Panzercorps Red Army?

[Aurelius]

Hallo,

I have a question: Will there be a Panzercops Campaing for the Red Army, similarly to Allied Corps?

Greetings from Germany
Aurelius

[timek28]

As far as I understand yes. At least this link gives evidence to it:

viewtopic.php?f=121&t=46306

What I would like to see even more is grand campaign for Allies as well as later on for Soviets. That would be probably a good business move and extremely fun

[rezaf]

I dunno, the scenario designers seem to have grown bored themselves with the later eastern DLCs already.
They are horribly unimaginative and generally boil down to throwing hordes and hordes of russians at the player in two or three waves. That's it.
I'm in '44 East now and my current stance on it is: I hope it's over soon!

I haven't picked up the western front DLCs yet (I probably would have if the complete pack was included in the sale), but I'm not really that interested just now. It's a slog.

Then again, the main reason the late scenarios are so boring is that - in PzC, losing is NOT fun, and you have to win to even keep going most of the time, but winning spectacular successes changes nothing in the DLCs, the course of the war goes on and on, and you just face worse and worse odds. In an allied DLC, the tide would have turned and you would be on the winning side in all the late-war battles.
However, as already seen in AC, this somewhat contradicts a core design pillar of PzC, namely winning vs. numerically superior enemies with a quality force - even the '39 DLC has you face ridiculous amounts of polish troops. The allies (especially true for the soviet union) won the war by being able to throw a dozen tanks at a problem that could not be overcome by a single one - and then another couple of dozen if the problem still persisted. The PzC engine is ill-equipped to model this approach.
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rezaf

[Aurelius]

@timek28

Thank you for the hint. Yes it seems so, that there will be coming Soviet Corps

Maybe the will conect the Allied Corps campaing and the soviet. Much is possible

[timek28]

I dunno, the scenario designers seem to have grown bored themselves with the later eastern DLCs already.
They are horribly unimaginative and generally boil down to throwing hordes and hordes of russians at the player in two or three waves. That's it.
I'm in '44 East now and my current stance on it is: I hope it's over soon!

I haven't picked up the western front DLCs yet (I probably would have if the complete pack was included in the sale), but I'm not really that interested just now. It's a slog.

Then again, the main reason the late scenarios are so boring is that - in PzC, losing is NOT fun, and you have to win to even keep going most of the time, but winning spectacular successes changes nothing in the DLCs, the course of the war goes on and on, and you just face worse and worse odds. In an allied DLC, the tide would have turned and you would be on the winning side in all the late-war battles.
However, as already seen in AC, this somewhat contradicts a core design pillar of PzC, namely winning vs. numerically superior enemies with a quality force - even the '39 DLC has you face ridiculous amounts of polish troops. The allies (especially true for the soviet union) won the war by being able to throw a dozen tanks at a problem that could not be overcome by a single one - and then another couple of dozen if the problem still persisted. The PzC engine is ill-equipped to model this approach.
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rezaf

Hi rezaf

I don't know if I understood you well. At first you say hordes are bad, and then you say allies applied that same tactics but it is not modeled in PzC engine in the right way? Aren't you talking about the same thing?

On the other hand I agree that 43 and on scenarios in DLC east tend to get very repetitive and tiresome. It is good on the first play-through though. However Soviet hordes were reality of the war back then. The only thing that could have reduced the repetitions of hordes and could have made game more fun would be better AI. AI simply cannot break through well placed wall of experienced panzers with good support. It doesn't know where the weak spots are (how to cross rivers properly), doesn't know how to create artillery and air preparation properly and ends with huge and stupid losses. Not to mention also surrenders of dozens of AI units due to pile ups. All in all I think eastern front is somewhat realistic numbers wise, but those AI swarms could have been much wiser then they are.

Also check Bebro's inferno mod for different perspective on eastern front. It brings a pretty different feel...

[rezaf]

I don't know if I understood you well. At first you say hordes are bad, and then you say allies applied that same tactics but it is not modeled in PzC engine in the right way? Aren't you talking about the same thing?

No, not at all.
First, hordes aren't neccessarily bad by principle, only when they are the only thing in many subsequent scenarios.
The only one that was different in recent memory (read: in the last one to two dozen missions I played) was the Warsaw Uprising, all others boiled down to "stop the juggernaut".

