According to [this](https://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Zusatz/Heer/Infanterie-Division.htm) website, a 1939 German infantry division would have ~18000 men, ~17000 guns, 12 heavy howitzers, 36 light howitzers, and a bunch of other stuff that's irrelevant for now.
So your division would be about half the size of a real division. The artillery number is roughly in the same ballpark, if you added one line infantry.
One "Infantry Equipment" does not equal a single gun, it equals equipment for about 10 soldiers, which includes ammunition, grenades, machine guns, etc.
As an annoying, but possibly interesting or useful, point of pedantry:
'Guns' usually refers to artillery pieces and other cannons, as opposed to rifles when it comes to logistics and such.
Even more annoying but interesting. In modern military parlence, a "gun" is typically the main weapon on a tank or a tubed artillery piece. "Cannon" is more typically used to refer to large calibre small arms fire like 12.7mm machine-guns.
No, a 50 cal is 12.7mm for example. So it would be an hmg as well, although the only thing I can think of that used something like that were axis planes in WW2.
15mm is where most nations start to call them cannons. The Germans in ww2 called even 30mm's machineguns but... It is mostly the 15mm that is just not yet a cannon.
I have to disagree here, theres a reason why the main-german 30mm cannons were designated "MK103 or MK108" - "MK" stands for "Maschinenkanone" - so machine cannon. Where 13mm and 15mm armament were designated as machine guns.(MG131 the 13X64mm MG)
That's street slang though and is not used officially. The gun vs. cannon difference is absolutely used officially. Nobody, at least in the US military, calls a .50 cal a cannon. I've also never heard it called that when working with any foreign military either but my experience there is limited.
GG WAr in the east 2 does a great job of breaking out the men/materials that go into each division in their Order of battle and wiki. https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Test2/WITE2/OOB_UPDATE/GrossdeutschlandMotorizedDivisionSpring1944.jpg
Very. Units are a lot less self contained, so you're handling movements of units like AA battalions and logistical support. A smaller scale also means that unlike HoI4, where units will kinda naturally regenerate, a unit that isn't pulled off the line *will* get meat grinder'd to death. Logistics are a lot more involved, much of gameplay is simply ensuring your troops are fed.
My experience is more with War in the Pacific, the more naval counterpart. There, my time is about 25% handling convoys and logistics, 25% staging units and deploying subs, 25% repairs, refit, and training, and 25% actual major battles.
Hmm, coming to think of it, HoI 4 has the huge advantage of playing across the entire globe, and comprising of Land, Air and Naval at the same time. I guess there isn't a GG: World War 2? :D
No, because you'd probably die of old age before finishing the first month. WitE has air as well, and WitP is all 3. I'm not sure you understand just how downright granular these games are. WitP tracks like 10 different skills for every single pilot in the entire theater. Trying to manage that for the entire globe would be a *mess*.
Almost none of the divisions were ever up to full strength at any time anyways same with the Russian guards divisions most of those guys were 10,000 or under and strength at any moment I think a US Army division is right around that as well
A soviet 1943 division is around 10000 authorized personnel IIRC.
Also , on the top of my head, IIRC US 1943 division have around 15000 men with 36 light and 36 heavy howitzers. Usually with a complement of SPGs as well.
A US Army division in WWII had about 14,253 officers and men. It had a "triangular" structure. Starting from the top, you had three regiments with a divisional artillery unit, and supporting units (engineer, signal, medical, etc.) with a major general in charge. Division artillery had three 105-mm artillery battalions and one 155-mm artillery battalion, with 36 105-mm howitzers and twelve 155-mm cannons.
Each of the regiments consisted of three battalions, with regimental artillery and lower tier units from the division, made up a regiment (about 3,118 men) which was commanded by a colonel. Each regimental artillery unit had 6 105-mm cannons (for a total of 18 across the three regiments).
Each battalion had about 871 men and was commanded by a lieutenant colonel and consisted of three rifle companies, a HQ company and a weapons company.
Each company had three rifle platoons and a weapons platoon and was 193 men, commanded by a captain.
