Axis research and production balance?

[Plaid]

I want to ask experienced players, what's the optimal labs/troops balance for axis at 39/40/41? Your land starting force is more then enough for european campaigns, while your probably will need some air units and naval ones, if you want to invade england, for example.
But when your start barbarossa you need at once much more troops to efficient advance into soviet union and to survive winter well. Here is my problem - at early game i focus at labs and simple don't have enough units to pass through dvina/dnepr defensive positions and to hold this frontline through the winter. So whats the aprox. size of barbarossa force to make this operation efficient and when its better to make this units (if we consider opponent clever enough to avoid pocketing all his forces at borders real 1941-style and retreating to river defences instead)?

[rkr1958]

I want to ask experienced players, what's the optimal labs/troops balance for axis at 39/40/41? Your land starting force is more then enough for european campaigns, while your probably will need some air units and naval ones, if you want to invade england, for example.
But when your start barbarossa you need at once much more troops to efficient advance into soviet union and to survive winter well. Here is my problem - at early game i focus at labs and simple don't have enough units to pass through dvina/dnepr defensive positions and to hold this frontline through the winter. So whats the aprox. size of barbarossa force to make this operation efficient and when its better to make this units (if we consider opponent clever enough to avoid pocketing all his forces at borders real 1941-style and retreating to river defences instead)?

A good bogey are the starting labs and troops for the 1940 and 1941 scenarios. That is, if you open these two scenarios up in hotseat and examine the labs and the additional air and armor units built these would be good build objectives to have for these dates when playing the 1939 scenario. Note, the labs don't start with any focus points applied (but in reality they'd have to) and all labs and builds assume a "historical" strategy and timeline.

Below are three screen caps that illustrate this.