Barbarossa Tips

[Dinglehoff]

Hello,
I'm looking for some Barbarossa tips.

I tried to go a more or less historical Barb and it's never worked out very well, including in my current game.

I've managed to destroy almost 100 (of 300 or so) divisions so far, but progress has been very poor. Only now in November have I barely gotten an encirclement on the big swamps, and also a smaller one along the Romanian border against Odessa. Up north I got close to Leningrad and took smolensk, but collapsed back and down from over extension, leading to the swamp encirclement.

What are you forces and what do you do to start off the invasion for better success?

 

[Eugenioso]

OOoooooooh... First of all, please search the forum for tips threads, there are enough as it is.

As form of a quick rundown:

- Have at least 9 infantry divisions per province facing the soviets. Artillery brigades help a lot as well as other cheap brigades like AA.
- You will need a big number of MOT and ARM, as a minimum around 18 of each, ideally way more (i go to Barba with at least 36 arm and 42 mot).
- Your airforce will be decimated by the soviets, so i tend not to bother with it too much. Getting some interceptors can help to defend key provinces from air bombing.
- Your job is to encircle and to keep moving forward. Once the first provinces are breached, which is simple enough, secure the conquered terrain with infantry, the deep rear with MOT and the tanks keep moving forward. One spearthrust can net you 3 encirclements of around 30 divisions each.
- Good places to encircle units at are the marshes in the central front (dont attack them directly, trap the AI inside of them), the baltic states (trap them against the sea) and in the south at Odessa. After that, you can do bigger or smaller encirclements at a whim. Beware of Rostov, as its really hard to encircle units there.
- For the sake of encirclement, forget the double envelopment. Go for one strong spearhead instead, supported by diversionary attacks on weaker russian sectors to draw enemy reserves away. Also, as a rule of thumb, never try to do single province encirclements, as the AI is set up to avoid them. 3 or more provinces deep are far more efficient.
- Your objective is not to go for resources, its to go for kills. You have to kill at least 100-150 divisions at a minimum to be able to survive the russian winter.
- Prepare in advance for the russian winter. Your infantry should be defending behind rivers and with proper brigades. You can go for defensive battles with this by letting the AI attack a province and let them push in before countering with your armors and nipping the enemy divisions. When well executed you can eliminate a ton of good soviet forces like armor and the like. Let them in and then counterattack the corridor.
- In '42, your axis of attack will likely drift southwards, and that's fine. Dont try to go for the Caucasus until after your center is secured.

 

[Dinglehoff]

OOoooooooh... First of all, please search the forum for tips threads, there are enough as it is.

As form of a quick rundown:

- Have at least 9 infantry divisions per province facing the soviets. Artillery brigades help a lot as well as other cheap brigades like AA.
- You will need a big number of MOT and ARM, as a minimum around 18 of each, ideally way more (i go to Barba with at least 36 arm and 42 mot).
- Your airforce will be decimated by the soviets, so i tend not to bother with it too much. Getting some interceptors can help to defend key provinces from air bombing.
- Your job is to encircle and to keep moving forward. Once the first provinces are breached, which is simple enough, secure the conquered terrain with infantry, the deep rear with MOT and the tanks keep moving forward. One spearthrust can net you 3 encirclements of around 30 divisions each.
- Good places to encircle units at are the marshes in the central front (dont attack them directly, trap the AI inside of them), the baltic states (trap them against the sea) and in the south at Odessa. After that, you can do bigger or smaller encirclements at a whim. Beware of Rostov, as its really hard to encircle units there.
- For the sake of encirclement, forget the double envelopment. Go for one strong spearhead instead, supported by diversionary attacks on weaker russian sectors to draw enemy reserves away. Also, as a rule of thumb, never try to do single province encirclements, as the AI is set up to avoid them. 3 or more provinces deep are far more efficient.
- Your objective is not to go for resources, its to go for kills. You have to kill at least 100-150 divisions at a minimum to be able to survive the russian winter.
- Prepare in advance for the russian winter. Your infantry should be defending behind rivers and with proper brigades. You can go for defensive battles with this by letting the AI attack a province and let them push in before countering with your armors and nipping the enemy divisions. When well executed you can eliminate a ton of good soviet forces like armor and the like. Let them in and then counterattack the corridor.
- In '42, your axis of attack will likely drift southwards, and that's fine. Dont try to go for the Caucasus until after your center is secured.

Thanks for the reply and sorry for the stale topic post.

