It seems the designers made it specifically to humble those (like me) who fairly breezed through it in SP1.
The problem I have is that the Soviet units' ratings are so low (base 35) that they deal almost no damage to the Finns. An example: I had a Finnish ski squad run into an ambush of 3 Sov rifle squads supported by a T28 and an armoured car. An exchange of fire took place, with the end result of a Soviet squad completely wiped out (they decided to defend fanatically
) and the Finnish squad having 1 casualty (the guy was probably rolling on the floor laughing at the inefficiency of Soviet fire).The interesting thing is that the Soviets usually have a higher to-hit percentage displayed but still don't manage to hit anything, while the Finns fire at 3-4% after running up to the ambush and take down 2-3 Soviets with every shot. The only units that did any significant damage were the off-board arty batteries, which quickly broke down as I was using them lavishly to silence the Finnish 81 mm mortars. To add insult to injury, on turn 3 I was bombed by 8 planes, that destroyed a couple of tanks, 2 guns, wiped out a few infantry units and supressed the living @$#% out of everything else.
I'm playing a delay scenario. I actually cheated and restarted until I got one, because in SP1 I noticed they're usually the easiest and the Sovs at this time need all the help they can get. I have all the settings on Default, with the command thingy disabled (I still haven't figured it out).
The Finnish attack was on a broad front which left no space for niceties (I tried to run an armoured car platoon around the flank to try and silence those @$#% mortars, but ran into infantry in the woods and had to retreat whatever was left).
My core consists of 6 motorized infantry platoons, 2 heavy tank companies (KV-1 and T28) and a few armoured car companies. The rests is AT and AAA. Most of the units are "elite", even though I didn't see any difference between them and the average ones.
Anyway, I'm open to suggestions. Are there any units that would be more efficient, like the Cossacks? Any strategic tips on the "preferred" battle type/location/weather? Maybe start the campaign at a later date, when the Soviets had some more battle-worthy units? Any tactical tips? I would like to keep the default settings and not ot tamper with the unit's experience level if possible. Just for kicks, I upped the Soviet's level to 120 and tried it that way... Revenge is sweet, but it gets boring
