Combat Width Calulator Is A GAME CHANGER! - HOI4 Combat Width Guide

Combat Width Calulator Is A GAME CHANGER! - HOI4 Combat Width Guide
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[@kindasimpson9704]

Why not just make a Combat Width Map that shows optimal width in different regions like Eastern Europe, South East Asia etc.?

[@MacPhal1]

Because even then it would be a generalization. Marshes in Eastern Europe would have a totally different width then the plains.

[@chrisofelt6427]

@@MacPhal1 marshes are so low in number you can just ignore them and not worth making 'marsh' divisions or figure that into optimal

[@jozopako]

Actually it is already done

[@lukachew32]

People have different definitions of what a region consists of. I.g: does Noth Africa also contain Morocco or just Libya and Egypt

[@chrisofelt6427]

@@ankitbhasi7794 just do 42's and be under width or over, I main USA and just churn out 42's and they seem to work every time for europe

[@Swat_Dennis]

Personally, I don't even think it matters all that much. We can talk about meta's and whatnot. But production, frontsize and all that is also important. Japan with a really small front with China might want different units than say Germany and the USSR because the size of their fronts is way bigger. Just build whatever and it'll probably work. 99% of people play Singleplayer anyway

[@12gark]

Yes, also on paper, 42-45w is great, but then try to use them in low supply areas and tell me how many divisions you can support... That's why 10W to me have a big importance for some countries, like Japan and Russia. Who cares of the HP if the enemy never has full stats due to lack of supply?

[@Truth4thetrue]

I'm using 42/21 and so far it's great for most countries, 42 is for breaking the lines and 21 for holding it (early game, later it's all 42), and they add up nicely so I don't get uncalculated overstack penalty from mixing different widths

[@ruymartinez4526]

Supply is p easy tho in NSB? You just need infrastructure to motorize supply areas and proper bases and roads, which is better than the infrastructure spam before. Makes me feel that I can actually control my country's logistics

[@FairyRat]

I still can't win with Mao in NSB. The lack of supply is insane. And if I invest in a couple of supply hubs, railroads, trains and whatever to help alleviate that - well then all my industry is working on that and I lack production on actual weapons in the long run.

[@juvandy]

I agree. Looking at those charts you're still getting at least 90% effectiveness. Especially in SP, it really doesn't matter that much. I can see how it would matter more in MP if you needed every single little edge.

[@1Maklak]

Looking at these graphs, everything seems to be above 90%, except 45+ width. So I'd argue that combat width penalty is less important, then just making a strong division template.

[@FeedbackIRL]

CORRECT! BINNNGO

[@Truth4thetrue]

@@FeedbackIRL ​ well then something's clearly off since the literal scientific paper by u/Fabricensis has effectiveness going as low as 75%, also they clearly disagree at widths below 10 so one of them is definitely not correct I believe effectiveness being always above 90% is hugely unrealistic so this script is probably flawed

[@spectreand007]

@@Truth4thetrue The paper shows the combat modifier (=modifier), whereas the script shows combat power (=modifier*used CW), which takes into account that even though you receive a penalty by going over the max, the number of divisions also increases. The reasoning behind this is that you want to see the actual damage output in each terrain type, not just the modifier. Hope that helps!

[@Truth4thetrue]

@@spectreand007 yeah it makes perfect sense now, thank you so much

[@CMAzeriah]

*Paradox tries their hardest to prevent meta from forming* Meta Gamer: The Oracles have returned from their meditation and delivered unto us a most holy gift from the Gods! The Combat width Calculator! Paradox: *Silent screams*

[@0sm1um76]

Anecdotally, 27 width has been really effective for me personally. It was one of the widths suggested in the original LaTeX document(which I know has been updated). But I find the combo of ease of production and better stats has lead to high winrates in Europe and in the eastern front.

[@meta671games]

27 suck( cause generals prefer fighting 108 in plains, -25% of attack and defence👍🏻

[@FeedbackIRL]

It's free real estate with the officer corps boys!

[@SophSleepyTimes]

Nice video mate.

