They would have to change the units themselves too, generally they have way too little manpower, especially artillery which has not even a third of what it should
A Russian rifle division in 1939 had 6 artillery battalions, not 2. Yes, the in-game artillery battalions feature 36 guns, but they also feature only 500 manpower, i.e. it's a single battalion. Equipment in the game includes more than just the weapon or vehicle it's labelled after, while 1 manpower really is just 1 man (that being said the game is missing a number of MP sinks, but that doesn't factor into this). My view on this has been confirmed by a HoI4 dev as accurate. I've done a fair amount of research on the composition of Russian rifle divisions and come to the conclusion that in order to emulate the late-30s template with a tank battalion of 19,350 men (some even had two tank battalions, raising the number of men higher) as much as possible, you'd need 12 infantry, 6 artillery, 2 anti-air, 1 anti-tank, 1 light armour line battalions, and 1 engineer, 1 light armoured recon, 1 hospital, 1 signals and 1 logistics support battalion (renamed to companies post-release in HoI4, but size-wise they remain battalions). It's been over two years since I did my research on this, but I'm pretty sure there should also be 1 maintenance and another engineer battalion as well. Obviously you can't have more than 5 support battalions in-game though, each of which are unique. Doesn't matter though as the line battalions don't fit the designer either, even pre-AAT. Even less so now.
Agreed on that, but it seemed that the number of artillery should be the deciding factor, not the manpower assigned, especially as it’s the guns that matter when it comes to artillery! Plus, if I did it totally like that, the divisions would be nigh won unusable, with super low org :P
it's not THAT painful in black ice because you start with 5000 light tanks there. granted they are basically tractors with a gun, but you wont have a deficit at least. you would need to use a lot of infantry brigades tho (3xinf + some art) because using divisions only is pain. however the tanks... yeah, the soviets didn't use tank DIVISIONS (25 width in black ice, 20 width vanilla) they used tank CORPS ( 37.5 width black ice, 30 width vanilla) that... is indeed pain.
@@DevilP3To be factual here, Soviets did use tank divisions at start when they all got destroyed. Instead, brigades were formed and over time they got concentrated into tank corps, which were more in size of division, when you compare them with Allied and German tank divisions.
@@aleksaradojicic8114 I see! thanks mate, i thought since they were corps the soviets were just concentrating a lot of firepower to push back harder. Maybe they where just slightly bigger (like how the video uses a 28 width division) but in black ice a lot of that extra firepower comes as support companies (light tank recon and heavy artillery for example). Going historical in BICE then is no problem and probably a lot fun! if you survive Barbarossa that is ;^)
@@DevilP3 In Soviet case, it was more elimination of levels of command, for which Soviets did not had enough officers. As such, goal was to get most simplistic organisation with less levels of command, which could still work.
What I learned from this video is that the in-game industrial output of military factories greatly underestimates what even poorer countries could produce in that time period.
You’ll probably have fun with Britain, their tank designs look amazing, Comet Cromwell and Crusader are fast and pretty well armored. Idk about their divisions tho
Sure! 2 battalions of maids to make tea, 2 battalions of light tanks, mediums and 1 battalion of royal Navy and 1 battalion of Churchill heavy tank and not to forget 1 battalion of historians who claimed it was all them who evacuated Dunkirk and french had no part in it while denying they didn't have part in famines in India
@@Aldrahill UK and Japan would be great, one playtrough that would be realy hard on both gameplay and harsh for Historical presets & divisions would be PRC, cannot how hard ot must be to play Mao while following historical presets and such
Oh this is a fun idea. I think part of why the air war turned was them covering larger air zones from worse air bases. Though if you do this for more countries im pretty sure youll keep seeing the no-org tank divisions. Both because of how paradox models it and because they really didnt put enough infantry in earlier divisions historically.
2:03 it's likely representing a later version of the aircraft that did indeed have cannons. Both versions are historical configurations of I16s. Specifically, the starting one represents something along the lines of an I16 Type 4, which was the initial production model. The preset is more indicative of an I16 type 12 which had an improved engine and upgraded armaments.
