Profile of bigchunk1

Hello Zero, you are pretty good (better than me) but see my advice:

Early in the game you send 2 or 3 squads to the cuttoff point. The first squad was a good move, but you kept sending conscripts. These unsupported units continually got chewed up by the 3 or 4 enemy squads massed at that point. Attacking a well defended position continually will lose your manpower with little gain.

You got two mortars early which didn't seem to do much for you in the game. I think this is because both you and your opponent had a mobile army. Mortars are much better against static players.

What would have been a really good thing to get around the early middle part of the game would be some machine guns. The player's trump card at that point was massed infantry which pretty-much wondered the map unchecked.

Personally, I think shock troops are far too expensive to get en-masse like you were doing in the mid game. Their short range and prohibitive cost makes them a poor choice for massed infantry fighting. They are much better going off on their own capping a side of the map as they prettymuch require a tank to stop them.

Your first armored vehicles (the first t34 and the first t70) went in unsupported. You should feel unsafe when you have tanks so close to your enemy's base with no friendly units nearby. If you can use the T70 to attack where your opponent is unprepared for them and quickly retreat when the damage is done, you will cause a lot more chaos than by giving your tank to your opponent in a straight fight.

I understand why you got an IS-2 when you did. Your opponent was so far ahead at that point there was not much else that could be used to try and break him. In the end he used all his manpower and fuel, in the form of mass panzer 4s, to overwhelm you. I am pretty sure there was nothing you could have done at that point because you were too far behind.

Other than all that, your initial opening is very good and you have it thought out well. You were able to capture your side of the map and threaten his. It all started going down hill when you found yourself unable to fight him. Thanks for showing the replay and exposing your faults so we all can learn from them. Only really thoughtful players are willing to do that.

I find SU-76 does its job well. It is the best anti infantry in T4 and is the earliest unit you can build in T4. It's more for the artillery and less about direct fire. All direct fire is for pretty much is to clean up light vehicles.

In my opinion, the SU-76's closest cousin is the T70 since they have their own style of delivering the same service to the battlefield, light anti-infantry and anti-light vehicles. Why bring those units together under the same tier?

T4 WITHOUT the SU-76 makes little sense. Doing that would make the T4 the SU-85 factory. No thank you.

Zis field gun Barrage ability at 60 munitions a pop is unsustainable. It's also risky to use since the AT gun is slow.

lol, that's why you have to get AT grenades.

I think the biggest problem with the SU-85 right now is how quickly the unit can throw reverse. It makes the unit very difficult and extremely risky to flank.

And yes please to a t34 buff, let's see some actual tank battles on the eastern front.

I think you have to get AT grenades against fast German t2. It's prettymuch been worked into my standard build order at this point. Once I see a light vehicle I get AT grenades.

Pure maxim spam makes no sense, there are hard counters to it such as light vehicles. You can also fall victim to grenadier rifle grenade spam. Use them with conscripts like Blovski said.

For the panzer grenadiers, try penal battalions with flamethrowers and/or getting a fast T-70. Panzer grenadiers without panzershreks are mincemeat for light vehicles and with panzershreks they aren't as good against infantry. Force them to get panzershreks.