Campaign 41 - should I fail on purpose?

[brettz123]

H'mm, I'm having a pretty hard time at Vyazma on field marshall and i tried to keep my distance from Leningrad city districts but i do play with a custom set to make it tougher to gain exp.
I guess I'm not so great after all if people are finding all these battles easy.

Really depends what you change I guess. I didn't find Vyazma difficult on Field Marshall though. For me the biggest problem was the mud and rain (which always annoys me). Now the best I have ever done is finish with three turns left. To be honest through if you throw a couple of fallschirmjaegers against the far objectives it would probably be a very easy scenario.

I have just replayed Vyazma on Rommel and won DV again by the last turn. I have occupied all cities on the map except two Moscow flags and one airfield. The weather is milder than it should be: I had several turns of rain and mud, but most of the turns the ground was dry and there was plenty of clear weather. IMO the weather setting should cause rain and mud most of the time, and even snow.

Whenever I play through I have about 1/2 my turns as rain or mud. I have heard a few other people get through with only a couple of turns of bad weather. In that case the scenario shouldn't really be very hard at all.

[Longasc]

The DLC campaigns get hard enough, I saw no need to fail on purpose!

Also, no, you need to win, ideally decisively to unlock some extra scenarios/options. There is no campaign path for the DLCs but in general decisive gives you an extra option or it doesn't matter, while a loss ends the campaign.

[dragos]

Whenever I play through I have about 1/2 my turns as rain or mud. I have heard a few other people get through with only a couple of turns of bad weather. In that case the scenario shouldn't really be very hard at all.

Yeah, but where is the snow?
Anyone encountered snow during Vyazma scenario? Historically, the first snow fell on October 7, 1941.

Also, no, you need to win, ideally decisively to unlock some extra scenarios/options. There is no campaign path for the DLCs but in general decisive gives you an extra option or it doesn't matter, while a loss ends the campaign.

Correct, some bonus scenarios gets available if you get DVs, but they are potentially more difficult and could be prestige sinks, so you may be better off choosing to avoid them. But not unless if you have played them at least once

[brettz123]

Whenever I play through I have about 1/2 my turns as rain or mud. I have heard a few other people get through with only a couple of turns of bad weather. In that case the scenario shouldn't really be very hard at all.

Yeah, but where is the snow?
Anyone encountered snow during Vyazma scenario? Historically, the first snow fell on October 7, 1941.

Also, no, you need to win, ideally decisively to unlock some extra scenarios/options. There is no campaign path for the DLCs but in general decisive gives you an extra option or it doesn't matter, while a loss ends the campaign.

Correct, some bonus scenarios gets available if you get DVs, but they are potentially more difficult and could be prestige sinks, so you may be better off choosing to avoid them. But not unless if you have played them at least once

Don't recall ever seeing any white at all!

[piotrekxg]

H'mm, I'm having a pretty hard time at Vyazma on field marshall and i tried to keep my distance from Leningrad city districts but i do play with a custom set to make it tougher to gain exp.
I guess I'm not so great after all if people are finding all these battles easy.

Really depends what you change I guess. I didn't find Vyazma difficult on Field Marshall though. For me the biggest problem was the mud and rain (which always annoys me). Now the best I have ever done is finish with three turns left. To be honest through if you throw a couple of fallschirmjaegers against the far objectives it would probably be a very easy scenario.

For me weather is the main factor at Vyazma scenario. I played it twice. First time started with 5 turns of continuous rain/cloudy and mud and just manged to get my forces close to first two cities north and south of Vyazma before I gave up. The second time I try I had mostly dry and clear weather and after 9 turns (out of 20) Vyazma and surrounding cities were taken and most of soviet forces wiped out. I had next 11 turns to mend my forces and take remaining two cities (which turned out to be purely defended).
So how does it really work with the weather? Does AI has some sort of weather scenarios that are picked at the beginning of the game (before playing turn 1) or is it randomly chosen from turn to turn (sometimes is seems unlikely that it suddenly turns dry after 3 days of rain

[Rudankort]

So how does it really work with the weather? Does AI has some sort of weather scenarios that are picked at the beginning of the game (before playing turn 1) or is it randomly chosen from turn to turn (sometimes is seems unlikely that it suddenly turns dry after 3 days of rain

Weather is random and is chosen turn by turn. At any given time the game knows only the weather for the current and for the next turn (the latter is needed to generate forecast).

Ground state depends on the weather and on the previous ground state. There is an internal parameter "moisture" used to determine when ground state changes. I've posted on this not so long ago here:
viewtopic.php?f=121&t=40599&p=380165

Normally after 3 turns of rain it takes 2 turns of clear weather to make the ground dry, because in this case the rain raises moisture to 5, first day of clear reduces it to 3, and second day to 1, which already corresponds to dry ground.

[captainjack]

I've had one particularly grim experience with Vyazma, with scarcely a dry turn. Even at colonel I got nowehere near MV.
After muttering a few colourful descriptions of what I thought about mud I came up with an alternative plan, and played Vyazma again to see if my alternative plan would work better - I had a few dry days and managed MV after some trouble.
By then I thought I'd worked out how to play mud better, so I played once more and I had at most two turns of rain and the odd cloud - it was a walkover, even though my troops were carrying extra sets of gumboots and rain coats.

Historically, you could argue that the bad weather should be near certain. But when playing the DLC for the second or third time, I quite like the challenge of balancing the risks of trying a determined fast attack relying on speed, good planning and a bit of luck with the weather, against a slow and reliable approach that should almost guarantee MV under any conditions.