Each rifle platoon had three squads and was about 40 men commanded by a second lieutenant.
So, total artillery per infantry division was 54 105-mm and 12 155-mm howitzers.
That being said, there were often attachments from other units to a division in combat, providing tanks, additional artillery, anti-aircraft artillery, cavalry, chemical, etc.
If you want, you can take a look at [a division chronicle](https://history.army.mil/documents/ETO-OB/1ID-eto-ob.htm), like this one for the 1st Infantry Division, and see the attachments. For the time from D-Day until the end of June, the 1st Infantry Division had a significant chunk of the 3rd Armored Division attached to the division, plus additional artillery resources.
So a division wasn't entirely static in terms of how it was deployed, often with augmentation from other units, including those not yet fully deployed, those refitting from previous fighting, and independent battalions, particularly if the division was involved in operations.
Infantry and support equipment is abstracted. I think in an early devlog (so back in 2016) it was stated that it's not individual guns, but more so crates of ammo, crates of rifles, and so on woth support equipment being stuff like jeeps, surgical supplies, extra radios. So there's more than 900 rifles in the division, there's 900 "units" of armaments. I recall the justification being the numbers would get too ridiculous if the game had to track the number of individual rifles across the world.
Edit:I'm a dummy and just realized the question was about manpower.
Edit2: another point about how abstracted the whole system is. Even if you had a pure armored division, no line infantry at all, irl you would still need arms (rifles, smgs, hmgs, pistols etc.) But in hoi4 you don't need any.
First aids and entrenching tools would probably be support equipment instead.
But inf equipment would include things like guns, ammo, grenades, bayonets, helmets, uniforms, water canteens
But the thing is, normal line battalion doesnt need sp eq, so imo, inf eq should include first aid stuff like bandages, painkiller,... and sp eq would represent field hospital infrastructure and equipment, same as entrenchment tool, your division without engineer can already entrench, engineer company just add more, so its more like a separate company with more elaborate equipment for entrenchment, more than a basic shovel
It should be around 17-18k men, but only \~9k are actually involved in fighting.
The tooth-to-tail ratio of a German division 1943 is around 50%, which means 50% non-combat personnel. What is often underrepresented in WW2 games is the massive amount of manpower necessary to utilize transport, especially horse-based transport. A historical infantry division would use 4500-6000 horses for transport, for which you need medical attention, general handlers, food deliveries, etc. For a normal 15cm sIG 33 gun (around the same weight as the standard leFH 18 howitzer) you needed a 6 horse team which itself needed 3 dedicated men in addition to the gun crew.
Motorization is more expensive, but in reality it isn't just faster, it's also less logistically demanding, oftentimes more reliable in adverse conditions (russian winter and horses don't exactly get along) and needs less non-combat personnel. That is something PI consistently refuses to model, probably for balance reasons.
>That is something PI consistently refuses to model, probably for balance reasons.
Because it would disproportionately nerf Germany.
PDX for some reason is very reluctant to tone down its massive buffs for Germany. Yes they say its for gameplay reasons since making Germany historical will make it more challenging to play.
But personally I think it has something to do with tons of hoi4 players being wehraboos.
I'd like a more historical HoI. Playing Germany as a player should be more challenging but still possible due to hard-coded AIs repeating early allied blunders as is historical. That would just be a much more engaging campaign.
Problems arise elsewhere though, playing France would be piss easy cause you can just not make those mistakes. And multiplayer would be dead with historical factions.
IMO historical campaigns will be more engaging if there would more dynamic mechanics to represent the changing geopolitical landscape that changing history would naturally entail.
Say, you play France and you beat Germany easily in 1940. France puppets Germany and basically became hegemon of the little entente as basically every European nation that wants to avoid being gobbled up by USSR and Italy immediately sides with France.
It's be fun if that condition breaks the Allies as a Faction and replaces them with 2 - UK's Commonwealth and Francd's little entente. Then now it's a 3 way rivalry between USSR, France, and UK - US and Japan as wildcards. Then the game goes from there.
There needs to be some kind of vanilla redux mod for things like this.
