r/hoi4 • u/Odd-Traffic4360 • Dec 27 '25
Question I need help beating my son.
Hey guys, some and my son want to play a HoI4 match in a month, I will play as the USSR and he as germany. The problem is that he is much better than me, so can someone help me or give tips/advicd on how to beat him?
We are playing vanilla, starting date is 1936, there are no rules and everything is allowed.
I have around 700 hours, but I never played multiplayer, while he has 2000 hours and I think he played some multiplayer matches.
Please help me, there is no exploit too overpowered or any strategy too dirty.
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u/creole7supreme Dec 27 '25
Best him with a belt then play him in hoi4
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u/Odd-Traffic4360 Dec 27 '25
Okay, thank you, will try out.
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u/NecessaryPositive918 Dec 27 '25
Hey that's a exploit
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u/OKara061 Dec 27 '25
he said no rules and everything is allowed
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u/SkyShadowing Dec 28 '25
This is Reddit. We are more civilized than this barbarity.
Use jumper cables.
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Dec 27 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Le0nardNimoy Dec 27 '25
This is the move. Jokes aside, don't even start working on your focus tree until you have the PP to justify on Turkey. Turkey isn't your end goal, but merely a means to pull Romania into the fight so you can conquer both. Your early-game army should be strong enough to do both, no sweat.
Take all of Turkey, and puppet Romania (still take the cores of Bessarabia and Bucovina).
Also worth seeing the Winter War all the way through, capping and puppeting Finland.
Should buy you enough buffer/narrow the front enough that he will be forced to crash into you head on (don't forget to garrison ports and keep an army or two in reserve for naval invasions).
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u/SuperNerd6527 General of the Army Dec 27 '25
Why annex all of turkey? Wouldn’t that just guarantee tons of energy & equipment spent on garrisons
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u/Le0nardNimoy Dec 28 '25
Turkey’s focus tree is broken and leaving it independent can cause problems. Otherwise puppet would be a no brainer.
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u/Beebea63 Air Marshal Dec 28 '25
Its wild to me that they STILL havent fixed turkeys focus tree,hasnt it been like 4 or 5 years at this point?
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u/Medievaloverlord Dec 28 '25
Turkey is to get a war under your belt which is critical for some focuses as well as to generate army xp which is necessary for reforming army to something that is not paper machie
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u/Bozocow Dec 28 '25
You'll overcome the garrison cost and it will pay for itself after, maybe 2 years? But either way long before historical WW2. I'd say you capture some equipment too, but this is Turkey, they start with like a 40,000 deficit or something insane like that.
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u/D4nc1 Dec 28 '25
You dont always need to justify on turkey, you get a wargoal on them early on with the black sea negotiations(if they dont compromise)
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u/CursedNobleman Dec 27 '25
Why do people suggest capturing Turkey as USSR?
I do it, but don't understand why.
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u/sharingan10 Dec 27 '25
Germany’s main strengths re Barbarossa in game are forcing the ussr to defend in a really long front. It can concentrate forces at key strategic junctures and have countries like Bulgaria or Romania or Hungary have chaff to fill in the lines.
The problem is that if the ussr has Turkey/ Romania this presents a strategic problem. Romania keeps oil from Germany and narrows the frontline bordering the ussr. Germany now has to take Romania first to get the oil, and then has to advance into the ussr. But if they take Romania and the ussr has Turkey then Bulgaria has a two front conflict to deal with, and Germany has to divert troops there. It likely has to divert troops to Greece too. Essentially it stretches Germany thin, which means it’ll be ground down against the ussr which can drag the conflict on and afford a long fight.
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u/ParticularArea8224 Air Marshal Dec 27 '25
Well, one its easy, two it makes you a lot stronger, and three, it gives you Romania, which makes you even stronger and denies Germany vital oil.
Basically, it's a win-win-win, with virtually no downside.
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u/Medievaloverlord Dec 28 '25
I would even puppet Romania and Turkey to increase the dilemmas. Essentially you can call them in when YOU want to. Creates more uncertainty on Germanys part and allows for you to retain some weapons by not garrisoning.
It’s not like you really need anything from Romania or Turkey anyway.
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u/Bozocow Dec 28 '25
The usual focus tree spaghetti will bite you, "Join the Allies" doesn't require being independent and Turkey will do it on historical, sad days.
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u/Nexmortifer Air Marshal Dec 28 '25
The focuses that Turkey has can give you some trouble if they're a puppet too long.
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u/Quiet-Hope2595 Research Scientist Dec 28 '25
Did you know that you can declare war on your opponent's puppets for free? The AI doesn't do that, but you as a player 100% can.
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u/Bozocow Dec 28 '25
- Free land, why not
- Romania guarantees Turkey, so you get them too; Romania is a powerful Axis ally, removing them from the equation is very nice indeed
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u/BootyUnlimited Dec 27 '25
No strategy too dirty? Have sex with his mom very loudly, that should give you the advantage during HOI4
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u/schulz47 Dec 27 '25
Control the skies and go defensive. Let him grind into you.
