I think the first thing to mention is the ground defense efficiency reduction that the Soviets suffer. Whilst there is some historical basis for this it would seem that the ground defense modifier is far too effective a method at curbing an army. Indeed I and many others have noticed that battles are over extremely quickly and are extremely bloody for the Russians. Whilst the latter is true the former is not, in fact many battles lasted a long time with the Russians praised for their stubborn defense. German losses need to be small but present as this along with the onset of winter are leading causes of the German halt before Moscow.
Note that I do not recommend removing all USSR penalties as before many players found Russia too easy. I do believe that SOME factor(s) is(are) needed, I guess the question is what.
Whatever is implemented it will need to achieve a delicate balance, one in which the following points hold true.
Technology:
Germany has an advantage over the Russians in most areas throughout the conflict. I believe at present that this issue is addressed and works well.
Industrial advancement:
Russia needs to be quite literally a sleeping giant. Historically Soviet Russia was coming out of a great period of upheaval. Many of its factories were still being finished and logistical services were chaotic. Thus Russia had great difficulty modernizing her armed forces just before the war. As the war progressed much of this buildup was jump started and finished relatively quickly and thus the Russian army started to modernize after the attack on Moscow. This modernization slowly let to the soviets being able to push the Germans back.
This in itself would be easy to emulate as the machinery to achieve this is already implemented in the code at present. The Soviet union tends to lag behind the Germans in technology in most games.
What is not addressed properly however is the state of industry before and during the war. In past HOI games the Soviet Union gets to utilize a large amount of its industry before the war starts. In reality this is not really true, Soviet industry was not gaining much efficiency until near the winter war against the fins when the soviet military had realized that war was coming and that they were simply not prepared. I believe the reason why the old system worked so well (high IC from 36 onwards) was that it let you build up a somewhat semi-modern force from scratch. The advantages being that some of it would last past the first winter where it could be used to repulse the Germans. The problem being that this semi modern army was able to defeat the Germans quite quickly and often lead to the SU winning easily.
The developers of Iron Cross were correct to identify that Barbarossa was too easy as the Russians were too strong but however weakened them in the wrong way. I believe the underlying problems with HOI renditions of Barbarossa require a radical rethink.
I would propose a few easily implemented improvements.
1) It is vital that the tipping point is well represented. When boiled down this really is the point when soviet industry can start producing in numbers that can address the balance between the Soviet armies numbers VS the German armies technical superiority. To this end I would handicap Soviet IC by about 40% before the Czech Sudetenland crisis and build it slowly to war levels after that point (boosting highly after the Finnish war). This boost will allow players to build up their red army with some modern units (like the few T34 and KV1 tanks).
2) Point 1 will inevitably lead to the Red army being undermanned by the time war comes. Two solutions can fix this issue.
- Increase the number of initial divisions that the SU starts with. The SU did have a significantly large army from before 1936 which is not well represented in the '36 scenario. By adding more units to start with the SU will have a large but technologically backwards army. Nevertheless the size of the army will be enough to counter to survive the initial invasion whereupon industry becomes efficient and more technological units start to become available.
. Alternately it might be prudent to make units using very new technologies much more expensive whilst making older models are made cheaper. This effect can again be removed around the Sudetenland crisis. This will lead to red army to be numerous enough to survive the first winter and then will allow the sleeping giant to awake and reequip technologically to defeat the invader.
If these improvements (or something like them can be implemented) I believe the following would occur.
Stage 1 (Before the war): The red army becomes numerous but is still technologically underdeveloped.
Stage2 (After the Sudetenland crisis): The results of the five year plan start to bear fruit and soviet industry starts to deliver, the IC cap increases (and advanced units could become cheaper again). The net result is that the Soviet army is still numerous and mostly technologically backwards with some advanced units.
Stage 3 (The first months up to the Moscow offensive) The technological inferiority of the soviets leads them to be beaten back but not annihilated (i.e. remove the ground defense penalty), the few technological units they have and the sheer numbers of cheap low tech units mean that the line cannot be severely broken and at points some limited counter attacks are possible. All the while the IC cap is increasing.
Stage 4(The Moscow offensive to Kursk vi Stalingrad) At this point the Soviet Unions IC is at maximum and high tech units are trickling into the army. At this point the army will be recovering from losses and thus it will take a long time for the soviet army to reequip itself. Therefore for the first part of this period there will be a somewhat slow withdrawal as the Germans still have the upper hand. The scales will tip around winter 42-43 when soviet industry has started to really make an impact upon the numbers and technology of new units, this will allow the red army for the first time to go on the offensive. The balance between the German technological superiority and soviet numbers/new technologies will reverse in this period meaning that the effect of weather will be important. As the balance between the two sides will be close long drawn out urban battles (Stalingrad) and cold winters will have an unusually large impact (as they both did on this front).
Stage 5: (Kursk and onwards) The effects of Soviet IC are now apparent as most if not all of the soviet army is now modernized and growing in size, the gap between German and soviet superiority widens and Russia can start to slowly reconquer territory in a large way..
These changes will allow Barbarossa to be modeled with some accuracy as the actual factors for the soviet unions reversal will be taken into account. This in turn means that the point of Barbarossa is now as pressing as it was in real life. The Germans need to decapitate the Soviets before their industry and army recover, the only way to do this is to quickly either annihilate their armies or capture their industrial centers. This will also allow us to move away from using the ridiculously powerful Barbarossa fails event. With Barbarossa right the rest of the western theater will pan out much more accurately.
