Slogkrieg

[kondi754]

You say it's not about the difficulty level but when you are notifying their objections I see that it comes to the level of difficulty.
All these proposals have cause to make the game easier.
Don't complain, think how to play it better.

[Andy2012]

Halftracks provide great maneuverability and both offensive and defensive strength. They are great at attacking routed or understrength units, which truck transport simply cannot do. Being transported in trucks means one move with zero offensive capabilities and greatly decreased defensive ones. Halftracks even resist artillery and air attacks fairly well. I always prefer 2 mechanized heavy infantry units to 4 regular infantry units (irregardless of experience) unless the terrain hampers movement (lots of woods or mountains). Because they make so many attacks they tend to gain experience stars quickly. A 4/5 star heavy infantry unit is really badass. These Panzergrenadier (the term actually wasn't used till 1942) can keep up with armor, providing a bit more of a blitzkrieg feel (though the game mechanics constantly stifle that).

Being short of resources can be very frustrating. In certain cases where I think the developers are unrealistically frugal (most of the late US scenarios in Pacific and Marines, some of the Russian Blitzkrieg ones) I use the cheat codes to give myself the resources (RPs), and occasionally even the command points (CPs), that they should have. Cheating, perhaps, but sometimes you have no alternative if you want a realistic battle rather than an artificially contrived "playable" one. In Leyte for instance, once you upgrade your units to reflect what their current status should be (1944 infantry and Marines, newer model tanks, aircraft and ships) you have little left to repair units. The game in campaign mode should automatically upgrade units to reflect this fact (I think there is a jump from 1942/43 to 44), but it doesn't, so I "cheat" to correct this deficiency. Same thing holds true in some of the Blitzkrieg scenarios. I can't afford more aircraft, armor, or an 88, but I know for a fact the Germans actually had them. Cheat code time. I try to use the codes judiciously to correct what I think are mistakes, but sometimes the developers seem so tethered by what they consider "playability" that the scenario is only tenuously related to the actual battle. A matter of opinion of course, but it is usually easy to find online the WWII Order of Battle (an actual listing of the units involved in an engagement), so look it up for yourself if you think the developers are being overly stingy in RPs or CPs and don't be afraid to use them occasionally, particularly if you want a more realistic scenario. Offensives just weren't launched into 3/4 to 1 disadvantages in men and equipment. That's tantamount to suicide in real world, yet is regularly used by the developers to achieve their notion of "playability".

Yeah, thats why I use them in PzC as well. Thinking about it, I might mechanize a Waffen SS HeavyInf in a second playthrough. In Blitzkrieg, I could mostly afford the units I wanted and needed, so I dont think they are too stingy. And I am usually not the guy who avoids expensive units if they are useful.

[Andy2012]

Yes, it is not about the difficulty, it is with the scenario design. The Dev's admit they make the objectives purposely nebulous as to add to perceived "replayability". Sorry this does not work. ANY scenario should be beatable on the first try with the right combination of forces and tactics. The need to find the "golden key" to meet arbitrary "Simon Says" requirement is tedious and frustrating. You see it permeate form OOB game to OOB game. It is not creative it is LAZY. Forcing the player to replay the scenario over and over to finally find the "golden key" is not fun, FYI. Blitzkrieg just brings this to the forefront. There are some changes to the core code that could help but they really, really, need some of the thoughtful, historical background that made the Panzer Corps DLC (for the most part...) very enjoyable and immersive. Things that need to be changed in the main game:

1. Air Combat and combat in general. The 10 vrs 10 yields 5 losses but 10 vrs 5 yields 3 losses needs to go. This goes for the entire combat system. It tends to over favor the defender. The fact that I cannot eliminate an air unit outnumbered 40 - 1 in strength, in 4 attacks is crazy. The fact that I can have an air unit escorted by 3 fighter units and still take 1/2 damage is even crazier.

2. Fix the Supply and Zone of Control system. Units under 3 strength and units out of supply should not exert any zone of control. Disorganized units or those out of supply should not be able to interdict supply.

3. Treat out of supply ground units like Air Units. After 1 turn out of supply they should take incrementally greater losses so after 5-6 turns out of supply they should be gone.