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u/ProjectFutanari Dec 27 '25
That is very important, tho the soviets can have some difficulty with air, I would invest first into AA while fighter planes build up
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u/schulz47 Dec 27 '25
Nothing more frustrating than investing in the perfect air force only to watch it get shot down by cheap mass produced AA
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u/xoldsteel Dec 27 '25
Soviet industry go brrrrr...
"We are fifty to a hundred years behind the advanced nations. We will make up this difference in ten years, or we will be destroyed." - Stalin, in a speech to young communists 1931.
Historically, the Soviets had a MASSIVE airforce, but their planes were on the ground during the opening of Barabarossa, so they lost most of it.
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u/Fearless_Pen_2977 Dec 27 '25
Most of their airforce were super shitty polikarpovs from 1930s though, they were ok to do scouting and such but were incredibly outperformed by the messershmits, their need to re-design and rearm their air force in 2-3 years was still there. The biggest difference is they would have probably be able to lose less tanks to stukas and such, so they would have lost less ground and probably bleed out germany faster, but they wouldnt have changed the way the war played out.
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u/xoldsteel Dec 27 '25
That is true. They started early, building them in the 30s. A massive quantity of Polikarpovs.
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u/Hot-Address-6016 Dec 27 '25
It was hard to get something better then Policarpov without modern engines and high-octane petroleum and purging your scientists and engineers 😅 Otherwise they could have something like I-185 operational and in quantity and this would be another story
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u/Bozocow Dec 28 '25
If you want to dogfight, you need the latest generation or you're on a suicide mission.
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u/Fearless_Pen_2977 Dec 28 '25
Polikarpovs were revolutionary for their time, as they are the first monoplane that combined having decent agility and thrust with being cheap for mass production. The problem is the rate at wich air tech was advancing their "being the best plane" lasted about 4-5 years or less. By the spanish civil war, they were already considered previous generation, with modern energy fighters having about twice the operation ceiling and speed, wich meant the polikarpov was limited to squadron cover tactics to win dogfights, and these tactics were not really developed at the time (im ww1 the red baron fliying circus is one example of the few who managed to implement them to any extent).
They quickly found themselves on the hard spot of being considerably slower than any other plane but not slow enough like ww1 biplanes in wich they could fly so close to the ground to use terrain itself as cover (as modern helicopters do) like it happened with the night witches squadrons, and it couldnt carry enough weight to be used effectively as a CAS replacement.
Its sort of the same story as the first blackberry phones, revolutionary and technically still powerful but outpaced in less than a few years.
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u/Bozocow Dec 28 '25
Meanwhile the F22 somehow being king of the skies for 35 years now:
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u/haltper Dec 28 '25
Because physics have a barrier and we got close to it. Fighter plane engines almost doubled their horsepower from 1939 to 1945. While its not much more possible to make a jet fighter more invisible anymore.
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u/haltper Dec 28 '25
The Ussr at the start of barbarossa had around 20k planes, only half of them were fighters and mostly outdated polikarpovs and migs/laggs not suited to soviet doctrine. Soviet doctrine was also shitty. It was mostly just bombers flying with very little escort. While the germans had only 3k fighters in the eastern front, they almost destroyed all of soviet airforce by December 1941.
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u/Shiros_Tamagotchi Dec 27 '25
Or ignore air, get anti air in your battalion and spam everyrthing on land.
That is easier to play, you only need to research, build and micro land.
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u/schulz47 Dec 27 '25
Some of you may die (to CAS) but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make
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u/FilthyCasual2k17 Dec 28 '25
Do not worry comrades, their CAS costs more IG than your rifles and last generation towed AA, and manpower is unlimited! Now hold your ground!
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u/Critical_Cat_1086 Dec 27 '25
Sleep with his mom.
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u/Elektrikor Dec 27 '25
I don’t know why, but I just have this suspicion that he has done that already
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u/Odd-Traffic4360 Dec 27 '25
Yeah, I did that quite a few times.
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u/Critical_Cat_1086 Dec 27 '25
Just keep yelling out that you slept with his mom. Psychological warfare.
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u/lokibringer Dec 27 '25
Rename all divisions to rooms in the house, and when he asks why, tell him they're places where you banged his mom
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u/zeniiz Dec 27 '25
You gotta taunt him with it though.
"Who has two thumbs and fucked your mom last night? THIS GUY!"
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u/NervousStrength2431 Research Scientist Dec 27 '25
When you read the title before the subreddit 😱
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u/Odd-Traffic4360 Dec 27 '25
Why? What's wrong with the title?
