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I've been trying to get into this game recently by playing as Germany. But whenever WW2 kicks off I'm unable to break the Benelux and the Allies attack through the Maginot. My army is composed mainly of infantry (Inf with art and AA brigades) with a few tanks (2 motorized, 1 tank) and my airforce mainly CAS and fighters. So, any tips?
Before someone yells at you to use the search function here's a couple of links that might be helpful. Mind you, I never play as Germany, but you should have several divisions of Mot and Armor by the time you invade France and Benelux. And nobody builds the AA brigades. I usually only equip my infantry with an Art and an Eng, or AC. Use your infantry to open up holes for your Arm and Mot to breakthrough.
As Germany in 36: What starting existing unit builds do you complete and then move to? How much do you grind industry before the war? Which units and structures do you prioritize for fighting the war? For infantry, is it better to keep speed...
Contents I.- Making Germany Great Again 1- Hitler Chancelor 2- Restoring order 3- Economic recovery 4- Zwangsarbeiter-Bataillonen 5- Today, Germany! Tomorrow,… 6- Militarization of society: Industry, Research, Luftwaffe 7- A busy beginning of...
Try to build a lot more tank divisions in the pre-war period. Then concentrate them in strong points and try to move as fast as possible, encircling enemy units, without getting yourself cut off.
A Germany playthrough is a great way to learn the game as your challenges get progressively bigger and harder - Poland, then France, then the Soviets. You are going to struggle with the next challenge if you aren't able to overcome any of the preceding ones in short shift.
You need to defend your side of the Marginot line which are 3 regions: Freiburg, Mainz and Saarbrücken. Since you have also some forts in this regions, roughly 2/3 of what the French can attack with is usually enough to stop them from attacking. Be aware that Freiburg can be attacked from 2 French regions. Mainz and Saarbrücken can help each other out, adjascent, but Freiburg is on its own. Keep an eye on troop movements which you might have to answere. It is possible to also use older units or even some cheap garrisons for this.
Darkest Hour (DH) is a good opportunity to read up on history... military history: Battle of France or also often called "Fall Gelb". In DH players successfully used not only the Manstein Plan (thru the Ardennen, in DH that would be Luxembourg>Arlon>Sedan and on to Paris to circumvate the Maginot line) but also the Schlieffen plan.
Best is, indeed, as Tommy said, first to practice on Poland (sorry, Poland) your Blitzkrieg skills. In DH terms this means you plan routes thru the enemy front: breakthroughs. You attack along the front with all you have, into the breakthroughs you storm with your armored Spearheads (Tanks and motorized infantry (MOT)) to get behind the enemy troops which are fixed by your attacking/blocking infantry. Once encircled, the enemy troops are cut off not only from supply but when defeated get completly destroyed (taken from the board) because they have no retreat path. If this happens to you, enemy breaks through, instead of attacking head on an alternative is to cut off the spearhead (which then is without supplies and encircled... standard answere of the Wehrmacht or as they said "Nothing is inevitable except the Wehrmacht's counterattack").
A variant is "overrun": You defeat enemy troops but your very fast MOT not only follows but actually overtakes the retreating enemy troops. If your MOT reaches the region first into which the troops retreat (and the region is empty), the retreating troops are destroyed without a further battle once they reach the region already occupied by you.
Both tactics define the modern mobile warfare of WW2 developed by Wehrmacht and Red Army, made possible by the speed of tanks and motorization of infantry (the opposite of mobile is infantry crawling burdened with artillery). And instead of the Napoleonic combined arms warfare: infantry, cavalry, cannons... you now use infantry, Tanks/MOT and aerial artillery=planes (tactical bombers (TAC) and/or close air support (CAS)). The usual applies, of course, always strive to gain a regional superiority of 3:1 at your point of attack at land and boost it even higher with TAC and/or CAS from air. And try to use the terrain to your advantage instead of attacking uphill or over rivers... and if you must do (and really must do after you checked alternatives) prepare accordingly.
