Questions before buying.

[stormbringer3]

Does the base game have a Campaign or just scenarios? Do I have to buy the AO DLCs to get a Campaign? Panzer Corps Gold is one of my favorite games, I really like the way Heroes are implemented. The reason I've never bought this title is that the Hero system has gone to extremes IMO. Will this game have decent gameplay not using Heroes or a very limited amount? Thanks for any opinions.

[FrancescoT]

Base game has the Wehrmacht campaign so you don't need to buy any AO DLCs. Considering it has both historical/unhistorical paths and Russia/Africa paths you will have enough hours of gameplay.

You can pick the Force Dispersion commander trait at the start of the campaign to limit yourself to 1 hero/unit and/or you can limit the amount of heros generated in the campaign settings (I use the former and it's enough to avoid ridicolous OP units).

[stormbringer3]

Thanks for the reply. Another question, can anyone tell me the download size of the base game and the AO DLCs? My rural area telcom data plan is 100 Gigs for a whole month for my internet, downloads etc.

[FrancescoT]

Base game with all AO DLCs' size of installation is 19.3GB so the compressed download size from Steam will probably be in the 12-15GB range but you can take the 19GB figure as worst case.

[stormbringer3]

Thank you. I don't use Steam so would the download from Matrix/Slitherine be about the same size?

[FrancescoT]

Installed size should be the same no matter the vendor so the worst case figure stays at 19GB. I presume that also direct download from Slitherine will have some compression so probably you should expect again a 12-15GB download.

[DefiantXYX]

Does the base game have a Campaign or just scenarios? Do I have to buy the AO DLCs to get a Campaign?

Try the base game. But compared to the AO series the campaign is just like a tutorial
If you can get a cheap bundle I recommend to buy everything at once.

The reason I've never bought this title is that the Hero system has gone to extremes IMO. Will this game have decent gameplay not using Heroes or a very limited amount? Thanks for any opinions.

Either you can use some traits or options like FrancescoT already said or you can play with your own rules. You can recycle the heroes for prestige or something like that.
If you play with "very hard" settings you will need some good heroe combinations, but you can also set up the game, so that you dont need a single hero.

There are at least 2 huge mods right now that are as good or even better than the official campaigns. If you buy the game you will easily have 1000 hours gameplay

[Tassadar]

I'll just confirm everything else said here. Base game is a good value for money, DLC are also really fun, but of course some are better than others. None are required to have an enjoyable experience, you can just test them out as you like, but the base game will keep you covered for a decent while.

As for fear of heroes being too OP, these as people said already can be limited, turned off for the most part or converted to prestige. Basically every key element of the game is customizable, the replay value is massive. Don't like how the new mechanics limit the impact of fuel and ammo compered to the first part - just always select Inefficient Supply (my favorite negative trait). Feeling capturing or overstrength are too powerful - turn them off with specific traits as well. Don't like managing aircraft - just select Anti-Air Veteran and profit. You can run the same campaign with setting so different it will make it feel like a totally different game.