diraska

Thanks to those who replied. I have taken the input and remembered to add an HQ to my invasion of England. I had 3 paratroopers that I para dropped all over England. London fell, and pretty soon did most of the ports without cities, which greatly weakened their navy. It fell to me sometime around 1941. Meanwhile.... The war with Russia was going, I had an engineer set up some defenses around Konigsberg, so that was never in any danger of falling. The lower front around Romania and the like was taking a beating, and my victorious army was returning, ready to make its presence felt all along the Russian front... My assault forces pushed north, aiming for a link up with Finland that had wisely listened to my diplomats and joined us. Leningrad fell and the Finns pushed through to threaten Moscow. A pleasant distraction that the Russians could not ignore. Next my Panzer forces pushed south, and soon the Center and the South were blasted wide open. I am now on the verge of pushing through to all those lovely oil wells in the very south. Great tip for the Italians: Save up and buy an HQ for them. It greatly increases their ability to hold Tobruk and push forward. Now the Italian force is no longer crap. Using only the starting forces for Italy and one HQ, they took over all of Cairo and took over Iraq after the British annexed it. Not one ounce of German help. thanks to all those cities and their delicious MPPs, Italy is no longer completely useless on the world stage. It is now only mildly useless. (I was almost going to have them invade Saudi Arabia and every country along North Africa, but I realized that the Italian army is in now way, shape or form, capable of such a thing. Fooie. I wanted to create a new Roman lake out of the Mediterranean.) Now the Brits are sitting with over 2000 in MPPs twiddling their thumbs over in Canada and Iceland and the U.S. is amassing a huge force that is currently aimed at England... :eek:

You can set England to surrender?? That would have helped a ton. As it is now, I have an italian army battering down the defenses around Cairo, the current capitol of the British. As for the USSR, I get them declaring war, kinda. Historically, (history major here, time to dork out), Stalin was very trusting of Hitler, he was completely caught off guard by the attack, as he had no intentions of screwing with germany any time soon. My main gripe is that the Russians are SOOO incredibly powerful by 1942. Their army is massive, and well armed. They have Tactical bombers at level 3 anti-tank, Heavy tanks 2, and a whole host of other advanced weapons. I guess they might have just gotten incredibly lucky with the rolls. Now, I played as the allies in the normal SC2, and in that one I remember the Russians being incredibly poor at the outset and I had a hard time building up a powerful force for quite some time. Not until 1944 did I have a large enough force for anything other than local offenses. But, the Russians in this game had their cake and they ate it too. Is this other peoples experiences?

I take out France in good time, maybe a turn or two longer than normal, not sure on this. Then I gear up for Operation Sealion. I take out a huge chunk of the British navy, and land troops. Sadly I forgot about supply issues (newb mistake). I thought I would be smart with taking out England first before tackling Russia. Sadly, the USSR declared war on me once Hungary and such allied with me, so I had to split my forces. Finally, after making the some mistakes, such as having bad weather ground my air force 8 out of 10 turns, I finally take it over.... and I get diddly. Now, I am facing a numerically superior USSR army, that is also more advanced than me. I can't help but think that invading England was a waste of my time. But, if I didn't I get back doored by the Allies. Now, I know I made some mistakes about supply in my invasion of England, but even if I had taken it over sooner, I would still be faced by a HUGE number of Red Army forces. They significantly outnumber me and have better equipment. Now for the point: How can Germany win? It does not produce nearly enough resources to take on Russia, and the only way it can is by invading them when Russia is unprepared. But that leaves England behind them.... *Note* I don't think Russia should declare war on Germany so easily. Germany accruing allies should not set Russia off. And conquering all of England should get some plunder. Something to offset the resources spent to get it in the first place.*

Yeah, it turned out to be not as bad as I had feared, mainly due to Russia joining the Allies before Germany declares war. This allowed Russia to start gearing up quicker, and it caught Germany with its forces spread out. So, I was not hit with all of Germany's forces at once, but in dribs and drabs (silly AI). One Important thing learned: Operational movements are fantastic! My first line of resistance was near the mine and Sevastapol. Within 2 turns, it was clear that the line was about to be destroyed, so I used "operate" to get my troops the heck out of there. The main force I sent to defend Stalingrad. A secondary forces (1 army, and 3 corps) I sent to safe guard my oil refineries. Since I moved them so far away from the main battle line, I had a turn to rearm them, and to get them dug in. Never underestimate the utility of the "operate" command. A normal fighting withdrawal would not have worked as each turn my forces would be in combat and suffering losses. So all in all, my turn as the allies is doing pretty well.... well, except for China. In China, Japan deployed roughly 11 armies, 2 tank groups, and 2 Air Fleets. Mao is dead, Chiang is close behind. Oh well, war is heck.

So I am playing as the Allies, and things are going ok on most fronts. Except Russia. In Russia, I am ALWAYS overwhelmed by German forces. Germans have roughly 49 ground units, while Russia has 18. I have tried to not spend a lot on Research, but I do not want to completely ignore it. I have wasted very little money, but still I cannot create a large enough army to compete with the sheer mass of the Germans. What the heck? How is Russia supposed to hold on when the Germans break through my lines in two turns, and then speed on through to everything else? I get that this is historically accurate, but then again, the Russians had rough numeric parity with the Germans at the start, and it took them months to get even close to Moscow, yet in the game it is only taking them three turns. So it is not like time is on my side, here. I even moved all my forces near Manchuria back home. ugh.