OOB Pacific was good but flawed.
OOB Battle of Britain was fun but highlighted the Air-to-Air Issues.
OOB Marines showed some cracks in the design with the scenarios relaying on arbitrary crutches to make the scenarios "Challenging"
OOB Blitzkrieg showed some major flaws as have been highlighted here.

Agree with some stuff, disagree with others.

"Golden Key" is a bit unfair. Trying different tactics can be challenging and fun. Arbitrariness is bad design, but I never felt that was the issue with OoB.
And the devs are definitely not lazy, dont be rude.
Agree with better immersion in Panzercorps; however, that was mostly because the briefings had voice acting and you could drag your core force over dozens of scenarios and had most of them with unique leaders and attributes over various tank versions (PzIII F - J and so on).

Air combat: Agree with the escort issue.
Supply: I think this can be fixed with maybe more Aux units. Never had such an issue with this, but would prefer some AI garrison units to secure chokepoints and rear deployment areas so my core can focus on the attack. "Starving" out of supply units is an idea, but just for some scenarios like Kiev.

Finally, if you are that dissatisfied and angry about OoB and begin calling the devs lazy - why do you actually keep buying the game? You seem to own more DLCs than I do.

[DirkW]

I own and have played all the dlc and got through all, including this (minus midway;)), in one try. I found each and everyone better then any campaign in pc (and I played all off them). The maps are stunningly accurate. Most off the mechanics work including air to air and escorting. The mechanics and scenarios work in the offence and the defence (in pc just the offence). Paks have some usefulness to them (hadn´t in pc), infantry is the A and O off combat (in contrast to the appalling losses it took in pc). Working navy encounters (ridicouless in pc).The devs fixed lots off design issues by now: flak and arty to strong, minelaying by planes, paras to easy out of supply and on and on. This is a game were the mechanics are to be improved even the game is now two years out and I find that commendable. So the supply mechanics could be improved I am sure they will over time. If you can´t stay the partly grinding aspect off the game in perspective to the boom and bang of pc wait for pc 2.

[WarHomer]

I found it a bit slogging as well (always play on hardest diff), but still liked it. Although I found myself only playing it through once before going to the morning glory/Pacific campaign (cant bring myself to calling this a grand campaign with only 2 "dlcs" covering the entire war)

I like to be able to win by different approaches (and different unit compositions) and not just one "right way".

I also like it to be challenging and with hard secondary objectives. I cant recall exactly why, but recall some fun and challenging secondary objectives in "Marines" even though this was also quite the slogfest.

I need more DLCs and miss ships!!!

[kverdon]

I just finished the Moskov scenario and with it Blitz("Slog")Krieg. This scenario again was flawed in it's briefing and almost falls into the "Golden Bullet" realm. You start out with the objective of capturing Moskow and 2 Primary Victory sites with a secondary of capturing the 2 Primary Victory sites in 15 turns. There are not other objective hexes marked on the map. I decide to plan my strategy to sweep around from the North of Moskov to use the map edge to prevent depleted Russian units from cutting my supply. This is fine until the victory conditions change. Now I normally do not mind that happening as it adds some flavor to the game and tends to highlight historic events. However THIS particular change marks out 3 NEW cities as "Secondary Victory" conditions that will cause you to loose the scenario if captured at any time. Well one of these is in the SW corner of the map where I have absolutely no troops anywhere near. Why do I have no troops there? Because there were no cities in the area marked as a victory condition to defend so I had absolutely no reason to place troops there. They suddenly come under attack by 2 T34s and It was game over as I could not move troops down there fast enough. I was able to reload a previous save game and start moving troops down there in advance and stage my Stukas to be in range so as to hold the city by 1 turn. The only reason I was able to do this was I now knew it was coming. Those secondary victory locations should have been called out as such in the initial briefing "Oh and you will need to hold x y and z to maintain supply for your army" or some such. To give them such arbitrary game ending value mid game is not good design.

[hrafnkolbrandr]

I had the same crisis in the SE!

Luckily I had a good resource reserve and was able to purchase an infantry unit to hold things down. I scrambled all my stukas to help, and managed to get a para unit down there pretty quick to turn the russians back.

[MikeAP]

I don't think anybody (in this thread) is claiming that it is too difficult. What they are claiming is that it just isn't fun or innovative.