Second, as I explained elsewhere recently, the thing the AI struggles with is using it's numerical superiority to it's advantage, even disregarding the additional AI limitations you outlined.
It is too hesistant to attack with it's units when the odds are bad, and for most soviet tanks, chances are odds are almost always bad when faced with a 5-star-XP fully overstrength Tiger or Panther.
So you end up building a tank-dam and stemming the russian tide, and then picking off one russian unit after the other until they are all gone, ammo being the only real consideration.
Doing this over and over again isn't so much fun.

Third, what I meant about being unsuitable for PzC is the player having control of the hordes. The game won't be much fun if you keep losing your core units and - as discussed - the AI is pretty retarded, so the only viable course for a campaign is the player having experienced elite units and the AI having the hordes, which for most part isn't how the situation looked at all.
Even in AC this problem is clearly evident.

The only thing that could have reduced the repetitions of hordes and could have made game more fun would be better AI. AI simply cannot break through well placed wall of experienced panzers with good support. It doesn't know where the weak spots are (how to cross rivers properly), doesn't know how to create artillery and air preparation properly and ends with huge and stupid losses. Not to mention also surrenders of dozens of AI units due to pile ups. All in all I think eastern front is somewhat realistic numbers wise, but those AI swarms could have been much wiser then they are.

I disagree, smarter and more imaginative scenario design could have gone a long way.
If the AI were much smarter, such concentrations of soviet forces would be prohibitive, since a player simply would have no way of stopping them and/or prevent the loss of core units.
While this may very well be more realistic, it's also considerably less fun.
There are ways to circumvent this, but Rudankort has not elected to implement any of them into the game.

Also check Bebro's inferno mod for different perspective on eastern front. It brings a pretty different feel...

I wasn't aware Inferno was finished. Bebro's IJA campaign is IMO the hands down best mod for PzC, so I'll definately check out Inferno. Thanks.
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rezaf

[timek28]

I agree that if hordes where any smarter player would have no chance. I didn't want to say that AI unit number should stay the same and AI just need to be smarter. If AI was smarter, then it's number count should be reduced by 2 times at least in later DLC east scenarios. Or maybe even by 3 times. As you said there are usually 2-3 waves of attacks, so either waves should be smaller or there should be less waves, but such waves should be smart (flanking maneuvers, backdoor attacks etc - not just straight frontal). Although honestly there is hardly anything that you can do against 10+ Tiger2s OS 15 (Maybe 20-30 IS2s OS15 but that would be hardly realistic). Hardly any tactic there helps. So that could be again balanced out with prestige, etc... Basically the idea is somehow to prevent player from having all elite Tiger2s (there should be some PzIVjs and others), and on the other hand preventing AI having hordes of super tanks that only elite Tigers can stop, which in turn makes game predictable.

It's actually very hard to say how optimal game should look like. Theoretically it is easy to say but I guess it is hard to implement.

Inferno is not finished unfortunately, but first 10 scenarios are pretty fun

[rezaf]

Just for the record, I think I'm only fielding 5 Tiger IIs, so I already have a technically sub-par force.
The rest are Panthers - sticking with PzIVs for a long time, I recently upgraded the last of them to Panthers. The high mobility is often very desirable on those larger maps and the Panthers are attacked almost as rarely as the Tigers.

My simple idea for putting a limit on the player would have been to put a hard limit on how much elite reinforcements you can take. That doesn't downright kill units per se (so it's not as frustrating as overwhelming and killing player units) but is very much historical and plausible. Better yet would be seperate limits for each unit class or even specific unit, simulating the supply situation of certain equipment. Prestige is such an abstract mechanic, I find it to be unable to properly reflect such limitations by itself.
However, if emphasised, I find the approach to make additional OS more and more expensive wrong and illogical, I'd rather have ALL elite reinforcements being very expensive in later years.
This should be a scenario parameter. I'd still prefer a hard limit though.

As for smarter AI ... I dunno, scenario scripting technically should allow for some things like flanking attacks and whatnot. It's just the scenario designers were pretty lazy and unimaginative in these levels.
For example, there's an earlier DLC where there's a paratrooper attack, and given sufficient fighters, you can see all the transport planes flying to their destinations and intercept them.
In the soviet DLCs, the Paras are just spawned in at some backdoor locations likely to be unprotected.

