Cannot win against Germany as USSR no matter what

By '41 you should have an immense amount of IC if you play it right. Try putting everything except production under AI control and see how it goes, because I don't think it's the game as many people including myself can win against Germany.

You must not be using your army correctly. Here's a post about Secret Master's plan to fully implement Stalin's historical naval expansion plans, and here's his post about how well he did.

What version are you playing Igor?

IgorDraskovic said:

I have played dozens of games and no matter what I do I cannot win against Germany when I play as the Soviet Union. I start the game in 1936 and try to build up my industry as fast as I can. By 1941 Germany outclasses me in every way. They have more doctrines, better infantry, tanks, planes and more of everything. Their IC is over 400 and their leadership at 50. I have tried focusing on infantry, armor and essential doctrines but I still fall behind. How can I win when I start with so little leadership and IC? I really feel like the Soviet Union is not correctly represented in this game. Also, I should mention that I am playing For the Motherland.

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Beating Germany can be tricky at first but once you get the hang of it you should be able to beat the AI almost every time with FTM (if they take the UK it might get tricky).

Don't build too much IC, tech will give you what you need and you can build units faster than you accumulate officers anyhow (which is the key). You need to focus on building your essential backbone for the red army without destroying your leadership. Forget spies and diplomats, put it all on tech and officers. Don't overbuild officer demanding units. Concentrate on militia or small infantry (if you don't want to put research in militia) for holding the rear and armor to boost your offensive capabilities (officer cost is more important than anything else when building your divisions, keep it low). Keep the officer ratio as close to 140% as possible (It's often hard but it's essential to keep a good ratio of officers, anything less than 100% will cost you dearly). Don't produce supplies during the pre-war period. You can trade all the supplies you need and use the IC for better things (like upgrading the Red Army).

Start a war or two during 36-40 and don't waste your officers by trying to end them too quickly (taking losses). War with Finland and other smaller neighbors lets you pick good laws that will substantially boost production and leadership gain.
When Barbarossa happens you need to preserve the Red Army as far as possible (which means giving up ground) until the Germans overextend, winter arrives or both (a fighting retreat is extremely hard if you don't have good morale techs and a good officer ratio).
When the Germans have stalled you need to punish them enough to drain the forces they would have needed to defeat you during the coming summer (this means encircling and destroying divisions, don't get too ambitious though, many small encirclements are easier to achieve than a few huge ones). Rinse and repeat for a year or two until you can turn the table and go on the offensive.

The best gauge of how well you are doing is: how much manpower do you have when Germany declares war? If you have too much, you aren't building enough units to prepare for the war. Also, try reading about the strategies on the wiki. There are multiple ways to conduct your defensive war.

Don't forget that you can just fortify a large line along the Daugava-somethingsomething river (there's only 1 province that isn't covered by the river in the line, so it's very effective) and hold there until you are built up enough to attack.

Take your time as the SU. Pull everything you have back across the first river so your line runs roughly Memel-Slomensk-Kiev-Crimera and just build tons of infantry. You can easily have a decent army (12-18+ divisions) per province and that + the river and good leaders should halt the Germans. At that point I would just hold the line and start building up massive amounts of armour/planes/more infantry before attacking sometime in '43. Then you just need a few big encirclements and your set.

You can also fall back in the north to Leningrad where the front will be shorter and where you Finnish forces can also support you main defence line.

Personally I think a defensive war is much harder than an offensive one. Maybe you should play a few more countries that wage offensive wars before you start on the defensive ones?

MY first and most obvious question is: Are you using AI control?

The reason I ask is b/c even on Very Hard..I've never had the AI give me a challenge. I'd love it if AI actually made it very difficult to win. I mean I could just edit them to have 1000000000000IC and manpower etc, but they always blow it by dispersing divisions everywhere. If you are using manual control just keep falling back and delaying. Avoid encirclements and make a stand near Moscow. That far in they have trouble supplying enough troops to break a well defended Moscow area.

Examples of dumb divisions? I think it would be hard to go wrong with 3 INF + artillery or anti tank guns as SU.

Beagá said:

Examples of dumb divisions? I think it would be hard to go wrong with 3 INF + artillery or anti tank guns as SU.

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Unless you are expecting a huge tank rush, 3xINF 1xART tends to be far better to build than any 3xINF 1xAT. However, no, neither of those untis are bad; in fact, they are very standard as "line infantry" divisions.


There are some obviously crazy setups... 1xMIL 1xSHARM 1xMP 1xENG would certainly be insane.


Other, more "reasonable" looking, but nonetheless iffy divisions, however, tend to end up like this:

A) 2xINF 2xMIL
-- not helped by the fact that some countries actually start *out* with these types of formations. The logic is that the MIL are there as the cannon fodder for the INF, but the reality is that the IC/LS investment to make these isn't efficient. Choose one or the other (INF or MIL), and just go with those. If you already have a number of both, rearrange them into their own divisions, and if need be, put them in the same province (their combined defensiveness/toughness will still be applied as long as they are both in the same fight). the few countries that would benefit from both types at once, unfortunately, don't tend to have the LS needed to keep both researches current, while doing whatever else they need to.

