Locarnus Addon 2026-01, for Battlefield Europe, OC, AK, SC and Grand Campaign East

[goose_2]

By the by, what happened to the Scenario's strat bombers? There were 4 in Soren's playthrough but as of yet I do not think I have seen a single one?

[Locarnus]

<< Ongoing BE + Locarnus Addon playthrough by eskuche >>
It is a classic picture and text AAR on Field Marshal Rommel difficulty (player gets only half experience, half prestige):
https://tinyurl.com/y8euym2r


<< Ongoing Grand Campaign East Locarnus Addon playthrough by goose_2 >>
Youtube playthrough on double Field Marshal, double Rommel difficulty plus rule of one and no super heroes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFieC-H ... 61Emy2K5bz


<< Ongoing Originial Campaign Locarnus Addon playthrough by goose_2 >>
Youtube playthrough on double Rommel difficulty plus rule of one and no super heroes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0UmJXn ... FssRp8ZU5p

ad 3: Sanctuary cites could be something like Minsk, Kiev and the whole Crimea?

I would consider like the major Russian cities Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Mogilev, Bryansk, etc. Perhaps all major victory hexes. Simply add a +1 strength trigger before the -1 strength trigger. Or honestly I would just redesign it with some zone painting, excluding those cities. If you changed winter attrition to be more geographically realistic, it could be like 4 turns Pripyat marshes and north, then every other turn for two turns south of that.

Edit: Heavily suggest not deploying Africa SAS until guaranteed winter turns are over. Having super vision into the snowstorm is a bit nonsensical

I very much like the zone instead of radius from Tula idea. Afair there were some complaints a few years ago that the effect was not actually at the border as written. So using a zone would fix that and could also exclude eg Crimea.
Having many cities excluded could make a significant difference for first time players compared to players who already know the mechanic.
Currently at least the player has to significantly rail back expensive troops in order to protect them, but with those sanctuary cities the opportunity cost is much lower. Making it much easier for non-blind players to also preserve overstrength.

I was also wrong about Warsaw. You can bring 36 units like Vilna and is a huge focus on arty blasting. I will not be looking to update any artys until after that battle, and plan on bringing every single one of them to get exercise. I am realizing that getting to 5th star experience is going to be harder than I hoped, where as 4th stars is very attainable.

Not sure what else I can do to try and get units to 5 stars except with arty training, so since my infantry are at 4 stars continue to work with them to get the 3rd hero allocation then switch them to arty for final 5th star training, while other arty's trade up for infantry kill training, and just switch back and forth between them.

Something similar may need to be considered with my air force, as it scares me how willing they are to attack my 4 starred fighters.

At least more and more units are getting almost or over 1000 kills for 3rd hero reaping in 45.

I will post the final Moscow 41 for Friday, but will not be on chat as will be in office.

Imho a few units that already have 460 experience or so could realistically be trained to 5 stars with arty and strats.
But trying to train units in the 400 - 430 experience range would imho be counterproductive. They not only can't reach 5 stars, they also take away training time from those units that might.


Aircraft training is pretty much set, since you absolutely decided against using more strat bombers for training.

Now it is about getting Slender to 5 stars as soon as possible (the only unit that both can and has to reach 5 stars).
Fighter Ace can reach 4 stars as is, but probably will need fighter cover.

CouchOffiziell getting a hero would be nice, but not necessary if he ends up as a strat bomber anyway. And he has to become a strat bomber to get him at least to 4 stars. Your choice if you want to make life harder for yourself by trying to get a second hero with him before the conversion to strat.
He 177 strat is of course an option, but the much less damage dealing Ar 234 can switch between strat and tac mode (jet bomber available first scenario of GC45east), if you really refuse to give up on getting kills with him. As a jet bomber it does not have any defensive fire, but at least it has very high air defense rating.

With Slender not ready for fighter duty, RMA901 could take the Me 262 in the last scenario of GC44east, if you want any chance for RMA901 to get a second hero.
Slender could either take the other Me 262 model once he is ready, or wait until near the end of GC 45east (Budapest 1945) for the other, weaker but much cheaper He 162 pulse-jet fighter to become available.