I have been saying this since the first iteration of OOB. The scenarios just aren't fun or challenging.

This Steam review (not mine) sums it up perfectly

If find this true in theory, but that the game generally tends to fail to deliver on its potential due to poor campaign design choices.

The second boot camp campaign mission, for example, is a brilliant use of combined arms. You have multiple objectives spread across several islands, and the purpose is to train the use of naval units and landing craft while still making combat fundamentally come down to taking land with ground units. In that mission, I actually went for the paratrooper island first, and set up an invasion of the mid-left side of the island, therefore bypassing several major enemy installations and attacking them later from behind, where they were less well-prepared. Where I chose to land was a real choice that had real consequences, as were my choices of troop composition for landing.

My choice of where I invade is heavily influenced by supply - I need to keep at least a destroyer near all my units to keep them supplied, and have to hold units back until I can take some cities to maintain logistical supply. I chose my landing point in Boot Camp 2 for having a port I could take so I could throw a supply ship into it as soon as I took one town. It meant the logistics system had SOME actual impact upon gameplay.

By contrast, playing the actual standard campaigns, you have battles like Java Sea and Java Invasion as two totally separate scenarios, where ALL naval action takes place in one battle, and then ALL land combat (with a nearly meaningless capacity to bombard from the shores added in) takes place afterwards. This functionally means that this game has this capacity for fantastic combined arms combat that it NEVER LETS YOU USE.

Every single sea battle is a "sea units only" battle, and every land battle is a "naval units are useless" battle where you've already landed your troops and established supply lines, thus eliminating about 75% of your most interesting choices and the depth of the combat and logistics system.

When I start the Java land battle, I already own enough capture points that I have 50% more supply than I could ever use thanks to control limits. The enemy also never attacks. Logistics is literally reduced solely to making paratroopers suicide units and detering splitting your army's strength to try to outflank with a landing you really don't need since you're better off concentrating your firepower, anyway.

That is to say, logistics exists to limit the strategic possibilities, not expand them. If you try the default strategy of just massing your units and going forward, logistics is irrelevant, but logistics exists to make any other strategy too difficult to be worth trying.

The same goes for the second mission, Invasion of the Philipines - you're supposedly doing an amphibious assault, but it's really just a pure land battle. You could have played a game where you had to soften up a landing zone, and weighed the pros and cons of using air power to focus upon protecting a beachead versus going deep to take out enemy aircraft early. Instead, it's just what all land battles would wind up being about - zerg rushing with infantry against entrenched enemies that sit in place and wait for you to swarm them.

Worse, it means you play through the campaign schizophrenically swapping between army and navy battles where you invest heavily in "core" units that sit out every other battle. Want to choose between specializations that basically amount to whether you get heavy tanks or jets? Well, too bad! Neither can participate in naval battles, and after you pick that one, you're going to have only a couple more land battles, anyway! Spent tons of resources on getting three Yamatos for that achievement? Too bad, sucker, it's only land battles from here on out, and you're now out of resources!

(The Marines campaign so far seems better about this, however, in that it at least picks one force and sticks to it. I presume the Finnish forces will be similarly focused upon land battles. Still, that squanders the potential the game had for being a combined-arms game, and honestly, it leaves me wanting to go back to playing Advance Wars more than Panzer Corps.)

Just look at how the actual historical Guadalcanal campaign went: Both sides were continuously landing reinforcements and supply upon Guadalcanal to the best of their ability, and Guadalcanal couldn't possibly support the troops fighting for it with its own local resources, alone. What broke the IJA's defense of the island came down to the IJN first losing aerial supremacy, and thus having to limit itself to "Tokyo Express" resupply runs by night, when aircraft were grounded, and eventually losing naval supremacy to the point that it could no longer sustain the losses it incurred trying to resupply the land forces.

THAT CAN'T HAPPEN IN THIS GAME! OOB's rule system is fundamentally incapable of handling the concepts of needing to run ships back and forth through The Slot, it just makes more supply than you will ever need magically spawn in from cities so that naval combat never matters when you're actually working upon the land combat for an island.

