A series of newbie-ish questions

[aster]

Hi all, just been getting my feet wet in the vanilla campaign and trying to figure out some stuff I didn't see elsewhere.

1. How exactly is Prestige calculated? It ticks up in scenarios - I assume back capturing victory locations and cities/ports/airfields, but what about destroying units? And there seems to be a bonus after a scenario's completed - is this a fixed value tied to DV or MV, or is it simply the remaining count of location-based Prestige that hadn't been captured in-play? Is it worthwhile to delay capturing that final objective and thus extend a scenario, in order to capture more non-essential locations for the points?

2. While I realize mountain troops seem to lose their special movement when attached to vehicles, do other troop types lose their special abilities the same way? For example do Pionieres lose their bonuses against entrenchment if they've got trucks or halftracks?

3. If infantry is airlifted you get a message "Do you want to leave your trucks behind?". I get this extends for the scenario, but is the transport re-attached for the next mission or does it vanish?

4. How does initiative work? Unfortunately on the iPad version we don't have the detailed combat breakdown windows or complete documentation (hopefully Slitherine fixes these soonish) so I'm sort of flying blind with any of the detailed mechanics - initiative, terrain effects, entrenchment, etc.

Thanks in advance.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

*1. Prestige is given to you in 3 ways:

- A per turn amount set by the scenario
- Capturing towns and airbases (I think 75)
- At the end of each battle, a certain amount is given to you based on the result. These are set in the campaign file:
Part of the campaign file from my WWI mod
Brusilov WWIbrusilovA.pzbrf WWIbrusilov.pzscn Romania 1000 WWIbrusilovB_decisive.pzbrf Romania 500 WWIbrusilovC_marginal.pzbrf END 0 WWIbrusilovD_loss.pzbrf

The non-bolded things are irrelevant to you at this stage. Basically it is saying that for the specified scenario (Brusilov Offensive), you get 1000 Prestige for a DV, 500 for an MV and 0 for a loss (you lose if you get a loss in that scenario)

*2. Only mountain troops lose their bonuses when equipped with trucks. All other abilities stay.

*3. You lose the transport until you purchase it again.

*4. To my knowledge, initiative decides who fights first within the round of combat, and gives that unit the advantage of destroying enemy strength points before they fight back.

- BNC

[aster]

Thanks BNC! Clears a bunch of stuff up.

On that prestige gain topic - again (I know it was a multi-parter), is it a usual strategy to delay your impending victory to pick up more locations and therefore more prestige? Or is that insignificant in the grand scheme (not to mention gamey)?

And then just for overall campaign advice, I'm not looking for a "formula for victory" but just some general best-practices... does it make sense at first to pay for Elite reinforcements for your units in the early game? Or should you focus more on purchasing more units for your core rather than maintaining experience? Or none of the above, and instead stockpiling that prestige for later use?

[BiteNibbleChomp]

The amount you gain from delaying victory is usually quite small (maybe a Pz I at best), so I don't bother.

In campaigns:

Vanilla, AK and AC - smaller but more experienced cores are really important. Elite replacements are better.

GC 39 and 40 - focus more on saving prestige, and disregard experience. None of the missions there will require anything much in the form of experience. in '41, use elite replacements, and make sure you keep at least 30k prestige available. You will need it later. '42 onwards require experience far more than anything else. HOWEVER, '44 AND '45 ARE GOING TO MURDER YOU IF YOU DON'T HAVE 3* + ON EVERY UNIT!

- BNC

[MartyWard]

Thanks BNC! Clears a bunch of stuff up.

On that prestige gain topic - again (I know it was a multi-parter), is it a usual strategy to delay your impending victory to pick up more locations and therefore more prestige? Or is that insignificant in the grand scheme (not to mention gamey)?

And then just for overall campaign advice, I'm not looking for a "formula for victory" but just some general best-practices... does it make sense at first to pay for Elite reinforcements for your units in the early game? Or should you focus more on purchasing more units for your core rather than maintaining experience? Or none of the above, and instead stockpiling that prestige for later use?

