Slitherine

Guards have 6 Hard Attack and shoot my tanks to crap!

monkspider wrote:Yeah, I was not really sure about those trains, I guess they are representing trains of troops from Siberia? The Kremlin is in the Central region, there is nothing really special to indicate it on the map, but if you mouse over it, it is listed as "The Kremlin" and it has an especially tough infantry unit guarding it. The sudden weather change after deployment is indeed a bit jarring, I remember it from one of the Norway scenarios too. Maybe that is something that can be patched, have the map during the deployment screen reflect what the weather will be on the first turn?

I brought this up before, but it seems people like it the way it currently is. Deployment phase will only ever show Dry weather, regardless of the initial state of the map. You'll have to convince Rudankort if you want this change implemented. I wasn't able to.

Yeah, they had been doing that to me too! Especially when I made the mistake of placing my panzers in city hexes.

Well, I have finally beat the 1941 campaign.

Demyansk Pocket
Decisive Victory on turn 24
Losses: 1 Wehrmacht Infantry and 1 Recon Car

This was a very interesting one, and a defensive scenario no less, always my favorite! This is the first scenario where we are actually trapped in a pocket, we have Soviets troops surrounding us on all sides and we have to hold the line. This really is a brilliant set up for a scenario but it has two major flaws.

1. All of the attacks come from the Northeast or Southeast There was literally no activity other than a few infantry at the very beginning on the west side of the pocket. It would be nice if there was more variety in the directions that the attacks come from.

2. The supply transport idea is a good one and is a great way of tying into history but it is problematic in several ways. First it is too easy to get your transports to the airfields, it would be nice if more Soviet fighters spawned in that area or something. I actually consider this the least serious problem because at least it is pretty tough to defend your airfields against the Soviet assault. The more serious problems IMO are that the transports can be turned into paratroopers and it is unclear if this will count against you if you do this. Do paratroopers not count toward your total that you need? I have no idea. The other problem is that it is just kind of annoying to have all of these transports hanging around your airfields. It would be nice if they disappeared after a turn or three. This could represent supplies being unloaded, heck, maybe you could even give us a prestige bonus for each transport that is successfully "unloaded"!

Otherwise, it is a great scenario, and really has one of the best set-ups of any of the scenarios, and most importantly, it ends on a somewhat suspenseful note that really has me looking forward to 1942!

I considered attacks from all directions... but we're still a little early in the war, and people may have just arrived from rather difficult Vyazma/streets of Moscow and they might be hurting a little. Stalingrad, 1943, 1944, and 1945 especially will all have abundant opportunities to get caught in a pocket and for being assaulted from all sides.

The transport mechanic is a little vague, just know that a unit on the hex, in air or grounded form, both count towards the total.
I thought about adding prestige to reward this escort duty... but I'm waiting for more feedback on this scenario. If people are starving for prestige, it'd make a nice bonus and boost, but if people dont need prestige, just giving them more hardly seems appropriate.

In the future at Stalingrad, it might be interesting to experiment and give the player 0 prestige for decisive, marginal, and loss outcomes, and the only prestige earned is through completing objectives, such as escorting cargo transports.
That's fairly radical, and I fear for people who do not go after these 'prestige bonuses' and their ability to get anything done could get crippled.



And for the rest, here's a copy paste from another thread:

Excellent feedback as always, thanks!

Couple quick comments:

Soviet AD units on Demyansk pocket have been switched to active, should make for at least a little more dangerous flight into the pocket.

Im fine with having the air escort objective be a simple one though. For starters, as you pointed out, the ground battle is NOT an easy one, even with choke points and fortifications for the player to deploy on.
Also, it was very historic that the airlift to Demyansk was a very successful venture for the Germans, and the Soviets failed pretty badly to intercept it.

The success of the Luftwaffe convinced Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and Hitler that they could conduct effective airlift operations on the Eastern front.[1] Göring later proposed a similar "solution" to supply the 6. Armee when it was surrounded in Stalingrad. In theory, the outcome could be equally advantageous; with the 6. Armee trapped, but still in fighting condition, the Soviet army would have to use up much of its strength to keep the pocket contained. This could allow other German forces to re-group and mount a counterattack. However, the scale of the forces trapped in the two operations differed greatly. While a single corps (about ⅓ of an army) with about six divisions was encircled in Demyansk, in Stalingrad, an entire and greatly reinforced army was trapped. Whereas the Demyansk and Kholm pockets together needed around 265 t (292 short tons) of supplies per day, the 6. Armee required an estimated daily minimum of 800 t (880 short tons), delivered over a much-longer distance and faced by a much better organised Red Air Force. The air transport force had already suffered heavy losses, and was much further away from good infrastructure. The Luftwaffe simply did not have the resources needed to supply Stalingrad.

That is a very good point actually about the attacks not coming from all directions so I retract that point. Maybe in the briefing you could mention something about unloading the troops from the transports onto an airport? I don't know, maybe I am the only weirdo that will end up being confused by that part of the scenario.

