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Soviet Union: Possibly just a tiny bit overpowered?

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Oh boy. Actually, if that whole thing about 0.1 IC units is true, never mind what I said about the USSR being underpowered. They may have been in DD/Arma, but not in DH. I mean, 0.1 IC units even on Normal difficulty? That can't be right. In Arma as Germany I defeated the USSR pretty easily (a bit too easily in fact, not sure why), but I don't think I'll be able to defeat them when they're getting tons of 0.1 IC divisions...
 
Eugenioso said:
Even then, winning WIF2 as germany is still relatively easy if you know what you need to do.
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I know that it is quite easy to beat USSR if you are building a lot of MOT and send them to Moscow and other key cities to pop up bitter peace. But for me it is quite gamey, and I would like to try a long struggle but still winable.
No one could explain to me how to survive Russian winter and spam of units. I fully understand that the AI should have bonuses, but on normal mod, at least free units should be less or stop after 1942 or 1943.

On manpower : historically Germany was able to field almost 10 million men even in 1944, according to Kershaw in "the end". With nearly 7000 manpower, the game is far from it.
 
Black Ader said:
On manpower : historically Germany was able to field almost 10 million men even in 1944, according to Kershaw in "the end". With nearly 7000 manpower, the game is far from it.
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When all German national provinces (Germany, Austria, Czech, Eupen, Luxembourg, Elsass-Lothringen, parts of Poland) are taken into account, Germany is able to mobilise well over 12,000 manpower when enacting total mobilization, which seems fairly reasonable, if your number is correct.
 
Note that Germany's 10 million is the total aggregate military personnel number. Including bureaucracy, logistic. AND counting the total amount who participated then rotated out of service. So Germany does not have 10 million troops at hand, but 10 million total. So the above number is the total max Germany should ever receive, outside of natural mp growth.
 
In 41 I did my Barbarossa as Germany, so quite historical path like. I had about 120 divisions as Germany on the front (it was a second trial with less IC hoarding this time). With my allies Romania and Hungary (Italy works in Afrika) I did a huge pocketing move to isolate the entire Soviet army group south.

I suspected that I had pocketed a whopping 30 something divisions. But to my surprise the Soviets stages many counterattacks with Ueberstacks coming from the motherlands, so I did a reload to check how many troops the Soviets has.

To be quite right on facts and figures, before I pocketed them, I had already destroyed 25 divisions during a smaller pincer movement. So I was curious how many troops they had fielded, I reloaded as the Soviet Union.

The time was augustus 41 and the pocket contained 86 Soviet divisions, they had 160 (roughly counted) divisions counterattacking, so it was impossible to hold the pocket. In the meantime I noticed their IC to be substantial higher then Germany's only one month after the Barbarossa campaign, my findings =

1) the amount of Soviet divisions is too high,
2) the AI keeps virtually none of its divisions in the east, north and centre of the USSR which is a bit weird,
3) their IC at war start is higher then Germany's (hm?),
4) they are building 0,1 divisions (hm?) so they can build like what 1000 divisions out of nothing?

is there a patch coming?
 
Spruce said:
In 41 I did my Barbarossa as Germany, so quite historical path like. I had about 120 divisions as Germany on the front (it was a second trial with less IC hoarding this time). With my allies Romania and Hungary (Italy works in Afrika) I did a huge pocketing move to isolate the entire Soviet army group south.

I suspected that I had pocketed a whopping 30 something divisions. But to my surprise the Soviets stages many counterattacks with Ueberstacks coming from the motherlands, so I did a reload to check how many troops the Soviets has.

To be quite right on facts and figures, before I pocketed them, I had already destroyed 25 divisions during a smaller pincer movement. So I was curious how many troops they had fielded, I reloaded as the Soviet Union.

