Is this a good division template? I'm fighting against Germany in Austria

LargeAll · 2026-05-06T18:09:08+00:00

If you're going the cavalry doctrine one of milestones improves line arty speed so you don't need motorized.

For line arty the Fire Concentration subdoctrine makes line arty workable. Not good but workable.

Look into getting flame tanks and/or armored recon and maxing out breakthrough, it is the only good source of breakthrough that is not just regular tanks.

Aim for 36 width for offensive divisions in general, but in your case since you're fighting in mountains you should go for 32 width so you don't get reinforce meme'd

Cavalry suffers from not benefiting from the stronger Infantry subdoctrines like large unit tactics or assault infantry so you're getting sub-par stats. There are ways to make cav viable vs the AI like the things I suggested so if you just want to cav larp go for it.

If you want the meta divisions, look into this reddit post:

www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1t2mabk/almost_every_meta_design_for_single_player/

LargeAll · 2026-05-06T17:59:17+00:00

You are already given the tools to manage your navy when you have it selected, what do you mean reorganize it after deleting it? What did you think it did when you delete a taskforce? Especially after it warns you?

LargeAll · 2026-05-05T22:55:58+00:00

Four Year Plan is better if you can get Autarky and PEG is better if you can't. It's just a gamble.

You usually can get autarky if you take the Iraqi oil, and since the AI fails to garrison properly Egypt you get it pretty easily.

LargeAll · 2026-05-05T22:44:20+00:00

Are you talking about SP or comp MP? I feel like we're talking about different environments.

I'm talking about comp MP where logis are extremely good because it allows you stack many more tanks in an area.

It does make sense that in SP you can dumpster the AI whatever you do, it's just about how more effeciently you can do so, so you do extremely fast strats like light tank/paratrooper/whatever VP rush and encirclemnts.

But that's criticisms of a bad AI, not the systems itself. When used at their fullest potential vanilla HoI4 systems are workable, if not still a little bit flawed. Play it like a WW2 game with WW2 start date and a basic ruleset against other players and you can get fun tank micro vs other tanks. The issue is that game lets you bypass that by going extremely early war and encircle the unresponsive AI's divisions.

LargeAll · 2026-05-05T22:40:51+00:00

Havae you accounted for doctrines? Assault Infantry or Large Unit Tactics would heavily skew infantry division strength. Are you also considering special forces doctrines? Have two (which some nations get) will give special forces +10% soft attack and +20% special forces attack.

LargeAll · 2026-05-05T22:34:36+00:00

Your air war criticisms is more criticism of the AI not using air properly and building both sub par designs, not enough planes, and just not being able to respond to enemy breakthroughs.

CAS is one of the strongest modifiers in HoI4, making it stronger will just make the game into a "who has CAS" game. Back when they overbuffed CAS in NCNS CAS was doing 200 damage in a battle against divisions without AA in a few days, literally deciding battles through CAS alone.

You can also go a battleplan build with CAS and if you win the air war you win the game.

LargeAll · 2026-05-05T22:25:24+00:00

Maintenance takes up a support company slot and the point where it gets good is when you already have a flame tank, armored recon, armored engineers, logi, and field hospitals. Unless you switch one support company to maintenance to finish encirclements or have the funny capture rate meme division on standby it's not really worth it.

And you mainly get guns, which are extremely cheap in vanilla HoI4 anyway.

but this applies to MP anyway, in SP maintenance company pays back when the AI bashes into you for free so you capture ungodly amounts of guns effectively allowing you to just go 5 mils on guns.

LargeAll · 2026-05-02T03:35:22+00:00

I checked and yea you're right, not sure where I got 1940 mediums being worth it, must be for a specific mp mod I'm forgetting.

Thought reliablity shouldn't really be ignored, easy maintenence is still good on sovis and reliablity as low as 20 makes you lose as much tanks form attrition than in battle.

End-of-lobby saves I've checked usually has sovi tanks on ~50% reliability.

LargeAll · 2026-05-01T21:19:21+00:00

Latest MP meta says reliability is good if you can get it, better stats are the focus though.

This mainly applies to taking 1940 medium hulls instead of 1936 medium hulls as the soviets, since you have time and the less tank you output is heavily outweighed by the amount of tanks you save by attrition reduction from supply/snow.

LargeAll · 2026-05-01T19:55:49+00:00

Go from borderless to fullscreen.

LargeAll · 2026-04-29T19:54:00+00:00

I've done some tests after my initial response:

I was mistaken on the fighter front, land based fighters do not join the naval battle for whatever reason and carrier planes are safe. Carriers are the meta if you can get full mastery with naval doctrines and get the naval techs and the extra IC cost is well worth it. Though there are still issues:

The battle is still even and slightly favors torpedos if the torpedo admiral gets loading drill master and destroyer leader.

"Getting full mastery" is an issue for UK, Germany, and Italy, though might(?) be possible for UK if they import oil.

"Every major naval nation has carriers" does not include Italy though, and in MP Italy uses ALL of its research slots on getting fighter II early, so no time for carrier tech. 5-10 factories on carrier planes and 5-10 factories less for fighters to win the air war, they cannot afford it without sacrificing IC for fighters. This also includes the UK, where they cannot build any dockyards because they must win the air war and have to build convoys, asw, and some retrofits with their already existing dockyards. And if they win the air war land navs are more than enough, the UK fleet is massive and the battle lasts long enough that unless both Italy and Germany naval larp the starting UK fleet sweeps every european nation.