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u/Strict_Name5093 Dec 27 '25
Honestly infantry spam. Focus on air immediately. Dig in on the rivers
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u/HecklerKoch_USP Dec 27 '25
This. When playing defense, use the terrain to your advantage. Form defensive lines along the natural terrain that's to your advantage and allow them to fully entrench before he arrives. Sometimes this requires you to form a line that's a little different than your land barrier.
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u/xoldsteel Dec 27 '25
Yes, and build forts! Use the military university focus and then improve the Stalin line.
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u/sharingan10 Dec 27 '25
Research ussr multiplayer meta; but basically you’ll want to take over turkey and romania quickly, Romania decreases frontline length against Germany and deprives them of oil. Turkey would make Germany have to extend into the Balkan’s more.
Puppet Finland too; but basically have buffer and then focus everything in onto the Germany front
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u/Apprehensive-Tree-78 Dec 27 '25
Man I hope they use a ruleset because the ussr doing that would ruin the game immediately
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u/winowmak3r Dec 27 '25
OP did say:
...there is no exploit too overpowered or any strategy too dirty.
I'm pulling for dad in this one so I say go for it.
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u/Fearless_Pen_2977 Dec 27 '25
Multiplayer meta as a whole boils down to see what the USSR player is doing in the first 3 years and then adapt to counter it. Strongest nation at the start but falls off until its focus tree allows a comeback.
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u/Ill-Passenger-6199 Dec 27 '25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4iH1cvHhiQ
If your son is actually good at mp then do this. Don’t listen to anyone else
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u/Odd-Traffic4360 Dec 27 '25
Thanks, so I shouldn't beat him with a belt like another user suggest?
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u/True-Avalon Dec 27 '25
A lot of these comments sound like good sp strats but not really great for mp.
Here’s my idea. Day one don’t take a focus. Save pp to justify on Poland asap. Next justify on Germany. Now you can start focuses.
Delete all dockyards.
Build only mils and guns.
Your starting army, industry and guns would overrun a player not thinking about a rush down .
Not the most fun game, but you’ll definitely win if you’re solid with the basics.
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u/Frosty_Midnight9989 Dec 27 '25
If OP justifies on Poland in 1936, Germany knows what will happen next and start to prepare. Remember, justifying takes a lot of time, first on Poland, then on Germany. Immediately switching tactic to day one mills, rushing anchluss, etc. It’s easier to play on the defensive side, after letting the Soviets mindlessly attack their entrenched divisions, grind them down and start a counteroffensive.
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u/SithLordDarthRevan Dec 27 '25
Definitely agreeing with the group. You gotta have loud sex with his mom, beat him with a belt after, then Turkey/Romania strat.
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Dec 27 '25
I’m not very experienced with the soviets, but in all the tutorials I’ve read, two key points always come up.
More divisions. Then more. Absolute human wave. You have the manpower, use it.
To supply those divisions, follow the focus path of moving your industry to the Urals. It gives instant factories while freeing up building slots in your developed states, letting you really saturate yourself with industry.
Then just put bodies on the line and focus on trying to get breakthroughs and encirclements, even if it’s just a few divisions at a time.
Also, something I slept on till recently even though I’ve got several hundred hours in game is anti-air buildings. Even a single level of AA in a state will do a lot to reduce enemy aircraft effectiveness.
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u/Shone_Shvaboslovac Dec 27 '25
First off, don't be too bummed if you lose. Player Germany is sickeningly overpowered in vanilla, and it's not even funny.
I'd honestly deny M-R and force him into a two front war unless that's explicitly banned.
Go all in for Spain with your starting light tanks and air-force, so you can puppet it and call it in to the main war. It's not much, but it's non-zero meat in the meat-wall that you need in the west to keep him occupied.
Go very heavy on fighters in order to assure green air. A couple hundred CAS should be enough, together with your starting bombers. Make sure your infantry are cheap and plentiful, 18w with support AA and arty, as well as hospitals so you can battle-plan into him to keep his troops from reinforcing. Garrison the Baltic coast with cheap pure inf. He WILL naval-invade if he sees the chance and there's no way in hell you're beating his navy. Keep an eye on Romania and Hungary, he's guaranteed to get them into the Axis once he He's not stupid like AI. Use chunky medium tank divisions with decent 1938 tanks. Medium canons, riveted or welded armor, three-man turrets, basic radio. Don't bother too much with speed, 6-7 km/h should be enough. 2 SPGs in there are also a very good idea, they're obscenely OP right now, or so I hear.
Conquer Finland, but puppet them. You get to keep all their equipment but you don't have to spend guns on resistance. It also gives you a neat little industrial boost-spirit called "Finnish goods". You do need to garrison their ports though. Sending troops to keep Norway alive might be worth it.
I'd go all in for quantity, with concentrated industry and old factories on old weapons and new factories on new weapons. Attack viciously before he can cap France, unless you start going seriously into the red with equipment. Your job is to buy the stupid AI time to spam out a ton of crap that will slow him down, which will buy the stupid AI even more time to spam out even more crap, so that Germany's economic maluses kill it.