The whole reason I was drawn to this game is this concept of combined-arms combat, and the thought that you could see battles like Guadalcanal play out based upon its logistics and the necessity of the navy in supporting army operations. Instead, they segregate out all these functions so that the game is artificially simplified and devoid of the depth that the mechanics were clearly meant to provide. Yes, I, too, would like to see something like a Mediterranean Campaign where the battle for Northern Africa is determined not through simple tank formation, but through how many oil tankers can survive the trip to Rommel's forces, while British submarines and torpedo bombers whittle away at their fuel convoys. That is what the game could be if it tried a little harder, but it just isn't willing to commit itself to that concept.

[kondi754]

This post from Steam demonstrates a total misunderstanding of the game, inability to build its own army (the desire to purchase 3 Yamato battleships ) and manipulate the facts.
In addition, I think that this post was written by a fan of Panzer Corps, which he's not able to adapt to the requirements of different game.
Philippines 44 (Leyte) scn is an example of using the combined forces.
When it comes to Guadalcanal, Marines captured Japanese supply depots after the landing, so you could say that the island supported the fighters by 'own' resources.

In general, as I read some posts where someone refers to the historical reality I have a feeling that he should read some books about this topic first.
I think the developers could work out the historical background of the game, but this aspect was solved correctly (but no revelations).

[Andy2012]

This post from Steam demonstrates a total misunderstanding of the game, inability to build its own army (the desire to purchase 3 Yamato battleships ) and manipulate the facts.
In addition, I think that this post was written by a fan of Panzer Corps, which he's not able to adapt to the requirements of different game.
Philippines 44 (Leyte) scn is an example of using the combined forces.
When it comes to Guadalcanal, Marines captured Japanese supply depots after the landing, so you could say that the island supported the fighters by 'own' resources.

In general, as I read some posts where someone refers to the historical reality I have a feeling that he should read some books about this topic first.
I think the developers could work out the historical background of the game, but this aspect was solved correctly (but no revelations).

I wouldnt belittle somebody who invested that much time and thought in writing a lenghty review.
However, 3 Yamatos is a pretty bad investment. And Leyte Gulf is a very, very long combined arms operation. You have to push west over the island while holding the Jap navy at bay and clearing the skies from Kamikazes.
I think the game chops some missions into smaller parts for memory and hardware reasons. I have a pretty powerful machine and Leyte crashed on me. In the tech forum for this game, people with mighty hardware regularly complain about memory leaks and choppy performance. (This was a major issue with the original release.) With smaller missions, you take some of the pressure off your PC.
Thinking about it, to combat the whole Slogkrieg issue, I would go for more, but smaller missions. 25 - 30 turns max. That way, you can turn each one into a shorter, tactical puzzle for the player to ponder and win rather quickly. I know, this might trigger once again the "Golden Key" complaints, but isnt that what you do before a mission and you deploy your forces: Look at the map, your resources, your forces and new equipment available and then make decisions to reach your objectives in a certain way? For example, the fighting retreat in Bataan was short and fun, Leyte with its 50 turns grinding through the island was just a bit too long.
Oh yeah, a mission where you protect fuel vessels for Rommel and your success determines his panzer ressources next mission is a great idea.

[Andy2012]

I just finished the Moskov scenario and with it Blitz("Slog")Krieg. This scenario again was flawed in it's briefing and almost falls into the "Golden Bullet" realm. You start out with the objective of capturing Moskow and 2 Primary Victory sites with a secondary of capturing the 2 Primary Victory sites in 15 turns. There are not other objective hexes marked on the map. I decide to plan my strategy to sweep around from the North of Moskov to use the map edge to prevent depleted Russian units from cutting my supply. This is fine until the victory conditions change. Now I normally do not mind that happening as it adds some flavor to the game and tends to highlight historic events. However THIS particular change marks out 3 NEW cities as "Secondary Victory" conditions that will cause you to loose the scenario if captured at any time. Well one of these is in the SW corner of the map where I have absolutely no troops anywhere near. Why do I have no troops there? Because there were no cities in the area marked as a victory condition to defend so I had absolutely no reason to place troops there. They suddenly come under attack by 2 T34s and It was game over as I could not move troops down there fast enough. I was able to reload a previous save game and start moving troops down there in advance and stage my Stukas to be in range so as to hold the city by 1 turn. The only reason I was able to do this was I now knew it was coming. Those secondary victory locations should have been called out as such in the initial briefing "Oh and you will need to hold x y and z to maintain supply for your army" or some such. To give them such arbitrary game ending value mid game is not good design.

