My thoughts on AO 1940

[FunPolice749]

So after finally getting to fully complete AO 1940 I wanted to share my thoughts on it. To preface this I have played through it 1 full time with an imported core and I'm part way through with a core you have when you start right from 1940. For both of them I played on Generalissimus without heroes (I still play with heroes you can get in the campaign but I have no heroes besides them).

One thing I really liked was the variety of scenarios and units that were seen in this campaign. The sheer volume of use that paratroops had was very fun to see and I thouroughly enjoyed looking at scenarios and thinking "how can I use just paratroopers to do this bonus objective". There were also many other instances such as using 88s as my main AT as it was the only thing I had to deter the heavily armored tanks like the Char B1 and Matildas. Scenarios like Dunkirk or the Netherland scenarios were great fun and quite enjoyable and a break from what has been relatively normal scenarios seen through SCW and 1939. I hope we see more stuff like this going forward.

One thing I was neutral on was the nemesis of Charles de Gualle. On one hand I strongly prefer the infinite lives variant of a nemesis as it means I cactually get to see my nemesis and come to hate him (in a good way) to the point that when I saw De Gaulle in the sealion scenarios I went "not him again". Comapred to Vega I found this Gaulle feel way more like a nemesis as with Vega I just killed him the first time I saw him and never gave it a second thought.
However, I think De Gaulle has several issues that should be addressed if nemesis are to continue having infinite lives. I think the biggest thing is that nemesis need to offer a reward for killing them in a scenario. De Gaulle as he is currently is only encourages fighting him to a point he runs away to heal. There is little reason do anymore than that since there isn't anything gained from how much work it takes to kill him. I think tying some reward to killing a nemesis would be great to see. Stuff like possibly an extra commendation point, a stockpile of equipment, or just a bundle of prestige would I think be a big improvement. The second issue I have is that I think the nemesis do not need to be as tough to kill as they De Gaulle was. Being in strong tanks already, the prudent effect made him incredibly hard to actually kill and I don't think they need to that unkillable at least for now (maybe in 1943+ when we have hard hitting tanks like TIgers and Panthers they could use stuff like that).

One thing I disliked was how many commendation points were left over at the end of the campaign. I think it's good that people aren't required to get all the commendation points as sometimes you just aren't able to get them all. However, it also felt quite disappointing that the last 7-8 bonus objectives were utterly pointless to me once I had everything. I hope something could be done to convert extra commendation at the end of a campaign into something else. Maybe you could have a shop where we could restock some of our captured equipment? Even just giving us like 500 prestige for each commendation point left over would be nice to see.

In terms of the scenarios here's my thoughts
Fornebu - Fun starting scenario. Not hard but the several layers of secrets was actually super cool. I figured the fort was hiding something but I never expected saving the blucher to actually matter (even though it doesn't end up changing anything gameplay wise).

Undisclosed Location CZ - Training scenarios are awesome to see. Helped a lot in giving us the units needed to fight with the specific units that were required to really handle the coming scenarios.

Valkenberg Raid - A nice set piece that was fun to play. The hidden cache was disappointing since it gave pretty much useless equipment but at the very least it was impossible to miss. It balances out but I personally prefer hidden caches to always have something worthwhile in them.

Grebbeberg - Another easy scenario with the only hard part being taking down the 20 strength bunker and the surronding units.

Eben Emael - Actually had to restart this because the single armor unit broke the encirclement and I couldn't reclose on the fort. After I knew about that it was much easier. This path is easily the much harder path since the bonus objectives were actually defended competently.

Hannut - The first real scenario of the campaign and a massive step up in difficulty. I had to restart this twice after seeing the intial fight not going well for me. Once I got 88s down and quickly wiped the artillery around Hannut out this was a lot easier. The bonus objective/hidden cache were also quite difficult to get until I used my veteran paratroops to assist in taking them.

Sedan - Felt quite easy as French resistance was mostly scattered and mostly passive. The 1st Panzer on my playthroughs both times pretty much had taken sedan barring a few infantry so it was quite easy to take that objective. I liked how many Hidden Caches were scattered around and that they all had unique and possibly useful equpiment. The unique objective was also super cool to see. I played before it got changed with that sationary tank which I think will make it a bit less interesting but I strongly want more unique stuff like this.

Arras - The British were arguably easier than the French since their heavy Matildas weren't as good as Char B1s but they still had to be respected. The 7th Panzer was quite capable and I only offered some air support to help them out. Overall it was a fun scenario that felt good difficulty wise.

Lille - I went for a full encirclement route and that made the scenario quite easy. The 7th Panzer did decently but I had to dedicate a more serious air force to make sure they were ok. It was frustrating that the the encirclement ring wasn't visible at all times. Otherwise pretty easy.