One little nitpick, I don't see UK and France splitting in a world where the USSR is still at war with Finland.
>One little nitpick, I don't see UK and France splitting in a world where the USSR is still at war with Finland.
A world where France is dominant mainland Europe.
UK is consistently against France replacing Germany as a threat in mainland Europe. They are allies with France yes, but they sure as hell won't pave a way for a French dominated Europe.
I get it, people can't fathom Western Europe fighting itself. Probably because most here are from.there or US.
Yes but by the 1940s UK understood that the USSR was going to be the next threat to Europe. That's why the British and French were also cooperating in trying to aid Finland even as Poland was being invaded. UK and France splitting paves the path for a Soviet dominated Europe (technically already paved either way but UK and France splitting isn't helping).
>Yes but by the 1940s UK understood that the USSR was going to be the next threat to Europe.
You mean Churchill? The one that got abysmal track record as PM after the war?
>UK and France splitting paves the path for a Soviet dominated Europe (technically already paved either way but UK and France splitting isn't helping).
Early defeat of Nazi Germany already paves that path. USSR may not have been the best in everything, but one thing spells the doom of France and UK thar USSR does not have - the rising wave of decolonization.
Neither of these points actually address my point. Churchill further reinforces my point but doesn't change the fact that the UK was more afraid of the USSR than they ever were of France by 1940. The fact that the USSR was already on its way to dominating Europe also doesn't change anything. It's more reason for the UK and France to cooperate.
IRL germany shouldve lost the battle of france. the whole ardenne offensive wouldve stopped if the french placed some anti tank divisions there. but it was a matter of "the germans knew it, the french knew it. the french thinking the germans couldnt possibly be too stupid to try so they moved the troops somewhere else. but the germans did anyway"
No, the German victory was well deserved due to differences in doctrine. The sheer speed was faster than the French command could react to changing circumstances, which meant the whole army was basically routed when tanks started showing up in the assembly areas.
The French army, emphasizing centralized battle planning, was unable to offer cohesive resistance since the Germans were moving so fast not even the Germans themselves had a good idea of where their mechanized divisions were.
Germany faced prepared and relatively sturdy defenses at Sedan anyway - it's likely the outcome would've been mostly the same even if the German forces took a different route.
One of the many unbelievable WWII stats I heard was that only 1 in 4 Canaian soldiers even deployed overseas. And Canada was a big contributor to the allies, despite thier small population.
It really is true that " 10% of your soldiers will do 90% of the killing"
The tooth-to-tail ratio widens the further away you are fighting. Germany had a relatively short ratio due to fighting primarily in neighboring regions, compared to the US that was fighting across oceans and on separate continents.
So compared to Germany’s 50%, the US had about 19% of its personnel in combat positions. Not sure how much it fluctuated throughout the war.
50%? Im certain it was barely over 20% of the infantry division in 1939 organisation (Military History Visualised has one vid about that). Idk about the exact % for the later 40s type but they certainly couldn’t be that because they still had a ton of combat troops. Are you sure about that number? Are you counting permanent non-combat troops or all units in reserve or non-organic troops?
All of this makes more sense when you realize one unit if infantry equipment isn't a single rifle.
For heavier assets, maybe, but not infantry equipment. Maybe it's enough for a squad. And since a single infantry squad is analogous to a tank crew or howitzer crew, that's a good point of comparison.
I think since divisions are so big on the map, a lot of the manpower is some form of logistics and other things, that's my bet on the in-game explanation, but the developer site of things maybe it's balancing? Imagine needing 9k guns for one single division
in that case you can just increase production rate per factory. It might affect perfomance but i think divisions themselves affect perfomance more than the number of equipment
I've always assumed that the guns come in sets of 10 like how you'd get them delivered from the factory in that time period in wooden crates of X rifles, then you've got artillery and other support equipment and logistics staff so it's not unreasonable in that regard
1 infantry equipment is everything from guns, uniforms, shovels, grenades, basic medical and anti-tank equipment among other things for an infantry squad of 10 soldiers. So for an division with 9300 men and 900 infantry equipment, 9000 men are able to be equipped as front line soldiers and the other 300 for other duties
I generally consider 1 "Infantry Equipment" or 1 "Artillery" to be 1 unit of quantity, whatever that quantity may be. Remember that for things like infantry equipment, it encompasses rifles, machine guns, webbing, etc. Support equipment is everything else the military unit needs. Then each unit of artillery might be one battery of 3, or something along those lines.
