HEARTS OF IRON III Soviet Union FAQ by Sephiroth Katana (http://www.rpgclassics.com) INTRODUCTION ============ Hearts of Iron occupies a unique position among the grand strategy games by Paradox Interactive. The other games span decades (Victoria II) or centuries (Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis), allowing you to conquer and colonize vast territories, spread your people's culture and religion, and potentially turn a tiny country into a superpower. War is a major part of those games; you fight dozens of wars, and it's not really a big deal if you lose one. In Europa Universalis, for example, you can often escape with a white peace or with a simple concession of defeat if things start going badly. But Hearts of Iron covers only twelve years, from 1936 to 1948. There is really only one war in this game. You spend half the game preparing for it and the other half fighting it, and once it starts, there is no turning back: the nations of the world group into factions, and each faction continues to fight until its total destruction. Hearts of Iron still uses many of the gameplay elements from the other games, but many of them are vestigial -- for instance, the game has core provinces, but there is no way to obtain new cores except through scripted events. There are no cultural or religious aspects to this time period; the only purpose of peacetime is to prepare for war, a process that involves increasing your country's "National Unity" until your people willingly accept a greater degree of oppression and militarization. Although the game models three different ideologies, every country builds up in the same way. The game has a very bleak view of the twentieth century: suffice it to say that, in the other games, you needed a Casus Belli to go to war (you could fabricate one, but still you couldn't just ignore it), whereas in Hearts of Iron anyone can declare war on anyone else without a reason. This FAQ covers the Soviet side of the campaign. The Soviet Union is a major power and can avoid having to deal with certain issues (for example, you get nearly unlimited resources). However, it starts the game behind on every important technology, has poor infrastructure (causing supply issues during the war), and is diplomatically isolated (whereas everyone else in Europe quickly joins either the Axis or Allied factions). Overall, it's not as challenging as playing France, but is much more challenging than playing Germany or USA. I will explain how to accomplish most of your major goals (not only surviving, but beating Germany) in the latest version of the game (all expansions). GENERAL STRATEGY ================ This section describes an overall plan for managing the Soviet Union through the various interfaces. More specific step-by-step details are given later in the walkthrough. 1. Diplomacy Diplomacy in Hearts of Iron is fairly limited, and many of the options you see are actually unusable. No one outside your faction will ever agree to an alliance or non-aggression pact. You may occasionally be able to obtain transit rights from a neutral country, but they won't be too useful since your units will run into supply issues. Trade agreements can be useful, but usually other countries will offer them to you automatically, and you won't need to offer them yourself. Your primary use for this screen will be to influence neutral countries diplomatically. However, you should do this sparingly. You will not be able to make other countries join your faction through diplomatic influence alone, since the UK and Germany can always counter with their own influence if the target country seems to be getting too close to you. However, for the same reason, influence can be useful for keeping other countries neutral if they appear to be getting too close to the Axis. This is especially important in the case of Hungary. You should influence Hungary on day one, as otherwise they will quickly join the Axis. They are not too powerful by themselves, but if they join the Axis, that means Germany will get free transit through their territory, giving you a longer border to defend. Conversely, if Hungary stays neutral, you can route more troops to the German front. This will also split up the German army between the main front on the German/Soviet border, and the southern front in the Balkans. You can also influence Italy, but they join the Axis faster, and using more diplomatic influence means fewer leadership points that you can spend on tech- nology. Keeping Hungary neutral is more important. The other nations in your vicinity (Romania, Bulgaria, etc.) will naturally join the Axis if you wait long enough, but it won't happen immediately and it is easier to just force them into the Comintern in late 1939 (see the walkthrough). Among the other nations, only Sinkiang and Communist China will be naturally close to the Comintern. You may wish to temporarily influence them if you see that they are drifting toward the Axis. As Japan gets more powerful, they will eventually offer to join the Comintern in late 1942 or so. The only gameplay feature distinguishing the Comintern from the other factions is that all trade agreements with Comintern members have no monetary cost. So, once you get a few countries on your side, go through the list and ask them for supplies. Most of them will not agree, but some will, and more supplies are always useful. 2. Production Always invest as much in Consumer Goods as is needed. The exact demand varies slightly over time, so it is good to invest a bit more than what the game asks for (up to 1 unit of industrial capacity), just to be safe. Never try to save on Consumer Goods -- high dissent will cause various problems, including a further reduction in industrial efficiency. It's also good to keep your units supplied, since it takes time to move the supplies and you might need to go to war sooner than you planned. You start with the Consumer Product Orientation law, which limits your indus- trial capabilities. Plus, while you start with reasonably high IC compared to some other countries, it's not nearly enough to prepare for war with Germany. So, you should start by investing heavily into additional IC. I recommend at least 4 serial runs of 5-8 parallel units of IC each. Basically use as much of your starting IC for building new IC as you can. The first round will take over a year to complete, but subsequent rounds will be faster, and the new IC will pay off in the long term. Place the new IC in urban areas with high infrastructure, but reasonably far from the German front. Some good choices are Moscow, Yaroslavl, Kalinin, or Perm (if you lose Moscow, you're doomed anyway). In the early game, you can ignore Upgrades and Reinforcement, and just put everything you have into Production, Supplies, and Consumer Goods. You'll be able to start the upgrades by 1938-1939 as you improve your economic laws. Once you start making military units, I recommend keeping things simple and focusing on two types of divisions: a. 3x Infantry, 1x Artillery (or 1x Anti-Tank) b. 3x Armor, 1x Motorised Later, as you research new units, you can change to the following: a. 3x Infantry, 1x Engineer, 1x Self-Propelled Artillery (or 1x Anti-Tank) b. 1x Heavy Armor, 2x Armor, 1x Engineer, 1x Motorised This composition gives you a decent combined arms bonus (particularly once you unlock Engineers) and a reasonable amount of variety. Infantry are a bit weak on their own, but Artillery/Anti-Tank gives them more firepower. I recommend alternating between divisions with Artillery/SPART and those with Anti-Tank. The Engineers not only improve your combined arms score, but they also help you mount attacks across rivers. For the tank divisions, it is possible to upgrade from Motorised to Mechanised infantry. Mechanised infantry are stronger, but there is a subtle nuance. Motorised infantry share upgrades with regular infantry, while Mechanised share their upgrades with Light Armor. You'll be researching infantry upgrades all game, but you'll abandon Light Armor for the other types. Thus, Motorised infantry will actually be stronger. When making divisions, always click the option to make them "as reserves." This has a much lower IC cost than the alternative, you'll just have to mobilize the reserves via the Politics interface before going to war. I never build any naval units when playing as the Soviet Union. For air units, you might consider building some Close Air Support, but don't go overboard -- 3-4 groups of 4 CAS are probably more than enough. They are supposed to assist your ground units, not replace them. Late in the game, you can build Flying Rockets, but the war will probably be over anyway at that point. Finally, if you ever have any spare IC, consider building Infrastructure. If you switch to the Infrastructure map view, you can see your country's main supply arteries. You want to build up the yellow/light-green provinces to green (i.e. from levels 5-6 to level 7). In particular, you should do this for the main artery going through Irkutsk to the Far East, as supply issues can become very serious during the war with Japan. In general, things will run more smoothly with more redundant supply routes. 