The Best Marine Template - With Testing - Hoi4 NSB

Going over different templates and how they stack up against well-planned defenses. What combat width should you go, how much artillery. Do you need amtracks/amtanks. Watch the video and find out.
Twitch.tv/71Cloak
0:00 Intro and some exploits
2:26 Marines Testing
6:40 Amtraks/Amtanks Testing

[@jaxkommish]

At least vs AI, amtracs just wreck Japan. The small armor number is still more than computer Japan can handle. You can invade from Saipan or the Philippines and land next to Tokyo and roll over the whole island. The key is to do it as early as possible, before they can set up for defense

[@71Cloak]

Against the ai you could just use a 9/1 infantry division, you don't even need marines 9 times out of 10.

[@aspielm759]

Frankly I did a world conquest with Germany again (just felt like it) And I simply used my 33 width medium tanks… Just use Supply drops, CAS and TACS With landingcrafts and all that but seriously, you could do that shit with literally anything. AI really isn‘t much of a challenge eventually

[@jaxkommish]

@@71Cloak Yeah, it is fun though to punch with fewer, more elite compositions

[@jaxkommish]

@@aspielm759 True, the you can beat the AI eventually with almost any build as a major. I do like trying out lots of different combos though, and a fun meme is worth it sometimes

[@javierperalta7648]

I've seen my puppets land their trash divisions on Japan and conquer them before I send my own invasion force (also this was during the very late game, so Japan had a lot of time to set their defences). The AI is so bad at defending from naval invaisions that it doesn't matter what you do, you still win.

[@artmaker123546]

Great video! Although i think you missed something. You can get planning with no exploit on naval invasions by utilizing the "tip of the spear" army command idea. It gives you planning factor +20% up from 0% on naval invasions, meaning you get planning at a slower speed but you can get full planning :)

[@71Cloak]

I just checked and found a bug. It does give planning bonus but it doesn't work with staff office plans. It would take 100 days to get to 40% planning bonus. Useful if you are preplanning an invasion pre war at the very least.

[@artmaker123546]

@@71Cloak Yeah you're right about that. I mean D-Day IRL wasn't planned in 14 days as it is in hoi4 :)

[@egesisli5694]

love your channel so much, i dont even play hoi anymore but your tutorials and playtests are delightful to watch

[@mountaindew418]

tbh it's the best informative channel about hoi4. i usually can't watch videos with that much information because it gets really hard to process everything.especially when english isn't your main or second language. but somehow i can understand everything clearly and not be bored. that's impressive. you are cool!

[@cleo4922]

Look at the factors and the stats, man’s putting hours testing out his math, turning strategies studying hoi anatomy pumping max factory capacity. If this man you decide to play, Your state’ll be nuclear decay. This man don’t need an attaché, Grinding his experience is his game.

[@commissarkordoshky219]

nice

[@weareeverywhere8851]

I still always make 40+ widths since you are bottlenecked by the naval invasion cap. 42 widths let you launch more powerful naval invasions in one go.

[@f-35enjoyer59]

Doesn’t make much sense why it’s by division and not by battalion.

[@cisarovnajosefina4525]

@@f-35enjoyer59 true

[@dutchrjen]

@@f-35enjoyer59 Or really by weight. Weight on ships makes the most sense.

[@oldpersonmc18yearold46]

planning bonus "exploit" is allowed in 99% of MP games, special forces exploit is also tolerated in unmodded games but some better rulesets put a cap on it (i.e. "24 SF divs max").

[@GeeseAreDeadly]

Thank you for this guide, ive been following your guides and have gotten a lot better at HOI4, but there is still one issue i have and that is micromanagement/combat. When i try to play out of your guides i struggle alot in combat and get stomped on by the ai. Even when having green air I struggle with breaking through. It would be nice if you made a combat guide, possibly a micromangement guide? as i struggle with that.

[@Steyr32]

Tanks

[@TheMelnTeam]

You can also just swap 2w cav slam to 50w infantry. The empty battalions count as deployed so if increases your cap.

[@71Cloak]

They will take manpower and any spare equipment though.

[@TheMelnTeam]

@@71Cloak Sure, but only for as long as you have them. For this one, you just make 200+ 2w, convert them to 50w, make however many marines/etc you want, then disband the 50w. Yet another method to do the same thing, break special forces limits lol.

