Fun thing, I think it's somewhat inaccurate to say horses were used less and less in the war. I think in general people wildly underestimate how much horses were used and similarly overestimate the amount of armour used. Anyway, just an aside.
Germany _literally_ *de-motorized* some of their divisions as the war went on. "We won't need to bring fuel, since grass is everywhere anyways" (ofc, the Americans just had enough of everything, thankfully)
One of my favorite Kaiserreich playthroughs (I think it was KR and not KX) was playing as Sichuan and realizing they get access to bicycle infantry. So I went mass mobilization to reduce the combat width and eventually as I conquered China converted my entire army to 25 battalion, 40 width bicycle divisions.
Paradox got bicycle battalions fundamentally wrong. In real life biking on anything other than flat plains is arduous; all terrain would give you a -25 or -50% speed bonus. Even deserts. Them working so well was inspired from Yamashita's famous bike offensive, but those people were on meth and that's why they crossed harsh terrain so fast.
Yamashita also jumped on boats a bunch of times in that offensive. Maybe something like a coastal movement bonus would be a better representation than the bikes having no terrain penalty to movement.
How about -50% movement speed into mountain terrain but +100% movement speed leaving mountain terrain into everything other than another mountain region...full bike downhill meme
This is assuming that you are cycling everywhere, though. While Bicycle Infantry could and did hop on the bike for roads and trails, a massive advantage to having them is that it gives every soldier effectively his own little cart to lug gear on, one that is fairly all terrain. I think an overlooked difference that is being represented is the speed difference between pushing a bike for 12 miles that has your cumbersome kit on it versus marching that same difference with 60+ pounds of gear weighing on your back.
Those debuffs are compared to people on foot though. While a horse is better at traversing that kind of terrain than a truck or tank, and can move both faster and carry more stuff than a human on foot, there are still impacted more by the terrain than a human, there are more places they can't go or where they need to slow down more in order to move safely than for regular footsloggers. So the penalties do make sense. Could they be tweaked a little? Maybe, but cavalry should still be impacted negatively by terrain, particularly if we assume that they are used the way cavalry was used in WW2.
Horses are downhill slower than on flat terrain. That movie downhill charge on horseback is bullshit, if you ask anyone who knows something about horses
@@randompotato2894 While horses are faster on flat terrain it is ridiculous to say downhill charges are a thing of fiction. Some of the most famous charges in history were downhill charges. The winged hussars charged down a hill at the siege of Vienna (which both the battle of helms deep and the battle of minas tirith were based on) for example.
That's true, but those horses that are used in mountaineer units are being used by men who are specifically trained in mountain warfare, which is quite differently from how most cavalry was trained and employed during ww2
Since horses benefit are having more org, removing a few horses after switching from infantry would've made for a better comparison. The individual units might've been more expensive than infantry, but fewer units might've offset the division cost. Also, I would've liked to see infantry and bicycles directly compared.
I like horses with mot art for minor nations that can't afford to make that many trucks (let alone tanks), but slowly start changing them over to a fully motorised division once industry is built up more. This is a good way to do fast encirclements on a budget. Worked super well in my Japan campaign
I will have to try using horses more as China/Commie China for tank divisions. I can see some cheap light tanks with horse speed being really useful while requiring only a small amount of factories and production lines to make. Less researches too since you can just ignore trucks/engine upgrades etc.
of course mech is better. its a matter of whether horses are cost efficient versus infantry or motorised, as those three you can get right from game start. mech takes time to research and costs most to produce, its stats are by far the best. its not a good comparison to horses
yeah, I just usually don't get far into motorized/mech or armored cars for it to matter. Get motorized 1, armored cars 1 and that's it. Mob infantry for tank divisions for hp and armored cars for garrison. I slap a heavy TD on my regular infantry to give them a nice hard attack and piercing. It just seems more economic. However if you can mount AT on armored cars or mech, then that changes the game. Heavy TDs are EXPENSIVE, and that's why you have to rush them and even then, you aren't using them much in early war if at all. Maybe like 2 divisions by 1939. I always error on the side of cheaper stuff, so a lot of time, I'm still using 1939/1940 tech in 1945 because I usually have tons of manpower as a major and having infinite equipment seems like a better use of my time than quality. Because even if they have better units, I can just detach 24 30 width infantry with 1-2 heavy TD battalions and 2 artillery with an AA and just continually ram them bc I have 10k+ equipment and manpower to boot. Of course, I've never done this with Germany, so maybe that's different, but I did manage to do it with Italy, though my navy did suffer for the focus on my land forces. I don't trust AI lol
What I hate the most about this video is that you added three infantry for the sole purpose of getting to 40 org but don't do any comparison where you only add enough horses to get there. You could use less manpower and reduce combat width while maintaining the org. 160 extra infantry equipment? No, you might even save some. So, you'd have a division with more speed, less manpower, less combat width and less infantry equipment required. I'm not sure about the downsides, because he quite literally didn't show what seems to be the most viable option.
If my calculations are correct 6 Cav would give 42.7 Org. That would need 720 Infantry Equipment, so 80 LESS than the 8 infantry would. Interestingly Mot Inf are the same Org as Foot Inf, so would also need 2 extra battalions for the >40 Org.
Personally, If I don't have special forces divs, I often will put them on tanks. I don't often have a top of tank divs how ever amphib AA med tanks with some rines with normal lights and Engi lets you ignore Rivers. Hell even Mountaineers are a good choice just to help tanks stand a chance in mountains. It's really nice compared to normal inf and you don't need that many tbh.
