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Both, US and USSR Light Infantry are a bit overpowered...and don't forget to build gazillion of T-10M tanksAnthropoid wrote:For land units, I've built tons of the Light Infantry. I think the stats on that unit are a bit off and it seems a bit to generic to be the best early motorized infantry for USSR.
Yep, does seem to be a good one as far as the stats. IS-6 Shashmurin is actually a good defender tank though. Might be the best close-combat defense unit the Soviets have up through the early 1950s.number47 wrote:Both, US and USSR Light Infantry are a bit overpowered...and don't forget to build gazillion of T-10M tanksAnthropoid wrote:For land units, I've built tons of the Light Infantry. I think the stats on that unit are a bit off and it seems a bit to generic to be the best early motorized infantry for USSR.
Anthropoid wrote:I think I've finally figured out a system to get my starting USSR infrastructure set up the way I want. The main issue is: lots of fabs, lots of low supply hexes = unnecessary hit on finances and relations.
1. Turn off all fabs
2. Lock all commodities and set domestic tax to 200%
3. Turn off purchasing for all except electricity (even that can be left off really) and turn off all commodity sales.
4. Get the finance and research ministers setup and locked out.
5. Build an airbase in Moscow
6. Send all units to reserves
7. Deactivate all: airstrips; coal and petrol power plants; industrial, and military goods; oil fields (Russia has no starting farms, waterworks, timber mills or uranium mines).
8. Use the cities list to identify towns or cities that have IG or MG and power plants and turn those back on.
9. Start the timer and turn on oil fields as needed to keep a static surplus.
The problem is, there are a ton of facilities built all over Siberia that have starting supply levels well below 30% and those are doing nothing but drive up inflation and use manpower. By this system, all of those extremely low-yield facilities get turned off and then the ones in a town or city with ~40% supply get turned back on.
Then the project over the next year or two is to spread the supply network so I get ~80% or so everywhere!
Don't think that's possible.Anthropoid wrote:ADDIT*2: Hey Balth would it be very hard to change my code so that the name boxes for cities and towns show up as the same size as the capital?
IS-6 was a prototyped heavy tank design the Soviets developed to counter the increasingly heavy German tanks and AT vehicles like 'Ferdinand'. It pre-dated the T-10 series, but is directly linked to their origins. My preference is to built 3-4xT-54 Mod 1949 and one IS-6, and combine them into a small brigade with Half-Track Infantry and a light tank battalion (T-70 or T-80).Anthropoid wrote:Until the possible "Blue Always Win" bug gets pinned down and/or fixed for sure, I'm holding off on playing as U.S. and minor powers. If I play USSR, and act friendly enough, on Normal diplo I know I can even grow my red sphere, even if there is some sort of 'bug' causing blue sphere to grow disproportionately.
I've started and restarted as USSR a few times now and find their strengths and weaknesses very intriguing and would really like to play all the way to 'end game.' I feel like I now have a sufficient handle on their OOB, economic and industrial situation, techs and diplomacy to play and have developed some general strategic principles (which I'll list below).
Last night I started up a new game with the settings that I've come to realize are most suited for my interests: Hard Milit; Normal econ and diplo; High random events; enhanced spotting and range off; Sphere victory (this seems to me to be the most realistic in that, it should hypothetically be feasible to 'win' without ever actually declaring war on anyone and simply growing your sphere through 'philanthropy' and diplomacy; pretty much everything else default.
COMMENT: Am currently playing USSR as well and would like to comment on several of your observations, as below.
I too have started and re-started both Single and Multi-player games as USSR, partly the result of BG release of Update 1 & 2 -
and now awaiting Update 3, as I understand ground forces in USSR Far East regions have been somewhat rebalanced, as have China ground force numbers.
Player Settings: alway play Hard Econ, Military - Very High Random Events - No End Game Length; as for military setting - ALWAYS play with No 'Enhanced Artillery Range' [because this allows extended arty ranges as if they already had RAP rounds, etc., and is quite unrealistic given the first couple decades of game play.]
My question to anyone who has also played as USSR is:
What do you do with all those UNITS!?
My God what a tangle of crappy obsolete aircraft, and units the Soviets have strewn across Eastern Europe . . . In previous games, I simply did the rubber-band select on _everything_ and told it to go to Reserve. This was before I realized that there are Russia hexes INSIDE Ukraine, Lithuania, etc. and later wound up moving nearly all those units back inside or Russia to garrison hubs or go to reserve inside Russia.
COMMENT. The Orbat for both Land, Air and Naval units was provided BG at the beginning of development.
