Plans for 1936
NOTE: Pics will be coming as soon as I can find them. I thought that they'd be in the 'Screenshots' folder but I guess that was awfully naive of me to think it'd be that simple. If anyone can help me out I'd appreciate it.
Initial Production Orders
After some deliberation I decide to go with and industrial focus for my research and construction. As mentioned previously, I'm concerned about Germany's ability to outproduce me in '41/'42 and if that happens I feel that I'll lose. Therefore I must try and keep pace industrially, initially by building factories (which I'll place in the middle of the country, far, far away from any potential front line) and later by gobbling up small neighbors. This means I must hope for a historical M-R pact but I'll worry about that later on. I queue up five parallel runs or four factories, using 24.4 IC, which will boost my base score by 20 before the end of 1940. Now this is a fairly small order and I'm probably only hurting myself by doing half-assed like that. But I'm reluctant to invest too much of starting production capacity into industry as it will necessarily mean neglecting expanding and upgrading the army. So a small amount is put into upgrades with the lion's share being divided between my Consumer Goods and supply needs. On to research.
I begin with a meager 15 leadership points a day. This will never do so I immediately switch laws to a large education investment, pushing the total up to 16.5 a day. While not much better I'll take every little bit. Of those, 12 points go into research. The Soviets start with some nice land techs so I figure that just maybe, if I throw everything I've got at it, I can field a fairly modern army. If this comes down to the crunch I will focus on keeping the armored units as advanced as possible while switching to infantry focus to a more quantitative orientation. I split the 4.5 or so left over between officers and spies. Officers are the more necessary of the two but spies also have definite advantages. Besides being so cool ( I really like the new intel system, think it's a huge improvement over all) they can do some very useful things, like lowering your neutrality, raising other nations threat value, and boosting your national unity. Starting unity for the USSR is only 55%. Ideally of course this will never present a major problem as the Germans will never occupy enough territory to pose a real danger. But you never know. I'd be much happier if I could get unity above 80% by 1939. But with such a small investment in spies this will be difficult, and it means spying on other countries isn't going to be too fruitful.
Interestingly, the introduction of NU makes conducting the purges a whole lot more appealing than they were in HOI2. Previously I would never even have considered it, I would just take the dissent hit and laugh it off, then go back to counting my huge number of generals. But now, in exchange for shooting some Trotskyite scum I get 5 points of dissent and a 22 point unity boost. The decision for the purge can't be taken until 1937 but it's given me something to think about.
Diplomacy suffers to most from this intellectual shortage, receiving none of the Soviet Union's best or brightest. Sure, it's nice to waste points on trying to woo Republican Spain into the Comintern only to have them get annexed by Nationalist Spain or, worse yet, join the Allies. But I just don't feel I can justify the waste. Besides, why influence people with diplomacy when you can let your giant army do the talking for you. That's what the "Create Puppet" option if for.
With the way threat works, I've probably doomed myself to a WWIII showdown with the Allies following the defeat of Germany but that's a little too far off to get worked up about.
Next update I'll cover initial research projects in more detail as well as political and intelligence tweaks. And hopefully screenshots.