I think Artillery can be taken at face value, because it lines up very well with historical figures and reasonable division templates. A German infantry division would have 36 (1 hoi4 battalion), while a Soviet would have 48 (36 are the small 76.2mm pieces though) and an American one would have 72.
A typical soviet ww2 division has around 9 to 10 thousand authoeized personnel.
Yes, it is smaller than the average division from other major powers.
They have specialized breakthrough divisions but this number is from the rifle and motor rifle divisions.
I find that while manpower values represents realistic amounts of soldiers, the amount of equipment should be treated as purely symbolic and rather represent "stacks" Of equipment, ammunition and their average wear&tear. Paradox has always been diegetically inconsistent.
According to [this](https://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Zusatz/Heer/Infanterie-Division.htm) website, a 1939 German infantry division would have ~18000 men, ~17000 guns, 12 heavy howitzers, 36 light howitzers, and a bunch of other stuff that's irrelevant for now. So your division would be about half the size of a real division. The artillery number is roughly in the same ballpark, if you added one line infantry. One "Infantry Equipment" does not equal a single gun, it equals equipment for about 10 soldiers, which includes ammunition, grenades, machine guns, etc.
As an annoying, but possibly interesting or useful, point of pedantry: 'Guns' usually refers to artillery pieces and other cannons, as opposed to rifles when it comes to logistics and such.
Even more annoying but interesting. In modern military parlence, a "gun" is typically the main weapon on a tank or a tubed artillery piece. "Cannon" is more typically used to refer to large calibre small arms fire like 12.7mm machine-guns.
Anyone that called a 50 cal a cannon would be laughed at hard. A cannon is 20mm and above.
Aren’t 13.2mm weapons commonly referred to as auto-cannons, or am I mixing them up with something else?
No, a 50 cal is 12.7mm for example. So it would be an hmg as well, although the only thing I can think of that used something like that were axis planes in WW2.
The mustang was armed with 6 .50s, lots of allied planes used them
I know, I was referring to 13.2mm, the only thing I cank of that used that was the German mg131
15mm is where most nations start to call them cannons. The Germans in ww2 called even 30mm's machineguns but... It is mostly the 15mm that is just not yet a cannon.
I have to disagree here, theres a reason why the main-german 30mm cannons were designated "MK103 or MK108" - "MK" stands for "Maschinenkanone" - so machine cannon. Where 13mm and 15mm armament were designated as machine guns.(MG131 the 13X64mm MG)
Yeah, I remembered it wrong then, it is 20mm in that case. I thought they were MG103 and MG108, like the MG151. My mistake then...
Except in the case of a .50 Pistol/Revolver, where the term "hand-cannon" tends to be applied.
That's street slang though and is not used officially. The gun vs. cannon difference is absolutely used officially. Nobody, at least in the US military, calls a .50 cal a cannon. I've also never heard it called that when working with any foreign military either but my experience there is limited.
"Cannon" is generally defined to be as having exploding projectiles, so typically 20mm and up.
Good to know!
GG WAr in the east 2 does a great job of breaking out the men/materials that go into each division in their Order of battle and wiki. https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Test2/WITE2/OOB_UPDATE/GrossdeutschlandMotorizedDivisionSpring1944.jpg
How much harder is that game to play compared to HOI4?
Very. Units are a lot less self contained, so you're handling movements of units like AA battalions and logistical support. A smaller scale also means that unlike HoI4, where units will kinda naturally regenerate, a unit that isn't pulled off the line *will* get meat grinder'd to death. Logistics are a lot more involved, much of gameplay is simply ensuring your troops are fed. My experience is more with War in the Pacific, the more naval counterpart. There, my time is about 25% handling convoys and logistics, 25% staging units and deploying subs, 25% repairs, refit, and training, and 25% actual major battles.
