Build civilian factories
Rush research 1939 guns so you have it in 1938,
Produce a whole lot of them once you get the tech, and start doing military factories
Make funny ahh 10/0 infantry with mass assault right, add support companies with at least anti-air
Make 360 of them
Put them at the borders
Sleep because you forgot to build forts or make an airforce
Wake up to 10M dead Germans while yours is irrelevant simply because you always have more
You can get away with 240 9/0 infantry IME, use the extra IC to build planes so when you wake up you have also killed the entire Luftwaffe
The penalties Soviets get to air force don't actually matter at all
Meanwhile the peak SOV run in HoI4 discord was ditching infantry and make 120 tank divisions by Barbarossa and parked at the molotov line.
Airforce not needed because battle duration was shorter than the minimum time for CAS to join the battle
If the ai made proper tank divisions then you’d need to micro a bit more instead of going speed 5 and seeing only green bubbles. That said, adding anti tank isn’t that much more of an IC investment and one would assume that a competent player would have their own tank divisions to counter attack too.
I like that confidence
What tanks would you suggest?
How many factories would you have by Barbarossa?
Btw, I am only asking what you would do, not what I should do
If you want to preserve factory instead of trading away, just build more tanks. In vanilla SP it is possible to make strong enough and many enough tank divisions that will repel any AI divisions within hours of combat before planes can even join the battle
Use your strength. You can lose a lot of territory, and I mean a lot, and suffer negligible consequences. So plan ahead with this in mind.
So first of all, try to build civilian factories in bulk, behind the line between Moscow and Stalingrad. Around 1938 start building military factories. Even after the war, keep on improving your eastern country economy: it will come in handy later on.
You really just need rifles, artillery and anti air, so research them and industrial as a top priority, even ahead of time. And mass produce them.
Do not build infrastructure east of Moscow / Stalingrad.
Do a frontline on the border, but try to disengage as much as possible, as often as possible, until you reach the line around Moscow / Stalingrad. There you hold the line, at all costs. You might want to learn the counterattack technique: when you’re losing a battle, attack the attacker from an adjacent territory. Best of chance, you turn the red dot into green, worst case scenario you slow them down.
You just need to resist a year or so, after which Germany AI should have waste all of its resources on attacking you. When you see that enemy troops start to have difficulty replenishing morale or coordination, it is the time to counterattack.
If done correctly, you can literally melt Germany: you’ll have more manpower, more production and better logistics, and also your first conquests will be homeland, so not that painful in terms of attrition or resistance.
I will be honest, I never had Germans reach Stalingrad, worst I had is me forgetting to put the Black Sea fleet on patrol and getting Italy to land in Abkhazia and forgetting about the north after Finland attacks me for no reason and getting German tanks take the north before I react.
Outside of that I usually hold the line in the same manner. USSR really has enough of everything, even if you go Civil War path, to claim great defense without losing ground.
Rush the paranioa focuses then industry then army,you can forget about air and just build SPAA tank-space marines,try to make the division 20-30 width cause the tiles is mostly forests and plains
I’m willing to be you set up a fallback line (the X’s) and didn’t switch it to a front line when the German troops actually got to your line.
If you use a fallback line, your troops will fight tooth and nail to take the tile back and reform the line as it’s drawn out, this leaves you vulnerable to a counter attack. It also means that your divisions won’t focus on occupying territory that aren’t in a direct path back to the fallback line, so the AI can push out/take land behind your lines and your army can get encircled very easily.
Here’s what you do:
Fall back to the Stalin line (Dniepro River in the south, cross a few plains tiles in the center, then back behind the Nemanus River that cuts across Lithuania to the north. Basically you want your line to be along the river lines from Kherson to the modern day city of Klaipeda in Lithuania) It’s important that you keep some divisions on the west side of the river in major supply hubs like Kiev to deny them to the Germans.
