Difficulty 41 DLC compared to 40 and 39

[Longasc]

I finished the 1940 DLC yesterday. One has to be prepared for the upcoming release of the 1941 DLC AND maybe the 1942 Beta, after all.
(sidenote: Wish I had upgraded to a SPW, my 12 strength veteran SE Infantry wouldn't have been nuked by a fort in the penultimate turn. Aaaargh!)

So what do you think, which scenarios were the hardest, most annoying or in general most spectacular?
Overall difficulty of the campaigns compared to each other? The "Tier" system was mentioned, some of the later battles in each Campaign are supposed to be harder.


Wassigny and Arras. French and British path of the 1940 campaign are both quite hard and also very interesting. I wonder how hard Arras would have been with my 1939 Core, I took the Wassigny path this time.
Surprisingly easy: Narvik. The Norway scenarios are interesting due to the naval element, which is only present in Narvik. In general the really brilliant default Norway scenario has more appeal to me than the three 1939 DLC scenarios.
In general I love the 1940 scenarios. I also tend to lose units in Reims for some reason, but always capture a Char B1 there as well. I think the 1940 scenarios are supreme, they are not too hard, not too easy. What makes me wonder about them is that the relation of Panzer IIIF vs Char B1 and Somua tanks is what I expected to be the Panzer III/IV vs T-34 relationship. The IVF got weakened and the T-34 buffed, so I expect things to be better now.
The 1941 DLC features tank battles. Not so much Infantry General as the default campaign felt at times.
The Crete scenario is interesting when you take the naval option or restrain yourself from deploying heavy tanks and artillery on Crete in the airborne option. I also find the Balkan scenarios to be interesting and really love the huge maps of Russia. Very cool maps!
The optional Moscow city siege is brilliant. Makes one wonder about Stalingrad! I found the Leningrad path to be more interesting and harder than the Kiev path.

For some reason I found the 1940 DLC to be much more dangerous. The IVD has only 6 GD and the IIIF only 4 SA. The Panzer IVF really pwns them even in its nerfed form and is much more formidable against Infantry, even weak 1 HA Infantry has a fairly good chance to destroy weakened IVDs in clear terrain.
Vyazma and the optional Moscow city siege might be the outstanding scenarios difficulty wise, to get a decisive victory or not to lose too many units in Moscow are IMO the major challenges of 1941. Unless you want to capture Leningrad and Kiev as well.

Now let's see how my captured Char B1 and Somuas do in Yugoslavia, Greece and Russia. Char B1 + StuGIIIB vs enemy Infantry will be quite the show!


Ah, a short and simple conclusion about DLC difficulty: 40, 41, 39. Now I wonder if my army will be gutted in 1942, 1941 in Russia wasn't all that bloody.

[deducter]

I agree that DLC 40 was harder than DLC 41 in GENERAL, although I think Streets of Moscow is a harder scenario and a masterpiece. Clearly the DLCs can be made difficult if desired. Perhaps there were too many people who did not like the hard scenarios of DLC 40? Stonne, Wassigny, Amiens, and Arras were all very challenging.

Part of the reason things seem easier is that the unit stats are much closer now. The German infantry are superior to all their Russian counterparts, whereas British infantry for instance was actually better than Wehrmacht infantry. The stats between a PzIVD/PzIIIF and a Char B1 are much further apart than the stats between PzIVF/PzIIIJ vs. T34/KV tanks. The Russian fighters are also worse than the British Spitfires, for instance. 3 stars is also much easier to obtain, with the higher exp cap of 375.

My main concern is that in the later war scenarios, say, 1943 and beyond, the German equipment will be so good that the Soviets don't stand a chance. There will surely be people with enough prestige swimming around that they can afford to upgrade all their units to the best, and an army of Panthers/Elefants/Tigers in 1943 cannot be stopped by the Soviets, since the AI struggles somewhat on the attack, especially with inferior units. Bear in mind the higher prestige cost of these heavy armor units is offset by the fact that they will rarely take damage in battle, so prestige might actually be more plentiful after the upgrades. I suspect many players will go for the Elefants as opposed to the StuG units, since the turn limit is fairly generous, so its slow speed/low ammo won't be a problem. And people will want to upgrade their panzers to Panthers/Tigers ASAP, and it'd be boring to see an army of pure Panthers/Tigers in time for Kursk. I do not know what exactly can be done to address this, so people will actually want to have a variety of armor in their core, or how the design philosophy is right now, but I think it is strongly worth thinking about ahead of time.

[Longasc]

Very well said!

The very moment German super tanks become available things are going to get difficult to balance.
Those who can't afford to upgrade will have REAL trouble, while those who can are likely to wonder why Germany is about to lose the war and have an easy time.
The danger is that Prestige and XP gain and ever stronger units while having fewer losses will compound and make the player ever stronger.

But higher experience for the Russians is likely, Kerensky mentioned that. I also know his "America" scenarios and me mumbling "Should have upgraded to Tiger II instead of Panther G" at times, so I think he can do it.

Still, this will be a daunting task the more the campaign progresses.

I didn't look up in the equipment file but the Panther was available from 1/43 and the Tiger already in August 1942. I don't see a way to stop people from upgrading to these tanks en masse and wonder how many would bother with the StuG IIIG, that's a unit I would love to see used a lot as it was in practice, same for the late Panzer IV models.
I can't think of a proper solution for this and believe most players would hate super expensive Tigers and Panthers or restrictions on their number. I am also not a fan of the "roleplaying" approach of limiting myself to not buying Tigers or Panthers en masse.


