Bialystok-Minsk_Soviet Corps Campaign

[Kriegsheld]

I decided to play the Soviet Corps campaign on Panzercorps Wehrmacht. I'm shocked at the results I get consistently. The German units are not that much stronger than the Russian ones. Many times, the Russians are stronger, including Initiative, yet the Russians consistently get bad combat results. They don't even get anything near what the combat results estimator says. It feels like the editor of this campaign wrote something into the settings that disadvantage the Russians. I'm seeing this most clearly in the Bialystok scenario. Even the Russian fighters when they have a 10 strength to 5 strength advantage and the planes are pretty similar are getting ridiculously lousy results. And the KV1 tanks can hardly even dent the much weaker PZIIIs. I've tried saving and restarting to see if I was just getting an unfortunate modifier, but all it does on occasion is to deliver less ridiculous bad results for the Russians. Can anyone tell me what is going on with this campaign? Thanks.

[faos333]

"It feels like the editor of this campaign wrote something into the settings that disadvantage the Russians" I have not played it, but from what you said it feels like it

[turn4441]

The biggest issue is a lack of experience. Even though you are given numerous auxiliary units in that scenario, they all have zero experience while all the German units start at 100 and so, get a +1 to initiative, attack, and defense. The Soviet fighters are not nearly as good the German ones and with no experience, they don't fare well. Some of your tanks may have a star of experience, but as it is only the 4th scenario and some of your units will be new, many won't have much experience at this point. And then, of course, there is the random number generator. Check the attack logs before (ctrl-click) and after (L) to see why the results are what they are. If it's too annoying, you can always use dice chess or other setting.

[fgiannet]

I feel your frustration and remember clearly similar experiences when I first started playing Soviet Corps. The games RNG seems designed to put out a certain amount of high results. This becomes more obvious with Soviet Corps because, as you said, the units are clearly stronger. Losing three Pz-III units to a T-34 doesn’t seem so bad as losing three KV-1s to a Pz II but they both could have been caused by RNG results of 96, 96, 98 out of ten (and everything gets a 5% chance to kill). We only look at the KV-1 result because it looks so egregious but there seems to be many results like that.
A 5% chance to kill should roughly correlate to 1 kill in 20 shots but the opposite seems to happen frequently. Often it kills 1 in 10 shots. Attack that unit and bring it down to 5 (now it should be one kill in 4 turns) and the unit will still manage to kill one every turn because those >94 RNG results still seem to show up (sometimes it feels like they increase). We also notice this much more when we are on the defensive because we do not control follow up moves. The aircraft is another story because the German aircraft with experience is far and away stronger than early Soviet (antiaircraft is the key). This is all my humble opinion of course.
But I am a great fan of Soviet Corps. Everything is designed to make the game more intense. I did stop attacking the Germans in 1941 only if I could afford to lose or it needed to be done (even a suppressed German infantry unit with two shots remaining usually manages to get a hit on a T-34). I have played Soviet Corps with 6 different levels of historical abstractions and have learned a great deal about history and strategy/tactics each and every time.

You are right (your frustration is justified) but stick with it (on paper things should have gone a lot better for the historical Soviets as well). You will develop some new and interesting strategies to deal with the situations presented. In time you will be leading a Soviet Steamroller yourself.

I hope this humble opinion helps you enjoy the campaign and I am always happy to talk further about Soviet Corps.

[fgiannet]

I decided to play the Soviet Corps campaign on Panzercorps Wehrmacht. I'm shocked at the results I get consistently. The German units are not that much stronger than the Russian ones. Many times, the Russians are stronger, including Initiative, yet the Russians consistently get bad combat results. They don't even get anything near what the combat results estimator says. It feels like the editor of this campaign wrote something into the settings that disadvantage the Russians. I'm seeing this most clearly in the Bialystok scenario. Even the Russian fighters when they have a 10 strength to 5 strength advantage and the planes are pretty similar are getting ridiculously lousy results. And the KV1 tanks can hardly even dent the much weaker PZIIIs. I've tried saving and restarting to see if I was just getting an unfortunate modifier, but all it does on occasion is to deliver less ridiculous bad results for the Russians. Can anyone tell me what is going on with this campaign? Thanks.

If it gets too frustrating you can enable, as turn4441 intelligently suggested, dice chess (predicted results always happen with a small variance) or chess (only predicted results happen). These can be enabled right in the middle of the mission with a cheat code and then disabled later on (say in 1944) with the same cheat code.

I hope you have fun which ever way you decide to play it.

[turn4441]

I watched my replay (field marshal) of that scenario from 3.5 years ago and while I lost one of my pathetic fighters and a new infantry, I didn't think it was too bad, although it was a major escalation in enemy numbers as I ended up destroying 56 units after only 29 in the Winter War and only 55 at Smolensk in the next scenario. I didn't have that much armor trouble. Lucky? While a KV-1A looks impressive, it's attack isn't much better (if at all) than a Pz III or IV. It does have better defense though. Make sure your tanks aren't in close terrain and have arty backup. Also use the switchable AA as antitank guns occasionally. One easy way to whittle theirs down (gamey, but maybe they had a dumb general at the time) is to let them take the victory flag on the river hex (they will use armor), have a KV-1A deployed beside it with arty backup and you can easily kill their unit. Then have a recon close by, take the hex back, retreat the recon back behind and the next turn they will sacrifice another tank to retake the hex. You can do this numerous times.

You need to be very judicious with your use of fighters. Try to use them when the German's are refueling or after they've been hammered by AA. Use fighter traps if possible. Of all the campaigns, Soviet Corps was the one that I easily used the least air units and by far the most AA units. Their fighters (and infantry for that matter) don't get decent for quite a while. However, the AA is pretty good and a lot cheaper than constantly repairing/replacing fighters.

On the plus side, Soviet Corps is the most generous campaign as far as prestige. Actually, I think it reflects the Soviet weaknesses/strengths quite well, much like the weak armor does in much of U.S. Corps. Both help give the game more variety.