Hearts of Iron 4: Best Division Templates for BBA DLC

We can say that Hearts of Iron 4 is the best World War II simulator ever. This guide has been prepared in accordance with the By Blood Alone DLC. Here you can find the latest Hearts of Iron 4 Best Division Templates for 2023. The By Blood Alone expansion pack was published by Paradox Interactive Studio in 2022.

Feb, 2024: We updated, our Hoi4 Best Division Templates + DLC

By Blood Alone Best Division Templates

The division template system is one of the key mechanics of Hearts of Iron IV. A division is 1 basic unit depicted on the map during gameplay. The composition of each division is specified by its division template. Division templates can be created and modified by the player using spending army experience. The composition of your division can make or break a battle.

How to Edit Division Templates

You can edit division templates by going to:

Recruit & Deploy: Then click “Edit” on the desired division.

Each division has a division template.

Here is an example of a 7 Infantry – 2 Artilery division template:

• Reset: Reset the edits you’ve made but haven’t saved.
• Duplicate: Create another division template just like this one without spending army experience, useful if you want to make a new division template while still keeping this one.
• The 3 Arrows: Red is for backup units, they are the last to receive quality equipment, white is for normal units, and yellow is for elite units, they are the first to receive quality equipement (new weapons or of you’re lacking equipment they will be the first one to be filled). You can manually choose which divisions you consider to be elite, normal or backup.

This is how a division looks like:

• Each division consists of up to 5 combat regiments and 5 support companies.
• Each combat regiment is composed of up to 5 battalions.
• It costs 5 XP to add a battalion to a division, regardless if it is the same or new regiment.
• Adding a battalion of a different unit type (infantry, mobile, or armored) adds a penalty of 20 XP per additional unit type.
• A division may have any number of the same unit type for battalions, but only one of each unit type for support companies.
• A division template may be specified as reserve, regular, or elite. Elite divisions will be prioritized for better equipment, followed by regular divisions and finally reserves.
• Each division template can receive specific types of equipment if multiple types are available. An example would be elite divisions only using the latest weapons and reserve divisions using the oldest.

Hoi4 Best Division Templates By Blood Alone DLC

Note: IC-cost, attack values etc. may differ due to various factors.

10W Port Garrison (1936)

This division’s main purpose is to hold their position as long as possible. A division width of 10 is chosen, since this is the smallest width at which the stacking penalty is nearly 0% (only -2% in plains). Enemies will have a tough time breaking through all the ORG this division offers. Its soft attack per combat width is excellent.
Support companies: Artillery, Anti-Air, Rocket Artillery (1940).

19W infantry (1936)

This design is wider than 10W Infantry; it inflicts more losses on the enemy than the 10W template due to the Engineer company when defending.

Other good combat widths for infantry are anywhere between 19 CW and 30 CW;

• Larger combat width divisions have less org per combat width, but will be more cost-effective. Anything in this range will work.

Support companies: Artillery, Anti-Air, Engineers, Rocket Artillery (add this after 1940).

‘Brick’ Space Marines (1936)

By incorporating just 1 ‘Brick’ Tank into your division, it gains enough armor to not be pierced by regular infantry. Extremely strong in Single Player, but in Multiplayer opponents can simply add Anti-Tank to counter this division.

Support companies: Artillery, Anti-Air, Engineers, Rocket Artillery (1940).

N.B. Defensive divisions can also be used for attacking, but will take heavy losses in the process.

Medium Tanks (1936)

This division will be your first offensive division. A mix of tanks and motorized is important to ensure you division has enough ORG and HP. Support companies include Medium Flame Tanks for the attack bonus, Engineer for a hefty defense bonus (tanks often have to defend after closing an encirclement). Anti-Air reduces CAS damage by 75%, Logistics reduces supply and fuel useage(takes longer to run out of fuel, important for encirclements). The last support company slot’s is debatable; some players leave the slot empty, others add recon or maintenance in this slot.

Replace the Motorized by Mechanized as soon as you’re able to!

Heavy Tanks (1940)

Only build this if you’re expecting heavy tank combat.

This division is an upgrade from the 1936 design. It pierces the 1936 design, and cannot be pierced itself until 1943. Heavy Tanks have quite some hefty attack penalties in various terrain types; Heavy Tanks are best in plains. In 1943, you can upgrade this design again, to pierce the 1940 version and be unpiercable to 1943 designs. The mechanized adds lots of hardness to this design, so this division will only take damage from other tanks and be virtually immune to infantry. Very good VS enemy tanks, but quite expensive.

Amphibious Tanks (1941)

From 1941 onwards you have access to the Amphibious Drive. This allows you to build Medium Amphibious Tanks, which are identical to normal Mediums except Amphibious Tanks are extremely good at attacking rivers, marches and amphibious landings, making them objectively stronger. Combine these with Amtracs (+makeshift bridges commander ability) and you’ll melt through the enemy river defense lines! More expensive than a normal Medium Tank division, but worth the price.

Garrison (offmap) Division

Cavalry is more efficient at suppression than infantry manpower-wise, and in addition slightly more cost-effective IC-wise (3 VS 3.3 IC per suppression). The combat width of this division does not matter. If you have a pure cavalry division empty of support companies, use that one. Else, create a new division, and put 1 cavalry in it as shown below. To do this, open any division via ‘edit’, click the arrow, then ‘create empty’. This way, this division will only cost 5 army XP.
The theoretically best design is 1 Military Police (MP) support company with 25 light tanks: these have lower manpower requirement per suppression point and take fewer casualties. Any light tank works, so bulid the cheapest design possible.

