Soviet Union - No Step Back!

[Galandran]

The Soviet Union - No Step Back



This AAR is about the Soviet Union (as you can read in the title). I have been playing for quite a while now, but I am still fascinated when I can play the USSR and fight the Great Patriotic War against Germany.

I will be using semper 2.04 with the diday's mod.
Settings will be on hard, but I edited the static modifiers so to give me a greater challenge. I am not using very hard due to the -40% combat penatly which is not such a great problem concerning land warfare, but with a -40% air combat penalty they will just eat my airforce, nevermind the technology.

Modifiers will be as follow:

hard_player = {
}

hard_ai = {
global_manpower_modifier = 0.8
global_revolt_risk = -10

global_ic = 1.0
global_resources = 0.50

supply_throughput = 1.0
naval_base_efficiency = 1.0

Additionally I will give Germany +100'000 offiziers + 2'000 manpower

Well, I will be micromanaging everything on my own, using the best unit setup I can (in my point of view) whilst using a few things to strengthen me further or give me more advantages. I will not be totally abusing the game mechanics, but you will see later what I mean.

My goal is to survive, then to beat Germany and then (depends on the circumstances) conquer the rest of the world.

If you have any suggestions / remarks / xyz please feel free to post it. I am also no native english speaker, so any advice concerning improving language is also highly appreciated

So let's get started, shall we?

[Galandran]

May the Show start!



The Soviet Union - A country on which the sun never sets.
Filled with quite a few brigades, planes, industrial buildings and a lot of workforce.
Something I really like
On the other hand, what I absolutely hate about the USSR are those hq's, spread all of the country, using up my supplies, officers, manpowers.
So my first task after having started the game is to disband all hq's, leaving me in the end with only one HQ, the STAVKA.







On the other hand, what I absolutely hate about the USSR are those hq's, spread all of the country, using up my supplies, officers, manpowers.
So my first task after having started the game is to disband all hq's, leaving me in the end with only one HQ, the STAVKA.


After having done this, the second exhausting part of playing the USSR begins, reorganizing all those 3inf 1art divisions (and a few other setups) into 2inf xart divisons. It might seem as it would be a never ending clicking, but after I while one gets used to it.







So, now, after having, more or less, reorganized the bulk of my army. I will take care later of the tanks, cavalary, garrisons and armoured trains.

But now let's have a look at the production queue. I am building a lot of artillery to fill up my "newly" created divisions and to give them some firepower. As you can see I am spending all my resources on production and consumer goods. The consumer goods will be lowered when I have the money to enact Consumer Good Orientation. To not let my army starve I am trading with various countries (mainly axis countries as they somehow are always willing to sell supplies)







I am also recruiting (only during the first month) spies and send them to Finland, Estonia, Persia and Turkey to raise their threads. After this first month I will then switch to research. I left all my ministers as they were, cause there were no better options available at the beginning.


Well, after the initial reorganisation and setting up everything, I can finally start.
In November my second serie of artillery production has finished and about 75% of my infantry has been equipped with artillery.
Most of them stand now amassed on the Finnish border, protecting good Russia from the evil Finnish.







Yeah, sure........Protection
I acutally just wanted some land and, more importantly, some law changes







After having declared war on Finland, my hastily mobilised and supplies troops began to advance on 1st of January 1937 into the white forests of Finland, home to alot of trees, bears, other deadly animal and a few Finns, sitting on the top of a tree or ambushing the brave russian Soldiers.







Not as if the Finnish had any chance to win a single battle. And even when they could offer a little resistance, they were quickley spotted the ever active russian Airforce, waiting to bomb them back to the stone age. Russian air superioety was such that even the interceptors could strafe the finnish Infantry.

After having achieved a breakthrough, russian Tankdivisions were then blitzing through the forests to conquer the most important cities and bring the Finnish to their knees. (After having looked through the screens, I realised that I took me 2 months to get me that far. I thought I was way faster. Well, Russian technology and such things can make this happen)







As I wanted to conquer all of Finland (and to get later on the very nice bonus of the Finnish Gulf), I continued the war until .........







TAAAADAAAAA, Victory.

After having secured Leningrad, what will the USSR do?



You guessed right, building Industry......

[Reaganing]

Hey writer of the other current Soviet AAR here. It will be fun to see how another person plays the USSR! Although it looks like you made things much more challenging for yourself. Subbed

[eqqman]

Unless the mod you use changes things dramatically, it seems a poor choice to attack Finland before you deal with the Officer Purge event. Now it will be harder to get rid of that Leadership malus.