Another hint especially for Poland: You don't need to conquere all of Poland. Once you occupy all the regions with victory points (VP) you can annex the country via the diplomacy menu. To see the VP-regions use the the victory map mode, button lower left corner.
For Belgium, Netherland and France it is done via event after you occupy a certain percentage of their countries (because of history and gamewise because some of their VPs are in the colonies you probably can't reach for now).
btw: Now, after you didn't use the forum search, we think you are obliged to tell us how you fared in another try...
You're forgetting one of the best tips for newbies: exploiting the AI. If you really want to cheese the game, you can set up some good encirclements against the French and Soviets by simply leaving a gap in your lines, waiting for the AI to rush in then cut them off and mop up the units. This can work wonders against the French if you let them take some of your land to think out the horde and then pinch the pathway out of their noses.
A variant is "overrun": You defeat enemy troops but your very fast MOT not only follows but actually overtakes the retreating enemy troops. If your MOT reaches the region first into which the troops retreat (and the region is empty), the retreating troops are destroyed without a further battle once they reach the region already occupied by you.
This only works if you have units in the province in question. If you build your units for true speed (so motorized divisions with armoured cars to match their speed but to pack them a bit more punch) you may have the problem that you move so fast that the province those units retreat to may already be empty again. In that case, they are able to successfully retreat there and occupation flips back to the enemy.
Also, yeah, invest a lot more in motorized and armour. Germany's early game advantage is mostly based on the mobile warfare doctrine, which allows it to start constructing armoured divisions earlier than most other countries. Speed really is your greatest friend in any German game
Actually pretty good. BTFO'd France, Yugoslavia and pretty much everything besides the UK and Scandinavia. Got Spain into the Axis. Stalled out around Barbarossa and moved on. I might go back and try again with what I've learned now.
This means you skipped it or did it later on?
To be honest, mostly I do skip it... too much in almost every aspect: frontline, bloodshed, micro, I also rather conquere the rest of the world and... weirdly I feel bad about even in a game trying to rip away that victory from the Soviets paid in real life with so much blood and, at least for a period of time, against all odds won by sheer stubborness and commitment until industrial power and the craziness of Germany fighting... the world... came crushingly down onto them.
PS: I do know and have no problems differing between the virtual world/gaming and real life... except for this. Eh, actually that's not true, when thinking about it a bit I can remember how revolting I found Paradox's game mechanics for Stellaris when, for some time, it made slavery and extermination the most superiour way of "playing".
Thank you all! Sorry for not using the search function lol.
Actually pretty good. BTFO'd France, Yugoslavia and pretty much everything besides the UK and Scandinavia. Got Spain into the Axis. Stalled out around Barbarossa and moved on. I might go back and try again with what I've learned now.
That's why I rarely play Germany. There's so much micromanaging you need to do when fighting the Soviet Union. For me, playing through 2 weeks of action on the Eastern Front usually takes me 2 or 3 hours. Which is about all I can devote to the game each night. I'd rather play as a regional or minor power
That's why I rarely play Germany. There's so much micromanaging you need to do when fighting the Soviet Union. For me, playing through 2 weeks of action on the Eastern Front usually takes me 2 or 3 hours. Which is about all I can devote to the game each night. I'd rather play as a regional or minor power
I can probably play through Barbarossa in that time. But I never really play optimally, since I just standardize my corps into 3 divisions each and are thus able to minimize micro cause I always have enough units at the ready to cover whichever provinces I need.
To prevent making another thread I'll ask here: how tf do I win as the Soviets? I build a few rounds of IC then spam out inf and militia with arty and engineers, along with some tanks, CAS, Interceptors, and motorized. Usually, I have like 300 divisions by Barbarossa. I set up a deep defence along the border and the Germans just chew through my lines with tanks. Any tips?
To prevent making another thread I'll ask here: how tf do I win as the Soviets? I build a few rounds of IC then spam out inf and militia with arty and engineers, along with some tanks, CAS, Interceptors, and motorized. Usually, I have like 300 divisions by Barbarossa. I set up a deep defence along the border and the Germans just chew through my lines with tanks. Any tips?
