[updated 4 September 2023]
Theater of War Mission Pack: Operation Barbarossa
Mission: The Crimea
I don’t know what aspect of the victorious 1941 German campaign in the Crimea this mission is supposed to represent, since it is basically a defensive mission, and quite unbalanced in favor of the Russians. Russian T-34s and KV-1s first show up around 8 minutes in on General difficulty level (~10 minutes on Captain level) and soon become a swarm backed by overpowered infantry, ZiS-3 field guns, and Katyushas.
I believe that you can win this mission reliably, even on General, but only if your ally is a reasonably skilled human player. The central problem of this mission occurs when you have a CPU-ally, because the latter appears to have defective coding; it just seems to fling itself suicidally at the enemy, and for much of the game has no more than a few units on the map. When you play with such an ally, you are effectively trying to beat a 200-300 pop cap. Russian force, which has OP units you can’t effectively counter, using only your own ~100 pop cap force. You can win sometimes, but only in a technical, run-out-the-clock sense, and only because of the shortcomings of the Russian AI.
On General or Captain difficulty, the strategy that seems to work best for me (though far from 100% successfully) is to use combos of Paks, HMGs (plus bunker-HMGs) and mortars, concentrated mostly in defense of the middle VP, but basically stretched out in a line across the top half of the map, keeping the Russians from capping the middle VP or getting to the top VP. I will often use a commander that allows pios to lay tank traps (after two command points)—in which case I bring in extra pios and use them to make TTs to reduce my defense line (at least my need for Paks). Usually by 15-20 minutes in, I’m facing repeated Katyusha attacks, and by then my base will be under attack too, but a couple of Paks is often enough to fend off Russian armor there.
It would be nice if you could block Russian vehicles totally with TTs, but, unfortunately, that just doesn’t seem feasible on General. Note that most lines of trees on this map, though they will block German tanks, will not block Russian KV-1s (which can open a route for others) so you cannot count on them as barriers. Note also that the Russian AI will sometimes just blatantly cheat, if it has no path through the TTs, by pretending they are not there or deleting (without gunfire or bombs) enough TTs to get through.
The mission is unbalanced even on Captain difficulty level. In fact, there are not many differences at this lower level, other than a slightly reduced Russian infantry unit quality and quantity, early-game, and a roughly two-minute delay in the initial tank onslaught. However, the extra breathing room does make the mission more winnable, especially if you are an experienced player. You can sometimes manage, by mid-game, to protect the entire northern half of the map with TTs, which makes a huge difference, even though some Russian tanks will magically “materialize” on your side of the TTs from time to time.
Win or lose, you will always see “The Crimea” as a broken mission, given the incompetent coding of your CPU ally and the unreal imbalance favoring Russia.
To add insult to injury, this map is not even an original map—it’s the Blitzkrieg mission map, recycled.
Don’t waste time playing from the lower German base, since your CPU-ally’s (inevitable) collapse will leave your right flank (i.e., everything to the N and W of your base) exposed to coordinated attacks by the combined Russian forces—which means you will always be base-wiped.
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