[Galandran]

@Reaganing: Thanks to you I only came to the idea of playing and writing about the USSR :-) So I'll be following yours aswell.

@eqqman: I am playing SF, don't forget. As far as I know annexing Finland without the event doesn't harm anything. And I think you might be wrong with your assumption that it was a poor choice anyway. Attacking Finland enabled me to switch to War Industry and Service by Requirement, which helps me enormely. I will anyway start only in 1940 to train officers, and at the beginning of the war I might be at 80% which is fine for me. I hope :-)
But we will see

[eqqman]

Attacking Finland enabled me to switch to War Industry and Service by Requirement, which helps me enormously.

If you only had those laws running for 3 months, I'm not sure if it was that helpful, especially if you mobilized and then demobilized your reserves. As I understand it you don't get back all the manpower used when you demobilize, so that could have cost you quite a bit.

[Galandran]

@eqqman: Don't forget, I am playing SF version, not FtM. If I switch laws during a war, i can keep them in peace time. Means I have from now on those laws till the bitter end. And I never thought about the manpower "regain" of demobilisation......But still, it is worth going to war. especially since it will give me a nice bonus in the very near future.

[Galandran]

Peaceful times (at least for the people living in Russia)




In the last chapter I built up the army of Russia and thus raised it's threat against their neighbouring countries, especially against Finland. By doing so I was able to declare war on them within a very short period of time and to enact war laws very early on. After I finished building my artillery I started the construction of several factories


Well, of course, building factories was not all I wanted to do. Using the huge thread I created I declared war on Estonia the day Finland surrendered.
So I sent a beautiful declaration of war to the (already mobilised) Estonians.







Knowing the strength of the Estonian army, I assembled several divisions to advance into enemy territory to guard my border, wait for the assualt of the Estonians and surprise them with a well-directed spearhead deep into their territory. The Estonians, putting great effort into the defense of the border, were daring enemies






After several weeks of fighting (as it was indeed, pesky little Estonians) my hordes overran the stubborn defenders and occupied their country.
And so I expanded my territory by the small stain called Estonia.







I obviously didn't conquer Estonia for the very small amount of mp or industry gain.
One of the reasons I wanted to conquer Finland and Estonia very early on was (apart from changing laws) to get the Gulf of Finland with its pretty 10% bonus in Leadership







After this I stopped my expansion for the moment. I could have declared war on some carribean country to stay at war while keeping heavy industry emphasis, but this is too gamey in my eyes.
In June 1937, my little puppet Stalin decided to go amok and eliminate a few officers, which gave me (apart from some needed unity) the (bad) malus of -50% officer recruitement and the (even more bad) -10% leadership bonus. Luckily 2 months ago I received a bonus of 10% leadership. What an amazing coincidence!







And, as it was, Stalin this idiot also reinstated the Dual-Command System, which reduced my Org. Regain Rate by 5% and, what was pretty nice, added another 9 unity. This doesn't sound to bad, but what you cannot see is the tech "gain" you get. The tech gives me the folloing "bonuses": -15% Leadership, -1% Atrittion and -15% Casualty Trickleback.







Well, as I couldn't do much about Stalin missgiving, I endured them and so the time past by. Somewhen in August Japan declared war on Nationalist China, which directly annexed it's vassal Xibei San Ma to strengthen its forces (while lower their already terribly officer ratio, but nevermind). Japan began to land their troops in Qingdao and Hangzhouh.







Within 15 days they advanced quite a bit into China. The poorly led Chinese fought like beasts, but were driven back by the modern Japanese army. Whilst Japan was making gains in land, its troops were not able to take any of the big cities. Shangai, Nanjing, Beiping and Jinan were still in the hands of the Chinese.

To bolster their morale and secure their position globally the Japanese government made a pact with Germany and joined the Axis.







So the peaceful times for the Russian citizens were only disturbed from time to time by horrible news of the country's neighbours. But they all knew, that they were guarded by the Red Army and its modern weapons.

But what will the future bring to them?





Note: I am sorry for not posting for a while. I will now try to update more regularly, once or twice a week

[Hughrocks123]

Nice AAR. I like seeing people play the SU, epically the daring things you are doing!

[Galandran]

Well, it will be a hard fight, that's what i can tell you!