3. Technology This tab is probably the most daunting of all, as the game has hundreds of technologies, but the "leadership points" that you invest in them are very limited and have to be shared with espionage, diplomatic influence, and officer education as well as research. So, it's very important to know what techs to focus on. Each technology has a date: for instance, Night Fighting Equipment is marked 1944. You can safely start to research the technology one year in advance (so, you can start on Night Fighting Equipment any time in 1943 if you want), but any earlier and you will incur a very heavy penalty. Thus, there is no point trying to jump ahead of everyone else -- it just won't work. Focus on staying up-to-date on the most important technologies. When researching a tech, the game will give you an estimate for when it will be done. This estimate can change over time. First, it is based on the current year, so every time the calendar rolls over to January 1st, you will find that your techs are scheduled to finish earlier. Second, you can speed up research by building related units and researching related technologies (e.g., one infantry technology will make it easier to research others). It is not really necessary to delve into the details of this system -- just focus on the things you need. There are always enough techs to use up your leadership pool. One note of caution -- try to keep some leadership allocated to Officers. It is easy to get behind on this since the benefits are not as obvious as the other categories, but if your officer ratio falls below 80%, you are setting yourself up for an early attack by Germany and very poor combat performance. Ideally this should be over 100%, but at the very least try to keep it at 85%. a. Infantry All four infantry techs (Small Arms, Light Artillery, Support Weapons, Anti- Tank) should _always_ be up-to-date as soon as possible. Research Engineers and Night Fighting Equipment as soon as you can (but, again, don't start them more than one year in advance). If you have some spare leadership points, consider Bridging Equipment to imp- rove your river crossings, and Assault Weapons to toughen up Engineers a bit. Everything else on this screen can be safely ignored (in particular, you do not need to bother with Mechanised infantry). b. Armor Build up the four Light Armor techs long enough to unlock Medium Armor and Self-Propelled Artillery (SPART), then abandon them. The four Medium Armor techs should _always_ be advanced as soon as possible. Research Heavy Armor as soon as it becomes available and then build up those four techs as much and as quickly as you can. Always advance the two Anti-Tank and Artillery techs as soon as possible, as these units play a major role in your infantry divisions. You can get by without Rocket Artillery. c. Escorts Can be safely ignored. d. Capital Can be safely ignored. f. Bomber Strategic Bombers can be used to deliver nukes, but Flying Rockets can do that just as well, so you can probably just ignore this screen. g. Fighter It is worth researching the four Basic Fighter techs and advancing a few levels in Fighter upgrades if you are planning to use Close Air Support. The techs improving CAS range and attack are particularly useful. Researching Multi-Role Fighters will prompt other countries to buy production licenses from you, but you are unlikely to use them otherwise. Drop Tanks will give a big boost to CAS range. h. Industry Always research Education, Industrial Production/Efficiency, Agriculture, and Supply Production. You always need more leadership, IC, manpower, and supplies. Research Advanced Construction Engineering ASAP to unlock infrastructure. Always research Mechanical/Electronic Computing Machine as soon as it is practical do so. If you want to build nukes, you'll need two chains of techs, starting with Rocket Tests and Atomic Research, respectively. You don't need to worry about these early on, as there are so many other things to catch up on, but you can definitely start thinking about this around 1939-1940. Note that, in order to advance in these techs, you will also need to construct a Rocket Test Site and a Nuclear Reactor, which is done through the Production interface and uses IC. If you're serious about getting nukes, don't forget to build these and make sure they get enough IC to finish on time. If you want to build Radar Stations, you'll need to research Radio Detection Equipment and RADAR. It can be useful to have a couple of these on the German border to monitor troop movements, but you won't get any value out of them, or any time to build more of them, after the war starts. The resource technologies can be safely ignored, with the exception of Supply Production. If you have some spare leadership, you might consider Combat Medicine and First Aid to reduce your manpower consumption during the war with Germany. It is possible to win without these, but Germany has quite a lot of manpower, so this might be one way to get an edge. i. Secret You can ignore these until quite late in the game. If you want to get nukes, though, you'll need to research Nuclear Bomb and Flying Rocket (to deliver the bombs). If you have some basic Fighter upgrades, you can get Helicopters and Medical Evacuation, which will boost Infantry morale. However, by the time you are able to get these, the war will likely be over or close to it. j. Theory Completely unnecessary except for the two Supply techs in the lower left-hand corner. These are quite useful, since they help to mitigate the supply issues that you face as the Soviet Union. k. Land An extremely important screen allowing you to research military doctrines that provide bonuses to all of your land units. Nearly all of these are useful and should be kept up-to-date as efficiently as possible. You can ignore People's Army, since you won't use irregulars. Special Forces is not a high priority, but it does benefit your Engineers, so you might consider it if you are really up-to-date on everything else. Although you'll need most of the others, it is useful to know how to prioritize given your leadership limitations. Consider researching in this order: Tactical Command Structure: unlocks Superior Firepower, which lets you put 5 brigades in a division instead of 4. Getting this upgrade should be a high priority from day one. Mobile Warfare: increases the likelihood of Breakthrough combat tactics, and also unlocks Spearhead Doctrine, which makes it so that more of your units are able to participate in combat simultaneously. Also a high priority. Schwerpunkt/Blitzkrieg: provide bonuses to all your armored units. Extremely high priority, since you need tanks to punch through the German defenses and maintain parity with the German tanks. Operational Level Command Structure: increases combat speed. Operational Level Organization: allows your units to regroup quickly after an attack, thus letting them attack again sooner. Infantry Warfare/Mass Assault: improve the organization and morale of your infantry, which make up the backbone of your army. Mechanised Offensive: improves your motorised/mechanised infantry, and also unlocks Combined Arms Warfare, which gives further bonuses to armor when combined with other units (e.g., your armor/engineer/motorised divisions will now receive a 20% bonus). Elastic Defence/Delay Doctrine/Assault Concentration: improve the organization and morale of your Artillery/SPART/Anti-Tank units. Tectical Command Structure/Mechanised Offensive: improve the organization and morale of your motorised/mechanised infantry. Large Front/Guerrilla Warfare: reduce supply consumption and increase the likelihood of useful combat tactics. Large Front also unlocks Human Wave, which increases the magnitude of your combined arms bonus. Integrated Support/Central Planning: increase the likelihood of useful combat tactics. l. Naval Can be safely ignored. m. Air Can be safely ignored. 4. Politics There's not too much to do here, but you can make a few very useful cabinet appointments. Kalinin and Stalin are fixed as Head of State and Head of Govern- ment, respectively (you can never change them). The others have some options: Foreign Minister: switch to Molotov on day one. He improves support for your ruling party, and the other choices are not helpful for a faction leader. Armament Minister: pick Stalin or any other Military Entrepreneur for a +20% boost to supply production. Stalin is available immediately, but Zhukov appears in 1941 and offers the same bonus if you're a fan of his. Minister of Security: Yagoda is doomed. After he dies, you can appoint Uritsky for a boost to counter-espionage. Beria becomes available in 1938 and gives a boost to ruling party support. Either way, come 1941, you have to appoint Panfilov for a much-needed +5% to leadership. Head of Intelligence: Berzin is doomed. After he dies, Proskurov is OK, but you'll want to switch him out for Kuznetsov in 1945 for an espionage bonus. Chief of Staff: Tukhachevsky is doomed. Once he dies, appoint Shaposhnikov for a boost to manpower. In 1942, you can replace him with Vasilevsky for a boost to supply throughput. Either is useful for the war. Chief of the Army: on day one, pick Stalin to reduce your supply consumption. Chief of the Navy: pretty much irrelevant. Chief of the Air Force: pretty much irrelevant. Alksnis is a reasonable choice since you'll only be making light aircraft. Oddly, the real Alksnis died in the purges, but he survives them in the game. Laws are very simple: every country always benefits from the most oppressive laws. As the Soviet Union, you never have to change Civil Law, Press Law, or Education Investment Law. The other laws can be improved over time as explained in the walkthrough. Only the Training Law is a bit ambiguous: Specialist Training gives you more skilled units, but they take longer to produce. You can win the game with just Basic Training. Before starting any war, you should click on Mobilize in this interface. This will make sure that all units are running at full manpower, and will impose a high Reinforcement cost on you for a couple of weeks. Just put all of your IC into Reinforcement and Consumer Goods during that time until the Reinforcement cost goes down again. When this happens, you're ready to declare war. Once you start occupying enemy territory, this screen will let you set an occupation policy, but you should always leave this at Collaboration Government to avoid rebellions. You can also Liberate German-occupied countries if you control their capitals, but you should wait until the war ends to do this. Creating puppets can likewise be left for the end. 5. Intelligence Espionage can be extremely useful in Hearts of Iron, but it costs leadership points and thus should be managed very carefully. First, whenever you send spies to a country, wait until you build up 10 of them there before assigning them a mission. Otherwise, the target country's counter- intelligence will eliminate them one by one, draining your