Might've been glossed over, but a big reason to use horses over trucks is that it'll save trucks to be used for logistics and supplies, and filling out those motorized support companies. You'll never run out of horses (until Paradox introduces some asinine horse DLC), but you can run out of trucks. Speaking of trucks and logistics, there should be some sort of organization boost/penalty to using mix-matched equipment. Germany used a LOT of different trucks, especially captured foreign trucks and used them til they broke from lack of usable parts. And then there's the issue of using infantry/support equipment from lend-lease and captured equipment, and planes and tanks and even ships. Make a whole DLC about it, not like paradox wouldn't make a free update to include parts of it but lock major pieces of it behind a DLC wall, LOOKING AT YOU AIRDROP SUPPLY MISSIONS
Camels: 0.02 less supply is 20% less supply for camels than horses. this DOES matter. 5 more HP also is significant at 30HP ! what is a major thing for consideration are the doctrines! you should highlight them.
I used to ride horses, and i just wanna say that the amphibious penalty for them makes no sense from my perspective, logically. Obviously its for game balance or "flavor" reasons (mobile infantry should have certain drawbacks or there would be no incentive to use regular infantry) but the notion that horses are significantly less mobile in amphibious assaults is just plain wrong. For one thing, they float much easier than humans, owing to their larger surface area vs weight (compared to my skinny a$$). Where horses should have the most penalties by far is in swamps, and deep snow. As for forests, mountains and hills, the penalty should be small, if at all, compared to regular infantry, because hooves actually perform way better than you would think in rough terrain. I also think more types of terrain could be very interesting in HOI4 overall. Like dense forests vs taiga vs leafy, sparsely populated forests with little undergrowth and large meadows are very different in properties. Carrying out any attack in a dense temperate forest should be much closer to the penalty in a jungle, than it is to a "sparse forest". I also think the penalties should be mostly focused around movement speed and attrition (equipment reliability), rather than pure attack/defense stats, and so on, which to be fair already is the case for a lot of these. I just think that they have laid the ground work for this, but it has a lot of potential for being expanded upon.
I think for the division templates they should add a certain number of free to design templates as long as they are based on a certain type of division. Such as a free infantry division that must be over 50% infantry then you can continually redo its template for free. You could unlock more through focuses or doctrine and have some buffs for some countries. That would be sweet.
This is a really good idea. We could finally make divisions specialiced for urban or rural combat, make stromrtroops for breaking stalements or small divisions to hold the lines without having to invest a ridiculous amount of XP
Funny enough horses have been used in the 1960s and 1970s in Africa. Due to the harsh terrain they did better than armored cars or tanks in what comes to mobility and then the riders would dismount and fight on foot. They were called "Angola Dragoons" or "Dragoons of Angola". As for the camels, no idea why they are faster than horses in plains or deserts. In Arabia horses are worth several camels precisely because how much faster they are.
The Rhodesian light horse used similar tactics to great effect in their Bush war to the Angolan dragoons. Also the Afghans used cavalry effectively against the Soviets in the '80s too.
A Idea for when camels are switched from Africa to Europe is to have a template then duplicate it and use the Cavalry Officer Corp to freely change the Camels to Cavalry then switch from the one to the other when need. But still I see Cavalry or Camels are only useful when stacking bonuses.
Honestly if you think about it less advanced units like infantry, artillery, cavalry, camels should cost less xp (maybe 2-3 xp versus the usual 5). After all tanks/mechanized are what was really developed in ww2, while basic units are much simpler.
The high cost of new templates is reasonably realistic, the German's had an un-manageable number of different division structures. This caused them non-stop issues logistically & command control wise as almost everything was non standard.. The allies had as few as possible and won.
Bycicles count as normal infantry for all tech and general trait purposes. They get horse speed for a bit of support equipment. Furthermore, if the unit lacks the support equipment, they only lose the extra speed and behave like normal infantry.
should use flame tanks and light tank recon to stack them with fuel drums :D then use horse with heavy tank to reach 50% harndess for blitz 50% speed buff, add CAS to reduce enemy movement speed and now you see front line cumbled in the first offensive attack advancing 2 tiles and overrun the enemy :D
0:50 negative stats make no sense like Mountains. Like uh pack horses literally where the backbone of Alpine fronts. Hills are negligible on a horse. If anything the modifier should not reduce attack but only speed.
One of the questions I've got in my head is about how infantry, cavalry, motorised or mech pairing ought to effect the armour design. For example, if I'm pairing with infantry, is it better to go for heavy tanks, medium or light? At the moment, early game, I'll generally pair fast light tanks with motorised for exploitation divisions (or just go pure motorised), and medium or heavy tanks with cavalry for breakthrough, and heavy with infantry for more defensive / tank killer builds.
Using infantry instead of motorized/mech for heavy tank divisions actually sounds kinda good since the tanks are already slow and it would simplify production lines and help reduce terrain penalties for the tanks. I make my heavy tanks infantry speed always because I make them as high armor as possible while keeping reliability high and cost low. Mech/motorized speed ends up being wasted, but they give max hardness to the division so I guess its still a trade of cheapness /simplicity vs more production lines+rubber and better hardness.
If you were to keep org consistently pegged to 40 org then horses give you the flexibility to add another one or two Tank divisions. That means that horse lets you field more tanks and therefore get more of the tank benefits for the same org cost.
Today we are gonna pair horses with tanks - that has to be the greatest idea ever since the japanese paired them with girls. Still sounds like a weird fetish Hentai
Camels HP bonus is huge. The only other unit with 30 HP is mechanised. The main purpose of Infantry divisions is to add HP and let tanks/arty/CAS do the damage, and 5 camels give you the same HP as 6 infantry/6 cavalry. Slightly more expensive but you need less of them.
