Brigades, regiments, battalions - some precision and clarity please?

[sandman2575]

I've been trying to figure out exactly how divisions are composed in HOI4, and wow, it is a mess. The Wiki is confused on the issue -- and the confusion has much to do with the *lack of specificity* with which the following terms are being thrown around: Brigade, Regiment, Battalion, Company. For example, in the Wiki, it says on one page that "Divisions consist of up to 5 combat *brigades* and 5 support *companies*". On *another* page of the same Wiki, it says, "Each division consists of up to five combat regiments and five support battalions." It then goes on to give a list of ... support *companies*.

Can someone please clarify *with precision* what a division in HOI4 consists of? I know that in in HOI3, the base unit of the division was the Brigade (which was mostly historically inaccurate for most of the major powers, but whatever...). I'm very glad that HOI4 will be adding a lot more detail here -- having the base unit be the brigade always irked me -- but I'd like to know exactly what the details are.

Note, I'm not asking for someone to define these terms in a general sense. I know what a Brigade is and what a Regiment is -- which is why I'm finding the Wiki descriptions so frustrating.

 

[Bryartuck]

The terms Brigade and Regiment are used interchangeably. There can be up to 5 Brigade/Regiments in a Division, each consisting of up to 5 combat Battalions. You can also attach up to 5 support Companies to a Division that are separate from the Brigade/Regiments.

 

[deadmancomand]

This video goes in detail about building a division.

 

[rutger9]

Can someone please clarify *with precision* what a division in HOI4 consists of? I know that in in HOI3, the base unit of the division was the Brigade (which was mostly historically inaccurate for most of the major powers, but whatever...). I'm very glad that HOI4 will be adding a lot more detail here -- having the base unit be the brigade always irked me -- but I'd like to know exactly what the details are.

For the purposes of hearts of iron IV you have in essence not something that is strictly defined as a division, regiment or brigade.
What you have is an onfield unit, this unit is divided into 5 blocks and called a regiment or brigade interchangeably, these 5 blocks are then again divided into 5 blocks and here they are called battalions.
In addition you have 5 "support" blocks called companies.
These names carry no actual effect and are just a name given to them for ease of identification, there is no difference between a regiment and a brigade in this game.
This means that you get allot more flexibility as you can represent field units as small as a battalion up to as large as a division. (or technically you could get away with representing a soviet tank corps as a single unit although in size and OOB they were roughly equivalent to a division anyways.)

 

[sandman2575]

Thank you -- these are all helpful, informative replies.

Is manpower calculated for individual battalions and companies (adding up to a total manpower for the division)? Or is that abstracted?

 

[rutger9]

Manpower and equipment is calculated per battalion and company to give you what you require to form the division with full equipment yes but on the map all these stats are rolled into the division so its not like HoI 3 where each division had a seperate strength and organisation.

 

[Sotahullu]

Thank you -- these are all helpful, informative replies.

Is manpower calculated for individual battalions and companies (adding up to a total manpower for the division)? Or is that abstracted?

Every Support Company and Combat Battalion has manpower cost aswell required equipment to fit them.

Personally HoI4 Division designer is miles ahead of HoI3 as you can have more detail on divisions construction.

 

[sandman2575]

Personally HoI4 Division designer is miles ahead of HoI3 as you can have more detail on divisions construction.

Yes I very much agree it's a huge improvement. I hated the fact that divisions were made out of brigades in HOI3, which led to all sorts of highly unhistorical formations -- the "Heavy armored brigade" was a particular bugbear of mine, as someone who often played as Germany. Heavy armored battalion -- now that's more like it!

 

[Mitsugi]

Every Support Company and Combat Battalion has manpower cost aswell required equipment to fit them.

Personally HoI4 Division designer is miles ahead of HoI3 as you can have more detail on divisions construction.

Much more importantly for me, you don't have to add and remove components on each division separately, just by division type.

No more 20 minutes of clicking reorganizing the Red Army.

 

[Bridger15]

The wiki is unfortunately quite confused. I have already fixed 2 pages to make them more consistent. According to the dev diaries, the individual unit blocks are Battalions, 5 of them together are Brigades, and the support units are composed of Companies. There is no reference to "regiment" anywhere in the dev diaries. This is why I've been trying to update the wiki to make it more consistent, and that's why I did not include anything about regiments in the above video.

 

[Sur]

Throw calvary divisions at Germany, they will get confused by your stupidity and explode

Bizarre and not very useful but made me laugh

 

[Nicolas I]

...Personally HoI4 Division designer is miles ahead of HoI3 as you can have more detail on divisions construction.

HOI3 Black Ice mod was even better. I wonder why they didn't took it directly instead of inventing a new system ?

 

[rutger9]

HOI3 Black Ice mod was even better. I wonder why they didn't took it directly instead of inventing a new system ?

Because its a massive amount of tedious work with the black ice mod, its a great fun mod but its division system is rather clunky and in the end its just HoI3's system with more unit space its not exactly an entirely new system.
Unless I misunderstand you and you mean take the units black ice added and the designer idea of HoI4 and combine them... in which case I'll still say it, a large number of units were superfluous and only there for historically accurate formations.

 

[Nicolas I]

Because its a massive amount of tedious work with the black ice mod, its a great fun mod but its division system is rather clunky and in the end its just HoI3's system with more unit space its not exactly an entirely new system. Unless I misunderstand you and you mean take the units black ice added and the designer idea of HoI4 and combine them... in which case I'll still say it, a large number of units were superfluous and only there for historically accurate formations.

That is what I meant, they could have used Black Ice building blocks (varying size sub-units) mixed with the template system which should be a great click/time saver.

But what they propose look quite good also as an improvement over HOI3.

 

[rutger9]

I suspect they want to keep the amount of distinct units to an absolute minimum in the base game to avoid making the game too complex, I have great faith in the modding community though and will probably pick up a unit mod that expands the roster when they come out. (something along the lines of tommylottos fox and lion or black ice or DWI)