ULTIMATE General Trait Guide - HOI4 General Trait Tier List

[@FeedbackIRL]

What is your favorite general trait??

[@MrTheFixer]

Scavenger 'cause my supply is shite

[@MeLoNarXo]

Logistics wizard cz i dont want to build so many railways

[@bomtron1889]

Aggr. Assaulter

[@matropgy]

Adaptable

[@ilikewatermelonz4959]

Propably substance abuser lmao

[@Jatischar]

"Attrition is not even a big Deal, most of the time you can just ignore it" - Franz Halder, General-Staff Chief of the German Wehrmacht, in 1941

[@fieldmarshalbaltimore1329]

Lmaooo

[@MultiFallguy]

tbf, that is because attrition in Hoi4 excludes man freezing to death in Russia, in real life - not so much.

[@MaziarYousefi]

😂😂😂

[@taeahmed4628]

worst case attrition in soviet union: terrain: Marsh +35% weather: mud +70% at 105% attrition assuming 80% reliability you lose 2.52% of equipment daily so you pay for a new division every 40 days

[@Oxley016]

@@taeahmed4628 Yes. This is why I immediately downvoted this video. How clueless can you possibly be whilst claiming to know how the game works.

[@ayuvir]

I'd like to put this idea forward: Skirmisher would be an amazingly interesting trait if it was reworked into an automatic thing that the AI would use to kind of apply pressure at random places and try to trick the opposing AI into shuffling his troops. This would be super interesting to see in those stalemate situations where you're playing a smaller nation and you start fighting a larger one.

[@DontCriticizeAsThis]

I like the idea! I think what you're talking about might actually be a great redesign for the probing attack ability though. But maybe Skirmisher could relate to the Intel combat bonus? Like it would give a bonus to your intel or decrease the enemy intel since it would make it harder for the enemy to determine your strategy and troop position. Or it could give a big debuff on enemy division speed when you retreat which would be simulating a rear guard action to delay the enemy? That would be cool to see as a way to counter a blitzkrieg in the early phases of the war. And it would make defending more viable against high breakthrough divisions.

[@ayuvir]

@@DontCriticizeAsThis Yeah! I'd like for traits to not only be stat increases especially stuff like these where it kinda leans into your general fighting in a certain style. So why not give his AI added quirks with the trait?

[@Hormitron6]

@@DontCriticizeAsThis it also would be cool to be more effective then on jungle or mountains terrain as guerrilla warfare is thought around playing with the terrain

[@ayuvir]

@@begonefosh yes, definitely. But I just had a run where I was microing the spanis civil war, the japanese invasion of china, along with all the other stuff you need to do. It's very easy to forget to click something in this game particularily when you go into a big war. So it ends up being a matter of is it practical?/is this tedious. Just like how you don't micro your generals tactics.

[@toonotsleep8]

Improv expert is deceptively powerful if you're using anything faster than infantry; that 10% speed increases the chance of overruns, probably my favourite pick if I have no idea how I want to spec my general (after infantry leader, ofc)

[@leiaorgana5098]

Really good for tank builds, add Panzer leader with Combined arms and a field marshal with aggressive assaulter... rivers go brrrrrrrrrr

[@toonotsleep8]

@@leiaorgana5098 late game light tank div with jet engine on a general with improv expert is a must experience in single player

[@thatonerussiandictator5412]

I personally value Improv Expert greatly, but that’s because I love Mobile Warfare. If you go down mass motorization, grab improv and have a marshal with that recovery rate and org loss? You can get some insanely fast divisions, you only need to break the line once and you overrun everything.

[@Buzzy_Bland]

Username does *not* check out. 0_o

[@NKVD_KGB]

But Stalin likes the wave of manpower

[@ivvan497]

I wish you rated general traits without taking earned traits into consideration. Because some generals start with shitty earned traits like commando for example. So he can get -50% CAS bonus from the start for basically nothing.

[@michaelgoldsmith9359]

Which is shit. The more traits you have the longer it takes to grind new ones. That guy won't be able to get infantry leader as quickly as a guy with no traits. hell some generals start with really good earned traits yet the meta is to ignore them and grind up perfect generals from scratch. For example as germany sepp ditrich and maximum are the meta tank generals over gudarian and Rommel.

[@nausimur6035]

a).the defensiv traits like panzer expert , cav expert inf expert give you breaktrough because breaktrough = defensiv while attacking (paradox logic) b)this also applies to unyielding defender which is a 10 % breaktrough for you whole army under the field marshell c)aggr. assaulter doesnt work (paradox logic) d) naval liason is useless because there is a shore bombardment cap and you dont raise it with the cap only gives u more bonus per ship which doesnt matter because a few heavy ships already give you full bonus anyway e) scavenger doesnt work proper either take into accout that some traits are needed for Officer Corps Roles here a few favorable mentions : fortress buster leads to Arty specialist Commando leads to Special force Specialist ... so you can get yourself a good high Command with gaining those traits espially if you get high lvl generals (for example grind a arty specialist as Japan in the China war with a lvl 6 guy is really benefial) terrain traits are always good not only for adaptable , ranger and Moutaineer are probale the best of them sadly not all traits work like they should or give shadow stats (stats that doesnt do anything ) btw same goes for example for the engineer corps in the military staf ith doesnt give u 5% railwaygun bonus it gives a bonus of 0,1% (paradox logic strikes again)

