Purpose of this guide to give you reference points from history and maybe some other players' play through. Idea is to be able to compare your in-game progress with historical one and with other players.
All data was generated mainly by chat gpt and shouldn't be considered as a serious research.

This is not an actual game guide. It won't teach you how to play. Goal is to give ideas and metrics to compare with, when you play. For a guide I highly recommend browsing official manual while watching these series by Tortuga:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myhaC_9GZXU&list=PLuXzIAdwiCCyOkltX4ZqKnxvQmCD2vmtT

Also, please fill free to add screen-shots from your playthroughs in comments, along with a final score for reference.

Below you can find a historical data about cities present on game map and actual dates when these cities where captured. It also has info about regiments responsible for the capture and in case of a long siege dates of its start and completion.
This info alone can give you an idea what to do with your armies.

Advise from the Game Manual:
Plan your strategy using armies and panzergruppe. Once you decide where you want to put those, you can switch to tactics level and execute your plan using divisions.

Last game turn is 58th. Tables below have dates past that, just for history. Also, if some cities have no data, it means that those were never captured/sieged.

This is probably the least accurate section of this reference. But, here is my best attempt after spending 30 minutes on this.


We will use this picture below as a source and assume that 15% of wounded died.


Result would be something that can actually be used in game as a point of reference. Just trying not to exceed these values too much is a reasonable goal for first few playthroughs




I wasn't able to find detailed info on Soviet losses in reasonable amount of time. Not sure it even exists, because even values for total losses vary by a lot. I don't want to post linear approximation, as it will be very misleading and won't take into account huge losses in the beginning of the campaign.
From game's strategy perspective it's better to prioritize management of your own losses. Still, if by turn 5, Soviet's lost less than 100k, you are definitely being too cautions.
Overall, you can balance your aggression just by comparing your German casualties to historical ones. Too low - add aggression, too high - be more cautious.

Now, for those fans of mega-encirclement, here is a list of most notable ones. But please don't take casualties estimations too serious. Those figures a very debatable, and also include POWs and wounded.
Also notice game turns data and theaters of historical encirclements. This can give you a hint on when to switch from blitzkrieg posture, and when to do first supply bases relocations, rest etc. in order to time your main encirclements properly.
Historically there weren't any big ones on North and very marginal ones on South. Maybe trying to just push for objectives there without fiddling with encirclement idea is something worth a thought.


If we sum up Soviet's casualties in this table we'll get a huge range from 750k to 1 250k losses from encirclements only. By no means this is a serious metric, but for our gaming purposes, I guess if you inflicted losses anywhere in that range by turn 12, probably you are doing fine.



These look confusing at first, but if you look at them for a while you'll realize that all of these have proper city names and even division numbers. This has a great potential for ultra-historic playthrough if you'd like.

Bialystok-Minsk Encirclement


Battle of Smolensk


Before Kiev and Uman encirclements


Kiev Encirclement


Vyazma and Briansk Pockets
Sorry but this is best I could find. It's actually not that bad once you decipher town names and realize it has detailed armies positions.

This section provides general historical goals and actions of all armies in all army groups. Use it as you wish. You can try and copy historic route. Or just review descriptions below, use it as inspiration and come up with the plan of your own. This also may be helpful for people like me, who don't have any idea what they are doing.

Its important to understand that original ("True") Barbarossa plan was much more optimistic compared to its historical outcome.



If you actually read this far, you probably noticed that some descriptions and maps use modern city names. To avoid even more confusion, hope this helps:
Stalingrad Volgograd
Sverdlovsk Yekaterinburg
Gorki Nizhny Novgorod
Voroshilovgrad Luhansk
Stalino Donetsk
Zhdanov Mariupol
Kuybyshev Samara
Stanislawow Ivano-Frankivsk
Dnepropetrovsk Dnipro
Kirovograd Kropyvnytskyi
Nikolaev Mykolaiv