BuUuUuT DaAaAvVe! :D That extra org of cavalry could be used to pack less of them and more of tanks to exchange not prefered extra org for other stats. I don't usually compare Cav with leg infantry - I mostly think about them in comparison to trucks. The same goes for extra speed you don't need on tanks - resources on it can be spend on other attributes, on top of fuel savings and IC savings. Lastly according to your last Poland video - horses can stack more bonuses from generals. Which means that they actually will have the same or more defense and even more attack. Leg Infantry through doctrines will regain org faster though. Hillariously cavalry works pretty nicely with Mass Assault: Mass Charge tactic. Packing 50% more divisions, hugely affected by plethora of bonuses. And then you can sacrifice 1 horse commander bonus to get access to another width increasing tactic and bonuses for mot+mech. Great content!
you can do that with a tank that goes 6kmh which can be med. or light and motorised and use CAS to reduce enemy move speed, cav also doesnt gain mobile warfare buffs
I think it should be XP free to make new templates for a certain number of units - say up to 6 line units and 2 support are free but then it starts to cost XP. That way making a new division template for another theatre or to start making divisions using new kit (say once you're ready to start making mechanised, making a new mechanised division instead of slowly adding them to an existing motorised template where you instantly lose speed from that one battalion of mechanised) will either be free to make a basic unit or only cost a about half the current amount to get a more developed one with all support slots fill and 6 extra line units - still enough to have to consider it but cheap enough that you're not blowing a new doctrine slot for a template with slightly better terrain stats for another theatre.
Choosing between infantry versus cavalry versus motorized versus mechanized is a matter of 1. Military Factory count 2. Availability of oil resources 3. Tank and SP anti-air battalion speed 4. Terrain 5. Population If someone is playing as a democratic Cuba in 1940 and has only 4 Military Factories and no oil and poor exports, motorized and mechanized are risky options for the predominant division design, due to not enough factories to manufacture combat transportation for motorized and mechanized battalions, and due to uncertain fuel supply. In jungle fighting terrain situations, anything truck-related is bad, partly due to a big speed penalty on trucks that also happens in forest terrain. There is thus a 3-way choice of infantry battalions versus cavalry battalions versus mechanized battalions. Infantry is industrially cheapest, but slowest, and is usually a good choice if a division has one or more battalions of towed artillery or towed anti-air or towed anti-tank, or if battalions of medium tanks or medium SP anti-air have a base speed less than 6.8 kilometers per hour, since armored vehicles such as tanks and SP anti-air also get a 40% speed penalty in jungle and forest that infantry and cavalry and mechanized ignore. At 6.8 kilometers per hour and higher speeds for tanks and SP anti-air, if the Military Factory count is sufficient for supporting more expensive cavalry, then cavalry can replace infantry for greater speed in jungle and forest. If in addition there is enough fuel, mechanized is even better than cavalry. More tank and SP anti-air speed means more bias toward cavalry or mechanized. At tank and SP anti-air battalion base speed of 10.8 kilometers per hour and higher, even in forest and jungle, bias increases as speed also increases in favor of mechanized over cavalry, in order not to slow down tank battalions and SP anti-air battalions. Recruitable population matters as well. Casualties tend to be less in mechanized battalions than in infantry battalions. In case of what would otherwise be an approximate tie, very low manpower situations favor mechanized, since ordinarily, equipment shortages and fuel shortages get resolved faster than manpower shortages.
The thing about horses is that they are cheaper than trucks and don't require anything but guns. Sure, they may be worse but you can make more of them.
If the horses give more org than leg infantry, doesn't that mean you can use less of them in a tank division to still get the 40 org, but overall use less supply and infantry equipment?
Hey feedback, theres this mod called the Utltea Historical Mod that has its own Infantry Squad Designer and reworked tank, naval and air designers as well economy and such. Thought you might wanna know
gotta agree, typically i use jeagers, cause places get cold/frozen more than than they do hot places, pratting about fighting in upper america / canada / russia is basically cold all year round, then winter typically colds out a lot of elsewhere too , now if bicycle jeagers were a thing...
I think horses are better if you are a small country who doesn't have alot of mils, instead of diverting alot of mils onto trucks and mechanized, you can put alot of mils onto just inf equipment and make your life easier
small fun playstyle for Germany. First,go for mainly mot. and mech. Infantry from the start,YES from the start straight away.Maintian the mobile warfare doctrine and there u go,u got your op army that u can jst battleplan and still win. Ofc lets say if u micro alot , tanks division can do the job maybe better. Jst go and try it yourself, probably u will like it.
In real life horses are effective for logistics and medevac as a horse can just run into the woods during an airstrike or a barrage, unlike a truck. (Yes i know what i am talking about.)
Also 0 fuel usage. Cav should probably have more buffs such as better breakthrough, also with regards to the Chinese Warlord stuff they used mad Cav but there's no benefit to using them AFAIK.
But there's a Spirit that makes Cavalry designs free, and maybe that works for Camelry, too. Plus, I think it gives a little attack bonus. So you could save some XP by doing that, possibly. And for Camelry, 5% extra attack/defense for camels in deserts is nothing to spit at, right? As for bicycles, does it really matter if you have a movement bonus in urban...? How far can you move with that bonus?
It is a riddle to me why cavalry has better defense than infantry. I get it if you were to counterattack, but imagine a guy sitting on his horse is better at static defending than an infantry guy sitting in a trench lol
Markus Z because cavalryman can get off his horse and sit in a trench and still have that horse to move quickly to another trench where the enemy is attacking. By ww2 cavalry was basically infantry but better (but also more expensive), they could fight exactly like infantry but with aditonal mobility (both by riding the horse and by walking next to the horse but the horse carrying the soldiers packs making both less encumbered) and they had a couple of sitational tactics that infantry couldn't do.