By the by, what happened to the Scenario's strat bombers? There were 4 in Soren's playthrough but as of yet I do not think I have seen a single one?

Fewer than 100 Pe-8 were produced.
I thus gave its unitID to the Tu-2 tactical bomber, which was numerous (>5k) but strangely absent from the unmodded game. The Pe-8 got a new unitID, though mainly for Battlefield Europe purposes.
Thus the Tu-2 shows up in the grand campaign where the scenario designers put the Pe-8.

[Locarnus]

The main thing is not to let the player get bored !
[...]
And I really hope that someday there will be an Asia Battlefield add-on, because from 1937 to 1945, events there were no less significant and bloody than in Europe.

Many incoming changes to BE already, from eskuche playthrough feedback.

Imho the European theater simply has much more ground and air unit variety.
Especially due to Germany not yet grasping the advantages of mass production, unlike Soviet Union and USA.
While Japan and China lacked the industry for all that variety in terms of technical stuff, with Japan focusing their limited industry on the navy anyway.

Turn 14
Enemy Turn/Surrenders/Casualties (underlined < 50% str): First U-boat loss. One recon in AGN lost to two sudden tank attacks. Nope…crash again. Rewind. We get a defensive hero for our efforts.
Atlantic/Western: Retreat for a while and let the planes do their job. All subs are out of ammo with 191, 196, and 206 experience.

Crashes are very worrying.
Should not happen.

Are they always in the Allied turn?
If yes, do you remember which Allied units moved before the crash?

[bondjamesbond]

The main thing is not to let the player get bored !
[...]
And I really hope that someday there will be an Asia Battlefield add-on, because from 1937 to 1945, events there were no less significant and bloody than in Europe.

Many incoming changes to BE already, from eskuche playthrough feedback.

Imho the European theater simply has much more ground and air unit variety.
Especially due to Germany not yet grasping the advantages of mass production, unlike Soviet Union and USA.
While Japan and China lacked the industry for all that variety in terms of technical stuff, with Japan focusing their limited industry on the navy anyway.

https://ron84z.neocities.org/
I partly agree with you, but there was definitely more infantry there than in Europe. Maybe there weren't such grandiose large-scale tank battles as at Dubno and the Kursk Bulge, but there were Chinese Stalingrads.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Битва_ста_полков
https://ron84z.neocities.org/40/09/images/400920c

[goose_2]

I was also wrong about Warsaw. You can bring 36 units like Vilna and is a huge focus on arty blasting. I will not be looking to update any artys until after that battle, and plan on bringing every single one of them to get exercise. I am realizing that getting to 5th star experience is going to be harder than I hoped, where as 4th stars is very attainable.

Not sure what else I can do to try and get units to 5 stars except with arty training, so since my infantry are at 4 stars continue to work with them to get the 3rd hero allocation then switch them to arty for final 5th star training, while other arty's trade up for infantry kill training, and just switch back and forth between them.

Something similar may need to be considered with my air force, as it scares me how willing they are to attack my 4 starred fighters.

At least more and more units are getting almost or over 1000 kills for 3rd hero reaping in 45.

I will post the final Moscow 41 for Friday, but will not be on chat as will be in office.

Imho a few units that already have 460 experience or so could realistically be trained to 5 stars with arty and strats.
But trying to train units in the 400 - 430 experience range would imho be counterproductive. They not only can't reach 5 stars, they also take away training time from those units that might.


Aircraft training is pretty much set, since you absolutely decided against using more strat bombers for training.

Now it is about getting Slender to 5 stars as soon as possible (the only unit that both can and has to reach 5 stars).
Fighter Ace can reach 4 stars as is, but probably will need fighter cover.

