almost little things punches me hard in the stomache

[ivanov]

For the short term however I will repeat my regular request to give us the ability when buying replacement units to give us the option to reform destroyed units as 10 str, 0 experience units but with name, medals, combat history, and kills intact.

To be absolutely honest, whenever my core unit gets destroyed I buy it back, rename it and by using a cheat code I give it 200 less experience than the original unit had It seems to be a realistic solution, because in reality it rarely happened that a unit was totaly wiped out by a frontal enemy attack. So I see the repurchase process rather as a reorganization of a battered unit, than creating it from zero. If a unit is completely surrounded by the enemy ZOC's when destroyed, then I don't give it any experience when repurchased, because I assume that all the unit members became the POW's

I agree that in some future projects the casualty rate should be reduced. If that change was implemented, then the maps would require less units and the resulting combat would be much more dynamic and less sluggish.

[brettz123]

I don't think that the offensive aspects of the infantry combat should be reworked but the defensive ones. I think that the cities, forests and entrenchements should give the infantry more protection against the enemy fire and affect more the strenght of the attacking tanks. So for example appart from affecting the initiative, the same type of close terrain ( most of all the cities, forests and mountains ) should offer higher penalty to the attacking tanks, than to the infantry. I don't know if that's the case already but if so, it should be reworked again, making the armoured assault against infantry sitting in the close terrain too costly. So it's not the case that the infantry units stats should be changed but the game's mechanics would need to be slightly modified.

One solution is just to lower the ROF of all artillery, so that each shot only suppresses 2-3 strength points. This will massively increase the difficulty of the game, as you can't effectively use artillery to defend yourself when attacked, making the AI much more potent. It would also be a bad idea to put your tanks into close terrain, even with artillery support, as artillery can't suppress enough infantry when they attack. You might also be forced to attack into unsuppressed entrenched infantry with your own infantry to speed things up.

This change is radical, but could work. I think it would bump up the difficulty very significantly, as it takes away one of the player's best tools.

It's an interesting proposal but I have to wonder if it addresses the correct issue. The more I think about it the more I think that the issue is infantry doesn't scale well in the DLCs. Dor instance I found infantry very useful in DLC 39, useful in DLC 40, ok in DLC 41, and useless in DLC 42 and DLC 43. I'm not sure that reduction of artillery effectiveness addresses the situation.

What if ancillary units like AA and artillery where limited to S5?

[Tarrak]

One solution is just to lower the ROF of all artillery, so that each shot only suppresses 2-3 strength points. This will massively increase the difficulty of the game, as you can't effectively use artillery to defend yourself when attacked, making the AI much more potent. It would also be a bad idea to put your tanks into close terrain, even with artillery support, as artillery can't suppress enough infantry when they attack. You might also be forced to attack into unsuppressed entrenched infantry with your own infantry to speed things up.

This change is radical, but could work. I think it would bump up the difficulty very significantly, as it takes away one of the player's best tools.

I don't think reducing the RoF of Artillery will help. Reducing RoF of artillery leads to three things:
1) It reduce the amount of suppression it can create which is exactly what you want but
2) It reduce the amount of damage artillery is doing and this is already somewhat low
3) The less shots you fire, the less dices you roll in the current system making the unit more prone to some strange RNG quirks.

This three things together will imho have a bad effect on a game play and will push artillery from, maybe a bit overpowered, to pretty useless.

On another hand i wonder why people keep complaining that the game is to easy but then want to boost the survivability of troops up and are avoiding losses using cheats and whats not else .. seriously isn't that quite contradicting each other?

[brettz123]

On another hand i wonder why people keep complaining that the game is to easy but then want to boost the survivability of troops up and are avoiding losses using cheats and whats not else .. seriously isn't that quite contradicting each other?

Well I know I don't use cheats and yes I think the games is a little too easy in some respects. I play on Field Marshall but I never have any problem getting a DV. I would like to see infantry get a boost in certain situations not only to make them harder to kill but also a better choice for the CORE.