reserves. After you build up enough spies, always assign them to Counter-Espionage to eliminate the target country's spies, or at least reduce them to 3-4. Only after that should you assign other tasks to them. You should always have Counter-Espionage selected, though, in case the target country tries to rebuild its spy network. Early on, you should send spies to Germany and Japan and order them to Increase Threat. The higher their threat, the more other countries are inclined to look to you for support. For example, Communist China has to see Japan as a threat before it is willing to lower its neutrality enough to join the Comintern. In 1939, Germany will start the war, and you can then tell your spies to Dis- rupt National Unity and Support Our Party. Same with Japan, except you can wait a bit longer. It is important to disrupt the national unity of Axis count- ries since this will make them surrender faster. You can also use spies to stage coups and overthrow foreign governments. To do this, give them the Covert Operations mission and wait until you build up 20 covert ops points. Then, a button to Attempt Coup becomes available. If it works, the target country's government will change to Communist, and more importantly, the country will leave any faction where it was previously a member. This is the only way to remove a country from a faction other than winning the war. The new government will not automatically join the Comintern, but it will move closer to you on the Diplomacy screen, and you can then use diplomatic influence to try to close the gap. Of course, if it were that simple, this would be a very easy game. Coups have very low odds of success, but you can improve them by telling your spies to Support Our Party. This will slowly increase the support for the local Commu- nist party in the target country. The Intelligence screen shows you the support for various parties in the country. The support for the local Communist parties appears to be roughly similar to the success probability for a coup. Thus, if the local Communists are strong enough to field 3 ministers, a coup will have a roughly 30% chance of being successful. If the coup fails, you'll have to rebuild your entire spy network, so this is always a bit of a gamble, and should be attempted only if the odds seem good (30-40%). The best targets are countries with fractured governments and low national unity. A good early-game target is Portugal: you can overthrow their govern- ment as early as 1939-1940 and bring them into the Comintern within a couple of years. But you can aim even higher. As far as I know, you cannot stage coups in countries that lead factions (so the UK and Germany are immune), but every- one else is fair game. That means Italy and Japan, who don't even start the game as Axis members. Building up your covert ops in Japan ahead of time can let you try a coup as a desperation move if you find yourself in a two-front war. If it works, it will be a game-changer. You can also play around with coups in the late game, hopefully after the war ends. If you are using the default victory conditions, the Allies get points if Greece and Norway are Allied members. Coups will knock them out of the Allies (you also get a point if you manage to bring Greece into the Comintern). You can even stage a coup in France -- if you've already defeated Germany, you'll have a huge army right on the French border to force them into the Comintern very easily. However, you will have to wait at least a year for your spies to raise the needed support for your party. (Note: If Nationalist Spain wins the Spanish Civil War, it is still possible to overthrow their government. However, the new government will be unwilling to join the Comintern even if they are close enough. I am not sure whether this is a bug or whether there is some explanation -- I have not observed this with coups in any other country.) The Support Our Party mission can also affect the ideological drift of the target country. For example, if you send your spies to Canada with this task, eventually the change in popular sympathies will cause Canada to drift toward the Comintern rather than the Allies. However, this takes a very long time (at least a couple of years) to have a visible effect, and the target may join another faction in the meantime. 6. Theatres To be honest, I never use this interface. It gives you suggestions for which units to build in different regions, but you're better off doing that yourself, and I usually use just two theatres (west and east) to begin with. THE ROAD TO WAR: 1936-1948 ========================== In this walkthrough, I will focus on the 1936 start. Some of the ideas there may be useful for the later starting dates as well, but the later dates are typically much more challenging since you have less time to prepare. 1936 The most boring part of this game occurs right here, before you even unpause. You have to go through your starting units and completely disband every single HQ, because the default organization and order of battle are very inefficient. Remove every theatre HQ except for STAVKA (Moscow) and the Far East Theatre (Vladivostok). To remove the other theatres, first select STAVKA, click the option to edit the theatre (the picture with the mouse arrow over the map), and redraw the theatre to cover the entire western half of the Soviet Union. You can then disband the other theatres. All this takes about 15-20 minutes, but it gives you a big reserve of officers that you can then use in a more efficient manner. Now you have a whole bunch of disconnected divisions scattered about the map. Start grouping them together by type (infantry with infantry, motorised with motorised, etc.) and bringing them to the Polish border. Once you have five divisions of the same type in the same province, select them as a group and create a corps HQ. You can put five divisions in a corps, and you can also station five divisions (plus HQ) in the same province without taking attrition penalties. You also need troops for your other borders, roughly along the following lines: 1. You start with five cavalry divisions. Send them all down to the Caucasus and station them on the Turkish border. 2. Put two other infantry corps on the Turkish border; start by organizing the troops that are already there. 3. You have a couple of divisions in Central Asia, close to the border with Afghanistan. Group them together. 4. Put two full infantry corps on the two provinces north of Leningrad, on the border with Finland. Put a third corps on the eastern Finnish border, close to Lake Ladoga. A fourth corps can be placed farther north, near Murmansk. 5. Group together all the troops that are around Mongolia and the Far East. You won't have enough to guard the entire border with Japan and Manchukuo, but you can at least get started. Put a corps in Khabarovsk, a corps on the Japanese border at the Korean peninsula, and other corps on the northern border with Manchukuo if you can. Everything else should go to the border with Poland. You can ignore the Baltic countries, Hungary, and Romania for now. Having done that, change your starting cabinet (see the Politics section above) and queue up a lot of new IC under Production. Three or four serial runs of 8 units per run will work well. Delete whatever production you start with. If you have any leftover IC, use it for infantry divisions (see the Production section above). Now go to Technology and start researching the following: - all four Infantry techs; - all four Light Armor techs; - Industrial Production/Efficiency; - Education; - Supply Production; - Agriculture; - a few of the most useful Land doctrines (see Technology above). Under Diplomacy, influence Hungary to keep them neutral. If you have any leadership left over after all this, you can put all of it into espionage. It is OK to go light on officers right now, but you'll have to ramp up officer education later after you pass the Three-Year Draft. Under Intelligence, you want to assign high priority to your domestic spy network with all the missions (particularly Counter-Espionage and Raise National Unity are useful). You can also send spies to Germany and Japan to raise their threat (see the Intelligence guide above). Be sure to raise your own national unity, though, as it is the key to getting anywhere in this game. Now unpause and start the game. This is not a very eventful year. Mostly you will be waiting for your techs to finish. You can use this time to get into the useful habit of regularly checking your Production screen to make sure that you have enough invested in Consumer Goods (to be safe, invest up to 1 unit of IC more than what you're asked for), and that you don't have too much invested anywhere else. You can ignore Upgrades and Reinforcement for a little while. Likewise, every time you finish researching a tech, take a moment to go through the Technology interface to see if you need to switch it out for another tech. You start out very far behind in Education and Industrial Production and Efficiency, so you can keep researching these continuously for at least 2 years. However, if you're up-to-date in infantry or armor techs, switch them out for some more land doctrines, or vice versa. See the Technology guide above for a discussion of what is useful. 