Gameplay changes in 1.20

[fsx]

It will be an other game for me with these changes. Thats not criticism . Its a fact.
I am very curious, how I have to play AC. All these changes will expand PC's gameplay.

My thoughts about the changes:

Prestige soft cap

* Where I can find the current factor during playing? Perhaps it could be added in the tooltipp for prestige per turn.
* What shows prestige per turn? The max. prestige or the prestige I earn (= prestige per turn * factor)
* How many prestige I receive, if I sell a unit? With/without using the factor?
* For me, I have to change how I play PC. In DLC 45 I own 93 core units + 8 bonus units. I "collected" the captured units (not often used).
* I prefer to have a core that I could select using more infantery (in cities) or tanks. Some of the DLC scenarios have briefings with hints like "use (more) infantery..."
* If I remember right, in DLC's are messages with showing the amount of prestige. Is there a suggestion, how to write such things in future? Will these messages updated with 1.20?
* Are the 400 and 800 changeable in files? I did not find they in gamerules.pzdat. For each DLC / campaign separate? AC uses differnt entry points for the campaign. Could I set the caps for each entry point?

Upgrading a unit also adds replacements

* If I own a 500 exp unit with strenght 1, after upgrade it will be a 500 exp. unit with strength 10. Perhaps the units for replacement should have exp. 0. If you like to hold the experience for a unit you will upgrade, you have to buy elite replacements up to strength 10 and upgrade after that.
I know, this would complicate the upgrage/reinforcement/overstrength process. But its complicated also with these beta-changes (if I see it right). I have to use a sequence to spend minimal prestige.
1. upgrade
2. reinforcements
3. overstrength
And if prestige is short, its difficult to calculate: It is enough prestige for the action I am planning?
* Sometimes its cheaper to upgrade than to use elite replacements (upgrade in a serie). Example: Sidi Barrani. Cruiser MKI with 200 exp, str 7. Upgrade to MKIV: 23 prestige, elite replacements: 37. With strength 1, I have to spend 111!
* CHEATING CHANCE using up- and downgrades in a series: I could allways reinforce my MK IV for 23 exp. I upgrade it (back) to MK I (0 prestige) and after that I upgrade the unit to MK IV for 23 prestige.

Replacements come suppressed

* If I play defender, suppression doesn't work. Perhaps suppression should work not until end of turn. Better: Until end of enemies turn.

I think, some user created campaigns would be unplayable with these gameplay changes.
Is it possible to make a switch in gamerules.pzdat for using 1.13 or 1.20 gameplay?
Or provide a version 1.13 for download?
Or make the soft cap parameters adjustable!

Okay, overstrength-prestige I could adjust in gamerules.pzdat. And experience bonus in exp.pzdat.
If I could adjust the 2 parameters for prestige soft cap... - it would help so much for the "old" campaigns.

List of changes

* Are the new bonus/penalty in the combat-prediction window added?

- Artillery now has a -2 attack penalty for every hex of firing range beyond 1.
* Why not for AA and ships?
* Higher range - lower chance to hit. Should this be simulated with -2 attack/range?
* (What do you think about: higher precision if i shoot second time on a hex. The replay informations could provide this.)

- Close terrain now gives +5 defense bonus to ground units vs. fighter and tactical bomber attack.
* I have to change the composition of my force.

[Kamerer]

You know you are testing AK under one of the extra difficulties ... if it become to hard for you with the new changes go back to lower level of difficulty. That's what they are for after all.

What I have found after many betas is that if it's easy to win on Field Marshal, and marginal to win on rommel, then it is tuned about right for the majority of players. I have been testing that way a while and in general it has worked well. The problem is the new rules radically alter gameplay in past PC versions (vanilla, GGE, GCW). And they are possibly being imposed without being tested for them and their campaign design and turn limits. So a voice of overall observation is not a bad thing.

I think you are missing the concept of "testing" and comparisons to past benchmarks.