[@waterking1013]

But aren't breakthrough and defense separate stats

[@waterking1013]

But aren't breakthrough and defense separate stats

[@nausimur6035]

@@waterking1013 yes and no , Breakthrough is the defense you get while attacking ,that is the reason why those bonus apply to it , this also goes for the defense points of your generals

[@waterking1013]

@@nausimur6035 wait so the stat saying defense also affects breakthrough a different stat

[@ayberkbilgin9677]

@@waterking1013 yes thats why defanse is a very important stat in mobile forces

[@ml2163]

It would make sense for probing attack to lower the defence and/or entrenchment of units you are attacking. 'Glider planes' should probably allow paratroopers to teleport to captured airfields behind the frontlines.

[@turchenko]

probing attack sounds like it would be great for delaying actions and preventing enemies from exploiting breakthroughs

[@malocuillandre1344]

The camouflage expert trait is really useful as France. You have one general that already has the commando trait, and giving him the camouflage expert one allows you to have a full army able to somewhat resist the massive CAS Germany brings upon you while you don't have the industry to really compete in the air.

[@Jatischar]

Eh, just use AA, costs next to nothing

[@malocuillandre1344]

@@Jatischar as France you don't have a big industry, you just cannot produce enough AA to equip the amount of divisions needed to hold back Germany, especially if you don't go democratic and don't have Britain's air force to help you.

[@michaelgoldsmith9359]

@@malocuillandre1344 yes you can. 2 mils from game start is plenty. Unless you don't put it on from the start of the game which is your mistake for not knowing how good anti air is.

[@bartswitalski]

Same with Polish general

[@monkas1833]

camouflage expert A. Think of Finnland where you can get a advisor with like -10 Cas damage who can also be leveled to -15 cause he is a general. Add some support AA or maybe you even built static AA and you a literally immune to enemy air

[@madensmith7014]

If you're doing a no air build, camouflage expert is top tier

[@monkas1833]

@@madensmith7014 yes. But how many nations can actually go air build?

[@37thgungrunts]

You would need support AA and static AA. Since static AA only hits strategic bombers

[@JamesBond-nk7hw]

@@monkas1833 Any minor that will go up against majors (portugal)

[@michaelgoldsmith9359]

@@madensmith7014 no air just isnt possible since they added logistic bombing.

[@liv558]

So, amphibious increases the amount of 'time' banked up while the ability is active, so you can plan for 14 days of invasion time in 7, it's still a really niche ability, but it's nice for island hopping because you can chain invasions!

[@joshbirkwood990]

It also allows you to make invasions in 1-3 days with the ability so for island hopping it is a real time saver

[@alatamore]

All special forces traits are niche because special forces are niche. But if the nation you are playing needs that (US and Japan island hopping) then that is an A tier trait. We all know Hungary isn’t likely to need amphibious traits, so knocking down this trait just because it’s only used by certain countries is stupid. If you do a lot of naval invasions this one is incredible to get.

[@asdfkgkspr284]

@@alatamore you're telling me feedback made a list video where he was very opinionated and also wrong on things!?! Say it ain't so!!

[@lokenontherange]

@@alatamore Island hopping isn't needed in single player. As Japan you should be jumping straight to Hawaii and then the US mainland - both times you should really go for overwhelming numbers so no using one unit - and as the US you should be jumping straight to the Japanese mainland from the north with your entire military. Island hopping just isn't something you should ever do in single player because it's just a waste of time. Island hopping happened irl because irl that's how they kept up their supply lines. In game you don't need to care about that. Sink the enemy fleet immediately or avoid it and get an army on their homeland.

[@alatamore]

@@lokenontherange Well, island hopping was controversial even at the time. There is a solid argument that the US didn’t need to invade the Philippines at all, and that entire effort was for MacArthur’s ego. A lot of it was based on the theory that you could win via strategic bombing, so those islands were important as bomber bases. There are a lot of “what ifs” about the US invading from Alaska. Ultimately it’s far easier to naval invade in the game than it was in real life though. Any real invasion of the Japanese home islands would have most likely been bloody on the level of the Eastern Front in Europe.

[@Dujvid]

For an amphibious to work, you have to activate it before planning the invasion.

[@Racob12]

Yeah, New Zealand’s General starts with it and it’s so useful for invasions in the Pacific.

[@soldieroffortune308]

And another sin, engineers can get fort buster assigned which opens up the artillery bonus for command staff roles, which is insane on a superior firepower build. So not only can you siege artillery your way through the Maginot with fortress buster, but you can create arguably the second most useful command staff role.

