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sHaeBerle

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Aug 21, 2003
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HI everybody!

ok, here's my problem:

i ve been playing a multiplayer HOI game with my friend lately. i was GER and he was SU.
ok i had bad luck, first schacht was a traitor, then anschluss with alliance and vichy didnt trigger at all.
my friend was building about 20 inf divs a month, so i dow SU in mid 1940 before he could build more inf.
i had about 200 divisions with about 50 tanks and 20 mech and mot each.
he had only inf, but 300+.
thing was, my tanks ruled, but he had simply more inf and broke first through romania and hungary and then in northern poland.

my question is how to conter these massing inf divs.
i teched my inf to 6 hard, 10 soft and about 20 def, and got pIV with 70mm.
should i build tact.bombers?
attack earlier?
more tanks?
art brigs?

thanks for good strats against stalin!
 
don't think on attacking before you got tanks!, try to build fast units as motorized/mech and tanks and rush him.
Take as many provinces as you can and quick! encirclment! when you mopped away his front troops advance slow and steady and fill up with inf, strat bomb those surrounded armies and walk in when you think they are weak enough.
 
re

Ok, your problem is a tactical one. The composition of your army and tech levels are fine.
First : Tanks do not "rule", tanks create breakthroughs and encircle enemy forces. Don't view your tanks as squishing the enemy soldiers, instead, imagine them as ripping the enemy to shreds, like deadly rapiers. This isn't Red Alert 2.
This is not Starcraft, it's the real world. Mono-type armies will NEVER win. Those 300+ inf divs as a "flood", a flood which you must stop. How are you going to stop it? Are you going to punch it head-on with your "ruling" tanks? It'll just slither through. Here's what you do. You'll make a soup:
1) You must gather this flood into "bowls" which are pockets of enemy infantry, and you can do this with your armored divisions with artillery attached. The armored divisions can cut up an army into several pieces. (The armor "shapes" the bowl.)
2) Mechanized infantry should follow and encircle the enemy, making sure he cannot escape. The mechs are the "bowl"
3) Send your bombers to pin the enemy down. (Light the fire under the "bowl".)
4) Move plain infantry with artillery attached into position. Hit the enemy until it's softened enough to be eliminated in a single assault. ( Cook the "bowl".)
Tada! Red soup! Enjoy.
Tips:
- There is no need to hurry up. Take your time. Remeber that you can always trade time for casualties (yours) if it is worth it. That is, quickly destroy a pocket, but the enemy will go down fighting.
- Remeber that paras can promptly help tighten up pockets which are in danger of bursting
- If you are 100% the SU player goes solely for inf, settle for Advanced Light Tanks (PzIIF or L) and focus on researching infantry and artillery techs.
- Mountain ranges are impassable if guarded properly
- Even if the enemy breaks out, you can always divert a couple of armored divisions to cut them off. Again remeber to have some paras on call in case such an oportunity arises.
Well, that's about it, let me know how it turns out, ok?
 
ok.

i know how to handle my armoured spearheads. i know about encirlement and ive read dozens of books about the blitzkrieg, thats why im playing hoi.
it just he attacks there, where no tanks are and defeats my inf cause of 3:1 men.

ok.

just some questions.
1.are brigades worth the ic and time? i mean these engeneers are pretty nice making your tanks faster and give them up to +6 defense. but art brigs makes inf cost 2.5 time more than vanilly and it gives just attack bonus and no defense at all.
i mean even with 200+ inf divs in 1940 i ve got enough MP to build more.
2.i thought of mec troops to counter his inf. i just dont know if he adds at brigs. if he does, my mechs will get blown cause they are 1:4 or 1:3.
3.basic tact.bombers? or better dive bombers? i mean having lets say 2 stacks with 12 bombers gets his org pretty much down, but u could build about 16 tanks with this IC not including the costs for teching.
4. im really not sure about those brigades.
5. when to attack? i like going historical ( almost), going for poland and france in 1939, maybe baltic and scandinavien in early 1940 and dow the reds in mid 1940. i really dont like these ahistorical 1936 matches.
6.im even not sure about paras. i mean teching and building them (20 IC each not including those 55 IC transports) costs so much, that saving those IC for some tanks and stuff sound more logical to me.
7.that sound good. i mean i really wouldnt need panthers and their 70mm to get rid of inf u can catch with mg ;) . lets say pII with 20mm? 30mm? 20mm!
8.yeah i know about mountains. u can really beat the hell out of mountain troops, they will kill your tanks like tanks kill cav ;)
so going for some bergjaeger is worth it aniyway.