[Kamerer]

To follow up on my testing of 1.20 and past games, I've tried in all free time to keep playing AK under it. I've since payed from "Dash to the Wire" up through Suez.

To recap, 1.20 reduced me from almost clearing the map (recent experience), to barely getting a DV and missing some captures - same experience I had the first time playing it in AK beta 1. So in general, as a very experienced player, I can work with that, but I think for new players or even reasonably experienced players, that's going to be a shock when translated.

Generally, it goes about the same except a few turn slower to complete. This is not a big deal in AK since turn limits were vastly more generous than most GCE scenarios. However, Malta and Suez in particular were quite tight with DV's on only the last turn and with little or no margin to spare (only a favorable weather change at the next-to-last turn made Malta work out).

Now that heavy artillery is available, and effective rocket artillery, it's slowing but not as bad in earlier scenarios. That's mediated, also, by the rapid tech tree climb of AK vs. the Grand Campaigns. No way I would want to play them, especially '39 and '43, under 1.20 with existing turn limits, rommel or other. The distance factor, in particular, feels especially badly factored as the Axis used forward observer teams, too. It's over-done and feels very wrong.

I am also finding my units earning heroes at massively accelerated rates. So, possibly, that is offsetting some of the effect, once you are past the first two or three scenarios. I know AK very well and where I normally got first hereoes at Second Offensive, many (1/3 to 1/2 of my armour) got their 2nd heores their, instead. And correspondingly, I have even disbanded some 200/300 units ( one tank, one Stuka) as they accumulated very mediocre heroes and I knew I could earn the exp back fast and I could gamble on better heroes. Interesting new twist. And I don't think positive.

After Palestine, I don't recall any really "hard" scenarios in AK, it's just about managing prestige and strength on rommel, and playing smart, even Persia. So I may quit this and try '39 or '43 East with 1.20. Probably , this is quite silly. 1.20 doesn't work with the existing AC maps, past games, so it's probably a waste of time to play games under it? If there's a different iteration on the horizon, or something else helpful, guidance would be helpful.

[Rudankort]

Thanks for feedback. Just a quick comment: since 1.20 rules eliminate some loopholes which existed in 1.13, it is to be expected that the game will become harder than before. However, if the game is manageable on bonus difficulties (even if it is hard), it sounds like the right balance to me. Bonus difficulties are supposed to be "hard but manageable". On the other hand, if you can easily clear the map on Rommel, this strikes me as a wrong balance.

There is one more, final iteration coming in beta 4 this Friday, but I don't think we'll have a lot of time to test it. We better make the right decision now.

[deducter]

I don't think new players will be playing the game on Rommel. Bonus difficulties should be very challenging even for the best players.

There's a player who got somewhere like 30000 prestige in Rommel, using my equipment files, for GC39-42, using a combination of artillery and overstrength. I personally could find motivation to play with only -75% prestige, and even then I ended with about 6000ish prestige for 1943. There are players who destroyed post 1943 content on Manstein using the classic heavy armor + air power strategy, and ended up losing very few strength points. The old system very heavily promoted certain unit classes, and it'll just take time to adjust to the new changes.

Experienced players should try out MP a bit. The jump may prove very enlightening.

I personally don't think the prestige soft cap or increased OS cost should apply until General or higher. Colonel should remain pretty much the way it is in v1.13.

[Kamerer]

Thanks for feedback. Just a quick comment: since 1.20 rules eliminate some loopholes which existed in 1.13, it is to be expected that the game will become harder than before. However, if the game is manageable on bonus difficulties (even if it is hard), it sounds like the right balance to me. Bonus difficulties are supposed to be "hard but manageable". On the other hand, if you can easily clear the map on Rommel, this strikes me as a wrong balance.

There is one more, final iteration coming in beta 4 this Friday, but I don't think we'll have a lot of time to test it. We better make the right decision now.

On the other hand, if you can easily clear the map on Rommel, this strikes me as a wrong balance.

