What Am I Missing

[canuckgamer]

My friend and I picked up Pz Corps 2 during the Xmas sale at the end of 2023 and have been playing PBEM games since then.
I would like to receive some feedback because it seems to me that the game plays like it was WW I with very little blitzkrieg. In my opinion it really favours defence. Maybe I am missing something in terms of tactics that more experienced players can comment on.

An attacking unit whether it is a ground unit or air unit can only fire once during it's turn. However a defending unit can fire until it runs out of ammo. For example, even an infantry unit in a clear hex can hold against enemy infantry or armour by placing an artillery unit behind it that has the AT specialty and the infantry specialty where it will fire on attacking infantry or tanks. Or you could place an artillery and AT unit behind the defending infantry unit. It cannot be overrun because it has support. In addition the defender can position an AA unit or more than one AA unit with a range of 3 to defend against air bombardments.

One of the offensive tactics is to draw the fire of the AA unit(s) before conducting the air bombardment of the unit you want to inflict significant damage on. The larger calibre AA units have 4 ammo so you would need to conduct 4 bombardment attacks before bombarding the priority target. By positioning more than one AA for overlapping ranges it might require 8 bombardment attacks to draw AA fire before hitting the priority target.

Positioning artillery units for overlapping defensive coverage means that one of your artillery units conducting a bombardment during your turn could be face multiple counter battery attacks before it fires.

We understand that there are a lot of abstractions in the game but we have yet to play a scenario that even comes close to replicating some of the factors and conditions of the historical battle that the scenario supposedly is about. We are in to our second playing of the Netscape Barbarossa scenario and there is no 1941 blitzkrieg and after a few turns it becomes a slugfest with very little movement of the front lines. We find it odd that the Russians are at maximum production of 900 immediately whereas historically it took them months/years to get there. Russian Yak fighters can be produced at an over strength of 15 immediately to attrition German air since the Russian production is 3 times that of the Germans. German tanks cannot move past Russian conscription infantry in the clear even when they don't have any support as per my above comments. In general the the Russian ground units are as good if not better than their German counterpart except for their conscription infantry which are cheap and very effective at slowing down any potential blitzkriegs. For example, the Russian can produce KV I tanks right from the start. It has a inf attack of 16, armour attack of 16, ground defense of 15 and an intitative of 6. The best German tank against enemy tanks, the Pz III H is worse in everything except initiative which is 7. There is no limit as to when and the numbers of KV 1's that can be built. At the start of Barbarossa I suspect that the Russians had very few KV 1 tanks.

As I stated, it is my opinion that the game mechanics favours the defender and scenarios such as Barbarossa do not have any historical elements so that the Germans can conduct rapid advances and breakthroughs initially. I am assuming that the 27 turns supposedly covers the campaign up to the first winter but again what time frame a turn represents in Pz Corps 2 is abstracted.