Update will be tomorrow

[Hughrocks123]

Cool, can't wait.

[sprites]

Isn't 15% leadership for 9 unity a bad tradoff?

[Galandran]

I am sorry that I did not update as promised, but something came in between. I will update this during the weekend, maybe even 2 updates, depends on the time I have.

@sprites: Well, it is a very bad tradeoff, but I couldn't decide whether i wanted this effect or not. The event happens automatically and I instantly get "researched" this tech I mentioned above. So there was nothing I could have done about. The only thing that probably might have stopped it from coming into effect is staying at war with someone. I am not sure whether this works also for other events, but Stalin's Purge and another event (you will see in the next update which one I mean) do not occur when I am at war. But was I said in the very beginning, I don't want to be too exploitiv

[Galandran]

Rising Tension



In the last chapter Japan attacked China and switfly took the major ports in northern / eastern China. But it seemed as even those ports and new frontslines were not enough for the Japanese. Landings were made in southern China, controlled by the Guanxi-Clique warlord. This posed to much danger for the week government there and the Guanxi-Clique as well as Yunnan were incorporated into the Nationalist China.







This had two important effects: When Nat. China absorbed Yunnan and Guanxi-Clique, they also inherited their army. But (from what I know) they do not inherit their officers, thus lowering their already low officer ratio even further, which means that they have even less organisation than before.

This allowed the Japanese army to advance fast into the Chinese territory, but also strechting their supply lines further.







Within three months time they advanced as far as Wuhan, triggering the decision for Nat. China to either accept peace and to abandon all territory lost by now (and to remain independent) or to fight on. They eventually chose to fight untill the bitter end.

By now, all of the major ports were in the hands of the Japanese, thus allowing them to supply a lot of troops and pushing back the Chinese even more, but they will soon discover another problem: Mountains and Jungle(s) are perfect places to set up a defensive line, which will hopefully stop the japanese advance.







Meanwhile I finsiehd my first series of industrial capacity and ordered antoher 40 to be built.

A reason why I'd like to be at war with someone is the reduction in consumer goods. With a almost mobilised amry (--> service by requirement allows me to keep my reserve brigades at a very high grade of mobilisation) my spending for consumer goods is rather high, which hinders me in building even more IC.

Authors Note: Does anybody know if the investment in consumer good is calculated by the amount of men I have serving in my army or only by the level of mobilisation (--> Going for service by requirement and then just no reinforcing my army to keep CGs low)







In April I finally got a very interesting effect with a nice choice of actions. I could either take a 25% bonus in IC, a 33% bonus in supplies and supply throughput or a increase in manpower gain by 30% and a decrease of national revolt risk by 5.

As you can see I chose to take the manpower, as, in my opinion, it's the best choice. One can always build IC and/or produce supplies, but manpower is more important against such a strong opponent as I will have to oppose in the future.

On the righ-hand side of the picture you can see that the japanese army advanced further into China, but, as my one of my teachers used to say, there is a big but. As I pointed out before, they japanese encoutered territory with jungle and mountains, thus slwoing down their advance. I hoped that this would stop their advance, but this might have been to much of a hope. At least it slowed it down and cost them more manpower.

I have forgotten to take a picture of the surrender progress of China, but it must have been at about 75%.
This might sound like a lot, but as China had 99% National Unity the japanese would have to take every vicotry point to make them surrender







Back in Russia, after I finished my 2nd run of IC building, I ordered another 40 and, with the spare IC, I began with the production of 3x2 Arm brigades. This was done to increase my armor practicals.







On June the 12th war was declared on Latvia with the obvious aim to free the surpressed Latvian population from their tyrannic rulers (and to gain more IC, LS, manpower and land)







As I failed to realise that my troops would need supplies to attack enemy nations my troops were not able to attack the latvian troops. Only after several weeks of standing near the borders my divisions could finally start their assault and occupy the latvian territory without much resistance. Latvia eventually surrendered after having lost Riga and was annexed.







In China, the Japanese were still advancing west. My hope that they would be stopped proved wrong, and it is unlikely that Nat. China has many troops left to fight. The Japanese have now only to take the last remaining VPs and then the war in the east is over.

You can also see that Communist China has joined the war on the side of Nat. China. It seems that they thought that they could make the difference in an already lost war, but I was startled nonetheless about this rather unlogical event.