Fair enough! Very looking forward to beta 4, did not think you all were going to do one. Unfortunately you know that Friday starts US War Memorial Day weekend, so most US players will be tied up with family/holiday/etc all weekend.

PS which "loopholes" do you mean from 1.13? The main loophole I experienced there and have complained about before is that AI units will give up entrenchment to attack what they view as vulnerable units. Such as, I will create an "artillery triangle" - place one artillery unit or mediocre infantry unit in their spotting, and two artillery units behind it outside their spotting range. They will come out of 8 entrenchment to attack, then be decimated. Not smart, but useful tool. I do not view it as smart AI behavior - mostly giving up the entrenchment and I have whined about that since 1.13 beta.

[Kamerer]

There's a player who got somewhere like 30000 prestige in Rommel, using my equipment files, for GC39-42, using a combination of artillery and overstrength.

That might have been me, or someone a little better. Mostly I overstrengthed infantry and artillery, air to 11, and never armor, and cared only about preserving my core and not getting DVs at all. I do have the saved games somewhere. I was not quite that high with your file. I can usually get to early '43 with about 25,000 pp or more on Rommel with standard eqp file, and I got near that with yours. Early '43 is where your files start to really kick in, and '44 is where yours really starts to kill and get painful. I can take the stock GC on Rommel and keep a 20,000 pp "floor" through '43/'44 and start '45 with that. It takes a lot of work and knowledge of game traits, but can be done.

[Kamerer]

Oh, would it be possible to fix the autosave visuals in 1.20?

For example, since 1.12 or 1.13, if you load a saved turn (load autosave allies, for example), it skips showing recon, air and artillery moves. Also when opponent turn occurs, the counter bar runs twice. This started when the artillery order was moved up. It would be nice to see it in total.

[Razz1]

Thanks for feedback. Just a quick comment: since 1.20 rules eliminate some loopholes which existed in 1.13, it is to be expected that the game will become harder than before. However, if the game is manageable on bonus difficulties (even if it is hard), it sounds like the right balance to me. Bonus difficulties are supposed to be "hard but manageable". On the other hand, if you can easily clear the map on Rommel, this strikes me as a wrong balance.

There is one more, final iteration coming in beta 4 this Friday, but I don't think we'll have a lot of time to test it. We better make the right decision now.

Then, I would like to voice again:

Artillery is a little too weak vs entrenched units now. This includes tanks vs entrenched units, so entrenchment is a little too strong now.

[Delta66]

Even with the new 1.20 changes this seems very much the same game to me. I think they are more small refinements, than major gameplay changes, also I think they are going in the right direction. And I doubt any casual player will notice any change at all. You can still jump in the game and play barely reading the manual and with no knowledge of the precise game mechanisms. Actually if the changes are meaningful for a player, he is probably not a casual PzC player anymore.

Entrenchement:
It's tougher now, it seems manageable so far for the new scenarios. Not sure about the previous urban ones
Yet I think their should be a different max entrenchment level depending on the scenario. I mean that currently the max entrenchment levels of 8-9 are OK to portray Stalingrad style (or Kursk or Cassino) intense city fight, with heavily prepared fortifications. However I don't think it was the common type of defense encountered in most battles. Limiting entrenchement to 5-7 (considering the new rules)to depict non fortifications heavy battles would feel more appropriate for me.

Artillery:
Considering the time scale of the scenarios, a turn representing around a full day of real time or more. I think that range is irrelevant at this scale. The artillery unit won't fire for the whole turn duration, and will have more than enough time to fire spotting rounds and correct fire, before firing the full barrage.
At any rate long barreled artillery canons are built for long distances fire, howitzer might be less accurate. But if we considered that the main purpose of artillery is to cause suppression, and not directly to inflict casualties (which I believe is a very good model), accuracy is not such a factor for suppression, as most troops will looks for covers whether the fire is accurate or not.
Finally if range should matter, it would rather be the range from the forward observer to the target, rather than the range from the gun to the target. Firing accurately deep behind enemy lines is certainly more difficult.