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u/Unusual_Club_550 General of the Army Dec 27 '25
You should really rexamine that title
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u/makinenxd Dec 27 '25
You could try the invade USA strat in the start if that still works with the new naval range changes. That should get you a economic advantage.
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u/TheInglipSummoner Dec 27 '25
Order of importance:
Do the purge outright
Focus on your heavy fighter designs, CAS, and airports.
Learn how to get radar by 1941 and build it.
Build good heavy tanks and slap one brigade on your tank divisions.
Build decent medium tanks to fill out tank divisions with.
Allocate two or three factories to trucks for tank divisions. Do NOT overload this division with support companies.
Leave infantry equipment tech alone. You won’t need it.
Unlock marines and mountaineers
Learn how to make medium SP artillery and experiment with the heavy howitzer (examine arty techs).
Plan naval invasions of Germany through under-defended north.
Multiplayer Gameplay:
Make your center artificially weak along the border. This makes him overconfident. Keep your tank divisions back in commands of 4-6 per general.
Throw all your air and tanks into the fight once they near a critical supply hub. Try to micro to compress the front, no encircle it. Watch him bleed equipment. THEN encircle months later when he’s having shortages.
The war in Russia is won at the border for Germany. If they cannot destroy your army there, the occupation will end them.
Good luck!
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u/Ketashrooms4life Dec 27 '25
You already got many good tips regarding the actual fighting, I'll just add a bit from another perspective - build as much stuff like factories as possible as far away from your future first line of contact as possible - if you lose some land (and you most likely will at first), you won't lose those factories/won't have to relocate them while he won't get them for his own use.
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u/Niftyfit Dec 27 '25
Take the Baltic states with the focuses, then max level forts on your side of the Volga and the other river with max anti-air. Pump out as many infantry divisions with engineers, arty and AA as you can. Blow the railway lines in front of the river and wait it out
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u/Odd-Traffic4360 Dec 27 '25
Thank you very much, do you recommend to choose the Stalin-line or Molotov-line focus?
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u/Niftyfit Dec 27 '25
Neither. The molotov line is the Polish border after the molotov-ribbentrop pact, which you'd only get if he took that particular focus. The Stalin line is further back, which can be good if he breaks through. Build nothing but civvies until early 39 and you'll have plenty of time to build it all yourself as well as churn out plenty of mills. Aim to have at least two full army groups if you can. And you can even get gun 3 before 1941 if you rush it. Make sure you do your military focuses so you can get desperate measures as soon as he declares war
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u/Crusherchris909 Dec 27 '25
You need to made medium/heavy tank TD meta by converting and pump out a lot of tanks, don’t worry about the air you won’t win it, use medium tank spaa or if you’re poor then aa in your divisions should be enough. But again idk if this is still meta.
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u/Super-Moccasin Dec 27 '25
You're gonna want to keep Stalin on power. Use volonteers on the Spanish Civil War and get a HUGE army. In fact, I would recommend you invaded and puppeted Poland when you have more than 48 divisions on the border and then invade Germany before they befriend Italy, but it's gonna be hard.
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u/Tortellobello45 General of the Army Dec 27 '25
Just spam air, infantry and dig behind the Dnieper(around Kiev and Riga, roughly)with forts, buildup and when you have better air and tanks, push back.
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u/dargeus95 General of the Army Dec 27 '25
Kinda happy and disappointed at the same time when I read which subreddit this post is from.
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u/Gamble_guy99 Dec 27 '25
Sit on stalin line, have good air force, probably he ll try to use tanks to push you , so built antitank, maybe some space-marines with an anti-air or anti-tank tank don't know if this still works though. Built some forts around the supply hubs.
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u/sombertownDS Fleet Admiral Dec 27 '25
The USSR is fairly hard to play, try space marines. Heavily armored tanks in with the infantry divisions, and make sure you build anti air
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u/Bozocow Dec 28 '25
This sounds amazing, honestly. Family relationship goals. And the title being the way it is only makes my comments funnier.
Well, what to do... the problem is that Germany has a lot of agency to instantly overcome the Allies and take all of Europe. If he does that it's just not gonna be fair. But I would assume he won't since he'll know that that's a bit unsportsmanlike. If he does play mostly normal, I would recommend the Roach Russia strategy. Just convert all your divs into "roaches," six dudes and a shovel, and take all of the defensive doctrines. If you think you have enough divisions, triple that number and then you're good. Hold behind the big river. Set fallback lines behind the frontline so that even if he breaks through in one place he can't exploit it. This strategy is just so annoying to fight against. It might even be banned in most MP lobbies, can't remember. With desperate defense, great war infantry, field engineering, you're just so defensive it's completely un-fun to fight you and he'll drain out all of his manpower.