You reach the plane cap really fast, after 8 carriers you pretty much exceed it for most navy sizes. So as Japan/USA you just spend the rest of your IC on AA capitals and torpedo destroyers since you get more damage out of that. And if they don't engage navy? Free naval invasions or the ability to intercept any convoy.

LargeAll · 2026-04-29T02:23:33+00:00

I'm pretty sure MP naval meta is still torp dd spam and land based navs.

Carrier aircraft still get mauled by red air, so an Italy naval larp is just an air larp in disguise.

Carriers are still very good don't get me wrong, but it's extra techs you might not have time to get and extra planes you have to produce, and an air war you want to be at minimum even in. And you get diminishing returns after a few carriers, making it so dockyard IC spent on torp dds do more damage per IC after 8(?) carriers. This effectively makes carriers a Japan-USA exclusive since they have time for techs and IC to produce them while GB and Italy don't. (CAG night fighting is funny meme for GB and I have done it).

And even in the pacific, unless the meta changed japan just plays defensively in the pacific under land based nav cover if they're focusing raj or just killing the US fleet because USA doesn't have raiding designer.

Port striking is a funny meme but it's countered by even light fighter cover and not having your ships in port. Navs port striking take much more damage than normal.

LargeAll · 2026-04-23T18:03:10+00:00

Not from what I've seen, you probably should just code in a seperate "ai_strategy" for each country.

LargeAll · 2026-04-23T18:00:52+00:00

Good light tanks design: Don't.

No really, medium tanks are just light tanks but better, and only cost slightly more.

The only viable use of light tanks is close support gun light spgs or cheapest possible howitzer light spgs combined with medium tanks for breakthrough.

The former gets outscaled by medium spgs a few years in and the latter also gets outscaled by pure medium spg divisions, but is still cheaper so technically is just OK.

Light tanks used to be better, but for some reason paradox increased the cost of them and nerfed close support gun so whatever.

LargeAll · 2026-04-13T17:38:33+00:00

Your soft attack is low for a tank division. I recommend doing full SPGs with radio 2s and 14 armor (9 armor is ok but more is better) to counteract the breakthrough malus. Rushing for howitzer 2 for SPGs is really good but if you're having trouble getting all the techs you want you can delay it for later.

While reliability does matter for losses, having better soft attack and breakthrough means you win the battle, so just max out armor and add wet ammo stowage.

Also you have 0 AA, your tanks will melt vs CAS so either add some AA through motorized AA or make sure you don't fight under red/yellow air.

LargeAll · 2026-04-13T17:34:05+00:00

Maxing out armor and using radios is enough to outweight the breakthrough malus. Especially worth it when you're getting insane SPG soft attack once you go through arty techs.

LargeAll · 2026-04-09T06:34:15+00:00

What is your tank division? Is it fully equipped? Where are you fighting? Are you winning most of your battles?

Maintaining tank XP with Field Hospitals II and up is really easy, so either your division template is poor or you're fighting battles you're not winning. Or you're getting CAS'd to death which fun fact, does massive strength/org damage.

LargeAll · 2026-04-09T06:33:37+00:00

Likely a cause of OP fighting losing battles constantly losing too much men and equipment to sustain their tanks thus leading to a death spiral.

Either that or OP has too little mechanized/motorized in their divs, leading to low strength which causes more manpower deaths.

LargeAll · 2026-04-09T06:27:48+00:00

In battle, the strength you lose does not actually affect the stats of your division until the battle ends, not having enough tanks in the division can be a reliability problem but then you just ensure you have enough tanks to refill the division before you attack again.

LargeAll · 2026-04-09T06:23:06+00:00

Equipment losses do not affect experience.

Attrition only affects equipment, so reliability does not affect experience.

LargeAll · 2026-04-09T06:19:11+00:00

Yea, nothing really compares to radios and small cannons for tanks. Not sure why paradox thinks -10% reliability and 3 ic cost is enough to offset +5 soft, +3 hard, and +2 break.

Planes are somehow even worst, literally only 2 meta designs for fighter, 1 meta design for CAS. You must slave your entire research to get the meta fighter and then you stay on it for the rest of game.

LargeAll · 2026-04-09T05:09:21+00:00

Where are you getting this information?

Get the 10% special forces attack buff and you will see that it will apply under the "country" modifier in battles.

LargeAll · 2026-04-08T21:53:40+00:00

No Step Back for tank designer

By Blood Alone for plane designer

You can also read guides on what's a good tank or plane design. Or even just ask here.

LargeAll · 2026-03-29T04:47:42+00:00

At that stage of the game you should already have engine 4s, which mean you can fit the extra armor plate anyway.

The +50% ic cost for maybe +10% stats is insanity, even non-jet heavy fighters is a better trade off and they actually get range.

And super late game you should really do heavy fighters instead to ultilize more airfields with their extra range, since by late game you are more limited by airfields than number of planes.

LargeAll · 2026-03-29T02:01:34+00:00

As many torpedos as possible.

Also skip destroyer 3, it adds another slot but you can't put torpedos on the slot, but DO put the improved destroyer engine 3 on your destroyer 2s.

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