From what I see, pdox made some mistakes creating the presets. Like the one with T-34 it also with LaGG plane. Irl they used V12 engine, not radial one. 12:08 because this is what they were before the war. Tank corps made of light tank division, heavy tank brigade and motorized inf division
Nice concept, but you missed quite a few steps actually. One was, after Winter war, Soviets realized in middle of 1940 that tank battalions in rifle divisions were quite weak forces (especially because they didn't had integrated repair and maintenance units like tank brigades did), so they were removed by early 1941, although many rifle divisions did retain about a company of tanks (16 tanks). That allowed Soviets to commit theur armour starting in June 1940 to first 8 tank, later mechanized corps. Each corps was meant to have two tank, one mechanized division and a motorcycle regiment (motorcycles and armoured car battalion), totaling some 36,000 men, 1,030 tanks and over 200 armoured cars. Each tank division was meant to have two tank, one motorised and a artillery regiment. Each mechanized division was meant to have one tank and two motorised regiment. Although quite ambitious project, Stalin made it ridiculously worse and decided it was a great idea to create out of blue another 22 mechanized corps, so majority of them by Barbarossa had less than half of their armour, and seriously lacked in pretty much everything but manpower. Also, don't forget that cavalry Divisions also had a light tank regiment (more like a battalion sized unit). Also, airborne corps had amphibious tank battalion.
Indeed I definitely missed A LOT but there was only so much I could include or research :P plus I thought breaking it down month by month would be too much in one video. Still though, where were you when I was doing my initial research! This woulda been great :D
I love this series man, if you ever get around to it France will be very, VERY interesting haha (the templates are utterly awful, and makes the B1 tank so bad haha). Anyhow, maybe you should consider using the templates while modifying them to fit the time period weapons so you could avoid the T-34 issue, as well maybe allow the focus tanks (my poor KV1). Maybe put it up to poll! Or whatever makes this fun, HoI4 can get tedious and I am sure these challenges spice it up. Either way, love the series and will continue to watch. Thanks!
Thank you SO much buddy that’s super kind of you to say :) yeah France will interesting to say the least xD I’m definitely gonna do them, Britain, and Japan as well, and we’ll see where we go from there and if people still like it!
Fun fact - the LAGG-3 fighter was called a flying coffin by the troops (it makes sense in russian) because it was made of wood and caught fire easily. Which is entirely not represented in the game...
A lot of vehicles have - in many different armies - been called 'coffin' in various variations. Tanks, airplanes, etc. The LAGG was translated as Lakirovany Grob, that is 'lacquered coffin'.
Worrying about Stalins paranoia while literally playing as Stalin is hilarious. 😂😂😂 Also, I wish you could specify how many weapons each division gets. I want to build a fully historical USA.
Thank you for such an interesting video and oh, please don’t be offended, but you said “Operation Bagration” so funny! 😂This name of a Russian general of Georgian origin sounds completely different in Russian, so at first I didn’t even understand what exactly you said. 😅
I really enjoyed this challenge as well as the Germany one. Maybe do this as the USA (island hopping in the Pacific then D-Day in Europe) as well as for Britain (North Africa campaign + defending the Raj/British Malaya from the Japanese. Then using paratroops for Operation Market Garden).
Thank you so much! I will definitely be doing more like this, so I super appreciate the suggestion :) next video is cities skylines 2, but after that it’s another like this! Just need to decide which country!
Very excited for US, UK, and Japan with historical ship designs if possible. Either way, Japanese template tanks and the historical strategies for all of them will be very entertaining.
I am too! Super stoked for them all :) next one NEXT Friday is going to be Italy, but this Friday I have a Poland HOI4 video that’s a bit different that I hope you’ll enjoy as well :D
@@Aldrahill yes, but the hoi4 brigade represents 3 battalions, because it has 36 artillery pieces while a battalion has 12, and is called artillery "brigade". The only mistake is that for some reason paradox have it just 500 manpower when a single battalion had 700 (so it should be 2100)
"The Centre" being on the left makes perfect sense for the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks had a history of lying about what they were. Their name meant "the majority." They were more than often not. Furthermore, the Bolsheviks LOST the elections in Russia. Lenin threw a fit and decided the Bolsheviks won anyway.
Now it is time for the other major, the USA, and try to include the Fleet in it with historical templates (for majors the ship components have custom names) and build quantities. Good luck.
Instead of having those paranoia pop ups fill up ur screen while ur waiting, u can press that arrow to close it and later access it in the political menu.