[ivanov]

I don't think that the offensive aspects of the infantry combat should be reworked but the defensive ones. I think that the cities, forests and entrenchements should give the infantry more protection against the enemy fire and affect more the strenght of the attacking tanks. So for example appart from affecting the initiative, the same type of close terrain ( most of all the cities, forests and mountains ) should offer higher penalty to the attacking tanks, than to the infantry. I don't know if that's the case already but if so, it should be reworked again, making the armoured assault against infantry sitting in the close terrain too costly. So it's not the case that the infantry units stats should be changed but the game's mechanics would need to be slightly modified.

One solution is just to lower the ROF of all artillery, so that each shot only suppresses 2-3 strength points. This will massively increase the difficulty of the game, as you can't effectively use artillery to defend yourself when attacked, making the AI much more potent. It would also be a bad idea to put your tanks into close terrain, even with artillery support, as artillery can't suppress enough infantry when they attack. You might also be forced to attack into unsuppressed entrenched infantry with your own infantry to speed things up.

This change is radical, but could work. I think it would bump up the difficulty very significantly, as it takes away one of the player's best tools.

That would be certainly a move in a good direction but it would admittedly change the game's balance and I don't think that it would work with the current maps. But yes, for the future PC2 or Allied Corps it would be a great solution. In the Strategic Command system, appart from the strenght value, the units have also morale and readiness, so the artillery fire is mostly affecting them instead of killing the strenght points.

[ivanov]

On another hand i wonder why people keep complaining that the game is to easy but then want to boost the survivability of troops up and are avoiding losses using cheats and whats not else .. seriously isn't that quite contradicting each other?

The difficulty of the game never concerned me too much, as it can be adjusted via the settings. What we are talking about here however, is that the game would need to be rebalanced and some of it's mechanics slightly changed, so it would result in having the more realistic and less monotenous combat model.

[deducter]

I am sure that reducing the ROF of all artillery by half, so that they are around 5, will make entrenched positions extremely tough to defeat. Each shot of artillery on an entrenched position probably won't even suppress anything, but it will remove one entrenchment, like some players proposed earlier. You'll basically use artillery to remove entrenchment and maybe cause a bit of suppression, then you'll have to attack with infantry and take heavy losses in the process. Your panzers will mostly be sitting uselessly outside of cities/forests/swamps. Doesn't this accomplish all the goals?

Edit: One consequence that is that Manstein would be pretty much impossible. You might be able to get some MVs, but that'll be about it. The other bonus difficulties would also be extremely hard.

[charonjr]

I dislike the idea to make artillery weaker rather than making infantry stronger.

Would not infantry digging in faster and raising their GD basically make them able to survive bombardments and a follow-up attack in rough hexes better without having to nerf artillery?

[Zhivago]

Thinking in terms of real-life outcomes in artillery barrages, sometimes laying waste to a city, forest, etc, with artillery can actually make entrenched infantry within even more formidable. The Germans bombed the tar out of Stalingrad at the beginning of the battle and destroyed most of the buildings in the city. However, this made for great hiding places for Russian troops. Same thing with the Allied bombing of Monte Cassino.

[deducter]

I dislike the idea to make artillery weaker rather than making infantry stronger.

Would not infantry digging in faster and raising their GD basically make them able to survive bombardments and a follow-up attack in rough hexes better without having to nerf artillery?

But this change accomplishes the desired goals. Raising infantry GD by itself doesn't work, as then they become tougher against tanks and infantry in the open. Then you'd need to raise the SA of infantry and tanks to compensate, and you'll need to raise the CD of infantry to compensate. Then you'd have to raise the GD and CD of artillery, AT, etc.

Making infantry have more entrenchment is not a solution, as entrenchment doesn't have enough effect against experienced artillery units. In fact, it could even make infantry even easier to destroy in close terrain, since if they entrench faster in forests/cities it'll be harder to force them to retreat, and the player can make them stay in close terrain to be attacked by his infantry to destroy them.

I mean, if you buff infantry you have the same effect as nerfing artillery. If you nerf artillery, you have the same effect as buffing infantry.

[brettz123]

I dislike the idea to make artillery weaker rather than making infantry stronger.

Would not infantry digging in faster and raising their GD basically make them able to survive bombardments and a follow-up attack in rough hexes better without having to nerf artillery?

