FOREWORD
This guide is chiefly about game mechanics and as such is a general guide and not only limited to the soviet union. It's the sum total of my own experiences in the two runs of this game i've played and it features most prominently the trivia that i wish i knew during my first campaign before the soviet one. No other sources have been consulted in the making of this guide, it's purely anecdotal and if there are major patches to the game in particular in regards to balance it may lose its value. I do not claim to know everything about this game and much might have passed by me without my notice.

Firstly this game is very arcadey, indeed it is much easier and much less realistic than the travesty which is HoI4 as such some of its mechanics are easily abuseable. The single largest factor that makes this game so very easy is the AI and some of its particular tendencies. In multiplayer you might have a challenge, or not. However this guide is about single player.

Before we begin yes i'm playing as the meme that is soviet union, however the game mechanics remain the same and by their exploitation correct use of the games well designed and balanced features it is possible to do the whole world conquest crusade with literally any nation.

Aah what a beautiful work of art of an image i hope you are ready for many more afterwards.
This game has two interactable map elements, REGIONS and CITIES that some regions have. This will be a bit long and very thorough since i don't want to waste your time if you think you're not an imbecille feel free to only look at the bolded words from this point on.

We can see the region of Rumeli here, it's selected this we know because it is highlighted and on the bottom left we can see regions interactable panel. The region currently has no orders and by pressing no orders we can select manually what this one region should do.

On the right of the regions name at bottom left corner we can see many separate images, first from left to right is trade routes, national trade routes are simulated in this game and to see what trade is flowing through what region simply hover over the image, then we can see that the region has an airfield, you should make an airfield in every region as that allows instant very long range transfer of unlimited quantities of infantry between regions with airfields as long as you have the airlift capacity for it. Then we see the image of a fort, forts have high maintenance. take a long time to build and they are useless, so don't build any. Then we see the image of a coastal fort, coastal forts passively damage enemy fleets in the region and as such can be worth it, then we see the two most important icons, level of regions infrastructure (we will talk of this later) in this case medium rail capacity and the level of agriculture in the region. And lastly the sum total of the regions anti air ability that is to say the amount of damage it does to enemy air units attacking the region.

It's a huge waste of time to improve regions or cities through the map like this so you should avoid doing it as much as possible.

When you click the city on a region another menu pops up, it's more useful than the regional one and as always you should not use the map to affect cities it takes too much time when you have many cities.

Middle of the Image.
On this city we can see it has a shipyard and you can select it to see if there are any fleets docked in, then we see what industry the city has, and lastly what "infrastructure" or non industrial (factory buildings you can order around) buldings the city has that give the city passive bonuses and also what military structure the city has you need to have at least tier 2 recruitment building in every city The cities separately from the regions can produce food with the right infra buildings, early game food is scarce so you may wish to consider making some city food buildings early game Starvation Lack of food causes national unrest and while the starvation of citizens is irrelevant what does matter is that infantry take food as upkeep.

On the far right of the image
Regions can also have static Anti Air (AA) as an upgrade.
The desk like icon mean that the region has static AA, might be worth it. Probably not. Primarily however you should have fighters for AA (bombers have a lot of air combat power also), non regional anti air artillery (AA-Guns) are very lethal to aircraft in the game in large stacks, you likely want to have some of them. Late game especially Air combat comes into play, aircraft carrier spam is a terrible malaise.

The way this game simulates the mechanized capabilities of armies and nations that is to say how to get your soldiers around different regions quickly is rather unique.

You have four separate units of logistics capacity which are produced by your industries or you buy from abroad The transport ratio of how many units of capacity you need to transport any unit is 1 to 1.

Firstly we have road capacity, in order to use road capacity all involved regions need to have at least unpaved roads infrastructure. Using road capacity besides infrastructure also requires units of road capacity (imagine trucks suitable for moving supplies and soldiers.) Using road capacity is better than nothing at all and is only really useful in regions with little infrastructure, you don't want to use road capacity if you don't have to because it's slow and not all units can use road capacity.

