Campaign 39, Field Marshall Difficulty

[ruskicanuk]

OVERALL thoughts
-Love the more creative mission goals. I think this should be encouraged and if anything, make them even the more creative. The odd defense mission thrown in there is appreciated.
-Anyway to add even a small tech tree? Maybe you start with only PZ 1A and on mission two you can upgrade them to 1B and then a couple later P2 is made available. Maybe the excuse can be that, while those stronger versions are of course out there, they are not available to your command at this time - given that you are but a lowly commander at this point. Teching up is very appealing.
-The 88 is an immensely powerful weapon that I wouldn't make available until Norway.
-Could do the same with inf. Only wehrmacht is available initially, then pioneers, etc.
-Overall, I found the campaign missions easier than the first time I played Poland in the normal version campaign. I think, given that this is a DLC, I would err on the side of making it harder, not easier, than the main campaign. People playing the DLC have already played the other campaign.
-I think there may be a bit of an issue with the greater creativity in the missions that causes the AI to trip up. See below:
-Also, I think there should be no reason that most missions progressively increase your core by a size or two. I love the Greece / Kiev type missions where you have to select a group from your core. This adds another strategic element to the game and lets you better define the battle with aux units. I'd encourage more of these kinds of scenarios.
-Getting away from time limits for decisive is AWESOME

ODER RIVER
-rd connection with Kalisz is messed up, I think (graphics)
-found the mission quite easy. I suggest a couple things to make it more interesting:
(1) add another fighter for the Poles. Maybe even 2 given how smelly they are and how this mission is supposed to be about removing their air-force
(2) I might add a lot more unprepared units (the zero ammo thing is cool) and maybe even make it so that the Poles have significantly more forces but do not start getting prestige until turn 4 - 5 so that an extremely rapid advance (exposed as such advances are to attack) is rewarded by getting Poles before they can reinforce themselves to str 10

DANZIG
-Very nicely designed scenario. Like the aggressive counterattack after taking some river cities. These counterattack concepts are very good for strategy
-I might get rid of the air fields so that the Stukas are a little less potent (a re-occuring theme for Poland is the Stuka is very powerful given the wimpy AA and lack of air power)

LODZ
In my opinion:
-Also very well designed. Beef up the Entrance to Lodz (ie 15-str fortresses) as a frontal assault is a little too simple.
-Weaken the 10th army as they are too easy to save. Or maybe give the poles a couple more units to attack with there.
-Might add a third fortress to cover the flank better so that the only viable attack is from the rear.
-The army in Kutno sat there the whole game - I think they only activated once both river towns were taken. I might activate them if any river town is taken OR Lodz is taken as that army is impressive and could make for an interesting counter attack.

BZURA
-This is another well designed mission - love the defensive missions!
-Quite easy, probably hard to get the AI to do decent attacks. I might send 2 bigger waves than 3 weak waves. Or just beef up the waves try to get them to attack multiple locations at once.

KAMPINOS
-Cool idea, go creativity go!
-Easiest mission by far, I took everything other than Modlin with over half time remaining
-Need to be careful as I could easily have taken Modlin and then the next mission is an attack (on something I already destroyed). Maybe make Modlin tougher.

MODLIN
-Assaulting a fortress, every mission to this point has been very unique. *Applause*
-Starting from Kampinos, the missions are getting VERY easy, my prestige is getting out of control. I am starting to play mindlessly because I don't have to struggle for a decisive or watch prestige, etc. I am losing the "flow" feeling. Just thinking how fun it would be IF it was more challenging as the designs are very solid

WARSAW
-Great mission. Love the artillery thingummy (get artillery for taking Eastern towns)
-Give the poles WAY more defense. None of this str-5 stuff, tougher, tougher, tougher (ok I'll stop getting into details)

BATTLE with RUSSIANS
-Cool idea but I think some history buffs will be offended...
-Again, super simple, the KV2 and masses of BT5s seemed stuck until the very end. I never saw the KV2 take a single shot - maybe need to activate them sooner.

THE NORWAY MISSIONS
-Even simpler than the final missions of Poland. Massive increase in difficulty needed for these.
-The trapped cruiser is a great idea.
-The second Norway mission is missing something interesting like the trapped cruiser (haha, see you are spoiling me now!)
-The third mission (Lillehammer), the British navy is WEAKER than the German one!! In the main version Norway the British navy is much better than the German which is important! I would do the same thing (even more so). The germans should have a long shot on getting the carrier Glorious and try to fight inland to stay away from a MASSIVE british navy. IMO.

No bugs or errors noticed.

Very cool DLC. I love where these things are going!

[deducter]

Heh, it's interesting to see we actually have a lot of thoughts in common, from the general one of buffing the difficulty (especially the Norway ones, and historically Norway resisted for like 3 months, while France only 6 weeks) to specific ones like adding more 0 ammo planes to Poznan! I especially like your idea about a "tech tree," and in the case of PzCorps I do think that the tech tree should more represent what High Command decides to give you. After all, there were a few PzIIIs and PzIVs involved in Poland, but of course such rare tanks wouldn't go to a mere corps commander like yourself.

[Kerensky]

The original concept for Poznan was to search and destroy something like half a dozen or more aircraft, all of which are 0 ammo understrength, but hidden around the map. You can see the relic of this concept in the hexes marked 'strange clearing' which now serve no purpose.

This idea proved too... radical though, plus if these aircraft really are caught on the ground, shouldn't they be on the ground level (not air units) and attackable by tanks and vulnerable to bombing by Stuka? Those were the complaints anyways. In the future, if we get some 'aircraft on the ground' unit images and corresponding entries into the base game, I would definitely like to make good use of this concept.

Invasion of the Soviet Union destroyed literally thousands of aircraft on the ground. One of the current complaints about current Barbarossa is the massive size of the Soviet Air Force, not caught on the ground but strangely filling the skies. DLC 1941 will better strive to solve both of these issues that are lacking from the current campaign, if all goes to plan.