Some of the scenarios give you a set amount of prestige per turn. If you have destroyed all the enemy, or can be sure you won't take any more losses, then don't take the last victory hex until the last turn and get that free prestige. If you are playing the basic campaign pay attention as sometimes the differance between a MV and a DV is how many turns it takes to get the final victory hex. Usually you get more prestige for a DV than an MV. Also some scenarios are not available if you don't get a DV in a specific scenario, check the sticky on the campaign tree to see what these are.

For certain units it pays to overstrength early, Artillery in particular as they don't take a lot of losses. Air units are another that benefit from overstrength as the constant drain on your forces by enemy aircraft makes gaining air superiority a benefit worth paying for IMO. Others units like infantry and tanks will always be taking losses and gaining experiance so it is not so bad to lose some experiance for the free green replacements. My rule of thumb is if using elite replacements keeps me from dropping a full star I use elite. Once I get to 3 stars I try to keep using elite so that they can get to 5 stars towards the end. Others use different measures but it is not always necessary to use elite replacement to build a good core.

[captainjack]

Sources of prestige I have come across:
- capturing victory hexes, cities and airfields. You only get the prestige the first time you capture them, so multiple changed hands = 1 lot only.
- Per turn (for some scenarios). In PC, hover the mouse next to the prestige indicator to see any per turn prestige.
- End of scenario. Can vary according to DV/MV/Loss - not necessarily more for DV than MV.
- enemy surrenders (version 1,2 and higher). You get half the prestige value of the part that surrenders. Surrender requires all strength suppressed no remaining entrenchment and no hex you can move into. I am 99% certain that if you have 8 suppressed and kill 7, you get prestige only for the remaining 1. This is where your low strength damaged units or just units with weak attack can be useful as they kill fewer and so you get more prestige. In some scenarios you get units with strength x/1 rather than x/10. Due to a quirk of the calculations, you get way more prestige for forcing these to surrender.
- disbanding units BETWEEN scenarios. (disbanding during scenarios = 0 prestige)
- achieving special objectives (I think only in Allied Corps and Afrika Korps - eg release Italian prisoners and get 500 prestige, or destroy stores and get bonus).
- capture marked hexes. Again only AK and AC I think. Capture a hex with a $ sign or a city next to a $ sign and you get bonus prestige.

[ThvN]

Hi all, just been getting my feet wet in the vanilla campaign and trying to figure out some stuff I didn't see elsewhere.

1. How exactly is Prestige calculated? It ticks up in scenarios - I assume back capturing victory locations and cities/ports/airfields, but what about destroying units? And there seems to be a bonus after a scenario's completed - is this a fixed value tied to DV or MV, or is it simply the remaining count of location-based Prestige that hadn't been captured in-play? Is it worthwhile to delay capturing that final objective and thus extend a scenario, in order to capture more non-essential locations for the points?

Well, income is dependant on the soft cap. This is a mechanism that slowly lowers your income the more expensive your units are. So if you use units that are relatively cheap, you'll get 100% of the prestige that is preset, but if you use nothing but 15-strength Tiger II's you will only get 20% of the values. It doesn't matter how many units you have, it only calculates the average cost of them and lowers the income based on this value. But the difficulty level can bump your prestige income or lower it as well. So that is why any prestige income values that other people quote may be different for you. I will use the 'basic' 100% values on Colonel level.

As explained by the others, there is a fixed value that is awarded for a Loss/MV/DV. This value can be set for each scenario. Some scenarios also hand out bonuses for completing certain missions, like destroying supply depots or taking out a specific target. This depends on the scenario designer, some scenarios are also set up to give you some prestige every turn.

Other than that, conquering a normal city or airport gives 50 prestige, victory hexes give 100 pr.

But this awarded only on the first time the flag changes into yours. If it is re-taken by the enemy and re-captured by you, no extra prestige. In defensive scenarios, you will often start out with cities, airports and victory hexes which are already under your control. If you allow the enemy to capture them and you re-capture them afterwards, than this is the first time the flag changes into your color so you will get prestige for them! I've used this gamey tactic to get a little extra prestige, and also to get enemy units in close terrain where my infantry could quickly take them out.

Destroying units doesn't give extra prestige, unless destroying certain units is set as a special condition by the scenario designer. But causing enemy units to surrender will give you half of their current value (including strength, so it can be very little if the unit has only a few strength point left).