B) 2xARM 2xINF
-- Again, some countries start with things like this, so to the novice, it seems like "if the AI does it, it must be smart". Also, since this gets the CA bonus, it looks liek it's "smart". But due to the INF detracting from the speed of the ARM units, 1/2 of this type of unit's usefulness is being eliminated. If you want to mix armor and infantry, use MOT or MECH, not INF (exception: HARM tends to be slow enough that INF can meld with it decently)

C) 2xINF 2xMOT
-- thank the starting JAP forces for this monstrosity. All of the problems as the ARM/INF combo above, and this unit doesn't even get a CA bonus as a saving grace. When playing as JAP, find your starting MOT brigades, and IMMEDIATELY de-attach them from the INFs.

D) 1xINF 4xART
-- popularized by the forums, this divsions brings a whole lot of pain down on single provinces, when you stack huge quantities of them in a single breaching attack. What is overlooked by many who read this, however, is that outside of the "breach overload" attack, these units have very low individual survivability, are very susceptible to losses by Airstrike, and cause havoc to your supply lines. So unless you have a VERY SPECIFIC plan for these types of nonfrontage-heavy divisions, you will want to stay away from them.

E) 1xGAR
-- another "good in theory" brigade, the concept here is that by lining areas (especially coastlines) with single brigades, you will be alerted to any landing/invasion before the attackers break into your backfield, and since GAR has better defensiveness than MIL (while still being very low on Officer needs), they will hold up "longer". However, their "longer holdout" tends to be on the order of 2 hours, and once they DO run, they will be lost, since their pitiful speed prevents them from escaping before the invaders push just 1 more province. If you want to line a coast for invasion-alert purposes, 1xMIL is a better choice, straight up. GARs are good for provinces that you actualy want to put up a fight at (at which point you want them to have some bite, like 2xGAR 1xART 1xAA), and where retreat isn't really an option (major ports, islands, and placing single GARs inland on IC/resource heavy provinces to prevent a bunch of 1xPAR auto-captures). However, due to the AI getting flummoxed by shoreliens full of GAR, some people tend to use this as novice GER players, see it work, and then become attached to them.

F) 1xX 1xMP
-- as of this version (3.05), you cannot reduce the revolt risk in Annexed provinces, which means the only use MPs have is in "occupied" territory with high-revoltrisk laws passed. Not that they AREN'T good in those situations, mind you, but those situations tend to be so few as to make widespread MP building a bad idea.

G) #xX, 1xENG
-- ENG are really good at helping in VERY SPECIFIC instances. Across rivers, into forts, into jungle/marsh... however, the number of times you will actually have to do that is low enough that putting ENG into your divisions organically is a major drain on resources. Having a few ENG in, say, your HQ "divisions", which you then split off and reattach to divisions that will be -making- these types of attacks, is a good idea, if you can handle the micromanagement. But if you DONT like that level of micromanagement, don't just "add ENG to everything". It's far too huge a drain.

H) 3xMAR/3xMTN 1xART
-- While DEFENDING, the ART mixes nicely with these specialized divisions. However, when ATTACKING, the ART gets substantial penalties in the types of provinces these untis are designed to attack *into*, making them a REALLY bad expendeture of resources. And since most people don't *defend* with MAR/MTN...

F) 3xMAR 1xENG
-- MAR already have a zero (with tech) penalty on amphibious assaulting. The only time you should consider ENG to go with them is if you are planning to amphibiously assault someplace with a high Fortification presence. Otherwise, if you just want more "oomph", forget the ENG, just add another brigade of MAR.





Do note that the above divisions are "iffy" to create, but that doesn't mean they aren't "effective". Just that a lot of the "less common" creations tend to require specific knowledge of the game, and specific world situations, to be worth their cost.

Superb advice gentlemen. Do you want borscht or cookies as reward?

Interesting points about heavy and super heavy armor, looks like those are pretty crappy then. Even putting self-propelled artillery or assault guns is not good then?

i would personally like vodka as a reward, but i didn't do anything for SU i just use tons of INF as stated earlier and then in '43 i launch a massive armored/mot offensive that breaks the back of the under supplied axis troops who have been in a kill-all match with my infantry and AT units as well as being hit by my tactical bombers... i find the SU very easy to play, i support the idea to forget about diplomacy and espionage and just focus on officers especially - officers officers officers, and if i forgot to mention - officers

GFM

Beagá said:

Superb advice gentlemen. Do you want borscht or cookies as reward?

Interesting points about heavy and super heavy armor, looks like those are pretty crappy then. Even putting self-propelled artillery or assault guns is not good then?

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Well as HARM and SHARM have no negative modifiers when defending (so far) they make excellent blocking forces for areas where you simply need to keep the enemy away. Put them in the mountains with MTN or in the cities and they will not be swayed by anything less than a concentrated air offensive unless completely surrounded. As the SU is a bit short on officers it's a valid albeit gamey tactic instead of the infantry spam. You don't even need to research any engine techs as you rarely want to move them if you plan using them for defense.

Under normal circumstances HARM is pretty good but you get more bang for the buck if you put the leadership and IC-days elsewhere. They fill a nice role as batteringrams late game but most Majors simply cannot afford the luxury.

Secret Master said:

The only real advantage is that HARM has a softness of 10. If you keep it pure, any division composed of HARM just stops caring about enemy SA. You can lower that softness further by adding some SHARM (softness 5%!) but now we are talking really silly divisions with hideous costs, lousy terrain penalties on offense unless you are assaulting in plains, and a division so slow that INF can out run it on the march while it consumes enough fuel to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs... again. :wacko:

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In other words, island defense ;p