Can't beat soviets 1941

[Xx_triplem_GAMING]

I started war with Soviet Union as Germany in 1940, I have 365 divisions on the front but can't seem to break through for some reason. Am I missing something?

[RalphRoberts]

You should have started earlier! The SECOND Stalin starts his purges, you invade!

Seriously though the Red Menace usually takes me a decade and 10 million men to defeat.

[Xx_triplem_GAMING]

damn thought they were weaker

[Garrett]

<beat soviet union on veteran, is also a hardcore german reich player


For german forces get logistics and signal company...(helps give you an advantage as logistics helps with supply when your deep in russian territory and signal gives you an advantage over enemy forces same with recon. dont forget recon company) make sure your airforce has decent numbers and is up to date, a good way to bleed the soviets is set up forts along the polish and russian border. Make sure you do molotrov ribben pact so it gives you time to focus on the allies an prepare your defenses. Make sure your artilliary is up to date also and Tanks. Dont cripple your eco and spam heavy tanks it aint needed trust me light tank and medium do everything better sadly

When you finnally go to war with soviets make sure you try to do surround and cut off tactics... the ai is bad at dealing with it. I once cut off 120 divisons in one small state and then they lost most of their frontline which was around 3 million deaths. If your having a real hard time just paratroop behind them and cut off their forces. DONT listen to people saying invade during the purge you will still get owned... you need to use your brain. Its best to strike soviet when there unity is low...

And its best to strike after you take FRANCE do night fight a 2 front war like hitler did. you will lose YOU WILL NEED ALL MEN on the front took me about 360 divisions in the east to beat the soviet union on veteran

one last thing.. make sure you use your best field marshal and keep plan on careful plan until soviets run out of supplys then aggressive charge them to push em back. AIRFORCE,RADAR,AA is very important as soviets will bomb your infrastructure and industry... you need that to help defeat there bombing which will cripplie your eco.


Another good strat is take turkey and iran and have forces pushing through there 100+ towards stalingrad and your main forces pushing through poland into russia.. or holding off the aithis makes soviet focus on a 2 front war and supplys gets VERY VERY low and they take crazy amount of casualitys. i found out this strategy is extremely effective believe it or not. Make sure your eco is booming like crazy tho before having this much divisions or your supply will cry and you will lose more men and most likely be pushed back. If the soviets get into a war with finland try to invade them as alot of their units will be near finland or hell invite them an help em out.. more allies the better trust me.

i honestly find invading UK worse then the soviet union as naval invasions are a such a wonky mechanic and dealing with UK/france navy is a pain so you cant get units past the channel.

hope this helped goodluck

[Ghost Of Capybara]

If you got 300+ divisions and can't beat any country, attrition might be whats killin you, or shortage of supplies. Build atleast level 2 forts on the border with them, and just sit there. Let them waste manpower and most importantly supplies, because usually an AI with a ton of divisions will be somewhat suicidal.

[ohio br]

Lay the ground work to get Japan into the Axis but don't call them in to any wars. I like to sit and let the Soviets attack me for a while then call Japan into the war. The AI flips out and starts shuffling units around. Right in the middle of the shuffle I'll start the attack and usually get to Moscow and Stalingrad before the AI gets it's ♥♥♥♥ together.

Same with Turkey. If you can get Turkey in the war the Soviets will waste millions of lives trying to get through those mountains.

[il]

tanks, artillery, aircraft, and if you want to bleed them out for a while, forts

[Ëvïlnïck8 ゴゴゴ]

What is your standard division template?

Also, 300 + divs is alot in 1941, you might lack huge number of guns or equipment making your troops fight alot less effeciently.

If you have them all on the frontline you might also have large supply problems.

[Volkswagon Amarok]

anyone up for some road to 56 multiplayer?

[Garrett]

Originally posted by ëvïlnïck8:

What is your standard division template?

Also, 300 + divs is alot in 1941, you might lack huge number of guns or equipment making your troops fight alot less effeciently.

If you have them all on the frontline you might also have large supply problems.