However, your army XP and IC is better spent on other things first! This design is in practice never worth it; if you have the IC for building light tanks, you typically also have enough manpower for cavalry.

A garrison division that costs only 5 army xp, use this in most of your games.

This garrison is the most cost-effective, giving +40% suppression (1939) due to MP. From 5 divisions onwards, MP becomes worth adding in terms of cost-effectiveness. Only upgrade your garrison division after finishing your doctrines! (or being very low on manpower)

Change garrison division here.

Aerial Warfare

Aerial warfare is extremely important for land combat, since CAS is very strong in the current patch.

In Hoi4, using close air support (CAS) is vital to achieving military success. You can perform CAS missions with:

• CAS-planes (short range; western Europe)
• Tactical Bombers (long range: anywhere outside of western Europe).

CAS Bonuses

• CAS deals damage directly to enemy divisions in combat.
• CAS gives your divisions a up to 25% bonus to attack and defense/breakthrough.

CAS also uses combat width similar to ground troops; typically the maximum reinforcement with is around 300. CAS does not suffer from an overstacking penalty, so airwings of 1000 CAS is best for maximizing damage!

Having planes in the air increases your ‘air superiority’. Heavy fighters provide 1.25 air superiority, strategic bombers 0.01 superiority and all other planes 1 air superiority. Having more air superiority than the enemy gives the following (maximum) bonuses:

Air Superiority Bonuses

• Up to -35% defense/breakthrough to enemy divisions.
• Up to -30% movement speed to enemy divisions.

These penalties to enemy divisions scale by 1% per 50 air superiority more than the enemy has.

CAS is vulnerable to being disrupted and shot down by fighter planes. To keep your airspace safe, you’ll need to build fighters, which hunt for enemy fighter planes and shoot down enemy CAS. You should have at least the amount of fighters the enemy has. As a rule of thumb (single player), build 2 fighters for every 1 CAS.

In general, you’ll want as many factories on planes as you can, since the direct damage dealt by CAS (both to ORG and HP) is extremely high.

Normally losses in this scenario would be about equal on both sides. However, the CAS allowed Germany to inflict 3x as many casualties as Poland!

Air & Sea Battles

Summary For Air Battles:

• It is best to keep planes in Airwings of 100. Ace bonuses are tailored for that size and it makes it easy to move them around.
• Your bombers can actually defend themselves fairly well, but will operate rarely and may achieve their actual objective without a fighter coverage.
• Detection chance and bombing damage are decreased at night.
• If you are unable to challenge enemy air superiority you should put your Fighters on “Intercept” mission. It will allow you to semi-reliably stop enemy bombers while not engaging enemy Fighters head on. Your forces will still suffer air superiority penalties.
• Agility and Speed are two most important statistics of a fighter only then followed by Air Attack.
• Strategic bombing can cause serious damage to the industry and infrastructure of an enemy.
• Both Radar and Air Superiority in a region provide Naval intelligence.
• When starting a campaign you should disband all your airwings and create a new ones.
• Disbanded planes go back to your reserves.

Summary For Sea Battles:

• Destroyers are cheap and best at dealing with Submarines.
• Light Cruisers provide the best surface detection allowing you to find enemy ships.
• Heavy Cruisers and Battlecruisers are good against Destroyers.
• Battleships have the highest health points and damage.
• Carriers aren’t as good as Battleships but have a nice damage if they aren’t attacked from too many sources, you can strike with bomber and flighter Aircraft in land and annoy major powers.
• Submarines are the best against Convoys, but they can also be efficient in fleets if the enemy doesn’t have many Desteoyers.

Division Tips

1. 1 Anti-air decreases damage from CAS by 75%, so Anti-air is quite strong.
2. Use the attrition graph to determine how much reliability your variant equipment needs.
3. Given enough air support, even basic infantry can push through enemy lines.
4. CAS is less effective than Naval bombers against ships, but can still be used for this purpose.
5. Flame tanks, support equipment, anti-air, anti-tank and tank destroyers are vulnerable to attrition due to their low quantities in divisions, so put extra factories on them to prevent shortages.
6. Set all field marshals to ‘supply by truck’ (3 trucks icon): this increases the supply range of supply hubs dramatically for all units under that field marshal. Use transport planes to supply your troops advancing into enemy territory: railroads require quite some time to repair themselves.
7. When in a stalemate, but you have superiority in the air, logistics strike will cripple enemy supply.
8. Railway guns decrease enemy attack, defense and entrenchment. Though expensive, they can be well-worth the cost.
9. Obtain the expanded special forces program technology to increase special forces capacity.
10. Refit your tanks after obtaining now technology, such as improved radio.
11. Use the combat width simulator to find the optimal division width for the theater you’re fighting in.
12. Creating a variant of mechanized equipment can reduce its cost from 8 to 4 IC, halving its cost.
13. Send an attaché to countries that are at war to receive 20% of their army xp gain.
14. Use a Tank Designer Company to give the tank you’re researching extra stats.