In Hearts of Iron 4, division composition is extremely important when it comes to winning battles. What you place inside your divisions will significantly change your offensive and defensive capabilities.
Support Companies are a huge part of the division designer part of HOI4 since they have a separate slot that doesn’t mess with the infantry/tank battalions and that you can use to give the division huge boosts.
Recommended Read: Best Focus Tree in Hearts of Iron 4
With so many choices as you progress through the tech tree, you will often notice that it can be hard to choose those 5 Support Companies.
In this guide, we talk about all the available Support Companies in HOI4 and decide which ones are the best for your divisions based on what you want to do with them.
Table of Contents
Support Companies Explained
When you create a division in HOI4, you will need to decide which combat battalions you want to use and which Support Companies you want to join them.
The Support Companies are extra battalions that exist only to help the main combat battalions.
In HOI4, you will generally use the Support Companies to gain stats and bonuses that your division would never get without them.
These unique bonuses and advantages can make even some of the worst divisions superior to what the AI will make.
Support Company Types
There are three important types of Support Companies:
- Artillery Companies
- Recon Companies
- Tech Tree Support Companies
Usually, you will mainly have a lot of tech tree Support Companies, with at least one Recon Company and some Artillery Companies if you don’t want to use line battalions.
Artillery Companies will usually have the choice to use normal Artillery, Anti-Tank, and Anti-Air. Usually, Anti-Air is the most useful out of the bunch since you can invest less in your Air Force.
However, line Artillery battalions will always be superior to Support Company Artillery, so you should generally try to get those in your divisions.
For Recon Companies, you will need if you want the boring Cavalry companies, or the more evolved companies that use Trucks or Armored Cars. The better the equipment they use, the better their Recon capabilities.
Though they are part of the tech tree Support Companies category as well, they are a bit more relevant than the rest, considering they have 4 different types you can choose from.
The most important Support Companies are the ones you can evolve through the Research tech tree. These 6 companies are extremely different, and they provide bonuses for various division stats:
- Engineers – Entrenchment bonus
- Recon – Reconnaissance bonus
- Military Police – Suppression bonus
- Maintenance – Reliability bonus
- Field Hospital – XP Loss bonus
- Logistics – Supply Usage bonus
- Signal – Initiative bonus
Best Support Companies in HOI4
Based on the advantages that they offer, these 6 Support Companies are the best in HOI4:
- Light Armored Recon Company
- Engineer Company
- Maintenance Company
- Logistics Company
- Signal Company
- Light Flame Tank Company
Recon Companies
We will first start with the most important and the best Support Company in HOI4 that you should have for all divisions: the Recon Company.
Without a Recon Company in your division, you will most likely get bad rolls in battles and end up losing more troops than you should have.
The Reconnaissance stat is much more important than you would think and you need to always make sure to have it in your division.
When it comes to the Recon Companies themselves, the best one has to be the Light Armored Recon Company. It has the best Reconnaissance stat (+4), along with good Armor and extra Breakthrough stats.
Generally, you should never build divisions in HOI4 without a Recon Company as Support. It doesn’t matter if all you can afford is the cavalry. You should still get it.
Engineer Company
Defense is extremely important in HOI4. Even if you are the attacking party, you will still need to defend various sides of the frontlines, and you won’t always be spamming the attack plans.
This is why the Engineer Company is one of the best Support Companies in HOI4 since it gives you the mighty Entrenchment stat.
Though the Defense stat will usually decide how good your troops are at surviving attacks, the Entrenchment stat will give you an incredible boost that doesn’t compare to anything in defensive combat.
There will be many moments where your troops will have to settle down for a bit before advancing, and the Entrenchment stat will make sure that those divisions can actually keep that territory safe until they advance.
With an Engineer Company in all of your divisions, you will learn that you can keep most provinces safe with just one beefy division instead of 10.
Maintenance Company
Equipment will decide in HOI4 if you win or lose the World War. Usually, players will know they are winning the war with their enemy by checking the Fighting Strength (the orange bar next to the division).
Though Morale and HP are very important, the Strength is usually decided by the amount of equipment that a division has.
If the division loses most of its equipment, it will fight with less than 100% efficiency, making all those nice stats in the division designer useless.
A 30 width division with 10% Strength is weaker than a 6 width with 100% Strength. So, here comes the Maintenance Company, one of the best Support Companies in HOI4, to save the day.
Reliability is a stat that will determine how often equipment breaks down. Now only do you lose equipment while fighting enemy troops, but you can also lose them from accidents and attrition.
To fix this, you can pop a Maintenance Company to increase the Reliability of the division by a flat rate.
You will also gain an increased chance of taking equipment from the enemies with this company in the division, making it even more invaluable.
This also allows you to build Tank templates that lose Reliability in exchange for defense, armor, and other bonuses, because you can get it back from the Maintenance Company.
Logistics Company
Supply is the killer of most armies in HOI4. Attrition can sometimes cause you more casualties than enemy artillery shells. Due to the complicated Supply system, many players have problems keeping their large divisions supplied.
To fix this, you can usually just stick the amazing Logistics Company in the division and lower the general Supply usage.
It will also lower Fuel use, which will become more and more scarce as you progress through the years and WW2.
The Logistics Company doesn’t do anything very impressive. It just offers you a basic bonus that will help you a lot in the long term, especially when you start fielding 50 width divisions with a huge Supply use. That flat -10% you get from the first level of the Logistics Company will do wonders.
At level 4, Logistics Companies will lower Supply use by 40%, allowing you to stack huge divisions on top of the same province without any real problems while also not building level 5 Railways all over your frontlines.
Signal Company
This might be the first time we stumble into a Support Company that is one of the best in HOI4 only in special circumstances.
The SIgnal Company will increase the Initiative of a division, allowing them to join fights and act out their plans faster than the rest.
This is not necessarily very important for all countries and divisions, as it won’t give a huge advantage. The divisions that will win the most from this Support Company are fast, mobile ones.
Tanks, cavalry, and mechanized divisions will gain a lot from a Signal Company, as it will allow them not only to reach battles fast but also take part in them faster than normal.
This helps with reinforcing defensive lines as well as decimating encircled or retreating enemy divisions.
Light Flame Tank Company
The Light Flame Tank Company is the best and most useful Support Company in HOI4. First of all, the Flame Tank will give your division Attack bonuses in almost all the terrain types in the game.
These bonuses will overlap potential disadvantages your division had before getting the Flame Tank and make your squad superior in most terrains.
Second of all, you can personally design the components of the Flame Tank, which means you can give them a huge Armor, Breakthrough, or Soft Attack stats and boost the defensive or offensive capabilities of your division.
Generally, the Light Flam Tank Company will be amazing at making any division a better offensive power and it can also help full Infantry divisions get the Armor they need to survive battles against most enemy divisions with a lot of Soft Attack.
Honorable Mentions
Though these aren’t the best Support Companies, you can still use them under some really good circumstances.
The Military Police Company is relatively useless, as you only need it to keep conquered populations in check. If you are building special Garrison divisions, then they might come in handy.
However, many players usually end up using them wrong and that can cause them more problems than advantages.
The Field Hospital can also be very useful if you have divisions that need to stay at the top of their level.
If you are afraid of losing a lot of troops and also losing division experience, the FH can help a lot. However, that is not usually worth the Support Company slot.
That’s everything you need to know about the best Support Companies in Hearts of Iron 4!
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