300 Isnt bad if you have a really good eco which if you run the right build you should be fine

[flake88]

With 300 division it sounds you have 'standard' divisions. Make sure they have everything they need, like artillery, AT etc.
This way you have a multipurpose army.

[frobisher]

300 divs??? I found 3x24 Inf, 2x24 Mot, 2x24 1941 LARM more than enough (like, seriously, more than logistics could even handle at times). Oh, and a couple of thousands of 1936 planes for the initial push. Couldn't be arsed to chop up and relocate in chunks to smaller airfields every week, so Goering went back to admiring his art collection. Result? SU falls apart with a whimper. Well, a whimper and the extended trololololololoolo, when you have to travel to the $%^#% Mongolia, because Japan had killed itself in China.

The whole thing starts, when you beeline 1941 LARM. Then you realise adding Motorised brigades is actually slowing them down... Then you consider using naked LARM, but go "naaah".

Then you beat Poland in a week or so with 20ish of them, most still lacking SPART (because you can't rush BOTH 1941 techs before 1939 ). Then Low Countries die before even forming a consistent frontline. Then France gets surParised as always and you notice that you don't even have army xp to add armor to your LARM (Mot brigades are slowing them down anyway), because everything died too quickly.

Ignore Africa. Screw Norway. Either carve up Balkans via focuses or drive jet fuel tanks to Athens. Optionally - invade UK after sending every ancient Tac bomber or whatever on a suicide mission to damage Royal Navy stacks enough for them to vacate the Channel for a moment.

Regardless of whether you gave Eastern Poland to SU or not... get one 24 LARM to NE Romania, another on the road to Minsk. Concentrate Mot or whatever for a secondary breakthrough via Lviv for easier supply, as Romanians are eating tons with their pseudo-units.

Create a giant cauldron, eventually pushing Soviets into those huge marshes with Inf. By the time your southern and northern tanks are meeting near Gomel you will probably notice secondary forces recreating a frontline to the east. Spare northern LARM and Mot should be knocking to Leningrad as well. Soviets are pretty good at emergency transfers, leaving eg. Caucasus dry, so after you chop up their reserves, Stalingrad is basically a road trip.



Then you have enough time to visit USA, especially if you killed UK and can concentrate LARM at Canadian border. At THAT point AI can finally consistently pierce them - precisely when it no longer matters anyway.





...or try the same with Medium Armor. Soviets are slow enough in any case.


The only time this model didn't really work for me was when HoI3 Black Ice or something was gifting Soviets free units every time I advanced too far. Ended up killing >6 Mil, taking Moscow and Leningrad and still getting attritioned into dust by tertiary defensive lines with 3-4 divs per province.

[EthanT]

Encirclements are your friend. Hammer their entire line with infantry to lock their divisions in place. Punch holes with your panzers in two places and swing them towards each other to encirclements the enemy. Your infantry will fill the circle in. Once their org drops from no supply crush them. I routinely catch 10+ divisions like this.

[Piggylongnose]

Originally posted by frobisher:

300 divs???:fear: I found 3x24 Inf, 2x24 Mot, 2x24 1941 LARM more than enough (like, seriously, more than logistics could even handle at times). Oh, and a couple of thousands of 1936 planes for the initial push. Couldn't be arsed to chop up and relocate in chunks to smaller airfields every week, so Goering went back to admiring his art collection. Result? SU falls apart with a whimper. Well, a whimper and the extended trololololololoolo, when you have to travel to the $%^#% Mongolia, because Japan had killed itself in China.

The whole thing starts, when you beeline 1941 LARM. Then you realise adding Motorised brigades is actually slowing them down... Then you consider using naked LARM, but go "naaah".

Then you beat Poland in a week or so with 20ish of them, most still lacking SPART (because you can't rush BOTH 1941 techs before 1939 ). Then Low Countries die before even forming a consistent frontline. Then France gets surParised as always and you notice that you don't even have army xp to add armor to your LARM (Mot brigades are slowing them down anyway), because everything died too quickly.