1937 As soon as 1937 starts, you get the option to Begin the Great Officer Purge, which is exactly what you think it is. Even leaving aside the moral aspects, this is still a controversial decision. If you go through with it, you will receive a 15% penalty to your leadership points, which will last until late 1939 and severely hamper your ability to catch up in research. You will also lose a large number of unit leaders (so many that all their names don't even fit into the mouse-over tool-tip), and even a few cabinet members. On the other hand, you will gain +22 to national unity. This means that you basically have to conduct the purge. Higher national unity will let you pass more oppressive economic laws, which will greatly boost your IC, along with other benefits. (And it's not just the Soviet Union -- every country in this game wants to raise national unity and pass more oppressive laws.) In particular, immediately after the purge, you will be able to switch to Full Mobilisation, Heavy Industry Emphasis, and Three-Year Draft. A few months later, your neutrality will drop low enough to enable a War Economy. It goes without saying that you should implement all of these as soon as possible. Only Heavy Industry Emphasis is a bit ambiguous, since it improves your industrial efficiency and supply throughput, but substantially increases the demand for consumer goods in peacetime. You may wish to hold off on it until you get closer to the war (the consumer goods penalty only applies in peacetime), or you may just go through with it now for the bonus to industrial efficiency. Since the purge does impose a severe penalty on your leadership, you may wish to wait until April-June of 1937 before beginning it. This will let you get a few more techs in before having to scale back. Don't wait too long, though: you really need the IC that you gain from the new laws. Once you get War Economy, you should have much more IC than before. Your first run of new IC should be finished in early 1937; the second one should be done about a year later. Continue until you've done about 4 runs, but use your new spare IC for more infantry divisions. In 1937, you should be able to unlock Medium Armor, at which point you can start building tank divisions (see the Production guide above for the composition). Aside from the transition to the War Economy, 1937 should be similar to 1936. Keep researching the high-priority technologies, building IC, and making infantry/tank divisions. Generally, all new divisions should go to the Polish border. Group them by type and make a corps HQ once you have five divisions in a province. Once you've created five corps in close geographic proximity, you can select those and make an army HQ, which can be positioned some distance behind the corps. Five army HQs can be grouped into an army group HQ, which should be linked to the theatre HQ (STAVKA or the Far East Theatre). Make sure that you have three corps on the Turkish border (two infantry, one cavalry), two corps north of Leningrad, and two more on the eastern Finnish border. You can also add a couple of divisions to your Central Asian troops until you have a corps -- you won't need more than one. The Far East can wait for now, securing the Polish border is more urgent. Note: make sure to replace your cabinet members immediately after starting the purge! If you forget, it might take months before you think to look at the Politics interface again. 1938 For the Soviet Union, this year is overall similar to the previous one. Your initial runs of IC should finally be close to completion, whereupon you'll be able to direct all of your production to infantry and tank divisions. At this point, your new troops should mostly be going to the Polish border, with an occasional division going to the Far East. You can also make some individual artillery/anti-tank brigades (click on Brigade Attachment under the Division picture in the Production interface) and attach them to infantry divisions that only contain three infantry brigades without support (you shouldn't be making any divisions like that, but this may apply to some of your starting units). During this year, you should finally invest in all those upgrades that you've been putting off. Just spend a month or two using your IC exclusively for upgrades and consumer goods until all the upgrades finally go through. In the future, you should have enough IC to handle the upgrades as they arise -- it is only necessary to postpone them early on when you don't have much IC. Likewise, continue researching technologies as usual, prioritizing Industrial Production/Efficiency, Supply Production, and Education when you can. By this year, you should research Advanced Construction Engineering to unlock infra- structure. You should also get started on the first Computing Machine tech. Otherwise, just keep hammering at those infantry/armor/land doctrine techs. Do your absolute best to invest some leadership into officer education during this year. You don't want your officer ratio to drop below 85%. Scale back on some research if you have to, even if it seems like you have enough officers. In the next couple of years, you will be deploying large numbers of troops, and new divisions eat through your supply of officers very fast. The international situation will start heating up. You'll start seeing some historical events, such as the Anschluss of Austria and the Treaty of Munich. In Asia, Japan will quickly annex Shaanxi and attack Nationalist China. The Chinese may ask you for assistance, in which case you can enact the "Operation Zet" decision. There's no reason not to do it, but it's not very significant either way. You may also get a prompt for the "Khasan Lake Incident," related to a historical border skirmish with Japan. This is likewise not too important to your game. By this point, Japan and Italy will have joined the Axis, and so will Hungary if you haven't been keeping them neutral through diplomatic influence. 1939 This year is a major turning point in the campaign. Your neutrality will finally become low enough to allow you to declare war, and several important historical events will change the borders of Europe. The most important of these is the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which will give you a non-aggression agreement with Germany that will last several years, and cannot be broken for about six months. In the game world, there is nothing controversial about this event -- you have to sign the pact to get a few more months' reprieve to build up your forces. What you have now is probably not enough to beat Germany, and you need to deter them from attacking you for at least another year. This event will also give you much more favourable borders for defense. So, you want this to happen. The problem is that you need Germany to offer it to you, there's no way to suggest it to them. I have had a couple of games in which Germany never offered me the pact. Both times, they attacked soon after (once in 1940, sooner than historical). I do not know exactly what triggers the pact, but one of those times I did not conduct the purge (and had low national unity), and both times I had neglected my military build-up and officer ratio. Think of this as a good reason to keep the officer ratio at 85% or higher. Assuming that Germany does offer the pact, accept it immediately (there is also an option to "Propose an unholy alliance," but AI Germany will never accept). Right after, you will be able to demand the annexation of the Baltic states through a national decision (like the purge). Then, Germany will invade Poland, and once they capture Warsaw you can demand eastern Poland through another decision. This will give you a border with Germany, a bit further west from where your old Polish border was. When this happens, move your troops to the new border and position one corps in each province (of course, you should be keeping up your infantry and tank production). Try to put infantry corps on the northern half of the border, and tank corps on the southern half. The reason is because the northern half is more heavily fortified on the German side and has a river right on the border. Rivers are difficult to storm, so you want to have infantry defending there to hold off a German advance. The south, however, consists of open plains where your tanks can charge forward. I suggest building level 3 forts in the north, in every border province north of Brest-Litovsk, to improve your defenses. Once the German border looks good, place a few infantry and tank corps on the border with Romania (3-4 infantry and one tank corps should be fine). This will come into play next year. Before you transition to the war phase of the game, go through all of your divisions and HQs and make sure you assign leaders to them. The ranks match the level of the unit, so rank 1 leaders can lead divisions, rank 2 leaders can lead corps, etc. It is better to put lower-skill leaders in charge of divisions, since they will improve their skill in combat. You also want to appoint leaders with desirable traits -- Offensive Doctrine and Battle Master for the German front, Logistics Wizard and Commando for the Far East, Engineer and Fortress Buster for tank divisions, and so forth. By the end of this year, you will finally be able to attack other countries. The easiest first target is Afghanistan. If you recall, I suggested earlier to place an infantry corps on the Afghan border. Now is the time to use it. Take two divisions from that corps and put them just north of Herat, in the western part of the country. The other three divisions should be stationed north of Kabul. Now mobilize your military, declare war with the Puppet wargoal, and march your troops into those two cities. Conquest in Hearts of Iron works a bit differently from the other Paradox games. To win a war, all you need to do is capture "victory points," namely key cities in the enemy country. There is a special map mode that will show you all the victory points. You must capture a proportion of the enemy's VPs that is at least as high as their national unity (thus, if their national unity is 50%, you need at least half of their VPs). Afghanistan only has two VPs, Herat and Kabul, and they're close to the border, so you'll win quickly regardless of their national unity. A single corps is more than a match for their military. You should be using the Puppet wargoal most of the time -- this will make the enemy country your vassal and force them into the Comintern. You can also choose Conquer, which will simply annex the target country. However, doing this will leave you open to rebellions later on if the annexed provinces are not "cores" of the Soviet Union. You do have cores on the Baltic states, so there's no problem there, but you don't have them in Afghanistan, so it is better to just make them into a Comintern puppet. Note that, in