Hearts of Iron IV – Beginners FAQ

New Players FAQ

Land Doctrines Explained

• MW: Faster planning bonus, with speed bonus, high org but zero combat stat beyond breakthrough for tanks, comes with 5% coordination. Relies on a very mobile tank force. If the front stalls due to whatever reason, the doctrine is shit.

MW X L has more manpower than MW X R, at the opportunity cost of combat stats. You only pick it because you somehow field a lot of tanks and have no manpower at the same time.

• SFP: High raw stats, designed for people/frontline who/which can never stack up any planning or entrenchment.
• SFP R R: Highest raw combat stats for infantry divisions, zero planning bonus.
• SFP R L: Highest raw combat stats for tanks, zero planning bonus.
• SFP L/R X: For the first split of the branch, left side gives coordination but no org bonus, where as R path gives org and more stat gain from support
• GBP: Overall gives planning and entrenchment and an army spirit for -5% supply consumption. If the front never stops moving for whatever reason, the doctrine loses quite some value
• GBP L: Highest actual combat stats – make SFP looks like shit when it is fully stacked, since it comes with coordination, tons of planning bonus (it can stack enough planning bonus to battleplan for 3 months consecutively before it decays to 0)
• GBP R: Good combat stats for infantry, less planning, doesn’t come with coordination but you get -10% supply consumption bonus and land night attack
• MA: Half the base entrenchment of GBP (but you don’t get faster entrenchment speed), more reinforce rate, army spirit gives 10% HP (which is fairly OP for them because of the way HP works)
• MA L: High reinforce rate, -20% supply, second highest HP per width and some planning bonus. Kinda shit in MP, even in SP it is only decent as SOV GER ENG USA (supermajors) cuz it takes massive industry and tons of manpower to run them. Also only works on large frontline because it relies on reinforce rate to exploit gap on the frontline
• MA R: Highest reinforce rate, highest HP per width, no supply bonus, more manpower. The most economical doctrine when it comes to pure defending. Can it attack? Yes. But only very effectively with large stacks. At any rate, for what is called “human wave offensive”, it takes far less casualties than the name suggests.

What Do I Do About Resistance?

Normal divisions that you move around do nothing for resistance, click your flag and then click occupied territories. Then at the top click the division icon to change the garrison template. Using cav is normally more than enough because it has more suppression than infantry, and is cheaper than armored cars or light tanks.

You can put military police inside the template, but there isn’t really much of a point. It only increases the suppression by a percentage, and you already have enough suppression if you don’t have any big modifiers.

You want to keep the garrison law on civilian oversight if you’re not democratic or local autonomy if you are for the compliance gain. If your compliance is at 0% and resistance is growing just use martial law.

Once it hits 20% use local police force and after a while it’s fine to use civilian oversight or local autonomy. If you’re having resistance issues you can switch it to local police force or something higher, just remember that you take a penalty if you don’t have enough manpower or equipment to supply the garrisons.

Why Does My Naval Invasion Not Work?

You need the research landing crafts, at the bottom of the naval research tab. With the first research done, you can only assign 10 divisions total at any given time, it is not 10 divisions per plan. Otherwise you need at least 50% naval supremacy in each sea zone the plan is going through.

Then you need to let it plan, each division assigned to the plan increases the time it takes to plan by 7 days. Make sure you’re at war as well please.

Why Won’t My Paratroopers Work?

You need 50 transport planes per division assigned to the same plan, so do the math to make sure you have enough. If you have enough, make sure the paratroopers are on an airbase with the transport planes deployed.

Make sure you have at least 50% air superiority through every air zone the plan is going through. If you have all this, make sure you can drop the division. If all else fails, restart your game. Double check you declared war as well.

The little parachute icon has to have a checkmark to be able to be paradropped.

How to Train and Use a Division Convert?

This explains how to train and use a division convert, commonly referred to “converts”. This allows you to fully train a tank division (or other division) with just infantry equipment in stockpile in advance.

• Train and deploy this (make sure the manpower is larger or equal than the final desired division):

• Edit the deployed template from step 1 to the final desired division, but do not press “save”:

• Click “equipment” tab (to the right of division name), and turn off all equipment for this division. Then save this division.

Now in the field, those deployed “train” divisions should all appear to be low strength while being fully trained, and do not reinforce any equipment.

• Now you can convert any one of those trained divisions in the field into the desired division. This will reinforce the required equipment.

How to Get Planning without Using Battleplan Order?

• Have the relevant divisions under a general, and the general is under a field marshal.
• The general puts a garrison order on a tile of neutral territory (Ex. switzerland or sweden)
• Draw field marshal frontlines on relevant borders. (Can be border with enemy, can also be frontline with teammates or neutral nations)
• Assign a field marshal battleplan from the frontline into the enemy/friendly territory.

Notice that now your divisions then accumulate planning whenever it is on the border. The general is still in garrison mode (72 command limit) and all divisions do not move unless you command them to. All tank micro is conducted under this scheme. Similarly for manually microed infantry.

What about Tank Conversion?

Similar technique can be used to save resources for tank production (at the cost of each final product being more expensive overall):

• Base Line: Base tank with everything identical to the final product, but with main cannon replaced by heavy machine gun. 
• Conversion Line: Convert base tank to final product, i.e. refit the heavy machine gun with the main cannon. 
• Reference Conversion Ratios: Heavy cannon 2 heavy tank with 4x small cannons: every 5 mils on base tank corresponds to 1 mil on final tank

Medium cannon 2 medium tank with 2x small cannons: every 3 mils on base tank corresponds to 1 mil on final tank. 

Sidenote: Conversion can also be used to produce a chassis before a certain technology is ready in preparation. Common examples: Soviet producing heavy machine gun medium tank then changing the whole production line to high velocity cannon 2 medium tank, and converting the stockpile. Allies producing a medium tank, then later changing the whole production line to amphibious tank (converting on the amphibious drive).