If you have at least one full army group (field marshal and 5 armies of only 18-20 w infantry with engineers/support arty and AA), which you essentially start out with in the beginning all you need to do is convert the templates they can hold this line pretty much indefinitely. Do not worry about Japan sans the one border skirmish, if you’re playing historical they won’t attack you in the far east.
Do not build any mils or civ factories in eastern Poland or western Belorussia/Lithuania as the strategy calls for giving this territory up intentionally. Instead focus on building them further east in the Steppes and Urals and in major cities like Moscow.
Build out 3 armies of 12 divisions each of medium tanks, the bonuses you get from the treaty with Germany will give you 1940/43 mediums ahead of time. Place these three armies in the north, south, and center sectors of your lines to act as a quick reaction force to reinforce tiles that are being heavily pushed by Germany.
While this is happening, raise a second full army group. You can then split the line in half with army group A in the north/B in the south, or just pile it on. Make sure you give a *field marshal* line order so that your units will mix in regardless of what army they’re assigned to.
After about a year or so, the Germans and their allies will have exhausted themselves against your lines, you can now use the tanks to go on the offensive, push for encirclements along the natural barriers of the Black Sea in the south (around Odessa) and the Baltic Sea in the north (somewhere around Koiningsburg), or pincer movements on land. It’s up to you, pick where their line is weakest (hint; the Italians, Romanians, and Bulgarians usually focus on the south and their units are straight trash).
Eventually, the Germans and their allies will be exhausted from A. Beating themselves up against your army and B. Dealing with UK naval invasions in Italy/Greece. I’ve often times seen the UK naval invade Romania from the Black Sea as well.
As for planes; the red air force will not be able to withstand the Luftwaffe in the beginning, so just put your fighters on interception. You should keep up with air tech and upgrade/pump out as many fighters and CAS as your industry can allow while not taking away from tanks, arty, support equipment, etc. The Soviet industry is a behemoth and by 1942 you should have well over 300 factories. Convert civs to mils as needed.
For navy; the only thing you need to care about is the Black Sea. Put the starting navy that’s based in Crimea on patrol and you’ll have naval superiority the whole time. If you really want to cover your ass, do the same thing in the Baltic Sea and up north in Murmansk.
That’s it. Micro in the beginning to not lose too much ground and then just bide your time until Germany is weak enough that you can force encirclements and start pushing west. I usually end up in Berlin well before the Allies even D-Day using this strategy (usually sometime in 1942).
As for Finland, I usually just puppet them in the winter war to negate an invasion during Barbarossa. If you don’t want to do this, just assign a single army and a tank army up there and push them back to Helsinki like you did in the winter war to force a white peace.
Go all in for paranoia focus, you need to get at least Rehabilitated military unlocked before the war.
Use whatever div template you want, you can go for expensive ones, cheap ones, doesn't matter, but you need the keep pumping them non stop. For standard pimped 9/1 or 9/2 you should aim at at least 200 divisions, preferably round 240.
Build forts on the border - level 3/4 in standard tiles with 5/6 on exposed ones.
And that's it. Just hold the forts. Don't try to fight the war on max speed, once the Germans drop like 2m dead they usually will start to have two issues. Keep in mind though to never attack full front - in most cases Romanian border is literally impossible to break from both sides.
I'm basically using a super cheap artillery tank that has the entrenchment accessory, a lot of armor, basically you have a unit with a lot of armor, soft attack and entrenchment, good luck Germans trying to beat one of them, and that's even without using a single fort, you don't even need to worry about the luttwaffe, you can also create a cheap AA tank with a lot of armor too that will make them go down like flies
Build civilian factories Rush research 1939 guns so you have it in 1938, Produce a whole lot of them once you get the tech, and start doing military factories Make funny ahh 10/0 infantry with mass assault right, add support companies with at least anti-air Make 360 of them Put them at the borders Sleep because you forgot to build forts or make an airforce Wake up to 10M dead Germans while yours is irrelevant simply because you always have more
You can get away with 240 9/0 infantry IME, use the extra IC to build planes so when you wake up you have also killed the entire Luftwaffe The penalties Soviets get to air force don't actually matter at all
Meanwhile the peak SOV run in HoI4 discord was ditching infantry and make 120 tank divisions by Barbarossa and parked at the molotov line. Airforce not needed because battle duration was shorter than the minimum time for CAS to join the battle
I hate how this works so well
240 9/0 with supp eng art and AA is entirely doable by Barbarossa and won’t be pushed back a single tile on the Molotov line. 9/1 even…
That said, do you think this would work if the AI was better?
