Slitherine

Xitax - like I wrote, it's totally fine in my book for the DLCs to stick to historical facts (roughly). What displeases me is that these hypothetical scenarios SUGGEST I can change things, only to make my effort have been in vain in the end. Sending my troops off to another front just before I can get to fight Moscow would be better if you want the rest of the war to play out as if Moscow had never fallen, in my book.
But it's only my point of view - yours is appearently different, which is totally fine. Was just trying to give feedback from my position, feel free to write a similar post reviewing the campaign from yours. I'm sure varied feedback from people with different opinions is in the bottom line more worthwile to the developers.

I DID try to be reasonable and fair in the "review", though - hope I didn't totally fail at that.
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rezaf

impar wrote:Is Prestige so tight in the final part of GC41?
Am at the start of Novgorod with an already overstrengthed core and have 5.800 of Prestige. Should I start saving some for later scenarios?

And after Novgorod, beginning of Leningrad41, after overstrength, 6.700 Prestige.
Guess am safe from prestige shortfalls.

PS:
As for my impression so far, I am liking GC41 but i feel that I have too many units.

Yea the GC are starting to reach that threshold of 'too many units'.

1942 has some solutions for this problem (reduced core size growth + large scenarios that allow you to split your core into separate battle groups).
Depends how well these designs are received, the last few DLC will probably continue along these lines. I don't think DLC 1945 will be very fun with 100+ units to manage every turn for 20 turns in each of 15 scenarios.

Worst comes to worst 1944 and 1945 may actually see negative core size growth, but I'm hoping it won't come to that (even though its fairly historically accurate)

I made it through Vyazma, behind Vyazma there was not much to worry about, except some nasty "rugged defenses", but no losses and with a new prestige-aware reinforcement policy things are back on track.

It's again all sunshine, despite rain, mud and winter!


Now going for Moscow. Will think about this tomorrow. Go for the Kremlin or stay behind the rivers and play for Prestige? Hmmm!!!

Kerensky wrote:Yea the GC are starting to reach that threshold of 'too many units'.

While this wasn't a problem for me in the '41 DLC, I can definately see where you're coming from. Guess I'll see how you'll solve this in the DLCs to come.
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rezaf

I know I am in the minority here, but I did actually appreciate the Greece and Kiev scenarios with reduced cores.
Epic, massive scale scenarios, with an enormous number of units are great, but they are even more special and meaningful if they alternate with smaller scale, shorter scenarios. Pacing inside a campaign is important.

Well, maybe they could add a way to prohibit certain unit classes in a scenario with a future patch.
In late war scenarios, you could then prevent tanks and/or planes in some missions (fuel shortages).

It'd be even cooler if this was achieved by limiting deployment tiles to certain classes - with a possibility to modify these during a scenario.

For example, it was pretty silly in the CreteAirborne scenario that you could just deploy your heavy armor on the island from the get go. Worse still, I was short by a few deployment hexes, but it was possible to just clear one heavy armor from the deployment hex and then deploy the next right from the reserves (at the cost of it's movement for that turn, of course). Such situations could be prevented then, by limiting tank deployment to the tiles at sea.

Anyway, that's just an idea, of course - maybe there are other or better ways to solve this, I don't know.
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rezaf

Well technically, you can do this in any scenario. Say in... Bagration you can just deploy nothing, wait a few turns for the AI to advance forward with their wall of IS-2s, and then deploy behind them.

Kerensky wrote:Yea the GC are starting to reach that threshold of 'too many units'.

Yep. I could have finished the scenario with 5-6 less units.

I see a different problem with " that threshold of 'too many units'. " - its that the game will become easier for the player in general. It is easier to have units covered by art, planes and AA if you have many units. You will always be better at coordinating units, allowing only 2 units to attack you etc. The more units are present on the map the easier it is for the player.

Im finding in the 41 DLC that I mostly loose paras (both in the air and on the ground when they land behind enemy lines) and some units that go too far away by themselves. Of course those are my mistakes and can be easily avoided since the clock is not too thigh in the DLC.

in 41 finding a column of Russian tanks is not so scary since I can quickly deploy a defensive line with lots of art covering my units and the counter attack with many air, art, tanks and inf in close terrain is devastating for the AI.

I think the core size as of Novgorod scenario (this is what I finished right now) is a bit too large. Making larger maps and hoping for the player to split his army is risky, because if you give too many turns the player can instead concentrate his forces in one place and clean out the maps easily.

The problems you are facing in the DLC are new - there wasn't such a long campaign in the original 5* series and you have to work out the solutions yourselves. Limiting exp in each DLC is a fairly good solution but you have to find something for the core size.

PS Im still having great fun with the game, good job !