If you think artillery is too powerful reducing the SA and HA a little sound s enough to me.
Have you taken into account how efficiency reduction with range would have the few 5 or 6 hexes ranges railway guns?

So far considering the combat engine and the units data, having a lot of artillery units seems a good strategy. Roughly 1/4 of my grounds units are artillery. Not counting airplanes, which are a sort of vertical mobile artillery. Overall this gives a WWI feeling and seems to much if I compare this to most WWII order of battles.
Maybe reducing the arillery values (a little) would be a good idea. Balancing this with an increased bonus for mass attack would gives a better WWII feeling for mobile battles.

Difficulty levels:
As they are, I think they are poorly calibrated. I've you run a poll, about which level(s) palyers use?
5 dificulty levels should be enough to satisfy every players strength.
Someone comfortable at Colonel sould have no difficulty jumping directly to FM. I suggest changing General to FM, and making the new FM more Rommel style . Actually Rommel with -10% turns would be fine. - 5 turns make it almost impossible for the shorter scenarios.

Playing through the AC campaign at FM, I've got only Triumphs so far, even playing the scenarios for the first time, this is not very challenging and reduce the replay value.

This leads to another issue, the scenarios outcomes are coarsely grained, with Loss, Victory, Triumph. As some others mentionned many players consider Triumph as the basic outcome. A finer evaluation of the performance would be a great improvment. Prestige serving as a currency doen't work so well as evaluating players performances, as would a High Score in an arcade game.

[deducter]

Artillery:
Considering the time scale of the scenarios, a turn representing around a full day of real time or more. I think that range is irrelevant at this scale. The artillery unit won't fire for the whole turn duration, and will have more than enough time to fire spotting rounds and correct fire, before firing the full barrage.
At any rate long barreled artillery canons are built for long distances fire, howitzer might be less accurate. But if we considered that the main purpose of artillery is to cause suppression, and not directly to inflict casualties (which I believe is a very good model), accuracy is not such a factor for suppression, as most troops will looks for covers whether the fire is accurate or not.
Finally if range should matter, it would rather be the range from the forward observer to the target, rather than the range from the gun to the target. Firing accurately deep behind enemy lines is certainly more difficult.

If you think artillery is too powerful reducing the SA and HA a little sound s enough to me.
Have you taken into account how efficiency reduction with range would have the few 5 or 6 hexes ranges railway guns?

Realistic or not, the old artillery system of moving up a Wurfrahmen and instantly suppressing an 8 entrenchment unit was problematic. Two barrages from almost any OS artillery will reduce a 8 entrenchment unit down to fully suppressed. I dislike that system, in which artillery is the god of close terrain combat, when in fact the opposite is true in reality. The new system at least makes it much harder to fully suppress entrenched units in close terrain, although it is also somewhat less effective in open ground.

So far considering the combat engine and the units data, having a lot of artillery units seems a good strategy. Roughly 1/4 of my grounds units are artillery. Not counting airplanes, which are a sort of vertical mobile artillery. Overall this gives a WWI feeling and seems to much if I compare this to most WWII order of battles.
Maybe reducing the arillery values (a little) would be a good idea. Balancing this with an increased bonus for mass attack would gives a better WWII feeling for mobile battles.

1/4 of units are still artillery? Is this because of defensive fire? I think the idea here is that artillery should be less desirable, not more.

[Delta66]

for AC so far,
1st artillery, #2 Fort Capuzzo
2nd Artillery, #3 Battle of Girba
3rd Artillery, #8 Beda Fomm

Beaufigher, #6 Sidi Barani
Stirling, #7 Bardia

Playing at FM with only strength 10 units. The pp start to get out of control after Sidi Barani, I don't understand why I get a massive +2000 pp between the end of Sidi Barani and the next scenario? and again +1700 after Beda Fomm.

