Beginning of May 1942:
The next 10 turns are mostly mud, with a few spots of snow or blizzard here & there.
During that time, I completed my retreat to my prepared defense line, and as got close to T47 and the end of the full mud season, my opponent has moved his army forward to make contact along the whole front.
Thoughts on up & coming 1942 summer campaign:
My army has refilled to about 6.7M men and over 5000 tanks over the winter. This allows (I think) a pretty stiff front line with good depth.
I have combined all of my cavalry and most of my tank brigades into Corps. I know some players recommend not making tank Corps until late 1942 or 1943, but my experience at least against the AI is that Tank Corps make a huge difference in counter-attacks. You just have to keep them far enough behind the line to not get them pocketed, and let them rest between attacks. If you can protect them and use them on massive counterattacks which win most of the time, you can get them good morale and experience gains, and several will turn into Guard status in 1942. I put all of my Tank Corps into tank-only armies and kept them under Stavka so they can move around the front easily.
The rest of the armies are either:
- 8 Rifle divisions + 2 Rifle Brigades which will later in 1943 become 4 infantry corps with the addition of 2 brigades.
- 1 Cavalry Corps + 6 Rifle divisions + 3 Rifle Brigades which will later in 1943 become 3 infantry corps
I know APs are most critical through all of 1942 and 1943, so I plan my Rifle Armies right from late 1941 to fit within the 18 AP limit and with the right number of rifle divisions and brigades to combine into Corps in 1943 once the cost goes down to 10 per Corps, so that I don’t have to use any APs to move them around.
Also in early 1941, as soon as I am done disbanding all the Corps HQs, I build 8x Sapper Regiments per Army. Those will support fighting in 1941 and 1942, and gain experience. Many get Guard status before 1943 that way. Then they get assigned to 2x per Cavalry Corps and later 2x per Rifle Corps, and I add them to Tank Corps also. I find early in 1941 the Russian player has plenty of APs and not too many uses for them (once you have swapped the few decent leaders into army & front command posts), so I find this is a good use of those APs.
That is one fun thing (to me) about playing the Russian side: all the planning ahead, as soon as 1941, for the vision of which Red Army you want in 1943 to start on the offensive. And doing it at the same time you defend against the Nazi onslaught. I find it useful to build a spreadsheet tracking all the things I want to do though, since the game spans several months for me, if not I would lose track of what I want to do part way through.
My initial defense strategy is as follows:
- The front line is made of 3-stacks in fort level 2. Its main goal is to require the German army to perform deliberate attacks to break it, which will quickly soak up MPs for many units and hopefully avoid too massive a penetration.
- Behind that I try to have a 2-3 unit depth of single units which have 2 roles: create and maintain fort level 2, and soak up German panzer MPs when they break the front line, to prevent them going too far back and pocket me. Also units retreating from the first line will be able to stack with those units in prepared forts as opposed to route further back, thus requiring more German attacks to move them.
- Around 4-5 hexes back from the front line, I have cavalry corps and tank corps which I try to make into 3-stacks, spaced by two hexes to lock up a backstop line with ZOCs. Those have 2 roles: 1) make a very strong stack to stop any panzer unit that has made it through the front line + the MP soakers, dead in it’s tracks. 2) Combine with front line infantry to counter-attack German spearheads with massive deliberate attacks.
he can not absorb such panzer loses for a long time. your loses were a bit too high so far imho but you did a good job farming victories and moral in the blizzard.