Capturing extra cities/airports can be worthwile if it doesn't cost you more than the income gained. Also, during the Grand Campaigns and Afrika Korps capturing remote cities sometimes gives you a (pre-determined) extra unit that can be kept or sold off. But sacrificing units to get a little bit of extra prestige isn't worth it. I've had some succes in hoovering up remote cities with recon units and paratroopers aided by strategic bombers, but the main benefit of that tactic is that the AI won't be able to use the city to buy and place units.

2. While I realize mountain troops seem to lose their special movement when attached to vehicles, do other troop types lose their special abilities the same way? For example do Pionieres lose their bonuses against entrenchment if they've got trucks or halftracks?

Transports don't cause abilities to be lost if the unit is dismounted, but the dismounted unit cannot move where their transport can't go. A truck can't go into mountains, and this limitation affects the dismounted Gebirgsjäger as well. Any special unit abilities can only be used if they are not in the transport. So an engineer unit in a halftrack won't get any bonus when they decide to attack while mounted. For any combat while a unit is in a transport only the combat stats of the transport are used, which are very poor.

3. If infantry is airlifted you get a message "Do you want to leave your trucks behind?". I get this extends for the scenario, but is the transport re-attached for the next mission or does it vanish?

It vanishes. No refunds, even if you still have the receipt, you'll have to buy a new one.

4. How does initiative work? Unfortunately on the iPad version we don't have the detailed combat breakdown windows or complete documentation (hopefully Slitherine fixes these soonish) so I'm sort of flying blind with any of the detailed mechanics - initiative, terrain effects, entrenchment, etc.

For some info on weather, terrain and movement, see this post and the links in it: viewtopic.php?f=121&t=50758#p477826

Initiative is tricky to explain, but it is actually a fairly simple system. When a combat begins, intitiative is compared. Let's say you attack with a Tiger I (ini=11), and your opponent is a T-34/43 (ini=9).

For each point of initiative higher than the opponent, 20% of your shots are taken before before the other may return fire. Each unit is 10 strength, this means they have 10 shots (dice rolls) each. So each point of ini advantage allows 2 shots to be taken before the opponent can attack back. This means that you need to have an advantage of 5 points of initiative to get 100%, the point where you may use all your shots before the opponent may return fire, so any advantage above a difference of 5 ini points has no effect.

But the Tiger I has 2 ini points more than the T-34 (11 vs 9), so it can use (2 * 20% =) 40% of its shots before the T-34. So the Tiger I rolls to hit for its first 4 attacks (out of a total of 10) unopposed. Let's say these 4 rolls result in a single kill and one point of suppression. Now the rest of the rolls are made simultaneously.

But now, the T-34 has already lost a strength point and another one is suppressed (alive but unable to shoot). So it only has 8 attacks left at this moment. So the Tiger I rolls its remaining 6 attacks at the same time as the T-34 rolls for its 8. The results are applied to the units, and the combat finishes. The way it is displayed is a bit misleading, because on the map screen the unit with the higher initiative fires first and then the other shoots backs, making it look like it is all-or-nothing. But it is a lot more subtle than that.

So, a higher initiative will give a better chance of damaging an opponent before they can return fire, but if you have low attack strength and are unable to cause enough kills or suppression the opponent will still be able to use all of his dice rolls when returning fire. Initiative is influenced by all sort of bonuses, like:

1. Before combat starts each unit randomly rolls for +1 or +2 initiative bonus; so having a small ini advantage can still not be enough if the dice rolls are bad.

2. Weather and terrain can limit usable ini, for example during snow/rain or when fighting in cities ini is limited to a max of 1. The random dice roll still applies, so it gets messy quickly if you have bad luck.

3. Initiative bonuses are given for experience (usually half a point per star), heroes (max +1) and special unit class bonuses. For example, AT units get +3 ini when attacked by tanks or recon units. An ambush or rugged defense also nullifies the initiative of the attacker.

I hope they update the iPad version soon, the missing features are really helpful when learning what works best.

[aster]

Wow ThvN, that is above and beyond. It says something about Slitherine that the community is so damn helpful - good players, usually good company.

I didn't even think about motorized infantry completely losing their ability to travel rough terrain. In that case, is it a good idea to keep some unmotorized (not just mountain troops)?