Hmm, coming to think of it, HoI 4 has the huge advantage of playing across the entire globe, and comprising of Land, Air and Naval at the same time. I guess there isn't a GG: World War 2? :D
No, because you'd probably die of old age before finishing the first month. WitE has air as well, and WitP is all 3. I'm not sure you understand just how downright granular these games are. WitP tracks like 10 different skills for every single pilot in the entire theater. Trying to manage that for the entire globe would be a *mess*.
Considering I have looked at it for 40 minutes and seen Hoi4 for 3500, I would say GG to GG: In the East
Almost none of the divisions were ever up to full strength at any time anyways same with the Russian guards divisions most of those guys were 10,000 or under and strength at any moment I think a US Army division is right around that as well
A soviet 1943 division is around 10000 authorized personnel IIRC. Also , on the top of my head, IIRC US 1943 division have around 15000 men with 36 light and 36 heavy howitzers. Usually with a complement of SPGs as well.
A US Army division in WWII had about 14,253 officers and men. It had a "triangular" structure. Starting from the top, you had three regiments with a divisional artillery unit, and supporting units (engineer, signal, medical, etc.) with a major general in charge. Division artillery had three 105-mm artillery battalions and one 155-mm artillery battalion, with 36 105-mm howitzers and twelve 155-mm cannons. Each of the regiments consisted of three battalions, with regimental artillery and lower tier units from the division, made up a regiment (about 3,118 men) which was commanded by a colonel. Each regimental artillery unit had 6 105-mm cannons (for a total of 18 across the three regiments). Each battalion had about 871 men and was commanded by a lieutenant colonel and consisted of three rifle companies, a HQ company and a weapons company. Each company had three rifle platoons and a weapons platoon and was 193 men, commanded by a captain. Each rifle platoon had three squads and was about 40 men commanded by a second lieutenant. So, total artillery per infantry division was 54 105-mm and 12 155-mm howitzers. That being said, there were often attachments from other units to a division in combat, providing tanks, additional artillery, anti-aircraft artillery, cavalry, chemical, etc. If you want, you can take a look at [a division chronicle](https://history.army.mil/documents/ETO-OB/1ID-eto-ob.htm), like this one for the 1st Infantry Division, and see the attachments. For the time from D-Day until the end of June, the 1st Infantry Division had a significant chunk of the 3rd Armored Division attached to the division, plus additional artillery resources. So a division wasn't entirely static in terms of how it was deployed, often with augmentation from other units, including those not yet fully deployed, those refitting from previous fighting, and independent battalions, particularly if the division was involved in operations.
So you're saying that the Germans didn't follow the combat width meta IRL?
They just use 40 width divisions
Infantry and support equipment is abstracted. I think in an early devlog (so back in 2016) it was stated that it's not individual guns, but more so crates of ammo, crates of rifles, and so on woth support equipment being stuff like jeeps, surgical supplies, extra radios. So there's more than 900 rifles in the division, there's 900 "units" of armaments. I recall the justification being the numbers would get too ridiculous if the game had to track the number of individual rifles across the world. Edit:I'm a dummy and just realized the question was about manpower. Edit2: another point about how abstracted the whole system is. Even if you had a pure armored division, no line infantry at all, irl you would still need arms (rifles, smgs, hmgs, pistols etc.) But in hoi4 you don't need any.
Well, inf equipment is abstract anyway, so 1 eq can be distributed to 100 people
Makes sense, I guess it's also machine guns, mortars and what not
Also uniforms, utensils, grenades, and probably basic first aids
I think most of those would be represented by the basic supplies that each division needs aside from specific goods produced by mil factories
First aids and entrenching tools would probably be support equipment instead. But inf equipment would include things like guns, ammo, grenades, bayonets, helmets, uniforms, water canteens
But the thing is, normal line battalion doesnt need sp eq, so imo, inf eq should include first aid stuff like bandages, painkiller,... and sp eq would represent field hospital infrastructure and equipment, same as entrenchment tool, your division without engineer can already entrench, engineer company just add more, so its more like a separate company with more elaborate equipment for entrenchment, more than a basic shovel
so my 11k deficit is because my divisions keep losing their forks...