Wait a bloody minute - You added 3 inf units to your initial template just solely so you could get the org barely above 40. Then, when you converted the inf to cav, resulting in 46 org, you didn't take the 3 surplus units away again. No wonder the supply and inf equipment costs looked so bad, the extra 3 units is necessary for inf, but bloat for cav.
Cavalry is not worth it in tanks because they only have 25 HP whereas motorized has 30, this means if you put motorized, you lose 1/6 less tanks from the same combat (Only reason to use cav tanks is if you want to save some fuel and your tanks are not faster than 6.4 km/h anyway)
sadly Cavalry miss a lot of bonuses from Doctrines and research. 6.4km/h tanks can be more reliable and cheaper, than standard 8.0+ km/h. Intead of cavalry i very like to use Bicycle Infantry, since it also has 6.4km/h, but it can benefit from doctrine tree and research as infantry + it doesnt cost that much IC, rubber and fuel like trucks. To well exploit cavalry armoured divisions i suggest to use Great Battle Plan - Assault, since it allow to scale well with Cavalrty with planning bonus. Anyway if you havent bicycle companies, then to reduce costs i still prefer regular infantry or trucks. only Japan and Netherlands have bicycle companies, when Netherlands often have of them. By puppeting it you can copy bicycle division and use it to make own bicycle templaltes At the end when we should use cheap infantry in armoured divisions? mostly on hard terrain and we havent IC. Then cheap infantry combined with cheap tanks will offer ultra cheap amoured divisions, that may be much better somewhere, than typical armor+mec divisions.
I don't use horses when there is bicycle infantry available because they have all the benefits of leg infantry plus the horse's speed. What do you think?
Training time dosent even matter, most of the time your divs will have support companies wich will make the training time 120 days. So Camels are good for african nations, maybe Britain, Italy, or even Germany in the Africa korp.
The organization talk is weird. I actually enjoy low org on high strength units because if you build a high strength unit properly it will rout infantries 40 org before its 30 org is up, but decreased organization on high strength armor units makes them break off the attack when they hit unfavorable terrain. Equipment loss is basically HP/Org*Damage taken, so expensive units having low org helps preserve their fighting power by making it so when attacks on bad terrain happen, they break off attacking before they lose substantial equipment. Armored units only lose like 12 org when they do a good attack on good terrain so 40-70 org is someting I consider mostly with trash units that need to hold till enemy valuable units can be encricled and kill. OBV high value units shouldn't have low org if they need to dual strong heavy tank units in a button mashing war to mp button mash encirclement's and win, but for a slightly fast tank unit that's just stacking inexpensive attack and breakthrough to quickly shatter enemy infantry to reach the next supply depo its a solid marco strategy for preserving gear.
Fun thing, I think it's somewhat inaccurate to say horses were used less and less in the war. I think in general people wildly underestimate how much horses were used and similarly overestimate the amount of armour used. Anyway, just an aside.
Military history visualized pointed out that more horses were used in Barbarossa than trucks.
@@alexraney2312 If I remember correctly, the siege of Stalingrad had about 10,000 Horse deaths per month for the German Army.
It's worth pointing out that, as Germany is practically constrained by their oil consumption, horses were the life blood for most unmechanized units.
You're thinking of horses being used for logistics which is a different subject than using cavalry in combat.
Germany _literally_ *de-motorized* some of their divisions as the war went on.
"We won't need to bring fuel, since grass is everywhere anyways"
(ofc, the Americans just had enough of everything, thankfully)
One of my favorite Kaiserreich playthroughs (I think it was KR and not KX) was playing as Sichuan and realizing they get access to bicycle infantry. So I went mass mobilization to reduce the combat width and eventually as I conquered China converted my entire army to 25 battalion, 40 width bicycle divisions.
Paradox got bicycle battalions fundamentally wrong.
In real life biking on anything other than flat plains is arduous; all terrain would give you a -25 or -50% speed bonus. Even deserts.
Them working so well was inspired from Yamashita's famous bike offensive, but those people were on meth and that's why they crossed harsh terrain so fast.
Yamashita also jumped on boats a bunch of times in that offensive. Maybe something like a coastal movement bonus would be a better representation than the bikes having no terrain penalty to movement.
How about -50% movement speed into mountain terrain but +100% movement speed leaving mountain terrain into everything other than another mountain region...full bike downhill meme
@@randompotato2894 Then the winged cyclists arrived
Coming down the mountainside
@@klulessdood4327 i like that
This is assuming that you are cycling everywhere, though. While Bicycle Infantry could and did hop on the bike for roads and trails, a massive advantage to having them is that it gives every soldier effectively his own little cart to lug gear on, one that is fairly all terrain. I think an overlooked difference that is being represented is the speed difference between pushing a bike for 12 miles that has your cumbersome kit on it versus marching that same difference with 60+ pounds of gear weighing on your back.
Bicycle infantry is not mobile infantry because they have to pedal it by themselves
its really dumb that cavalry gets such debuffs in hills and mountains
to this day horses/mules are used in mountaineer units in many armies
Those debuffs are compared to people on foot though. While a horse is better at traversing that kind of terrain than a truck or tank, and can move both faster and carry more stuff than a human on foot, there are still impacted more by the terrain than a human, there are more places they can't go or where they need to slow down more in order to move safely than for regular footsloggers. So the penalties do make sense. Could they be tweaked a little? Maybe, but cavalry should still be impacted negatively by terrain, particularly if we assume that they are used the way cavalry was used in WW2.