I was kind of astonished by the stubborn resistance of the chinese and the snail-like pace of the japanese. 4 Months after having taken all important Chinese cities Japan still struggled for the 2 VPs left to take. China was on the brink of surrender, but they still fought on. 96% of their VP's were occupied, but because they had 98.7% NU left, they could fight, litteraly, to the last man. Japan also needed 4 months to take 3 provinces of Com. China, which they finally integrated into their own country.

[Hughrocks123]

Nice update!

Give the USSR even more MP!

[Veugdenmans]

Very interesting AAR I will certainly be following. Keep it up!

[sprites]

The chinese will last a few more weeks/months at this pace , 100% NU is a bit too much!

[Galandran]

@Hughrocks: The USSR needs all the MP it can get as Germany is hard to bleed out with 80% additional manpower gain

@Veugdenmans: I am glad to have you onboard. I can promise that the AAR will get more interesting as I am approach the 1940s where I can finally do something

@sprites: Well, I hope they will last as long as possible. But I guess you are right. 100% is a bit unhistorical, but well, I am glad they will stay alive for a bit longer than expected.


Sorry guys btw for the delay of posting something new. I am having a hard time IRL, but it should get better soon, so there will be more (and more frequent) updates. Talking about update, new one will be up in a minute (or two)


edit: Does anybode know why the pictures I post are having full size when I am writng it and press "Preview Changes" they are still fullsize, but as soon as I post it the pictures get smaller?

[sprites]

The forum has some script to resize big images , i think.

[Galandran]

Expansion



In the last chapter you saw the annexation of Latvia and the Chinese struggle for survival. I had a fairly peaceful time during last few updates, but this is about to change very quickly.







I declared war on Lithuania 2nd January of 1939, one day after the Lithuanian government was forced to cede the Memel to the Germans. I waited on purpose for half a year before attacking them so I wouldn't harm the "road to war" for Germany. This time I made sure that I had enough supplies to actually attack without having to wait another month. Well, enough supplies does not mean I had anything in my stockpile whatsoever, I had 196 in my stockpile, but obviously enough to support my frontline troops.

I gave my troops order to advance into enemy territory and to surround and take the Lithuanian capital.







I did not expect to meet much resistance, but I was surprised when I even got counterattacked when I reached the border to their capital province and, according to the arrows, I would be losing that battle. But i was confident that my divisions would arrive in time.







They arrived early enough and so I can already begin to siege their capital, which was only defended by one infantry divisions and a HQ.








As you can see I did not only had to fight their troops, but was also hindered by the cold weather and the urban area, but the Lithuanian troops were not entirely mobilised so it was only a matter of time until I could hiss the flag in Kaunas







On 7th of March, 2 months after the begin of the assault, the war was over and I could annex them. I am still amazed how long they survived, considering that I used twice the amount of troops they had. Rather concerning perspective for the future.......







Meanwhile I began the production of 40 sp-art to bolster my infantry divisions and the few tanks I had. You might think that it would be more worthwhile producing normal artillery for my infantry. But I guess it's worth a lot since it not only lowers the softness of infantry divisions, it also gives them more firepower than additional artillery could AND 2x INF + 2x/3x sp-art gives the combined arms bonus.







When I declared war on Lithuania, my thread rose high enough to enable me to declare war on Persia, which I did directly after I annexed Lithuania. I want to stay at war as long as possible, so I didn't declare war on them the day I could.







I then ordered my already deployed troops to assault the Iranian lands, giving them almost straight routes to the VP's. I did (as always) not expect much trouble so I didn't bother givem them any sophisticated routes.







This time I finally guessed right and I did NOT meet any serious resistance. My advancing tank division could event attack in mountainous terrain, which meant a lot by that time.







You can see that they stood absolutely no chance against my troops. Fighting with tanks in mountain terrain, I lost only 16 men whilst the Persian lost 1515 men.







After having overran the Persian defence, their defeat was only delayed by the long way my tanks had to go until they reached all the VP's necessary for making them surrender.







Which they indeed did a few weeks later. The whole thing lasted for only one month, which is quite an embarrassing show for such a big country.



My next targets are rather easy to guess, so I won't bother showing you them already





I now used only parts of my screens, where you can't see the topbar and only the thing I am describing in my text. Do you guys like it better this or the old way where I was using the whole screenshot?
Problem with the old pictures was that they were apparently to big so they were automatically reduced in size and in format, means although they should have really good quality, you can't see as much as I can in the orginial ones