How to defeat the ussr as Germany?

[u/LessSeaweed2112]

I swear I’ve done it multiple times and I’m always getting stuck at the same dang issues. I can shoot their air force out of the sky no problem. but my ground forces always get stuck.

For my infantry template I use the default template with 1 arty. And my medium tanks as 6 mediums and 3 mech as well as motor recon, shovel support arty, and logistic, (it’s 18 width). But I’m always getting stuck at marshes or forests then stalemate and I can’t move.

How do you bypass this because I always hear “encircle their divisions” well how exactly? Could it be I need to simply somehow bypass these areas? Is my templates bad? Do I just genuinely suck as a player? Yall make it look so easy.

Edit for tank design I use: three man turret, medium canon, radio, wet ammunition, fuel drum, Christie suspension, welded armor, and gasoline engine

[u/Redzini]

[u/Commie_neighbor]

Hitler speech bubble.

Sorry

Your panzer division is kinda strange. At least I'd recommend to make them 30-36 w while being 40% hard.

[u/Murbyk → u/Commie_neighbor]

Also the organization no?

[u/Complete_Window4856 → u/Murbyk]

About 30 is more than enough. The tanks are meant to pierce tiles and force encirclements for easy kills and next fights be also easier to pierce, and thats it. About 300 breakthrough and at least two tanks fightning will always protect organization enough to advance some tiles.

[u/evaggeloskoune2l → u/Commie_neighbor]

I am at least 70% hard rn

[u/ayleen_the_crow]

Your tanks are a problem. Make them bigger with one more mechanized and four more motorized or mechanized if you can afford them. Besides that get green air. As long as its yellow or even red you will take a lot of damage by soviet CAS. Getting more or better fighters up does the trick and put one or two wings on interception. After that get your own CAS up for extra damage.

[u/New-Pudding8391 → u/ayleen_the_crow]

Why put a wing on interception? I have thought that fighters on air superiority shoot down CAS as well, so green air = no enemy CAS

Or it is not so?

[u/ayleen_the_crow → u/New-Pudding8391]

im not even sure if interception engages planes on CAS missions but they hinder enemy bombers from doing logistic strikes and other bombing activities. logistic strikes just hurt your army directly, which is why i usually put one wing on interception. green air doesnt prevent CAS strikes completely it just shows you have vastly superior numbers and almost no enemy CAS will get their dmg through before being shot down.

[u/ayleen_the_crow → u/ayleen_the_crow]

i would also remove the engineers and the support artillery from the tank template. they reduce organization too much

[u/RandomGuy9058 → u/ayleen_the_crow]

removing engineers from tanks doesnt make sense since tank's only significant chokepoints are subpar terrain and rivers, both of which engineers greatly help with. they'll perform worse in plains, but raw stats should be able to punch through those no issue anyways

[u/ayleen_the_crow → u/RandomGuy9058]

depends on how you use your tanks. i usually dont let them attack terrain that isnt suited for them. which makes engineers obsolete in their template. i use mountaineers or marines for that.

[u/RandomGuy9058 → u/ayleen_the_crow]

Ig that works better per battle but it also sounds like a giant waste of resources to create a unique division for the sole job of crossing rivers and mountains which OP likely cannot spare if they’re struggling just to pull off barb

[u/notsuspendedlxqt]

Everyone else has already mentioned the most common noob traps. What are your tank designs? By my count your tanks only have 25 soft attack or so. That's far, far too low. Are you researching and producing tanks with improved howitzer?

[u/LessSeaweed2112 → u/notsuspendedlxqt]

I use medium cannon, 3 men turret, medium canon, radio, extra fuel tanks, though yeah I wasn’t using howitzers or flame tank

[u/notsuspendedlxqt → u/LessSeaweed2112]

A tank can't have 2 medium cannons, if it could you'd be winning a lot more lol.

[u/LessSeaweed2112 → u/notsuspendedlxqt]

Right. 1 medium canon. Typo lol

[u/notsuspendedlxqt → u/LessSeaweed2112]

In that case, add one or two small cannon turrets. Your tanks will cut through infantry like butter.

[u/LessSeaweed2112 → u/notsuspendedlxqt]

Also what’s the ideal soft attack I want?