Secondly we have Rail capacity, it requires at least low rail density to use and of course rail capacity resource (imagine sum total of available locomotives and carriages), the better upgraded the region rail density is the further it can move your troops per turn. This is likely your most scarce capacity because upgrading region infrastructure such as unpaved roads -> low rail density takes rail capacity per turn. It's also the most generally useable way to move your forces around, it's very fast, it can move armor and heavy artillery and it uses generally less resources and resources which are more available than the other methods.

Thirdly we have shipping capacity, shipping capacity is necessary for moving troops from the land to the seas. You likely have a lot of it because most trade you will do with other nations will likely take a lot of shipping capacity.

Lastly we have the most over powered capacity in the game, airlift capacity. To use airlift capacity the start and end regions must both have airfields and then you need airlift capacity. Why do i say it's broken? Because as long as you have the necessary airlift capacity for it, you can move unlimited numbers of infantry between very long distances and over the seas in one turn. This allows you to teleport around stacks tens or even hundreds of infantry units where ever you need them practically instantly. So if you get a foothold into enemy region with an airfield you can drop in as much infantry there in one turn as you can.

Airfields only take 5 turns to make and have very low upkeep cost, there is no reason to not make an airfield in every region.

In general you should strive to get a comfortable stack of few thousand units of every capacity. Especially right at the start of the game when these capacities are scarce and you need shipping capacity for trade, you should buy at least few thousand shipping capacity in your first turns if you can.

That is a dense image, but fear not there's not that much into it.

The top resource bar of the game is divided in two sections, unrefined resources and refined resources. The game has Armaments, Fuel and Steel in the way of finished resources and Coal, Metal, Crude Oil and Food in the way of raw materials which can be turned into the refined type of resource through industry and money which you use for trade and upkeep. We will touch on food at the end of this section.

Immediately below the resource bars at the top of this image there is the resource tab. every region in the game likely has some raw materials extration which you can access and peruse by going into the production tab and then selecting "resources". You have to shuffle the resource tab every now and then between expanding production and prospecting. By prospecting for resources every region has an X% chance of discovering new resources to exploint per turn. By expanding production instead of looking for new resources to exploit you will slowly transfer the pool of prospected resources into useable resources, unless you're really resource starved you shouldn't waste time too much by micromanaging this. The resources a region has will not deplete naturally, though resource production is capped by the infrastructure level the region has.

On the right side of the image we have the Infrastructure tab of the production tab. From here you can manage every regions infrastructure in the game and select what every region will do. The production tab is, quite likely the most useful tab in the entire game and you need to make the most of it for the sake of your valuable time.

Below the resource tab we have the image of the first city tab of the production menu titled factories. From this tab you can manage every single factorys production. Both civilian production for money, and resource refining of steel, fuel and armaments and military production of aircraft and ships. Managing this all will take a lot of time, especially when new units come available, you will have to manually set the new units into production. The number of smoke stacks of each individual factory symbol denotes the level of that factory. The larger the factory the more resources it produces and the more it takes, might be the same for military units also, don't know. In general terms as long as you can afford it and could need it, there is no reason to not set every factory to make military units and relevant resources

Below the factory image we have the production tabs military production menu.
Here you can see every regions available manpower (MPU = manpower unit) 1MPU is the same as one regiment? of infantry, engineers or whatever as far as i have seen, reinforcing units does not take MPU's. You can also see the level of recruitment buildings and you can choose what unit what region will make and even where the trained soldiers will march to assemble and how. Very useful, very important tab. Important! when you annex a nation you will have full access to all of its MPU's with no penalties so getting MPU rich regions will behoove you under all circumstances.

At the very bottom of the of the image we find the last and final city production tab, the city tab, from here you select what new city bonus building (like hospitals which increase MPU growth), or new factories, factory upgrades, laboratories or recruitment building every city is doing. Do not neglect this tab You can sort these menus in many ways, make use of them.