Aloo wrote:in 41 finding a column of Russian tanks is not so scary since I can quickly deploy a defensive line with lots of art covering my units...

I race my 88mm in a halftrack into that column of soviet tanks, put two StuG IIIB giving support fire if attacked and, next turn, yet another soviet tank falls to that 88mm.

Regarding too many units, there is no need to replenish in battle if you have too many units.
A core unit has fallen to 3-strength?
Put it to sleep during the rest of the scenario and reinforce mid scenarios cheaper.

impar wrote:
Regarding too many units, there is no need to replenish in battle if you have too many units.
A core unit has fallen to 3-strength?
Put it to sleep during the rest of the scenario and reinforce mid scenarios cheaper.

I know about this and use this all the time

I cross rivers with tank units when there are tanks on the other side with no problem - just put 2 art units behind and you are safe. I found that 2 art units behind anything make it almost impervious to the enemy.

PS the StuG IIIB is much more powerful than it might look just going by the stats and gains exp very fast.

Kerensky wrote:Yea the GC are starting to reach that threshold of 'too many units'.

1942 has some solutions for this problem (reduced core size growth + large scenarios that allow you to split your core into separate battle groups).
Depends how well these designs are received, the last few DLC will probably continue along these lines. I don't think DLC 1945 will be very fun with 100+ units to manage every turn for 20 turns in each of 15 scenarios.

Worst comes to worst 1944 and 1945 may actually see negative core size growth, but I'm hoping it won't come to that (even though its fairly historically accurate)

I have two (2) suggestions on options to alleviate this problem.

Option # 1

Howze' 'bout just stop adding new core slots?

Just pick an arbitrary number and when the player hits it,that's it,no more.

The scn's would continue to be tougher,,but the core woould not get any bigger.

I think this would be better a better option than actually reducing the core.

The player would only be able to replace units,,not puchase new ones.

You could also stop adding SE units.

Option # 2 (and my personal choice)

I myself (and I hope some others ) like a large core force,but I know not everyone does.

Leave it up to the player on what (and how much) they want to deploy , I will explain.

You could put a "recomended core force" in the briefing (IE: "Herr General, you should be able to subdue the enemy utilizing 20 units"). The player could follow the "recomendation" and deploy the 20,or deploy his full 30 (both the 20 and 30 are arbitrary). You could "penalize" the player who wants to use the full 30 by only allowing him to intially deploy 20 units, so that he will have to wait to the next turn to deploy his remaining 10,but he would still be able to deploy them,,just one turn later.

This way you (kinda) alleviate the need for capping the core and allow somebody (such as myself) to use their full core if they wish.

These are just ideas that I'm throwing out there.

Call it "logistics isues".

HQ can only maintain supplied X number of units in this scenario, if you wish to supply more units than X, spend some prestige to assure that extra supply.

I won't mind a "capped" core force size. That been said, I like to have a large number of reserves/pool of units - and to have this pool constantly growing, even if I can deploy only a fraction. That way you can fine tune your core force for each scenario, "store" unique captured units you'll wish to collect and not destroy, etc ...

There is no such thing as core size in general, only scenario limit. You are already free to buy as many units as you want, it is just that if you buy a lot, some will have to remain in reserve.

What he said, I first encountered a CORE > SCENARIO DEPLOYMENT SLOTS in the default Campain in the Kiev scenario.

Maybe the recently mentioned "hardcore path" is something like this:
Splitting up your forces for two different paths.

I.e. you only have this pool of forces for the next three scenarios in this path, and the other units are the pool of units used for the other path.
Basically something like half of your forces take the "Stonne" path in 1940, the other half the "Maubeuge" path. Later they might re-unite.

Guderian might get a heart attack when you split your forces but well...!

Sorry,, I was using the wrong terminology

Substitute " core size" with CORE SCENARIO DEPLOYMENT SLOTS in my options above. . By saying "core size" I had meant the units that you get to use in a particular scenario.

If the harcore path is right,,then that would be alright (kinda )

impar wrote:And after Novgorod, beginning of Leningrad41, after overstrength, 6.700 Prestige.
Guess am safe from prestige shortfalls.

And after after Leningrad41, beginning of Vyazma, after overstrength, 6.200 Prestige.
I see now what you say about less prestige in this part of the GC.

And what difficulty settings are you all playing on when you have these huge amounts of prestige?
I can do the same thing in the stock campaign, save up 5000 prestige by Sea Lion is not very hard on Colonel or even Field Marshal. It's all about difficulty setting though.

You guys have to keep in mind Colonel is balanced for players who are completely new to the game, Field Marshal is for relatively experienced players, and the extra three difficulty settings are for advanced players.