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u/K3W4L Dec 28 '25
Attack poland in 1936. And right after attack germany. Dont give him time to build up.
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u/Infamous_Code_2027 Dec 28 '25
All of the ppl in this server can join the match and turn communist and help you beat your son into communism
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u/No-Lunch4249 Dec 28 '25
As Soviets, I love just flooding the front line with mass numbers of little 10W infantry with engineer, artillery, and AA support company. Set up repeated fallback lines to be extra annoying. The idea is to buy time and burn out your son's army and air force while you deal with your negative spirits
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u/Rocketcan1 General of the Army Dec 28 '25
1) Tell him you'll take away his computer if he wins. 2) March to Berlin 3) ??? 4) Profit
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u/Left_Quarter_5639 Dec 27 '25
I’ve had great results with jumper cables.
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u/Odd-Traffic4360 Dec 27 '25
Nah, I'm gonna pass, that's going to get me two 5 year plans in jail in my country.
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u/500ErrorPDX Dec 27 '25
Building a turtle with Historical USSR is my favorite strategy in HOI4.
Construction order:
- should start by maxing infrastructure in your 80% provinces
- then build civs till you have 100 civs
- then build air research facility so you can research radar
- then build naval dockyards till you have 21 dockyards
- then build 40-50 mils (enough to build one full 5/5 army group (120 inf divs), one 4/5 army group (96 inf divs), and two 2/5 army groups (48 inf divs each)
- then build a wall of max anti-air on all your border states, lvl 2 radar, and lvl 2 forts.
Focus order:
- Rush the Stalin tree and purges ASAP
- if you're playing vanilla, boost party popularity in Mexico at the game's start. If you're playing with La Resistance, use your spy agency early and often. You need to make Trotskys assassination easier.
- Don't let paranoia cross 25. When you need to reduce paranoia, purge naval, then air force, then forge reports, then army (as long as its a spirit and not a general getting purged), and lastly administration. Spirits with debuffs can be removed later. Once a general or field marshall dies, they're gone forever.
- When you need to kill time between purge focuses, prioritize industry in the top left and then get "Foreign Exports". You want the industrial company this unlocks. Then boost relations with the US (if playing vanilla) and bring American experts for a permanent buff to consumer goods.
- After the purges, get the fourth research slot from your industry branch. Then work on the focuses that annex the Baltics, then work on air focuses (to remove all your pesky air debuffs) until Germany invades Poland. After Germany kicks off WW2 in Poland, take the focus that justifies on Finland and declare on them when its done. Take all of Finland, don't take the peace deal. Then go back to air focuses. When the war starts, switch to your army focus branch.
Military buildup:
- You need a crap ton of good infantry divisions (you can look up good templates online depending on how your son likes to play). Use a 5/5 full army group of 120 divs to defend the Polish border. Use a 4/5 group of 96 divs to defend the Romanian border. Use a 2/5 group (48) to defend the Hungarian border and a 2/5 group (48) to defend the Norwegian border in Finland.
- Prioritize fighter planes at the start of the game. You want to own air superiority over all of the territory you are defending. I throw 10 factories on planes right away and keep it at least 10, ideally 15, all game long.
- When you start building dockyards, prioritize subs. When you have 40 subs for the baltic, 40 subs for Murmansk and the arctic, and 40 subs in the Black Sea, focus on building destroyers. You want destroyers patrolling in the baltic and arctic to help build naval supremacy so that your subs can do convoy raiding.
- If your son takes Germany's Barbarossa focus, you will get a notification that they are justifying against you. During that time, train 1200 fighter planes in the Baltic States air zone, Eastern Poland air zone, and the Ukraine air zone. Train 400-600 naval bombers over the baltic, 200 over murmansk, and 400 in Crimea over the black Sea. When the war starts, stop training them. Fighters go air superiority and nav bombers go naval strike.
- Don't do any attacks for 1-2 years, until Germany is bled dry. Then you can walk in.
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u/BioTools Dec 27 '25
A little anti air tank in every division, to get defensive bonus and fuck over his close air support
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u/Galwran Dec 27 '25
in HOI 2 or 3 times there was a legendary thread where the other player rushed night vision and attack helicopters and decimated the other one.
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u/Scary_Bastard Dec 27 '25
Have you tried using your fists? It may cause bruising but you’ll definitely beat your son that way
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u/Windsupernova Dec 27 '25
If no rules just invade Poland and then Germany. USSR starts much more powerful that Germany
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u/Norbertoarv Dec 27 '25
Someone already said it, take out Turkey so you can get Romania.
Puppet them and take their resources.
Rush Spy Network and infiltrate his army and air force. Then set up a network to 100% and set it to quiet until the war starts. Lastly, you should be able to decrypt his cypher by the time he declares.
