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Soviet Union: Possibly just a tiny bit overpowered?

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Very slow org regain isn't particularly realistic though. And 100% GDE just means that you take less casualties, it has very little to do with breaking through enemy lines etc. Successful breakthrough and exploitation statistics would be org (for continuing to advance without having to stop and regroup), land speed (for obvious reasons) and soft/hard attack (to quickly dispose of things in your way), supply modifiers (though historically a weakness), and combat events. GDE does none of this directly. Division and doctrinal stats due virtually nothing at a strategic level except for movement speed and HQ supply efficiency.

Also, I really hate the idea that the Soviets have a "manpower doctrine" which wasn't their doctrine at all. This can/should IMO be simulated through events that nerf movement speed, org, morale, leader efficiency, and just having less capable leaders due to the purge. I've advocated this previously but since my tech mods are mostly for Kaiserreich which lacks purge events and the exact weaknesses inherent in the Soviet army faced in 1941.
 
Beryl said:
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...
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You're right, but they did so at the insistence of high command because of their timidity and overestimation of Soviet capabilities in the Autumn of 41' Reports coming back from the front often were disbelieved at high command because they couldn't believe their own successes. Operational commanders like Guderian sent lots of letters, asking to continue pursuit of mauled Soviet divisions, even without infantry backup. Source: Barbarossa, the Russian-German conflict, Alan Clark
 
My overall point is that the doctrines should simulate how those armed forces approached combat generally, emphasize what they're good at, and try to include tactical advancements. For instance, German late-war docs shouldn't start to emphasize militia and defensive fighting since that was something they were forced into by other factors. They still believed in and emphasized maneuver warfare they would just incapable because of a lack of tanks, loss of mobility in favor of armor, lack of fuel, etc. Changes in doctrine due to material factors can be done via decision and unique effects can be handled via event, i.e. the purges. For my tech mod I actually include an event-activated tech for German only called Auftragstaktik which simulates the training and discipline beat into the German army in the inter-war years that made them capable of great tactical flexibility apart from their strategic mobility and was unique to the Wehrmacht of that time. This has the additional benefit of making the doctrines tree more portable to Kaiserreich where certain factions can develop a mobility doctrine without having the unique training and small unit cohesion and discipline that was a hallmark of the German WWII army.

Ideally this would be a function of the professional army slider but that is now defunct so... I make do
 
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There's not going to be major changes to German doctrines or Soviet doctrines. We believe the two doctrines are balanced fine after many rounds of testing. We specifically balanced the two doctrines against one another in patch 1.03. Germany has one of the best doctrines in game, and the doctrines fit with what they did historically. They do not need better doctrines.

On another note, some minor changes to militia have been made to make them less competitive. Mostly vulnerability increases.
 
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I hope you will do something at last with the unlimited free soviet units, because it is utterly insane.
For the doctrine, I believe it is balanced, but if ot is, how can 40 divisions of militia drive out my 20 infantery divisions entrenched in Kiew (id est urban zone), with artillery and so on?
 
I'm playing a Germany game, how can you manually edit the militia vulnerability please?
 
Limith said:
There's not going to be major changes to German doctrines or Soviet doctrines. We believe the two doctrines are balanced fine after many rounds of testing. We specifically balanced the two doctrines against one another in patch 1.03. Germany has one of the best doctrines in game, and the doctrines fit with what they did historically. They do not need better doctrines.
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I agree that the nations are balanced against each other relatively well currently, however, my issue is that the doctrines themselves are poorly thought out and do not, in my mind, represent German/Soviet doctrinal thinking and its effects on combat strength. They simulate both the German's highly professional army and the effects of the Soviet purges which causes issues for other countries using those doctrine trees which didn't have those same events and end up being over buffed or over nerfed because of it. Not a huge-problem in DH full, but when other scenarios (especially KR) borrow the doctrines, it leads to unrealistic depictions within that mod. Not strictly your area but something I'm trying to work on.
 
Czaristan said:
I agree that the nations are balanced against each other relatively well currently, however, my issue is that the doctrines themselves are poorly thought out and do not, in my mind, represent German/Soviet doctrinal thinking and its effects on combat strength. They simulate both the German's highly professional army and the effects of the Soviet purges which causes issues for other countries using those doctrine trees which didn't have those same events and end up being over buffed or over nerfed because of it. Not a huge-problem in DH full, but when other scenarios (especially KR) borrow the doctrines, it leads to unrealistic depictions within that mod. Not strictly your area but something I'm trying to work on.
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Whether or not KR should use our doctrines isn't something we consider, generally. I think the only other nations which can use manpower doctrine well is China and India? Perhaps USA as well, but USA has enough IC to take advantage of another doctrine? FYI, we don't simulate the purges in the doctrines.
 
Limith said:
FYI, we don't simulate the purges in the doctrines.
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Maybe not intentionally, but the Soviet doctrine does simulate the purges with the low GDE early on. Since there are no events that nerf Soviet army post-purge, it sort of defaults to the doctrines.
 
Does anyone here ever tried to use the mobility doctrine instead of the manpower one when playing as soviet union?
The game becomes much easier when you make that choice.I think that the manpower doctrine is the worst doctrine in the game.
 
bikespeed said:
Does anyone here ever tried to use the mobility doctrine instead of the manpower one when playing as soviet union?
The game becomes much easier when you make that choice.I think that the manpower doctrine is the worst doctrine in the game.
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Yeah, because other doctrines have 100 percent efficiency for GDE while Soviet doctrine tree provides only 50 percent efficiency in 1941. That's exactly twice. GDE ( Ground Defence Efficiency ) has very decisive effect on battles. Devs tried to compensate that huge malus with tons of extremely cheap troops. IMO, Soviets are still underpowered.
 