As the Soviets you have some significant disadvantages in the early war against Germany. Trade territory for time and things will turn your way. When the mud comes from the autumn time, the German offensive will grind to a halt and all further advances become largely impossible. You can regroup and begin to push back. As long as you avoid loses large numbers in encirclements at the start of Barbarossa, things will bend your way in the end.
As the Soviets you have some significant disadvantages in the early war against Germany. Trade territory for time and things will turn your way. When the mud comes from the autumn time, the German offensive will grind to a halt and all further advances become largely impossible. You can regroup and begin to push back. As long as you avoid loses large numbers in encirclements at the start of Barbarossa, things will bend your way in the end.
Yeah, it seems that no matter what I do I really can't win as Soviets. I switch my doctrines, spam militia, no matter what the Germans break through my lines. What am I missing?
I guess you need to elaborate a bit on the "no matter what I do"-part.
What year is it, IC, troop numbers, where is your frontier, general strat, building plan, how do the Germans break thru when you have a deep defense, why can't you cut off their spearheads, number of your losses/inflicted (can you bleed them out?)...
I guess you need to elaborate a bit on the "no matter what I do"-part.
What year is it, IC, troop numbers, where is your frontier, general strat, building plan, how do the Germans break thru when you have a deep defense, why can't you cut off their spearheads, number of your losses/inflicted (can you bleed them out?)...
>year
41 sometimes 42
>IC
abt 200 I think. I build a few rounds at the start for '33
>troop numbers
About 300, mostly inf with a few tanks
>general strat
Usually: Spam a fuckton of Infantry, with a few tanks and motorized, update cav to motorized and tanks, set up deep defense either along Dneiper or the border, hold until they bleed out (Though they break through before that)
>Building plan
Build usually a lot of inf in serial and parallel productions with a few tanks after a bit of IC building
>how do the Germans break thru when you have a deep defense
Tanks and way more units than I have it seems. They attack my weak spots with tanks before I'm able to reinforce and rush in a massive stack of infantry and more tanks before I'm able to push them back. My lack of ORG means they then kill the retreating divisions and any reinforcements that arrived.
>Why can't you cut off their spearheads
they outnumber me way too much
More.
When I open the 1939-scenario as Germany, the USSR has 385/277 IC (effective/base), Germany 228/224.
When I open the 1941-scenario as USSR, the USSR has 252eff/307base with 15% dissent, Germany 384/274.
You have 200... base or effective?
In any way, your USSR is seriously underindustrialized.
Rules of thumb:
1) Priority always: Get rid of dissent. This not only gives you more IC, it is also the cheapest/most efficient way to get IC.
2) Build factories... nothing else... upto at least 1936, probably even into 1939. Make sure to build those factories in safe regions, behind the Ural mountains.
Along the way optimize your policies and ministers for IC and less needed consumer goods (the latter also helps with getting down dissent).
3) Then switch (completly) to massbuilding units. The Germans' bottleneck is MP (manpower), so they'll build lots of brigades and tanks, your bottleneck is NOT MP, so you prioritize raw units over brigades/tanks (more units also equal more organisation).
Switch some ministers in favour of less supply consumption, better org, better fighting bonus for infantry.
4) Remember 1), but try to keep serial lines up in the production list so they don't loose their gearing bonus due to lack of IC. During war keeping dissent down gives you not only IC but dissent also lowers your units' combat stats and you don't want that.
5) From on 1933 use passive upgrading of your units.
If you want to micromanage it, use the "prioritize" button of units to allocate some IC for upgrading the oldest units upto 1 or 2 techs below your best tech. Upgrading very old units gets a huge discount in cost and time. Then deactivate the prioritize button to let them passively upgrade the last expensive steps. You have lots of time from 1933 until outbreak of the war. So think and plan what kind of upgrades you want to do including the cross-upgrades from CAV to ARM, inf to MOT etc. Where to upgrade to, should get priority for research.