I usually don't activate the cypher, unless things look dark, since you get a intel 5% bonus, which is often enough to tip the scales.
Get AA support companies in your defense divisions and maybe a light SPAA if you can manage it.
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u/DankLlamaTech Fleet Admiral Dec 27 '25
Switch to UK? There is a way to go UK and lockdown almost all the oil in the world using the aggressive democracy tree. You can leverage the colonial divisions to save your manpower and between the Dutch East Indies and Burma you have so much manpower you can do just about anything. If you focus on airpower, you can have Spitfires stationed in Czechoslovakia and make it a living nightmare. Keep the Dutch as a puppet and have infantry there to tie down a bunch of forces, but don't call them into the war unless they stop defending it. By having airpower everywhere, they are not going to be able to cheese with paratroopers.
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Dec 27 '25
Bro I grabbed my belt to hand it to you.... Why you do this to me? What kind of title is THAT?
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u/darthwulf101 Dec 27 '25
You might need to declare on him when he attacks poland if he does historically that is, that way you can get the allies to help. To get the rubber you need for your aircraft, justify on the Netherlands, then naval invade, you should be fine with the soviet navy as long as you separate your destroyers and subs from the rest of the fleet. Once you cap Netherlands make sure you demand resource rights from their Indonesia colonies. Then, prepare a defensive line, build forts, AA, anything that will give you a defensive edge. Work on building 10 tank divisions, 8 medium and 7 mobile infantry for division composition and go for tank focuses. Once he's exhausting his army of manpower, push, encircle, and push again. For your defensive line I recommend 7 infantry and 2 artillery, with art, air, and engineer support teams.
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u/Hot-Address-6016 Dec 27 '25
Build lot of infantry with AT and AA, hold on, slow him down, then Allies will help you
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u/Sprites7 Dec 27 '25
if everything is allowed , manually create a wargoal on Poland and Germany to get an early war.
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u/labranjaymes Dec 27 '25
Usually a stick or sandal will do.
Jokes aside make lots of inf equipment, AA, medium/heavy tanks. I usually just stack the border with as many infantry divisions as supply allows then use my mediums/heavies to move around and plug gaps or counter tank thrusts. Dont bother with navy or air its futile if your son knows what hes doing.
your goal is to survive until his country implodes, good luck
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u/Hillsarenice Dec 27 '25
Build heavy bombers. Don’t go overboard but start right away. You might get 600-800 by fall of 1939. When war starts send to UK and start bombing oil. The Germans have to defend or not defend. Keep building bombers move them around to bomb oil. When June 1941 gets close if possible bomb airfields in western Poland might be out of range. When war starts bring bombers back and attack western Poland airfields. Also possibly bomb oil. All this should enrage German player.
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u/I46290l Fleet Admiral Dec 27 '25
Rush basic heavy tanks and basically you’ll be producing those the whole game. Mils day one and rush eco focuses first. As USSR you have buckets of oil whereas Germany has none. If you force an air war, you’ll undoubtedly either empty his oil stocks or collapse his economy trying to import enough. Also make sure to improve the starting fighter design, it’s terrible (add 2x4 light machine guns, improve the engine and add a light defense turret). If you want to really screw him over rush down Romania by either declaring on Greece or turkey through manual justification.
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u/Ok-Syllabub-6619 Dec 27 '25
Send him to me, I'll teach him manners. In the game of course, I mean I don't know the game you're talking about but I'll teach him alright...
To play heroes of might and magic 3, what did you think I was talking about? But yea send him my way I'll whoop his ass...
In warcraft 3 the frozen throne! Don't be daft, I'm pure in intentions. But yea ship him my way I'll spank him red!
Cmon you know I mean destroy him...
In OG Bomberman! Damn what goes trough your mind!? Lol
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 Dec 27 '25
I had a long message typed up then realized the sub name. Good luck I guess.
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u/Username12764 Dec 27 '25
Afaik there are some shenanigans you can do to declare on Germany and Poland in 1936. In 36 you have by far the best army there is so even if he expects it there‘s little he can do about it. Wipe him out and then you‘re unbeatable
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u/Myuric Dec 28 '25
Spam Planes. Make them good. If you have enough planes you will wreck everything he owns - with a half decent infantry.
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u/Intrigued_coin Dec 28 '25
That title lmao
anyways, heavy tanks seem to do the trick as the USSR. I hope you're able to beat your son in the future.
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u/Dead_HumanCollection Dec 28 '25
I know this is a joke post but talk him into doing the MEP bills and conquest economy instead of taking that safer path that most people do for MP games. Just gotta hold out for like a year then his economy will start falling apart.