[@UNiTL337]

Do a video on the exploit where you convert your veteran divisions into another template while keeping the veteran status.

[@iannoyed3684]

They also have a great use as the Germans because you get a 1 year ahead of time bonus you can research mech 2 and get Amtrak 2 at the same time they make breaking the river line a lot easier since you would actually get a bonus for river attack

[@71Cloak]

While amtracks would be useful in that situation germany gets no such ahead of time bonus. I think you are thinking about horst.

[@Jointorino]

@@71Cloak If you do the "Army Innovations 2" focus, you get 100% bonuses for tanks, which can also be used for mech or armored cars.

[@shoppingtrolley4305]

Do motorized/mechanized bonuses apply to amtraks (f.e. from advisors/tech). Inf and special forces do apply right?

[@alptekinhac3682]

You talked a lot about MP. I think your marines should have (usa & uk) at in them because you will go against germans. Why did not you test the division that you used in Usa mp video, i believe 8 infantry 4 artillery 1 at 29 width. I like this division.

[@jasonhw00]

I use 8w marines with supp art, engineers, rockets and flame tanks for island hopping; of course single player only. Its the free templete that works with 6 divisions of 4 batts for the 24 cap.

[@javierperalta7648]

Amtracs by themselves might be bad but if you use marines instead you don't get the speed bonus. I use Amtracs+Medium amphibious tanks with Medium howitzers if possible. Otherwise just regular marines+Medium amphibious tanks, but they are slow.

[@galivg3538]

if some mf has the brain and industry to pull off the 400 marine div exploit in my multi game he can have the whole lobby, mans won the world before we started, ggwp

[@FlamingTM]

Usually force attack is used with naval invasions, how would that change the outcome for the marine templates in this case?

[@aspielm759]

Quite frankly the armor stat and the amphibious chassis needs some more tweaking, balancing or even reworking

[@noela3039]

Do you recomend using 10w in all divisions including divisions that are ment to atack like tanks divisions?

[@ZeAshTonz]

Tank divisions should be higher widths because they’re all about using high stats to break through infantry lines. Small tank divisions aren’t optimal. 10w infantry takes the least combat width penalties but they also lose the most equipment and manpower so they’re not necessarily the most cost efficient. You’ll have to play the game and decide which is best for your purposes.

[@trikmandularlgaming2026]

for singleplayer, 10w are unstoppable. add support aa, rocket arty, arty, log and eng. you can conquer the world with 2 full armies of these bad boys

[@Triumph633]

I think many people forget that flame tanks and engineers give bonuses for amphibious assaults. Either go Marines + Flametank + recon tank + Engineers or Marines with Heavy tanks or go full bananas with armtrac, marines, amphibious tanks + flame and engineers. The amphibious combat bonus on my giga divisions is 188%, you cant really lose with that... Im playing with expert AI and I invaded england with 20 divisions, 8 marines + heavy tanks and 12 giga divisions with everything (marines, amp tanks, armtracs), all either 33 or 43. I invaded one of their channel ports and the combat started at 97% green XD. 188% + green air + cas + shore bombardement is basically cheating. but so is killing 1200 ships while only losing 35 I guess.

[@pimmelfischli]

For a Marine template that can actually land in normandy what you want to do is 1. go GBP left side because of the breakthrough that it gives 2. get Mot. Rocket Arty (Katyushas) and ideally Rocket Arty tech 2 3. for the Template you go 4 mot. rocket, 4 mot. anti tank, rest marines until 40 or 42 width 4. for support you get max breakthrough flame and recon tank, engineers, anti air, rocket artillery why do this template? Because you want breakthrough above everything else when trying to naval invade. The mot. anti tank provides some extra breakthrough but is most important to actually hold the beaches when germany comes down on you with tanks and ofcourse CAS is probably the most important thing in the whole game so having those is nice as well

[@71Cloak]

So I just loaded up the save and gave it a go with marines and then with amtracks using your divisions design. Both failed to land and it wasn't really even close. France's average org was still over 70% both times.

[@pimmelfischli]

@@71Cloak interesting, this is the standard template that everyone uses in the MP games I am in to land for dday against bulgarians that can get much higher entrenchment. Did you test with force attack as well? COnsidering your tests it's probably force attack and CAS that make the biggest differences

[@mahadbilal6996]

@@71Cloak did you use cas 3 or tac 2s and force attack? that divison is best to beat bulgaran dday wall in HIST Vanilla

[@71Cloak]

@@mahadbilal6996 none of them had that. And yet the 10 widths and amtanks still landed.