They shouldn't ("outnumber you way too much") and with a sufficiently built up industrial base you'll have the means to not get into this dire situation.
On the contrary, you need to outnumber them at around a ratio of 2:1 for land units in general, locally 3:1.
Reason: The Red Army's land doctrine "man power focus" starts with a low GDE (Ground defense efficiency). This, among other things, leads to the Red Army loosing every 1:1 fight or even when outnumbering the enemy at 4:3. So, to get even with the Wehrmacht, you need to outnumber them. More than 3:1 gets inefficient, though, due to diminishing returns (see Combat Rework for 1.03).
Historically this "man power focus" is a bit whacky since the Red Army had an even stronger developed "mobility" doctrine and, other than the Wehrmacht, also the equipment to go for it. But a mix of reorganisation, misorganisation and the loss of most of the medium to higher staff and field officers (purges) led to a Red Army having lost the ability to follow any doctrine, instead was forced to rely alone on courage and the pure life of their soldiers (Darkest Hour tries to translate this into "man power focus").
So, this basically means, that you have 2 big strategic options:
a) Go historically:
Throw the soldiers of the Red Army into the way of the most experienced/skilled/brutal army of that time until the Wehrmacht has bled out, then you can slowly turn it around.
Sounds as gruesome as it is and was but is fairly simple: industrialize like hell, then massproduce infantry, place them in 2-3 regions deep lines along the frontier to get killed and keep on placing them... until you have lost a really ugly amout of manpower but since you have more of it than Germany you will have bled out the Wehrmacht at some point. For that point prepare armoured/motorized units to be ready when you, finally, go into the offense.
b) Try a different way (or several... experiment)
The USSR has the industrial-, tech- and resource potential to also succeed with completly different approaches.
This could be also something like "correcting history" in the sense of abandoning the manpower focus in favour of the mobility doctrine but other than the only-spearheads of the Wehrmacht with a true mobile army of a lot more MOT and ARM than the Wehrmacht ever had... which was the path the Red Army originally was on until the purges and misorganisation and lack of skilled staff and field officers crippled it almost beyond repair.
Be aware, though, that you'll have to cope with a lot of bad events you'll get as the USSR and those will try to push you into the a) historical path.
Misc / special notes:
Fighting spearheads/encirclements
>how do the Germans break thru when you have a deep defense
Tanks and way more units than I have it seems. They attack my weak spots with tanks before I'm able to reinforce and rush in a massive stack of infantry and more tanks before I'm able to push them back. My lack of ORG means they then kill the retreating divisions and any reinforcements that arrived.
You have more manpower, doesn't mean you have eternal manpower, so avoid getting encircled, same for building/using militias, some are ok but don't overdo it since they are cannonfodder and, as said, even the USSR's MP isn't eternal.
Sometimes it is smarter not to attack the German spearhead head on but indirectly: Don't attack the metal point but the wooden staff if to keep within the spearhead image. Let the spearhead come forward, then attack the regions/units behind to cut them off from supply: encircled... then wipe them out.
Alternative 1: Trap
Don't wait until the Wehrmacht breaks thru at a point where you possbibly aren't prepared. Instead enforce it by offereing a weak retreating center but with prepared defensive positions behind (not necessarily prepared by forts but with in sufficient numbers positioned infantry which are rested and dug in). Your "weak" centre is accompied by strong flanks which have not only to hold but are also able to counterstrike. In practice the Wehrmacht pushes in until runinng against the wall of your prepared defenses, your flanks hold and then counterattack diagonally into the Wehrmacht's rear to encircle. Keep the encirclement, cut it into several small encirclments, let them starve for a while, then wipe them out. Keep an eye on "placing" encirclements onto favourable territory (=try to avoid discovering that the encirled enemy units sit on a mountain/swamp which gives the defenders a big advantage... if it happens nevertheless, analyse the local situation wether you are able to keep them long enough encircled that the lack of supplies seriously diminish those units' strength, alternatively it might be a good idea to let the enemy units "escape" into a neighbouring more favourable region to trap them there for wipe out).
