Slitherine

I noticed this too while playing the Frozen north. The conscripts quite often got 1 point of damage on the King tigers which was about the same a much more expensive unit would hit.

The current game engine probably doesn't "cook" the results internally. Meaning it's "raw" random numbers.

This leads to a less satisfying, more swingy, game in my opinion. Including having 1, 1 units having a real shot at Tiger IIs.

Note to devs: Either use a bell-shaped probability curve (something like 2D10x5 instead of 1D100) or, better, bite the bullet and add several what-if "sanity clauses" that keep results within reasonable levels.

IMO the real value of conscripts is not so much their ability to do a point of damage to a KT but to restrict its movement. 60 points to halt a KT or affect its ability to move is cheap irrespective of any damage you do to it. In fact, if you can put 2 conscripts (120 points) on either side of a KT (or any tank for that matter) you'll significantly hinder it for a couple of turns at least (depending on other support it has). Of course, this all depends on your 'slot' situation.

It's really the 15 strength that is over powering for conscripts from what I've seen in Multi-player. The way the combat engine works you can never suppress them all or make them retreat with out using almost twice as many of your units as against any other enemy unit that is 10 strength.

Say you hit a 15 strength Conscript with your biggest artillery, the most you can hope to kill or suppress is 10 points, it still is gona have 5 or more un-suppressed strength left. Then attack with standard infantry and you do 5-8 points of damage but the Conscript is still has 7-10 strength left and will not retreat. You do the exact same thing to a Guard unit, the artillery will suppress 3-7 or so points with kill or two, attack it with your standard infantry and you can do about 2-6 points of damage and it will retreat nearly 1/2 the time. Most any other unit is easier to make retreat then a Conscript unit for the same number of attacks you throw at it.

If you attack a Tiger II with a 15 Strength Conscript, the TigerII's soft attack value is so high you will kill and suppress up to 10 points but that still leave 5 points of strength left for the Conscript to attack the TigerII with and you have chance, abit low. If you attack a Tiger II with a 10 strength Guard unit, again its soft attack value is so high you will kill and suppress probably up to 10 points of the Guards strength but for a Guard unit there are no points left so it gets no attack and no hope of doing any damage.

Conscripts should be a 10 strength units and just make them even cheaper to buy, say 45 prestige. I think that would solve the problem.

TLDR: Conscripts lose in long and drawn out battles of attrition.



Well the conscript is not unlike the King Tiger if you think about it.

On one end of the unit spectrum you have the King Tiger with it's highest price and highest strength of all units in the game.
On the exact opposite end, you have the conscript with it's lowest price and lowest strength of all units in the game.

Like the King Tiger, dealing with a unit on the extreme end of the spectrum requires a certain strategy.

Quite often, the strength of conscripts is in their number, there's not just 'one' conscript unit. You can quickly turn this into your advantage with surrender mechanics.

I play on a special difficulty setting, which means the normal 15 strength enemy conscripts are 20 (twenty) strength units.


One shot from a powerful piece of rocket artillery, or two from lesser artillery types will give you this:


As you said yourself:

the most you can hope to kill or suppress is 10 points

Which is exactly what I accomplished, 4 killed and 7 suppressed for 11 total points.

A follow up from a Panzer IV will give you this.

And just like that, a 20 strength unit is finished off, without ever managing to have shot back at all.

Sure the conscript is much cheaper and easier to replace, but clearly this is a futile effort. Each conscript has dealt no damage in return for it's destruction, so it is only a matter of time before the more expensive tank and artillery combination pays for itself in terms of conscript units destroyed.


The same holds true for multiplayer, not just against the AI.

If all you do is buy the most expensive tank, the conscript is a serious problem. The better strategy is to make more use of the medium tanks (which are being vastly improved in the upcoming patch as well!) to handle soft targets.

viewtopic.php?t=28554
In this game, my opponent tried to conscript flood me. As you can see from the final kill tally, I destroyed a total of 77 infantry units.


So for a very long time, yes I had to constantly kill wave after wave of conscripts. But while I was doing so, because I was using abundant artillery and medium tanks, I was never losing any prestige in the process because of the minimal damage my units received. The proof is right there, 1 total tank unit lost, 1 total artillery unit lost compared to 77 infantry units(seventy-seven!!).

At the same time, each conscript I destroyed needed to be replaced and repurchased, which slowly but surely drained my opponent of all of his prestige.

After all, the Soft Attack of a King Tiger is only 9.
The Soft Attack of a lowly Panzer IVD is 8.
The price difference between the two is absolutely enormous!

I haven't played around much with 15 strength infantry since that other PG remake.. what was it again? The one with Uk/Americans against China/Russia...

Anyway, if the 15 str seems too damn strong for some, here's another simple solution. Either:

A. Increase damage by (certain) other units when specifically attacking the conscripts.

or...

B. Add penalties to conscripts, such as lower moral/entrenchement values, etc.