But this change accomplishes the desired goals. Raising infantry GD by itself doesn't work, as then they become tougher against tanks and infantry in the open. Then you'd need to raise the SA of infantry and tanks to compensate, and you'll need to raise the CD of infantry to compensate. Then you'd have to raise the GD and CD of artillery, AT, etc.

Making infantry have more entrenchment is not a solution, as entrenchment doesn't have enough effect against experienced artillery units. In fact, it could even make infantry even easier to destroy in close terrain, since if they entrench faster in forests/cities it'll be harder to force them to retreat, and the player can make them stay in close terrain to be attacked by his infantry to destroy them.

I mean, if you buff infantry you have the same effect as nerfing artillery. If you nerf artillery, you have the same effect as buffing infantry.

My concern is that this makes artillery all around bad and I'm not sure that is a good thing. I still think reworking the entrenchment to actively reduce suppression is the best way to go.

[Carius]

Working with infantry entrenchment should be the first place to find a solution. I would first increase the rate of entrenchment from 1 to 2 every turn.

[Tarrak]

Working with infantry entrenchment should be the first place to find a solution. I would first increase the rate of entrenchment from 1 to 2 every turn.

I don't think this is really going to solve the problem. I think bretz123 is on the right track with his suggestion to rework the way how entrenchments are reducing suppression. If a heavily entrenched infantry becomes heavily resistant to suppression it should fix most of the issues people have.

On the other hand i think the whole solution goes the wrong way if what people want to achieve is to have some more realistic core compositions. The problem currently is that there are only two limiting factors: prestige and core slots. While prestige becomes quite a non issue on most difficulty settings the core slots are the only real constriction. When all units use up the same amount of core slots you are of course best of getting the biggest bang per slot which in the end game simply are the super heavy tanks. What imho needs to be done to solve this is introducing a "price" difference for different units when it comes to core slots. Lets assume infantry, recon, light tanks and light artillery cost only one core slot, heavy or special infantry, medium tanks, heavy artillery costs two slots and heavy tanks costs three it allows you to have one Tiger 2 or two Panzer IVs in your core or 4 infantry units making the options much more usable. Of course the exact costs would need some tweaking and testing but i think that's the only way to really achieve more historical but still competitive core setup.

[ivanov]

Thinking in terms of real-life outcomes in artillery barrages, sometimes laying waste to a city, forest, etc, with artillery can actually make entrenched infantry within even more formidable. The Germans bombed the tar out of Stalingrad at the beginning of the battle and destroyed most of the buildings in the city. However, this made for great hiding places for Russian troops. Same thing with the Allied bombing of Monte Cassino.

I aggree. There are also countless examples, of how actually ineffective the preparatory artillery barrage ( along with the air bombardment ) was, against the well entrenched and determined enemy in a difficult terrain. Not to repeat the example of Monte Casino, we can point out the Normandy Battles or the Battle Of Seelow Heights. Since the 1917, when the elastic defence concept was successfully implemented, the Germans proved time and again, that the shock and destruction of the heavy artillery barrages could be limited to the minimum. Also, the dodged and brilliant while on the defence Soviets troops, proved exactly the same.

I think the best way to go, would be if the terrain type and the unit experience reduced greately the chance of suppresson. An infantry in the open should suffer from the artillery fire just as it is now.

[Zhivago]

The speed at which an infantry unit gains or loses entrenchment should be directly tied to the type of hex it occupies. A forest hex, a city hex, or hex with hills would offer more of an entrenchment/protection factor for infantry than a flat, open country hex. A prepared fortification position, as is common in DLC43, should have the fastest entrenchment factor, and take the longest to suppress with arty. Maybe certain types of infantry should be able to entrench faster than others, and lose entrenchment more slowly than others. Perhaps a hero bonus could be plus 1 or 2 entrenchment per turn, and conversely, lose entrenchment levels at a slower rate when attacked by enemy arty or strategic bombers.

[soldier]

think the best way to go, would be if the terrain type and the unit experience reduced greately the chance of suppresson. An infantry in the open should suffer from the artillery fire just as it is now.

