Weird prestige behaviour, and what to do abut it...

[timek28]

Hi all

I have been playing GTPG mod for a quite while now. It is excellent mod, and right now I'm at Rostov mission in 1943. However I have been having problems with the prestige. The mod is made as such that main prestige income is coming from the prestige per turn as well as from capturing hexes. I decided to play on colonel difficulty as someone told me that is the way mod is supposed to be played. Otherwise I play on FM.

Like I said I have problems with prestige gain. I noticed this problem after first 2-3 missions. It basically manifested in getting half of the prestige per day suddenly from mission 3, as well as half of the prestige for victory hexes. For example if prestige per day stated 100, I was getting 50. Victory hexes gained me 50, while regular hexes only 25. Since there is not much prestige gain between the missions (only jump to 43 gives lot of prestige which is natural since there are many new units), I cannot afford this little prestige gain on hexes and per day basis.

I circumvented this issue by switching player prestige in advanced settings to 200% in effort to double this amount somehow. Author of the mod told me that was one of possible solutions as mod supposedly uses original PC settings and there could be problems between those settings and 1.20 patch which came later than the mod.

So basically this worked somehow, for some time. Although not really consistently. I wasn't getting exact prestige numbers for day and hexes. For example If I was supposed to get 100 prestige for WH, I would get 80. Sometimes I would get 102 etc,,, All in all very weird behavior. But now I came to 1943 Rostov mission, which is a new cycle of tough Russian missions, and now prestige gain is getting reduced AGAIN! And actually not halved, but quartered! For example, mission is supposed to give regular prestige per day gain of 100. I boosted prestige to 200% so I would get this (so it states 200 prestige per turn), but now I'm getting only around 30 prestige per turn?!?! What is happening?

I can play this way too, although I have to really stretch my forces thin, and reduce my losses to the absolute minimum. On the other hand regular prestige per day would give me a little less stress and headache. I just don't need artificial difficulty induced by this Rommel like settings in the colonel game.

Is anyone able to tell me what is going on? Does this happen to anyone else? Is it compatibility issue between 1.20 patch and mod? Or is it maybe induced because of large number of core units mod gives (48 right now)? So maybe it is some kind of penalty for too many strong units (cap or whatever)...

I really like the 1.20 because of surrenders (they also give strangely little prestige). For example surrendered T34-43 of strength 9 (not reduced in strength by surrendering attack), gives only 100 prestige. Weaker units, give around 10-20 prestige. What is the logic behind this? I thought that surrender gives 1/2 of the units value. So T34-43 is supposedly costing only 200 prestige?

Also I like suppressed replacements a lot, but author of the mod also mentioned that maybe I should try to play under 1.14 rules and see how prestige behaves then...

[ThvN]

I can't be sure, but you could check to see that the prestige soft cap is disabled; in the gamerules.pzdat (open with Notepad or Excel), near the end is a line 'UseSoftCap'. Make sure this is set to 0 (zero), the default is 1, which means all prestige income is gradually lowered when you reach a certain treshold (which is adjustable in the settings).

For surrendered units, you get 50% of the worth of whatever surrenders, but I assume this is also lowered by the soft cap. Anyway, you can alter the % with the 'PrestigeForSurrender' setting. But I would start with just turning the soft cap off and see what happens.

[timek28]

Wow great ThvN I will try that out and report what it did...

Edit: By the way, where am I supposed to find this file? I did a search and it exists for every DLC I had before independently (GC39-45). Also it exists for Italian Campaign 2.0 mod, but there is no such file for GTPG mod which is under question, as well as there is no such file for main PC or AC games that I have (or I'm unable to find them). Also as far as I could see there is no such option as UseSoftCap in any of these files. I updated my game to 1.20 of course.

I don't know I might give a try to 1.14 rules after this mission.

[ThvN]

You're welcome, the file for the main game/AK is in the game data directory: 'Slitherine\Panzer Corps\Data' on my system. Or you can try to search for gamerules.pzdat, it should show up.

The DLC's have their own file because they have a few settings different from the main game, for example the rate heroes are gained is much lower.

[timek28]

When do this changes take effect? I restarted Stalingrad scenario after I changed soft cap to 0. Now it states prestige per turn 300, and I get 100. I get 30 prestige for regular hexes, yet to see how much I get for VH...

Is this change supposed to take effect immediately or in between scenarios (since advanced settings are only available in that time)? Or is change applying once scenario is restarted? I just don't know how game engine works...

[ThvN]

Usually you need to start a new scenario, so the game 'reads' the file. So restarting won't work here I think. If you want to be certain you can start a new campaign to check if this setting works or not.

[timek28]

Apparently soft cap WAS the reason of the weird behavior. It takes a new mission to start as apparently game engine loads settings only at the beginning of map (not on restart). So now in Dieppe mission I'm getting 200% of what was originally intended. I will change everything back to normal right after this mission and continue playing. God knows how much prestige I lost this way...

