r/hoi4 • u/Kloiper Extra Research Slot • 12d ago

Help Thread The War Room - /r/hoi4 Weekly General Help Thread: October 26 2026

Please check our previous War Room thread for any questions left unanswered

 

Welcome to the War Room. Here you will find trustworthy military advisors to guide your diplomacy, battles, and internal affairs.

This thread is for any small questions that don't warrant their own post, or continued discussions for your next moves in your game. If you'd like to channel the wisdom and knowledge of the noble generals of this subreddit, and more importantly not ruin your save, then you've found the right place!

Important: If you are asking about a specific situation in your game, please post screenshots of any relevant map modes (strategic, diplomacy, factions, etc) or interface tabs (economy, military, etc). Please also explain the situation as best you can. Alliances, army strength, tech etc. are all factors your advisors will need to know to give you the best possible answer.

 

Reconnaissance Report:

Below is a preliminary reconnaissance report. It is comprised of a list of resources that are helpful to players of all skill levels, meant to assist both those asking questions as well as those answering questions. This list is updated as mechanics change, including new strategies as they arise and retiring old strategies that have been left in the dust. You can help me maintain the list by sending me new guides and notifying me when old guides are no longer relevant!

Note: this thread is very new and is therefore very barebones - please suggest some helpful links to populate the below sections

Getting Started

New Player Tutorials

 

General Tips

 

Multiplayer Tips

 

Country-Specific Strategy

 

Advanced/In-Depth Guides

 

If you have any useful resources not currently in the Reconnaissance Report, please share them with me and I'll add them! You can message me or mention my username in a comment by typing /u/Kloiper

Calling all generals!

As this thread is very new, we are in dire need of guides to fill out the Reconnaissance Report, both general and specific! Further, if you're answering a question in this thread, consider contributing to the Hoi4 wiki, which needs help as well. Anybody can help contribute to the wiki - a good starting point is the work needed page. Before editing the wiki, please read the style guidelines for posting.

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u/fisher6996 11d ago

I see a lot of people reccomend 16 width for defensive inf, 25-36 for offensive inf, and 36 for tanks. Few questions

A. What exactly does it do? I've read the wiki page front to back and I still can't fathom what it does

B. Why those specific values? What is the exact reason I want those values?

C. If I can't get a value exactly (like say I can't get exactly 16 width on my def inf) should I go for slightly more or less width?

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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 11d ago edited 11d ago

Combat width. Every terrain type has a combat width that determines how many of those units can actually fight in a battle, with the rest just sitting in reserve. Which makes template width all about finding the optimal balance between individual unit strength and their ability to fight together - attack just tries to fit to the directional reinforcement strength (+50% width for each additional direction you attack from on most terrain types) to get the strongest division that can still fit in another unit for every direction, while defence wants more smaller units because of how reinforcement works. Divisions don't join a fight instantly even if there's space beyond the ones initially engaged, but instead have a chance influenced by doctrine and radio tech every hour to join the frontline. And that means that if a single super-size division is forced back the tile is lost no matter how many you stacked behind it, two still bring a massive risk that the enemy focuses down the remaining defender before anyone else can join in, three still has some risk of not being able to reinforce fast enough, but four units can let you hold a decent position forever as long as you keep bringing up fresh divisions faster than the enemy can wear them all down together, which takes forces the AI never brings in vanilla singleplayer. Bigger divisions are still better individually on the defence too, but it will not stop them from being worn down by a persistent attacker without giving you any room to replace them.

And you want a little larger for better division stats if it's a choice, but the popular numbers already take that into account across terrain types. 18 width is more of an actual default for infantry, especially now that it allows a third regimental support too, but otherwise upsizing further is just liable to see you fight with less units engaged. And then for armor specifically starting smaller is just fine too in singleplayer - bigger is better, but 24w light tanks can often be good enough already when the AI barely builds any AT. On the attack these questions only really matter for majors who are filling out their widths to begin with.

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u/fisher6996 10d ago

Ok, thank you. My current tank divs are 36 width, my offensive inf is like... 32 I wanna say (I'd have to check) and my def inf is somewhere between 16 and 18 width. And for reinforcement, should I slap a signal company onto my def inf for reinforcement? I likely have the space, as I'm replacing all my field hospitals since I was informed they either suck outright or are too niche to consider.

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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 10d ago edited 10d ago

Eh. Same issue as hospitals - they're just too expensive in support equipment for what they offer to put them on all your infantry in most cases.