Yes whats wrong here is that experienced troops don't get any advantage when hit buy artillery. They suffer the same suppression (or worse in some cases) as a green recruit. Same with the follow up assault, A green troop has just as much chance of belting a veteran because experience has virtually no effect on troops and other low initiative units. I'd prefer to see those units make better use of their positions rather than seeing entrenchment and suppression rules changed as a blanket but at the moment none of these things can be modified anyway. I don't like the idea of reducing ROF because it weakens defensive artillery against units attacking out in the open and I'm not concerned about ramping up difficulty level either.
You can however change infantry CD in the eqp file which makes them tougher in towns. Iv'e increased Heavy weaponry troops and guards to three which probably adds about one combat point their way in most fights. Its maybe the only working solution unless the devs tweak some of things we cannot.

[dragos]

The defense values of Pioniere should definitely be increased. Currently their "ignore entrenchment" feat is useless because if they attack an entrenched but unsupressed infantry they will suffer tremendous losses. Paratroopers and Grenadiers ar better in every way so it makes no sense to purchase Pioniere.

[Lamont]

The defense values of Pioniere should definitely be increased. Currently their "ignore entrenchment" feat is useless because if they attack an entrenched but unsupressed infantry they will suffer tremendous losses. Paratroopers and Grenadiers ar better in every way so it makes no sense to purchase Pioniere.

I definetly agree with you that there is no point at all in buying/using a pionere over PzG (panzer Grenadiers) or fallschirmsjägers at all. Well maybe for rpg reasons but thats it. I noticed this after only a short time spent with the game. Pioneres should've 1 or two traits going for them compared to others in say defence and attack on an entrenched enemy (I know they ignore entrenchments but to no real advantage compared to Pzg and Fj).
Pionere need a revamp as a concept imo. Same thing with Gegbergisjägers too imo.

Generally speaking I agree the kill ratio is mindblowing and I still shake my head when I see a pure kill without even having worked on the enemy unit first (not talking about Tiger crushing a inf in the open now). Entrenchemensts doesnt seem to work as intended either or do they ? Art should first bring down entrenchment and some suppression as the entrenchments get destroyed not both at the same time on say +3 entrenchet inf in a city for ex. That is a thing to be looked at for sure.

When it comes to making inf a more appealing unit in the game as it is now is to make more maps where close terrian in over 60% or something like that perhaps ?
Dont know but it seems most maps are full of open terrain wich makes them far better for tanks etc. A mix of maps terrain to make them different (inf friendly or Tank friendly) could help some in that regard. Maybe..... seen many ideas in this thread wich only points to that there are issues that we can all agree with I think.

[brettz123]

The defense values of Pioniere should definitely be increased. Currently their "ignore entrenchment" feat is useless because if they attack an entrenched but unsupressed infantry they will suffer tremendous losses. Paratroopers and Grenadiers ar better in every way so it makes no sense to purchase Pioniere.

I definetly agree with you that there is no point at all in buying/using a pionere over PzG (panzer Grenadiers) or fallschirmsjägers at all. Well maybe for rpg reasons but thats it. I noticed this after only a short time spent with the game. Pioneres should've 1 or two traits going for them compared to others in say defence and attack on an entrenched enemy (I know they ignore entrenchments but to no real advantage compared to Pzg and Fj).
Pionere need a revamp as a concept imo. Same thing with Gegbergisjägers too imo.

Generally speaking I agree the kill ratio is mindblowing and I still shake my head when I see a pure kill without even having worked on the enemy unit first (not talking about Tiger crushing a inf in the open now). Entrenchemensts doesnt seem to work as intended either or do they ? Art should first bring down entrenchment and some suppression as the entrenchments get destroyed not both at the same time on say +3 entrenchet inf in a city for ex. That is a thing to be looked at for sure.

When it comes to making inf a more appealing unit in the game as it is now is to make more maps where close terrian in over 60% or something like that perhaps ?
Dont know but it seems most maps are full of open terrain wich makes them far better for tanks etc. A mix of maps terrain to make them different (inf friendly or Tank friendly) could help some in that regard. Maybe..... seen many ideas in this thread wich only points to that there are issues that we can all agree with I think.

The more I think about it the more I come to think entrenchment is the real issue and not infantry.

[deducter]

I remember reading in the post about core forces that many players use pionieres exclusively in their cores. It seems players either love them or hate them.