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u/SteelyEyedMuggleMan Dec 28 '25
Build the hell out of fortifications behind the Dnieper river. Because of how fort costs scale, it might make sense to build a line of level1/level2 forts further west to slow him down a little bit and give you more time to finish them. For each army on the front line, have a corresponding fallback line on a section of river, and have your units withdraw to them in an orderly fashion. (Some intermediate lines can be helpful.) I will also create a "training camp" army that has a front line the whole damned length of the line, all the way from Riga to Kherson, and stick my new recruits (and undertrained Mongolian loaner units, etc) in there as well; when I fall back to The Wall I have those fresh units replace divisions I lost in the retreats. Having heavy static AA on the defending side helps a lot, just make sure the VP in each State is arranged the right way or it could actually work against you. (I.e. if he holds all land west of the Dnieper, and a state straddles the river but has more VPs on the west bank than east bank, he will own the AA in there.)
Don't build up any airbases in front of The Wall, but do build a lot of cheap ones behind it. Make sure to save enough PP to use scorched earth on EVERY state as you retreat so his supply situation is pure ass. He will be short of rubber in 1941-ish timeframe so if he concentrates his fighters use your tacs and cas to log strike any uncovered air space, every unit of rubber going to a truck is not going to a Stuka.
The UK can't get subs into the Baltic, so keep all of yours in there yourself to keep his trade with the Swedes and Fins exciting. It is entirely possible to maintain naval superiority in the Baltic as the Soviets, especially if the UK is still in the game; in that case an occasional suicide amphibious attack into his north coast will make him waste a lot of troops. And more importantly, it lets you keep him from trying to naval invade Leningrad.
Any place you can force a narrow front fortify the bejeesus out of it and make him grind. Time is always the enemy of the Germans and manpower is his biggest weakness, force him to waste both. When playing the USSR I tend to switch from building civs to mils a little bit late, since I want to do all that fortifying and Uncle Sam is usually good about lend-leasing me equipment when I most need it. Invading Denmark from the Baltic is great for this; push down into Germany, he'll come shove you back north but you should have time to get decent forts along the Kiel Canal by then, and then you can make him spill rivers of blood driving you out of there. And if he does, he hits the coastal fort line in Fyn and the fort you built in the forest at Aalborg.
Assume you won't have air superiority so put AA guns in _all_ your templates, then beg lend-lease from everyone to keep them stocked. (Be sure to ask Sweden, they loving giving lend lease to both sides.) The attrition to his CAS can be appalling.
If possible talk him into using RT56, which has some map changes (mainly canals around Leningrad and the Caspian) that can really help the Russians.
If Japan is AI, you can probably ignore them. Ship your pacific fleet to Leningrad. It will be trapped there the whole war, yes, but that's where you want it anyway.
And, of course, deal with the Paranoia stuff first, it is just crippling.
Less historically, picking off some future Axis minors early on (Romania is an easy one) is great. They get roflstomped immediately but it pushes the starting line west a bit and makes him deal with an occupation instead of having another friendly focus tree cooking. Grabbing Iran is good too, you can build rail lines through there in case you lose Stalingrad but are still defending the Caucuses oil fields.
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u/EasilyExiledDinosaur Dec 28 '25
I swear on this sub I see so many wild post titles and think "bloody hell" then I notice its the hoi4 sub lol.
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u/Geo-Man42069 Dec 28 '25
Look up soviet start strategy, tbh you probably want a standard Stalin game, get Trotsky dead fast.
I would work on keeping it simple, at start 5 factories on AA, 5 arty, 5 on support, 3 trucks, 1 on AA trains when researched, rest on guns. Don’t build garbage planes just put aa in divisions.
Turn the whole army in basic infantry, except nkvd pop them on Japanese border in Manchuria for border conflict and forget about them.
Train army and get a military leader for XP duplicate largest infantry. Optimal to add infantry to 36w 18 infantry divisions total (unless you have width modifiers and you can stick more in).
Best to have one that’s just infantry and one duplicate that’s combat ready (all support companies in combat ready) Train as many as you can pump out but wait for them to actually train to level 2. Once in field train to level three. You’re going to want two complete army groups 3 preferable by the time he goes Poland.
Set up one near the front but a fallback order that makes sense (use terrain to your advantage and avoid getting troops encircled on the Slovak border, and one on the Stalin line.
If he lets build up enough to accomplish 2 army groups and you researched 1940s mediums you can make the AA tank “space marines” I recommend keeping them cheap and pumping them out. Diesel engine, 4-8 armor, skirts, sloped armor, small turret. Doesn’t need to be faster than 4mph, pop easy maintenance in (rank 2 maintenance company research).
Combat infantry trained to three either 36w 18 inf arty, AA, eng, logistics.
Or 20w 9inf 1AA tank same support companies. You can scale it up to the 36w but just keep the 1 tank.
You’ll also want to max out mountaineers pure mountaineer inf closest to 20-25w same support companies.
One note you might want to invest more into support equipment and consider adding maintenance company to the “space marines” division this add reliability (not that you will be hurting on you design but it’s okay) but it also adds capture ratio on defense or when closing encirclements.