[@downtwiist9919]

Could you give me the full calculation text on 1:10 so I could enter it myself in Python and choose and test for myself which combatwith is the best for spezifik areas. That would be great :)

[@fahad_hassan_92]

Dave you can try to make a lot of graphs with all different combinations of terrain and in the end you can superimpose all graphs to find the best one

[@propagandapanda1210]

CAS PART 2 LOAD IT UP

[@IqweoR]

@@downtwiist9919 you can write down the trinket io link from the video and copy it by yourself

[@alatamore]

The real question players should ask is “what width should I use playing as country X fighting in theater Y?” This calculation can’t just be about terrain and combat, it also has to include supply, and unit cost. So terrain in North Africa might make a 45 width the best but those divisions will just take constant attrition unless you build ports in every coastal province. Then what about cost? You touched on this with a very interesting concept that in the short run smaller templates are cheaper to build but will bleed manpower and equipment faster than big ones. I’d really love to see an analysis that considers these factors.

[@haukionkannel]

And that makes HOI4 fun at this moment! There are enough elements that affect the outcome that we don´t have "ultimate" meta (yet), so we may see very different solutions in multiplayer to this positive "problem". In single player... well allmost anything beats the AI in anyway so it does not matter.

[@fatihonal6273]

Tbh, i don't care much about width. What is more important to me, is a.) does the division has enough softattack b.) enough org and hp c.) can i support it, logistics and equipment wise. I play SP only.

[@ComanderSev]

and here is why width matters: Overwidth drops your soft attack

[@skullyboi1215]

Ah i see u have not embraced monke; Softattack and speed are only required

[@hurricaneh8534]

Soft attack and organization have always been more important than combat width. It is even moreso the case now in No Step Back since they reduced combat width penalties and they made combat width more difficult to optimize. People are putting a lot of effort into finding the best combat widths, but combat width is as irrelevant as it has ever been. Others stats like attack, organization, defense and breakthrough are all more important.

[@skullyboi1215]

@@hurricaneh8534 soft attack and speed

[@thebiggestbill_]

You could figure out the meta, or spam 7/2s in 2022

[@kyle857]

Honestly, 7/2s are just easier at this point. lol

[@thebiggestbill_]

@@kyle857 yeah, it was easier before barbarossa when we knew what to use lol

[@ComanderSev]

the funny part is that 7/2 are actually pretty good again

[@friendcomputer5276]

Well, according to the calculator, 7/2s are still perfectly viable.

[@bobjackson4287]

26 - 42 still king? ya got it. 34 is that weird middle ground that is not ideal. it's the .40cal of hoi4. 26's are cheap fit in a wide arrange of zones are make for excellent defensive units. The reasoning i could see for 34's is its less support equipment than 26's but honestly if you are a nation using 5x stack of support companies the cost of having more div overall is not really an issue.

[@alatamore]

Damn your content lately is fire! I mean I always loved your videos, but lately it seems like another level. Awesome job!

[@Raven-yk7lg]

27 width was so good that I achieved World conquest with them

[@novakice]

same i use that

[@commander66a26]

Can you tell me what you had on that template still have to get that one.

[@timothyhouse1622]

You can achieve world conquest with the starting templates. Just sayin...

[@Raven-yk7lg]

@@commander66a26 it was 9 inf 3 arty. 10 inf 2 arty and 1 aa also worked in certain situations.

[@commander66a26]

Thank you much appreciated.

[@usf22raptr1]

See, I look at the original graph and 26/27 really looks like the optimal, catch-all division size, it isn't overwhelmingly large so it can be supplied and trained faster, but is a good mix of Org and HP. The low-30 sizes look good too, but I think that upper-20 size group looks better. YMMV

[@SophSleepyTimes]

Great vid mate.

[@imperify7671]

In my experience, 21 width and 42 width are good options. I've also used 27 widths and they melt ai divisions because of its a good balance with very good soft attack

[@grudgebearer1404]

Officer corps don't exactly solve the xp problem because they are for DLC only, who doesn't have the DLC still have to shit army xp to make 300 different templates.

