I always try to have line artillery in my infantry templates if I can afford it. Line infantry get one battalion, and if I have assault infantry, they'll get two or three. When fighting ai specifically, soft attack is king.
And since you dislike line artillery, what is your opinion on motorized artillery?
Efficiency is why they are not good. But play as you like.
I have 2000h in this game and I would say I am really good in this game. But the mathematical method for the division is really great. Thank you I will use it in the future.
4.0 isn't max speed, get a super heavy tank with lots of armor added on and see how fast you're going.
Try saving that same design, and you'll see.
I‘m traumatised from this lineartillery thing. What should i do instead when playing for example poland and not having the IC for tanks?
I'd say focus on air instead. CAS does so much damage on its own, decent infantry with CAS support will win against (almost) any AI. Special forces is an alternative i mention in the video.
@@sumzer_0 i never tried but i don‘t think that poland can win the airwar against the soviets and the germans while having enough troops. Also you‘d have to build you‘re own rubber and Aluminium is verry limited
@@Spielkind104 If you are fighting both soviets and germans, then you are really struggling with IC (production cost). Special forces would probably be the best way to break out, if not just numbers work.
@@sumzer_0seems like i have to give that a try
Will it work in multiplayer though?
KInda... It also depends on how experienced your opponent is. The point of the guide is to give a foundation for making a division no matter the circumstance. If you are playing against experienced meta players, then just make cheap infantry and quality special forces like i explained, otherwise you have to resort to tanks.
First of all, your points on motorized and tanks are completely correct, however your "max dmg per width" stat misses two very important variables.
The first one is manpower cost and the second one is time to win battles. In a 9/0 division you have to pay around 83 manpower per unit of soft attack, in a 9/3 division that goes down to roughly 50 manpower per soft attack, the pure inf div requires 67% more manpower per soft attack! Now that may not be an issue if you're playing a major with lots of manpower, but if you're playing any of the scandinavian countries, turkey or honestly almost any minor it is a huge cost to pay to save a negligible amount of production cost not producing artillery.
As for the second point, if you have more soft attack and less org, even if you do the same amount of damage per width in total, you will win battles faster, that can be the difference between your enemy reinforcing a battle or not or it could decide if you encircle an enemy or not.
Taking into account those two variables I would say that line artillery is still the objectively superior choice 98% of the time.
The AI is too incompetent to require using special forces in singleplayer so honestly i have no opinion on your last point.
Measuring manpower per soft attack is a completely useless metric. Max damage per manpower is slightly more useful. Im gonna compare a 12/0 with a 9/2, since having equal combat width is more important when comparing quality units. Here i get only a 24.6% increase in max damage per manpower.
Now lets do max damage per IC. 12/0 has 8.95, while the 9/2 has 8.29. This is an increase of 7.9%. This does not take into account the several other bonuses that infantry does get, which would make this in favour of infantry. Now, IC is actually more important than manpower, since you can always make more tanks instead of infantry, but you cant magically get more mils. IC is therefore the preferred method of calculating how effective divisions are. If you calculate losses you will see similar numbers.
Yes, you will win battles faster, but you will also lose faster. The reason attack is slightly more important than organization is due to critting, and not how quickly the battle finishes.
Line artillery is the objectively worse choice 98% of the time, ask any expert...
If we are arguing about AI incompetency, than there isnt any point optimizing to this degree.
5:00 if my inf breaks enemy inf and enemy org gets down to 0 before mine does; adding more artillery to my divisions definitely makes it a better division
If you finished watching that part of the video, you will that is what i measure. Going from 9/1 to 9/2 is a very small improvement (with significant downsides), while 9/2 to 9/3 is a decrease. Meaning the extra artillery makes the division worse.
@@sumzer_0 i got your point but 9/3 has more breakthrough so that means it will face less organization damage
Tbh getting the 3rd arty is no need just push for more air production
@@karaboga212 9/3 does not have more breakthrough per width (which is what matters), since support companies matter, you actually have LESS breakthrough per width. Also, even if this was the case, the difference is so small since you will be critted either way (opponent has higher attack than your defense/breakthrough).
I wouldnt recommend anything higher than a 9/1.
@@karaboga212this isn’t true your 9/3 isn’t pushing anything truth is small width is only for defending you want high cw divs for attack
I didn't understand anything
You from german?
No, Norwegian.
The better you are at the game, the more you learn to love Signal Companies.
Haha... no. Even though signal company isnt exactly bad, other companies are better. On quality divisions like tanks and special forces, all of your slots will be filled. With cheap divisions, signal is too expensive, and doesnt serve a real purpose either.
@@sumzer_0 Signals are actually really strong for both reinforce rate and faster planning in MP. Soviet players who go down mobile warfare with infantry and tanks should ALWAYS put signals on everything. As for allies, signals on offensive divs are key for faster planning for their GBP left orientated divisions(tanks and marines), and extra reinforcement is key to not get instantly reinforce memed against axis tanks. It tends to be less used by axis due to the need of AA and their overdependence of mass assault right countries providing 100% of the infantry that's used to hold the line.
@@sumzer_0signal is like goated more recovery planning reinforce
@@Ixertiusand CAS buff
@@JDothan ???
how can you talk about specialization but then not take into consideration overexceeding combat width, and tailoring your division widths to be optimal for the types of terrain you wish to attack and defend.
@@Onalot because exact combat width matters very little. Also the details are very complex, and doesnt matter that much for a beginner.
@@sumzer_0 I dunno man, attacking into a forest with a 25width can be pretty bad with that massive exceeding combat width penalty. You can lose like 33% attack power. That's a pretty big deal. Don't take this as an attack on the video, i liked it, especially the part where you brought up the inefficiency of going 9/2 or 9/3 over a 9/1. Very helpful.
@@Onalot 25w Attacking into forests does not give -33% attack.
From one direction it gives 25% penalty. Including the additional stats you get from the overfilling, its now only 6.25% penalty.
Averaging over 3 directions with weights of 1-2-1 its about 2.22% penalty. So yeah, its not that important.
And... thank you!
Such a flurry of clueless beginners making vids on hoi4 it's tragic.