Defending Barbarossa

[B1GB0M]

Played my first Allied game (vs standard AI) and Barbarossa was an unmitigated disaster. I was able to push the Axis out of NA, neutralized the Italian and German navies, and landed in Sicily, but I just could not hold off the Germans in the east. I set up defenses around Leningrad and Moscow, with some lighter defenses around Stalingrad. It was also an odd game, Molotov-Ribbentrop was denied and Germany occupied all of Poland. I thought the increased Soviet mobilization would make it an easy win, but I was not prepared in the slightest.

I took infantry weapons as soon as I could as well as double chit in industry and a chit on AA and fighters. I spammed out as many corps as I could while keeping research maxed out, placing corps in cities along the roads to Leningrad and Moscow. The bulk of the force was concentrated around these cities. I used an engineer to fortify around the outskirts of Moscow (saw the AI do this a lot)

Germans invaded in May '41 and steamrolled through the initial hexes as expected, getting bogged down around Leningrad/Moscow in the north and Rostov/Sevastopol in the south. German air power was relatively neutralized by AA and lvl 2 fighters. I rebuilt the discounted units throughout the winter and went into Spring '42 with 80 land units, feeling pretty good since most of my Axis games the AI Soviets usually had 30-40 divisions going into Spring '42.

I was absolutely hammered in April '42. Germans had lvl 3 tanks that broke through the defenses in Leningrad and pushed to the outskirts of Moscow. I couldn't fight back at all. I checked and the Germans alone had 156 land units, more than double what I had and all were upgraded.

Is there a general guideline for how many units you should have before Barbarossa as the Soviets? Any tips for research or unit priorities? I don't think MPP was a problem, I was able to keep the convoy routes clear and had an income of over 900 per turn. My units just couldn't fight back and I was heavily outnumbered.

Any tips are greatly appreciated!

[klschult]

The trick is to out-build the Germans.

Corps lost if in supply of 5 or more are cheap and quick to build, so don't let them die under 5 supply if possible.
They die, you build them back.
Investing in production helps a lot.
Remember, they are very weak the turn you place them so try not to put them immediately on the front line.

The further you get from the frontier the Germans should run short on supply. So don't even try to defend the frontier.

Counter attacks generally don't work and just make your units weaker. So I only counterattack if I can kill or surround an Army, or Armor unit.

Eventually the AI puts itself in a position where you can make large encirclements. Generally every city inside goes to 3 supply. Then either take the cities inside the circle or put two units next to them for 3 turns, eventually, every unit inside the circle is either easy to kill or dies of starvation.