Ah good point! Well, I always said I was doing presets, not only building what they only built, so I’m happy to have built them - goddamn glad I did too, because the t34 wasn’t cutting it!
19:15 Honestly this is a 100% historically accurate play through of the Soviet Union in world war 2. >Completely screw up your army organization and build up every step of the way >bad equipment >bad divisions >STILL WIN AGAINST GERMANY 10/10 well done
I know you keep asking why and probably know why, but, the reason the presets aren't the same as the ones you start with is because most of these vehicles got/get modified as time goes on, for example, the I-15 actually became a valued ground attacker in the Caucuses later on, but at the start its just a standard biplane fighter that got shredded up before that conversion. That I-15 with the cannon actually loses its machine guns later too iirc.
The problem with this challenge is that you're going with historical presets, but not "historical" simulation of everything else, including physics. As in, these divisions look horrible because of how HOI 4 simulates battles and conceptualizes complex things like organization into a single number. In reality, they were not horrible obviously, or they wouldn't have been used. HOI 4 can't simulate a battle where heavy tanks are used at the front and lights for support.
awesome video but just one thing, the 'SP artillery' in soviet WW2 divisions is actually refering to SP anti-tank vehicles (e.g. SU85, SU100). No clue why this is the case but hey ho. can be seen in the chart you used at 17:05 aswel
I hate when people can't push the main frontline and instead just snake for Berlin through the baltic and Poland like it's so cheesy you didn't even defeat AI, there is a hundred division just standing still in the middle of Russia.
I eyed up that penal battalion focus, but I didn’t think my line could stomach any more shitter divisions :P thank god I didn’t lose too many infantry in the first attack!
I would argue that if a historical vehicle doesn’t have a preset or if the preset is innacurate (like the T-34) you should be able to design that vehicle.
14:09 "We're also almost completely out of manpower so we'll go to extensive conscription to try to defeat that problem." *Has 0 manpower the next frame*
7:15 I'll ask you to come to your senses. The 76-mm gun on the T-34 was not "crappy" at all. At one time, they passed under the category of antimaterial guns, because the Germans did not physically have armored vehicles that could withstand the shelling from these guns before the mass appearance of Tigers (they did not appear en masse).
It's such a shame that historical divisions are horrendously bad in this game. And historical tanks in the competitive Hearts of Iron 4 are not needed by anyone at all. Sad!
i remember when i first got into the game, i played a britain game with extreme larp using only historical division templates the worst part is even though i had cavalry in my artillery units, it actually worked better than real life since france never fell
Thank you so much! Next two videos are cities skylines 2 and a vic 3 one, but after that (next Friday) I’m doing another one just like this with a different country :)
Nice research work, I enjoyed a lot. I would recommend that you keep an eye on simple thing though: the manpower issues, the thing with the front line and the fallback line, not hiring any officer corps... But as I said, I really enjoyed the video!
You had so much bad supply during the war. Was it due to focusing on the presets that you could not focus on building up your supply network? A great video all in all. Clearly a lot of effort spent. But man o man the supply :)
Yeah I should've invested more in my supply network :) And thank you! TONS of work went into this, as well as the last one, and going to make more soon :)
Indeed, I think it’s just a bit easier to defend! The German ai didn’t really counterattack me too much tbh, and they never put enough factories on planes!
Hey, I googled a LOT but things like the USA Army history sites, a site called tmg110, and niehorster.org were MASSIVE for me :) Just google aplenty and check your sources!
niehorster.org and tmg110.tripod.com are where I got a LOT, but I researched a lot elsewhere, those sites were just the best ones to show my research visually.
@@Aldrahill it is doable! I've done historical Lithuania with historical division templates, albeit I didn't use historical tanks or their presets, but wouldn't have effected much since you barely get any tanks.
This might sound silly but how do you get so many full divisions so early??? by 1944 USA i don't even have 5 full armies
11 месяцев назад
how? 1944 usa has tones of mils, manpower and you should have plenty of guns. Are you using normal 21 width divisions for your infantry because I usually have at least 10 armies as the us.
It may just be the size of your divisions. The historical divisions he used where realitivly small in comparison to the pre AAT meta of massive 42 width divisions that you maybe using. That and the USSR has a crazy industry and manpower pool.
@@akumu9188 i normally use 20 or 27 width divisions and i didnt know that the smaller the division the faster it trained. Thx for the advice! (I only have 175 hours)