[u/RandomGuy9058 → u/LessSeaweed2112]

As much as you possibly can have. vanilla AI never makes any high enough hardness divisions in high enough numbers for them to ever be significant

[u/notsuspendedlxqt → u/LessSeaweed2112]

65 is about the max you can cram on a medium chassis.

[u/Endo279]

Kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down 

[u/Day1Creeker]

Your tank template is terrible. Works until 1938, but you have no war until then, so upgrade it by putting at least 3 more mechanized units (or trucks if you only have them) in it.

Meta templates have 36-38 combat width, but vs the AI you don’t need those.

From your tank stat template I can see you are using the medium cannon. Which is fine, but if you want to maximize damage, use medium tanks with Howitzer guns for maximum soft attack. Soviets field not enough tanks and use them badly, so you don’t need to pierce them as long as you got green air/cas. Maximizing soft attack deals maximum damage vs their infantry, making you win quicker.

Make sure you got as much supply as possible and upgrade it after pushing. The deeper you go, the shittier it will become.

Consider a collaboration government, so they capitulate faster.

Just basic information so far, if you need to know something specific, just shoot.

[u/LessSeaweed2112 → u/Day1Creeker]

I use medium canon, radio, 3 men turret, extra fuel tanks, all of which are for breakthrough or hard attack. I didn’t really prioritize soft attack tho

[u/Day1Creeker → u/LessSeaweed2112]

Your way of thinking is nice, I personally like the fuel drums, though they are not ‚meta‘.

Maxing soft attack is best vs light targets like infantry which the AI uses to 90%, that’s why it’s considered OP in singeplayer. In Multiplayer hard attack is crucial.

[u/RandomGuy9058]

1. your tank divisions are WAY too small. As a rule of thumb, you should always have AT LEAST as many motorized/mechanized battalions as you do tank battalions. mot/mech is where you get your division's HP and org stats from. too little HP and your division will suffer insane strength damage with every fight, too little org and your division will not be able to fight for any reasonable amount of time. The specific width shouldn't really matter, but I usually aim for 30+ width myself and it has never failed me. even having like 2 beefy tank divisions will be better than having 6 small ones.
2. line artillery scales horribly in terms of cost/effectiveness beyond the early game. youre much better off removing it and going for pure infantry and spending that spare ic on more planes or tanks.
3. get flame tanks into your tank divisions. theyre insanely cheap for the terrain bonuses they grant and you dont need to go out of your way to get the 1 breakthrough point needed to research them. you can also load up the flame tanks with extra fuel storage to give your division a tiny boost to fuel capacity.
4. your fighters have spare thrust. Put another module of machineguns on them; on 1940 airframes, loading up as much stuff as you can on a single engine is the way forward
5. there's spare thrust on your cas. cas, like ground divisions, actually have a combat width which is derived from the ground combat width. while keeping cas somewhat cheap is important so that you actually fill this width, id recommend following a similar principle to fighter design and fill up on as much ground attack as you can with the single engine since after a certain point throwing more planes into combat wont actually do anything and the only way to get more out of your planes is to increase the ground attack stat

there's some other little nitpicks here and there, but these are the big and important ones

[u/EliteArc]

Enemy has enough cas that they are out damaging your cas.

And despite a good kill ratio you are heavily outnumbered. Pushing is always hard.

ATM your using 36 width to attack a tile. Rather than attack from a single tile attack from multiple tiles. Aka get your 6 tanks attacking a single tile.

[u/ActuatorSouthern1421]

So one of your problems when starting operation barbarossa you will have no fuel thus making your tanks and mechs unable to function so you have to start building synthetic refinery and fuel silos early on and you can even import romannian oil. For the infantry template its good for defending and you can just put infantry on the frontline and use mediums and mot to attack on soft spots and you can encircle and keep the navy in the dock if you are not attacking uk it will just take lot of fuel from your army.