Theyre used as pack animals for infantry. Theyre not used as cavalry units use them.
Horses are downhill slower than on flat terrain.
That movie downhill charge on horseback is bullshit, if you ask anyone who knows something about horses
@@randompotato2894 While horses are faster on flat terrain it is ridiculous to say downhill charges are a thing of fiction. Some of the most famous charges in history were downhill charges. The winged hussars charged down a hill at the siege of Vienna (which both the battle of helms deep and the battle of minas tirith were based on) for example.
That's true, but those horses that are used in mountaineer units are being used by men who are specifically trained in mountain warfare, which is quite differently from how most cavalry was trained and employed during ww2
Since horses benefit are having more org, removing a few horses after switching from infantry would've made for a better comparison. The individual units might've been more expensive than infantry, but fewer units might've offset the division cost. Also, I would've liked to see infantry and bicycles directly compared.
I like horses with mot art for minor nations that can't afford to make that many trucks (let alone tanks), but slowly start changing them over to a fully motorised division once industry is built up more. This is a good way to do fast encirclements on a budget. Worked super well in my Japan campaign
I will have to try using horses more as China/Commie China for tank divisions. I can see some cheap light tanks with horse speed being really useful while requiring only a small amount of factories and production lines to make. Less researches too since you can just ignore trucks/engine upgrades etc.
japan and minor nation HMMM
i think Mechanized and Armored cars are better. If you have the mobile doctrine tree it will stack on so so much breakthrough.
of course mech is better. its a matter of whether horses are cost efficient versus infantry or motorised, as those three you can get right from game start.
mech takes time to research and costs most to produce, its stats are by far the best. its not a good comparison to horses
Armored cars doesn't give org
yeah, I just usually don't get far into motorized/mech or armored cars for it to matter. Get motorized 1, armored cars 1 and that's it. Mob infantry for tank divisions for hp and armored cars for garrison. I slap a heavy TD on my regular infantry to give them a nice hard attack and piercing. It just seems more economic. However if you can mount AT on armored cars or mech, then that changes the game. Heavy TDs are EXPENSIVE, and that's why you have to rush them and even then, you aren't using them much in early war if at all. Maybe like 2 divisions by 1939. I always error on the side of cheaper stuff, so a lot of time, I'm still using 1939/1940 tech in 1945 because I usually have tons of manpower as a major and having infinite equipment seems like a better use of my time than quality. Because even if they have better units, I can just detach 24 30 width infantry with 1-2 heavy TD battalions and 2 artillery with an AA and just continually ram them bc I have 10k+ equipment and manpower to boot. Of course, I've never done this with Germany, so maybe that's different, but I did manage to do it with Italy, though my navy did suffer for the focus on my land forces. I don't trust AI lol
@@williampaabreeves they are. Mech are literally 4 ic and give you A LOT OF DEFENSE and good org + breaktrough
@@jovanhardianto4658 that's what the mechanized is for.
Inf supply use: 0,06, horse supply use: 0,12. Twice more. "Slightly more supply use"
What I hate the most about this video is that you added three infantry for the sole purpose of getting to 40 org but don't do any comparison where you only add enough horses to get there.
You could use less manpower and reduce combat width while maintaining the org.
160 extra infantry equipment? No, you might even save some.
So, you'd have a division with more speed, less manpower, less combat width and less infantry equipment required.
I'm not sure about the downsides, because he quite literally didn't show what seems to be the most viable option.
Yeah, you would also replace the extra horses and org with more tanks.
If my calculations are correct 6 Cav would give 42.7 Org. That would need 720 Infantry Equipment, so 80 LESS than the 8 infantry would. Interestingly Mot Inf are the same Org as Foot Inf, so would also need 2 extra battalions for the >40 Org.
@@doubleskulls So, about 30% less manpower and 10% less infantry equipment, just incase you want to double the combat width to 40.
I think cavalry and camels should give breakthrough. That way they could replace Tanks in difficult terrain.
Personally, If I don't have special forces divs, I often will put them on tanks. I don't often have a top of tank divs how ever amphib AA med tanks with some rines with normal lights and Engi lets you ignore Rivers. Hell even Mountaineers are a good choice just to help tanks stand a chance in mountains. It's really nice compared to normal inf and you don't need that many tbh.
Might've been glossed over, but a big reason to use horses over trucks is that it'll save trucks to be used for logistics and supplies, and filling out those motorized support companies. You'll never run out of horses (until Paradox introduces some asinine horse DLC), but you can run out of trucks. Speaking of trucks and logistics, there should be some sort of organization boost/penalty to using mix-matched equipment. Germany used a LOT of different trucks, especially captured foreign trucks and used them til they broke from lack of usable parts. And then there's the issue of using infantry/support equipment from lend-lease and captured equipment, and planes and tanks and even ships. Make a whole DLC about it, not like paradox wouldn't make a free update to include parts of it but lock major pieces of it behind a DLC wall, LOOKING AT YOU AIRDROP SUPPLY MISSIONS
1:42 "sightly more supply who is not big deal" proceed to ignore that horses use double the supply of infantry , :U
"Feet can potentially go anywhere."
True motivational words to live by!
Camels:
0.02 less supply is 20% less supply for camels than horses. this DOES matter.
5 more HP also is significant at 30HP !
what is a major thing for consideration are the doctrines! you should highlight them.
I used to ride horses, and i just wanna say that the amphibious penalty for them makes no sense from my perspective, logically. Obviously its for game balance or "flavor" reasons (mobile infantry should have certain drawbacks or there would be no incentive to use regular infantry) but the notion that horses are significantly less mobile in amphibious assaults is just plain wrong. For one thing, they float much easier than humans, owing to their larger surface area vs weight (compared to my skinny a$$).
