Hearts of Iron IV – Division Templates Guide

Examples of division templates. I recommend using them but in the end, there are also tips for designing your templates.

Guide to Division Templates

Please note: all credit goes to CaptainKozdro!

Info

I didn’t give photos of divisions statistics because they are different for different equipment.

I described all statistics, support companies, and tips about division design at the end of the guide.

Infantry

20 width 7/2 division

  • Good starter division, but weaker than 40 width divisions in almost every situation.
  • Good in low supply areas like Africa or Asia.

20 width weak infantry

  • Use only when you can’t afford better or as cannon fodder.

20 width 8/1/1

  • Useful only if the opponent has a lot of tanks. Don’t make them a lot.

40 width 14/4 division

  • The cheapest infantry division 40 width. I recommend using it only in countries that have an infantry specialist. Then it has efficiency similar to 11/6

40 width 11/6 division

  • This is a very universal approach, as 11 infantry battalions will be able to maintain their newly acquired position and gain new ones.
  • This is an artillery division, so the infantry specialist will not increase its statistics.

40 width 8/8 division

  • Tank division without tanks. Thanks to the huge amount of anti-live attack, it perfectly destroys enemy infantry. Weak in defense so I would support them with 20 width divisions.

Important: You can change artillery to rocket artillery

Tanks

20 width 6/4 division

  • Normal tank division.

20 width heavy tank division

  • Better than 20 width 6/4 division but much more expensive.

40 width 15/5 division

  • Higher production costs, but these divisions are nearly unstoppable.
  • Probably banned in most MP games, and will destroy anything they face in singleplayer.

Important: You can change medium tanks to light ones. They are weaker but cheaper. Later, I recommend to change them to modern tanks that are a combination of all three types of tanks. I recommend using a motorized infantry first, and later when you can afford to change it to a mechanized infantry.

Special Infantry (Mountain, Paratropers, Marines)

Basic mountain

Better mountain

Paratropers

Marines

Mobile Divisions

I do not recommend using these divisions because they are not much better than infantry and use a lot of fuel. Mechanized division is better than motorized but is more expensive.

Motorized division

Mechanized division

Horse division

This division is only used to pacify the resistance on the conquered provinces.

Support Companies

If we don’t need a company, we do not take it! Each additional company, apart from some positive value, worsens other statistics of our division.

  • Mainterance reduce combat penalties and increase division speed in difficult terrain. Additionally, they allow the division to dig in, which greatly increases its defensive value when it holds its position and does not move.
  • Field hospital reduces the loss of human resources and the loss of experience as a result of incurred losses.
  • Logistics reduces the consumption of supplies and fuel. Useful when fighting in areas with a very low infrasructure factor, or when you use a lot of mobile equipment.
  • Engineers increases the reliability of a Division’s equipment, which reduces equipment losses due to exhausion or combat. Additionally, it allows you to “steal” the enemy’s equipment during fights.
  • Recon increases the reconnaissance value of a division, which increases the chance of countering enemy tactics in combat.
  • Signal significantly increases the organization of the division and the Initiative.
  • Military police increases the value of pacification, making the division better able to deal with rebellions and guerrillas.
  • Anti-aircraft artillery increases anti-aircraft defense.
  • Anti-tank artillery support increases hard attack and penetration.
  • Artillery support increases soft attack and defense.
  • Rocket artillery support increases soft attack and breakthrough.

Stats

Max Speed

The base maximum speed a unit can go, this value is usually lower due to infrastructure level and terrain, however some things like engineer support increase this.

HP (hitpoints)

How much damage your unit can take during combat. Infantry and variants have a lot of this because they are many, while armor has very little.

Organization

This is very important. It’s your unit’s ability to sustain combat. Provided primarily by infantry and motorized or mechanized. It’s usually between 25 and 60.

Recovery rate

How quickly your units regain the organization. Recovery is as important as an organization. However, since most recovery units also provide the organization, these values usually, balance each other. Usually, it is between 0.30 and 0.44.

Reconnaissance

A high level of reconnaissance increases the unit’s chances of choosing a tactic that better counter the enemy’s tactics. it is only affected by the Reconnaissance Support company and Research: Shock & Awe Doctrines of Superior Firepower or Infiltration in Depth of the Grand Battleplan, therefore the reconnaissance value is usually equal to the Recon Battalion Level with values from 1 to 7 with an absolute maximum of 8.

Suppression

Suppression of revolts in the occupied territories. Gives nothing in combat. Two values affect suppression: the base unit value (cavalry provides 2, while most other units provide 1) and the military police support company, which provides a 10% modifier of this value.

Weight

How many convoys it takes to ship your unit. Closely related to Supply Use, but then without any actual meaning.

Supply use

How much supply your units consume. Each province has its supply limit. When it is exceeded by too many divisions, it gives them movement and combat penalties. In general, infantry uses very little supplies and tanks use a lot. The logistics campaign reduces the amount of supplies used.

Reliability

Applies only to vehicles affecting their wear. Each vehicle has its basic reliability. It can be increased by a maintenance company.

