Germans vs. italians in the core

[Ballacraine]

As ever, it is a matter of balancing historical accuracy or plausability with attractive gameplay.

That is always a tricky equation.

As the player is attempting to rewrite a different version of history, I feel it is plausible that after 1943, given that Italy might still have been an axis protagonist, it would be reasonable to grant them access to both their own more advanced equipment & a limited access to later German equivalents.

Italy did have some competent equipment both in use & under development.

Balla.

[monkspider]

Wow, this is an amazing discussion, to see Kerensky, Deducter, and Rudankort all throwing around ideas in the same thread is a rare treat!

I would just like to state, first of all, that I have been using a large number of Italian units in my core to great effect, my core includes 4 Italian infantry, 1 anti-tank gun, 1 mobile anti-tank, one field artillery, one mobile artillery, one Italian FLAK, one Italian fighter, and a tactical bommber.

I think the obvious corollary to this discussion is the age-old question of how do you encourage a historically accurate core, and how do you discourage players from having all Tiger IIs and ME-262s in their core. That's still not a question that has ever been satisfactorily answered. There are some players, like me, who find using a historical core to be far more satisfying and enjoyable. But some players might just want to try to have the strongest core impossible, regardless of historical accuracy. This creates balance issues in the game since developers don't want to punish players who actually are using an accurate core but then this causes the players with 10 Tiger IIs to complain that the game is too easy.

I think the long term solution is to reevaluate the core system so that certain units take up more slots or deployment points than others at certain points in time. Would you want a core that has 10 German units or a core with 6 German units and 8 Italian units. That is an interesting question for players to consider with no obvious answer.

But in the short term, despite being a stickler for using a historical core personally, I would not want to see this mandated with forced core composition limits. I think I agree that the most realistic option is to try to find ways to make Italian troops potentially attractive. Perhaps they could have their cost reduced while German units in Afrkia Korps actually have their price increased compared to what they would cost in the normal game/Grand Campaign. Including '43 class Italian infantry would be another easy addition that would help in the later scenarios.

[Kerensky]

I think the obvious corollary to this discussion is the age-old question of how do you encourage a historically accurate core, and how do you discourage players from having all Tiger IIs and ME-262s in their core. That's still not a question that has ever been satisfactorily answered. There are some players, like me, who find using a historical core to be far more satisfying and enjoyable. But some players might just want to try to have the strongest core impossible, regardless of historical accuracy. This creates balance issues in the game since developers don't want to punish players who actually are using an accurate core but then this causes the players with 10 Tiger IIs to complain that the game is too easy.

For the record, I think that a core of all Tiger II and Me262 is fine, within reason. Someone beat DLC45 with such a force and posted a screenshot of it somewhere. I have no problem with that what-so-ever.
Within reason means they are playing on a low or average difficulty level. Colonel, Sergeant, or Lieutenant. Obviously the game is balanced where such a force is unaffordable in the highest difficulty levels. Bottom line is someone who wants to play that way should get to play that way. Even if you make arbitrary 'historical' limitations on players CORE composition, guess what? There are cheat codes(or save/load exploiting which is a form of cheating) that people can and will use to get their all Tiger IIs and Me262s. So when you create these arbitrary limitations, all you do is punish your players who try to play fairly, because those who want all their top of the line elite are going to play on a low difficulty setting or just use a cheat code. There's also nothing wrong with that again, because single player campaign is not a competitive environment that need fine tune balance.

Obviously no official multiplayer scenario exists that allows for mass purchase of only Tiger II and Me262s. Hylan Valley is the closest thing to an exception to this, but that's also a very weak force to wield on that map because you can never get enough prestige to make your critical mass of Tiger IIs, you always end up having too few against too many lesser British units.

On the other side of the coin, anyone who wants to use Italian units at a historical ratio is completely free to do so now. This would not be the cast if we enforce an arbitrary core balance to maintain gameplay balance (Must have 2:1 German:Italian units, because an inexperienced player getting too many Italian units might hurt their ability to progress, hence arbitrary 2 good for 1 bad unit ratio). Obviously the historical accuracy crowd would not be happy with such a balance because it's not historical, but our game players would appreciate it because they would have a safety net instead of accidentally buying too many bad Italian units and no longer being able to progress.

That's why freedom to do ANYTHING is important. Panzer Corps lets you play the way you want to play. All Tiger II and Me262, or proper Italian to German ratio of troops. Both are 100% possible right now,it's only up to the player to decide what units they want to use and buy. If you want people to buy Italian units and use them in their CORE, don't force players to use garbage, give them a choice of units that have some benefit or actually warrant being used and balance the campaign accordingly. This would probably mean...

Playing on Colonel, you could have 2:1 Italians to Germans and have a fairly successful campaign, given an experienced player. So anyone who wants to be historical can be historical and have success.
But to succeed in higher difficulty levels would require better min/maxing and penny pinching, which probably means 0 Italian units.

[deducter]

This is a complicated issue. Let me preface this by saying I'd like to have a cordial, intelligent conversation. I am speaking in a broad, philosophical sense here, not attacking anyone's play style. Let me play Devil's advocate, if you would.