-I had around 7-9 each, but with almost no brigades. Only my 3 paratroops have air artillery attached, which I've been using to conduct attacks on airfields and trap retreating units.
-I had around 20 arm and 15 mot split into two mixed prongs north and south.
-My air is not large enough, and I'm seeing that land progress is terrible without ground support air missions. 3 groups of 8 mixed Int/Fighter groups. and 3 groups of 8 mixed CAS TAC and int/fighter. They are just getting savaged over time, and when I have to pull them off the line there's not enough ground support. Now the US and friends are showing up at Brest with 40 stack bombers.
-Forward progress was poor. I've been going for overruns over encirclements and don't like single province encirclements, but my units keep getting bogged down and sometimes cut off. Maybe I'm keeping them too concentrated. The big encirclements have been happening only very late. With the 30 around Odessa I had to make the Romanians clean it up with military control.

 

[SpaceViking]

Do you have all the minor axis powers on your side? Take control of them as they help a lot early on. You can use them to guard the beaches back west if nothing else. I sometimes trade them basic techs for free before they join to give them a bit of a boost.

Did you declare war on the US? If you leave them alone they often won't bother you until later.

Developing both FGT and INT as well as both CAS and TAC is a trap! Just one of each and run with it. Be careful using some brigades as they slow your units down and speed is your best weapon early on. In fact, make sure you have a minister that gives your units +10% speed (I forget which one). Also, pushing your infantry tech development along quickly makes them use a lot of oil without much gain in ability. And you can always go the INF to MTN route to save oil, too.

What I did the last time I played was to put *all* my armor in one province in the NE of Poland from the one spot where your provinces stick out into the Soviet ones. Then I blew through the line there heading north and had some circle around to catch all the troops in the Baltic states. Move infantry in behind them to hold off counteratttacks. I had the infantry that hadn't attacked yet advance and clean up the pockets and the tanks advance and capture Leningrad which had just one INF division in it. Meanwhile I had two large infantry groups advancing SE from central Poland and NW from Romania to catch a bunch more divisions in SE Poland. That one didn't work quite as well and a lot of troops escaped.

I didn't worry about protecting every province and lost a few but that was fine as it ultimately made it easier to catch and destroy those divisions.

Once those were done there was now a big "bulge" in the center so I had the armor head SE from by Leningrad to cut the bulge off. That caught a HUGE number of divisions which I had the armor turn around and attack from the rear. There were still a lot of Soviet troops left but they were in clumps and couldn't adjust fast enough as I kept my ARM moving. I used the offensive option on the armor a lot once the Barbarossa bonus was over and did run my oil down probably too low.

I tried something new that game and did not build any MOT for the Germans. ARM works fine on its own and MOT is really expensive for its fighting ability.

 

[Dinglehoff]

Do you have all the minor axis powers on your side? Take control of them as they help a lot early on. You can use them to guard the beaches back west if nothing else. I sometimes trade them basic techs for free before they join to give them a bit of a boost.

Did you declare war on the US? If you leave them alone they often won't bother you until later.

Developing both FGT and INT as well as both CAS and TAC is a trap! Just one of each and run with it. Be careful using some brigades as they slow your units down and speed is your best weapon early on. In fact, make sure you have a minister that gives your units +10% speed (I forget which one). Also, pushing your infantry tech development along quickly makes them use a lot of oil without much gain in ability. And you can always go the INF to MTN route to save oil, too.

What I did the last time I played was to put *all* my armor in one province in the NE of Poland from the one spot where your provinces stick out into the Soviet ones. Then I blew through the line there heading north and had some circle around to catch all the troops in the Baltic states. Move infantry in behind them to hold off counteratttacks. I had the infantry that hadn't attacked yet advance and clean up the pockets and the tanks advance and capture Leningrad which had just one INF division in it. Meanwhile I had two large infantry groups advancing SE from central Poland and NW from Romania to catch a bunch more divisions in SE Poland. That one didn't work quite as well and a lot of troops escaped.

I didn't worry about protecting every province and lost a few but that was fine as it ultimately made it easier to catch and destroy those divisions.

Once those were done there was now a big "bulge" in the center so I had the armor head SE from by Leningrad to cut the bulge off. That caught a HUGE number of divisions which I had the armor turn around and attack from the rear. There were still a lot of Soviet troops left but they were in clumps and couldn't adjust fast enough as I kept my ARM moving. I used the offensive option on the armor a lot once the Barbarossa bonus was over and did run my oil down probably too low.

I tried something new that game and did not build any MOT for the Germans. ARM works fine on its own and MOT is really expensive for its fighting ability.

The historical axis + crippled Nat Spain are on my side. Italy and N Spain got totally demolished so I'll have to pull units out of the east to help them if the West lands there.

Japan declared early and the US joined the European War themselves. Intel says they have 60+ inf and many many thousands of planes.

I'm not sure they are all bad to develop. They have different stats and also there's the research year block, so it wouldn't seem to hurt going sideways instead of up.

The big idea was to "Cross the T" on thier lines and roll them up from the side but my split prong offensives weren't strong enough for their huge forces.

MOT has the highest speed, so I've been trying to use them for quick strikes as part of the mobile attack forces. I've seen them do well in avoiding encirclements and outrunning armor when needed.