[Zhivago]

Artillery:
Considering the time scale of the scenarios, a turn representing around a full day of real time or more. I think that range is irrelevant at this scale. The artillery unit won't fire for the whole turn duration, and will have more than enough time to fire spotting rounds and correct fire, before firing the full barrage.
At any rate long barreled artillery canons are built for long distances fire, howitzer might be less accurate. But if we considered that the main purpose of artillery is to cause suppression, and not directly to inflict casualties (which I believe is a very good model), accuracy is not such a factor for suppression, as most troops will looks for covers whether the fire is accurate or not.
Finally if range should matter, it would rather be the range from the forward observer to the target, rather than the range from the gun to the target. Firing accurately deep behind enemy lines is certainly more difficult.

If you think artillery is too powerful reducing the SA and HA a little sound s enough to me.
Have you taken into account how efficiency reduction with range would have the few 5 or 6 hexes ranges railway guns?

Realistic or not, the old artillery system of moving up a Wurfrahmen and instantly suppressing an 8 entrenchment unit was problematic. Two barrages from almost any OS artillery will reduce a 8 entrenchment unit down to fully suppressed. I dislike that system, in which artillery is the god of close terrain combat, when in fact the opposite is true in reality. The new system at least makes it much harder to fully suppress entrenched units in close terrain, although it is also somewhat less effective in open ground.

So far considering the combat engine and the units data, having a lot of artillery units seems a good strategy. Roughly 1/4 of my grounds units are artillery. Not counting airplanes, which are a sort of vertical mobile artillery. Overall this gives a WWI feeling and seems to much if I compare this to most WWII order of battles.
Maybe reducing the arillery values (a little) would be a good idea. Balancing this with an increased bonus for mass attack would gives a better WWII feeling for mobile battles.

1/4 of units are still artillery? Is this because of defensive fire? I think the idea here is that artillery should be less desirable, not more.

I don't have a problem with an artillery having to hit an entrenched soft target 2 times (or even in some cases more) for suppression, but artillery is being marginalized out of the game, especially artillery with a greater range. Why bother with an artillery piece with a range of 3 when its effectiveness is nerfed down so much? I'm not an artillery expert, but I am sure a shell fired from an artillery piece that can travel three hexes (or more) can probably do quite devastating damage. If artillery is going to be penalized, or weakened, weaken the wurfranmen. Put a penalty on that specific class of rocket artillery, not an across-the board penalty. And I still think that ANY artillery "adjustments/penalties" should be limited to General difficulty level or higher.

[Delta66]

Entrenchment:

If you improve the value of entrenchments while also reducing the arillery effectiveness, it will propably significantly skew the balance of existing scenarios. In particular, I think of GC Sevastopol 42, or Storming Stalingrad and Stalingrad Docks.

With 1.14, if you needed two artillery shots to completly suppress a entrenchment 8 target, it still leaves you with a entrenchment 6 to deal with. The suppression only help to reduce your casualties not to kill enemy steps. You could add a plane, or two if one was allready over the target, you are still at entrenchment 4. Add in the chance of rugged defense. you might still need more than one attack to clear the hex, and after the first attack you will have to suppress it all over again.
In effect it often takes more than one turn to clear a entranchment 8 hex, and that is if you use around 6 units for one targe thex. In effect this makes massively urban map quite hard to clear if you don't want to take too much casualties.

Realistic or not, the old artillery system of moving up a Wurfrahmen and instantly suppressing an 8 entrenchment unit was problematic. Two barrages from almost any OS artillery will reduce a 8 entrenchment unit down to fully suppressed. I dislike that system, in which artillery is the god of close terrain combat, when in fact the opposite is true in reality. The new system at least makes it much harder to fully suppress entrenched units in close terrain, although it is also somewhat less effective in open ground.