Kerensky is right that the players who want all Tiger IIs and ME 262s can just cheat their way there. Players who want to use weaker units can do so. But the question is, what should the default game setting be tuned as? Should it be tuned so that Colonel, anyone can get anything whenever they feel like? Sure, fine, that sounds reasonable. But then there are players like produit playing on FM who are rampaging around Suez with 9 Panzer IVG, winning DV by turn 7. He probably needs to be playing on an even higher difficulty, and of course players with that kind of skill is rare. I like it fine that Colonel is tuned so that the player can do whatever. But if you can beat Colonel easily, you won't find anything short of Manstein much of a challenge. Some players (like myself) dislike loading the dice in the AI's favor (Manstein) and would prefer a challenging game with a weaker core composition while keeping the AI's units at normal strength.

But it's not really that simple right? Complete freedom is obviously nonsense too. Freedom to do ANYTHING is wrong. Why not just have all scenarios start with 99999 prestige, or reduce the cost of all units to 1 prestige? That's more freedom than the current system. But that's not a strategy game, which PzC is supposed to be. It's supposed to take some amount of skill to win. So the question really is, what is skill? Is skill using a variety of weaker units effectively, akin to solving a puzzle? Tactical skill, in other words. Or is skill to min-max your core composition, and win through that? Or perhaps skill is really a combination of doing both, and both are important. If core composition is irrelevant, then this is no longer a strategy game. If a player can easily get whatever core he wants on anything higher than Colonel (which is not hard for the expert player. I intentionally still keep Italian troops when I can easily afford more Germans when playing on Rommel, and I'm doing fine), then perhaps the problem is that the difficulty settings aren't varied sufficiently.

There are many players who want historical accuracy and good gameplay. I daresay I am one of the better players who greatly enjoys a more "historical" core while being very competent at using one. So perhaps I'm just promoting my style of gameplay. I realize that sitting around for 30 minutes thinking about the moves in a turn in GC43 is not for everyone. Or even 99.9% of players. But it's fun for me. Others would have more fun to blast their way through with Tiger tanks. Fine. But on the highest levels, I'd like a game like this where there are real choices to make, at least above Colonel, when that's really not the case. Where you don't feel punished for using an Italian tank instead of a German one. In theory, prestige is supposed to address this concern, but in practice, it doesn't always work out, since it's not hard just to buy the best equipment. And more often than not the best equipment actually saves you prestige in the long run, so there's really no choice at all.

As someone who enjoys greater historical accuracy, I ask the question, why shouldn't the game be balanced around being more historical, and anyone who doesn't like that can turn off some of the options, or use the cheat codes? Why must I force myself to buy weak units just to hamper myself, when instead, since this is a strategy game, why shouldn't I be thinking of what the best way of using my Italians units are? In other words, some players might wonder, "Can I do better than Rommel with what he had?" rather than "Well, if Rommel had 800 Panzer IVs and perfect supply, would he have taken Suez?" But I can guess at the answer, which is that most players of this game don't enjoy a historical core that. Nevertheless, I think these are fair questions too. More historical-minded players may be in the minority, but it'd be nice to have game design features that address our concerns too.

At the end of the day, I honestly believe that there is no one solution that will satisfy everyone, and hence, more modding options are critical. At least code some provisions, even if not implemented, for restricting core size based on nationalities. So whatever is done, as long as there are options available for modders to "enforce" a more historical core, I think that's what we would love

On the subject of MP, however... Deep strategy games are very rare. Many players complain enough about how MP is all RNG or who can amass the most heavy tanks, when I know that is not true at all at the highest levels. Perhaps this impression is from SP. And if there's an expansion focused on MP released, then these players will demand that you should be allowed to buy whatever you want in MP, or win with whatever unit composition you want, where strategy no longer matters. I just don't want this game to be dumbed down, since this is probably one of the best strategy games in MP I've played.

[monkspider]

I think this discussion ultimately gets at the heart of what kind of game we want Panzer Corps to be in the future. I think Kerensky did a bloody brilliant job of balancing the DLCs and making historical cores viable. Now, to be clear, I completely agree with Kerensky's philosophy of total freedom. I think that it is important to making Panzer Corps as accessible to as large an audience as possible.

But within this framework of complete freedom, I think there is room to create more interesting decisions and more varied strategies that are of comparable viability. I don't think it takes away from the player's freedom to create incentives to use units that are weaker on a purely 1 to 1 basis if there reasons to make these units strategically interesting.

Kerensky's point about different difficulties being a way to prevent excessive amounts of top-tier equipment is valid. But I believe it is possible for the game to be designed in such a way that, regardless of what difficulty they are playing on, regardless of how much prestige they have, or don't have, that using German or Italian troops is an open question, where each unit would have distinct advantages and disadvantages that would prevent one or the other from clearly being completely better in all cases.