Trickleback & Exp.Loss

Trickleback is the number of victims returned to your manpower and exp.loss is a loss of experience when those victims are replaced by new people. This can only be changed with a support company of a field hospital. These values are very important for low manpower countries.

Soft Attack

The ability of units to deal damage. Infantry has a very low soft attack, tanks have weak and artillery have very heavy. Most divisions have a 90-100% soft attack, so it’s one of the most important stats.

Hard Attack

A unit’s ability to deal hard damage to tanks and mechanized units. Tanks and Anti-Tank guns have a high hard attack.

Air Attack

The unit’s ability to shoot down aircraft.

Defense

The ability of a unit to withstand an attack. Absorbing damage that would otherwise fall on the unit’s organization. This value comes mainly from infantry and derivatives. For armored divisions, motorized or mechanized ones are necessary, otherwise they will not be able to defend themselves.

Breakthrough

The unit’s ability to smash enemy units. Usually, defense is more important than breakouts because you want to hold your position while the enemies lose their organization on attack.

Armor

Ability to resist enemy penetration. When the enemy cannot pierce, you take 50% less damage, 50% less damage to your organization, and deal 50% more damage to your organization to fighting units, this bonus is applied to your entire division. Thus, the armor itself can make a unit work, even if on paper it seems hopelessly outclassed.

Piercing

The only thing piercing does is steal the enemy’s armor bonus. Useful for fighting tanks.

Initiative

The reinforce rate and planning speed. It is affected only by the signal company and seems to have very little tangible impact on battles other than the planning bonuses.

Entrenchment

The entrenchment affects how quickly and how much the unit gets entrenched. This is only influenced by the Engineers support company.

Combat width

A very important value. Indicates how much space a unit occupies on the battlefield. a typical fight is 80 wide, so you can fit 8 units of 10, 4 units of 20, 2 units of 40, or one of the 80. If you create divisions, e.g. 21 widths, they will only be able to fight 3 at a time, because 4 will not be fit. If you get a field marshal with an offensive doctrine that reduces the combat width of all units under his command by 10%, you can create units with combat width of 11, 22, and 44 respectively, and make them all act as if they are 10, combat width 20, and 40.

20w

Allows us to create many cheap and small divisions with which we can flood the enemy’s front. Unfortunately, the consumption of supplies, human resources, equipment, penetration value, and armor is less than 40w. This is a good solution when we measure the number of our branches.

40w

Allows us to create few, expensive and large divisions that better focus their attacks during fights. Their only drawback is the huge demand for equipment, but they lose fewer stats along with losses. This is a good solution when we measure the quality of our branches.

Cost

Manpower

How many people are in the division. As a general rule, line-artillery units and armor take 500 men per unit in your division, infantry takes 1000, and motorized & mechanized take 1200.

Training time

Unit training time in days.

Equipment numbers

All the individual numbers of vehicles and other equipment you would require to produce this division template. It is here that you can make a good estimate of how to distribute your overall production.

Estimated Production Cost

The minimum and maximum estimated production cost of a unit. These values represent the overall production cost in the industrial capacity of your unit and do not represent the material requirements of each division. Naturally, a lower cost is better.

Hardness (the bar below division stats)

The ratio of damage you take. If your unit has 43% hardness you take 57% soft attack and 43% hard attack.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 15060 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices.

7 Comments

  1. Great guide, would be nice if you added the best resistance suppression templates(cavalries, MP, armored cars and etc.) depeding on your industry.

  2. Military police gives a percentage bonus to suppression, so it’s more cost effective to have a garrison template full of cavalry/ACs with single MP (although that requires lots xp, so don’t do it until you have your main templates formed).

  3. Support companies are providing great bonuses, which compensate stat debuffs:
    Engineers provide a big defense bonus for infantry and attack bonus for tanks in various terrains;
    Logistics will allow you to concentrate more divisions;
    Field hospital saves your manpower, and more important – allows your division reach veteran experience much easier (and that’s 75% bonus!)
    Armored recon will utilize your useless light tanks and give some armor; tactics advantage is nice tho;
    Maintenance decreases (and later removes) attrition, which became a bigger problem with LaR; also you can capture a shitton of enemy tanks and other equipment from encirclements.

  4. Can’t agree with mechanized divisions. I usually do encircling with tank divisions (which are your spearhead) followed by mechanized divisions (which stay on occupied provinces, preventing enemy from escaping). Mech divisions are fast enough to keep with tanks and tough to withstand attacks while you finish encircled enemy.

  5. Don’t use only medium tanks in your divisions, it is a complete waste. For every 5 tank battalions you have, make 1-2 of them mediums and the others lights, it is just as effective as full mediums but with less supply usage and cheaper.

  6. i suggest that, when you switch from light to medium/heavy, you start giving your light tonks to minor allies or put them in your infantry, it would be dumb for all those light tanks to go to waste

  7. So this is still good for Singleplayer, but is going to quickly become out of date as people find new metas in multiplayer, most of the info below the division examples still applies, using this info you can come up with the new combat width metas on your own.

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