[@ruukinen]

It's not useful at all. You never go with very artillery heavy divisions. Before you had to actually get the artillery icon to benefit. Now instead you just get a fraction of the bonus based on how much of that type of unit you have in the division. You never get the full 15%/10%.

[@soldieroffortune308]

@@ruukinen most of your division soft attack comes form the artillery battalion and I think you’re wrong about the game applying the modifier fractionally like with armour (that isn’t even a division composition breakup it records - how much percentage of arty you have), it applies the bonus to the battalion stats directly, which means most of it ends up applied into your division soft attack.

[@ruukinen]

@@soldieroffortune308 It doesn't work like that. It works on the whole division by percentage of how many of a particular unit you have. 71Cloak has a video proving my point. You are the one who is wrong.

[@cpn_porta]

Camouflage Expert is actually pretty easily attainable by using Inventive Leadership as Spirit of the Academy, giving you a very high chance of getting a Commando. -50% CAS damage reduction is also insane on nations like France and Spain, who mostly don't build air since they either have no chance of competing with the enemy (in single player, the AI just has a 4k deathstack of fighters and CAS on your line) or have allies who do said job better. I'd give it an A tier for simply countering such a dominant plane without needing industry to build it (i.e. anti air). It is probably essential on an anti-air build, where the damage reduction greatly helps counter the damage the CAS does before getting shot down by the obligatory support AA company every France or minor player knows and loves.

[@erikrodrigues2733]

Organization factor is how much weight the unit org has on Org calculation. It's useful if you are not using superior firepower and you have plenty of support companies. For short, increase org when using 5 support companies

[@efulmer8675]

20:45 Fast Planner is helpful when the CP cost of Staff Office Plan exceeds the CP cap, or if you're waiting for your CP to recover because you just performed a number of other CP actions, or if your CP cap is low because you have assigned Extra Ground Crews to a number of air zones. I would put it around C tier because it's not a particularly large bonus, but I can see where it is useful.

[@efulmer8675]

9:10 Invader is a trait that you can get by recruiting generals if you have a specific officer corps spirit assigned. Often what I'll do is take that spirit, recruit a pile of generals, some of which will come with the Engineer background and/or Invader, and then grind them up to high levels so that I later have a skilled general with Invader, rather than grinding a skilled general for the Invader trait. In my opinion, this method makes the trait about B tier because the time reduction and invasion speed are really helpful for planning large invasions and ensuring they get intercepted less.

[@timra9309]

7:21 its the army that needs to be 40% armour not the division it self also panzer expert gives a 10% combat bonus (in generals defence also gives a bonus for breakthrough for some reason and breakthrough doesn't for some reason) that's divided by the percentage of tanks compared to other battalions in the division.

[@dannyzero692]

I got into this game a week ago and learned it from scratch with only minimal tutorials, what I found is that the Naval Assault plan is extremely useful when combined with paratroopers (against AI cause I’m not that good). Basically my favorite tech tree is GBP due to its very high planning bonuses and entrenchment as well as special forces cap so I could meticulously plan my invasion all across a wide front. Being somewhat of a LARPer I really got into using aircrafts as part of my plan, bomb the hell out of their ground defenses once I secured air superiority and use paratroopers to capture enemy airfields (2-3 divisions each airfield to prevent encirclement and hold out for a while) just before I naval invade which combined with attached air wings give me a huge boost in air support. Once I have successfully pulled off my naval invasion I linked up with my paratroopers using the marines and pulled in the primary army to engage the enemy. Was this plan unnecessarily complicated and difficult and expensive to pull off? Yes. Was it fun and satisfying to see your plan succeed? Absolutely.

[@Vagabond820]

Commando is wonderful as it reduces the penalty a unit suffers for being out of supply from 50% to 25% meaning this leaders units keep moving and fighting where other units stop dead.

[@Klemeq]

Does it apply to fuel as well? Because losing fuel also costs you armor.

[@craniusdominus8234]

Camouflage expert is brilliant for Finland, and they even get a general that starts with commando from day 1.

[@jeffreyhornblower6515]

Fast planning allows you to get the army reformer adviser, if you have a general that starts with organizer get it; it's a great way to get army xp early for country that don't have a way to get xp easy

[@soldieroffortune308]

That general would have to be level 4 already. I’m not sure there’s more than one general in the entire game fitting this situation. Maybe with mods. But if you have to grind up a general to level 4 and organizer and then turn him into an army reformer, it just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

[@bombidil3]

"Defense" on traits often includes Breakthrough because it's the Defensive stat on the attack. The wording in HOI4 is often very unclear. In which case, Panzer Expert would give +10% defense and breakthrough which is pretty good. The same applies for Unyielding Defender, I believe. Equipment capture from Scavenger I think is a flat value too, meaning it's additive not multiplicative, which would be really good. Essentially, you'd go from capturing nothing to capturing 3%, which is good if you're grinding through China maybe and great if you're a small nation. The camo expert can also be added to your Officer Corps and combined makes CAS basically useless, which is a huge deal because CAS is OP as hell.