And yeah, I'd *really really* like to have the detailed combat preview enabled for iPad (to say nothing of the customization options). It'd really help to learn how all these factors work together, it's one thing to read conceptually here and another to see in each specific game context.

[JimmyC]

...Initiative is tricky to explain, but it is actually a fairly simple system. When a combat begins, intitiative is compared. Let's say you attack with a Tiger I (ini=11), and your opponent is a T-34/43 (ini=9).

For each point of initiative higher than the opponent, 20% of your shots are taken before before the other may return fire. Each unit is 10 strength, this means they have 10 shots (dice rolls) each. So each point of ini advantage allows 2 shots to be taken before the opponent can attack back. This means that you need to have an advantage of 5 points of initiative to get 100%, the point where you may use all your shots before the opponent may return fire, so any advantage above a difference of 5 ini points has no effect.

But the Tiger I has 2 ini points more than the T-34 (11 vs 9), so it can use (2 * 20% =) 40% of its shots before the T-34. So the Tiger I rolls to hit for its first 4 attacks (out of a total of 10) unopposed. Let's say these 4 rolls result in a single kill and one point of suppression. Now the rest of the rolls are made simultaneously.

But now, the T-34 has already lost a strength point and another one is suppressed (alive but unable to shoot). So it only has 8 attacks left at this moment. So the Tiger I rolls its remaining 6 attacks at the same time as the T-34 rolls for its 8. The results are applied to the units, and the combat finishes. The way it is displayed is a bit misleading, because on the map screen the unit with the higher initiative fires first and then the other shoots backs, making it look like it is all-or-nothing. But it is a lot more subtle than that.

So, a higher initiative will give a better chance of damaging an opponent before they can return fire, but if you have low attack strength and are unable to cause enough kills or suppression the opponent will still be able to use all of his dice rolls when returning fire...

Excellent explanation ThvN. I never really understood how initiative worked (other than the higher the better), but your clear explanation makes everything clear to me. Many thanks!

[BiteNibbleChomp]

It vanishes. No refunds, even if you still have the receipt, you'll have to buy a new one.

What am I meant to do with the receipts for the few Opel trucks I have purchased then?!

- BNC

[captainjack]

What am I meant to do with the receipts for the few Opel trucks I have purchased then?!

I can't even believe you'd buy a truck, let alone advertise the fact in public! What's wrong with walking?

If I abandoned a transport and then wanted to replace it with the same model in a later scenario, I would take my receipt to the stores and get a replacement.
In the game, this is done using Cheat code "Prestige 50" (or "Prestige 100" if it was a half track).

I think in most cases, you'd pick one of the troops and get them to drive the truck home if everyone else was going on a plane - that or use dial-a-driver.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

What am I meant to do with the receipts for the few Opel trucks I have purchased then?!

I can't even believe you'd buy a truck, let alone advertise the fact in public! What's wrong with walking?

Rocket Firing Artillery can't walk, so it gets Opel Trucks. Everyone else walks, because it's far cheaper.

- BNC

[ThvN]

I can just see the discussions with the Ministry of Armaments:


Sir BNC, we have an acceptable transport compromise that will be cost-effective and might prevent the troops rioting!

What is it?

Well, we could give them motorized vehicles, so they won't have to drown in the mud.

Ridiculous. They'll just use them for joy-riding and break them. Besides, their exhaust fumes and noises are unhealthy and will degrade morale!

OK, but we have a backup, we can give them horses?

Presposterous! They'll just eat them when they feel 'hungry'. And they smell.

Mmmh. Sir, how do you feel about bicycles? They are quiet, cheap and very durable.

Only if they are unicycles!

What?

Well, it will halve the wear on tyres! Do expect me to fund two-wheeled bicycles when there is a more compact, economical alternative? I think not.

Sir, we've raided all circuses and there simply aren't enough around to mobilize even a single platoon! This means the men will have to keep walking as before.

Oh yeah, about that...

Uhm, yes... Sir?

If they hop on one foot, we can halve the wear on shoes! Dismissed.


And so the war continued...




http://i.imgur.com/kOazwIr.jpg (url in case image doesn't display properly)

[BiteNibbleChomp]

and instead of landing craft, how about Viking longships?

After all, they don't need engines, just a hunk of wood and a huge rag.

- BNC