There are two unfortunate exceptions to this--the AI and lack of customizable difficulty settings.
I'll start with difficulty settings first, since this one seems tinker with. First, there is no way to manually modify starting amounts of prestige or experience for better or worse, which makes some scenarios shockingly easy, even on Field Marshall. (For example, I cleaned up the Kursk salient with several turns to spare when playing it as a one-off scenario. I was also shocked to find I started with 4000 prestige as the Germans, when all my history books always told me that replacements in this battle were at a premium due to the recent Italian invasions and an all-in mentality to the Kursk offensive. (Sorry for the digression, but I thought the context helpful.) My point is that I would love the ability to manually play with modifiers such as these to get just the right amount of challenge into the game without having to open up the scenario editor.
One other note about difficulty settings: even though I'm playing on Field Marshall, the '39 campaign has not been too difficult. To be fair, it hasn't be all roses either (I missed launching Sea Lion '40, for example, by one turn), but I've generally been able to get Decisive Victories in just one or two play-throughs. Russia was just crushed, and now I'm embarking on Sea Lion '42... and I don't feel as though I had to work too hard to get to this point. I'm still mastering game concepts, and playing some of these battles without knowing the distribution of enemy troops, or how to best organize my forces, either. I would love to have the ability to increase the difficulty here on my next play through, either through reduced prestige amounts, higher costs for elite replacements, or more AI bonuses.
Also, rather than ratcheting up the difficulty through opaque "ranks," I think a big improvement would be at the very least to put in the slider options for difficulty settings at both campaign and scenario levels, so that the player could manually adjust the level of the AI, the amount of prestige the player and the AI begin the scenario with, and experience of both sides' units. I would love the ability to make scenarios as challenging (or as easy) as necessary. This would especially be useful for balancing things out for multiplayer games, too, if one side begins with a decided advantage simply by virtue of the scenario's design (say, the Allies in the Germany scenario).
One other comment about difficulty levels: I can't find any details about the differences between them! Panzer Corps is so good about transparency in battle outcomes; I'd love to know the nuts and bolts differences between Colonel and Field Marshall, too--even if just as tool tips when selecting them.
I don't that would be too much trouble for a patch, and I hope you will consider implementing greater options around difficulty settings in a future update.
My second critique is towards the AI, which I've now been observing in about 15 scenarios (one offs and campaign play) all at the Field Marshall level. Here are some specific observations.
- 1. Just like in PG Forever, this AI seems to eschew creating and maintaining an air force for hunkering down with a prickly combination of anti-air and artillery around key towns. There seems to be little-to-know operational awareness of how to fight battles.
2. The AI often blindly follows an order of battle that does not take into account the Panzer Corps engine. Units appear to often (if not always) move and fire/fire and move sequentially ala Panzer General even though this is no longer necessary in Panzer Corps. Units also don't seem to be aware of using suppression as a prelude for their attacks. Often, I'll get attacked then the unit will be suppressed, which is really just a waste of good artillery, don't you think?
3. Enemy units don't always go in for the kill. Often I will see one of my units getting pummeled, but for some reason the enemy doesn't finish me off with a unit when it's more than able to do so. I'm not asking to play against Heinz Guderian here, but this is a step back from the PG Forever AI where there was some real dogged pursuit (often to the point of recklessness, certainly, but I at least had the sense that it was trying to really stick it to me.)