[@MadpupYT]

Playing Sardinia in Kaiserreich, you get really good bonuses for Paratroopers and Marines, but you also have a very low # of troops you can field until you annex back some Italian land, so your army will always be something like 10-13 troops, with 8 of them being 20w special forces. You are also stuck without a functioning navy making Marines nearly useless. Its the first nation I've played where I actually made 20w paratroopers designed to fly, land, and hold a line and it has shown me how effective paratroopers can be when used the way they were designed to be used, where you focus on taking 1-3 zones when you land and then spread out as necessary. Glider Planes essentially make it so your Paratroops have higher organization when landing, which makes it more likely that they will survive and drive out any troops they land on and the 10 extra days of supply make it so you can effectively take your objective before you start to suffer penalties. Its the different between taking a supply zone behind enemy lines to weaken defenses for an attack and losing a bunch of 20w infantry units.

[@Fuer64]

Makeshift bridges sounds good if your border already follows a river and your war starts out with a stalemate.

[@steegmagaming4430]

14:13 For Amphibious, I think you need to click the naval assault plan before you make the naval invasion. It will change from 140 to 72 (If i'm not mistaken) days.

[@juanon_industries7256]

The meta is just to plan 1 division invasion, then reinforce it with the other forces💀, just 7 days of planning

[@soldieroffortune308]

The panzer traits apply at DIVISION level, so you get 10% on your average division defense. The combined arms applies on individual battalion level, for each individual mechanized/motorized battalion whether that is a part of an armoured division or part of a motorised one. Lots of people miss this factor. For a division to count towards Armour Division is has to be recognized by the game as such, thus have an armour to other stuff of 40% or more, and it has to be the same type of armour. If you mix in lights and mediums you will screw with the ratios to the point where the game may by default consider it not an armour division and the Panzer Leader bonus is wasted. Second, in order to grind armour leader you have to have a 40% composition of divisions in the army be recognized as armour divisions, but they don't even have to participate in the fighting. They point in case, you can grind armour leader in spain with 7 volunteers, 3 tank divisions of one tank each that are parked away from combat, not even losing fuel, and 4 infantry divisions that do the fighting. No tanks lost, no fuel consumed. See an old Dankus video about grinding traits for proof and reference. It's not always very clear in the tooltips but (and this applies to command staff as well) armour bonuses are awarded on DIVISION level (see division makeup above) while cavalry and motorized/mechanized bonuses are awarded on battalion level. Dave seems completely unaware of this, and you can see it when he comments about the armour defense bonus.

[@blahmaster6k]

Doesn't work like this anymore. For grinding traits it works the same, but for the purposes of bonuses divisions gain a percentage of the bonus based on the percentage of battalions of a certain type.

[@michaelgoldsmith9359]

@@blahmaster6k if your division is over 60% armour it's just better to use panzer expert period. But who makes divisions over 60% armour?

[@JS-iu3ce]

I would argue skilled staffer a bit better because it leads into a logistics expert in high command. Which is amazing

[@ayouthinasia4105]

Fortress Buster unlocks the artillery specialist role for the officer corps, the artillery advisor gives +15% artillery attack and +20% artillery defense at max level.

[@efulmer8675]

17:30 Using the officer corps spirits you can recruit generals with the Commando trait already, so if you were a more minor power and knew you were going to be CAS'd into oblivion, you would only need to assign Camouflage Expert and then grind them to a decent level to get good bang for your buck. I would put that trait around C tier because it's most applicable for smaller nations, but the bonus if you need it is solid.

[@zoroasper9759]

Naval Liason is actually F tier because the bonus to shore bombardment is capped at 25% which means that the 25% increase is completely wasted

[@Klemeq]

Ya, it means that a fleet which would otherwise only be able to deliver a 20% bonus can now do the full 25%. But any fleet which could already do 25% gets nothing. Very lame.

[@zoroasper9759]

@@Klemeq And basically all major's fleet at the start of the game are already big enough to provide the full bonus. If you REALLY wanted to min max you could split your navies into groups that get 20% shore bombardment each and use the trait but that seems insane and not that useful anyway, it's not like you will have that many sea tiles to cover anyway

[@synthetictechnocrat9270]

Another thing you can do with Logistics Wizard is give it to a field marshal and then assign him to command a single army. This way, you can still use Extra Supplies for just that army for a much cheaper Command Power cost.

[@mercdutch3950]

I cant believe you put Amphibious in F tier and naval liason in C... imo, the 240hr supply grace is way better for marines in the pacific then the shorebombardement firepower requirement reduction. One thing that I figured out is that if you do large naval invasions with multiple battles per sea tile, you share your shorebombardement equally. This means that if you plan a 5 tile invasion, you need 5 times the navy to get to the 25% bonus as before. I am not a D Day expert, but supply in Europe is not as bad as in Asia. So maybe Naval liason is better there as you dont run out of supply as fast. But you could land massive armies and have supply for 10 days to rush the nearest supply depot.