Where horses should have the most penalties by far is in swamps, and deep snow. As for forests, mountains and hills, the penalty should be small, if at all, compared to regular infantry, because hooves actually perform way better than you would think in rough terrain. I also think more types of terrain could be very interesting in HOI4 overall. Like dense forests vs taiga vs leafy, sparsely populated forests with little undergrowth and large meadows are very different in properties. Carrying out any attack in a dense temperate forest should be much closer to the penalty in a jungle, than it is to a "sparse forest". I also think the penalties should be mostly focused around movement speed and attrition (equipment reliability), rather than pure attack/defense stats, and so on, which to be fair already is the case for a lot of these. I just think that they have laid the ground work for this, but it has a lot of potential for being expanded upon.
I think for the division templates they should add a certain number of free to design templates as long as they are based on a certain type of division. Such as a free infantry division that must be over 50% infantry then you can continually redo its template for free. You could unlock more through focuses or doctrine and have some buffs for some countries. That would be sweet.
This is a really good idea. We could finally make divisions specialiced for urban or rural combat, make stromrtroops for breaking stalements or small divisions to hold the lines without having to invest a ridiculous amount of XP
Something like a polish winged hussars meme with massive buffs for cavalry
Funny enough horses have been used in the 1960s and 1970s in Africa. Due to the harsh terrain they did better than armored cars or tanks in what comes to mobility and then the riders would dismount and fight on foot. They were called "Angola Dragoons" or "Dragoons of Angola".
As for the camels, no idea why they are faster than horses in plains or deserts. In Arabia horses are worth several camels precisely because how much faster they are.
The Rhodesian light horse used similar tactics to great effect in their Bush war to the Angolan dragoons.
Also the Afghans used cavalry effectively against the Soviets in the '80s too.
A Idea for when camels are switched from Africa to Europe is to have a template then duplicate it and use the Cavalry Officer Corp to freely change the Camels to Cavalry then switch from the one to the other when need. But still I see Cavalry or Camels are only useful when stacking bonuses.
Honestly if you think about it less advanced units like infantry, artillery, cavalry, camels should cost less xp (maybe 2-3 xp versus the usual 5). After all tanks/mechanized are what was really developed in ww2, while basic units are much simpler.
If i had a penny for the amount of times Feedback updates his video titles...
I would have atleast 1 penny
Feedback gaming was like we haven't had enough of op horses yet since last Poland video.
The high cost of new templates is reasonably realistic, the German's had an un-manageable number of different division structures.
This caused them non-stop issues logistically & command control wise as almost everything was non standard..
The allies had as few as possible and won.
Bycicles count as normal infantry for all tech and general trait purposes. They get horse speed for a bit of support equipment. Furthermore, if the unit lacks the support equipment, they only lose the extra speed and behave like normal infantry.
Can't wait for my bicycle amphibious assault units for sealion!
In serious games you would actually want to create specialized divisions on specific theaters and there is place for Camels in Libyan deserts :)
should use flame tanks and light tank recon to stack them with fuel drums :D then use horse with heavy tank to reach 50% harndess for blitz 50% speed buff, add CAS to reduce enemy movement speed and now you see front line cumbled in the first offensive attack advancing 2 tiles and overrun the enemy :D
0:50 negative stats make no sense like Mountains. Like uh pack horses literally where the backbone of Alpine fronts. Hills are negligible on a horse. If anything the modifier should not reduce attack but only speed.
Horses have the advantage of having a higher concentration of tanks and still having 40 org
Horse + tank isn't a bad early game compromise, and it's cheaper in XP to transition to motor/tank or mech/tank when you have the production.
One of the questions I've got in my head is about how infantry, cavalry, motorised or mech pairing ought to effect the armour design. For example, if I'm pairing with infantry, is it better to go for heavy tanks, medium or light? At the moment, early game, I'll generally pair fast light tanks with motorised for exploitation divisions (or just go pure motorised), and medium or heavy tanks with cavalry for breakthrough, and heavy with infantry for more defensive / tank killer builds.
If you're expending all the resources for heavy tank divisions you might as well go for mechanized for maximum power and hardness.
Using infantry instead of motorized/mech for heavy tank divisions actually sounds kinda good since the tanks are already slow and it would simplify production lines and help reduce terrain penalties for the tanks. I make my heavy tanks infantry speed always because I make them as high armor as possible while keeping reliability high and cost low. Mech/motorized speed ends up being wasted, but they give max hardness to the division so I guess its still a trade of cheapness /simplicity vs more production lines+rubber and better hardness.
Horse division uses more infantry equipment: secret WW2 horse-MG hybrid confirmed.
Horses and tanks side-by-side in any theater past WW1 paints such a metal picture in my mind! 🔥🔥
If you were to keep org consistently pegged to 40 org then horses give you the flexibility to add another one or two Tank divisions. That means that horse lets you field more tanks and therefore get more of the tank benefits for the same org cost.
Today we are gonna pair horses with tanks - that has to be the greatest idea ever since the japanese paired them with girls. Still sounds like a weird fetish Hentai
I love adding medium flame tank support companies to my tanks since it makes them better on harsh terrain
Horses were also replaced because the number of horses became severely limited due to industrialization.
Camels HP bonus is huge. The only other unit with 30 HP is mechanised.
The main purpose of Infantry divisions is to add HP and let tanks/arty/CAS do the damage, and 5 camels give you the same HP as 6 infantry/6 cavalry. Slightly more expensive but you need less of them.
Switching active battalions should be significantly reduced if they share similar equipment.