Alternative 2: defense in depth
To avoid getting encircled yourself, have 2 or even 3 lines of defending units. Thus enemy spearheads need to move and fight considerably longer until they have a chance to successfully encircle your troops, the time for you to react is also longer, and you also gain more options to which regions to direct your counterattacks. In practice this means on both sides the locally concentrated forces get diffused (more territory to cover) which also means not only the forces of the Wehrmacht but also your own forces are stretched... the side wins which is better prepared and able to react in a way to establish (again) localized superiority.
A sideffect of defense in depth: You gain safe regions to (strat-)deploy new reinforcements which shouldn't be placed right into the front meatgrinders but into 2nd, better 3rd line to gain time to reorg. The 2nd and 3rd line also allows orderly retreats where your front units, if defeated, can fall back to. Ideally not because they have been formally defeated and run to a random region but because shortly before they rout you have manually ordered them to break off the combat and move to a position of your choosing and liking.
Your 1st line of defense is still your main defense but your 2nd/3rd line can be seen as safe hinterland for your reserves to arrive, reorg, perhaps even to circulate troops inbetween to regroup/reorg. At the same time the 2nd/3rd line is there to stop a local defeat developing into a front wide rout because they can retreat into some reserves... instead of getting perhaps overrun and completly wiped out by some fast enemy units overtaking them.
Scope: Keep it small and manageable
Whenever thinking/planning breakthrus, encirclements, roll overs... check at least twice wether your plans aren't too big and/or too rushed. The bigger an operation, the more difficult, the more can go wrong. Try to keep it small in a way that it is easier to handle: unitwise as much as timewise. I did this mistake of too big operations all too often. It was also one of the reasons why historicallly the Red Army did not beat the Wehrmacht earlier: too big plans, too big operations which then failed locally or even when not failing werent successful enough to turn things truly around... starting with the winter offensive 41/42 and basically handicapped the Red Army upto the very victory and led to even the most successful operations like Stalingrad, Kursk, Bagration, Berlin to become a lot more costly than perhaps necessary.
Army size
Most likely you will have to retry the whole 1933 scenario. But before restarting, take a close look onto your positions and situation as of now. Also check how big the Wehrmacht is... to gain experience what number of divisions you are striving for, also what industrial base is probably needed for it.
Reconnaissance
Obviously you should strive to NOT get surprised. The best tool for reconnaissance are "air superiority" missions of fighters along the front and behind the lines of the enemy. This is costly but worth the information. Since the fronts are long and many, don't hesitate to make yourself notices. Unfortunately DH lacks any tools or a map where you can just attach some notices to an area (wouldn't that be handy?), so don't shy away from some paper and pencil next to your computer.
In case you get surprised nevertheless, it does help to have at least a small capable tactical bomber force protected by some fighters/interceptors. See it as a kind of reserve of flying artillery brought in to help defend a position where you definetly do not want a gap to open but your troops are in danger of getting routed. Difficult to say, though, how practical such a recommendation is for the USSR in dependence on existing necessary airports and how wise it is to allocate resources and tech to it which might be missing elsewhere.
Wehrmacht not attacking
If you get familiar with DH and how to properly play the USSR, you might run into the problem that the Wehrmacht won't attack at all. Well done... but a bit boring.
The reason is that there are certain checks how big the defense of the Red Army is along the border and if those checks come to the conclusion that it would be a bit insane to attack giantic USSR... there will be no attack. Workaround: You need to strengthen the Wehrmacht's confidence a bit by weakening your border defense and placing units hidden from the Wehrmacht.