wartime, Heavy Industry Emphasis will greatly reduce the demand for consumer goods. Make sure to reduce your investment into them during the war, but also make sure to ramp it back up when the war concludes. Finally, in late 1939, you get the option to start the Finnish Winter War. This is the way to finally remove the research penalty that you received when you started the purge in 1937. For that reason, once again the historically controversial decision is completely straightforward in this game. Start the war and pause the game. Now, go to your two corps north of Leningrad and push the divisions north into Finland. Don't move the HQs along with the troops -- you want to move the troops first and only bring the HQs along after the area has been secured. As you cross the border, you can split up your corps so that two divisions go one way and three go another. You have to push the Finnish army back from their forts on the border, and then send a couple of divisions west along the shore into Helsinki while your other troops hold down their army. Your corps on the eastern border should mostly just try to get in the way of the Finnish counterattack as much as possible. This is usually not too hard if you keep your HQs back and always attack with multiple divisions (at least two at a time). The Finnish troops tend to be more spread out, and two of your divisions can easily push back one or two of theirs. You need to capture Viipuri (close to the border) and do enough damage to them before they propose peace. Usually occupying Helsinki is enough, but if not, start pushing to their other victory points. When they propose peace, choose to settle for your initial demands. You can opt to continue the war, but this will revoke your non-aggression pact with Germany, and you really don't want that. Accept the peace and reposition your troops on the new (and better-fortified) border. When the peace is signed, you will finally lose the research penalty. Finland will also start gravitating toward the Axis, so use some more diplomatic influence to keep them neutral for a while longer. 1940 You're safe from Germany for the entirety of this year, so take the time to continue your military build-up, fortifications on the Polish border, and research. You should be able to research Superior Firepower this year (even last year if you're quick), which lets you make divisions with 5 brigades. Refer to the Production guide above for the composition. During this time, the nations of the world will start to choose sides and join the Axis or Allies. Unfortunately, no one wants to join the Comintern of their own accord. Furthermore, if they join the Axis, you can find yourself in big trouble, since not only do they help Germany, they can also provide additional paths for the Germans to your doorstep. If both Hungary and Romania join the Axis (which is very likely), your border will become unmanageable. You can keep Hungary neutral diplomatically, but the easiest way to deal with everyone else is to just conquer them. (Note: You may need to use some diplomatic influence to keep your targets from joining other factions before you have a chance to get to them. At the start of the year, take a look at Bulgaria -- if they look dangerously close to the Axis, pull them away with influence. You won't have to do this for long.) In June 1940, you can demand Bessarabia from Romania through a decision. This will allow you to annex some border provinces (and obtain cores on them). Around the same time, Hungary will annex a different part of Romania through another event. This will create a long, narrow strip of land on the Romanian side of the border that is connected to the rest of the country only at about two provinces. With 5-6 corps of troops on the border, you can now declare war on Romania with the Puppet wargoal. Have 2-3 corps on the southern part of the border (in Ismail and the neighbouring provinces), and have the rest guarding the "strip." You can maneuver your troops south in a way that leaves a substantial portion of the Romanian army stranded in the "strip," cut off from the rest of the country by your troops and occupied provinces. Surrounding troops in this manner is the only way to destroy them in this game -- you'll never destroy the enemy army through combat alone. Rather, you have to surround them, thus cutting off the flow of supplies. Then, you can gradually push in the pocket of surrounded troops. If enemy troops are surrounded without any friendly territory to retreat to, they will surrender (disappear) after the next battle they lose. With no supplies, they'll also be far less effective in combat. You don't even need to destroy the troops, just keep them contained while your southern divisions push forward to the victory points. There are only two, positioned right next to each other, so you should be victorious within a month. (If a month passes, you can add more wargoals through the Diplomacy interface -- Install Communism replaces their ministers with communists, for a more realistic effect.) Once Romania is in the Comintern, move your troops to the border with Bulgaria and repeat the process. This should be even easier, since Bulgaria is smaller and has fewer VPs. You can position your troops as close to the VPs as you can in order to speed up the process. If you were using your influence on Bulgaria earlier, you'll automatically stop using it now. Next is Yugoslavia. You can position your troops close to their VPs from inside Romania and Bulgaria. Yugoslavia is another country that may join a faction before you have time to conquer them -- check their diplomatic alignment at the beginning of 1940 to make sure you have time. Greece is another good target, but tends to join the Allies a lot sooner, and it may be prohibitively expen- sive to hold on to them with diplomatic influence. Just let them go, you can always stage a coup there later. Plus, they might be mildly useful later by capturing Italy's holdings in Albania. Next up is Turkey. Declare war on them and attack from two sides. You can send the troops from before across the Bulgarian border to capture Istanbul, and you can also send your three corps on the eastern border into Anatolia proper. The Turkish army will be focused on the eastern border, and you'll be able to just walk into Istanbul and the nearby VPs. The next logical target is Persia. Send your troops from the eastern Turkish border to the western Persian border, and send your one corps from Afghanistan to the eastern Persian border. Declare war and send each corps to a victory point. This can take a bit longer since the country is much bigger, but it shouldn't be too hard. Just don't let the enemy army de-occupy the provinces in your rear as you push forward, since you might get cut off from supplies. The troops that you used for Romania and Bulgaria should be stationed on the western borders of Yugoslavia (Germany and Italy). If you don't get Yugoslavia now, the Axis probably will, giving you a much wider southern front to deal with, and possibly allowing them to walk through Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey to your territory. Putting troops in that area will let you hamper such efforts. The last target within reach is Finland. It's a bit funny that continuing the Winter War will revoke your non-aggression pact with Germany, but waiting a bit and starting another war will not. The strategy is the same as before, but it should be a bit easier since you won't need to push across a small and heavily fortified border. Focus on getting to the VPs. After you win, move two of your invading corps up north to the border with Norway. There are two provinces there with sufficiently high infrastructure for troop movements. As Norway is usually conquered by the Axis, it is important to keep this gap plugged. Finally, if you're able to stage coups in any other countries (Portugal) where where Communists have at least 30% support, you might take a chance on it. If successful, you can then use diplomatic influence to bring them into the Comintern. So what was the point of all that? You actually get a portion of your puppets' leadership points, so by the end of 1940, your leadership situation should look dramatically better than it did in 1936. By the same token, that means the Germans have less leadership than they would have if they had conquered these countries. It also gives you an advantage in positioning your troops, as discussed further down. Note that, if you've kept Hungary neutral so far, you can also turn them into a puppet. However, I would actually suggest keeping them neutral until after World War II is over -- this will make it easier to deal with the vast German army. 1941-1942 By early 1941, you should have a buffer zone of puppets surrounding you, thus leaving only the borders with Germany and Japan/Manchukuo to contend with. Once you have a corps on every province on the German border, it's time to think about Japan. First, make sure that your main supply artery from Moscow to Vladivostok is at least at level 7 infrastructure. It's better to over-prepare for a possible war with Japan than to be caught off guard. I suggest putting 3-4 full corps directly west of Vladivostok (to plug up the "indentation"
formed by Soviet territory inside Manchukuo). One of these should be a tank
corps, placed on the corner where Japanese, Manchu, and Soviet territory meet.
The others should be infantry corps -- tanks tend to run out of supply quickly
in rough terrain. Put a full corps in Khabarovsk and two more directly south
of it. Next, put a full corps in Otpor (near the border between Manchukuo
and Mongolia) and at least two more on the northern Manchukuo border between
Otpor and Khabarovsk. You can split up the corps, so three divisions are with
the HQ and two others are in an adjacent province. This lets you cover more of
the border and prevent the Japanese from seeping through. They usually won't
attack here if your troops are within attacking range of every border province,
since the terrain is rough and there are rivers along the border.