thanks.
 
i forget to say, that i was horribly shocked how easy it is to go russian hordes for the SU. just tech your inf and art techs, land doctrines the ones giving more inf org or defense and youve got enough IC to go industrial and electrical all the way down including cpu and those stuff. AND youve even got enough IC to start building 10 INF divs at the same time from the beginning, i mean jan 6, 1939 !!!
by 1939 you ve expanded your industry that much, u can build inf with 300+ IC !!!

thats for that.
 
re

I'll be glad to answer your points:
1.In my opinion, yes, the artillery brigades are worth it, especially since you will be the one attacking. If you really want to, a nice boost is to attach engineer brigades to your mechanized infantry, the units which will be responsible for holding the trapped units in place.
2.make sure that you fly some bombing missions as you move your mech inf in position to counterbalance the superior numbers and if possible blitzing right through the pocket before the enemy has a chance to entrench. There was a feature where if a defeated enemy unit was retreating to a province and you captured the province and you have units there when the defeated unit arrives, the defeated unit will disappear. Since there seems to be no problems winning individual battles, you can just divide a pocket, rip right through the defenders and as they retreat use mech inf to reach the inner provinces of the pocket where the enemy will be retreating BEFORE your enemy does.
3.Well, go for the cheaper dive bombers since you get reasonable bang for less buck and more numbers, so you can even the odds in multiple pockets near the front line at the same time.
4.There's bound to be some losses, but you say you have the manpower to pull it off. If you do a bit more research in artillery you'll see things paying off.
5.Take your time. If he goes about bulding those inf divs again mid 1940 should be just fine.
6.Paras should be built just in case you see a faraway weak spot you really need to get to FAST, if there are no such situations, then it's ok to forget them
7.20mm is just fine
8.I told you this to remind you that you can make the best of the mountain terrain in southern Poland, Romania and the Balkans.
9.If you can, you should strike USSR's soft underbelly if he's starting to gain the upper hand: Crimea. Your mobility should allow you to explode before the lumbering giant has a chance of dragging its hulk all the way from Poland to Sevastopol.
 
thanks.

ok, about the brigades, i think a new thread would be worth it.

lets say going adv.light tank 20mm. i mean is there any need to go up the armor tree to get those bonuses? like you get some techs boostung your riverattack or defense or whatever.
teching for basic medium tank prototype would also give you the bulldozer, which boosts your engeneers and for me this means all my tanks mechs and mots.
about art research. normally i go for the 70mm tank gun and tech all inf guns and stuff, but i actually stop teching in the middle of the tree, cause down the tree there are almost only techs boosting art, at, aa or tank hard attack except the 150mm inf gun.

about crimea: you mean amph landing on crimea? i dont know how to get there cause of gibraltar and the british home fleet in the north see.

allright, lets say teching to the pII, mech, dive bombers and paras if i want.
and then just make it like real world and trap those hundreds of thousand men in pockets like bialstok, minsk, kiev, .... ;)
 
re

You can be a bit more sneaky than real-life:
Let him advance steadily on Berlin through Poland. You should slow him down with standard foot infantry (enginner brigdes optional) and airforce. Again, this is a delaying action to make him think you are actually fighting him, your men don't have to die where they stand, pull back steadily as if you are overwhelmed. You can pull back even to the gates of Berlin, if you whish to "fake" it to the max. You should guard heavily every mountain province in the Balkans and Romania and Poland. Behind the mountains you should have your armored and mechanized divisions. When he has advanced far enough advance north all the way to the Baltic Sea cutting his *entire* army off. Your mech inf should be a wall preventing him from breaking the siege, they should get the most air support. 2/3 of your armored forces should attack the enemy head-on, zipping around the pocket and stopping him from defending, keeping him on the run while you pound him with the rest of your airforce, keeping his organization as low as possible as you advance with your foot infantry and absorb the pocket. The rest 1/3 of your armored forces should advance east.