[@warrick1280]

Hey what’s a good combat width for single player with the ratio of inf and art

[@ignasanchezl]

I had made some 4kmh basic amphibious tanks with marines

[@raskimarraskimar8360]

I did the same template but my Amphibious Tank/Amtrack division have only akout 26 org, yours have over 33, what could be reason for that?

[@dr.brigh0275]

for marine templates i usally use 6 marines 2 amtracks and 2 light amtanks

[@Pompomatic]

So smaller marine divisions are better. Then how about 9/11/13 width (inf + 1 artillery)?

[@FLUX.2226]

Why the logistics company? So that you can invade a low supply port and still hold against a counterattack?

[@localman9063]

How tf is everyone keeping track of these in multiplayer? It just looks so easy to get yourself banned from doing something innovative, only to learn it was designated as a banned exploit.

[@rikai5344]

Easy: Use common sense. Planning a land assault on Vichy Corsica shouldnt yield you the ability to stomp Gibraltar.

[@ethan10sam]

If you're up to it, could you please make a guide on espionage? I recently purchased La Resistance and have been quite confused with it

[@thekommunistkrusader3921]

I can try to help explain it Starting off you need to use civilian factories to setup a spy agency, you start off with 1 every time. You can get another from an illusive gentleman and one more from getting I believe 4 spy agency upgrades. Spies can start off with certain traits like generals only difference being usually they're entirely random and you cannot choose them, best trait to have is seducer as it's just better but usually any spy will do, all spies also have nationalities, this is important because if you get the localized training centers agency upgrade you can choose what country your spies may more likely come from, those nationalities help your spy from being caught and get Intel faster or do operations better The main things spies can do are as follows. -counter espionage- allows you to use your spies to capture enemy spies within your territory -intel gathering- the main thing you would use a spy for is to get general intel gathering from a region in an enemy country, with enough spies in an enemy countries with all the upgrades for civilian, naval, air and army you can get a very accurate look at the enemy and what they are doing. -quiet intel network- basically once your spies cant get any more intel from the type of mission above, you will see an equal sign next to your spy, this means it's best to put a spy on quiet intel network and if all your regions of spies were connecting you can use a single spy to keep your current amount of intel with almost zero risk of getting your spy caught That's basically what your spies will do. Operations are varied and rather uneventful, for the most part ya wont do many operations unless you need to free a captured friendly spy... then you will need at least 15% intel network in the country and 2 spies available to break them out, the best operation every is trying to get a collaboration government this basically reduces all resistance in enemy territory, ups compliance when taking enemy territory, and lowers how much you have to take from the enemy for them to surrender. Now if you have any more questions please ask I will answer them to the best of my ability, could also add me on discord at TheKommunistKrusader#9695

[@extraburnt1698]

Great video cloak, it would be interesting to see these divisions in an actual mp game. It's too clean too assume no air, navy or similar defensive templates/traits. Hoping to see how these divisions in non plain tiles and AT, maybe on twitch.

[@1stWarlord]

As always great video showing the difference between different templates ! In a real scenario you would have air and shore bombardment. For island hoping in the pacific I tend to do 28 widths since most of the tiles are jungle (3x28=84). Something like 3 arty 1AT or AA and the rest marines. Seeing that your 10w pure marines managed to land I may consider dropping 1 arty and the AA/AT and add 2 more marine divisions and do something like 11-2.

[@LJKGray]

Great to see the template swap exploit still exist. But man, Mp hoi4 got so many rules and I think the number of people got banned is higher than the number of game played.

[@MaxRavenclaw]

Why Light Flame Tanks? Mediums seem to have better bonuses. And why are 10 with marines so good? Shouldn't stacking penalties make them less effective?

[@maximilianodelrio]

As the US against Japan would a 9/3/1 amtrack arty tank division with full support be good? Not from a meta standpoint but rather if it does the job or not especially when landing in the mainland. Air support obviously included. I just like to make My divisions versatile and historical because I don't need a ton of them and I have fun with it

[@71Cloak]

Sure against the ai. The one tanks will make it unlikely that the ai will pierce it.