CouchOffiziell getting a hero would be nice, but not necessary if he ends up as a strat bomber anyway. And he has to become a strat bomber to get him at least to 4 stars. Your choice if you want to make life harder for yourself by trying to get a second hero with him before the conversion to strat.
He 177 strat is of course an option, but the much less damage dealing Ar 234 can switch between strat and tac mode (jet bomber available first scenario of GC45east), if you really refuse to give up on getting kills with him. As a jet bomber it does not have any defensive fire, but at least it has very high air defense rating.

With Slender not ready for fighter duty, RMA901 could take the Me 262 in the last scenario of GC44east, if you want any chance for RMA901 to get a second hero.
Slender could either take the other Me 262 model once he is ready, or wait until near the end of GC 45east (Budapest 1945) for the other, weaker but much cheaper He 162 pulse-jet fighter to become available.

You gave me a hard pill to swallow, that I think you are unfortunately right about. I was always thinking that I had time to train my units and get them ready for the final 2 battles in 45, but you are probably right about getting them to 5 stars and as such I will need to rethink my plans for final training. Sheesh, nothing like being a realistic wet blanket to just send me in a tizzy.

Cursory question?

I will get Brodrick to 4th star in Vilna, which i was thinking training him as best I can as an arty to try and get as much experience as possible before 45, but should I instead switch Paul Wilde for the last 2 to try and get him to 4th star exp?

I was trying to focus on him getting a 3rd hero as he is doing so well as a Hetzer, but maybe I need to get absolutely evry one of my se units to 4 stars ASAP?

[Locarnus]

https://ron84z.neocities.org/
I partly agree with you, but there was definitely more infantry there than in Europe. Maybe there weren't such grandiose large-scale tank battles as at Dubno and the Kursk Bulge, but there were Chinese Stalingrads.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Битва_ста_полков
https://ron84z.neocities.org/40/09/images/400920c

I agree, Asia and Pacific certainly have more infantry, but imho PzC engine and visuals are mainly good for the equipment focus of combined arms variety (contrary to the organizationally focused approach, which is much more prevalent).
So eg to represent an army corps in the Panzer Corps engine, you could use 3 infantry units, 1 artillery unit, 1 AT unit, 1 AA unit, with the organizational HQ being abstracted away.
While in organizationally focused games you just put 3 infantry divisions and 1 HQ, with all the arty, AT and AA being included within the infantry divisions and thus abstracted away. Like in the Strategic Command or War in the East games.

But that equipment focus requires more equipment variety to be interesting for gameplay.
Eg the player can decide to make a self-propelled StuG III in arty mode protect an anti-air gun that is used on the front line in ground attack mode.
That is imho the core of the Panzer Corps gameplay.
With another pillar of PzC being the unit upgrade and core composition choices, taking that unit variety into account.


On the other hand, the Pacific/Asian theater requires an engine that does well with logistics and naval combat (combined with air combat). Imho the Panzer Corps engine is particularly bad at those two (or three), with naval combat being hard for any turn based game anyway. Or at least I have not seen any turn based game doing naval combat particularly well...
Strategic Command has a Pacific theater in its World War scale, though imho that game series hast its own problems.

You gave me a hard pill to swallow, that I think you are unfortunately right about. I was always thinking that I had time to train my units and get them ready for the final 2 battles in 45, but you are probably right about getting them to 5 stars and as such I will need to rethink my plans for final training. Sheesh, nothing like being a realistic wet blanket to just send me in a tizzy.

Cursory question?

I will get Brodrick to 4th star in Vilna, which i was thinking training him as best I can as an arty to try and get as much experience as possible before 45, but should I instead switch Paul Wilde for the last 2 to try and get him to 4th star exp?

I was trying to focus on him getting a 3rd hero as he is doing so well as a Hetzer, but maybe I need to get absolutely evry one of my se units to 4 stars ASAP?

I mean, I'm not certain about the cutoffs and how much experience you can still gather if you focus on that.
But since you also have units that are not even on 4 stars yet, you already have to focus on training those and the few others that are already close to 5 stars.
The "watering can" principle of distributing experience has its merits, but mainly in (practically) open ended situations. While here there is a clear deadline ahead and in PzC a 493 experience unit is technically the same as a 400 experience unit for combat in Berlin.
If it then requires effort (or rather opportunity cost) to bring a unit from 400 to 493 xp, then that effort is totally misplaced and would have been much better spent on getting 3 other units eg from 470 to 500 experience.