My fast and short hints & tips got a bit longer than expected, I hope some of it can be of help for you to let the Red Army visit my city Berlin *grin
Concepts Of Warfare by Mikkel (shortest, funniest and best introduction to military campaign planning I know and universally applicable... I think the author was/is a researcher for peace & conflict solutions and an euphoric strat-wargamer *grin)
Maskirovka - Red Army military deception doctrines
The Great Purge: specifically extent of lost staff and field officers in the Red Army at outbreak of WW2 and even ongoing with the 1941 Purges
Concepts of how to wage war: Germany/Prussia
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (Chief of the Prussian/German General Staff 1857-1888), the one who phrased: "No battleplan survives contact with the enemy". Some lines of his can be found here: theory of war. In general I'd say Moltke the Elder's thoughts and reorganisations were fundamental for the development of (German) modern warfare and led to...
Auftragstaktik ("leading by task" instead of "leading by orders")
Schwerpunkt (A "holistic" concept difficult to translate, an approach could be "everybody along the wider frontier, beyond and within the specific point of attack, keeps in mind and acts in a way to support the overarching discussed and given aims". This needs a quite highly trained and trusted leading officers staff and is also dependent on very good communications within that staff which, on the other hand, made Wehrmacht operations also vulnerable to counter interceptions of said communications. Less than one might think, though, since the officer staff were trusted to act on own initiative to fulfill those tasks instead of giving overly exact to follow orders. In practice, often enough the Wehrmacht's enemies knew that something was coming but didn't know it on the operational level.)
Blitzkrieg (the word we all know but was never used by the German military command): a possible result when Auftragsstaktik, Schwerpunkt, leading from the front get combined with 2-way-radio transmitters, spearheads, tanks and tactical bombers
Defence in depth / elastic defence: english - deutsch (its modern form developed during WW1 by Germany and France)
More.
When I open the 1939-scenario as Germany, the USSR has 385/277 IC (effective/base), Germany 228/224.
When I open the 1941-scenario as USSR, the USSR has 252eff/307base with 15% dissent, Germany 384/274.
You have 200... base or effective?
In any way, your USSR is seriously underindustrialized.
Rules of thumb:
1) Priority always: Get rid of dissent. This not only gives you more IC, it is also the cheapest/most efficient way to get IC.
2) Build factories... nothing else... upto at least 1936, probably even into 1939. Make sure to build those factories in safe regions, behind the Ural mountains.
Along the way optimize your policies and ministers for IC and less needed consumer goods (the latter also helps with getting down dissent).
3) Then switch (completly) to massbuilding units. The Germans' bottleneck is MP (manpower), so they'll build lots of brigades and tanks, your bottleneck is NOT MP, so you prioritize raw units over brigades/tanks (more units also equal more organisation).
Switch some ministers in favour of less supply consumption, better org, better fighting bonus for infantry.
4) Remember 1), but try to keep serial lines up in the production list so they don't loose their gearing bonus due to lack of IC. During war keeping dissent down gives you not only IC but dissent also lowers your units' combat stats and you don't want that.
5) From on 1933 use passive upgrading of your units.
If you want to micromanage it, use the "prioritize" button of units to allocate some IC for upgrading the oldest units upto 1 or 2 techs below your best tech. Upgrading very old units gets a huge discount in cost and time. Then deactivate the prioritize button to let them passively upgrade the last expensive steps. You have lots of time from 1933 until outbreak of the war. So think and plan what kind of upgrades you want to do including the cross-upgrades from CAV to ARM, inf to MOT etc. Where to upgrade to, should get priority for research.
They shouldn't ("outnumber you way too much") and with a sufficiently built up industrial base you'll have the means to not get into this dire situation.
On the contrary, you need to outnumber them at around a ratio of 2:1 for land units in general, locally 3:1.
Reason: The Red Army's land doctrine "man power focus" starts with a low GDE (Ground defense efficiency). This, among other things, leads to the Red Army loosing every 1:1 fight or even when outnumbering the enemy at 4:3. So, to get even with the Wehrmacht, you need to outnumber them. More than 3:1 gets inefficient, though, due to diminishing returns (see Combat Rework for 1.03).