[@polishscribe674]

You ignored that these traits can lead to unlocking advisors. Fortress buster for example allows artillery expert, which is crucial for SF mains like me.

[@localman9063]

4:18 That cat in the background and then briefly obstructing the camera was a funny addition. Lol

[@augustduplessis5862]

Siege artillery trait give you the option to make the general a artillery specialist. Offensive doctrine don't work on generals only on field marshals

[@soldieroffortune308]

The +1 attack still applies, that was the point behind promoting a general to field marhal, giving them offensive doctrine and then using them as a general. Guderian comes to mind since you can bump his attack from 2 to 3 this way, he has panzer leader anyway so no need to grind him. Rommel is another candidate since you bump his attack stats from 4 to 5, and he grinds panzer leader quite quickly anyway. Later I also prefer to use Rommel as my field marshal, because it negates his reckless trait since field marshals can’t get injured, while still being likely to level up attack. If that is the case, I have to remember to grind organizer about 65% of the way before i start grinding panzer leader, so I can also get logistics with him.

[@thijmenbaak718]

I can't tell you how much your videos provide in information. You litterally have me waiting everyday for a new hoi4 guide like this, the last vid covering all Officer corps was so interesting, just like this one! Keep it up

[@Michus1980]

Amphibious trait actually works fine imho. It accelerates the speed days count in preparation phase. Kinda don't know why it didn't work for you. I really like this trait for quick island naval invasions.

[@TheLumpmachine]

One use for probing attack that I've found is when using purely defensive infantry + cas. In situations where the AI is refusing to attack your line any longer, you can hit probing attack to bleed their divisions while maintaining your stacked entrenchment. The -20% attack penalty doesn't matter since your cas is doing the damage, it might even be beneficial since to will drag out the combat. I did this once as France before NSB and it was a lot of fun.

[@efulmer8675]

20:05 Using the officer corps spirits you can recruit generals that have the Inflexible Strategist background, allowing you to promote them to a Field Marshal and have the Unyielding Defender trait on top of Defensive Doctrine. I would personally put Unyielding Defender as B or A tier because that defense on top of the entrenchment makes holding much easier.

[@sandstorm9305]

We need another post-NSB all metas in one video: best general traits, best templates, best aircraft, etc

[@TESI303]

Ever since the NSB DLC/update to supplies, I use a chunky Parachute division on one spot to cut off regional supply to the enemy. I then rush the enemy once out of supply, while supplying my paratroopers to break through and save them. So the paratrooper trait is worth it for at least 1 general in my army.

[@beyondEV]

I often used an army of 10 width, full support space marines paratroopers. Can cut the supply of an entire frontline (or in many cases simply take all the victory points). As Germany I once used multiple (2 or 3) armies to completely instantly encircle about 5mio soviets by dropping them from the Baltics all the way to the Black sea. But I guess this wouldn't work anymore, as armored recon has been nerved. So they couldn't stop enemy tanks anymore for prolonged times.

[@monsterpoof1378]

5:48 You can make your marines have like 10-15% attack bonus with rivers, so having it makes marines useful to manually push rivers to save human resource

[@boomknight1015]

As a person who often cheeses the AI as smaller nations into attacking small held places. I use probing attack to force the AI to take more losses after a failed attack with out opening your self up to getting ran over.

[@germaniumge7768]

Defence in combat on offensive gives breakthrough since it counts as the defence of attacking you can check this by assigning a commander to a unit and attacking and looking at the bonus to breakthrough

[@154Kilroy]

Also, that naval invasion assault plan thing used to work as intended. It would just cut down the number of days to prepare and was pretty awesome. But it's broken now. It hasn't worked in probably over a year.

[@Pqgers]

hm... giga chad general... why not?

[@TheZappingChannel]

I believe that panzer expert says "Armoured Division Defense", meaning that it is a bonus to the whole division's defence, not just the tank brigade's defense.

[@FeedbackIRL]

A recent change made those numbers proportional based on how much of the division makes up armour

[@malocuillandre1344]

2:13 in my latest Germany game (where things did not get smooth and easy at all lmao) I sent Rommel to help Mussolini deal with the Allies in Africa, and I manage to encircle +50 French, Belgian, British and for the most part American division in the Belgian Congo. The fight was gruesome, they did have more supplies than Rommel bc the Belgian had their capital city moved there, they were so packed and stacking entrenchment behind the big rivers that I had to build an airport and draw a line of railroad with 3 supply nods to actually do some damages... And after a year or so of fighting in the jungle, Rommel got the jungle trait...but it was time for him to prepare barbarossa, and there is no jungle in Russia. I think the biggest problem these niche terrains traits is that by the time you get them, your generals will fight in a completely different battlefield with completely different terrains... Maybe the Devs should regroup some terrain traits in one, for exemple desert + jungle, hills + mountains + winter and swamp + urban + ranger. Because of you're fighting in hot places you may encounter jungle but also desert, so you gain time and one trait having them both at once...