Anyways, it seems that it is a problem induced by soft cap. Although I thought that thing was introduced to prevent abnormal prestige gains (like hundreds of thousands or snowballing as you guys call it), I don't know why it activated the way it did in my case. I didn't have much prestige (around 2000 for every new mission), and was barely able to give elite replacements to units between missions. I had rarely units that are over-strength. I upgraded only units in same tree and rarely bought new ones.

[Tarrak]

Anyways, it seems that it is a problem induced by soft cap. Although I thought that thing was introduced to prevent abnormal prestige gains (like hundreds of thousands or snowballing as you guys call it), I don't know why it activated the way it did in my case. I didn't have much prestige (around 2000 for every new mission), and was barely able to give elite replacements to units between missions. I had rarely units that are over-strength. I upgraded only units in same tree and rarely bought new ones.

The soft prestige cap got nothing to do with the amount of prestige you have stockpiled. It calculates the value of the units you are fielding and if it's over a certain threshold it will reduce the prestige gained in this missions. So it doesn't matter if you have 100 or 100000 prestige stockpiled: If you field only the best available and overstrengthed units you will receive less prestige. If you got with worse units you will receive more.

[timek28]

I understand that now. However the mod fields a lot of units and maintaining them takes a lot of prestige. Thats why I turned soft cap down. I was barely able to give elite replacements to full strength to my tanks and airplanes ONLY! And that is hardly good enough for ever incoming Soviet onslsughts. 2000 prestige beyween missions for core that big is simply too little.

But I guess it gives more realism of German struggle.

[Tarrak]

It's up to you how you play your game. No need to justify yourself. The prestige cap was introduced and fine tuned for the officials campaigns. User made campaigns tend to have different, usually higher, difficulty level anyway. On top of that the maps seems to be often bigger and so require more units anyway which may throw the threshold calculation in user mods off anyway.

[timek28]

It's up to you how you play your game. No need to justify yourself. The prestige cap was introduced and fine tuned for the officials campaigns. User made campaigns tend to have different, usually higher, difficulty level anyway. On top of that the maps seems to be often bigger and so require more units anyway which may throw the threshold calculation in user mods off anyway.

Heh I just wanted to say that no prestige cap suits better for me so no justification intended I'm sure there are excellent players who like to play it as hard as possible, but it is not for me

On the other hand there is always that optimization problem in which players are trying to find a perfect ballance between joy and frustration of playing this awesome game. Too much joy leads to boredom and too much frustration to giving up. Realism is out of question anyways (for God sakes it is a turn based strategy). If there was any realism in the first place then Soviets wouldn't suicidaly try to cross rivers again and again in the same places and get pummeled as if they don't know what is waiting for them.

Actually that is one more topic (rivers as insormauntable obstacles), that I wanted to post about. I just think there is too much strategic advantage for a player that places perfect mobile defence on rivers (wall of tanks backed by artillery and AA). It is very helfpul in regards of player being able to hold of Soviets and hypotetically win the war, but on the other hand AI should do a much better job of recognizing that river crossing is impossible at certain places and try to place brige engeneers somewhere possible or try to do paradrops in rear, or try artillery barrages first and attack after that. The way it functions right now is pretty straightforward - you place your defence on the river, wait for one after another Soviet tank to try to cross -and anihallate them all. It is just mundane, and somewhat stupid...

[Horst]

I still don't get it how the soft cap mechanic works.

# *** Prestige soft cap
# 1=use soft cap, 0=don't use
UseSoftCap 1
NormalPrestige 400
MaxPrestige 800
MinKoff 20

What exactly are these prestige values? How and when is the game suppose to check how strong my units are and calculate this somehow with these values?
I've raised the values to 500 and 1000 because I play rather hard campaigns with many units at moment, but still have no real clue what I have actually changed.

[Tarrak]

Prestige Soft Cap explanation by Alex, copied from the beta boards. It may be not 100% accurate anymore as it was subject to some changes during beta but it should give a bit of insight:

Prestige soft cap

This is a mechanics which, in its current form, came up in our Snowball effect discussion thread. I've posted a test version there, but there was no feedback on it, so it is now part of the new Allied beta. Here is a description of this new feature, taken from the snowball thread.

