Vanilla campaign: decisive wins with first try?

[ScotchYeti]

I am almost at the end of my first playthrough of the vanilla campaign (on iOS) and love every minute. Slowly I begin to understand how the Blitzkrieg has worked - too late, of course, so I achieved mostly minor wins and only a couple decisive ones. Most of the time I didn't save during the scenarios and replayed some when I made too many stupid decisions. Otherwise I took it like a man.

For decisive wins it was often necessary to be very fast and efficient and I was wondering: did you guys achieve it with your first plays?
Without reloading? Knowing the map and typical AI moves surely helps to counter them but this isn't realistic. Or have you built the skill in the older PG games?

Anyway, especially the last battles were pretty dramatic. After an easy win in "Gustav Line", Overlord started to eat up my beloved units. Things started to run smoothly again UNTIL suddenly a bunch of tanks appeared in the east. This delayed things enough to make a decisive win impossible - next time I can counter this of course, but the surprise event was quite exciting.

The Ardennes were much fun as winter started and the airforce was useless. Most of the enemy airfields were captured in time before the weather became better, stranding almost all of the enemy planes.

So the final battle it is, the German Reich is counting on me... And then I can start all over with the Grand Campaign (I bought the years '39 - '42 during the sale).

[BiteNibbleChomp]

PzC was my second real wargame, so I didn't have a lot of experience beforehand. (Time of Wrath was first, those who are wondering). For some reason I went straight to Grand Campaign '39 after the tutorials (very shortly after it came out), and got all DVs. But that was Sergeant.

As for the main campaign:

Poland: DV first try. Hard to truly screw this one up.
Norway: DV first try, only barely - those rotten British boats!!!
Benelux: technically MV, though with a reload of an autosave I got a DV (due to utter rubbish combat result instead of the predicted 2/2 or something)
France: DV. Similar story to Poland - I remember rampaging with a recon car taking all the undefended stuff.
Sealion: I don't know how many restarts this one took. And this was after playing MP with my Dad on it. Twice.
Barbarossa: again, technically MV with dumb combat on the last turn, similar to Benelux.
Rush Moscow: should have been an MV, but I fluked a combat in Moscow and barely managed a DV.
USA: A few restarts before I figured out the landing, once that was done I had to restart Fort Knox a couple of times. To get an MV. My 2nd and 3rd playthroughs gave DVs.
USA Midwest: Bash straight through 'em. No issues.
USA West: My first ever DV on this one was a couple of weeks ago. That was also close run.

New ones that I only recently played for first time:

Kiev: No problems.
Moscow 41: Is this rotten thing impossible? Didn't even really try for a DV, doubt I could have gotten one. The weather didn't even interfere as much as it probably should have.
Stalingrad: MV, missed the Kaukasus by about 2 or 3 turns.
Kursk: Expected a blood bath. Got through with no lost core . 11 turns.
Moscow 43: I'm convinced the date should be August, not October 15. Almost easier than Poland!

- BNC

[bgnot2]

I've been playing GC blind. No reloads, ironman. Just the briefings afforded before each mission. I chose middle difficulty, and am having a blast.

I'm often surprised by scenario designers. Scenarios are often different and multitask.

I myself have gotten all DV and one MV. But ... It's not that easy at least I think.
If a scenario gives 20 turns I often get it DV on 17,18,19 and a few times 20 even.

They are well balanced and full of counter attacks and surprises.

25+ scenarios in my campaign and at least 5x I was in jeapordy of losing 4-5 core units.
I am deep into Russia now and have over 15 home grown heroes.

Life is good. I could increase the difficulty but since I'm playing blind with no reloads colonel seems enough as I often only get a DV with 1-3 turns left.

However you don't need DV really at all kinda to speak, truth is "can you field a army and win when you need".

Sure at some point far as I know and have looked some MV are mandatory.

This for you and I is only issue 43 East plus.

See you there.

[bgnot2]

I didn't answer your question.

People cheat, reload, do anything to reach the "supposed" finish line.
Hardly zero of peeps can run Panzer Corps vanilla cold.

Vanilla Panzer Corps is hardcore.
One might even say knowing all maps, knowing all enemy layouts, reloading and getting DV is a achievement in itself.
That's probably a true statement.

Could Eienstein do it? Or Rommel?

Well there dead, so we will never know.

Generally speaking no it's not possible without multiple replays, reloads to school USA in vanilla.

This is where I welcome you to DLC and the GC here it's more forgiving. One might even say more realistic.

Play Grand Campaign as iron man, as what happens is truth, then you will be free.

Hope this helped.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Could Einstein (sic) do it?

No better than any other player. He was very good at physics and theorising stuff, but he never did much (any?) research on military strategy.

People cheat, reload, do anything to reach the "supposed" finish line.
Hardly zero of peeps can run Panzer Corps vanilla cold.

Calling it "cheating" depends on perspective. Some people consider it unfair to look at a map before playing it, others are perfectly fine with giving themselves an extra 4000 pp. PzC is a game, so the point is to have fun, not to insist on being perfect just for the sake of it - though people are of course welcome to try

This is where I welcome you to DLC and the GC here it's more forgiving.

I'm going to guess you haven't played '44 or '45 East yet? Without saying much, those are certainly not forgiving.

- BNC

[bgnot2]

I'm just trying to pump him up.
Somebody gots to take the trenches.

At least CO said so.

[braccada]

If this is your first contact with the game, there is no way you will make it to the US and win on a high difficulty level. At least not with an ironman approach. My first game was on Field Marshal and I won the US scenarios on first try, but I think I had to reload Kursk because I ran out of time. I had a lot of experience with Panzer General though and the difference especially in the vanilla campaign is not too big.

[bgnot2]

Decisive wins first try? No.
My recollection is I played Panzer General in mid 1990's on windows 95. Yea it's essentially the same game I remember 20 years ago.

The same game I'm playing on my 2012 ipad.
Same rule set, same icons. Same campaign path. I failed that game 100's of times. It was only vanilla. No dlc.

My point? The vanilla game is defeat. Unless you learn, play, optimize battle for specific scenarios.

But when was war or combat able to be replayed 10x and optimized?

Its probably boils down to their is no AI. Their is no ?

The game is 100% scripted and limited by such.

Which leaves multiplayer.