Also, it could ironically help the AI if it were more stupid. It could probably achieve more by just disregarding all odds and always attacking, no matter what. SOMETIMES even a inexperienced T34 would land a hit against that 5 star Panther, and if there's 10 more T34's standing in line, what do it's losses matter? In fact, it'd be BETTER if the unit was completely destroyed in the process, because then another unit could resume the attack from the same spot immediately. This would also consume the ammo of the defending unit, which is often the only consideration in these scenarios.
Essentially, this would be a quite fitting depiction of the human-wave tactics the soviet army actually employed.
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rezaf

[timek28]

Yes I forgot about Panthers. No way Berlin Redux scenario can be won without them, I had them too of course.

I agree with most of the things that you said. Actually Bebro's inferno quite well depicts the human wave strategy that you are talking about. I had so many units and most of them very bad and weak, so basically you can and have to throw them to oblivion, but you have to continue attacking until you destroy the German units. Even 4-5 constcript units can destroy one experienced Grenadier unit, just from mass attacks. This is tactic AI fails to use both on German tanks as well as planes. If he wasn't reluctant and wanted to attack German units no matter what he would be destroyed (as he is anyways), but would score at least several core kills, and that could make game more interesting in longer stretch.

And yea some equipment cap could be realistic. No way German industry was able to produce thousands Tiger2s as depicted in game and refill them with elite commanders. But like you said developers maybe got a bit lazy, and realized it's just a game

[shawkhan]

As Stalin said at least once, "Quantity has a quality of its own."
You simply cannot make an historically accurate PC campaign for the Red Army. The Red Army specialized in making bloody attritional attacks. No conceivable AI ever could hope to make a good showing when outnumbered by 3 to one. No human player could fight another human player when outnumbered by that amount either. Reducing the Russian forces would result in totally unrealistic situations, From the beginning of Barbarossa, German forces were outnumbered by the Russian colossus, which is why PanzerCorps Wehrmacht works so well. You simply cannot do it the other way around and have something that is reasonably historical.

[bebro]

The red army was overall superior in numbers no doubt, but it was not so in each and every battle of the war at every point in time. Even at Kursk 1943 the ratio was IIRC just around 2:1 in favour for Sov.

The picture the DLCs give - that Sov had basically unlimited stuff and many times more troops in almost every engagement is rather a stretch. I fully understand the gameplay reason behind it - otherwise it would just be too easy, but from a historical point it's not that accurate.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

The easiest way to amke a semi-historical Red Army campaign would probably have to start at Stalingrad or 2nd Kharkov in 1942.

Then:
- Axis troops need to be very experienced
- Many more PzIVs, and next to no Elefants (I think only 90ish were ever built). Panthers and Tigers should also be minimal.
- These PzIVs should be experienced and given heroes etc. so that they were comparable in strength to a str. 7-8 Panther or a str 5-6 Tiger.
- Soviet experience cap would need to be quite low until mid-1944
- Berlin and Oder offensives would need to encompass other theatres such as Vienna, so that the player cannot pull his whole force into a battle at Berlin, which would be VERY easily won.

The campaign would need to be more about smashing the Germans than occupying objective after objective.

I don't see that playing Barbarossa in 1941 as Russia would be any fun - you would lose 100 units in very few turns, and this would go on until Vyazma in Oct '41. Following Vyazma, you would still be beaten to a pulp until August 1942, which is where I suggest the campaign starts. Using some really easy small-scale scenarios in 1941 to start with is not a very good idea as I was not fond of these in Allied Corps:

- Border Raids is so easy you cannot lose (unless you sit there and just press end turn repeatedly)
- Capuzzo requires you to defeat the equivalent of 2 tanks, which is quite easy in the timeframe you are given
- Girba isn't much better, the tanks the Italians have are ground to pulp easily by Armoured Cars
- Sidi Barrani (or whatever the next one is) has little to do with fighting, it is just move here, hold the line, move somewhere else for 20 turns.
- Taranto - bombing stuff that doesn't fight back, and not much of a purpose in the campaign
- A few others...
- Then you get mauled at Crusader!

I don't think this really works. For those of you that really like this, I am not doing it as an attack on the idea, it is just how I see the scenarios being wayyyy to easy.

I have looked at the campaign path for Inferno (though not played it) and like how bebro has modelled the campaign so that Minsk 1941 etc. isn't in it and you start near Moscow, ready to turn the tide on Germany!

- BNC

[bebro]

Well, I actually have some early 41er scns in Inferno that turned out to be devastating for Sov.

You're right it's a prob to depict battles that were clearly lost, but for example in the Kiev41 scn I have "victory" doesn't mean that the whole battle was won by Sov, but rather that the player delayed the Ger attack long enough to have his core extracted to continue...