I didn't notice too nasty surprises in the latest 41 DLC Beta build. An additional problem is balancing for multiplayer and the "PvE" scenarios at the same time. Ah well, let's enjoy the 41 DLC and start worrying about the decisive phase of the war and the DLCs as well: The transition from 1942 to 1943.

Maybe a Prestige reset AND equipment reset or a fucking disaster in Stalingrad is needed to reduce some 5000+ excess Prestige of some players.
But how to do that without killing those that struggle...

[deducter]

I'm pretty sure the only real solution is to offer a hard branching path that guts a good 1/4+ of your core or more but gives tons of prestige, and an easier path that doesn't give much prestige but doesn't kill too many of your core units. The only real reason people would choose the harder path is for the challenge (like me), and maybe bragging rights or "achievements" as is common these days in games. Otherwise it is impossible to reconcile the fact that scenarios can't be too hard due to the super long length of the campaign.

Obviously we have no idea what the design plans are for the late war scenario. I am emphasizing, however, that it is worth thinking about now rather than get to 1944 and suddenly realize most players just have all high power armor units and wondering why the Soviets can't seem to do too much without resorting to giving the Soviets all JS2 and SU-100s.

[deducter]

I didn't look up in the equipment file but the Panther was available from 1/43 and the Tiger already in August 1942. I don't see a way to stop people from upgrading to these tanks en masse and wonder how many would bother with the StuG IIIG, that's a unit I would love to see used a lot as it was in practice, same for the late Panzer IV models.

To be fair the StuG IIIG and the StuG IV are supremely useful in MP. They are probably tied as my second favorite German armor unit now, right behind the Jadgpanther. It saddens me to see that I'm pretty much the only player who buys them, and in fact I had been using the StuG IV even prior to its massive buff. If I ever see a MP opponent buy those units, I know he is probably quite skilled. Sadly I have yet to see that.

[HeinzG]

Maybe a Prestige reset AND equipment reset or a fucking disaster in Stalingrad is needed to reduce some 5000+ excess Prestige of some players.
But how to do that without killing those that struggle...

I think we have to keep in mind that with all our concerns, to which I completely agree, we dont want to shoo away players by making a sneak attack on their saved up prestige points.

I dont know what possibilities Kerensky has for balancing. I could think of two solutions so far that would seem fair. The problem could be that it currently cant be handled this way by the game engine.

First suggestion would be a degression in prestige like it is already done with the difficulty levels. Let's say a player reaches map 3 an has already 3000 prestige. Now the game reduces the prestige for this map by 20% as an example. If he reaches the map with 3500, his prestige would be reduced even more, like 25%. If he has only 1800 prestige, he gets the normal assigned prestige in this map. I hope you get my point. The only drawback is that the levels where the reductions are applied would have to be preset, tested and probably hardcoded.

Seccond idea is that something like a percentual Stalingrad could help. Let's add the prestige from a players core and his saved up prestige for example. Thake that sum and give the player a damage of x percent of this prestige sum. This way, players with expensive cores would face a bigger prestige drain than players with cheaper cores. Maybe one could even count in some progression, bigger prestige faces even a larger drain.

To make another point: people having a hard time with the scenarios might seriously think about lowering the difficulty level - at least that is what they were designed in my opinion

[Kerensky]

I'm not particularly concerned with late war balance. A lot of changes have already been made with unit balance to help this situation, and scenario design will only help.

What people are most likely to see is large formations of medium enemy tanks. That is, instead of just IS-2 and Su-100 spam, units that the Panzer IV is almost totally ineffective against, there will be a lot more T34/43s and T34/85s.

T34/85 doesn't show up until 1944, which leaves 1943 Panthers Tigers and Elephants unchallenged... except this is why I requested the new Russian units. Specifically the KV85 and IS1, both of which are comparable to the Panthers and Tigers.

Large maps or snowy maps (double fuel consumption) are good deterrents to units such as the slow Elephant and fuel hungry Tiger.

Bottom line, the idea is going to be to create content that does not force the player to only use Tigers, Panthers, and then Tiger IIs, something of a problem with current Bagration/Balaton.

In the end, there's no stopping players from simply opting to only have the best equipment as soon as it's available.
Someone might just save up a mountain of prestige well in advance. Someone might disband all of their tanks to afford 1/2 as many top quality tanks. Someone might just enter a cheat code.

The content will be geared in favor of medium tanks, but trying to escape the reality that the Panther is 100% better than the IVH in every situation is more or less unavoidable and not worth trying to fight.
Even the cheaper price of the IVH compounded by the cheap 'family discount' cannot compare to the prestige saving ability of the Panther to deal out more damage and take less at the same time.


Part of the plan is already in motion though. I see players with 13 tanks in their core, and they are not even at 1942 yet. Upgrading 13 IVG to IVH costs how much? Drop in the bucket compared to upgrading 13 anything to 13 Panther and Tigers.

[Rudankort]

Personally I don't think that Tigers and Panthers are going to be a problem per se, all will depend on scenario design. In late war the soviets will have more experience, and we could easily, say, overstrength their units to 15 to represent the fact that they had big numbers of tanks to throw at the enemy. I'm sure that Kerensky will come up with something.