BuUuUuT DaAaAvVe! :D
That extra org of cavalry could be used to pack less of them and more of tanks to exchange not prefered extra org for other stats.
I don't usually compare Cav with leg infantry - I mostly think about them in comparison to trucks.
The same goes for extra speed you don't need on tanks - resources on it can be spend on other attributes, on top of fuel savings and IC savings.
Lastly according to your last Poland video - horses can stack more bonuses from generals. Which means that they actually will have the same or more defense and even more attack. Leg Infantry through doctrines will regain org faster though.
Hillariously cavalry works pretty nicely with Mass Assault: Mass Charge tactic. Packing 50% more divisions, hugely affected by plethora of bonuses. And then you can sacrifice 1 horse commander bonus to get access to another width increasing tactic and bonuses for mot+mech.
Great content!
Im gonna stick with the hoses every time I don't go for mobile warfare cause being able to outrun an infantry division is worth so much
you can do that with a tank that goes 6kmh which can be med. or light and motorised and use CAS to reduce enemy move speed, cav also doesnt gain mobile warfare buffs
I think it should be XP free to make new templates for a certain number of units - say up to 6 line units and 2 support are free but then it starts to cost XP. That way making a new division template for another theatre or to start making divisions using new kit (say once you're ready to start making mechanised, making a new mechanised division instead of slowly adding them to an existing motorised template where you instantly lose speed from that one battalion of mechanised) will either be free to make a basic unit or only cost a about half the current amount to get a more developed one with all support slots fill and 6 extra line units - still enough to have to consider it but cheap enough that you're not blowing a new doctrine slot for a template with slightly better terrain stats for another theatre.
really loving these videos, really no one else takes the time to really dive into the stats and what makes the game tick like you do
Choosing between infantry versus cavalry versus motorized versus mechanized is a matter of
1. Military Factory count
2. Availability of oil resources
3. Tank and SP anti-air battalion speed
4. Terrain
5. Population
If someone is playing as a democratic Cuba in 1940 and has only 4 Military Factories and no oil and poor exports, motorized and mechanized are risky options for the predominant division design, due to not enough factories to manufacture combat transportation for motorized and mechanized battalions, and due to uncertain fuel supply.
In jungle fighting terrain situations, anything truck-related is bad, partly due to a big speed penalty on trucks that also happens in forest terrain. There is thus a 3-way choice of infantry battalions versus cavalry battalions versus mechanized battalions. Infantry is industrially cheapest, but slowest, and is usually a good choice if a division has one or more battalions of towed artillery or towed anti-air or towed anti-tank, or if battalions of medium tanks or medium SP anti-air have a base speed less than 6.8 kilometers per hour, since armored vehicles such as tanks and SP anti-air also get a 40% speed penalty in jungle and forest that infantry and cavalry and mechanized ignore. At 6.8 kilometers per hour and higher speeds for tanks and SP anti-air, if the Military Factory count is sufficient for supporting more expensive cavalry, then cavalry can replace infantry for greater speed in jungle and forest. If in addition there is enough fuel, mechanized is even better than cavalry. More tank and SP anti-air speed means more bias toward cavalry or mechanized. At tank and SP anti-air battalion base speed of 10.8 kilometers per hour and higher, even in forest and jungle, bias increases as speed also increases in favor of mechanized over cavalry, in order not to slow down tank battalions and SP anti-air battalions.
Recruitable population matters as well. Casualties tend to be less in mechanized battalions than in infantry battalions. In case of what would otherwise be an approximate tie, very low manpower situations favor mechanized, since ordinarily, equipment shortages and fuel shortages get resolved faster than manpower shortages.
5:30 “horse paste so the horses don’t get Covid” xD
The thing about horses is that they are cheaper than trucks and don't require anything but guns. Sure, they may be worse but you can make more of them.
If the horses give more org than leg infantry, doesn't that mean you can use less of them in a tank division to still get the 40 org, but overall use less supply and infantry equipment?
Hey feedback, theres this mod called the Utltea Historical Mod that has its own Infantry Squad Designer and reworked tank, naval and air designers as well economy and such. Thought you might wanna know
Main problem with mechanized is the research, production cost can be reduced pretty hard if you have the xp
Bicycles are exclusive to Netherlands, Italy and Japan sadly. But they're very very good. I've been using them for quite some time.
Bikes were historically very useful because of their increased carrying capacity.
Bicycles, add bicycle infantry to major countries and go bicycles with tanks.
Bicycles ON THE BEACH!?!?! +40 attack?
Really weird for horses to get a 5% penalty in hills. Horses can deal with hills compared to feet.
gotta agree, typically i use jeagers, cause places get cold/frozen more than than they do hot places, pratting about fighting in upper america / canada / russia is basically cold all year round, then winter typically colds out a lot of elsewhere too , now if bicycle jeagers were a thing...
I think horses are better if you are a small country who doesn't have alot of mils, instead of diverting alot of mils onto trucks and mechanized, you can put alot of mils onto just inf equipment and make your life easier
small fun playstyle for Germany. First,go for mainly mot. and mech. Infantry from the start,YES from the start straight away.Maintian the mobile warfare doctrine and there u go,u got your op army that u can jst battleplan and still win. Ofc lets say if u micro alot , tanks division can do the job maybe better. Jst go and try it yourself, probably u will like it.
That supply difference on the camel is 1/6th. That's not insignificant, especially in theatres where supply is terrible and restricted.
I'm a cav type of guy. Hence, my main countries are Mongolia and poland
recently started playing hoi4, i love the style of youre videos
i use Horses with Light Tanks as China and Japan. Gives you some cheap, easy and fast pushers.
