Playing USSR with Very Hard setting

[mrsund]

Been playing some USSR game with ver hard settings, trying with different set ups, on the current game I am focusing on INT, CAS and ARM, ARM mostly consisting on ARM/MOT/SPART/AC, but maybe its to weak, will prob change to ARM/MOT/MOT/SPART.
I am trying to stop Germany on the border with slow manual withdrawal.
Any tips and inputs are welcome even for future games (USSR) with different focus and setups.

 

[roverS3]

Been playing some USSR game with ver hard settings, trying with different set ups, on the current game I am focusing on INT, CAS and ARM, ARM mostly consisting on ARM/MOT/SPART/AC, but maybe its to weak, will prob change to ARM/MOT/MOT/SPART.
I am trying to stop Germany on the border with slow manual withdrawal.
Any tips and inputs are welcome even for future games (USSR) with different focus and setups.

DIsclaimer: I'm not an expert on playing the game on very hard, but have played a lot on normal difficulty, and a little on hard difficulty. Lately I've also been playing mostly as the USSR.

That said I can quite confidently state the following: Arm, Mot, Mot, SP Art (triangular) is better on the defensive as a unit than Arm, Mot, SP Art, AC. (binary) This is valid for all triangular vs binary comparisons of equivalent units. There is one caveat, however: Frontage is limited. If you have 10 frontage, you can get 5 binary Divisions or 4 triangular Divisions into the fight, a two-pronged battle with 15 frontage allows for 8 binary divisions or 5 triangular ones. Of course stacking penalties reduce this advantage a little, but then again your binary divisions do have a slightly higher combined arms bonus. This is only an issue if you consistently have 5 or more Divisions available to defend a province, with reserves ready to be sent in to face larger multi-axis attacks.

Now, you write that you're concentrating on Int, CAS, and Arm. On the aviation side this makes some sense as you get a lot of bang for your buck, especially against panzer divisions. You will be constrained by air base space before you know it, though, and the short-range CAS needing to be based very close to the front do add strain to the supply network. Most of the units you will face are relatively soft, and Tac is definitely the best at dealing with soft units (but the most dangerous ones are hard). At some point you'll probably find that the only way to increase air support, once you already have a lot of CAS, without ruining the supply situation is to build Tac and base them further from the front.

On the land warfare side, I think Arm is probably the best bang for your buck as far as tanks are concerned. However, motorising your entire army is going to be counterproductive as motorised and armoured units use up more supplies, and especially fuel, and they are more expensive to build, so you can field significantly less of them. Considering the hefty economic modifiers of the Very Hard difficulty, I do wonder whether it is even possible to IC-build your way out of this limitation, and I'm pretty sure it won't be possible to infra-build yourself out of the supply issues.

I would suggest building your army around infantry divisions, either triangular ones (more defence focused, and you need fewer units to cover the whole front), or binary ones (more offensive focused, packing more offensive punch but you need more of them to cover the front.) Then you can supplement this with a mix of offensive tank divisions (Arm, Mot/Mech, SPArt, AC/TD) to break through the enemy lines, and defensive tank/motorised divisions (Arm, Motx2, SP Art / Motx3, SP Art) as a fire brigade to stem enemy armoured offensives and to exploit breakthroughs (as in protecting the flanks of an armoured spearhead consisting of binary divisions).

In short, the Soviet Union's massive manpower reserve gives it an edge, use it. (at least to some degree, don't just spam Milx4, because you will loose and probably run out of manpower)

Finally, to add even more punch to your divisions, consider researching the superior firepower doctrine, which allows you to add a fifth brigade to your existing units.

Here is an overview of a Germany Player's OOB to beat the AI on Hard difficulty. This player went for binary divisions all-round, look at the ratio between tank forces and infantry and the total amount of units, and that's for Germany, which is short on manpower, compared to the Soviet Union:
https://hoi3.paradoxwikis.com/Barbarossa_OOB

In any case, I would be interested in seeing the results of your build on very hard difficulty.

 

[mrsund]

Thanks for reply and the tips Rover, much appriciated.

I tried a few games on very Hard and its relatively easy to win, especially if let the axis break trough in the south, then let go as far as Afghanisan and then cut them off

But now I am trying no step back (before fighting atleast) and really focusing on as few techs and fully uppgraded units as possible with a strong airforce +140officers

Will Restart a game tonite and change to INF/TAC and ARM/MOT/MOT/SPART, was thinking of starting with INF/INF/ART and adding a ARM when available, then upgrading INF to MOT when needed, will be fighting defensive for atleast a year anyway. When Superior Firepower is researched should I put a supportbrigade or ARM/MOT as the fifth then?

Hopefully I will nail it tonite and got the upper hand by 42/43, next game I planning on is a more historical gameplay, with more spread out kind of units and lower officer%, doing 3 defensive lines also on very hard, plaing the with the Downfall mod btw, but any tip from vanilla or other mod could be useful, anyway its always fun reading about others experience.

 

[Kovax]

When building Infantry divisions, don't put AT in every division, since MOST of what you will face will be soft units, and AT has the lowest Soft Attack of anything you can put in a division other than MPs. ARM/TD and CAS/TAC should be sufficient to blunt most German Armor attacks, but having one or two divisions per Corps with AT can help a little if you can put them where they need to be. Still, unless you can maintain up-to-date Piercing levels, your AT won't be very effective. I rarely use them. ART can give you decent firepower with less frontage, so that's a potentially better option.

Keep your Infantry Warfare and Mass Assault doctrines up to date, or even a year ahead, and start boosting your Officer Ratio as soon as the Winter War is triggered and the officer training penalties are removed.

As said by roverS3, TAC will provide more range, which will prove valuable in the long spaces between airfields. If you use CAS, don't give them leaders with Tank Destroyer traits, since CAS has higher HA than SA, and the trait will increase the target's Softness. TAC has higher SA than HA, so those leaders will help there.

AC is good on the attack on account of its speed bonus for the entire division in certain terrain types, and the combined arms bonus also helps. Another MOT would be a lot more resilient on the defense, though.

TD is cheaper than ARM, and can provide a higher Piercing stat, but it will in turn be pierced by almost anything with AT capability. The good point of TD is that you only need to maintain ONE tech to keep its Piercing level current, but if you're building ARM and are willing to spend the Leadership to keep the techs current, then you probably won't need TD. For a purely defensive play, it can save a LOT of Leadership over Armor.

One underhanded option would be to mark down where the infrastructure "highways" are in the western end of your country and/or eastern Poland. When GER attacks and advances past those points, use TAC to wreck the infrastructure in a few bottleneck provinces. A Wehrmacht with only limited fuel and supplies isn't going to be very effective.

 

[mrsund]

Thanks Kovak

I have been avoiding anything with AT and TD, but it may be a good idea with TD instead of ARM, cheaper both in LS and IC and maybe able to start build sooner as well.
Ahhh, TAC and logistical attack, forgot about that, it will be fun to try

 

[mrsund]

Did only have time to play to early 1941 yesterday, had to sleep a couple of hours before work

Will continue tonite, hard to build plenty of numbers of ARM in time, a bit harder in Downfall, cant uppgrade CAV or LARM to ARM.
But with some luck and micromanagement with the Airforce it could go well.

Continued last night, Germany didnt invade until 1942, so maybe I did something right, they push back the Red Army a bit slower than usual.
I have 10x4 INT and 10x4 TAC, a bit behind in air and air techs, so I dont have control over the air so far.


So I was pushed backed slowly, to slow really, I didnt get the extra manpower event until mid 43 and then I was lacking about 100mp, after that it was pretty straight forward and Germany was broken in spring 44.