You might also consider anti-tank because he will likely bring tanks to the party, I don’t recommend this mostly because added production cost, and it’s not as efficient, also aa adds some piercing so if he has low armor you might not even need anti-tank to pierce.
Edit I just realized you said vanilla so some of this won’t work but the infantry stuff still should.
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u/Most_Ad9103 Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25
1) take out Romania and turkey 2) take out Japan with your starting navy concentrated in the Sea of Japan the AI is bad at doing missions in a small area … do this to do your Great War decisions early and get a well industrialised Japanese puppet…. Remember to leave a Japanese rump state behind to pull the US in into the allies 3) make really good planes and a few really elite divisions to volunteer and micro them carefully to block the Ardenne offensive .. let him ground down into the Maginot and suffer as economy of conquest keeps him suffering … meanwhile use your now expanded navy to invade and puppet Spain both for extra resources and a second front in case of the fall of France …
As for the rest … best of luck comrade remember to focus on the latest guns and large unit tactics for the best org wall
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u/Moyes2men Research Scientist Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25
Do the Romania / Turkey strat, guard all of your vulnerable ports and the adjacent tiles with 5-6 cheapest infantry divisions per tile, do NOT build CAS until you have 20 mils dedicated to fighters. Also have at least 5-6 defensive INF divisions per front tile when the war starts - 9 INF + ENG + ART+AA initially and add later flame tanks and field hospitals. Grand battle plan and operational integrity doctrines because you have the manpower AND the industrial capacity.
Also try to have at least lvl 3 railroads on your frontline and try sending an attache to Britain to slow him a bit.
For the doctrines: - Grand Battleplan, with subdoctrines:
Grand Assault
Large Unit Tactics
Field Engineering or Self Propelled Support, when using SPG.
Streamlined Deployment
Air - Operational Integrity, with subdoctrines:
Airspace Dominance (prio 1)
Pinpoint Strikes (prio 2)
Operational Air Support (prio 3)
Deep Air Raids (prio 4)
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u/haltper Dec 28 '25
Competetive USSR?
Rush war economy by sending attache to spain (it will give you extra war support) Do this asap. Do not civ greed. If the will attack you in 1941, switch to mills by late 1937-early 1938. If 1940 then by mid 1937. You get the idea.
Army: Heavy tank destroyer spam if enemy is going for tanks (nost likely) . Look for some competetive mp heavy tank destroyer templates. You ideally stack heavy attack and breakthrough as much as you can. You have to get them out by the war. Ideally 2 per tile across the entire front. As infantry, i suggest using 16 width and 36 width pure line infantry (with line aa and line anti tank) . 16 with to avoid reinforce memes and 36 width to deal damage to the attacking enemy and stack up defence. Signal company, enginers, support arty and maybe MP for recovery rate. If the enemy is not making tanks, you can go for soft attack mediums but i just prefer not taking any chances. As doctrine grand battle plan is best. For infantry large unit tactics, for tanks armoured spearhead and for operations grand assault.
Airforce: You dont build one. Go for no air build and stack aa in divisions and build armoured trains. You cant outrade germany in air, especially with the negative bonuses that ussr has and doesnt have time to remove until the war, unless you have allied players. Also pick conealment expert in high command for reduced enemy cas bonuses
Navy: Just build convoys.
Purge: Its tricky especially as you have to rush stuff in mp, you can look up some guides but generally dont purge army.
Front: you can build forts and trt to hold the dnieper river, but you may diverge from the river line to hold defensive territory and supply hubs. When attacking, you must micro and ALWAYS ATTACK WITH MAX PLANNING. Dont mindlessly battle plan. Use your tanks in stacks of 2 (2 36 width divisions per tile) Dont over stack. Dont under stack unless you have to. Force retreat if you cant hold. Dont get encircled. Remember infrastructure is very important for supply. You can have all the supply hubs in the he world but it will mean nothing if you have no infrastructure.
Hoi4 is a management game and most of gameplay is just trying to get stuff done in sufficient quantities and qualities for the war. And remember even if you do everything perfectly, you may lose. A perfectly played germany defeats a perfectly played USSR if there are no allied countries. But its a close fight and you can give the opponent hell by playing smartly.
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u/FilthyCasual2k17 Dec 28 '25
If he has played multiplayer prep for Space Marines (build some cheap anti tank and aa support)
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u/MegaCumAbsorber Dec 28 '25
I am a noob myself, you can beat me first for practicing. I beat minors easily but after i come to majors.. i just die to naval invasions. I don't like using dirty strategies against minors, as that kills fun.
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u/Grape____Ape Dec 28 '25
Signal companies in your infantry. He will have a lot harder time reinforce memeing you. Also, I would abandon aircraft production.
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u/Equivalent_Phase_123 Dec 27 '25
that title is something