Making Panzer Corps a great (and lucrative) multiplayer game

[the_iron_duke]

I was rather disappointed with Panzer Corps multiplayer. I do, however, feel that if it was developed in the right direction it could be as good a multiplayer game as Field of Glory, a game which I've played many hundreds of times in multiplayer.

First, a few thoughts on why I disliked Panzer Corps multiplayer. A big hindrance is the core slot limitation. I had one game playing as the Italians and I had thousands of points spare that I couldn't spend because I had used up all my slots. One consequence of this is the game ends up with too many high-value units. This was another thing I didn't like about Panzer Corps generally in that it was too tank-oriented. A real panzer corps was 2/3 infantry and I think the combined arms approach is more tactically stimulating than big tank-on-tank fests. My opinion is that chess does not become more interesting if you turn all the pawns into queens.

So anyway, now to a solution. I think the direction Panzer Corps would be best taking if they want a really great multiplayer game is to follow the Digital Army Generator system from Field of Glory, where you have purchaseable Army Books and a certain amount of points to create your own army to take into battle. It would also bring additional revenue to Slitherine, which of course when it comes down to it, is what will make something happen or not.

The Army Books could either be divided by war theatres (e.g. Western Front), countries (e.g. Great Britain) or by years (e.g. 1939). The armies within each Army Book would be things like a "Wehrmacht, Western Front 1939" army or "Panzer Corps, Eastern Front 1943" and thus would generate a lot of armies. There would be armies for each year so there'd be six "Wehrmacht Western front" armies for each year of the war with the correct military materiel available for the date. In this way you'd avoid the technology imbalances of fighting an army from a different period of the war. There could even be an option when setting up a multiplayer game of setting a year and one's opponent would have to bring an opposing army from the relevant year.

Like in Field of Glory there should be limits along historical lines as to how many units of each type one can buy when creating one's army, so an army would be tailored to one's preference but not be ahistorical or unbalanced.

There should also be lots of new maps to play on - hopefully many dozen, like Field of Glory.

I think if Slitherine went down this route they'd have a cracking multiplayer game on their hands. The Panzer Corps game engine itself is great, but playing single-player against a computer opponent just doesn't do it for me any more and I feel the only way to have a real tactical challenge is to play against a human opponent. It would be easy to implement this plan as most of the groundwork is already in place, just the developmental vision being lacking. If Panzer Corps multiplayer was revamped along these lines then everyone would be a winner - gamers would have a fantastic multiplayer experience and Slitherine would roll in the money.