Food

The game begins with a global deficit of -3000 food or so and the AI is very bad at upgrading its agriculture. Because of this food deficit you cannot trust the world market to feed your people and soldiers.
So there are only two ways to increase food prodution and to avoid starvation first is to go into the region tab and upgrade regional level of agriculture. At the start of the game on the very first turn you should upgrade every regions agriculture to avoid starvation. You might want to disband some military units that take food as upkeep like cavalry and mounted troops. The more food the region produces the more the upgaded region will produce, if the region is making very little food any less than 5 you should ignore it even as much as 10 you might want to consider whether it is worth it. but any more than that and it will be worth it.
Second way is to waste city production time and make city buildings that make food, like cannery, slaughter house or fishery if the situation is dire enough make some.

Infrastructure

The military logistics side of infrastructure like rail density has already been discussed but infrastructure also affects the regions tax income which itself is directly determined by the quantiy of MPU's of any region.

This game has a simple yet robust trade system with good reasonable automation you should use so you don't have to spend as much time microing resources sales and purchases. It's all pretty self explanatory and there's not as much nuance in it as some other gsg games.

Resources are not teleported in this game, of course you need to have shipping capacity for over seas transfer and, rail capacity/trucks for land trade. Strangely enough only shipping capacity is set at 1 to 1 ratio with the trade goods which means you need to get at least 1500 shipping capacity as any real country to trade any serious quantities of resources, shipping capacity itself is perhaps the most lucrative trade good in the game, while you only need minimal amount of rail/road capacity for trade.

In war, fleets can intercept your trade overseas trade. I don't think there's anything you can do about it other than to defeat the enemy fast. Then again you should strive for autarky ingame.

That's about all, there's not much into it.

The research system in this game compared to HoI is a simple one, you can only research one thing at a time, to unlock some research you need to have a higher level laboratory building in one of your cities, to unlock higher level laboratory buildings you need the appropriate research first. Typically most research only unlock one thing per research, most research cost the same and take the same time to research so timewise it matters little what you research.

Thing to keep in mind is that many researchable techs are not necessary probably at least half of it is entirely a waste of time in general. Only some crucial techs which unlock some better units and buildings are really good.

The way research speed is decided in game, is that depending on your education spending and your laboratories the game makes a roll to see if you succeeds that turn and the research ticks forward, in theory you should care about education spending but just making a lot of laboratories can completely break this, education costs a terrible amount of money so you'll save tens of thousands per turn by just having a lot of research labs.

This game has an extensive though cumbersome system for making puppets and the game strongly encourages you to not directly own the land you conquer by decreasing your nations stability from having wrong religion, ethnic groups, and high taxes which cause corruption which further decrease your stability.

When your stability falls too low you'll get labor strikes, civil disobedience, and armed rebellions to punish you for your hubris of rightful conquest. This is all a sham though, even though it looks bad having wildly negative stability will have little to no impact on your nation. Rebel spawns are very rare and they are only militias which may as well be unarmed civilians against modern infantry and armor. Having positive or negative stability gives you no production penalties or bonuses so you gain nothing wrong having positive stability.

'Due to the poorer qualities of the AI decision making in production of units and buildings in particular there's no reason to handicap yourself by suffering from puppets or allies. The only reason to not annex everything is to not have to micromanage your provinces as much.

This game features 4 distinct types of units
Ground forces

• Mainly Infantry and Tanks

Artillery

• Like anti air guns, rocket artillery, field guns and assault guns

Air forces

• Fighters, and various bombers.

Navy

• Submarines and surface ships.