Wurfrahmen and Artillery:
If the problem come for the wurfrahmen, make change to this particular unit data, not necessarily to the whole artillery subsystem.
Actually as a range 2 weapon it will shine even more than before compared to the range 3+ guns.
The AI forts guns would be less of a threat with a range penalty, and the range 5 railways guns would become very unatttractive, considering they allready have low ammo and low rate of fire..

Rocket artillery was used for short time (around 10 seconds to fire the 6 rockets) , short range (2km), saturation barrages. The accuracy was poor even at such short ranges, it relied more on number of rockets fired at once. It had only a very basic vertical adjustement capability, nothing that compare to a gun aiming system. And it was slow to reload, making it poor for continuous fire.

So you can reduce the SA or HA a little, increasing the price would also be good but probably not a big a factor with pp a-plenty. A more radical change would be to reduce the ammo to 3, highlighing its powerful yet erratic nature. And also severly reducing its magic defensive fire value. As it is combining great mobility with powerful attack value make it a very good choice

I dislike that system, in which artillery is the god of close terrain combat, when in fact the opposite is true in reality

Actually wurfrahmen were very effective for Urban warfare. Close terrain means a lot of different things, artillery was particular effective vs wooded or hill areas.
For urban warfare, direct fire self propelled gun were more effective. At Stalingrad the Germans found the 75 mm Stug to be much too weak vs heavy fortifications. They had a dozen 150mm Stug 33B. But it was only after Stalingrad that they developped the more efficient 105 mmStuH42 and 150 mm Sturm PzIV.

Limiting the number of each type of unit in your core:
Another way to limit the abuse of very powerful units, would be to have a limit of each unit type allowed in your core. Most games that use a point based systems to build armies have some sort of rules and restrictions for army building, to keep the armies within reasonably historical boundaries, and for keeping some control on gameplay balance, hence the popular army lists found in most miniatures wargames.

Some players might not like it, but at least for modders it would be a great addition.

Typically a late war german unit will have 3 batteries of 105mm guns and one of 150mm guns (the Americans have a similar ratio), heavier caliber was much rarer, and even in 44-45 at least a batallions of Pz IV and one of assault guns to go with the Panther batallions. Currently in the game nothing prevent you to field only guns of 200mm + caliber, and only Tiger II or Pershing tanks. It is fun for a while to have a overpower feeling but it quickly become boring.
Moreover the AI does have a mix of medium to heavy guns and tanks.

[Kerensky]

Side note on artillery. This reduction in firepower as range increases really hurts naval units.

[Ballacraine]

Limiting the number of each type of unit in your core:
Another way to limit the abuse of very powerful units, would be to have a limit of each unit type allowed in your core. Most games that use a point based systems to build armies have some sort of rules and restrictions for army building, to keep the armies within reasonably historical boundaries, and for keeping some control on gameplay balance, hence the popular army lists found in most miniatures wargames.

I think this is an important point.

It is not realistic to have forces made up solely of Uber units.

I think a more balanced force is more challenging & more fun to use anyway.

Balla.

[Delta66]

I was thinking of a simple system, something like:

For each unit, give a value in % of the maximun number of units allowed for a scenario. Round up to make sure at least one of each unit type is allowed.
For example for a rare unit 5% of units to deploy, this mean only one unit for deployed force between 1 and 20, a second unit for force of 21-40...
The final rounded number should be displayed somewhere, maybe on the main purchase screen, next to the unit name under the icon.
The exact % could be displayed on the detailed unit data on the right part of the purchase screen.

Limiting only deployed units seems good enough and let the player collect some more if he want to develop his core reserve.
the % value should be adjusted depending on the date of the scenario and also maybe on other factors like theater of operation or importance of the offensive (to portray additional special assets allowed).

[deducter]

If you improve the value of entrenchments while also reducing the arillery effectiveness, it will propably significantly skew the balance of existing scenarios. In particular, I think of GC Sevastopol 42, or Storming Stalingrad and Stalingrad Docks.

