Some guiding principles for the mod, and for the infantry part of the mod, mainly.

There are loads of different infantry units. With russian names. I've added an english translation in the research and buy window, but you'll have to learn and memorize some of the names since the translations aren't around when playing battles.

Quick guide:

1) Prizyvniki - Conscripts. Fresh troops, without much training. No fancy equipment. No combat experience. Their training gets better later in the war ('44).

2) Frontoviki - Regular troops. Decent training. Some combat experience. A little better off equipmentwise compared to Prizyvniki

3) Tankodesantniki/Desantniki - This is your motorized troops. They ride into battle on tanks, not in lorries or in halftracks. Not a very popular assignment, but at least they get extra pay.
You can either buy them separately and mount a vehicle manually, or you can buy a combined tank + tankodesantniki squad.

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How to unlock tankodesantniki squads with tanks.

a) First, unlock the Frontovik tankodesantniki '42 squad in the upper half of the research tree.
b) unlock the desantniki '42 squad down among the tank research
c) research a tank that can have tank riders. The corresponding tank + tankodesantniki squad can bel unlocked for 0 research points.

The late war tanks requires you to unlock late war tankodesantniki. Same thing here -
d) unlock the '44 Frontovik Avtomatchiki squad, top half of the research tree
e) unlock the desantniki '44 squad down among the tank research
f) unlock late war tanks

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When it comes to researching troops,
a 1+ point cost is a gameplay upgrade (better weapons, skills, abilities etc),
and a 0 point cost is more of a cosmetic upgrade = a squad that is pretty similar to the squad with the same name, but different uniforms, slight difference in equipment etc.

Example: If you unlock, lets say Prizyvniki '41 with MG, a 0 point unlock becomes available (Prizyvniki '41 with MG) and a 1 point unlock with the name "Prizyvniki '42 with MG".
The 0 point unlock is basically the same squad, the 1 point unlock is an improved version.

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'41, '42, '43, '44 denotes which year a squad like this would appear. It is reflected in both uniforms and equipment. For the Soviet Union it's usually better the further the war went, but they do have some well equipped troops right at the outbreak of the war.

Early war soldiers ('41') have different insignia than '42 and '42 insignia and uniforms are different than the '44 ones. Then there's always the odd soldier still keeping their old insignia or uniform (or got handed obsolete equipment) but you won't see weapons and uniforms from the future, like in vanilla. :)

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The Metagame AI in the campaign works a little different in the mod.

In the vanilla game, the AI (roughly) unlocks troops from POOR (beginning) to GOOD (later). So Germany invades Russia with Field Police, Penal battalions, Fresh recruits, Osttruppen (who historically came from conquered Soviet territories) Luftwaffe Feld Division (who didn't appear until almost 1½ year after the invasion), and so on.

Well, the German AI still does this, since I haven't started working on the Jerry yet. :)

BUT, as the Soviet army works right now, and how the German army will work soonish, is that the units you encounter are based on when they appeared CHRONOLOGICALLY.
So Germany will attack with fairly decent infantry, (and cute little tanks), and the Red Army will have to defend Mother Russia with (mainly) Border Guards, Conscripts and Militia. At least for a while. So it will probably be a bit tougher playing the Red Army in the mod, at least in the beginning. Be warned. Or play with a mod altering campaign difficulty.

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Another reason for the large amount of rather basic squads is that it makes it more likely that you'll encounter basic squads far more often than the more exotic squads. The AI will still pick elite and rare troops, but it won't be as often.

(Reserved)

(Reserved)