- I've set two parameters in the game: normal prestige per slot (NormalPrestige) and max prestige per slot (MaxPrestige). The former is equal to 400 and the latter to 800. These values are of course very arbitrary. In the future we may need to deduce them from game's data and change them from scenario to scenario (depending on available equipment etc.). But for now, they should give us a start. 400 prestige points accomodate all but high end units in each class, and 800 is enough to buy most units in the game, including OS.
- As long as player's prestige is below normal, he gets full prestige, just a now.
- When player's prestige gets above normal, all prestige earnings are reduced using a koefficient: (MaxPrestige-Prestige)/(MaxPrestige-NormalPrestige). In other words, the closer we get to MaxPrestige, the less prestige we earn.
- The koefficient never drops below 0.2, so 1/5 of normal prestige income is the slowest earning possible. It is perfectly possible to get above MaxPrestige, and thus get all Tiger II force, but it will take more time than now, and after that prestige will accumulate very slowly too.
- Player's prestige is calculated as follows. For each core unit its cost is UnitCost+TransportCost, adjusted to unit's strength. So, a normal 10-strength unit at full OS is 1.5 of its normal cost. Unspent prestige and units in reserve are not counted. This means that the game allows to accumulate more prestige if it remains "passive" (does not actively participate in the battles). Bonus units are not taken into account at all.
- Player's prestige is recalculated every time he gets income, not just at the beginning of a scenario etc., so it does not help in any way to keep units in reserve and deploy later etc. In particular, prestige bonus for DV comes at the end of the battle, when all the units which actually contributed to this outcome are deployed. We might need to adjust this on the maps with exit zones, but this should be good enough for a test.
- Difficulty adjustment is done before the koefficient is applied. This means that player on Rommel will hit the cap later than on Colonel.
- Soft cap affects only single player campaign games, and only the side whcih plays the campaign (germans in all the official content).

The idea of this mechanics is to slow down core progression in case it happens too fast. High end units are still the most desirable (which makes sense, I'm sure real commanders would love to have an army consisting solely of the best equipment), but the player should not be able to get them all at once. In this game prestige is supposed to provide a quality cap, so as long as it remains limited, quality cap should work. At the same time, player is still motivated to earn as much prestige as he can, and with as small force as possible. This is pure theory though. How it works in practice remains to be seen.

[Horst]

Oh thanks, this made it much clearer!
So the NormalPrestige setting is basically the prestige cost of a wanted mid-quality unit (e.g. Pz.III.late and IV.early-mid), while MaxPrestige is the cost of the best-quality units.
Okay, I see. So you won’t really experience a penalty until mid-war when units start to cost more than the NormalPrestige of 400.
If someone modifies the costs, like the end-war high-quality equipment more expensive but the early-mid war the same or even cheaper, it’s wise to only increase the MaxPrestige setting somewhat.
Alright, now I know how to adjust this to my own stats properly.

The cap is not bad, but quite penalizing if a map designer thinks all enemy AI units need to have 3-star 15-overstrength as average in the end-war scenarios, and you have to deal with three times as many of them plus constant scripted aircraft spawns from outside the map compared to your core force . I guess loosing the war is the point of playing the Germans somehow.

[timek28]

The cap is not bad, but quite penalizing if a map designer thinks all enemy AI units need to have 3-star 15-overstrength as average in the end-war scenarios, and you have to deal with three times as many of them plus constant scripted aircraft spawns from outside the map compared to your core force . I guess loosing the war is the point of playing the Germans somehow.

Like I said, I didn't have problems with this until 43 (in mod though) where I was supposed to keep track of my core with 50 slots, while having only 2000 prestige between scenarios, 30 prestige per day, 25 for hexes, and 50 for victory hexes. It is almost impossible.

And like you said there are 3 starred Soviets attacking from all sides, with twice as many units, endless airplane waves etc... Obviously this simulates reality better (or I don't know how to play ), but then again when pivotal Kursk scenario comes, the cap and inability to replace your elite units just breaks down the war in Soviet favor (as it happened in reality). And from that point there is no turning back the tide.

[Horst]

When I finished the GC45East months ago, I couldn’t see green tank units anymore. The last battles of Berlin make you virtually sick with so many experienced Soviet units. While I also gathered something over 10k prestige mid-war, it quickly dropped down to 0 at the end of war – and that was without 1.20 prestige penalties. I’m quite curious if someone has actually played through the whole GC line with the soft cap and increased overstrength costs lately. Is it actually possible to beat without dropping the difficulty grade to the bottom?

[timek28]

When I finished the GC45East months ago, I couldn’t see green tank units anymore. The last battles of Berlin make you virtually sick with so many experienced Soviet units. While I also gathered something over 10k prestige mid-war, it quickly dropped down to 0 at the end of war – and that was without 1.20 prestige penalties. I’m quite curious if someone has actually played through the whole GC line with the soft cap and increased overstrength costs lately. Is it actually possible to beat without dropping the difficulty grade to the bottom?

Very good question and observation... Well as far as I know some players take pride of saying they had been able to gather over 200k in prestige during GC! While this is theoretically possible (without the cap), that would probably mean loosing almost no units during battles. There are surely tactics (or cheats maybe :S) to reduce losses to absolute minimum (playing campaign several times, loading - saving etc), Such perfect tactic maybe could in the end give player a shot of completing GC with current cap settings (player could hardly have any OS, and could have troubles of keeping elite replacements and buying new units). Of course this was similar in real war. But this is game.

I know that in Berlin and Berlin Redux, I had almost all units overstrenghtened to 15, all of them Tiger 2s and Panther Gs (necessary for counter attack), all artillery and planes at max experience and capacity... Even with that I had extremely tough time winning it all. Zukov himself is a IS2 tank, of strength 20, with 5 stars and unlimited ammo (well not unlimited but something like 20 shots).

Like you said after that I was just sick and couldn't stand seeing green units anymore...