Major Goals - Don't lose Barbarossa (note you're not expected to win, just to hold)

-Bleed the Axis to the point where DDay is feasible

-Make beastly heavy tanks

Proximate Goals - Get the Allies tons of air XP in Spain, encircle Axis volunteers (you're not expected to win)

-Get as much army XP as possible out of Spain, China, and Finland

-Get 2x panzer expert + engineer + ranger generals, 2+ ambusher, 3+ infantry expert from Spain and Finland

-210-270 civs by mid 1939, 250-300 mils by end of 1941

Start the game with Stalin constitution, socialist realism, 5 year plan, then go down the Positive Heroism tree to your research slot. Afterwards, you need to do armament effort and improved railway network, then sit no focus until 1938 to save PP and start Great Purge before August 1938 (ideally May-June 38 so you're ready for Lessons of War as soon as Germany does M-R pact). After you get 5th research slot, sit on army training.

PP spending: war eco, civilian construction guy, stability guy, free trade, industry design company. 1x Improved Worker conditions or Promises of Peace + war propaganda. After that, you're free to pick military theorist, tank designer, infantry equipment designer, and fill up high command. At war, you want to switch to total mob immediately and use war bonds on cooldown.

Initial construction should be infrastructure in Moscow, Leningrad, Staligrad for 70 days until you're on war eco. Then start converting all your military factories into civilians. You want to convert all but 2-11 military factories (which you leave on motorized and support equipment). Your starting army has plenty of guns to help Spain/China but you need to jumpstart your economy.

From there, build civs until mid 1939. Multiplayer you're aiming for 210-270 civs, in SP 200+ is a good benchmark. Build as many civs as you can on high infrastructure provinces and max the infrastructure in Baku for oil in 1939 as you start expanding your armor production. Justify on Finland when Germany does Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and go to war. War bonds while you're at war and rapidly expand your military industry. You should build nothing except mils from mid 1939 for the rest of the game. Justify on the Baltic nations and accept their ultimatums, fully annex Finland and do Lessons of War down to your final research slot. If Germany has not done Reassert Eastern Claims before M-R Pact, justify on Lithuania first.

You're aiming for 250-300 mils when Germany declares in mid 1941 if this is MP, 250 mils in SP is fine. Of these, expect about 70-80% to be used in the production of heavy tank divisions. You want 150 on heavy tank 3s before Germany declares, 10 on HT3 SPAA, 30-40 on Mech2, and roughly 10 factories of support equipment and AA will be going to the tanks. With the rest of the factories, you need about 15-20 each on AA and support equipment, 10 on arty, and the rest on guns 2 (usually 30 going up to 80 as the war goes on). If your infantry is fully supplied, start another line of heavy tank production. Keep 1 factory on motorized all game, expand to 5 if you run low.

Variants: Max gun and reliability on heavy tank 3s, then max armor. Max AA on SPAA 3, then 2 points reliability. Upgrade engine on HT3s when you have the XP.

Standard research juggle for research speed techs at the beginning. Get tier 2 in construction and dispersed industry. Research construction and dispersed any time they're less than 1 year ahead. Put one slot on Superior Firepower right-left and finish the doctrine as quickly as you can. Research heavy tank 1 when you see Germany doing Tank Treaty focus. Research heavy 2 with the bonus and research heavy 3 as soon as Lessons of War is finished. You want to get heavy 3s by 1940. Research heavy 2 SPAA once heavy 3 is started (don't waste your bonus on SPAA) and research heavy 3 SPAA when it's available.

Other things to prioritize: You want AA 3 ASAP, ask an Ally to rush it and license production from them. Arty is less important but you at least want arty 2. Guns 1 is fine for a while, guns 2 should come out when you switch off free trade and have extra steel. Get support weapons on time and get the infantry hard attack upgrades. Go up to a half year ahead of time on engineers and signal companies, keep recon at tier 1.