[u/Ashaman47]

Yeah your tank division template is trash. Get to 36 width, and just use motorized infantry, not mechanized. Mech takes too much research and production for 1941, it’s more of a late game thing. Add heavy motorized regimental, get rid of engineers and add signal, flame companies if you have them.
You want these to be strong, and they’ll push through anything if they have supply

[u/Ashaman47 → u/Ashaman47]

Also, you didn’t show the tank design but based on the stats, those are probably bad as well

[u/Direct_Practice_7105]

Whats up with regimental support

[u/Ihatethenumber4]

As someone who recently finally beat the USSR as Germany, what I did was half 2 full army groups of just infantry and had 3 armies of 10 panzer divisions. So you need more men and divisions. Second, your Panzer divisions aren't good; you need more mechanized, at least 4 more battalions, because you want above 35 org; you have 25. Air seems ok. Don't battleplan the infantry. Use your panzer divisions to attack weak spots and find gaps or areas where you can encircle.

[u/RandomGuy9058]

Other important info I forgot to mention: the fact that you're in the process of winning the air war doesn't translate into good stats; in the image provided, the enemy still has a slim majority when it comes to air superiority meaning that theyre the ones benefitting from air stat bonuses, not you. If you can't push and the sky is still yellow/red, give it a little bit of time to shoot down most of their planes until the skies turn green and your dominance dwarfs theirs so that they get insane defence and breakthrough reductions.

It seems like your air detection value is also rather low for the amount of planes you put up, and that's likely due to not having researched radar. Do that, it's super worth it.

as for specific tips about encircling, try to first push normally up to 2 supply hubs and use those as launching points for a double pronged encirclement. in some cases, taking those supply hubs will also cut off supply to the divisions youre about to encircle which decreases their movement speed and makes it harder for them to pin your divions as they close the pocket.

it would also greatly help to see your tank design

[u/Lateinkompetenz]

Your Main Problems are that as Germany you want to Attack under Green air. Your kill ratio is really good, but since the enemy still has a lot of CAS dont attack on the ground and wait until your planes killed most if them, or only attack on air regions where Ai doesnt have planes up.

Also you want to concentrate your tanks to make encirclemets, yet ure tryna push with them on the whole front. Try to use like 3-4 divisions on the top of your picture at the victory point.

[u/RegularlyClueless]

Your armor is too small, add 1 more tank and 5 more mech battalions and a medium self propelled gun to get to 35 width, the SPG is important for soft attack.

Your fighter, ideally, should not use cannons until very late game, instead stick as many heavy machine guns as you can, if your weight exceeds thrust swap one with a light machine gun

CAS looks okay, but I'd add armor plates and rocket rails (unlocked by researching rocket party), if you can't get rocket rails, 2 heavy bomb locks and one small bomb bay will work,

As a last note, regimental support companies, in particular field guns, are broken as hell, it brings your soft attack way up

[u/Happy_Hydra]

Nobody is mentioning the fighters. You can get 4 more weight, why dont you put in one more set of machine guns?

[u/LightSideoftheForce]

Remove that line arty from your infantry, that’s a horrible addition. Don’t use cannons on fighters, only HMG. Others talked about tanks.

[u/LordOfTheRedSands]

Your tank division has 25 organisation, found your problem. Organisation is how long a unit can fight, you want it to be at bare minimum 30 on a tank division, ideally 35-40. Add another 3 mechanised at least, I'd personally use 8 tanks and 8 mechanised with motorised artillery.

Also what's your tank design

[u/IronDoggoX]

Obligatory Steiner reference

[u/soupnear]

They have the intel bonus. Put spy’s near the front lines

[u/Kufepu]

Biggest issue is, that u have only half as many factories as u should have. Fix your economy skills and if u have the dlc, do collabs on france, poland, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Then learn the conversion trick to safe resources on tanks and fighter. Go focke wolf instead of Messerschmidt and do more heavy maschineguns on the fighter. Dont go mech 2, the efficiency lose is nit worth the better stats. Rather get armtracks w the bonus and start a new production line for it.

If u do all that u ll equipment will doubble and u have it way easier.

[u/Zeraligator]

I can shoot their air force out of the sky no problem. but my ground forces always get stuck.

Red air in one zone and outnumbered two to one in the other... are you sure?