Ref your "crappy obsolete aircraft"....yes, but the Russian kept these in service because pilots were familiar with them, others had medium- and high-altitude performances (Spitfires) not available with Russian fighters, lots of Lend-Lease aircraft (late-model P-40s, P-39, P-63 and B-25s to mention a few) were still in active service in late-1949. This was partly the result of wartime Soviet losses and the quality of Western aircraft - they simply lasted longer than most Russian aircraft.
So what do you guys do? Garrison on the border with the West? Garrison in a strong defensive line in your WP allies, else farther back inside your colonies? Send everything to reserve?
What to do with "old" combat aircraft? I put them in reserve and over coming year, sell them to my allies (North Korea, Bulgaria, etc.) and neutral regions. Same applies to older Armored Cars and Cavalry.
Historically, Soviets kept a high level of ground units in Eastern Europe - especially East Germany - out of distrust of the West and this was part of Group of Soviet Forces there in 1949.
Generally, out of respect for the historical fears of the West and distrust of the occupied nationalities of Eastern Europe, I keep much of the East German-based garrison there, knowing the AI or US-player is going to shove great numbers of units into Western Germany. France appears to deplete its forces due to the demand to fight North Vietnam. But, once tried to see how
far USSR could get if they "jumped off" against Western garrison in West Berlin and into W. Germany - got into Netherland's
and then things slowed up, as American and British units began arriving to European ports.
A few observations/strategic principles I've developed:
1. USSR starting OOB is strangely lacking in infantry, though I suppose with a close combat defense of 12 their SU-100 anti-tank is just as good for garrisoning in close combat hexes?
COMMENT. This is the direct result of BG cutting out large blocks of Infantry and artillery from the original OOB given them - there view that the number of units had to be reduced. Unfortunately, it appears that this reduction got more-and-more aggressive as they "moved" from Eastern Europe to Soviet Asia....one effect I have noticed when playing Single games, its that Soviet allies (which rapidly become China, North Korea, and usually the Czech & Poles, re-deploy their units to Soviet areas -
....this is a case where the AI is "taking-over" the game from the Player....where it perceives that there are insufficient Land or Air units to defend its own allies, in this case the USSR. This needs to be changed!
In one game, the USSR had scads of Saudi Arabian (an ally in mid-50), North Korean, and others all over the USSR!
2. USSR has an overabundance of artillery, motorcycle recon, unmounted Engineers & old Lavochkin squadrons. In the past I have gifted these en masse to warm relations with N Viet, N Korea, Eritrea, etc., but to be honest I'm not sure that I was really helping them by soaking up their manpower with these seemingly antiquated units? I'm now tending toward just plain scrapping any interceptor that has less than 10 or 11 mid air strength, any arty with less than 15 or 20 attack, and the moto recons and engineers I'm not sure about.
COMMENT. While the strategy fits the game needs, I tend to (wrongly of course!) also sell them off - the only concern for not doing this is when you are playing a High Volatility game, USSR can find itself at war with the UK (in particular, plus a couple of its European smaller allies) and fighting to get enough units to defend the Baltic and Arctic regions! In that case, the Brit's came half-way down the Karelian Peninsula and were fighting just west of Leningrad, very quickly.[see your comment below...]
3. Having played through a couple times now and tried different things, I'm not sure what real use keeping such a large and overall antiquated army on active duty serves me as USSR. I have yet to see any Blue aggression up through about 1952, and by then I can have produced a couple hundred Light Infantry which are apparently better than the standard leg infantry in every respect and quick to build. Mountain Infantry are substantially better at attack and defense though slow, and Combat Engineers are also much better but take considerably longer than the Light Infantry. But in any event, it seems that pretty quickly 'replacing' most of the existing Soviet Infantry, Engineers, Tanks and artillery is the smart way to go? I wouldn't imagine that those older designs would do much more than act as 'meat-shields' in actual combat.
COMMENT. I sell-off most of the lower-end Infantry and Pioneer Engineers. I build quantities of Heavy Supply Vehicles (or a alternative design bought from a Western country) early-on, to move Leg infantry and engineers around where I want them.
Combat Engineers are indeed fine to built - but naturally take more time to build. If one gets into a war early, Motorized Infantry are essential to provide numbers before one can build greater numbers of Half-Track Infantry and Combat Engineers that are necessary for assaulting city garrisons.
4. USSR has paratroops, but aparently no air transport designs that are capable of carrying them. Should I split those para battalions or forge toward better transport aircraft designs? Related to this, I noticed the U.S. is not the least bit hesitant to trade any and all of its designs for the right price, which I was honestly a bit disappointed to see. U.S. should just NOT trade its designs to anyone that it doesn't have truly awesome relations with _and_ is in its sphere if not also allied. I will follow a house rule not to exploit that, but I did find it slightly immersion breaking.
COMMENT. Unfortunately, when BG designed the "Soviet" track infantry, even a first-split Paratroop unit is too large for a C-47 (or Li-2....both of which were in the Soviet air force in 1949) Dakota.