Finally, put a corps northeast of Khabarovsk in the province adjacent to the
northern tip of Sakhalin. If you don't do this, Japan can send marines into
Sakhalin and across the strait to occupy your land and cut Vladivostok off from
supplies. This must not happen.

Japan can also conquer the British holdings in India and Southeast Asia, and
will be able to attack you through Afghanistan. You may wish to station a
couple of corps in Afghanistan to protect against this possibility.

During 1941, World War II will be well underway. Germany will probably have
conquered France and the Benelux countries by late 1940. The USA will have
joined the Allies, though to be honest they won't be much of a help in this
game. You will have a "moment of truth" in 1941-1942: if you were successful
in your military build-up throughout the game, Germany will not break the non-
aggression pact, and will leave you alone, possibly for the rest of the game.
You may still have to fight Japan in 1943, but otherwise, if your goal is to
survive, you'll know by late 1942 whether you've accomplished it. Of course,
if Germany goes on to conquer the UK and the rest of the world, your country
will be surrounded by the Axis with pretty bleak prospects for the future. So,
if you'd like to change that, read on.

1943-1945

Two things happen in 1943. First, your non-aggression pact with Germany will
completely expire, so even if they didn't break it earlier, they can just
attack now. Second, Japan will attack Communist China, usually in February or
March. If you've brought them into the Comintern (which is doable using only
diplomatic influence -- they're also Communists and they feel threatened by
Japan), this will bring the entire Comintern into the war. This war is very
winnable, since the Comintern is obligated to defend every member, but the Axis
is not, so you'll just be up against Japan and its Asian puppets.

The war with Germany is a different matter. There's a good chance that they
just won't declare war, if they haven't done it by 1943. In that case, you may
wish to declare war on them, if you'd like to dismantle the Axis once and for
all. Or they might declare war anyway. Assuming that, one way or another, you
end up fighting Germany in 1943, here are some thoughts on how to handle them.

First, by keeping Hungary neutral, you force them to split their armies into
two parts. The main force is on the German/Soviet border, and a smaller force
is on the Yugoslav border. If you let Yugoslavia join the Allies, by now they
will have been conquered and Germany will attack Romania and Bulgaria from
their territory. If they beat Bulgaria and Romania, you are guaranteed to lose.
So, you need a task force in the Balkans, preferably holding down the Yugoslav
border from both the German and Italian sides. When the war starts, you can
try to probe German territory with these forces.

The purpose of this task force is not to win the war, but rather to waste the
Germans' time, keep them bogged down in the Balkans, and make them commit
troops to the area. If they don't commit enough troops, you will actually be
in reach of multiple Austrian VPs, including Vienna. If they do have a lot of
troops there, don't try to advance too far and take over just a handful of
provinces. Keep your corps close together, ideally side by side. You don't
want to let the Germans bypass your task force and walk through Yugoslavia.
You want to make trouble for them. If Hungary is neutral, it actually takes a
long time for their two fronts to communicate.

On the main front, your strategy should be to use tanks to break through in the
south (from western Ukraine into Slovakia and western Poland). If the northern
part of the border is well-fortified with infantry corps and level 3 forts, the
Germans will have a tough time cracking your defenses. You can then put all of
your tank divisions in the south. A division with 1x Heavy Armor, 2x Armor, 1x
Engineer, and 1x Motorised can do fairly well. Put all of your CAS close to
this area and use them to support your breakthrough when it starts.

In Hearts of Iron III, attacks are much more effective if they are coordinated
from multiple directions. If provinces A and B both border province C, it will
be much more effective to attack C from both A and B simultaneously (this is
because A and B combined have greater "combat width" vs. C). Similarly, if
someone in province C attacks your troops in A, you can severely weaken the
attack by mounting a counterattack on C from B. But your opponent will do the
same. So, when mounting an attack on one province, you have to also attack the
neighbouring enemy provinces, to keep them busy and prevent them from reinfor-
cing.

The next thing you will notice is that the Germans will redirect their strong
units (such as Panzers) to reinforce places that are taking a lot of fire. So,
if your tanks are suddenly running into stiff resistance, pause the game and
take a look at the rest of the front. It is likely that the northern part of
it is now very lightly defended, and you can mount a surprise push there with
your infantry. Don't push too far -- the Panzers will be back very soon. But
you can at least draw their attention.

Next, to conserve your units' morale and organization, try not to attack in
unfavourable locations. In other words, don't send infantry charging across a
river to attack a corps of heavy tanks in a fortified city. A corps of infantry
armed with artillery and anti-tank weapons can handle a division of tanks,
sometimes even across a river if they have high organization, but they cannot
handle multiple divisions. Use your heavy hitters (Heavy Armor) to attack
groups of units, particularly in fortified areas. Even there, position your
tank divisions so that more than one of them can hit the target at once, and
bring in your CAS to conduct ground attacks on the target.