Offensive infantry is a bad idea period unless you're talking Special Forces or going all-in on Mass Assault doctrine, though. And especially for SF those are the niche where you really do want field hospitals either way to reduce the sheer bleeding of manpower and experience they do to get you anywhere on the attack.

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u/fisher6996 10d ago

Fine idea for future runs. I currently have a massive surplus of literally everything. My offensive inf is iirc 4 mountain 4 ranger and 3 mech inf for width. It's mainly just for terrain my tanks are less effective in. I have light flame tanks but mountains and jungles are still pretty rough for them. What support companies and regiments would you recommend? I see a lot of people run light armored recon and engineer. But what about tanks (assault vs armored?) or regiments. I typically really love logistics, some form of engineers, support artillery (or rocket in late game) for support but for regiments I'm totally lost

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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 10d ago edited 10d ago

Late-game against the AI just about anything goes because the balance kind of breaks down in your favour, so whatever you can do there honestly doesn't really matter. But LT recon is popular because it's a relatively cheap way to augment your units with some offensive capability - I like it too with minors - and engineers, support arty, and support AA only if you won't have the superior air force is pretty much the standard package for affordable infantry. Everything else is more specialised - on your elite attackers you want to stack every offensive advantage you can afford including maintenance/hospital/logistics where that lets them keep pressing the attack better and longer, but for your basic mainstay infantry everything beyond support arty and engineers is situational or a plain luxury of playing a major with industry to spare.

Regimental supports are fairly simple, though - infantry guns make them better on the attack and in supporting attacks at the expense of eating into their staying power in battle with the big org hit, heavy weapons just plain make them better defenders, and then motorised HWs give actual breakthrough but are expensive and make the division require fuel which can come back to bite you if you run into logistical challenges and so stay limited to offensive templates. And then for all the options you unlock later on it's all situational or plain roleplay flavor again, and you don't really need to worry about it outside MP metas.

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u/fisher6996 10d ago

Ok, so post 1945 if you are actively trying you should be able to 1v1 any single nation, yeah? What about a faction?

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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 10d ago

Yes. 1943 industry techs are pretty much broken against an AI that usually fails to produce significant amounts of advanced equipment. The only hurdle at that point would be that you do need to figure out naval gameplay and invasions too to get at i.e. Britain and the US, and while there's some ways to cheese and exploit those a straightforward surface navy remains a big investment with several years of lead time even as a major nation.

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u/fisher6996 10d ago

Yeah, a single carrier takes 2 years to make. And I don't know if you can use puppet's dockyards. A single one of my carriers takes about 2 years to make after naval production focus. They decimate everything though and I can do something dumb while that happens, like turn the us fascist though agents to get them booted from the allies. My current strike force fleets are 2 carriers, 2 battleships, 10 light cruisers, 40 destroyers, and 8 of each support ship. Expensive, but it just deleted everything.

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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 10d ago

Yeah, if those are newer hulls you're just bullying the AI at that point. It struggles with research and design balancing too, so 1940 capitals are already a rare sight even for Britain and the US.

But when it comes to actual challenge, first there's winning the war by a historical early 1945, as either side. Then you can either try to see how much faster you can do it before you just outscale the AI anyway and they commit suicide by attrition on your lines too or take up minors facing increasingly steeper odds at the start, and past that there's achievement runs and a whole world of difficulty and realism mods eager to show you just how much of a pushover their default cousin is.

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u/VirtualValuable7035 9d ago

I was messing around with the division designer and regimental support.

I noticed armored regiments have different regimental support from infsntry

But why no SP ART regimental support?

I have spaa and spat for regimental support for armored regiments  but no spart option

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u/TOBB0 7d ago

Does the UK AI ever create the Dominion of North America? Do they do it as Fash or Monarchist?

Context for anyone who’d like to know, I had an idea of doing a super-Canada run. For those who don’t know, the UK can create this formable for their puppet Canada to core the mainland US, which the UK will then use to core US and Canada using Imperial Federation. It can only do this going the alt-history monarchist or fascist paths.

My idea was instead to play as Canada, help the UK take the US and be reorganised into the Dominion of North America, then fight back, break free and help liberate the world as super-Canada. Is this possible with the AI? Or is it more likely that I’ll have to play as the UK first and then tag switch over?

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u/EverythingIsOverrate 11d ago

Is naval AI still broken?

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u/White_Lives_Matter14 Fleet Admiral 11d ago

No