I used the same tactics / deployment, yet was successful on my first try. Mostly because I looked at the map, saw the silver flags on some cities, remembered my history and then bought some cheap mountaineers without transport to place on chokepoints in the south. Together with the AT aux units you get, they hold down the southeast pretty easily if you let them dig in from the start for several turns. (Still need air support.) I can still understand your frustration, though.
Altogether, I think scripted events like these and sudden turnarounds in missions make the game more interesting and sometimes a bit more frustrating when your neat plan comes crashing down on you. But the added drama is well worth it and actually reduces the slogkrieg problem. And what you call "Golden Bullet" could also be read as "I look at the map, my reserves and new tech and make decisions about deployment and new forces accordingly". You always have to work with what the devs dream up. Even though adherbal claims in some post above that they write the AI to be variable and make various approaches possible, there are still game mechanics (read: rules) and design decisions in each scenario and DLC that make some approaches better and more successful than others.

[kondi754]

Referring to the post from Steam forum:

Brisbane 44 and New Zealand 44 (Rising Sun), examples of scenarios there are combined naval-air-land forces huge operations.
So not only the Philippines 44.

[kondi754]

Version 3.3.7.
Difficulty - Feldmarshall

Date - 27/06/1941

This is the real Blitzkrieg.

[kondi754]

More screenshots

[kondi754]

I decided to make another pocket, this time west of Minsk.
I think you stop writing nonsenses now.
Slogkrieg ...

I took Minsk on 5th July 1941. (28 turn)

[kondi754]

Next scenario from Blitzkrieg Campaign.
9/08/1941 - Smolensk pocket.

[DemBones24]

I play on the hardest difficulty and always go for every secondary objective, which is probably the best way to turn the game into a "Slogkrieg." It definitely forces a more methodical playstyle instead of the constant offense I imagine the blitz was about, but it also forces you to really understand and use game mechanics like supply and encirclement. I would say the biggest frustration for me in the Blitzkrieg campaign was getting a sense of how much requisition points were necessary to preserve before the campaign becomes untenable. Its not just about making it through each mission. You can wreck the campaign by taking too many casualties in a mission.

I have been working on narrating videos of the replays for the Blitzkrieg campaign (highest diff, all secondary objectives). I can post links here if people are interested.

[kondi754]

I play on the hardest difficulty and always go for every secondary objective, which is probably the best way to turn the game into a "Slogkrieg." It definitely forces a more methodical playstyle instead of the constant offense I imagine the blitz was about, but it also forces you to really understand and use game mechanics like supply and encirclement. I would say the biggest frustration for me in the Blitzkrieg campaign was getting a sense of how much requisition points were necessary to preserve before the campaign becomes untenable. Its not just about making it through each mission. You can wreck the campaign by taking too many casualties in a mission.

I have been working on narrating videos of the replays for the Blitzkrieg campaign (highest diff, all secondary objectives). I can post links here if people are interested.

I played OoB both methodically and aggressively, in both cases I have no problems with fulfilling additional tasks.
The losses are once bigger, once smaller - I learned to play "on the unit limit", I need only the amount of RPs awarded after each turn to keep the army in relative combat readiness.
During Barbarossa, unfortunately, we need as many units as possible, if you want to encircle large groups of enemy units.

If you want to post links, do it. You don't have to ask anyone for permission.
I think a lot of people watch your movies with curiosity.

[DemBones24]

I played OoB both methodically and aggressively, in both cases I have no problems with fulfilling additional tasks.

Yeah, you are a pro. Pics look like you wrapped up the Barbarossa missions pretty textbook. It looks like you have a lot of units with low efficiency, still on the move. Is it that you have enough experience to know where they will be safe, or do you not care much about them taking losses?

[DemBones24]

Here's a link to my video of the first Blitzkrieg mission, hardest difficulty, with all secondary objectives. Will post more as I finish the videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFZvjug ... e=youtu.be