You will be able to make reinforcements during the war. In fact, as soon as the
war with the Axis starts, you can switch to Total Economic Mobilization and
Service by Requirement, the final and best laws. This will slash your consumer
goods demand and give you even more IC. The problem, however, is that it takes
a long time to make the units and then send them to the front. You will need to
pause the game and give out orders multiple times per in-game day -- you can't
afford to wait several weeks for reinforcements to arrive. So, you can't be too
aggressive. Your units recover their morale and organization after each attack
(this is represented by the orange and green bars you see when you click on
them), but it is not instantaneous, and if you make them push forward, they
will just lose and then fold to the next enemy push. You have to try to let
your units recover by distracting the enemy somewhere else. If you have extra
infantry divisions, keep them right behind the front and move them in when a
front corps runs low on organization and gets pushed back. When you make
reinforcements, don't bother waiting until you have five divisions of the same
type before you make a corps -- just mix infantry and tanks together. It's
better to get them to the front sooner.

Positioning is quite important during this war. As soon as it starts, send a
couple of corps into Slovakia (an Axis puppet) and advance them west along with
the rest of the front. This fills a gap in the front, preventing Germans from
sneaking past, and it also has other benefits. As the war goes on, add the
Puppet and Install Communism wargoals against Slovakia. They have a single
victory point in Bratislava, and as soon as you take it, they will be knocked
out of the Axis and join your side. Not only does this remove a considerable
part of the German army, but Slovakia also gets a truce with Germany for a
few months, which means that Germans will be unable to even access their terri-
tory during that time. This reduces the width of the front, as well as the size
of the enemy army. If your Balkan task force managed to get to Vienna, it is
even easier to secure Slovakia since Bratislava is very close to Vienna.

The best and most cost-effective way to win is to somehow encircle part of the
German army and destroy them by constricting the encirclement. Unfortunately,
unlike that strip of land in Romania, German geography doesn't lend itself too
well to such tactics. The best place for that is eastern Prussia (Koenigsberg
region), a fairly narrow coastline area. Unfortunately, the AI is smart enough
to know when you are trying to encircle it, and will prefer to escape from
the region instead of getting caught there. If you can't capture any units
there, you pretty much have to push them back to the path into Denmark (the
next natural choke point on the map). But if you get that far, you've basically
won the war already.

You can liberate any occupied country whose capital you control through the
Politics interface. For Poland, this will happen automatically as soon as you
take Warsaw. In general, don't do this unless you already control most of the
country. Liberated countries tend to start with low national unity, and it is
quite easy for the Germans to simply reconquer them again if they still hold
most of the VPs, this time cutting you off from supply. Advance slowly and
don't rush to the VPs until your entire front reaches them.

The war with Germany consumes a lot of manpower. You will be at parity with
them from beginning to end (if they capture 20% of your victory points, you
get a special decision that gives you a large bonus, but by then it will be
more difficult to mount a comeback). Make sure to keep checking the Production
interface to make sure that you always have enough invested into Reinforcement.
Also, to reduce supply problems, just invest more IC into supply than the game
asks. For example, if it asks for 40 IC, invest 100. The excess supply will be
sold, but most likely someone somewhere will need it. 

It is important to maintain your spy network in Germany to disrupt national
unity. They own a lot of VPs, so there is a real difference between having to
capture 60% of them vs. 90%. Even then, it's a race to win before you run out
of manpower. This is one reason why it's important to be up-to-date on your
Agriculture research.

With luck, the Allies might actually do something useful eventually. I have
found that, if the Balkan task force holds the line, Greece can occupy Albania.
The UK may opportunistically stage a landing somewhere in Axis territory. The
USA, unfortunately, does not help much in this game (they might conquer Vichy
France and possibly fight Japan in the Pacific, but that's all). I have had
one game where I never fought Germany, but massed up so many troops on their 
border that they kept their whole army there, allowing a handful of American 
marines to walk across, and take over, their whole country. But, if you are
fighting Germany, the Allies will be content to just let you do all the work.

To summarize, a successful campaign against Germany involves the following key
elements:

1. Keep Hungary neutral!
2. Distract and annoy the Germans somewhere in the Balkans. These troops don't
   have to win or advance, they just need to survive the pressure while your
   main army forces its way into Germany. If the Germans have to use a lot of
   troops to hold these guys down, they'll have a harder time pushing into
   Romania and Bulgaria, and will also have fewer troops for the main front.
   The best-case scenario is that these troops will be able to take over some
   land in Austria or eastern Italy.
3. Use tank divisions with Heavy Armor for breakthroughs. Don't attack with
   weak divisions, focus on using the most modern divisions with five brigades
   and Engineers.
4. If your tanks run into a lot of German panzers, take a look at the opposite
   end of the border to see if there is an opportunity to grab a couple of
   provinces (you can use infantry divisions for this if the provinces are
   lightly defended). As soon as you meet real resistance, go back to your
   tank divisions and push forward with them.
5. Reduce their national unity, liberate Poland and Slovakia once you're sure
   you can hold on to them, and do whatever you can to raise or conserve man-
   power.

Once Germany falls, you just need to mop up Italy, which is a far simpler task.
First, many of their troops will be stranded in Germany, cut off from supply,
and can be easily captured. Second, their military is not as strong as that
of Germany to begin with, and their national unity tends to be lower. This
task should take only a few months.

Make sure to add all the wargoals you want before finishing the war. You want
both Puppet and Install Communism for every Axis country, but if you want to
dismantle them further, you can add Acquire Territory wargoals and create
puppet countries in the acquired land. For Germany, you can acquire the Baltic
region (gives you a couple of core provinces in Lithuania), Austria, Bohemia-
Moravia, and the Sudetenland. These last three can be used to create Austria
and Czechoslovakia. You can also acquire and liberate Albania from Italy.
There's no point keeping the land for yourself since it's far away and subject
to rebellions, but you can use it to create a bunch of new Comintern puppets
through the Politics interface.

The war with Japan is a different story. It's less strenuous overall, and much
less of a drain on manpower. However, you face much more severe supply issues
since the terrain is rougher and the infrastructure is not as well-developed.
In fact, Japan's strategy is to cut off your troops from their supply routes
and starve them out. To prevent this, you need to carefully guard your entire
border with Manchukuo, keep a corps at the strait leading into Sakhalin, and
maintain a force in Afghanistan to hold off any incursions from Siam and the
Japanese force in Indochina.

When the war starts, attack using your corps in and south of Khabarovsk. The
troops west of Vladivostok can also attack opportunistically, but it is more
important to hold the line here until the Khabarovsk team can clear out the
eastern part of Manchukuo. The divisions protecting the northern and western
Manchukuo borders should hold the line -- you need to keep looking at this
section so you don't overlook some Japanese marines trying to sneak past
your border guards. The border here is mountainous and has lots of rivers, so
don't attack unless you're moving into empty territory or dealing with only
a single division. Japan's puppets are much weaker than Japan itself; Manchukuo
has only a handful of militia and infantry units.

Once the Khabarovsk team is lined up with the Vladivostok team, carefully push
west. You want to keep the Korean border closed, but you want to push the
Japanese forces in the north of Manchukuo away from that border and into the
south. For wargoals, I recommend Puppet and Install Communism for Japan's other
puppet Mengkukuo, but Conquer for Manchukuo and Japan itself (for Japan, you
can also add Acquire Territory for Sakhalin). Annexing Manchukuo will let you
build infrastructure there and supply your troops in Asia more easily.