[@ausnorman8050]

Cheers Dave!

[@Vuosta]

So with the field marshal planning exploit wouldn't the best idea for a small country looking to defend its borders be to create a couple different templates meant for each indiviual tile? With the 1 division trick (which still works fine on nations that start with a small army and dont enter conflict for a long time I.E Greece or the US) one can easily get enough exp to create lets say a 25 width for mountains and a 20 width for hills, a 21 width for forests then a 30 width for the odd plains tile. It's definitely more tedious, but wouldn't that in theory be the best for a defensive setup (which i tend to find is very effective on nations like Finland where you need to defend a long time to get the desired achievements).

[@wolfianius6037]

If you go Mass Assault, you can select "opperational Reserves" in the Spirit of Division Command, wich gives your Divisions +10% HP, combined with the -0.4 Combat width for Infantry, you can have quite "Healthy" 10 width Division. Could be Interesting for minor countries, to have a decent sized Army on a Budged and the reduction on Supply consumption is also quite nice. Also, in the Spirit of the Army you get "Bayonett Strenght" wich gives your Infantry + 10% Experience gain from Combat and reduces the Design cost from Infantry, Motorised and Mechanised by 100%.

[@154Kilroy]

I use 27 and 15 width (1 artillery, the rest infantry and support). The 27 seems to be incredibly good. Definitely my go to. 27 width tanks too.

[@TheZweric]

27 with 9 inf 3 arty, full support companies and superior firepower works great in any scenario

[@154Kilroy]

Yeah, I'll do that when I have the production to make the artillery. Or make I'll make the equivalent template for trucks.

[@Bigzthegreat]

is 15 width the meta for low supply theatres like africa and s o u t h a m e r i c a ?

[@154Kilroy]

@@Bigzthegreat to start with, yeah. Eventually something like a 23 works pretty good (inf + 1 art). Most South American countries don't initially have very good templates, so even a 15 will usually be bigger. But not always. In Africa you're probably fighting majors. Most of their starting templates are 18, so that would put you at a disadvantage with 15. Unless it's Italy. Again, 23, or still 27 and build some infrastructure. 15 or even 10 is ok with engineers to sit there and hold if you don't actually want to fight in Africa, but don't want to loose what you have either. (Just sitting there and having active subs will destroy alot of divisions from the ai shuffling troops, and sinking convoys meant to resupply is a drain on their equipment)

[@Bigzthegreat]

@@154Kilroy why would you have a disadvantage for having lower combat width troops?

[@duncant.2570]

Going Mass Assault as the Soviets and making a 15-1 seems to be working for holding ground.

[@12gark]

9/3 for infantry, 42W for tanks and marines, 10W with support (art/aa/logistics) for low supply areas. Too much effort on the combat width is not going to benefit you... This unless you are a minor that only fights on certain terrain types, like Greece for example.

[@anonthemous7437]

10W with support art/AA makes no sense for loss supply areas to me. The support versions only use marginally less supply for a significant reduction in firepower compared to the line variants. Since Logistics give a percent reduction, it's better to use fewer high supply divisions compared to more low supply divisions IMO.

[@12gark]

@@anonthemous7437 no, it's better to have more low supply units, so you can cover large frontlines (Russia anyone?), and push/defend from different directions. There's just more margin to be effective as a player microing, with few units there is nothing to micro to actually win/encircle/hold and so on. If you can battleplan win, the combat width is irrelevant.

[@hardcorehakon]

So I have found that the 7/2 is now a 6/3 when fighting in the pacific. I was playing as Australia and most jungle tiles being 84 means you can run these 21 width 6/3’s as defence and the Japanese can’t get through them. Your at your weakest if they manage to push you back to the mountains where you can only field 63/75, but for the majority of the rest of places like new gunea it owns.

[@cusy1054]

Ive already made all my divisions 21 width in my most recent campaign 😭

[@krasnamerah1926]

Ah, another Average Bitt3rSteel Enjoyer

[@user-xh9pu2wj6b]

If it works, what's wrong?