All of these units are neccessary for you to use to play the game successfully. The center of your army should be the ground forces, Infantry is the king of the battlefield due to being powerful, very fast to build and plentiful in quantity. The AI strongly neglects this. Bad thing is it takes MPU's.
Have bonuses to various movements and attacks.
Is generally stronger than infantry 1 to 1, but it takes twice as long to produce and requires it's own factories. But it takes no MPU's so focusing on armor is depended on your nations MPU pool. Also Armor has no passive resource upkeep unless they are moving.
The game has besides normal infantry, marines, mountain infantry, airborne infantry etc, generally these have minor stat difference but take longer to recruit, need a higher level recruitment buildings and take more upkeep. You'll likely not find much use for them though, because the upgrades for these units come very late and they'll still easily get overwhelmed by normal infantry with numerical superiority.
Artillery cannot be combined in same stacks as armor and infantry, it is its own separate support unit, though a powerful one. It cannot defend itself against enemy armor and infantry so you need babysit them some. Artillery are also able to attack enemy artillery, more times than not this is worth it. The most potent artillery unit is the heavy siege gun, in early game you should not make any other artillery than them as long as you have the rail capacity to support their movement. A stack like this can eliminate 10-20 or more units of enemy infantry and armor in one turn.
All air units need airfields to operate from, the attack range of the unit is dependent on the unit type and it's level (fighter 1 < Fighter 2). Fighters are most critical to defend against enemy bombers and carrier aircraft while bombers function is the same as artillery but with a much longer range. However bombers are the most effective anti ship weapon in the game in large stacks and they can hurt ground units well too in large stacks.
Bombers can also damage enemy factories, but considering the fast rate of building repair this i've found to not be worth it.
Surface ships in this game are very robust and they can take hits easily, they can do shore bombardment which is a powerful way to lose troops to artillery attrition. Surface combat ships can of course also attack other surface ships. The most powerful ships in the game are however aircraft carriers because they come automatically with their own aircraft, carrier aircraft losses can be replaced for free by repairing the fleet at a port. The carriers can attack at exremely long range even when in port while being invincible to damage. A fleet with many carriers can easily send an air raid with 120 aircraft or more that can vaporize enemy fleets, aircraft and ground units alike. You can order your aircraft to specifically target enemy carriers, and you should. A mixed fleet of carriers and other ships is extremely robust and due to the AI not targeting your carriers first you can freely molest all enemy carriers and reign supreme.
Submarines are partially invisible and you have to manually order them to attack enemy ships in the same region and they can evade attacks easily. All ships can interdict trade.
In case of annexation you will take over the annexed nations naval forces where ever they are.

The combat in this game is perhaps the simplest of them all in theory terrain affects combat but in the end the only thing that matters is that you have more offensive combat power than the enemy has defensive. The same goes for surface fleets and air battles too. That's it.
Artillery can significanly affect combat also so you should not neglect it and its robust support abilities.
All units have monetary upkeep, in general there's no reason at all not to increase taxes indefinetly besides corruption. In any case money is likely not a problem anyway due to the many ways of aquring it. Infantry units also take Food as upkeep at a ratio of 1 regiment of soldiers to 1 unit of food.
You select your level of mobilization from the state screen is it much more expensive to be mobilized rather than not. If you're at war without being mobilized you will be penalized for it. However mobilization is instant so there's no reason to mobilize ahead of time.
Cavalry and mounted units take much more food than infantry 3-5 food for one unit of cavalry, this is terrible especially at the start of the game. The solution to the cavalry question is disbandment and getting more useful, more powerful, noble and masculine infantry. There's no reason at all to make cavalry because the rail, and road logistics make the marginally faster default movement speed of cavalry completely pointless.
Mechanized infantry does not take MPU's as far as i know, but since it's made in the same factory as the tanks there's no reason to not just make the best tanks you can.
Very important, every action you do with your military units, attack or movement, takes resources of armaments to attack and fuel to move, you do not want to run out of these vital resources.
By moving infantry or tanks into enemy artillery units or regions with an airfield in use by the enemy allows you to capture enemy artillery and aircrafts. Very useful, watch out though the enemy can capture your units too.
Very important There's no reason at all not to have every factory make military units and resources indefinely, there's also no reason not to recruit as much infantry as possible.

Addition, Do not make Militia, they're worthless, make a better barracks and get infantry instead.

The AI in this game greatly neglects the recruitment of infantry, in the production of war material and logistics capacities and in upgrading its infrastructure and also in prospecting and expanding its resourcing operations due to these reasons mainly the AI which is tactically somewhat clever in war is terribly handicapped. Being aware of this and even with basic micromanagement you'll reign supreme.