Your  first priority is to knock Manchukuo out of the fight by seizing both of 
their victory points. The first, Harbin, is right along your attack path, and 
you'll pick it up as the Khabarovsk team pushes the Japanese south. The second,
Mukden, is deep inside Manchukuo territory, and is harder to get. If your
advance stalls, the Japanese can wait until your morale flags and then mount
a counter-offensive. Try to move toward Mukden as quickly as possible. One
option may be to draw enemy fire around Harbin and use a single corps to 
sneak by the Japanese front in the south. Once Mukden falls, Manchukuo joins
your side and the Japanese military will suddenly find itself cut off from
supplies.

That is really the main challenge in this campaign. While cleaning up the
Japanese army in Manchukuo, quickly place a couple of corps at the Korean
border to contain the peninsula. The rest of your forces should then move
to Mengkukuo, which only has a single victory point and thus is fairly easy
prey. After that, pushing into Japan's Chinese holdings is straightforward.
They will occasionally try to storm the coastline, so maintain corps in
both Korea and the Chinese region. If Communist China has survived, they
can actually be pretty helpful in distracting or even pursuing the Japanese
forces.

Usually, Xibei San Ma joins the Axis, and you can easily clean them up at
this time. Their territory is accessible from Sinkiang and Communist China,
with VPs that are close to either of those borders. You can also reach Tibet
from Xibei San Ma -- it only has one victory point close to the border of XSM.

If Japan seems to be contained (they may also have to contend with attacks
from the UK or USA, leaving them with little time for you), you can easily
bring all of China into the Comintern. Nationalist China has a relatively weak
military (mostly infantry and militia) and VPs that are easily accessible from
XSM, Communist China, and the Chinese holdings you took from Japan. Yunnan
has only two VPs that are easily accessible from Nationalist China. Finally,
Guangxi Clique has three VPs that can all be picked up by simply walking
across the border in various places. Once Nationalist China is brought into
the Comintern, you can take the Guangdong region and Hong Kong from Japan.
You will not be able to enter Indochina, however, due to its poor infra-
structure (this will also keep the Japanese from attacking you through there).

After that, you probably will not be able to invade mainland Japan, since you
haven't researched any naval upgrades (Japan will sink your transports before
they ever reach their destination). But you might not need to -- the UK and
USA might take care of Japan for you. There is an interesting aspect here,
which may be a glitch or a game feature. If you are using the Conquer and
Acquire Territory wargoals, and the UK defeats Japan by capturing the needed
percentage of their VPs, not only will you keep the territory that you are
occupying, but you will also annex any territory that is not currently occupied
by anyone -- the UK will only keep whatever it is directly controlling. You
may thus find yourself in control of most of the mainland without even having
to try.

Overall, fighting Japan is much easier than fighting Germany. However, there
is one scenario to watch out for, and that is when you have to fight both of
them at once. They both have to declare war on you for this to happen, but
if you declare war on Germany, you'll have to fight the entire Axis. The
basic strategy is the same for both fronts, since they are far enough apart
to function independently, but you may not have the manpower needed to sustain
such a conflict. If you are planning to attack Germany, it may be better to
wait until Japan has attacked Communist China, since this lets you make some
progress in that part of the war. 

If you find yourself getting bogged down in Manchukuo, you have one ace up your 
sleeve, and that is to stage a coup in Japan. Japan actually has fairly low
national unity (particularly if you've built a spy network there), and you can
fire up support for the local Communists during the preceding years. If, by a
stroke of luck, you succeed at doing this, Japan will immediately be knocked
out of the Axis, but Manchukuo and Mengkukuo will stay in the fight, allowing
you to trample over them without even having to worry about Japan. You can then 
take your time in China before returning to deal with Japan, if you so choose.
Or, if you don't want to fight Japan, you can then try and bring their new
communist government into the Comintern diplomatically -- it takes some time,
but it is possible.

1946-1948

One way or another, most of the fighting should be done by 1946. If the war
with Germany started in 1943, you should be finished by late 1945. You may
still be at war with Japan, but you should already have seized Manchukuo and
Mengkukuo, and occupied Japan's holdings in mainland Asia. If you want, you
can now finally take over Hungary.

There is not much to do aside from shaping the post-war world. If you took
the time to Acquire Territory from the Axis countries, you can now redistribute
it among various puppet states. As soon as Germany falls, all of its former
conquests (like France and Belgium) will regain their independence. However,
by a quirk of the game design, you can automatically make them join the
Comintern if you control their capitals. For example, if you happen to control
Brussels when Germany falls, Belgium will reappear as a member of the Allies
(if that was where it was before). However, you can still liberate Belgium
through the Politics interface and turn the whole country into a Comintern
puppet.

In the last couple of years, you can stage some coups to remove some Allies
members (if you're worried about the Allies fulfilling more of their victory
conditions than you have yours). Good targets are Greece, Norway, and Belgium.
There seems to be a bug in the game that sometimes doesn't allow you to invite 
countries to your faction, but you can still knock them out of other factions.

If you researched nukes, you'll probably get to use them by late 1946. It takes
a long time because you first have to research the Rocket Tests and Atomic
Research sequences of techs, which also involves using IC to build a Rocket
Test Site and Nuclear Reactor. After that, you have to research Flying Rocket
and Nuclear Bomb, and then you have to wait for nukes to be built (you get
10% of a nuke per month, more with more advanced tech). By the time you get
them, it will probably be too late to use them. However, if you can find a use
for them, they do lower the target country's national unity by 8 every time
they are used, which speeds up the surrender of large opponents.

OTHER STRATEGIES
================

If you'd like to contribute some Soviet strategies for Hearts of Iron III, I'm
more than happy to include them here.

One interesting strategy floating around the community is to bait the Germans
inside the Soviet Union. Instead of fortifying the Polish border, move east and
fortify the Dnieper and Dniester rivers. If the Germans capture 20% of your
VPs, you get a huge boost to manpower through a scripted event. If you've 
managed to keep most of your army intact, you can then have an advantage in the
subsequent struggle (while they may experience supply issues the further they
get into your territory). The problem with this approach is that it abandons
the other Comintern countries on your border, letting Germany either conquer
them outright for more IC, or turn them into puppets and send their armies
against you. If you try this approach, you can use the Crimean peninsula as
a natural choke point to entrap some German troops.

A second strategy is to take over Sweden around 1940-1941, while you are going
around "recruiting" Comintern members. This gives the Germans another front to
worry about -- they can retake Sweden, but it will waste time and require a
commitment of troops, while the Swedish/Soviet land border is narrow and can
be easily defended. This is similar to the "Balkan" strategy described above,
in that it encourages the enemy to send troops to multiple distant places, thus
reducing their effectiveness at the main front.

Sometimes, you can hold off on the war with Germany until a really good opport-
tunity arises. For example, Germany might stage a landing in the UK, diverting
a substantial amount of troops and possibly leaving the border lightly guarded.
More commonly, rebellions might appear in German-controlled Poland, causing
the Germans to divert a large proportion of their border guards.

THE END
=======

Hearts of Iron III is a copyright of Paradox Interactive, 2009-2012.
This FAQ is a copyright of Sephiroth Katana, 2014.