[updated 8 July 2023]
Theater of War Mission Pack: The Southern Fronts
Mission: Kharkov Divide
General (Hard) level
Don’t bother with Kharkov Divide on the hardest level (unless you want to give yourself some buffs with console commands). You cannot win consistently, and it’s mostly an exercise in frustration. I’m not sure the Relic devs ever had this one working correctly. You can run out and get what looks like decent map control in the first several minutes, but soon the Russians will get, as freebies, large numbers of tanks including IS-2s and Su-85s, and their infantry, including about 100 ZiS-3 guns+crews, seems coded to be unusually difficult to kill. Each of the two German forces has one irreplaceable Tiger and can use no other tanks, and the German CPU ally makes little effort to protect its Tiger from destruction, so it usually loses it at some point in the first 15 minutes, and then collapses—leaving you, as the human player, to deal with overwhelming combined-arms attacks from both Russian sides. As if the Russians didn’t have enough advantages on this mission, they also typically use one of COH2’s worst cheats, propaganda artillery, which makes your infantry units in the vicinity of the “exploding propaganda bombs” immediately retreat, e.g., just as they are capping a VP after a desperate battle.
Captain (Normal) level: Kharkov Divide is easily winnable and only moderately challenging on the middle difficulty level. Start by bringing in another panzergren squad, an HMG squad, and then a mortar team. At first, follow the lead of your CPU ally, i.e., follow its Tiger—usually it will attack the middle VP. By supporting this attack, you will reduce the chance that the CPU ally loses its Tiger early in the game. Keep moving, building up your forces, taking VPs with concentrated firepower, then taking points on the way to the Russian base; in this way, you will deprive the Russians of resources and the initiative, and typically will win in 20 minutes or less.
Playing from the alternate base: Makes no difference.
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