[@damnd6277]

@@krasnamerah1926 bruh if you know the secrets spill them. I literally stalemated with the allies as the nazis

[@krasnamerah1926]

@@damnd6277, 9-1 inf-art for defensive, 9-2 mot inf-mot art for offensive, if you can make armor, make it BIG for the purpose of breaking enemy's frontlines quicker (13-8 l arm-mot inf and 11-10 m arm-mot inf)

[@patropro]

Would be interesting to have a similar chart with decimal combat widths for mass mob divisions

[@kevinhayes3672]

Line goes up, a man of taste

[@RyanTheHero3]

Are large divisions like 42w still optimal rather than making all your divisions in the 27w range? Don’t divisions spread their attack over all the other divisions now which would nullify any reason to have larger widths? Or am I missing something

[@MetoFulcurm]

El-Alemein is city but hard to capture, let's say if there are 5 urban areas in North Africa, you for example consider it 20 urban areas to optimize for the desert and that one crucial city both.

[@maxscholts8649]

I don't understand the focus on combat width. As long as you stick to 20-45, you're not really going to notice in comparison to having air support and keeping the divisions supplied and equipped.

[@xanderalexander2545]

Because in mp you need the small advantage because your opponent has equipped air supported disions

[@thealien2411]

@@xanderalexander2545 Most of the time i see people use a mp mod called horst and seems like they always use 30 width.

[@xanderalexander2545]

@@thealien2411 horst modifys things

[@thealien2411]

@@xanderalexander2545 I know

[@wgerrard]

What do you stick in your 32 width infantry division? 10 Inf 4 art?

[@12gark]

Imho if you really want to try the 32W, 11-3-1 is the way to go (the "1" using Anti air).

[@FeanaroNoldoran]

15 widths seem to be the best for me

[@ivanfisker]

I played as Sweden today and puppet Denmark and Norway, and Norway made 21 with but Denmark made 32 with

[@_Yomoholo_]

does anyone have a link for this calculator?

[@elmerikamari801]

Dave please can we get a link for the script?

[@rogertracy4005]

Hey Dave, I've been having a lot of luck with 28 width combat divisions for infantry.

[@craig5322]

People should just use historical divisions since combat width is such a mess anyway. Seems fun to find what they actually used and copy it

[@hommedesbois9080]

I have no dlc, which DLC made that change of width? Which dlc is recommended

[@FeedbackIRL]

The DLC is called No Step Back

[@Tommuli_Haudankaivaja]

Jokes on you, I'm not going to stop making 5 infantry batallions with support arty and rocket arty divisions. Cheap, effective and I can focus on air instead.

[@JD-kl8hz]

I find 9/3's(27w) has been working well.

[@NapalmFlame]

First a document typeset in LaTeX on combat width, now trinket? Its like my experience of university all over again, jeez.

[@anthonyrosario7414]

Whats your opinion on using 16 wifth INF as a smaller nation?

[@nxibba]

18 much better, but i think 22 works too, rn trying 27(9-3) in a mp game as romania, i ll see if its good

[@Jakaj99]

I dont understand, what hp have to do with manpower and equipment losses.

[@leonardoariewibowo1325]

can you post the source code/ github link??

[@TalonAshlar]

Nice

[@_Tamir_]

if 10w have half of the hp but also half of the guns and manpower 20w had why would it take more casulties? is it becouse of crit dmg?

[@FeedbackIRL]

HP does not effect garrisons

[@Mutineer9]

Problem is, all this combat penalties basically assume oversaturation of divisions. But with a few exceptions, fronts usually undersaturated.

[@FeedbackIRL]

TRUEEE

[@AndrewJ9673]

While we still can see "optimal" combat widths, the changes to how width works overall seems to show us making a super strong width division isnt really important anymore to begin with. Divisions of different widths seem to be able to compete with each other now more evenly. I think if one were to look at a width meta, you would come to a conclusion more that making specialized divisions instead of all-rounder mid-width divisions would be better than simply getting a slight edge overall

[@diegomirabent]

18 width for the european theater is extremely underrated.

