Kiev - this is a bit ridiculous

[Andy2012]

I just crushed Kiev. Literally played it by the book - connected the three secondary objectives with a swift Panzer move from the south and slow push with lots of arty from the north. Held the supply lines open, everything fine.
Troops inside the pocket panicked and went unsupplied / undersupplied and I crushed them from two sides.
Blitzkrieg at its best.
Yet I lost.
The objectives should be "Cut off Kiev salient, crush the pocket, seize Kiev". Not "Chase dispersed units around the map". There were just a couple of stray units hidden way behind the front and totally irrelevant to the mission. Mostly stationary around the east, my Me109 found them. And they made me lose a perfectly executed mission.

@devs: This is a bit ridiculous. This quite directly mirrors Dunkirk and chasing out of supply units there. Just without the all-reveal and ample time. Seriously, these "Kill xx units" or "Kill all units" objectives are annoying and turn an elegantly won mission and fun game into a tedious slog. Again.

[kondi754]

I just crushed Kiev. Literally played it by the book - connected the three secondary objectives with a swift Panzer move from the south and slow push with lots of arty from the north. Held the supply lines open, everything fine.
Troops inside the pocket panicked and went unsupplied / undersupplied and I crushed them from two sides.
Blitzkrieg at its best.
Yet I lost.
The objectives should be "Cut off Kiev salient, crush the pocket, seize Kiev". Not "Chase dispersed units around the map". There were just a couple of stray units hidden way behind the front and totally irrelevant to the mission. Mostly stationary around the east, my Me109 found them. And they made me lose a perfectly executed mission.

@devs: This is a bit ridiculous. This quite directly mirrors Dunkirk and chasing out of supply units there. Just without the all-reveal and ample time. Seriously, these "Kill xx units" or "Kill all units" objectives are annoying and turn an elegantly won mission and fun game into a tedious slog. Again.

You unnecessarily nervous, just leave a few units in the east and you eliminate other enemy units easily.
When you destroy one bunker the other blow themselves.

[Andy2012]

You unnecessarily nervous, just leave a few units in the east and you eliminate other enemy units easily.
When you destroy one bunker the other blow themselves.

Yeah, thank God I picked up the habit of saving every turn in a separate file so I can go back and redo this.

My point was not nervousness. Rather, I feel that the gameplay of an otherwise fun and motivating DLC suffers from these
annoying kill objectives. After all, Blitzkrieg was about sweeping pincer movements and then either obliterating a cut-off enemy
or forcing a surrender. This grinding through all units on a map to win is tedious. Suggestion: Define a target line of objectives to be seized and
held for a specific time, then the enemy automatically surrenders or withdraws, I win.
Right now, in Dunkirk and Kiev, I cut through the enemy like carving a cake, seize the objectives and then spent 2/3 of the alloted turns finding and killing the remaining units.

[bjarmson]

Got to agree, the kill xx number of units in Dunkirk and Kiev is a ridiculous victory element. Having to run around chasing individual units down is ludicrous. To be told you just wasted several hours and have been defeated simply because of a hidden unit or blockhouse is infuriating. Why the developers have suddenly taken a turn toward nebulous, tedious objectives is unfathomable. If you capture Dunkirk you shut off the ability to evacuate troops, game over. If you encircle the troops at Kiev they eventually wither and die from lack of supplies, game over. The need to kill every last enemy unit in these scenarios means insipid games and irksome defeats. These two scenarios need real objectives. Capturing Dunkirk and holding it for five turns should be sufficient for a win. Keeping the encircled troops at Kiev from breaking out for five turns should give one a win. Seems to me the developers are trying to knock off scenario packs too fast and thus not paying much attention to victory conditions. Relying on kill xx number of enemy units is the simple alternative to providing thoughtful objectives, and likely much easier to code.

[Andy2012]

Got to agree, the kill xx number of units in Dunkirk and Kiev is a ridiculous victory element. Having to run around chasing individual units down is ludicrous. To be told you just wasted several hours and have been defeated simply because of a hidden unit or blockhouse is infuriating. Why the developers have suddenly taken a turn toward nebulous, tedious objectives is unfathomable. If you capture Dunkirk you shut off the ability to evacuate troops, game over. If you encircle the troops at Kiev they eventually wither and die from lack of supplies, game over. The need to kill every last enemy unit in these scenarios means insipid games and irksome defeats. These two scenarios need real objectives. Capturing Dunkirk and holding it for five turns should be sufficient for a win. Keeping the encircled troops at Kiev from breaking out for five turns should give one a win. Seems to me the developers are trying to knock off scenario packs too fast and thus not paying much attention to victory conditions. Relying on kill xx number of enemy units is the simple alternative to providing thoughtful objectives, and likely much easier to code.

Well, I now got around this with cheating. I felt around Turn 28 that if I held Kiev, obliterated all units inside the salient and just had some conscripts and a bunker on the off-side of the map left, this made me a winner. Period.
However, I doubt that "easy coding" is a problem or issue with the devs. If you can program the AI and the supply line system and all those unit models, then a working objective marker with a turn counter is probably a piece of cake. I guess that they are on a budget and a deadline to churn out content. It is still a great game from a small team, but quality suffers nevertheless. Apart from all these kinks, it is still a lot of fun. Hopefully, they do Afrikakorps next and don't screw it up.

[Andy2012]

BTW, Moscow was a lot more fun and to be frank easier than Dunkirk and Kiev. Why? Because it was about objectives, not about grinding through mounds of enemy units. Still the best DLC so far (in my opinion), but don't do these "kill all units" scenarios again.

[hrafnkolbrandr]

Agreed, please get riding of "Kill XX Units" Objectives. It totally kills immersion when you execute a great plan, then have to disperse units everywhere to find a stray enemy hiding somewhere completely away and irrelevant to the battle the scenario depicts.

Getting a loss because of it is even worse. Make it a secondary or something.

[kverdon]

Just ran into this in Greece. I lost because though I had captured Athens, I still had 4 Greek units to kill. Of Course there are not 4 Greek units anywhere on the map so I don't know where I was supposed to find them????? Seeing the Large Italian Army sitting on the Albanian border I sent a task force and captured Loannina in 17 turns thinking those troops would be of use as the victory condition says "Cutting of the supply route of the 1rst Greek Army in Albania will allow the Italian Army to advance into Greece. I'm thinking that if I liberate Loannina, those troops will come under my control. WRONG! They remain under the AI control, do they advance into Greece, NO! 1, just 1 Italian unit wandered into Albania, looked around, said "NAH!" and went home. The rest JUST SAT THERE for the entire game.

This really, REALLY needs to be addressed. Cutoff and surrounded troops should act historically and SURRENDER after say 5-10 turns with no supply. Either that or this moronic "Kill xx units" victory condition needs to be dropped or moved to the secondary category.

In many ways this game is unplayable or at least unenjoyable with cheat codes.