review requested 2v2 on Moscow Outskirts

This was a 2v2 on Moscow Outskirts. We (I as Donald Grump and random teammate) spawned north.

In short, the game was a 1+ hour slog where it felt like both players kept on the other team attacking me on our natural fuel side. My teammate would occasionally help, when he wasn't typing about how bad of a player I am. In the end, I lost 320+ models, maybe 20 full squads. We won with about 30 points left but it felt like we were losing most of the time, maybe because I was getting pummeled so much.

Here are my questions:

Some of the wipes that I had were from trying to move left and having units retreat in front of their army. Should I just give up on the left and try to get the center? Sometimes when I give up on part of a map, it feels like the game just gets worse because they easily have more of the map and work on taking the rest.

Unit composition - normally for this map I like double pak howies, but kept having them wiped by walking stukas. I thought about getting a lt and hmg's, but thought that would only feed more vet to the walking stuka's. Any suggestions on what to do differently?