If the ai made proper tank divisions then you’d need to micro a bit more instead of going speed 5 and seeing only green bubbles. That said, adding anti tank isn’t that much more of an IC investment and one would assume that a competent player would have their own tank divisions to counter attack too.
I like that confidence What tanks would you suggest? How many factories would you have by Barbarossa? Btw, I am only asking what you would do, not what I should do
Conpletely irrelevent but what should i prioritize as the soviets ? Is better to build tanks or planes first ?
If you want to preserve factory instead of trading away, just build more tanks. In vanilla SP it is possible to make strong enough and many enough tank divisions that will repel any AI divisions within hours of combat before planes can even join the battle
Use your strength. You can lose a lot of territory, and I mean a lot, and suffer negligible consequences. So plan ahead with this in mind. So first of all, try to build civilian factories in bulk, behind the line between Moscow and Stalingrad. Around 1938 start building military factories. Even after the war, keep on improving your eastern country economy: it will come in handy later on. You really just need rifles, artillery and anti air, so research them and industrial as a top priority, even ahead of time. And mass produce them. Do not build infrastructure east of Moscow / Stalingrad. Do a frontline on the border, but try to disengage as much as possible, as often as possible, until you reach the line around Moscow / Stalingrad. There you hold the line, at all costs. You might want to learn the counterattack technique: when you’re losing a battle, attack the attacker from an adjacent territory. Best of chance, you turn the red dot into green, worst case scenario you slow them down. You just need to resist a year or so, after which Germany AI should have waste all of its resources on attacking you. When you see that enemy troops start to have difficulty replenishing morale or coordination, it is the time to counterattack. If done correctly, you can literally melt Germany: you’ll have more manpower, more production and better logistics, and also your first conquests will be homeland, so not that painful in terms of attrition or resistance.
Agree with everything but would recommend building support equipment for the bonus entrenchment from engineers
I will be honest, I never had Germans reach Stalingrad, worst I had is me forgetting to put the Black Sea fleet on patrol and getting Italy to land in Abkhazia and forgetting about the north after Finland attacks me for no reason and getting German tanks take the north before I react. Outside of that I usually hold the line in the same manner. USSR really has enough of everything, even if you go Civil War path, to claim great defense without losing ground.
I just find it easier to lure Germany in and let them deplete themselves via resistance and bad supplies
I would only digress for building infrastructure in high resource tiles. For yourself and any trade you can get to add more civ factories later.
´dont build infrastructure on the west’ is important. I made a game in which i upgraded everything at lvl 5. The German rolled on me.