The time was augustus 41 and the pocket contained 86 Soviet divisions, they had 160 (roughly counted) divisions counterattacking, so it was impossible to hold the pocket. In the meantime I noticed their IC to be substantial higher then Germany's only one month after the Barbarossa campaign, my findings =

1) the amount of Soviet divisions is too high,
2) the AI keeps virtually none of its divisions in the east, north and centre of the USSR which is a bit weird,
3) their IC at war start is higher then Germany's (hm?),
4) they are building 0,1 divisions (hm?) so they can build like what 1000 divisions out of nothing?

is there a patch coming?
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You've gotta take out the border armies in the first blitzkrieg and keep pushing. The soviets also have an IC penalty until the great patriotic war event fires, but the AI gets this event immediately unlike a human player. Its still pretty damn unbalanced. Sometimes when I try new strategies I mess up in 41 and get bogged down. 250 German divisions can still make quick work of the 500ish soviet divisions in 42 after the weather clears up. Either build more land units or use your airforce to blunt the counter attacks. Just like the German AI in a hands off game, a human player can crush the soviet AI pretty easily...
 
Spruce said:
In 41 I did my Barbarossa as Germany, so quite historical path like. I had about 120 divisions as Germany on the front (it was a second trial with less IC hoarding this time). With my allies Romania and Hungary (Italy works in Afrika) I did a huge pocketing move to isolate the entire Soviet army group south.

I suspected that I had pocketed a whopping 30 something divisions. But to my surprise the Soviets stages many counterattacks with Ueberstacks coming from the motherlands, so I did a reload to check how many troops the Soviets has.

To be quite right on facts and figures, before I pocketed them, I had already destroyed 25 divisions during a smaller pincer movement. So I was curious how many troops they had fielded, I reloaded as the Soviet Union.

The time was augustus 41 and the pocket contained 86 Soviet divisions, they had 160 (roughly counted) divisions counterattacking, so it was impossible to hold the pocket. In the meantime I noticed their IC to be substantial higher then Germany's only one month after the Barbarossa campaign, my findings =

1) the amount of Soviet divisions is too high,
2) the AI keeps virtually none of its divisions in the east, north and centre of the USSR which is a bit weird,
3) their IC at war start is higher then Germany's (hm?),
4) they are building 0,1 divisions (hm?) so they can build like what 1000 divisions out of nothing?

is there a patch coming?
Click to expand...

In addition to what arfen said, i would like to say that in old WIF2, the hard version, i managed to starve the soviets of MP, and eventually win, but by then the americans were pushing hard on me on france, and i -just- barely held them back long enough to win.
 
Thanks for the tips & tricks, but my point was that (on normal setting, forgot to mention perhaps) it's too difficult.

I'm a player that also likes to play a lot of historical, so I invest also in battleships, subs & good arial defense to fight of the RAF, to simulate the historical German approach. And not ueberspecialising & optimise all choices in the game to be ready on Barbarossa.

So my point is that on normal the USSR is too harD.

That also goes along with my remark that I couldn't hold on the big pocket at the very start of the war ... Let's say we are close at the right setting.
 
In my last game I destroyed 170 (from 250) SOV Divisions in my initial assault (July 1942), after about one and a half month, which I needed to get my infantry division nears Moskau and Leningrad, the SOV already refreshed to his old strenght (September/Oktober), after a month of heavy fighting, he already outnumbered me with 100 Divsions ... The best thing in that time was my attack on Orel 25 Divisions start the attack with a support of 30 another, they needed (for a distance of 50km!!!) aproximately 25 Days to arrive, in this time the SOV permanently flooded the province with Divisions which got beaten, after my troops arrived in the province they were so much of low org, that they promptly were forced to retreat. I assume that the SOV could move faster and regain org quicker, therefore it isn't only numbers ...
 
Thing is if you take the historical German approach, you kinda should lose. I mean, that's what happened to the Germans. The whole point is that you have to do something else, because the German plan didn't work.
 
Historicall, germany was halted before moscow because of missing winter equipment and stupid decisions. For example produced Panzers were hold back to create new Divisions instead of refill the already existing, no wonder Panzer-Divisions were stopped by russion infantry before moscow if they were totally exhausted (some Divisions only had left something like 15 tanks). But I see there no historical reason, why an fully supplied and equipped panzergroup of 6 Tank-Divisions with Infantrysupport (6 Infantry-Divisions with flak and artilleriebrigade) and winterequipment should be stopped by militiadivisons.
 