[@mortalcoil8585]

I use expert ai 4.0 and I don't think it's possible to ever break islands I've tried so hard. I can only break minors

[@MrBandildo]

Are the Amphs Tracks DLC?

[@TheHumaneCrafter]

3:20 Sorry, don’t play a lot of MP, can anyone explain why Italy normally goes mass mobilization right?

[@71Cloak]

There are 2 ways you establish a D-day wall. 1. Italy goes mass assault right and pumps out as much infantry as possible and gets all the reinforcement bonuses allowing the to get into combat basically immediately. or 2. Bulgaria does basically the same thing. Kind of depends on preference.

[@alexmannen1991]

ai rarelu have mega stacks on ports u dont reallu need larger than 10-15 widths marines. i find it better to attack wide and then enricle ports rather than death stacking a single point. also never put artu on main division u lose the amphibious bonus. that 25+ more atk is a loss because u go from 75% atk bonus on naval to 60%

[@javierperalta7648]

it depends who you are attacking. If you are fighting against a neutral nation that you just declared war on, you will definitely see lots of troops on their coasts, especially in the late game. You really need good divisions then.

[@ryanrusch3976]

Wouldn't 32 width marines make the most amount of sense for knocking out provinces like Nantes, Caen, and Bordeaux? 32 width is the max reinforcing width of urban tiles and considering how most players and the AI don't make perfect divisions for every tile it would be a great way to reinforce meme them.

[@71Cloak]

Why land on urban when there are plains tiles on both sides in Brittany to land on.

[@ryanrusch3976]

@@71Cloak because people have defence for plains tiles, they don’t have defence for urban tiles.

[@zeedesertfox7573]

Is it better to do Amphibious medium, heavy, or light tanks?

[@71Cloak]

Heavy tanks are just never worth while they are just too expensive. Light tanks have a hard time getting the peircing and hard attack you need to deal with tanks in mp but can get the soft attack you need in sp. Mediums are able to deal with both infantry and tanks without being too expensive.

[@memeking912]

The 10 width marines are pure marines? Wouldn't adding artillery inside beef them up?

[@71Cloak]

Adding artillery drops their org quite a bit while increasing their combat width meaning less get into the battle. Lower width also abuses the coordination mechanics better.

[@Jose-jw6vi]

Why are 10 width Marines so strong compared to everything else??

[@71Cloak]

Stacking support companies and the enemy is dividing its secondary attacks across 4 divisions.

[@cm01]

if pure amtracks are garbage does the same follow with mechanized? mech 1 seems to be pretty much the same as amtrack 1 besides more breakthrough and hard attack.

[@naoyanaraharjo4693]

Mech 1 are useful to give your tank divisions more armor PDX nerfed the armor reduction motorized batallion gives in a division

[@cm01]

@@naoyanaraharjo4693 im not asking about putting mech in tanks. everyone knows thats a good idea. im asking about a division comprised entirely of mechanized battalions.

[@71Cloak]

I don't think a full mech division has ever been a good idea outside of the motorized rocket artillery divisions. Even then their usefulness was only pushing infantry.

[@artmaker123546]

What if you combine mech and inf in seperate divs? Mech only take hard attack, and inf only take soft attack. So having seperate divs means the enemy can never specialize their enitre army for one purpose.

[@71Cloak]

I think you are forgetting about tank divisions. Tank divisions often time have good soft and hard attack.

[@loxyo3089]

I've a few questions, is putting line AT in my marines a good idea so they can somewhat fight tanks? I usually have 3 line artillery and 3 line AT and 30w marines. Don't Amtracks and amphibious tanks run out of fuel if the battle last for a bit ?

[@71Cloak]

9/3/3 now that sounds an awful lot like a horst divusion to me. In single player you wouldn't really need more than 1 line at. In mp no amount of line at should stop a well built tank fron pushing you. They shouldn't run out of fuel anymore. The lack of supply at sea bug was supposed to have been patch a couple of months ago.

[@loxyo3089]

@@71Cloak Maybe not for the piercing, but more for the hard attack and deal damage, I usually build those while playing the USA, it's really expensive otherwise. And thank you for the info !

[@Trifler500]

What about 8 width?

[@joegrcz7151]

How do you do these tests? Is there a command to turn off the AI?