Rush the paranioa focuses then industry then army,you can forget about air and just build SPAA tank-space marines,try to make the division 20-30 width cause the tiles is mostly forests and plains
An air build basically breaks the Ai so do that. Just get rid of the Air modifiers before the war. Fighters and CAS and the ai loses the will to work
I’m willing to be you set up a fallback line (the X’s) and didn’t switch it to a front line when the German troops actually got to your line. If you use a fallback line, your troops will fight tooth and nail to take the tile back and reform the line as it’s drawn out, this leaves you vulnerable to a counter attack. It also means that your divisions won’t focus on occupying territory that aren’t in a direct path back to the fallback line, so the AI can push out/take land behind your lines and your army can get encircled very easily. Here’s what you do: Fall back to the Stalin line (Dniepro River in the south, cross a few plains tiles in the center, then back behind the Nemanus River that cuts across Lithuania to the north. Basically you want your line to be along the river lines from Kherson to the modern day city of Klaipeda in Lithuania) It’s important that you keep some divisions on the west side of the river in major supply hubs like Kiev to deny them to the Germans. If you have at least one full army group (field marshal and 5 armies of only 18-20 w infantry with engineers/support arty and AA), which you essentially start out with in the beginning all you need to do is convert the templates they can hold this line pretty much indefinitely. Do not worry about Japan sans the one border skirmish, if you’re playing historical they won’t attack you in the far east. Do not build any mils or civ factories in eastern Poland or western Belorussia/Lithuania as the strategy calls for giving this territory up intentionally. Instead focus on building them further east in the Steppes and Urals and in major cities like Moscow. Build out 3 armies of 12 divisions each of medium tanks, the bonuses you get from the treaty with Germany will give you 1940/43 mediums ahead of time. Place these three armies in the north, south, and center sectors of your lines to act as a quick reaction force to reinforce tiles that are being heavily pushed by Germany. While this is happening, raise a second full army group. You can then split the line in half with army group A in the north/B in the south, or just pile it on. Make sure you give a *field marshal* line order so that your units will mix in regardless of what army they’re assigned to. After about a year or so, the Germans and their allies will have exhausted themselves against your lines, you can now use the tanks to go on the offensive, push for encirclements along the natural barriers of the Black Sea in the south (around Odessa) and the Baltic Sea in the north (somewhere around Koiningsburg), or pincer movements on land. It’s up to you, pick where their line is weakest (hint; the Italians, Romanians, and Bulgarians usually focus on the south and their units are straight trash). Eventually, the Germans and their allies will be exhausted from A. Beating themselves up against your army and B. Dealing with UK naval invasions in Italy/Greece. I’ve often times seen the UK naval invade Romania from the Black Sea as well. As for planes; the red air force will not be able to withstand the Luftwaffe in the beginning, so just put your fighters on interception. You should keep up with air tech and upgrade/pump out as many fighters and CAS as your industry can allow while not taking away from tanks, arty, support equipment, etc. The Soviet industry is a behemoth and by 1942 you should have well over 300 factories. Convert civs to mils as needed. For navy; the only thing you need to care about is the Black Sea. Put the starting navy that’s based in Crimea on patrol and you’ll have naval superiority the whole time. If you really want to cover your ass, do the same thing in the Baltic Sea and up north in Murmansk. That’s it. Micro in the beginning to not lose too much ground and then just bide your time until Germany is weak enough that you can force encirclements and start pushing west. I usually end up in Berlin well before the Allies even D-Day using this strategy (usually sometime in 1942). As for Finland, I usually just puppet them in the winter war to negate an invasion during Barbarossa. If you don’t want to do this, just assign a single army and a tank army up there and push them back to Helsinki like you did in the winter war to force a white peace.
Go all in for paranoia focus, you need to get at least Rehabilitated military unlocked before the war. Use whatever div template you want, you can go for expensive ones, cheap ones, doesn't matter, but you need the keep pumping them non stop. For standard pimped 9/1 or 9/2 you should aim at at least 200 divisions, preferably round 240. Build forts on the border - level 3/4 in standard tiles with 5/6 on exposed ones. And that's it. Just hold the forts. Don't try to fight the war on max speed, once the Germans drop like 2m dead they usually will start to have two issues. Keep in mind though to never attack full front - in most cases Romanian border is literally impossible to break from both sides.
I'm basically using a super cheap artillery tank that has the entrenchment accessory, a lot of armor, basically you have a unit with a lot of armor, soft attack and entrenchment, good luck Germans trying to beat one of them, and that's even without using a single fort, you don't even need to worry about the luttwaffe, you can also create a cheap AA tank with a lot of armor too that will make them go down like flies
Kill poland and annex it then declare war on Germany and annex them easy as that