If you go only as far as the advanced light tank with a 20mm gun, the rest of your research should focus either on artillery research if you decide to attach artillery support to your armor, or focus on upgrading your dive bombers.

As for landing in Crimea, you could annex Hungary and Yougoslavia before going at war with the allies, to get to the yougoslav ports, and move your navy there before attacking the SU.
Good luck.
 
His bait plan works well in one on one Multiplayer, if you play the same person tho he shouldnt fall for it twice.

I have some similiar problems playing my cousin as SU me as Germany.

I do take Yugo for its ports, very helpful in opening a second front or rushing some fast units into the heart of Mother Russia via Turkey/Bsea.

Also try to get as many of those Baltic countries into your alliance as you can and feed them techs, that is if you two allow tech sharing(every one has dif rules about this) Finland is a great ally as well, taking troops away from your front and also giving you another place to luanch assaults from. A few german soldiers in key spots can wreak havoc, tying up even more of his troops.

Youd be surprised at how useful thier expd forces can be with a little tech help and a sprinkle of your German inf thrown in.

You can creat a threat that he has to respond to, weakening him elsewhere. Then you can pounce with your elite units. Keep him reacting to you as MIHAI mentioned earlier.

If you dont like loosing dont play so historically either. It will give you more flexibility.
 
ok, last week it was time crushing the russian hordes at my friends house in a 1on1 lan game.

last time we played SU just pumped out vanilla, so this time time i increased my armoured and mech production and also built 60% art brigaded inf.

this time:
nice poland blitzkrieg: 8 days. then wanted to get france, just DOWed the low countries and SU dowed me. so i retreated to the oder and put some forces to the hungarian and romanian mountains trying to hold the red until finished france.
but looking at the stats:
ger 120 inf, 15 mech and 300 arm
su 130inf (!!) 0 mech 5 arm and 25 mountain
me thinking wtf? the answer is he only built at brigades and did A LOT of research. so easy game, breaking through his front with my tanks causes a main retreat of his army to his fortifications in russia. although he had some reserves at his frots, my tanks crushed his lines before his main inf could be there. by now, i got some new arm divs and achieved to encircle red 40 divs in the swamps.
he gave up.

i think its not very clever for the SU to build almost only brigaded inf. well, so even if i think my friend did worse than last time playing, i would like to thank you for the nice-working tipps i got.
 
re

Well, i get the impression your friend tried really hard to do something about your tanks, but AT brigades alone just won't do.
You should savor these early victories while you can since he will eventually start developing tanks of his own and that's when the real game of rock-paper-scissors begins.
If you have any more problems with the russian hordes, you know where to write!
The horde-minator (yours truly over here) will always have an answer:cool:
 
Some thougts...

im this last lan game i also built some tact bombers. but even though i had them in stacks of 12, they couldnt do much against his inf. every attack did cost me about 4 times the casulties, so i ll forget about those next time. better invest the IC in art tech or stuff.

one problem was his navy. he achieved to crush my kriegsmarine with his navy forcing me to keep my ships in port west of the sund. this lead to heavy beach defending on the entire east coast.
i mean against the UK and US ai you need about 10 divs inf and some 2-3 mech and arm to guard whole french and low countries coasts. but with the SU having some 20 transports i had to put about 40 divs on my eastern beaches to prevent massive landings.
 
Surround and eliminate 40+ USSR divisions at once. That will delete a nice chunk of Cyber Reds.
 
easier said than done
 
Originally posted by deathsai
Surround and eliminate 40+ USSR divisions at once. That will delete a nice chunk of Cyber Reds.
Click to expand...

What a brilliant plan!! I never would have thought of it!! :rolleyes:
No wonder the US is "winning" in Iraq... :confused:

Read the entire thread first (that translates to <every post>), Brainstein!! Then you can see how much your all-american 2 cents are worth!
 
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