[@71Cloak]

Yeah. Type in ai. It turns off the ai. The wiki has a list of most of the commands.

[@joegrcz7151]

@@71Cloak almost 2K Hours in the game and I didn't know about this command. Thanks a lot that's gonna be extremely usefull.

[@alexanderholt4679]

Bruh. You dont go SF right left ever that was pre NSB now mobile is king for tanks or you go SF right right for inf. Italy mass mob is also not the “usual” mp doctrine and for japan SF is still king and no 30w is not meta for tanks at all. 42 is most used but 45w is likely most efficient width

[@captaincapitalis1205]

30s are really solid for tanks though. Most of the time tanks fight in plains or deserts anyways, and if they aren’t they have issues regardless of combat width. 42 may have less debuffs if attacking a marsh or mountain, but if you attacking those places with a tank it isn’t efficient anyway. That’s how I see it anyways

[@alexanderholt4679]

@@captaincapitalis1205 as i said 45 is probably still best through it fits into everything 100%

[@cco9162]

why are 10w marines that strong that they get banned? why are 2 10w marines stronger than 20w marines that have artillery? or at 90 combat width 9 10w better than 3 30w?

[@71Cloak]

10 widths have 2 things going for them. A lot of org and a lot of support companies. Despite what people say, org does win you sone battles because it keeps you in the fight longer. On top of that, 10widths have a 9 sup arty per 90 combat width vs 3. So they are still bringing a lot of soft attack for their combat width. Between the two you just overpower the enemy because you have similar amounts of soft attack but double the org.

[@alexanderholt4679]

You dont need reliability on amfibious tanks as you will never take atrition because if you do you cant land and your breakthrough is overkill 1.3k breakthrough against infantry is a waste get more soft attack. The good thing about amfibious hull is you can add 4 aditional machineguns boosting soft attack massively

[@jinstronda2571]

So 10 wids are always op lmao

[@tedarcher9120]

Use armored light tank recon + both arty support companies

[@nickolasdufresne6036]

quick tip for you, meet a proper bulgarian dday wall and tell us how it goes with no planing on naval invasion, what you call ''exploit'' is how the rest of us manage to do anything against players that know what they are doing

[@71Cloak]

Its still an exploit. If paradox wanted you to have planning bonus on a naval invasion they wouldn't have give naval invasion planning a -100% malus to base gain.

[@nickolasdufresne6036]

@@71Cloak well thats just not true, assign naval invasion and click staff office plan, you will see you get full planning within a couple of days, now how cam you say this is an exploit (also i can tell you for a fact that all hist server do not consider this an exploit) Also making comment about paradox design is kinda flawed since paradox has no idea what they are doing who else would have designed this russia focus tree with efficiency cap of 132% and 1940 tools 5 with absolutly mad bonus for combat on core territory through their propaganda poster

[@71Cloak]

@@nickolasdufresne6036 That's wrong for 2 reasons. By default you do not get planning bonus in vanilla on naval invasions at all. If you did it wouldn't be considered an exploit. 2. Staff Office Plan does not work with the planning bonus gain from tip of the spear, the only way to get planning bonus on naval invasions in vanilla. The existence of tip of the spear shows that paradox doesn't want you to have planning bonus on naval invasions which means using a separate order to get it is an exploit. The soviets get the efficiency cap bonus coupled with a reduced efficiency growth to replicate the time it took for the soviet industry to scale up production and how much they managed to produce once they did.

[@nickolasdufresne6036]

@@71Cloak yeah you are actually right on that, people dont really play vanilla hist hoi4, every single hist mod remove that and when you click staff office plan it gives you full planing, anyway, i truly hope for your enjoyment of the game that you dont play against competant bulgaria players then, cause lunching naval invasion without planing against 106% entrenchment full gun 3 full arty 3 bulgarian with grinded general on yugo and greece war sounds like a new level of cancer. each to its own i guess

[@bruhbruh3144]

30w is not tank meta lmao, or meta for any tile even.

[@FurryCruz]

Another exploit video.

[@maxxgrumpy]

stopped to watch on "exploit" word, fkn cheaters

[@71Cloak]

I have never used any of these in a mp game.

[@maxxgrumpy]

@@71Cloak it's ok. I don't like even on SP, people are free to use, I just hate it and don't participate #peace

[@alexmannen1991]

whats ur discord id