Paratroopers are the most interesting Special Forces unit in Hearts of Iron 4, as it has a history of being used in an extremely toxic way.
Due to its ability to instantly drop on top of the Victory Points of various countries, instantly making them capitulate, players have started creating new rules to stop others from abusing this mechanic.
Recommended Read: How to Change Country Name and Capital in HOI4
Years later, the AI is smarter, and they finally leave troops garrisoned in their most important cities. However, does this stop us from using Paratroopers? Absolutely not.
In this guide, we will present the best Paratrooper division templates you can use in HOI4 to jump behind enemy lines and cause chaos all around.
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Best Paratrooper Division Templates in HOI4
When it comes to Paratroopers in HOI4, the template can change a lot based on your goals.
If your mission is to just annoy other players, you won’t really need to make anything that interesting.
However, if you want to properly use the Paratroopers and gain a foothold behind enemy lines, we have a couple of templates that will help you withstand extremely powerful attacks.
The Spammer
The most common Paratrooper template in HOI4 is the one that is meant to cause chaos that not even the player can understand.
Due to the low Special Forces limit, players can’t make a lot of Paratrooper battalions.
However, if they make small, 2 width Paratrooper divisions with no support companies, they can spam out a lot of them and throw them everywhere behind the enemy lines.
If your goal is to just use the most toxic Paratrooper divisions that won’t actually achieve anything besides chaos, then you should also press the Equipment button in the division template designer and remove all of their equipment.
This way, you have the weakest Paratroopers ever that won’t actually lose you anything besides Manpower. Still, this type of Paratrooper isn’t allowed in multiplayer games and they wouldn’t likely achieve any incredible results.
And, considering how many transport planes you will need for such an elaborate scheme, we generally don’t recommend this template.
Simple Early Game Defensive Paratroopers
In the HOI4 early game, you will likely have to make Paratrooper divisions templates that are a little bit smaller than you’d like, due to the Special Forces cap.
However, there is still a division that should work well in this circumstance.
The Paratrooper template we are talking about will be a 6 width Paratrooper division with full support companies.
The best support companies at the start to accompany the Paratrooper are Engineers, Artillery, and Logistics.
The Engineers might be the best addition to the squad, as they will increase the possible Entrenchment for the division, allowing your troops to defend better on hostile lands.
Artillery will be important for the increased Soft Attack, and Logistics will help with the lack of Supply.
The general strategy with this division template is that you get these troops behind enemy lines, and you leave them just to defend while the main army advances to their position.
They don’t really have the offensive capabilities to push the line if the enemy’s army comes in full force.
Evolved Paratrooper Divisions
Once you get a bit more tech and increase the Special Forces cap a bit, you can upgrade your Paratrooper division template in HOI4 to a 10 width squad (5 battalions) with Engineers, Artillery, Logistics, Armored Recon, and Flame Light Tank support companies.
The Armored Recon and Flame Light Tank will give you a lot of needed Armor and Defense to hold the line.
You should make sure that, when you design the Flame Tank, you give it as much Armor as possible. This will help a lot and will give you advantages on most terrains.
The Armored Recon will also increase your Breakthrough and Piercing capabilities, making most divisions a lot easier to get through.
If you build your Paratrooper division like this and manage to send a few of them behind enemy lines, you might actually be able to push with them.
The Real Paratroopers
The most powerful Paratrooper division template that you can make will keep all the support companies from earlier and will increase the number of Paratrooper battalions to 10, reaching 20 width.
With around 12k Manpower, this Paratrooper template will be almost as strong as a normal Infantry division.
If you also couple the division with a special general that has the Paratroopers trait, they will fight at full supply for a really long time behind enemy lines.
Since you need at least 50 transport planes per Paratrooper division, using the largest possible template will be the most efficient thing you can do production cost-wise.
The only problem is that you will need to help them out at some point.
However, this division should be able to hold the line for a long time until you come to save them.
Just make sure to drop them in such a way that they have space to retreat in case they lose a battle. Forming a blob of Paratroopers is better than conquering a line.
That’s everything you need to know about the best Paratrooper division templates in Hearts of Iron 4!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
