The USSR is by far the weakest link among the major allies, even more so in Alpha 2. If Germany makes a major push into the USSR, all I have seen the Soviets do (even when I have played them) is to is pull back and then turtle in Moscow. There has got to be a better way to counter the German threat than retreat. Anybody have any success with some strategy with the USSR that just isn’t falling back and consolidating? Stalin would be disappointed if not.
Stalin would get his infantry in a vodka fueled rage and send wave after wave of conscripts until the Germans would run out of bullets/change barrels = Win
that’s wrong!! yeah you need to defend but don’t give up all that money and territory. the key to defending Russia is simple: layers of defense. have a defense line at the boarder and each territory line after that. i.e. Novgorod, Belarus, pripet marshes, western Ukraine, Ukraine. just build inf. and a few tanks. make the Germans pay for each bit of ground they take. but its most important that you don’t let them destroy your whole army. what i mean is don’t bunch up your forces at one defense line. do some small counter attacks.
also don’t give up Leningrad or Stalingrad with out a major fight. if you do the Germans get a minor factory. the same goes with the Ukraine.
You do exactly what Stalin did.
Run away from the front lines, mass up in or just behind moscow.
Hold the fringe points in Leningrad/Stalingrad, then gradually push back in 1942 - and never look back.
Stalin would go and alter your previous post in an armor change discussion thread behind your back, making you look like a total moron, then laugh about you to his other friends about how cool he is and what he can get away with on his website. Then the thread would devolve into a shouting match between Churchill and Hitler with Stalin laughing on in the background the entire time.
OH WAIT where were we? Defending Russia? Yes… Just build ART R1, then ARM after that with INF sprinkled in. Try to keep your tank stack alive, retreat from battles before you leave a stack of THREES (now that we know tanks can still defend with 3s) out there vulnerable to a counterattack. Don’t be afraid to push the offensive, especially if Germany pursues a large fleet/Med. adventures/Sealion. You’ve got the advantage in unit counts as long as the dice don’t swing terribly far; try not to leave medium INF stacks exposed if you can help it, they’re terribly vulnerable to getting diced in battles without armor/FIGs to back them up. Capture the initative and make the Germans respond to YOU, don’t be the pushover player who just builds INF the entire game and waits for the end in Moscow.
Stalin didn’t do this at all. He stayed in place and got surrounded army by army. He claimed “we can’t just give up our cities”
He finally left making military decisions to his Generals who did take the option of trading some space for time to rebuild.
Stalin on the other hand learned from his mistakes and never wanted to give up ground. After losing many times he gave the Generals the options they needed. Hitler did not and took more and more control over all military matters as the war dragged on.
So its really what Zhukov, Timoschenko,Chuikov, or Konev would do?
Yup, the Russians changed tactics by retreating from the Caucasus in 1942, using scorched earth methods and torching oil wells as they left. This was probably the main reason they won on the Eastern Front, by forcing the battles from the open steppes where the Germans had the advantages in tactics, planes, and armor, and bringing them in to the streets of Stalingrad to be ground down into dust.
yes but that was not Stalin’s decision. The was could have been won in 1941, but only in that year. In 1942 they didn’t have enough and the Russians did.
Meh, I think Hitler could have won a local offensive to take Moscow in 1942, if he’d played his cards right. The Germans actually consolidated some Russian pockets from the 1941 winter counterattacks and cut off a major counteroffensive at Kharkov in spring 1942. Seriously, at Kharkov in 1942 Stalin was probably directly responsible for at least 270,000 Soviet casaulties, most of them prisoners of war, by refusing to give the order to retreat until it was too late. With the Germans taking the initiative after that Soviet defeat they could have made a decent stab at Moscow with what they had left from 1941. If the Germans had been able to cut the rail lines leading into Moscow and pushed the supply line for Russia back into the Urals, they might have stood a chance. But since this is HITLER we’re talking about here…
1943, not a chance.
What are you defeatists talking about!
He had a chance right up until christmas 44.
And if he’d gotten the nuke in 45… :P
I agree russia must not be to passive
as far as hitler and stalin
hitler did the same thing as stalin he just didn’t have enough germans
Well History does repeat itself “Napoleon”, just lure them in let the snow come in and own them.
You defeat Russia from the East not the West.
Buy a Fighter a turn
stalin moved his siberian troops to moscow,and pushed the germans from the gates,and got a few months breath,we cant do that cos the japs would kick the shit out of us in the east.this is a game not a real war,we cant do anything that stalin would do,except drink lots of vodka and play pissed:)
@Idi:
Buy a Fighter a turn
Buy an Idi each turn and place them in the front lines. Then attack in the evening and the setting sun reflecting off all those medals will blind the Germans!
I am a history major, so I have a small amount of insight into this area, and the primary reason that the Russians were able to push the Germans back is because of immensely horrible leadership by Hitler. Had Germany followed Guderian’s encirclement plans at the time of invasion, or had the 2nd or 3rd panzer corps not sat still for 39 days after the fall of Smolensk, or had Hitler not sent Guderian to the assistance of Rundstedt, or had Hitler used Gen Student’s paratroopers. Or had Hitler merely besieged rather than conquer Stalingrad, or allowed Von Paulus to break out and meet Manstein, or really just allowed Gen Bock to command the South in 1942. Any of these things would have brought victory to the Germans.
This is obviously simplistic but in the broadest sense the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich had the same cause - Hitler. He created it and he destroyed it.
Russia has been getting more fun to play with each new edition. You have lots of ways to respond to Germany. One of my recent experiments as Germany allowed Russia to buy a couple bombers and transports to great affect. Don’t sit idle even if you see nothing but a stream of troops coming in. Artillery are a great buy a huge offense boost for little cost. Tanks, planes, and mechs can also be part of the mix depending on what Germany is buying and how they are moving.
Germany can either attack north towards Leningrad or South toward Stalingrad. Russia cannot defend both against the German tide. So it seems the only way that Russia could take an aggressive posture would be to place the majority of its troops oriented toward one sector, hope to stop the Germans there and then turn to the other in time to stop the Germans from wheeling around toward Moscow. Ironically, I think defending Leningrad and the northern sector is more crucial in the long run even though the Ukraine is more valuable. The northern sector has the convey NO, access to Scandinavia (the only plausible rout of allied reinforcements) and deprives the Germans use of the Baltic as a highway to reinforce troops easily close to the front. In this sense I think the USSR buying tanks is a waste. Planes and guns are the most effective.
that’s wrong!! yeah you need to defend but don’t give up all that money and territory. the key to defending Russia is simple: layers of defense. have a defense line at the boarder and each territory line after that. i.e. Novgorod, Belarus, pripet marshes, western Ukraine, Ukraine. just build inf. and a few tanks. make the Germans pay for each bit of ground they take. but its most important that you don’t let them destroy your whole army. what i mean is don’t bunch up your forces at one defense line. do some small counter attacks.
also don’t give up Leningrad or Stalingrad with out a major fight. if you do the Germans get a minor factory. the same goes with the Ukraine.
This tends to work quite well for me, as long as i don’t leave stacks within reach of germanys tank stacks. I’ve found it’s a rare day that germany can keep the supply lines constant on it’s march to Russia. I can usually chop them up at some point or another.