[@fozzy-1598]

20 width in every situation be like: hello, how are you?

[@pax6833]

Yeah weird 20w wasn't even brought up. It basically is optimal for everything, doesn't have the 10w HP problem, fills a frontline far more cheaply, and also can more easily attack from multiple directions.

[@kyle857]

I've heard you say "coombat width" so many times, it has lost all meaning.

[@krasnamerah1926]

Haha, never forget that. But i sometimes forgets it, whether it means "how huge a division is" or "how wide the battlefield is"

[@johncraig3948]

over 20 combat width you lose use of support units attached

[@-JA-]

👏

[@p0xus]

I still like 20 width myself.

[@TheCarloCarlone]

It's not that hard. Make 40 to 45 width. Penalties "don't matter" that much. I mean they do matter but 80% of 100 is still bigger than 100% of 50. Making a smaller division so it can fight 100%, does not mean it will fight well

[@imnotanumber43]

But 2 20 width divisions can fight wherever 1 40 width can

[@ComanderSev]

heh, but those small divisions fit better. You dont just use one, and as soon as your frontline extends you want to have more small divisions instead of few big ones

[@empereurloutre]

100% of 50 is a lot more cost efficient than 80% of 100 in which there is virtually 1/5 of your army which does nothing

[@12gark]

Yeah, 45W everywhere, the perfect way to have zero supply on 90% of the world map...

[@senoalamsyah7481]

Even an amateur like me know 45-50w is not good for the long run even in SP but it will be the best for maybe defending you country alone without doing anything especially world conquest

[@soldieroffortune308]

But where is the calculator so we can play with it?

[@HungarianPatriotGaming]

Quite frankly, I absolutely, completely despise the new combat widths, it's forced complexity without any added depth. Instead of making the AI smarter, Paradox just prevented the players from making fully optimal armies... genius move. Inspired by a now outdated mod, I changed all combat and reinforce widths to 96/48, and I must say, my gaming experience improved tremendously.

[@ivanmaste]

Can you share the code?

[@DrewDubious]

I want to play game why my head hurt so much...

[@revolrz22]

I've been having a lot of luck with 9 inf, 3 artillery divisions. Kind of follows the pattern of U.S. Army Infantry c. 1943 and is 27 width. Been working well in most situations for me.

[@Raven-yk7lg]

Same here

[@magni5648]

Afaik US infantry would be more along the lines of 9inf, 1 art and support art. Line arty are artillery regiments with three 12-gun battalions each, support arty is a 12-gun battalion. A US infantry div had 4 artillery battalions, while the individual regiments only ahd a "cannon company" of half a dozen pack howitzers each and no full-size artillery pieces. Of course, US infantry divisions would also basically always have corps or army-level untis directly attached when sent into combat, most notably and very commonly an independent tank battalion.

[@revolrz22]

@@magni5648 So four battalions of field artillery are represented by one line battalion and a support company in game? Eh...

[@magni5648]

@@revolrz22 Well, line are 36 artillery equipment, support are 12. Lines up with 12 guns per historical battalion. For extra fun, the norm for divisional arty in the infantry was a 3+1 mix of 105s + 155s.

[@revolrz22]

@@magni5648 That's just pulling strings to ensure that your division is ineffective in the meta.

[@SwedenTheHedgehog]

I've gotten reeeaal good use out of 27 width. Maybe they're less good in Mountains or Jungle or something; but there I use 10-withs special divisions anyway

[@gerovon2558]

hmhm

[@smthsmth]

27

[@JustTiredFrom]

Meta

[@TheZoc711]

Contrary to popular belief. 10 widths don't actually tank more losses in the long run than the 20ish width divisions (7/2s, 9/1s, 9/2s etc).