Part of the "problem" is that BG uses one 'standard' for all aircraft squadrons....some countries used aircraft numbers in a "squadron" significantly higher - in order to accommodate either a half-battalion or full-battalion of Para's, and para battalion's varied greatly in size between armies - therefore, the "one size fits all" of BG does not work well in game terms.
I tend to go after a early twin-engine transport design from Tech options, in the fist 7 Tech design options available.
Historically, the Soviets in the early-post war years replaced C-47/Li-2s in the military airborne / strategic reserve foreces
with the IL-12 (Crate)...but not in game, so you have to go further down the Tech level to get another, longer to develop design!
5. The Yak-23 Flora versus the Mig-15 Fagot. Based on the in-game stats, the Flora is a better aircraft, though only a bit. In contrast, based on my wiki studying, it seems the Fagot was the main Soviet plane used in the Korean War and the Flora only had a few models built?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakovlev_Yak-23
Just an error in the stats?the Yak-23 was quickly replaced in the Soviet service with the more complicated swept-wing MiG-15, which offered superior performance. In all, only 310 Yak-23 aircraft were built before production ended in 1950.
COMMENT. It is a bit over-rated, especially in its Mid-Air rating. On my work copy mdb, this has been adjusted downward [ATM, forgot the numbers but will Edit here later and insert them in...]. Stat's are based on Russian State trials.
6. As far as economy/production the pattern I've tended to follow so far is:
a. turn off as much of all facilities as possible. Given the low level of supply throughout most of the country (even Moscow only has about 60% at start!) I think leaving all those facilities putting out a trickle of production is a waste of manpower and serves to do little other than drive up inflation and employment.
b. spread a high supply network from Moscow to the nearby regions to boost productivity
c. focus on social/medical/science techs
d. try to get coal and uranium production up a bit, build more petrol and coal power plants while upping petrol production to keep up, then as the supply network gets spread a bit, bring more consumer, military and industrial facilities back online.
COMMENT. Strategy here depends on what I want to do in terms of national strategy: a] do I want to support North Korea early-on? b] do we want to take advantage of our overwhelming Land forces in GDR and invade W.Germany - or even just Berlin?; or, other?
In Current single game, the Turk's twice shot down PBY Catalina's flying Black Sea patrol....the third time, I declared war. The objective was to only take "European Turkey", using forces in W. Pact and Ukrainian based units. We succeeded...but the Turk's would not surrender! Despite repeated Diplomatic offers. So, we moved across the Istanbul border and in eastern Turkey via Georgian Republic. In the end, we subdued Turkey and Colonized it! With extension of the war, it became necessary to draw units from as far as Moscow and Ulyanovsk, as well as GDR. Good example of how "best laid plans don't work out" as desired.
7. Military: I have mainly built Light Infantry, which seem to be in most respects as good as Mt. Infantry except mobile, quick to build and rather cheap. Almost seems kind of overpowered for such a generic unit though. None of the Soviet bombers I've noticed so far seem to have the range to hit targets inside the continental U.S. so I'm at a bit of a loss for how to pose a credible nuclear threat.
COMMENT. I try and avoid building infantry-type units until I perceive a war coming. The focus is to replace "lost artillery"...that taken from game by BG, early-on. Try to get a Self-Propelled Gun or Howitzer (SPG/SPH) soonest, including buy outside USSR if need be. The Russian fought WW2 mostly with towed artillery, and that is what you see in the SR-CW game in 1949.
Very quickly, the Military Goods and Industrial Goods can come up short when one begins having to build out max number of units (IIRC, 46 units). So, it is a good idea to get this capacity up, early-on.
Naval Units - the game screwed-up getting all the proper available naval units that the Soviet could historically build in 1949 -
even some of the units in the ground ORBAT are not available for production (look at IS-3 and IS-4's), along with several naval units designs. [Some of this might have been corrected in Update 3 - but don't think all are corrected].
Oh yeah, the IS-6 Shashmurin seems to be a pretty decent tank, but with all of that forest and villages in Eastern Europe I don't see those as being that useful in early game? Even in Turkey there is an lot of close combat hexes and I have yet to see a really potent soviet mobile infantry design as far as I've gone in the Tech tree, which is admittedly not far.
] More COMMENT. In SR-CW, South Korea early in the post-June 50 period does not have an alliance with the U.S., and if the war is ready on between North (DPRK) and South (ROK), one can become involved for benefit of the USSR. In the long-term, it is useful.Anthropoid wrote:
I would imagine that fighting against either Laos or S. Korea in either of those two wars will spoil my relations with the West and if I combine that with the proper amount of espionage in the right places, maybe I can provoke them to declare war on me.
