How to survive as Soviet Union?

[Myoon]

i was playing HoI IV, 1936 start as the Soviet Union. I thought I was really well prepared; I had level 5 land forts on every province on the front line, a radar in every state, air superiority, and anti-air, but my lines almost immediately crumbled. What am I doing wrong?

EDIT: I'm playing without any DLC

 

[marcelo r. r.]

how's the org of your main template?

 

[Kanitatlan]

A successful Soviet defence is driven by a whole range of different things and therefore it isn't going to be easy to comment on why you have a problem. Your defence is a combination of sufficient industrial build up, creation of sufficiently large armoy, production of sufficient and appropriate equipment and some basic understanding of what sort of units to produce. If you provide a save game someone may be willing to look at it.

 

[Myoon]

A successful Soviet defence is driven by a whole range of different things and therefore it isn't going to be easy to comment on why you have a problem. Your defence is a combination of sufficient industrial build up, creation of sufficiently large armoy, production of sufficient and appropriate equipment and some basic understanding of what sort of units to produce. If you provide a save game someone may be willing to look at it.

How many divisions should I have? I had about 273 in June 1941

 

[Myoon]

A successful Soviet defence is driven by a whole range of different things and therefore it isn't going to be easy to comment on why you have a problem. Your defence is a combination of sufficient industrial build up, creation of sufficiently large armoy, production of sufficient and appropriate equipment and some basic understanding of what sort of units to produce. If you provide a save game someone may be willing to look at it.

My unit design was 3 rows of 4 infantry, and 1 row of 3 artillery and 1 anti-tank, is that good?

 

[Demonthese]

How many divisions should I have? I had about 273 in June 1941

My unit design was 3 rows of 4 infantry, and 1 row of 3 artillery and 1 anti-tank, is that good?

273 is fine numbers wise, ~2 armies (240) is usually the rule of thumb for the Soviets. However this isn't a good defensive division. It's counterintuitive but for defense smaller infantry divisions do better than bigger ones (particularly if you take out the line artillery). This is primarily for two reasons. The first is what is known as "reinforce memeing". This occurs when all of the defending divisions in combat run out of org before reinforcements can cycle in. When this occurs , no matter how many units you have on the tile, all units retreat. Because of combat width restricting the number of units in combat at once the bigger the divisions the fewer in combat and the more likely it is that they get knocked out too close together. Secondly we need to know how org works. Organization is the average of all of the units in your division. A division with a single infantry has the same organization as one with two. However here combat width kicks in again, despite having the same organization you can fit twice as many of the first division as the second in a combat so using a single infantry per division means more organization in battle. While there is some tradeoff here in that having less defense they will take more org damage it works out that the increase in org is better.

Taken all together, and including considerations such as IC investment, for holding the line you are generally going to be better off downgrading your divisions to something like 6 infantry and then some support companies and spending the IC you save on something like fighters/CAS or tanks. You aren't really going to get an infantry division that can stand toe to toe with a tank division anyways so the purpose of the cheap infantry is just to buy time for either your own tanks to show up or to drag out battles for CAS to do damage.

For the Soviets where you establish your defense also matters. There are a variety of ways to do it, roach the marsh tiles, hold behind the two main rivers, etc, but in general you want to use terrain as much as possible.

 

[Myoon]

273 is fine numbers wise, ~2 armies (240) is usually the rule of thumb for the Soviets. However this isn't a good defensive division. It's counterintuitive but for defense smaller infantry divisions do better than bigger ones (particularly if you take out the line artillery). This is primarily for two reasons. The first is what is known as "reinforce memeing". This occurs when all of the defending divisions in combat run out of org before reinforcements can cycle in. When this occurs , no matter how many units you have on the tile, all units retreat. Because of combat width restricting the number of units in combat at once the bigger the divisions the fewer in combat and the more likely it is that they get knocked out too close together. Secondly we need to know how org works. Organization is the average of all of the units in your division. A division with a single infantry has the same organization as one with two. However here combat width kicks in again, despite having the same organization you can fit twice as many of the first division as the second in a combat so using a single infantry per division means more organization in battle. While there is some tradeoff here in that having less defense they will take more org damage it works out that the increase in org is better.

Taken all together, and including considerations such as IC investment, for holding the line you are generally going to be better off downgrading your divisions to something like 6 infantry and then some support companies and spending the IC you save on something like fighters/CAS or tanks. You aren't really going to get an infantry division that can stand toe to toe with a tank division anyways so the purpose of the cheap infantry is just to buy time for either your own tanks to show up or to drag out battles for CAS to do damage.

For the Soviets where you establish your defense also matters. There are a variety of ways to do it, roach the marsh tiles, hold behind the two main rivers, etc, but in general you want to use terrain as much as possible.

IC??? This isn't HoI III lol

 

[Herennius]

IC??? This isn't HoI III lol

Abbreviation of "Industrial Capacity"; in HoI4 discussions refering to what you are using the output of your 'MILs' (= military factories) for.