Historically this "man power focus" is a bit whacky since the Red Army had an even stronger developed "mobility" doctrine and, other than the Wehrmacht, also the equipment to go for it. But a mix of reorganisation, misorganisation and the loss of most of the medium to higher staff and field officers (purges) led to a Red Army having lost the ability to follow any doctrine, instead was forced to rely alone on courage and the pure life of their soldiers (Darkest Hour tries to translate this into "man power focus").
So, this basically means, that you have 2 big strategic options:
a) Go historically:
Throw the soldiers of the Red Army into the way of the most experienced/skilled/brutal army of that time until the Wehrmacht has bled out, then you can slowly turn it around.
Sounds as gruesome as it is and was but is fairly simple: industrialize like hell, then massproduce infantry, place them in 2-3 regions deep lines along the frontier to get killed and keep on placing them... until you have lost a really ugly amout of manpower but since you have more of it than Germany you will have bled out the Wehrmacht at some point. For that point prepare armoured/motorized units to be ready when you, finally, go into the offense.
b) Try a different way (or several... experiment)
The USSR has the industrial-, tech- and resource potential to also succeed with completly different approaches.
This could be also something like "correcting history" in the sense of abandoning the manpower focus in favour of the mobility doctrine but other than the only-spearheads of the Wehrmacht with a true mobile army of a lot more MOT and ARM than the Wehrmacht ever had... which was the path the Red Army originally was going until the purges and misorganisation and lack of skilled staff and field officers crippled it almost beyond repair.
Be aware, though, that you'll have to cope with a lot of bad events you'll get as the USSR and those will try to push you into the a) historical path.
Misc / special notes:
Fighting spearheads/encirclements
You have more manpower, doesn't mean you have eternal manpower, so avoid encirclements, same for building/using militias, some are ok but don't overdo it since they are cannonfodder and, as said, even the USSR's MP isn't eternal.
Sometimes it is smarter not to attack the German spearhead head on but indirectly (don't attack the metal point but the wooden staff if to keep within the spearhead image): Let the spearhead come forward, then attack the regions/units behind to cut them off from supply: encircled... then wipe them out.
Alternative 1: Trap
Don't wait until the Wehrmacht breaks thru at a point where you possbibly aren't prepared. Instead enforce it by offereing a weak retreating center but with prepared defensive positions behind (not necessarily prepared by forts but with in sufficient numbers positioned infantry which are rested and dug in). Your "weak" centre is accompied by strong flanks which have not only to hold but are also able to counterstrike. In practice the Wehrmacht pushes in until runinng against the wall of your prepared defenses, your flanks hold and then counterattack diagonally into the Wehrmacht's rear to encircle. Keep the encirclement, cut it into several small encirclments, let them starve for a while, then wipe them out. Keep an eye on "placing" encirclements onto favourable territory (=try to avoid discovering that the encirled enemy units sit on a mountain/swamp... if it happened nevertheless, analyse the local situation wether you can either starve them out there for long enough, alternatively it might be a good idea to let the enemy units "escape" into a neighbouring more favourable region to trap them there for wipe out).
Alternative 2: defense in depth
To avoid getting encircled yourself, have 2 or even 3 lines where you have defending units. Thus the way for the enemy spearheads to go is considerably lenghtened, the time for you to react is also longer, and you also gain more options to which regions to direct your counterattacks. In practice this means on both sides the locally conentrated forces get diffused (more territory to cover) which also means not only the Wehrmacht but also your own forces are stretched... the side wins which is better prepared and able to react in a way to establish (again) localized superiority.
A sideffect of defense in depth: You gain safe regions to (strat-)deploy new reinforcements which shouldn't be placed right into the front meatgrinders but into 2nd, better 3rd line to gain time to reorg. The 2nd and 3rd line also allows orderly retreats where your front units, if defeated, can fall back to. Ideally not because they have been formally defeated but because shortly before you have manually ordered them to break off the combat and move to a position of your choosing and liking.
Your 1st line of defense is still your main defense but your 2nd/3rd line can be seen as safe hinterland for your reserves to arrive, reorg, perhaps even to circulate troops inbetween to regroup/reorg. At the same time the 2nd/3rd line is there to stop a local defeat developing into a front wide rout because they can retreat into some reserves. Instead of getting perhaps even overrun and completly wiped out by some fast enemy units overtaking them.