[@efulmer8675]

The other way I can see to group these would be jungle+swamp, desert+winter, hills+mountains, and urban+ranger, but I agree with your point.

[@intemir]

Planning speed saves cmp, better for large armies(cmp cost) or secodary defensive armies, as it counts to defence. Also helps when you have low war support or great battleplan. Also make bridge ability becomes essential in china as you will probably lack aircraft and airfields to deal with mao's forts built on mountains behind river.

[@JohnRhoooodes]

Scavenger is amazing if you're a minor defending against somebody smashing into you. For example, Romania/Finland vs. Soviets, Netherlands vs, Germany etc

[@XvorlinkX]

Ambusher, Camo Expert, Defensive FM traits, (even Panzer Expert + Dozer Blades as well) can make defensive divisions insane for holding your ports as axis or el-alemein/malay/islands as allies. The discounting defensive play with 'just push more' doesn't work for port guards as axis or any of the first 2/3 of the game as allies. I guess if your only metric is barbarossa then this list makes sense

[@tristanthebaut9716]

I like grinding the engineer traits because you can then get the fortress buster that leads to artillery expert on your chief of staff

[@Cerabelus]

One time I had a brilliant strategist, tank expert, hill fighter, mountaineer, adaptable, improve expert general. He was amazing.

[@mainman879]

Armor expert is much better than you give credit for. Defense modifiers affect breakthrough because breakthrough is defense. 10% extra breakthrough from your tanks is good. Aggressive Assaulter is also bad because it makes bad tactics more likely. Unyielding defender is better in every instance because it gives +10% defense and +10% breakthrough (remember breakthrough IS defense) and doesn't dilute your battle tactics.

[@ToastGamingNCrew]

Engineer and Commando are great traits what are you on about? Supply grace hours bonus for Commando, and Scavenger is a secondary from Engineer, which builds on the first bonuses AND gives you more supplies for capturing enemy troops. Sleeping on the support traits is gonna cost you dearly. Supply lines are very very grateful for the Scavenger perk

[@SaucyAlfredo]

Amphibious must be activated before making the plan to work, glider planes you activate just before the plan goes and the paratroopers land with full org instead of 25% or whatever it is usually

[@juvandy]

I really like makeshift bridges. That plus engineers in river-rich places is a great combo.

[@bombidil3]

Super important to remember Traits enable your generals to join you Military High Command. This makes things like Fortress Buster go from mid to must-pick because you can then use the general to give all arty battalions +10% or even +15% soft attack.

[@yurivii]

Paratrooper org factor means this: Normally when you drop paratroopers they go to very low org when they land. With glider planes they dont get the org hit when they land. Simple, and useful for paratroppers

[@SadisNic]

I think something you failed to mention here is the Military High Command requirements. Fortress Buster itself is kind of niche sure, but the Artillery Expert is amazing with a 8th level Artillery expert providing 20% more artillery attack and 15% artillery defense ARMY WIDE. Artillery Expert is, as far as I know, the only way to increase the actual defense stat of artillery too. Admittedly kind of useless, but sometimes every bit helps. With a 8th level Artillery Expert, the Superior Firepower and the full arty tree researched, that totals at 70% Line/ 110% Support soft attack with Integrated S&A. Even a 4th level Arty Expert gives an army wide 10% attack bonus. As an added bonus too, with an engineer company, you can increase attack on forts by something 45%. That negates the effect of level 3 forts completely in single combat.

[@marcomorgen300]

The only reason I'd go for the comando trait, would be to get the Special Forces high command trait since I tend to use mountaineers most of the time.

[@vnnwrywn]

Commando is pretty useful for naval invasion IMO. Because when you could land your divisions to flank a port, which means that those division will not get a naval invasion penalty but instead get out of supply penalty (after some time). Reducing it could greatly increase your chance of delivering a successful naval invasion, and with just 40 width worth of division to do the actual naval invasion battle at that. I sometimes even land a medium tank to flank a port, the tanks will get only a negligible amount of out of supply penalty and finished assisting the invasion before getting lack of fuel penalty.

[@PIXTONER2.0_Archive]

Una cosa que muchos olvidan es que, cuando dice ">40%" no se refiere al porcentaje dentro de una división, sino al porcentaje de divisiones bajo el mando del general que son consideradas por el juego como X tipo de división. Esto se puede ver en la pestaña del ejército cerca de la tensión mundial, así, divisiones con 2 tanques ligeros y 6 de caballería son consideradas "divisiones blindadas".

[@magni5648]

Improv expert/makeshift bridges is one of those things that's not that useful most of the time, but then is insanely good when you you do actually need it. It makes breaking a river line sooooo much easier. You can just pop the order and hammer through situations where you'd need to essentially purpose-build Marine divisions otherwise. Plus 10% speed doesn't look like much by itself, but you can go some crazy places stacking speed bonuses on light tank/motorised divisions. 10:50: Note that Panzer Expert applies the bonus to tank DIVISIONS. If your division is majority tanks everything in it gets the bonus to defense, including the motorised/mechanized infantry. Also, a divisional defense bonus also applies to breakthrough IIRC. (Similarily, Infantry Expert gives +10% attack to the whole division, including the artillery.)