Regarding the topic itself, I would like to emphasize the point made on importance of terrain: Use what you have. Beside putting defensive lines behind major rivers, this means making good use of the size of your land. Initially, that means retreating and giving up some space. Room your enemy needs to take, supply, garrison and hold. Since you have option to even migrate your industry in the east, those "easy" initial territorial gains can play out as a trap for attacking Germany.

 

[Myoon]

Abbreviation of "Industrial Capacity", in HoI4 discussions refering to what you are using the output of your 'MILs' (= military factories) for.

How many mil factories should I have,, and what should they be building? In my last run I had about half of my military factories making infantry equipment, a quarter making planes, and the rest in between support equipment, trucks, and artillery.

 

[Myoon]

how's the org of your main template?

Each division has 36 organizaiton is that good enough

 

[Eisscrat]

Post the save ffs!!!

 

[Myoon]

Here you go, this is a few months before war begins.

 

[Joshua Happytree]

What am I doing wrong?

 

[Eisscrat]

Ok here we go.

Your divisions are out of supply all over the front.
Some only have 8% supply. So they cant fight and shoving more troops to the front only make it worse.

Only lvl 2 railways at some places only lvl 1 = not enough supply...

You lack trains and convoys so even less supply. (don’t know were the 258 convoy are needed the 20 divisions in Syria should not need so many...)

You are in 1944 and only have 250 factories
Germany alone has around double of that all the minors combined even more

You are short on many things and need
more artillery ( 380 days of production)
much more Support Equipment ( 600 days of production)
double the number of medium tanks ( 700 days of production)
and also trucks even you dont motorised the supply of the armys yet.

You have 15 factories on medium tanks while you have 10 on rocket interceptors (wich are crap by the way)

Some of your templates are real bad

You already have 639 Divisions and have clocked up 264 more which are waiting for equipment.
They are also set to infinite new cycles while you even cant equip your current troops.

Also none of your divisions are fully trained. some are even green.

That is some things i noticed for now and im sure there will be more.

Try to fix this and then do it better next time.

And why you play ironman if you are not knowing what you are doing.

Good luck for you.
Watch some strategy guides at youtube or read some tips online.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

My unit design was 3 rows of 4 infantry, and 1 row of 3 artillery and 1 anti-tank, is that good?

that not good.
in really bellow 40org isn't good, less 35 ORG its a average org for tank template without mobile warfare doctrine.

You should trade more ART for more INF, to try 45 ORG on average, otherwise the german ORG WALL divisions will instantly stomp you.

Higher ORG means you can stand longer battles.

 

[Myoon]

How many civ factories do I need to maximize mil factory production by 1941? I did the math myself and found I need to build 4 but I'm thinking that's wrong.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

How many civ factories do I need to maximize mil factory production by 1941? I did the math myself and found I need to build 4 but I'm thinking that's wrong.

on average, its 1 month to build 1 military factory. so its all about how many "rows" of building order you can afford x months spare before the war. if you have 5 rows of civ buiding MIL thats means 25 Military factories in 5 months.

10 rows of building is already a overkill and means you become a industrial powerhouse.

 

[Findell_HOI]

How many civ factories do I need to maximize mil factory production by 1941? I did the math myself and found I need to build 4 but I'm thinking that's wrong.

Depends on what you are producing as in terms of resources used.

Depends on how much land you have.

Depends if you moved all your factories back to the urals or are holding onto enough of the land in front of them.

Depends if you went closed economy.

If you went an Infantry focused build like 10 inf + 1 AA type holding line division with mass assult you dont really need that many. But if you went resource have with tanks and artillery and things that use oil well thats another story.

 

[jll303dc]

You're not doing anything wrong. You just need to watch the battles and modify your game. I can stop the German Army at the border, but I can also stop the German and Russian armies at the border while playing as Poland. After 7000+ hrs of playing HOI4 I have this skill, but my wife just doesn't care. I started a list of how I do it and currently up to 12 things I always do (one critical) but it seems like I would be telling you how the movie ends before you see it and it would be a shallow victory for you. The three happiest days of my life were stopping the German Army at the border, birth of my child and getting married (may not be in that order) and I don't want to take that away from you. Now back to gaming...playing the latest DLC as Iran and currently #1 in total score...sweet update with a lot of bugs. I know...I'm a dork.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

You're not doing anything wrong. You just need to watch the battles and modify your game. I can stop the German Army at the border, but I can also stop the German and Russian armies at the border while playing as Poland. After 7000+ hrs of playing HOI4 I have this skill, but my wife just doesn't care. I started a list of how I do it and currently up to 12 things I always do (one critical) but it seems like I would be telling you how the movie ends before you see it and it would be a shallow victory for you. The three happiest days of my life were stopping the German Army at the border, birth of my child and getting married (may not be in that order) and I don't want to take that away from you. Now back to gaming...playing the latest DLC as Iran and currently #1 in total score...sweet update with a lot of bugs. I know...I'm a dork.

wow lol