This game is too complicated to play anymore. I'll just watch you play
In real life horses are effective for logistics and medevac as a horse can just run into the woods during an airstrike or a barrage, unlike a truck. (Yes i know what i am talking about.)
I only used cavalry with Mongolia in KX because roleplay and because the buffs to them were enormous.
I once made a cav only army and got completly wasted from the higher supply consumption
Also 0 fuel usage. Cav should probably have more buffs such as better breakthrough, also with regards to the Chinese Warlord stuff they used mad Cav but there's no benefit to using them AFAIK.
Last I remember bikes were only given to a few nations, could be wrong though.
But there's a Spirit that makes Cavalry designs free, and maybe that works for Camelry, too. Plus, I think it gives a little attack bonus. So you could save some XP by doing that, possibly. And for Camelry, 5% extra attack/defense for camels in deserts is nothing to spit at, right? As for bicycles, does it really matter if you have a movement bonus in urban...? How far can you move with that bonus?
It is a riddle to me why cavalry has better defense than infantry. I get it if you were to counterattack, but imagine a guy sitting on his horse is better at static defending than an infantry guy sitting in a trench lol
Markus Z because cavalryman can get off his horse and sit in a trench and still have that horse to move quickly to another trench where the enemy is attacking.
By ww2 cavalry was basically infantry but better (but also more expensive), they could fight exactly like infantry but with aditonal mobility (both by riding the horse and by walking next to the horse but the horse carrying the soldiers packs making both less encumbered) and they had a couple of sitational tactics that infantry couldn't do.
Do any Focuses make horses worth taking? Soviets get one, for example.
Wait a bloody minute - You added 3 inf units to your initial template just solely so you could get the org barely above 40. Then, when you converted the inf to cav, resulting in 46 org, you didn't take the 3 surplus units away again. No wonder the supply and inf equipment costs looked so bad, the extra 3 units is necessary for inf, but bloat for cav.
No fuel consumption and requiring only infantry equipment so they're easier to upkeep mechanised is better but Horses are better in the early game
Cavalry is not worth it in tanks because they only have 25 HP whereas motorized has 30, this means if you put motorized, you lose 1/6 less tanks from the same combat
(Only reason to use cav tanks is if you want to save some fuel and your tanks are not faster than 6.4 km/h anyway)
Or if you are low on production.
Feedback realy trying to optimalize divs for singleplayer
With the forest and marsh buffs camels might be better for an Italian eastern front tank
So the real title should be WHEN ro use horses instead of trucks.
its funny cuz there is a small ytber known as paradoxian, that said the same stuff as you did. just earlier :)
sadly Cavalry miss a lot of bonuses from Doctrines and research. 6.4km/h tanks can be more reliable and cheaper, than standard 8.0+ km/h. Intead of cavalry i very like to use Bicycle Infantry, since it also has 6.4km/h, but it can benefit from doctrine tree and research as infantry + it doesnt cost that much IC, rubber and fuel like trucks.
To well exploit cavalry armoured divisions i suggest to use Great Battle Plan - Assault, since it allow to scale well with Cavalrty with planning bonus. Anyway if you havent bicycle companies, then to reduce costs i still prefer regular infantry or trucks.
only Japan and Netherlands have bicycle companies, when Netherlands often have of them. By puppeting it you can copy bicycle division and use it to make own bicycle templaltes
At the end when we should use cheap infantry in armoured divisions? mostly on hard terrain and we havent IC. Then cheap infantry combined with cheap tanks will offer ultra cheap amoured divisions, that may be much better somewhere, than typical armor+mec divisions.
I don't use horses when there is bicycle infantry available because they have all the benefits of leg infantry plus the horse's speed. What do you think?
Chinos cavalry animation is cool, try it! BANZAI!!
Chinas
Training time dosent even matter, most of the time your divs will have support companies wich will make the training time 120 days. So Camels are good for african nations, maybe Britain, Italy, or even Germany in the Africa korp.
Can you make video on recon planes? 😅
Yeah, I hate the XP cost of making divisions.. Doesn't make much sense. Luckily, there mods/cheats to disable it :)
I do horses and light tanks with Cossack Poland
As japan you can rush China and use cavalry, because chinese stats are so bad! 1936 ftw
Put a flame tank Support div on it.
The organization talk is weird. I actually enjoy low org on high strength units because if you build a high strength unit properly it will rout infantries 40 org before its 30 org is up, but decreased organization on high strength armor units makes them break off the attack when they hit unfavorable terrain. Equipment loss is basically HP/Org*Damage taken, so expensive units having low org helps preserve their fighting power by making it so when attacks on bad terrain happen, they break off attacking before they lose substantial equipment.
Armored units only lose like 12 org when they do a good attack on good terrain so 40-70 org is someting I consider mostly with trash units that need to hold till enemy valuable units can be encricled and kill.
OBV high value units shouldn't have low org if they need to dual strong heavy tank units in a button mashing war to mp button mash encirclement's and win, but for a slightly fast tank unit that's just stacking inexpensive attack and breakthrough to quickly shatter enemy infantry to reach the next supply depo its a solid marco strategy for preserving gear.
don't camo has heat accumulation benefits?
Which doctrine goes with horse?
Bros before hors!
Seems like horses would be efficient on defence on russia
Cav benefit from generals having infantry expert. Do they not also get the infantry weapon and support weapon tech bonuses?
Bicyicle infintry for the win
What!?! No War Cows! How's India going to get the 'Holy Cow' victory?
Conclusion bikes are the best
Why would inf equipment go up with horses? How would that make sense?
I think horses are better cause they add more org so u can put more tanks per division
Bikes are amazing, shame only Japan and the Netherlands can make them.