[@FrancoisMarchant]

Having a general with mountain specialist is such a blessing if you ever intend to challenge the PCC/Shanxi border of the sino-japanese war. Guerilla fighter isn't really a defensive trait, because if you're defending you usually don't move that much, so generating entrenchment faster is not worth it. Guerilla fighter is there to ensure that those motorized divisions you sent in for your encirclement can get a super-quick dig-in bonus to help them stick around. It's an offensive bonus, really. Fortress hunter combines pretty well with rail-artillery, you can make forts a big joke. It's also surprizingly good for naval invasions because naval forts are pretty common. And against low level forts, it makes your job easier than if there were no fort at all. Ambusher is much better than infantry expert. Not only does it buff both defense and offense (because that's what entranchment does), it plays a lot better with the role infantry is designed for (holding the ligne), and it can scale with entranchment bonuses. It's just great. For amphibious, i think the modifier is applied to Naval Invasions that are issued when the trait is active. So click the power, then draw your naval invasion, and it will calculate a lower prep time. Probing attacks have a very niche use : you can use it to lock ennemies into a certain position while other troops are maneuvering. Those attacks are only meant to delay, and thus your attack score doesn't matter, and you don't lose your entranchment. It's still not great, though.

[@sandercohen5543]

The increased paratrooper supply grace and organization trait is actually very strong. If you have it, you can make big paratrooper divisions that are able to actually fight on their own. This can make fighting in areas where there is no infra or supply tolerable, and it can also be an easy way to take a port, especially when you don't have a navy.

[@Sidedlist]

2:19 I really like ranger cuz I find myself fighting in forest a lot so it’s nice to mitigate the debuffs for tanks in those tiles

[@efulmer8675]

19:50 Using the officer corps spirits you can recruit generals that have the Brilliant Strategist background, allowing you to promote them to a Field Marshal and have the Aggressive Assaulter trait on top of Offensive Doctrine. I would personally put Aggressive Assaulter as S tier because the only downside to it is maybe grinding the Field Marshal.

[@soldieroffortune308]

Aggressive assaulter is bugged. Has been for a long ass time. Check out 71cloak’s video of it where he tests it. It is his generals defense gives breakthrough video.

[@CasualGamingDad187]

So my medic commando companies riding horses during a naval invasion in the winter are bad? :(

[@ghostlyninja125]

recon gives u intel bonuses and i think it makes more troops enter combat initially (instead of 2 out of 3 divisions [1 in reserve] 3 out of 3 might join straight away)

[@louiswinterhoff334]

The thing with terrain traits for myself is that they just take too long to train. Just started a game as Germany, sent some volunteers to participate in the Spanish Civil War, assigned Sepp Dietrich to the army to train up the Cavalry and Panzer leader traits. I was thinking about what other traits I could do, and mountaineer was the terrain trait that I thought I wanted to train so that fighting in them wouldn't be as much of a nightmare. I ended up only getting it trained to a mere 37% by the time the war was done, and it was definitely not worth all the equipment and men I lost.

[@memer7987]

Actually Naval Liaison only effects the efficiency of naval bombardments it doesn't give a bonus towards max damage cap So imagine 1 heavy cruiser gives 5 naval bombardment damage out of a 25 cap, naval liaison makes that 25% more efficient Instead of 5 ships you only need 4 (Its a rubbish perk that only small naval nations might use) F tier

[@bigpoppa1234]

Infantry Leader -> Ambusher then Defensive Doctrine (and Unyielding Defender if they have inflexible strategist) have been my go-to choices when I was playing Soviet Union at higher difficulties. 100% XP from infantry + 15% infantry defense + 30% entrenchment and another 10% defense from unyielding with the right infantry unit and it's really hard to break. The only other trait I've cared about is Logistics Wizard because supply issues are the only thing that annoy me. Adaptable I don't care about unless the area I'm playing is so bad for terrain I can't find any flat terrain to smash with tanks, like south america or asia.

[@CraisenGaming]

The 40% ratio requirement for panzer leader is not the ratio of tanks in the division, it’s the ratio of “armour” division being used by the general

[@intemir]

Also i think probing attack is defensive ability, reducing enemy planning, while keeping your entrenchement.

[@Plumxy]

the one of spain general has the expert delegator in start of the game and its op in 1939 when spanish civil war was over.

[@linconnuquonneconnaitpas7199]

hey there is forget to say that the trait "engineer" allows to affect the general as an artillery officer which obviously allows to make the artillery much stronger that it is for the attack or the defense (5% for the specialist, 10% for the expert, 20% for the geniuses if I am not mistaken) a part ça it is good video as usual :D

[@baldeagle1171]

I won't pretend like my whole strategy doesn't revolve around entrenched positions that bleed the enemy white. Defensive ones when stacked, along with the proper air support, and forts. . I love the D even if it isn't meta.