Ignore Africa. Screw Norway. Either carve up Balkans via focuses or drive jet fuel tanks to Athens. Optionally - invade UK after sending every ancient Tac bomber or whatever on a suicide mission to damage Royal Navy stacks enough for them to vacate the Channel for a moment.

Regardless of whether you gave Eastern Poland to SU or not... get one 24 LARM to NE Romania, another on the road to Minsk. Concentrate Mot or whatever for a secondary breakthrough via Lviv for easier supply, as Romanians are eating tons with their pseudo-units.

Create a giant cauldron, eventually pushing Soviets into those huge marshes with Inf. By the time your southern and northern tanks are meeting near Gomel you will probably notice secondary forces recreating a frontline to the east. Spare northern LARM and Mot should be knocking to Leningrad as well. Soviets are pretty good at emergency transfers, leaving eg. Caucasus dry, so after you chop up their reserves, Stalingrad is basically a road trip.



Then you have enough time to visit USA, especially if you killed UK and can concentrate LARM at Canadian border. At THAT point AI can finally consistently pierce them - precisely when it no longer matters anyway.





...or try the same with Medium Armor. Soviets are slow enough in any case.


The only time this model didn't really work for me was when HoI3 Black Ice or something was gifting Soviets free units every time I advanced too far. Ended up killing >6 Mil, taking Moscow and Leningrad and still getting attritioned into dust by tertiary defensive lines with 3-4 divs per province.

Good advice for OP. One question though, what is LARM? Cant figure out what it is.

[Bvisi0n]

Once you understand game mechanics you will only use 3 Division Templates.

1 Template consisting out of the classic 7 Marines, 2 Art, recon, engi, AA, AT, (last slot is your choice)
This infantry template is used to stand on beaches, frontlines, air fields, ports, cities to hold it's ground and shoot anything that approaches. They do not attack unless the enemy has run out of supplies. The only reason you use Marines instead of Infantry is so you can use them to secure a beach, build a port and move in the armor.

1 Template consisting out of 5 Medium/Modern Tanks and 5 Motorized/mechanized Infantry, recon, engi, signal, AA, again last slot is your choice.
These guys will run around enemy territory decimating everything that fails to run away. They don't care about the terrain, desert, mountain, river, no problem just keep going at full speed.

And then we have that 1 template with 5 Cavaly and Military Police to run around scaring civilians so they don't try anything stupid.

USSR on Veteran or not, wont stand a chance. Maginot line? Waste of resources.

I'd be willing to use "proper" templates and use mountaineer divisions and such but if only the AI deciding where the units stand on a frontline was smart enough to look at unit types. And the terrain it's putting them on.
Oh and the last slot is your choice is always a field hospital for me since the xp loss benefit has proven to be very usefull in getting those division to the highest level possible turning them into unstoppable monsters fast. The manpower trickleback is a nice side effect. This obviously only works on industrial powerhouses like USA, Germany, USSR and France if you manage to keep the Axis out and build up that industry.

How do you invade USSR with this? Make 3 frontlines (or more) equally dividing the infantry so they don't go from Estonia to Romania for no reason, these armies have no attack plans but have the play button activated and are on agressive, they will assist the tanks and attack when the guys standing in front of them are not paying attention. Then make 24 Division Panzer armies and use them to make concentrated pushes with battleplans. USSR falls within a year and you lose almost no men, maybe 500k or more depending on if you made your infantry push too or not.

[MeDaDaddy]

As Germany, you have a LOT of political power points.
I usually start influencing Russia at game start (boost fascist popularity,) encourage a coup when fascism is at over 50%.
It'll still take a year or so for the coup to happen but by that time you could have over 60% support.
The Russian Communist forces rush to quell the revolution so you stomp all over what they left at your common border and make a beeline for the VPs.

EDIT; You can do this with the UK too. The coup splits their Navy so the UK Navy will be busy dealing with those who turned traitor, allowing naval invasions across the Channel with minimal German ships/subs on escort duty