1) Imho first priority is getting all units using initiative to 5 stars, which can realistically get there. Since 5th star gives ini bonus on top of attack and defense bonus.

2) Second priority get every unit to 4 stars.

3) Third priority would be getting second heroes.

While getting a third hero is imho no priority at all. It is simply a nice to have luxury if and only if all other priorities are dealt with.

[Locarnus]

Edit: Heavily suggest not deploying Africa SAS until guaranteed winter turns are over. Having super vision into the snowstorm is a bit nonsensical

Would certainly make more sense in terms of in-game events.
I just can't help the feeling that the British counterattack would have been much less dangerous without the AI having that unfair advantage. And that this unfair sight advantage partially balances out the fact that Panzer Corps just does not handle logistics issues at all. With those being one of the historical reasons that made the British counterattack more potent (or the German situation less tenable).
Perhaps unfairness cancels unfairness?

Turn 15
Refit/redeploy/Heroes: New semovente, M14/41, Sdkfz 252 recons. Massive redeployment now that winter is over.
Upgrades/purchases/repairs: Final winter repairs across the board.
Prestige: 1377. Hopefully this will go only up from here.

Looks like everything is stable and you got rather well through the winter, with decent prestige to properly start into the spring offensive.

Turn 16
Enemy Turn/Surrenders/Casualties (underlined < 50% str): Lost the Finnish Jager with only 1 strength, but it accomplished the task of taking out the critical enemy artillery. Fairly good defensive casualties inflicted on the northern front.
Atlantic/Western: DD/BB/convoy in Mediterranean ambushed. One DD destroyed on shipping lanes. One DD destroyed at Tobruk, and last BB HMS Queen Mary weakened and finally some surrenders set up for next turn.

Refit/redeploy/Heroes: More reinforcement of the frontline. Few more cloudy/snow turns.
Upgrades/purchases/repairs: N/A
Prestige: 1312

Mediterranean theater seems to be much better, British counteroffensive is practically repulsed.
Leningrad siege nearly resumed, still quite a few enemy tanks around Moscow. Unfortunately looks roughly 2 turns of winter will be missing for crossing the Don near Rostov while frozen.
But always a tough call whether to push there, at the cost of losing strength on expensive units due to the winter effect.

Turn 17
Enemy Turn/Surrenders/Casualties (underlined < 50% str): Lost a Romanian infantry in Crimea. Battleship and tank pushed it into Maxim Gorky.

Some forward motion. Need to upgrade IIIJ/1s and shuffling them back slowly.

Waiting for enemy fighters to sortie out.
Refit/redeploy/Heroes: N/A
Upgrades/purchases/repairs: Few remaining Moscow front line units getting repair.s
Prestige: 1687 (surrenders restarting again!)
Balance: I am very scared of approaching Western fighters. I saw a 3.7 star Polish fighter. Oof. I think the AI is out of prestige…they spent a LOT on overstrengthening units and declined to repair the Tobruk hurt units.

Panzer III upgrade to the longer 5cm variant now (still decent against soft targets), or wait until the long barrel, multi-purpose but weaker against soft targets StuG III becomes available a few months later? I like those dilemmas.

Thinking a bit about your observations that the AI is running out of prestige.
It might be that the 150% AI experience boost from the difficulty setting has pushed a sufficient number of their units to a point where they can take one more strength of even more expensive overstrength.
I guess the AI is terrible with prioritizing replacements in the BE setting. So it will be interesting to see that play out.

[eskuche]

1. I'm not sure I can breech the Mareth line with no access by ships and with only 2-range Italian artillery. It seems like it would take up to 1944, and I'm sure the units could be put to better use elsewhere.