Raucher said:
Historicall, germany was halted before moscow because of missing winter equipment and stupid decisions. For example produced Panzers were hold back to create new Divisions instead of refill the already existing, no wonder Panzer-Divisions were stopped by russion infantry before moscow if they were totally exhausted (some Divisions only had left something like 15 tanks). But I see there no historical reason, why an fully supplied and equipped panzergroup of 6 Tank-Divisions with Infantrysupport (6 Infantry-Divisions with flak and artilleriebrigade) and winterequipment should be stopped by militiadivisons.
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I couldn't say better...
 
I've altered the doctrines pretty significantly in my own modding. It seems to help. Not balanced yet but a bit of tweaking. German org regain is absolute garbage atm. I've actually slightly nerfed their GDE to .88 until about 1941 but buffed their org and morale since German successes was partly based off of superior tactics which the GDE represents but also superior abilities to attack and continue attacking which is vaguely represented by org/org regain
 
German doctrine should be tactically superior, as it had been IRL. Operational and strategic blunders made by the germans should be represented in some other way, not by nerfing mobility doctrine. Most of these strategic and operational mistakes were caused by poor intelligence reports, that aren't represented at all in the game.
 
KaiserBeer said:
German doctrine should be tactically superior, as it had been IRL. Operational and strategic blunders made by the germans should be represented in some other way, not by nerfing mobility doctrine. Most of these strategic and operational mistakes were caused by poor intelligence reports, that aren't represented at all in the game.
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It's not a nerf at all it just simulates the German's ability to (at least early in the war) have divisions just outrun their opponents. After my mod Germans have ~93% GDE at Barbarossa and Soviets have ~43-47%. Still massively superior. What the change does I hope is let the German mobile divisions actually run wild by being able to outspeed the Russians and continue to attack. IRL the German Spearheads only stopped because OKW got nervous that they would be cut off (something the Russians were totally incapable of doing at the time)
 
Czaristan said:
IRL the German Spearheads only stopped because OKW got nervous that they would be cut off (something the Russians were totally incapable of doing at the time)
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IMHO the panzer stopped :
- to wait for the infantry to come and secure their supply lines.. and be supplied at all, even without the risk of being cut off. Sometimes they could advance further only by transferring fuel from all vehicules to a handfull of tanks
- to finish off encirclements and wait for the pocket reduction, but sometimes those damn ruskies didn't want to surrender and fought to death, while counter-attacks tried to free them...
 
NapoleonComple said:
Thing is if you take the historical German approach, you kinda should lose. I mean, that's what happened to the Germans. The whole point is that you have to do something else, because the German plan didn't work.
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Thing is that the historical German approach was the right one, the problem was that the spearheads were halted on both tactical and strategical reasons. A small pauze might have been needed, altough a lot of discussion on that matter too - but fundamentally Hitler changed its mind to divert from the main political goal (threatening Moskow and the totalitarian Soviet regime structure) to a more industrial & resource based goal (the foodstore in the Ukraine & Donbass & Bakou oil field basins).

So losing to the Soviet union isn't that deterministic as you state, it was a due to a fatal misjudgement of Hitler that a knock out of the regime basis wasn't top priority anymore.
 
Czaristan said:
It's not a nerf at all it just simulates the German's ability to (at least early in the war) have divisions just outrun their opponents. After my mod Germans have ~93% GDE at Barbarossa and Soviets have ~43-47%. Still massively superior. What the change does I hope is let the German mobile divisions actually run wild by being able to outspeed the Russians and continue to attack. IRL the German Spearheads only stopped because OKW got nervous that they would be cut off (something the Russians were totally incapable of doing at the time)
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The whole point of the mobility doctrine, the whole friggin point, is that the 100 GDE is made as to do a breakthrough that you can exploit, hold and destroy whatever is inside. If the encirclement or enemy destruction doesnt work properly, then you are screwed. Manpower doctrine is all about absorbing the enemy's blows and advancing. We dont need to nerf mobility, mobility is already screwed if the initial attack goes wrong. Mess up early on France, and suffer from the (already mentioned) very slow org regain.
 
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