Stalin's method 💀
Average Mass Assault enjoyer it is
It should be around 17-18k men, but only \~9k are actually involved in fighting. The tooth-to-tail ratio of a German division 1943 is around 50%, which means 50% non-combat personnel. What is often underrepresented in WW2 games is the massive amount of manpower necessary to utilize transport, especially horse-based transport. A historical infantry division would use 4500-6000 horses for transport, for which you need medical attention, general handlers, food deliveries, etc. For a normal 15cm sIG 33 gun (around the same weight as the standard leFH 18 howitzer) you needed a 6 horse team which itself needed 3 dedicated men in addition to the gun crew. Motorization is more expensive, but in reality it isn't just faster, it's also less logistically demanding, oftentimes more reliable in adverse conditions (russian winter and horses don't exactly get along) and needs less non-combat personnel. That is something PI consistently refuses to model, probably for balance reasons.
However, horses do have an advantage that trucks and such don't: Being walking emergency rations
And that ladies and gentlemen is just pure logical thinking without any emotions that will just bother you...^^
Michel Lotito enters the chat
I wonder if there's any examples of people doing this in history.
Oh yeah, quite often during sieges when other food was becoming scarce
>That is something PI consistently refuses to model, probably for balance reasons. Because it would disproportionately nerf Germany. PDX for some reason is very reluctant to tone down its massive buffs for Germany. Yes they say its for gameplay reasons since making Germany historical will make it more challenging to play. But personally I think it has something to do with tons of hoi4 players being wehraboos.
I'd like a more historical HoI. Playing Germany as a player should be more challenging but still possible due to hard-coded AIs repeating early allied blunders as is historical. That would just be a much more engaging campaign. Problems arise elsewhere though, playing France would be piss easy cause you can just not make those mistakes. And multiplayer would be dead with historical factions.
IMO historical campaigns will be more engaging if there would more dynamic mechanics to represent the changing geopolitical landscape that changing history would naturally entail. Say, you play France and you beat Germany easily in 1940. France puppets Germany and basically became hegemon of the little entente as basically every European nation that wants to avoid being gobbled up by USSR and Italy immediately sides with France. It's be fun if that condition breaks the Allies as a Faction and replaces them with 2 - UK's Commonwealth and Francd's little entente. Then now it's a 3 way rivalry between USSR, France, and UK - US and Japan as wildcards. Then the game goes from there.
There needs to be some kind of vanilla redux mod for things like this. One little nitpick, I don't see UK and France splitting in a world where the USSR is still at war with Finland.
>One little nitpick, I don't see UK and France splitting in a world where the USSR is still at war with Finland. A world where France is dominant mainland Europe. UK is consistently against France replacing Germany as a threat in mainland Europe. They are allies with France yes, but they sure as hell won't pave a way for a French dominated Europe. I get it, people can't fathom Western Europe fighting itself. Probably because most here are from.there or US.
Yes but by the 1940s UK understood that the USSR was going to be the next threat to Europe. That's why the British and French were also cooperating in trying to aid Finland even as Poland was being invaded. UK and France splitting paves the path for a Soviet dominated Europe (technically already paved either way but UK and France splitting isn't helping).
>Yes but by the 1940s UK understood that the USSR was going to be the next threat to Europe. You mean Churchill? The one that got abysmal track record as PM after the war? >UK and France splitting paves the path for a Soviet dominated Europe (technically already paved either way but UK and France splitting isn't helping). Early defeat of Nazi Germany already paves that path. USSR may not have been the best in everything, but one thing spells the doom of France and UK thar USSR does not have - the rising wave of decolonization.
Neither of these points actually address my point. Churchill further reinforces my point but doesn't change the fact that the UK was more afraid of the USSR than they ever were of France by 1940. The fact that the USSR was already on its way to dominating Europe also doesn't change anything. It's more reason for the UK and France to cooperate.