2. I was really curious why my unit baiting wasn't working so I looked for the SAS unit (with cheats), which is now gone?! I guess that adds some uncertainty in terms of *ahem* abusing the AI, but was completely unexpected.

3. Yes, I think I should have kept my 13 str Morser on the frontlines. It would've helped a lot and I believe should skirt the winter rules (in spirit, at least).

4. I checked some AARs, and it seems Case Blue extended till 1943 for some people, so I think I'm still ahead of schedule a bit.

5. Perhaps elite/overstrength prices can be revisited. Since we have so few core units, and really the only time the player will be elite reinforcing is before the prestige wipe in add-on, I would suggest a minor reduction in elite replacements by say 10% and an increase in overstrength pricing (contrary to grand campaign) to discourage AI use of it. If you significantly increase OS cost, maybe giving the AI a bigger baseline income can be useful to avoid the problems above (and get me more surrender prestige, heh).

[Locarnus]

1. I'm not sure I can breech the Mareth line with no access by ships and with only 2-range Italian artillery. It seems like it would take up to 1944, and I'm sure the units could be put to better use elsewhere.

2. I was really curious why my unit baiting wasn't working so I looked for the SAS unit (with cheats), which is now gone?! I guess that adds some uncertainty in terms of *ahem* abusing the AI, but was completely unexpected.

3. Yes, I think I should have kept my 13 str Morser on the frontlines. It would've helped a lot and I believe should skirt the winter rules (in spirit, at least).

4. I checked some AARs, and it seems Case Blue extended till 1943 for some people, so I think I'm still ahead of schedule a bit.

5. Perhaps elite/overstrength prices can be revisited. Since we have so few core units, and really the only time the player will be elite reinforcing is before the prestige wipe in add-on, I would suggest a minor reduction in elite replacements by say 10% and an increase in overstrength pricing (contrary to grand campaign) to discourage AI use of it. If you significantly increase OS cost, maybe giving the AI a bigger baseline income can be useful to avoid the problems above (and get me more surrender prestige, heh).

ad 1: I agree, Suez and beyond is a luxury target. Nice to have, but not cost efficient to bind resources for it.

ad 2: Ah, seems McGuba put a script somewhere to disband it even in 1942. I noticed it not being there in an attempt years ago, but only after I had taken Egypt and parts of Arabia, so I assumed that it becoming useless anyway was the trigger.
On that attempt I spent so much on going from Tobruk to Iraq, that I stalled far too early on the Eastern Front.

ad 3: With the next Addon update only the specific aux Karl-Gerät and all the 28cm rail arty will be exempt from the winter strength drain. By putting those 28cm rail arty in the armored train class for Battlefield Europe main scenario, I can target that class with the editor scripts. Thus it works for both the aux and any purchased 28cm rail arty.

ad 4: Yep, an early crossing when the Don is still frozen is possible, but takes away forces form other areas plus the winter strength drain. Historically the Axis reach the area pretty early but then had to turn around before trying again. Only crossing the Don near the end of July 42.
There is some more resistance on the road to Baku compared to earlier BE scenarios, but the oil is still well worth it.

ad 5: Great idea. Making in scenario elite replacements cheaper could also solve the issue for the non-BE campaigns. Currently most players do not use elite replacements during the normal campaigns (except for special situations like Napoleon difficulty with rule of 1).
The cost difference compared to the deployment phase is just too big.
By lowering the scenario elite replacement cost by 10 percentage points, from current 75% to 65%, the difference to deployment phase elite reinforcements (50%) would then be 15 percentage points. Which is the same as the difference for regular reinforcements with the Addon (25% in scenario, 10% during deployment phase).

As a start I would only go for the cheaper in scenario elite replacement costs and see how that works out, before touching the overstrength costs as well.
So far, overstrength is very rarely given by players in BE, reducing the strategic options. Making the overstrength choice a bit cheaper during the scenario would make that option more viable, increasing choices.
Normal campaigns would be practically unaffected, since os would still be much cheaper during the deployment phase (and those costs are not altered).


So many great improvements, thank you very much for all the feedback!