[@KlaustheViking]

How? It lacks HP and defense to not lose manpower regardless if you use hospitals fore trickle back

[@vovanbalashov]

@@KlaustheVikingEasy. The total amount of HP is not important, but the cost of each unit of HP. In addition, the new coordination system makes small divisions stronger (they used to be bad, since a division with 100 defense against 150 attack will suffer 3 times more losses than against 100 attack. Now the damage is smeared)

[@KlaustheViking]

@@vovanbalashov Now are they strong although out the game or just early to mid game or what? Cause before you had your starting template you build for and eventually make them bigger (for certain terrain of course)

[@vovanbalashov]

@@KlaustheViking we can do some tests. however, we can also calculate it mathematically. Let's see. Technology level: 1939 Division with 5 infanry and artillery support costs 338 production and 5 000+300=5 300 manpower They will have in total 177 defence. They have 125.2 HP (with this numbers you can count average amount of losses in combat. I will use only defence) How much damage they will become? I have to run the game and build a tank division with 42 combat widht. We know that now it will deal damage to 8,4 divisions with 10 combat widht. We will see what if we are using 1 and 2 such divisions (against 9 defenders). I built an awesome heavy tank division with 1 000 soft attack. It costs a lot, but it doesn't matter here. Coordination is 0.35+0.07*1.35=0.4445 (with initiative. Without it will be 0.42). In total: (0.4445+(1-0.4445)/8.4)*1000=510.63 attack against 177 defence. 333.63 uncovered attack. 510.63 attack more if 2 tank divisions are in attack. Looks really bad. And what if we have 11 infantry battalions? It gives us 378.6 defence. Tanks will deal damage to 2*42/24=3.5 divisions. In total: (0.4445+(1-0.4445)/3.5)=603.21 attack against 378.6 defence 224.21 uncovered attack. 603.21 more if 2 tank divisions are attacking. But what about damage? That's not so intuitive to count, but I'm shure that I'm counting right. You have to believe me :) For 10-th: (1000-333.63)*0.1+333.63*0.4=200.09 damage (it still isn't equal to HP loss) For 22-th: (1000-224.21)*0.1+192.9*0.4=167.26 damage. If 2 tank divisions are attacking: For 10-th: (2000-844.26)*0.1+844.26*0.4=453.28 For 22-th: (2000-827.42)*0.1+827.42*0.4=448.27 So we see that 10-th will not suffer much more losses than 22-th Okey. And what in the future? It's not hard to count :) But there is not much that will change All numbers are from wiki and dev diaries forum.

[@vovanbalashov]

@@KlaustheViking In past patches, it worked differently. The entire attack was always inflicted on only one division, and therefore the increase in defense reduced the damage by 0.3*defense. Therefore, it was profitable to build the 20th

[@PikaPilot]

where's the LINK? reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[@batughanuzun]

The best is making 20 w guards and 40 w cavalry, they are cheap but if supportes with full supply they rock on every terrain and also built cheaper than tank divisions

[@TheBusbyBabes]

i hate this new combat width stuff. as someone who likes to set his frontline and watch it move forwards and not think too much about the game the 7/2 meta was best :(

[@joelp7665]

7/2 still works just like in the past, except in mountains and marshes.

[@Bigzthegreat]

you could put 1 artillery and rock the 3 combat width life and as long as you aren't playing a nation with tiny industry like romania, (which you probably aren't doing anyway) you can just chill. The AI is so dumb.

[@TheBusbyBabes]

@@Bigzthegreat i only play minors

[@batzing]

Dave a 45 cannot defend against the 10w spam. They get org killed every time. They also suck on offense because they lack the org to win the battles. So I'm not sure why anyone would use them. You keep missing that small divisions stack the power of support arty/rockets. Stacking combat power = I win. It's great you have a new toy calculator but in game results are what matters.

[@ichsagnix4127]

So that's why HOI4 gets so slow.

[@alesisanchez9728]

The combat width crap is *boring*. The new different combat widths are bloat that do not add a single good thing to the game.

[@variotronic7276]

Am I First to comment

[@cusy1054]

Yea bro

[@dimaaftaritet]

man whats all this nonsense please just tell me whats the best one for singleplayer