Scope: Keep it small and manageable
Whenever thinking/planning breakthrus, encirclements, roll overs... check at least twice wether your plans aren't too big and/or too rushed. The bigger an operation, the more difficult, the more can go wrong. Try to keep it small in a way that it is easier to handle: unitwise as much as timewise. I did this mistake of too big operations all too often. It was also one of the reasons why historicallly the Red Army did not beat the Wehrmacht earlier: too big plans, too big operations which then failed locally or even when not failing werent successful enough to turn things truly around... starting with the winter offensive 41/42 and basically handicapped the Red Army upto the very victory and led to even the most successful operations like Stalingrad, Kursk, Bagration, Berlin to be a lot more costly than perhaps necessary.
Army size
Most likely you will have to retry the whole 1933 scenario. But before restarting, take a close look onto your positions and situation of now. Also how big the Wehrmacht is... to gain experience what number of divisions you are striving for, also what industrial base is probably needed for it.
Reconnaissance
Obviously you should strive to NOT get surprised. The best tool for reconnaissance are "air superiority" missions of fighters along the front and behind the lines of the enemy. This is costly but worth the information. Since the fronts are long and many, don't hesitate to make yourself notices. Unfortunately DH lacks any tools or a map where you can just attach some notices to an area (wouldn't that be handy?), so don't shy away from some paper and pencil next to your computer.
In case you get surprised nevertheless, it does help to have at least a small capable tactical bomber force protected by some fighters/interceptors. See it as a kind of reserve of flying artillery brought in to help defend a position where you defiently do not want a gap to open but your troops are in danger of getting routed. Difficult to say, though, how practical such a recommendation is for the USSR in dependence on existing necessary airports and how wise it is to allocate resources and tech to it which might be missing elsewhere.
Wehrmacht not attacking
If you get familiar with DH and how to properly play the USSR, you might run into the problem that the Wehrmacht won't attack at all. Well done... but a bit boring.
The reason is that there are certain checks how big the defense of the Red Army is along the border and if those checks come to the conclusion that it would be a bit insane to attack giantic USSR... there will be no attack. Workaround: You need to strengthen the Wehrmacht's confidence a bit by weakening your border defense by placing units hidden from the Wehrmacht.
My fast and short hints & tips got a bit longer than expected, I hope some of it can be of help for you to let the Red Army visit my city Berlin *grin
Concepts Of Warfare by Mikkel (shortest, funniest and best introduction to military campaign planning I know and universally applicable... I think the author was/is a researcher for peace & conflict solutions and an euphoric strat-wargamer *grin)
Maskirovka - Red Army military deception doctrines
The Great Purge: specifically extent of lost staff and field officers in the Red Army at outbreak of WW2 and even ongoing with the 1941 Purges
Concepts of how to wage war: Germany/Prussia
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (Chief of the Prussian/German General Staff 1857-1888), the one who phrased: "No battleplan survives contact with the enemy", some few aspects of his theory of war which were fundamental for development of (German) modern warfare and led to...
Auftragstaktik ("leading by task" instead of "leading by orders")
Schwerpunkt (a "holistic" concept going a bit beyond localized superiority)
Blitzkrieg (the word we all know but was never used by the German military command): a possible result when Auftragsstaktik, Schwerpunkt, leading from the front get combined with 2-way-radio transmitters, spearheads, tanks and tactical bombers
Defence in depth / elastic defence: english - deutsch (its modern form developed during WW1 by Germany and France)
1) Negate CAS damage would be a too strong word.
2) Most land units are better off with no brigade or at least a brigade helping in land battles.
3) An AA-brigade would be only of use when attacked from air, otherwise useless... instead of equipping all your land units with AA against an occasional attack from air, it would be better, more versatile and more efficient to build a few interceptor or fighter to fight CAS or TAC or other planes... and that even everywhere in air.