You should send 5 of your starting mountaineer divisions. Once the war starts, delete the rest of your army + air force and send guns and planes to the Republicans. You should send 100% of your planes, 3K fuel per day, and 20K guns. Rename your guns to 00000GunName so they are handed out before the locally manufactured guns and get more army XP. With your divisions, attempt to grind engineer, trickste, ranger, and hill fighter. Use Rokossovsky and replace with Popov if Rokos has gotten his 2 terrain traits. As you get more XP, make your mountaineers into 11-6 MTN-arty with support engineer, recon, arty, signal. Keep one division on the forest tile south of Navarre to prevent the Germans grinding ranger and generally try to defend against Axis attacks (more likely to be winning thus 4x the rate of general XP). Do not use frontline orders, you don't want to grind organizer as it will slow down all your other traits. Each trait you earn reduces XP gain by 20% multiplicative. When Axis pushes to win the war, fall back to Barcelona and keep your divisions alive, these troops will become your first tanks.

Grind Finland with 20 width pure infantry with engineers and arty supports. No need for AA since they lack planes. Your goal is to get 2 generals with ambusher who you can promote to FMs with defensive doctrine and org first. Other generals should be ground to get infantry expert to server under these ambusher FMs. Kuznetsov should be an ambusher general. Rokos and Popov (or Konev/Chuikov, whoever you want to command the tanks directly) should be given an army containing at least 10 tank divisions that sit behind the line and remain unequipped while they attack with infantry. This will lead them to grind panzer leader. Rokos becomes FM with aggressive assaulter, offensive doctrine, panzer expert, and organization first. General under him gets Panzer expert and makeshift bridges.

Templates for Barb, make them while you're at war with Spain so you don't hit 500 XP cap

-12-7-2 HT-mech-SPAA with support engineers and signal

10-0 pure infantry with just AA (suicide squad)

10-0 pure infantry with engineers, arty, AA (org wall)

14-3-3 inf-art-AA with engineers, arty, AA, recon, signal (basic 40 width)

17-1-3 inf-art AA with engineers, arty, AA, recon, signal (optional)

14-3-3 marine-art-AA with engineers, arty, AA, recon, signal (optional)

20-0 pure motorized with engineer and signal (training)

Suicide squad with no orders placed in the path of German advance. Don't give them fallback lines, that makes them clump when the line is broken. Try to have 1 per tile for 3 layers in front of the Stalin Line rivers to damage infrastructure. Yes it will take micro to set this up but do it, very worth. They can be put further forward as well but that tends to lead to encirclements. I wouldn't put them farther forward than the Memel-Odessa line.

Org wall troops can start on the Memel-Odessa line or the Stalin Line. If you have a coop or are good at micro, starting forward and pulling back step by step is fine. Try to use the Baltic forests and Pripyat marshes to attrition German divisions and destroy infra. If you're solo, put them on the Stalin Line so they can entrench.

40 width infantry sits on the Stalin Line in key positions. Try to have 1 per tile and more in likely breakthrough spots (Vitebsk, any plains tile behind the line). Put 4 in Kiev in front of the river so the Germans have to fight to take it and cannot improve infrastructure until they do. If you made marines, put them in the Pripyat Marshes in a rough oval shape that connects back to the Stalin Line. Make the Germans bleed to take it. Put them under Kuznetsov so they have the out of supply penalty reduced. Marines get a marsh bonus but 40 width inf works fine too. Balance your stockpiles by using the various mix of infantry, arty, and AA with the 2 suggested templates. 17-1-3 if you have more infantry equipment, 14-3-3 if you have more arty.

Tanks should have 5 extremely veteran divisions from Spain converted to tanks so they don't have to be trained. Other divisions should be trained as pure motorized then converted to tanks to minimize tank losses in training. Keep your tanks on the areas the Germans will try to break through (Riga, Vitebsk, plains tiles, and a few by the Dnieper bend in the south). Counter any German attack by either hitting it from the flanks or moving in directly to defend.

Ports should be garrisoned by suicide squad, 20w EAA, or use 10 widths if rules allow. Garrison the coast of the Black and Baltic Seas fully with one general, have another just doing ports. Perfect use for your old guard generals.

After that, you're pretty much good to go. Keep dumping out tank divisions and stick them in the line wherever the Germans try to break through. ♥♥♥♥♥ to the Allies constantly about how slow their DDay is. Ask them to bomb Germany. Complain that they lost Africa. Remember, nothing is your fault if you lose and the glory is 100% yours if you win.