Have you ever tried not to take Moscow and to resist to russian winter? If yes, and you still find USSR underpowered :

1) you are a game genius,
or
2) we have not the same game.

GDE just mean that soviets will have heavy losses against you in attack, and they will perform defense rather bad. But whith almost two times more org than German, and due to the size of USSR, it is not really a problem after great patriotic event, because tons of units will always exhaust the Wehrmacht.

IMO, USSR should be a little bit stronger at the start of the war, but the endless free stacks are rather insane.
 
Black Ader said:
Have you ever tried not to take Moscow and to resist to russian winter? If yes, and you still find USSR underpowered :

1) you are a game genius,
or
2) we have not the same game.

GDE just mean that soviets will have heavy losses against you in attack, and they will perform defense rather bad. But whith almost two times more org than German, and due to the size of USSR, it is not really a problem after great patriotic event, because tons of units will always exhaust the Wehrmacht.

IMO, USSR should be a little bit stronger at the start of the war, but the endless free stacks are rather insane.
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Well the rationale is like this :

- You manage to destroy tons of Soviet divisions because of doctrine techs. You have 100 percent GDE, they have 50 by 1941. GDE doesn't only affect number of casualties, it makes you lose the battle. It is very decisive factor. If you are playing this game since HOI2, you will remember that Great Patriotic Events were designed to increase Soviet GDE step by step. Only when Soviet GDE increased enough, they managed to stop and push Germans.
- Hardcoded GDE difference is meant to reflect better German tactics, doctrines and discipline. The counter of this was Soviet numerical superiority and productivity. So, Soviets get tons of very cheap divisions to counter their hardcoded GDE malus. This is not unfair IMO because IRL Soviet armies were not really that inferior to Germans. Surprise attack in June 22 was surely a big factor. In short : Huge GDE malus cancels out extremely cheap units.

BTW, these cheap units are only for human German player at normal difficulties. Sov AI doesn't get them against Ger AI. If you don't like these additions, you could easily change difficulty requirement in that event to 3 ( Hard ) or play on Easy. Darkest Hour tries to give challenging Barbarossa to human players. You are not meant to finish Soviets by 1941. Barbarossa was too easy before.
 
I think the main reason for cheap Soviet units is the fact that unit production speed is very slow in DH. Soviets simply are not able to rebuild their army like they historically did without free units. Personally I don't like this solution and I rather think that Stalin should significantly lower unit production time. This would, however, probably make the game way too easy for a human player.
 
Miihkali said:
I think the main reason for cheap Soviet units is the fact that unit production speed is very slow in DH. Soviets simply are not able to rebuild their army like they historically did without free units. Personally I don't like this solution and I rather think that Stalin should significantly lower unit production time. This would, however, probably make the game way too easy for a human player.
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That event provides first units in 30 days. ( Not all of them are set for 30 days, there are 90 days and 120 days as well ). Other units that come with the event are just in serial production and will not arrive before standard Soviet build time. Soviets are able to shorten their production times quite a lot with their doctrines, but it can't be called as a cheat. Unfair thing is that these units cost only 0.1 IC.
 
After all of the manpower doctrine production boosts, building an INFANTRY division takes LESS time than a MILITIA division (~70ish days afaik by loading a later scenario with assembly lines, optimal sliders, etc.). That is what you get with Manpower Doctrine. You get reduced GDE, but incredibly low build times. We lowered the bonus a bit internally as it USED to be 30 days for an Infantry division at one time.

Manpower doctrine also gets much higher org, which is useful to soak up attacks and grind mobility doctrine attacks to a halt.

Manpower provides bonuses to militia which is useful in bad terrain.

vs Mobility:
-You get higher GDE, lower morale, so good in good terrain, and if you don't have manpower to spare but do have IC.

Each has their benefit.

Gort said:
Swkd2.png
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Tbh, I prefer the Light Infantry doctrine line if I know I'm using many infantry, since that provides move bonuses, org bonuses, and more that adds up to make the actual doctrinal impact higher than the base stats.
 
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makif130289 said:
- You manage to destroy tons of Soviet divisions because of doctrine techs. You have 100 percent GDE, they have 50 by 1941. GDE doesn't only affect number of casualties, it makes you lose the battle. It is very decisive factor.
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You forget the ORG factor. Surely, 10 divisions of Germans are beating easily 20 divisions of Soviets in 1941. But after all free units, which are up-to-date (1942 infantery with ART), your 10 german divisions are beaten by 10 soviet divisions, because the SOV divisions have artillery, are 1942 model (and due to very very very long time of upgrade I have never 1942 infantery as Germany in summer 1942) and they have better ORG than German divisions.
For me GDE german bonus is counterbalanced by ORG Soviet bonus, or almost. What is not counterbalanced is tons of free units.

My suggestions are :

1) that the Great patriotic war event give more GDE instead of free units
or
2) less free units
or
3) just one wawe or 2 of free units (like in World in Flames)
or
4)free units not so up-to-date (1939 infantery for example), and without artillery
 
Instead of free units, which is a try at simulating the USSR's capacity of growing the Red Army multiple times over while at the same time loosing 100+ divisions worth of men, maybe the Soviets should get a "Za Rodina" event that massively reduces the build time and cost. The US has a similar event that massively reduces their naval cost and time.
 
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