Unity of Command Forums

General Thoughts
I had a lot of fun playing the Soviet campaign. It certainly required more thought than the Axis campaign which I found fairly straightforward from a strategy point of view. As Axis the player has a huge safety margin with the superhuman units you are given each mission. With the Soviets however, I frequently restarted missions because of something I had overlooked or ignored. As I progressed through the campaign I noticeably improved as a player. Mistakes that were tolerated in the earlier missions were not acceptable later on. Overall the Soviet campaign was challenging and enjoyable.

Tips & Hints
Here are a few tricks I used throughout the campaign which may be of some use to you:

Aggressive reinforcement
I frequently recycled my under-strength units to bolster my forces elsewhere. I never really did this as Axis (never needed to) but it certainly is a nice thing to be aware of and may give you that extra push you need to win a mission.

Note: There are times when reinforcing a unit is suboptimal: Reinforcing weakened infantry units facing an SS panzer division, for example, is useless. The SS PD will one shot your unit whether it has 1 suppressed step or 7 active steps. It’s best to reinforce units other units instead.

Be sure to arm your armoured spearheads with specialist steps. In a lot of missions your infantry start out with T-34s, Katyushas and KV-1s. Move these specialist steps to your tank units instead and you will have a much easier time penetrating Axis lines.

Reorganize your tank units so that they have at least five steps when going into battle. Four-step tank units are not only easily killed by more powerful Axis units but they can’t even be relied on to destroy weak Axis divisions. Make sure you don’t demote your tank units when reinforcing them. You are frequently given veteran and elite units, so only reinforce when you know your unit won’t be demoted. One-step reinforcement costs five experience points for veteran units and eight points for elite units.

Luring AI to your Supply Depots
The AI will try to capture your supply depots if it sees an opening in your lines. You can use this to your advantage and force the AI to get bogged down fighting for something that you don’t even need. I used this to great effect in two missions: Orel and Dnepr/Donbas.

NIcely done - is this with or without re-loads?