[@lukebeich]

I wonder if there was a way to unlock earned traits forcefully by paying something (like a lot of CP) then would make more traits viable. Because the issue with "niche" traits is that you earned them after you probably don't need them anymore, since they are "niche" situations to begin with. So maybe giving an (expensive) way to unlock them, could possibly introduce a strategic aspect of it and would make it possible to plan around them.

[@enderoe97]

You do really undervalue movement speed and bonus on land from impov expert and offensive doctrines. For me they are at least B if not A tier. They really help you with pushes, whether you push into enemy or you defend, those 2 traits help you regain some strenght faster and make overruns easier to make or defend from. Naval liason is shit imo. You barely use shore bombardment and when you do its capped at -25%. Shore bombardment traits DO NOT allow you to go over that 25%

[@stevepirie8130]

Weirdly the gliders in RL moved the majority of forces and equipment for Allied Parachute Divisions yet were barely thought of in HOI 4.

[@dudugardus343]

Scavanger traif is broken,enemy will capture your equipment when they are on offensive.Basically works only when u are attacking

[@Vaelosh466]

Infantry Expert is good now since all tank production should be CAS instead so you're using infantry to push enemies and trigger CAS damage, but if you're using tanks infantry should be almost entirely defensive to hold your gains and encirclements so it tends to be trash compared to taking the the entrenchment one. The entrenchment bonus also applies to all units, not just infantry (although I think cav/mot/mech divisions count as infantry so that distinction is kind of meaningless. Also makes infantry expert good for cavalry generals). Invader also doesn't take that long to get if you're doing multiple invasions, they just don't tend to happen that often, but if you're only doing a couple invasions the whole game the reduced planning time probably doesn't matter anyway. I suppose you could grind it against AI by doing invasions onto a port, then leaving the port and letting the AI take it back to do another invasion.

[@josephgraney1928]

Damn. I love improvisation expert. Maybe it's because I'm fighting wars all wrong, but that 10% extra speed on everything makes my infantry divisions faster than the enemy's infantry divisions, leading to waaaaaaay more encirclements and whole enemy divisional destruction.

[@SilencedP2P]

Thx for making this tierlist, im pretty bad at this game so this helps alot!

[@FeedbackIRL]

No problem!

[@georgeofazgad2176]

Camouflage expert is great for the soviets trying to survive the initial German onslaught

[@Not_Evil_]

I was trying to invade Sudetenlands late game, and literally couldn’t do anything, then got fortress buster and went right trough

[@154Kilroy]

They should modify the invader trait to get earned simply by launching and successfully landing a naval invasion. I get why they did it the the way they did, but it kinda sucks that way.

[@kevinmyers8325]

I'm just learning you can scroll down at the general traits screen

[@oscars4608]

Makeshift bridges is EXTREMELY useful against a Soviet player who attempts to hold the Stalin line river. Makeshift bridges + medium tanks, infantry for org and some CAS and it’s like the river isn’t even there.

[@vittoriovenetov9655]

YES

[@edoardobaia7927]

There is a mod that upgrades and expand commanders traits and it's called commander upgrade

[@wazoo41]

defensive cavalry is my go-to as a bigass country like soviets, cheap line holders that move around the front line quickly. i would maybe do cavalry expert one step above the panzer expert, only because sometimes you end up wanting offensive infantry with that artillery, and need line filler

[@wazoo41]

yeah i would say cavalry expert is a solid e tier, quick cheap horsies are good at defending. plus i bust out laughing whenever i think about them defending against tanks, alone.

[@wazoo41]

horsie go prrrffdt

[@Litterbugtaylor]

Fortress butcher also allows artillery expert high command

[@MrRhPlus]

Naval Assault Plan gives you 1.5 times day of invasion preparation each day

[@miknud]

defence stat on generals gives breakthrough i think.

[@jansatamme6521]

unyielding defender is straight up better than aggressive assaulter because it also gives 10% breakthrough for some reason

[@boomknight1015]

With the navel one often I'm using rines with engi getting roughly +75% on attack. When it's nice for faster attacks, often times it's one you sorta ignore unless you get it randomly by accident. Also you bush amphibious when it's not that bad. You're already getting the 50% slash to time base line then you get another 50% rate, With tier 2 landers it often takes me 2 weeks to invade around on the small islands near japan. Also how often do you not have com power stacked up by 1940, anyways? Defense on Cav is nice for smaller nations. What you do is Bold attacker, level one leader then farm inf and cav leader, takes them mid level 3 which they get super fast then you got +10 in each before getting inf leader and cav leader. making it +20 just because. As well as often near maxing attack by level 4-5 depending on rng, they bully around inf vary well how ever. It lets you basically replace your inf with cav. You can still go for morter but I often want to go mechs and for some reason I question if mechs get inf leader which sucks.

[@tristanthebaut9716]

Panzer expert is important if you want your general in your chief of staff I guess.

[@sgarner5]

Thanks Feedback. Appreciate your insight and humor.