With 1.14, if you needed two artillery shots to completly suppress a entrenchment 8 target, it still leaves you with a entrenchment 6 to deal with. The suppression only help to reduce your casualties not to kill enemy steps. You could add a plane, or two if one was allready over the target, you are still at entrenchment 4. Add in the chance of rugged defense. you might still need more than one attack to clear the hex, and after the first attack you will have to suppress it all over again.
In effect it often takes more than one turn to clear a entranchment 8 hex, and that is if you use around 6 units for one targe thex. In effect this makes massively urban map quite hard to clear if you don't want to take too much casualties.

I think urban maps should have quite a bit more casualties than they currently have. I remember you cleared Stalingrad with something like 20 step loss total. Certainly an impressive feat, but I don't think any player, no matter his skill level, should be able to slaughter 150+ AI units while losing only 20 steps, on any urban map. Urban maps should be much higher in casualties.

I played Berlin West with the preplaced core, and I cleared most of the map losing only 4-5 units, while playing rather poorly. So urban maps are not as bad as you think. You have to adjusted in a number of ways, which I pointed out in a post in that map. There's no need to just bring up hordes upon hordes of artillery and pummel everything down to fully suppressed before attacking. Sometimes, you just have to accept good enough odds and lose 1-3 step points in an attack.

Actually wurfrahmen were very effective for Urban warfare. Close terrain means a lot of different things, artillery was particular effective vs wooded or hill areas.

I think you're talking about if the artillery shell actually hit, then yes, they can be very effective in forested area. But in practice, there were many reasons why forests and urban terrain are the worst for the Germans, at least on the Eastern Front. Every single account I've read agrees on how difficult it is to defeat Soviet troops in forests, even as early as one week into Barbarossa, and every single account agrees on how bloody urban warfare was, even if the Soviet losses were far higher. Targeting troops in cover is difficult, and while losses might be higher if the shells hit, nevertheless German troops will still have the go in for close quarters combat to actually clear the Soviets out, who often will fight up a tough fight. Ammunition was scarce, and the Germans couldn't afford to fire their shells at will. There's certainly no dragging 10.5 cm artillery into the city of Stalingrad, and setting them up in direct fire mode to take on fortifications or to defeat Russian counterattacks. That's why vehicles like the StuG IIIB and later Brummbar were developed, to provide close range fire support.

Yes, when artillery is set up properly, and fired in massive barrages, even an entrenched enemy will often be completely routed. As early as August-September 1941 during the Battle of Smolensk, the Soviets had a 4:1 advantage in artillery and plenty of ammunition, and they pounded AGC's infantry divisions. It was basically trench warfare, and German losses were actually the highest in the month of August 1941 until January 1943. During the late war, the overwhelming advantage of Soviet artillery was such that a barrage would destroy even the best entrenched troops, so commanders like Raus and Heinrici would withdraw their infantry from the front lines and let the Soviets fire into empty land. But the Germans never achieved such great concentrations of artillery. Even at Sevastopol, with absolute air superiority and the greatest collection of guns the Germans assembled on the Eastern Front, the battle was a close thing and German losses were high.

A large part of why I like the artillery changes is because the AI is incapable of dealing with artillery. Long story short, if you play MP, you will find that artillery is not the god of close terrain at all. Human players can defeat artillery, but the AI cannot. Short of massively improving the AI, tweaking a few rules to make artillery less effective might be a bit more of the aggressive nature into SP play.

[Tarrak]

I don't understand what is meant with:

- Soft cap rules were changed a bit. It no longer calculates unspent prestige and units in reserve at all.

[Rudankort]

I don't understand what is meant with:

- Soft cap rules were changed a bit. It no longer calculates unspent prestige and units in reserve at all.

In beta 3, unspent prestige and units in reserve were counted with 0.5 coefficient, when calculating total player's prestige. This is no longer the case. As long as prestige remains "passive" (sits in reserve or in the bank) it does not reduce your earnings.