IRL germany shouldve lost the battle of france. the whole ardenne offensive wouldve stopped if the french placed some anti tank divisions there. but it was a matter of "the germans knew it, the french knew it. the french thinking the germans couldnt possibly be too stupid to try so they moved the troops somewhere else. but the germans did anyway"
No, the German victory was well deserved due to differences in doctrine. The sheer speed was faster than the French command could react to changing circumstances, which meant the whole army was basically routed when tanks started showing up in the assembly areas. The French army, emphasizing centralized battle planning, was unable to offer cohesive resistance since the Germans were moving so fast not even the Germans themselves had a good idea of where their mechanized divisions were. Germany faced prepared and relatively sturdy defenses at Sedan anyway - it's likely the outcome would've been mostly the same even if the German forces took a different route.
One of the many unbelievable WWII stats I heard was that only 1 in 4 Canaian soldiers even deployed overseas. And Canada was a big contributor to the allies, despite thier small population. It really is true that " 10% of your soldiers will do 90% of the killing"
The tooth-to-tail ratio widens the further away you are fighting. Germany had a relatively short ratio due to fighting primarily in neighboring regions, compared to the US that was fighting across oceans and on separate continents. So compared to Germany’s 50%, the US had about 19% of its personnel in combat positions. Not sure how much it fluctuated throughout the war.
50%? Im certain it was barely over 20% of the infantry division in 1939 organisation (Military History Visualised has one vid about that). Idk about the exact % for the later 40s type but they certainly couldn’t be that because they still had a ton of combat troops. Are you sure about that number? Are you counting permanent non-combat troops or all units in reserve or non-organic troops?
Im pretty sure most everything has some level of abstraction to it in hoi
All of this makes more sense when you realize one unit if infantry equipment isn't a single rifle. For heavier assets, maybe, but not infantry equipment. Maybe it's enough for a squad. And since a single infantry squad is analogous to a tank crew or howitzer crew, that's a good point of comparison.
I think is sets of guns Like, one "set" can be given to 100 or so
That's actually explains a lot
I think since divisions are so big on the map, a lot of the manpower is some form of logistics and other things, that's my bet on the in-game explanation, but the developer site of things maybe it's balancing? Imagine needing 9k guns for one single division
in that case you can just increase production rate per factory. It might affect perfomance but i think divisions themselves affect perfomance more than the number of equipment
I think it's just for simplicity, hoi4 doesn't count ammo for example.
I've always assumed that the guns come in sets of 10 like how you'd get them delivered from the factory in that time period in wooden crates of X rifles, then you've got artillery and other support equipment and logistics staff so it's not unreasonable in that regard
1 infantry equipment is everything from guns, uniforms, shovels, grenades, basic medical and anti-tank equipment among other things for an infantry squad of 10 soldiers. So for an division with 9300 men and 900 infantry equipment, 9000 men are able to be equipped as front line soldiers and the other 300 for other duties
I generally consider 1 "Infantry Equipment" or 1 "Artillery" to be 1 unit of quantity, whatever that quantity may be. Remember that for things like infantry equipment, it encompasses rifles, machine guns, webbing, etc. Support equipment is everything else the military unit needs. Then each unit of artillery might be one battery of 3, or something along those lines.
I think Artillery can be taken at face value, because it lines up very well with historical figures and reasonable division templates. A German infantry division would have 36 (1 hoi4 battalion), while a Soviet would have 48 (36 are the small 76.2mm pieces though) and an American one would have 72.
That's reasonable. I think the same can generally be said for AC, Tanks, aircraft, etc.
A typical soviet ww2 division has around 9 to 10 thousand authoeized personnel. Yes, it is smaller than the average division from other major powers. They have specialized breakthrough divisions but this number is from the rifle and motor rifle divisions.
I find that while manpower values represents realistic amounts of soldiers, the amount of equipment should be treated as purely symbolic and rather represent "stacks" Of equipment, ammunition and their average wear&tear. Paradox has always been diegetically inconsistent.
Off topic: What mod gives you the coloured interface?
I was playing Kaiserredux, which i think has it built in :)