What is Going on!?

[Rotciv Iilems]

I am able to steamroll Poland (as germany) easy peasy. I am able to steamroll france easy peasy. But for the love of god, I am unable to pull off a barbarossa. Jesus christ how does this work. I have 130 40 width infantry divisions on their border (space marines), with NO SUPPLY ISSUES, in 1942. I have 5 40 width tank divisions with no supply issues either (only 5 because it's literally impossible to have the production power to make more without seriously hurting your other production lines). And yet I can barely make a dent into their land before they push all the way to berlin.

For reference, the only times I was ever able to take over the ussr and the uk, was when I absolutely spammed them with nukes in 1960, and finally won in 1970. What am I doing wrong? What can I do to fix it? This is all on the death or dishonor DLC on normal mode too.

 

[walt526]

Seems to me like you're wasting a lot of MIC in equipping those (130) space marine divisions and you're simply not building enough armored divisions if you only have (5) by 1942.

Each Heavy Tank Destroyer battalion costs 500 MIC, so 130x500=65,000. Each 15/5 is about 10k MIC. So just by shifting that HTD to MARM, you can more than double the number of armored divisions.

To defeat the USSR as Germany, you need to encircle and kill off the enemy divisions. To do that, you're going to need more than just (5) armored divisions.

 

[RAID186]

You should be fine with that many 40W divisions. Heck you don't even need tanks to beat the AI.

What are your templates?

Doctrines will be important too, what are you using?

Annnndddd most importantly, what's the air war like? I'd say that's where you're losing.

 

[Rotciv Iilems]

You should be fine with that many 40W divisions. Heck you don't even need tanks to beat the AI.

What are your templates?

Doctrines will be important too, what are you using?

Annnndddd most importantly, what's the air war like? I'd say that's where you're losing.

Mobile warfare doctrine. Blitzkrieg and modern blitzkrieg. Also I had air superiority in ukraine, where I kept most of the fighting. About 4000 fighters and 1000 CAS.

14 - 4 infantry (with engineering, artillery, and recon) and 7 motorized - 12 medium tank - 2 SPAA (with engineering, artillery, recon, and signal tech).

Lined up each infantry army (24 divisions) along their own not-too-wide portion of the german ussr border, stretching from the baltics to romania. Didn't do molotov ribentrop and started the war in 1942 when the soviets attacked japan. Soviets didn't wear themselves down on my northern infantry border as much as I hoped, and mainly focused on the southern front where they were able to push into romania and make little breakthroughs into my territory which eventually became larger and larger. I was able to push a fair bit into their territory on the north via infantry counterattacks, but it was ultimately hopeless.

As for the tank divisions, I made an army containing 5-9 medium tank divisions, and attempted to pincer enemy divisions with this army of 5-9 medium tank divisions (40 width). Unfortunately, I couldn't get the tanks to even get a reasonable penetration into their territory, so there was no pincer and there was no encirclement.

I'm thinking of swapping the previous tank template for a 20 width alternative of 4 motorized - 3 medium tank - 2 SPG (with engineering, artillery, armoured recon, and signal company).

 

[Bki]

Against the AI you can really go yolo with snaking and encirclement. The last time I played Germany I made a lot of 20 width light tank division (2 mot/5 light tank/2 LSPG + supports) and 20 width infantry. The light tanks were good enough to get a breakthroughs then encirclements (sometime quite ambitious ones), then go VP snipe once I felt I had destroyed enough divisions. The infantry meanwhile was on a frontline so that they would automatically move to cover the light tank, which was good enough with how slow the AI react to you snaking.

The exact same tactics also worked in a little-entente France game when I went against the USSR, though this time I only used the tanks while the infantry was my allies'. (The template might have been slightly different too, but it was 20w light tank)

 

[Fulmen]

Ditch the tanks in your infantry. If you really want to min-max, ditch everything except rifles, engineers and support artillery from them. Set almost all your mils to buildings tanks, fighters and CAS. You can leave your infantry at 20 or 40 width, up to you. You should have several dozen 40 width tank divisions by mid-'41.

 

[Harin]

By 1942 the USSR has removed many of the debuffs they started with and are well on their way to field a large number of divisions. At this time, it can be difficult to penetrate far, as the USSR has many divisions behind the line due to supply issues. You just run into them after you advance a tile or two.

If this is the case for you, then it may be a better choice to defend as cheaply as you can everywhere, and make a deliberate offensive force of as many tank divisions as possible. I say this, because your tank force will have to penetrate the front line, advance under bad supply, and defeat the USSR divisions in the back. Infantry just cannot do it fast enough before those divisions in the back reinforce the tile you are attacking. The goal would be historical, that being, encircle and eliminate as many USSR divisions as you can, as fast as you can. You have to thin out their superior numbers right away.

You will definitely need green air and fast moving motorized or light armored divisions to help pull off the encirclements. It is all about concentrated tanks, fighters, and bombers so you can break their divisions quickly.

One good thing, once the AI USSR starts taking casualties, it tends to run out of equipment quickly. You just have to get those first encirclements in to start the dominoes to fall.

 

[him_15]

Why so few amour divisions, that's even less than Germany did historically.

 

[desphorin]

Like everyone else mentioned, 130 14-4 is asking for trouble. I only do 120 10-0 and rest of the production is on MT3 and planes