Oh, and one rather significant thing I forgot to mention is that I was critically short on prestige in the Demyansk scenario. I was often too low even for basic replacements, this was somewhat self-inflicted though since I used up my prestige before the start of the battle and forgot to take into account that I wouldn't be getting much prestige from capturing cities since I was going to be on the defensive. It looks like you already addressed this though in the list of upcoming changes in the next version.

Pretty little helper indeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t98Ehtav ... re=related

Feld Marshall Habermann is a very lucky man indeed.

Well our editors removed the name Habermann...

My plan was that Habermann the Field Marshal has a daughter in (our little member of the Hefrinnen der Wehrmacht) and at some time in DLC 1944 or DLC 1945, the player has the choice of which of these characters they try to save... and which one dies.

I still plan to work this bit of story in the campaign, except I won't have be able to show that both Field Marshal and German helper girl were father and daughter.

Dude, that is incredibly brilliant! What are they thinking? They need to put that back in! It is that kind of creativity that is elevating the grand campaign project to the status of art.

monkspider wrote:Dude, that is incredibly brilliant! What are they thinking? They need to put that back in! It is that kind of creativity that is elevating the grand campaign project to the status of art.

Out of my hands, sorry.

Don't worry though, that mission will still come along, it just won't have their names.
DLC 1945 the 'split path' will be at the very end. One path leads to the Death of the Generalfeldmarshal, the other to the death of his daughter.

I dunno, DLC 1945 is a long way off, nothing concrete about the above plans either.

Or something like that, basically the characters introduced to the player over the DLC campaigns start to get killed, to emphasize the sense of doom and disaster that was afflicting Germany towards the very end of the war.

That is so cool! I hope you get to implement something like this. I am trying to play through the retail DLC to get a core that I can import to the 1941 DLC to test how an imported core affects the campaign and I see that they still refer to Habermann by name in the Eban-Emael scenario. so the character still officially exists. I think something like you describe has the potential to give the last scenarios some real emotional weight.

monkspider wrote:That is so cool! I hope you get to implement something like this. I am trying to play through the retail DLC to get a core that I can import to the 1941 DLC to test how an imported core affects the campaign and I see that they still refer to Habermann by name in the Eban-Emael scenario. so the character still officially exists. I think something like you describe has the potential to give the last scenarios some real emotional weight.

Not for long, unfortunately. That name was missed in the edit(all the others were removed), and will be patched out.

Kerensky wrote:

monkspider wrote:That is so cool! I hope you get to implement something like this. I am trying to play through the retail DLC to get a core that I can import to the 1941 DLC to test how an imported core affects the campaign and I see that they still refer to Habermann by name in the Eban-Emael scenario. so the character still officially exists. I think something like you describe has the potential to give the last scenarios some real emotional weight.

Not for long, unfortunately. That name was missed in the edit(all the others were removed), and will be patched out.

What a shame. Well, he will always be Habermann to me.

Randomly stumbled across this on youtube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhL4mlid ... re=related

Kerensky wrote:Randomly stumbled across this on youtube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhL4mlid ... re=related

WTF

She is pretty cute though.

Yup.

and yup again! lols

She reminds me of Jack Bauer's daughter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberly_Bauer

I started up my 1941 campaign with my imported 1940 core from a completed 1940 retail core on General. I am starting off with an even stronger force and 5600 prestige at the start of the 1941 campaign, so as generous as the starting, non-imported force is, it by no means seems excessive.

I played Crete Naval Invasion on my imported core campaign and I did find it to be quite a bit tougher than the airborne invasion but ultimately differently tough, I honestly feel that the Royal Navy can kill your lnog-established core units too easily. I ultimately had to do something similar to what I do in Sealion and that was hold my troops back for the first, oh nine or so turns. It really takes a long time to bring the Royal Navy to heel, possibly too long, even with a 13 strength Junkers strategic bomber. I managed to still get a decisive victory, but only on the very last turn and it took a supreme effort and all of the aux units in the center were lost since I wasn't able to back them up in time. My Aux units to the west survived though. I do like a lot of aspects of the naval invasion, like the race to try to save those paratroopers especially but I think it could use some work to be somewhat balanced with the airborne scenario.

Ostrov

Woo hoo, an all new scenario! After a long campaign, my imported core has made it to Ostrov as part of the Leningrad path. It was a perfectly enjoyable scenario, certainly no complaints. It was not too difficult but the large amount of enemy armor and swamp terrain did make things a bit dicey at times.

DV turn 14 of 18
Losses: none (In fact, I should tell you, on my imported core I still have my original recon buggy that I started off with in Poland!)
Ending prestige: 5500 (On this imported core I am doing quite well for myself, prestige-wise, I amt thinking I will turn it up to Field Marshall on my next grand campaign).