Noob Soviet Question

[Mutineer]

I got the game recently and try to play Soviet Union on historical setting.
Every time Germany roll over me. This time it is fifth attempt.
This time my army 3 times bigger then ever, with much bigger air.
I look on battle I am loosing and it say something like that: recently 220 of your plains help in battle doing 0 damage to organization and strength.
120 opponent help battle doing 120 damage to organization and 80 strength. Your AA prevented 90 damage and 60 damage.
Your AA shot 8 plains, there AA shot 3.
??????
I do not understand. I try to find any information do I have air superiority. There is no any information. In Air map mode regions look green, what ever that mean.
I have about 1200 fighters and 900 close Air support operating in region.
I have no idea how many enemy have. I do not have all expansions, no espionage, no latest.

 

[Jerichoo]

mate. Are your planes a 1912 model?

 

[Mutineer]

mate. Are your planes a 1912 model?

Nope, mixture fighters 1 and fighters 2

 

[Jays298]

USSR is hard. I have 500 hours in the game and whenever I play USSR I feel like I screw it all up, waste divisions.

My tanks starting off are garbage, which is why I allowed the Spanish nationalists to destroy 6 divisions.

To win? Well it's time. Time is on your side. It's a numbers game. You have to out produce them and bleed them dry of men.

CAS is very strong. AA in your units is good. Lots of fighters with upgraded engines, maybe better range.

You suffer if planes don't cover the entire air zone.

But Soviet has weak industry at first so I can't give good advice.

Learn the game with Germany.

Italy is a challenge.

USSR...that's like hard mode.

 

[Mutineer]

But I am from USSR, why I would want to play Germany?
I really do not understand why my Airplanes do not damage, when Germany Air shred My military.
I believe I got my economy well, I have to import all resources, except Chromium..
All my equipment up to date and I even manage with my 6 Mountain divisions win Spanish civil war and got an ally.
I fix front line supply problems, do not have any.
I build bunch of forts along border behind rivers.
But all this useless if Germany Air shred my ground forces.

 

[shadowpho]

Right now ussr tree is not great. You really have to min max to play it correctly saldy.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

I got the game recently and try to play Soviet Union on historical setting.
Every time Germany roll over me. This time it is fifth attempt.
This time my army 3 times bigger then ever, with much bigger air.

Honestly, this doesn't say much. 3 times bigger army might be anything between 100 and 1000 divisions. For me 250 infantry divisions were enough to hold out for a year and push once air production caught up (I did end up having some 3.5M losses, but hardly had to do anything to win). You can look here for some tips on pre-war buildup:

Guide To get 450 factories before Barbarossa

Version: 1.114 (Beta3) Difficulty setting: Normal difficulty, Germany strengthen Max rank, Italy strengthen Max rank do not use spy to steal blueprints, do not declare war The reason I don't ues Elite difficulty is because With small change in...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I do not understand. I try to find any information do I have air superiority. There is no any information. In Air map mode regions look green, what ever that mean.

You seem to be lacking basics, so you can start here:

Air warfare - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

and work your way up to whatever other questions you might have.

Do note, that Soviets have a lot of debuffs, so you should either get rid of them or compensate with numbers.

 

[jacekgk]

My few advice:
- You can eliminate Romania very early by declaring war on Turkey. Romania is very good ally for Germany, they have a very aggresive AI, which push hard into USSR from the south. If You puppet them, You have a nice buforstate (Germany should not attack Romania). If You annex them completely, You eliminate Hungary as well, because if Romania does not exist, Hungary cannot refuse Treaty of Trianon and they don't flip fascist;
- build some forts (at least level 3) on Dniepr line and retriet here. You will loose some good province (especially Kijev), but this is the best defense line;
- at the begging of the german offensive stay here and let them bleed. AI likes to push hard not counting with the costs. They will be loosing manpower and equipment. You can go with countreattack, when D-Day kicks off.
About air:
- are You sure, that You don't overstacking Your airports? If You put to many planes into one airplane, they will be not operating optimal;
- have You build some radars? I have never done it before, because I was thinking, that radar stations are irrevelant, but in the current patch they are very cool - especially in cooperation with CAS.

 

[Mutineer]

My few advice:
- You can eliminate Romania very early by declaring war on Turkey. Romania is very good ally for Germany, they have a very aggresive AI, which push hard into USSR from the south. If You puppet them, You have a nice buforstate (Germany should not attack Romania). If You annex them completely, You eliminate Hungary as well, because if Romania does not exist, Hungary cannot refuse Treaty of Trianon and they don't flip fascist;
- build some forts (at least level 3) on Dniepr line and retriet here. You will loose some good province (especially Kijev), but this is the best defense line;
- at the begging of the german offensive stay here and let them bleed. AI likes to push hard not counting with the costs. They will be loosing manpower and equipment. You can go with countreattack, when D-Day kicks off.
About air:
- are You sure, that You don't overstacking Your airports? If You put to many planes into one airplane, they will be not operating optimal;
- have You build some radars? I have never done it before, because I was thinking, that radar stations are irrevelant, but in the current patch they are very cool - especially in cooperation with CAS.