Dunkirk - A cool, unique air only scenario. Was quite fun and the sheer amount of stuff that needed to be handled was an interesting puzzle. I had 3 restarts as I figured out the correct targets and way to go about it. Enjoyed this a lot.

Abbeville - I would say this is probably the hardest scenario in the campaign and I one of the few scenarios I soured on. The 7th Panzer preformed poorly as about 15ish turns into the scenario they went to reinforce and never moved out again. Plus the random attack waves all spawned facing the 7th Panzer and created this massive deathball that was not fun to face. I had to restart several times entirely due to the randomness and AI which was something I really did not enjoy. Even on my winning run I barely got the bonus objective due to the lack of the AI helping in the north, having to deal with the 4th armored division in the center, and having keep a garrison in the southeast side to deal with the British and stray French units. Overall I think if the waves had to spawn more scattered and couldn't randomly decide to stack and there were improvements to the AI to not be as passive I would like this a lot more. Right now though I ain't looking forward to this in my second playthrough.

Neufchateau - I think this was a relatively fun scenario with a very intersting bonus and the only real sticking point was De Gaulle. With how hard it was to kill him and Gualle being a super stubborn defender of the city it was my least favorite encounter with him. I eventually got him stuff and shot him to death with 88s but I did not enjoy having to put so much effort (and some hefty pretsige into reinforcemnets) in order to really get the bonus.

Jersey (Training) - A nice scenario to train up extra ground units in the run up to sealion. I do wish there was the ability to train up an air unit seeing as how strong the enemy air force would end up being. If someone was a bit lacking in their fighter experience or lacked heroes I could see Sealion being way way harder.

Dover - Dover was a wake up call for the amount/quality of air power I would be facing and after learning about/dealing with that it was quite an easy scenario. The ground forces were mostly passive and no navy to face made the landings much easier.

Brighton - I was expecting a massive fight of armor but in the end I kinda just bottle necked them at the river and smashed them with little effort. I was surprised that the Blucher showing up even though in the end the entire navy got smashed without any hope. The only thing I really didn't like was that the sea force got super aggressive and harassed my ground forces all along the coast and even quite a ways into the land (the carriers kept patrolling close to the coastline that made the planes able to strike deep).

Epsom - This was the only scenario I couldn't make all the bonus objectives happen because of the nature of the spawn waves. In the eastern side it seemed several spawn waves stacked up but were bottled necked and stalemated for pretty much the entire scenario. It made it impossible to get those 2 dug in positions held by commonwealth forces becuase there was just way to many units to fight through while also having to push into loindon and across the rest of the map. I really did not like that RNG seemingly stopped me from getting the bonus objective. Otherwise the scenario was very fun and the great west areodome had a very interesting hidden cache!

Portsmouth - This would be my favorite scenario if the Royal Navy was toned down a little bit as they hit ungodly hard and I essenitally had to wait to attack until I sunk them all because otherwise my infantry and tanks were losing 2-3 health per attack of the enemy ships. If thbey were like 1-2 stars I think it would've been less annoying. Otherwise I really liked the fact I needed to breakout by holding against a massive attack force while grinding into Portsmouth itself.

Pindus - A great scenario and I think a massive improvement of how smaller nations were handled over the previous Finland scenarios. The Italians were incompetent but their extra bodies were important in stalling out the attack. Mountain Troops were very important for this scenario and although this doesn't relate to anything in the campaign I feel like the alpine trait after the buff makes them a bit to lopsided when fighting in mountains. Even pioneres have a hard time fighting them and those are insanely powerful infantry units. I hope it get slightly toned down at some point so it's not so oppressive in combat. Although it for sure needs to remain strong.

Valona - The last scenario is also a pretty easy one. I pulled the Italian forces back a bit and dug in along a few choke points and the Greeks never got to move past that. They had no tools to move tanks and my rocket artillery + mountain troops shut down any close terrain advances the Greeks moved through. The flame tanks from commendations are cool but were hard to use in this scenario so I assume we'll be getting a lot more use from them in 1941. And I tried to not to rant again but I hope flame tanks could be made a little better in general as they feel very niche outside of when you stack a god hero set on them, something like butcher (+5 attack against infantry) I think could be a great addition so they deal more damage specifically to the high health infantry units without changing any other attacks for them.


Overall, AO 1940 imo was the best campaign put out so far in the PzC2 and I hope we get more like it. The unique units, the varied scenarios, all the new traits (I really hope this becomes a staple of all the dlcs coming out), and other things made me really enjoy my time with the DLC. For sure there are things that need further tweaking (nemesis as I talked about above) but the upsides were far greater than the few downsides. I'm very excited for future content I'll be here for 1941 and beyond :steamhappy: