Abstract: Best practices for the dictator of a world power, a working paper
As with many nations in AOD, the USSR starts in a very delicate position although it has a huge potential, one can argue even on par with the US (at least during the game’s timeframe). Nonetheless, in order to reach our potential, we need to establish our priorities. From this time onwards I will refer to the USSR in the first person as I am after all, the grey entity that controls everything and everyone.
So, let’s start from the begging, establishing specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound objectives (ring any bells? SMART?).
Targets for 1936 - early 1937: Change ideologies, disband navy and air force, disband all attachments that are not engineers or artillery. Maximize Hawk Lobby Slider in spite of dissent.
Targets for 1936 - 39: Build 5 industrial complex in the largest 20 economic centers. Invest as much as possible in infrastructure in those centers plus in the provinces within the top 20 resource productions list.
Targets for 1939-1940: Build up an army and initiate hostilities against Germany before or during their declaration of war against Belgium.
Targets for 1940+: Although we won’t know our tactical targets until we get directly involved in the war, our long term target regarding armed forces is as follows:
- 252 infantry divisions with artillery brigades that we will organize into 84 armies of 3 divisions each.
- 40 armor divisions with heavy armor brigades and 20 mechanized divisions also with heavy armor attachments that will be organized into 20 armies of 2 armor + 1 mech.
- 100 fighter wings organized into 25 flotillas.
- 48 tactical bombers wings accompanied by escort fighters that will be organized in 12 air flotillas.
- 16 CVs, 32 CVLs and 64 CAs with radar and AAA atachements that will be organized into 4 fleets of 4 CVs, 8 CVLs and 12 CAs.
- An undisclosed ammount of paratroopers, air transport wings, air cavalry divisions, ICBMs, nuclear warheads (we don’t even know what those are yet) and naval transports.
I know these are ambitious numbers but rather than “targets” those are aims, since we haven’t defined a time scope for them. We should “tend” to reach them.
Finally, we have a very long term aim of maximizing our national resources output through infrastructure and build as much industries as we can feed with local raw materials, disregarding puppet “trades”. But I highly doubt that we will reach this goal since they would take years, there are a lot of worthy adversaries out there and the game turns sluggish during later years.
Policies:
- No trade with anyone until the beginning of the war vs. Germany et al.
- Don’t maintain captured provinces that are not Russian cores and that can be liberated, unless the resulting dissent would be too high to be deemed acceptable at the time.
- Check every year for better ministers and change them as soon as possible.
- Sliders priorities: Hawk lobby, Professional Army and Interventionism. Once these are maxed we will try to maximize Open Society, Democracy and move towards the center of the ideological spectrum. These last moves will be made as long as they don’t change the government officials, since the authorities for a non-communist Russia suck (otherwise we would move towards democracy).
Research priorities:
We’ll go shopping for all of these
Some of these
And of course, the cherries of the last course
1st priority: Industrial technologies.
2nd priority: Infantry techs.
3rd priority: Land doctrines. Notice that we will change to grand battle plan aiming to reach infiltration in depth. I know that this does not optimize the Soviet Union’s performance in an early war but in the long term seems to be the best doctrine of them all.
4th priority: Tanks and artillery.
5th priority: Airplanes.
6th priority: Air doctrines and secret weapons.
7th priority: Naval doctrines. We have also change the original one and are aiming to base strike doctrine (this maximizes CVs performance)
We will only research CVs, CVLs and CLs as well as Cavalry divisions in order to get air cav after 1943/4.
We will try to reach infantry, armor, artillery and air technologies one year ahead of their historical year. We will start researching land doctrines one year ahead of their historical year. Even if there are no technologies left to reach in any year, we will no research outside the listed target technologies, I don’t mind suffering some extra penalty.
About the player: Let me get this straight from the start. I suck at HOI, I always did and I don’t plan on changing that, since I enjoy role playing so there is no need for the game engine to force me "optimize the game outcome or die" (which is why I don’t use mods). You will see some role playing as you must have deduced from my sliders priorities, although in a role playing spirit I should balkanize every territory I can, due to performance limitations, I will try to release the smallest possible number of puppets (less countries equals better performance).
Now to the primordial stuff has been taken care of, and as WOPR would say
SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?