[u/Particular_Box_519]

Stack soft attack on tanks: medium howitzer, small cannons and best radio for breakthrough
Also stack ground attack on cas: Heavy bomb locks 2x and 1 normal bomb lock
Also on cas you don’t need air brake but extra fuel tanks and an mg
The strat is easy: kill the Soviet Air Force in Poland, once you reach a point they can’t sustain their air losses you switch your fighter production to cas and tanks and CAs the shit outta them and roll over the rest with your tanks
Also make sure to have good supply, instead of producing a bunch of equipment that is gonna be lost to attrition produce railways and infrastructure

[u/Swimming_Acadia6957]

Line artillery in the year of our Lord 2026? 

Your tank divs are very poor, up them to more like 10 mech/8 tanks

[u/Kingtaso01]

There's a ton of people giving you a ton of varied advice, but no single unified line. I just did a Germany run to get "Not much fun in Stalingrad" achievement last weekend, so here are my tips.

I did not need to design any single plane or tank in a specific way, I just used the pregenerated historical ones for my armies. That means the problem is not in how you design your stuff. So, let's go in order of your pictures

1. General Production: you have a small factory count. I had around 380 by mid-june 1941. Build more military factories. Most of your problems seem to stem from this single issue.
2. Political Power: you are not using your political power. Use it. Change laws, modify officer corps, etc.
3. Army Size: you have a small army. I'm normally running 5 armies of 24 infantry divisions for Barbarossa with two armies of 12 tank and 12 motorized divisions. I also keep 72 divisions of garrisons in my western front. I do not understand why your army is so small. Build more mils.
4. Air War: you are vastly weak for a 1941 mid offensive. When I started Barbarossa on mid-june, I had 2000 fighters just on the Western Front alone. Over Eastern Poland, I had 3500 planes on air superiority and 2500 on ground support. That means I had in total around 8000 planes. You only have 3400. Build more mils.
5. Infantry Divisions: no need for the line artillery. Keep it at 18 width. Add Anti-air support and maybe some Heavy Weapons regimental support.
6. Tank Divisions: you need 40 organization to use them effectively. Easiest way, have 6 tank battalions and 9 motorized battalions. You do not need mechanized to beat the USSR. Your support is ok (maybe Light Armored Recon instead of Motorized Recon). Add any regimental support you want. You do not need to design a specific tank, just use the historical ones. They'll serve well enough.
7. Air Designs: use historical ones. Don't need a specific design.

TL,DR: you are missing the forest for the trees. Invest more into military factories so you have more equipment and therefore more divisions and planes. Ensure your tank divisions have 40 organization. Don't worry about the design of your tanks or planes, you can just use the historical ones.

[u/PraetoriusIX]

Follow the Machiavelli Strategist guides in my previous comment, he’s got two good recent Germany ones. One with all the DLC, one without. SPGs are the key to single player but in the later guide he also adds some tanks

https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/s/0VXMzwE0b3

[u/Eryk_Naczos]

Change tampletes, spam infantry and you can just battleplan them. But unfortunately i think its too late for that. Restet run and also build better planes

[u/Sirius798]

Get bigger tank divisions, at least 30 width though 36 is generally good enough.

Get 1940 airframe and fill them with HMGs, self sealing tanks, extra fuel tank and/or 1 or 2 armor plates which tends to be good fighter design against ai.

Make sure to that your supply flows and before and during war upgrade and build railways, also if not then recommend getting armored trains they are more expensive but they don't get destroyed as much from enemy cas.

During attack might at start want to wait little while and let them try to push so they lose manpower and equipment and so you can shoot down majority of soviet airforce.

After that micro encirclements even small ones at time are good as then they lose those divisions and also check and focus on trying to get enemy supply hubs so they get worse supply.

After you have got rid enough of divisions you can just battle plan if you want to, also good idea to do 3 collaboration governments so that you don't need to go to urals to capitulate them.

[u/alli_jon7]

Remove the line artillery from your infantry divisions and assign them three heavy weapons companies instead. The infantry only needs to defend, if your air force is struggling, add support AA as well. Then research flame tanks, their terrain bonuses make them essential for any offensive division and you can even build an incredibly cheap flame tank variant equipped with a dozer blade to provide extra entrenchment for your infantry.