But Soviet Union did not attack Turkey or Romania. Romania was German ally in ww2, most known for covering German Flanks in Stalingrad, relatively easy for Russian tanks.

No I do not do any basic mistakes, no over staked airports, or other basic mistakes. I may be new to HOI, but not to Paradox games.
First few days my loses were small, but after they got try my defense line I am loosing 500 infantry EQ/day why producing 300. Soon I will run out. Then like in previous games rot will start.

 

[jacekgk]

But Soviet Union did not attack Turkey or Romania. Romania was German ally in ww2, most known for covering German Flanks in Stalingrad, relatively easy for Russian tanks.

Jap, of course - but, as I always say, there's no rules, which make you play historically

Of course, it up to You, but eliminating two of Your potential enemies early makes things mutch easier.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

[...]
I have about 1200 fighters and 900 close Air support operating in region.
I have no idea how many enemy have. I do not have all expansions, no espionage, no latest.

Switch to the air map mode (button with a plane icon in the lower right hand side), then click on the air zone where your battle is taking place. This will open an overview and show all planes present in that air region, including the most recent air engagements and losses.

Depending on your difficulty settings it is not unreasonable for the Axis to have 4000+ fighters and 1000+ bombers in your air region, and even if you have air superiority enemy bombers can still get through your air defences and attack your divisions in combat. The best defence against that is adding an AA support brigade to your divisions - if you keep up with techs these divisional AA guns will negate most of the damage & shoot quite down a lot of planes over time as well.

 

[AP Erebus]

A save game would be quite helpful. There is a lot of things that could be the reason for your struggles

 

[Winkz]

I got the game recently and try to play Soviet Union on historical setting.
Every time Germany roll over me. This time it is fifth attempt.
This time my army 3 times bigger then ever, with much bigger air.

First time i played on this patch i managed to win with 150 foot soldier divisions only. It required a lot of microing but eventually i pushed them back all the way to Germany until they capitulated. I would recommend that you have much more divisions than that if you wanna win comfortably.
On my second try i had 300 divisions and that time i didnt had to micromanage whatsoever. Just executed battle plan and won.
So i will give you couple of quick tips.
Try to think before the war even starts on what you are going to focus militarly wise.
You going pure infantry? Okay then how many divisions do you need?
Are you going to need airplanes?
Are you going for anti air?
Ships? Yes/no?

Strategize first. Once you know your battle plan. Produce a butt ton of equipment.
Once you do that. Decide where you going to meet the Germans. You going for the Stalin line or maybe just meet them at the border of Poland/Hungary/Romania?


If you dont want to think for yourself and just have an easy time i can give you a blueprint on what works.

-300 divisions of infantry (preferably with shovels, anti air, arty)
-about 4-5k of fighters
-meet them at the Polish/Hungarian/Romanian border
-dig in and wait for them to inflict huge numbers of casulties on themselves.
-mid 1942 start pushing them back slowly.
-win eventually

production wise:
40 military factories on infantry equipment
5 on support
10 anti air
10 arty
50 fighters
1 trucks
1 trains

optional:
20-30 on CAS if you wanna have even easier time.

 

[Winkz]

But I am from USSR, why I would want to play Germany?
I really do not understand why my Airplanes do not damage, when Germany Air shred My military.
I believe I got my economy well, I have to import all resources, except Chromium..
All my equipment up to date and I even manage with my 6 Mountain divisions win Spanish civil war and got an ally.
I fix front line supply problems, do not have any.
I build bunch of forts along border behind rivers.
But all this useless if Germany Air shred my ground forces.

For gaining Air superiority i can give you couple of tips.
Just put a lot of your production on figters at least 50 mills. Try to have minimum Figters II at the start of the war. You can even have Fighters III researched at that point if you really rush it down but its not necessary. Send Air volunteers to Spain. You can gain A LOT of air exp there before the war even starts. Make sure to do pilot exercises before the war starts so the airforce is trained at least somewhat before the war. Remove couple of debuffs from the soviet national focus tree (air related ones). Make sure to do the "More ground crews" option and lastly if you really wanna make sure you win the air battle: build radars near border.

 

[Mutineer]

Switch to the air map mode (button with a plane icon in the lower right hand side), then click on the air zone where your battle is taking place. This will open an overview and show all planes present in that air region, including the most recent air engagements and losses.

Depending on your difficulty settings it is not unreasonable for the Axis to have 4000+ fighters and 1000+ bombers in your air region, and even if you have air superiority enemy bombers can still get through your air defences and attack your divisions in combat. The best defence against that is adding an AA support brigade to your divisions - if you keep up with techs these divisional AA guns will negate most of the damage & shoot quite down a lot of planes over time as well.

Thanks that was very helpful.
Yee currently German have 4000 fighters and 1200 support operating to my 900/600 left. Funny, Romans have nothing and this border did not move. At lest that made something clear.

 

[Mutineer]

Well, took 2 more attempts and in game 7 I manage to stabilize front. Germans no longer can move forward, but I never been able to take a single tie back.
I suppous I need to learn how to build tank/motorize divisions, because original light tanks divisions I had, even improved, never able to achieve anything.