Of course, I am not saying that Italian units should be ahistoricaly buffed so that they are comparably strong to German units. But to go back to my earlier post, I feel that my proposal, at least at first glance seems to be an example of one possible way that core composition could be made more interesting without sacrificing player freedom. Let's say a player was given 250 supply points at the start of the scenario which would determine how many units they could deploy, a Panzer IV in 1941 might use 25 points while an Italian infantry would use 10, then in 1943 a player might have 300 supply points and a Tiger might use 40 points, a Panzer IV might use 20 points, and an Italian tank would use 10. I think that this would actually enhance the philosophy of player freedom by granting the player the freedom to have a greater number of viable cores. A player would have the freedom to use nothing but Tigers, but even if he had ability to afford such a thing, it may not necessarily be superior to using a core with a larger number of Panzer IV's. Of course, such a system might have unforeseen consequences that I am not thinking of, but I I think that such a system may have merit at least as an option.

[Razz1]

I would suggest a small decrease in the limit to the German core and do the balance via upgrades.

Increase the cost of German reinforcements by 35%
Penalize the Germans for upgrades by making the units loose all their experience.

Now the player has a challenge.

Choose a very large German core at the expense of prestige which latter will lead to a smaller force and transitioning to Italian units late in the game or
Choose a balanced core with both countries and have prestige to reinforce and upgrade properly for both countries.

[nikivdd]

I'm satisfied to have a mixed core. I suppose if you get rid of all the italian units and replace them by german ones, more scenario's will be a walkover.
Sofar i managed to keep my 3 it inf, 2 it tanks and the it fighter in the game and i intend to keep them. I mix them with the german units and give them the advantage of StuG or propelled artillery protection.
An idea could be that via the editor, you can define how many core units of which nation you can purchase/own. (and without a cheat to alter it )

[alex0809]

I think a bit step forward to making the Italians more useful would be making them cheaper and making the Germans more expensive:
eg. Fiat M14/41 costs 273, Panzer IV E costs 319, why?!?
Fiat is slower, has much less anti-infantry, even a bit worse anti-tank, and STILL costs only ~50 points less. And even worse, I can cheaply upgrade the Panzer IV to higher versions later which are much much much better than the Fiat at a very low upgrade cost... (I dunno how you can upgrade the Italian tank, but I don't assume the later tanks will come close to later-war Panzer IVs).
It's the same as with the Tiger issue in the Grand Campaign DLCs... they are way too cheap: since Tigers are more survivable than anything else you got in '43 they will in the end be CHEAPER than Panzer IVs because you will lose much less.

[Rudankort]

Hello All!

Great discussion in general, and it is nice to see conflicting points of view and game styles. Some random comments on the points made above.

I'm afraid, making the italians competitive with the germans is out of question for various reasons. I fully agree with the idea that every unit must have its niche, but this principle works mostly within a single nation. Here we have a different situation. Every nation must have units which cover all possible niches, or at least the most basic ones, because there are scenarios, both existing and future, where these nations act on their own. For example, every nation must have a basic infantry unit or a medium tank. And all these "basic infantry units" or "medium tanks" of different nations are direct competitors. So, when we begin to mix different nations in the core, there is no escape from the fact that certain units are plain better than the others. Thus, we all know that Panther was superior to most other medium tanks of late war, period.

We could balance this by making inferior units more numerous. This is a very controversial approach, but even if we agreed that it was good in general, it must have been used consistently from the very beginning. Thus, it must have been applied to Soviets, who successfully used bigger numbers to their advantage in the course of the war. But now that the soviets (except Conscripts) use 10 strength, and we have a big pile of content balanced with such soviets in mind, making 15-strength italians does not make sense at all. It will not feel right. Besides, in case of Italians the situation is made even worse by the fact that they do not have good upgrade paths, simply because their equipment list is not as extensive as that of germans and other major nations. So, even if italians were made equal to germans in terms of raw unit strength, the players would still go for germans.

What else can we do? In an ideal world, assigning the italians smaller prices would balance them. Alas, as the game mechanics stand now, cheaper but poorer units tend to be more expensive in the long term, because they take much more losses which must be replaced. The only exception is if you only give them free regular replacements between missions, but then there is no big difference if such units are part of your core force or not. They will always be treated as throw-away junk. It is interesting to note that in MP price balancing works pretty well, but not in SP campaigns.

The only real solution within the existing rules framework would be to have units using a different number of slots. Thus, italians might take 0.5 slot, while germans would take 1. But this would be a huge change with far-reaching implications. Thus, I expect that all MP scenarios where the italians are involved would require rebalancing.

To sum it up, I don't see a way to persuade the players to buy italians instead of germans just because they are a better choice. Either we use some sort of limiting to force some italians into the core, or we leave them as it is.

For the record, existing situation might not be that bad. You start the campaign with italians in your core, and getting rid of them instantly is probably not an option. As the campaign progresses, you get more and more germans in your core, but at least in the fictional part of the campaign (which is pretty long) we can assume that this could be the case. The only real problem is with a few scenarios in the middle, which are still historical, but where most or all of the italians are already gone from player's core. So if any limit for germans is introduced, it would exist only in these "middle" scenarios, and softented/removed in the fictional part of the campaign.

Question about freedom in general and about "all Tiger IIs and Me262s core" is philosophical. My opinion can be summed like this: in a simple game like PzC it is extremely hard (or maybe even impossible) to make a historical core "optimal" from gameplay point of view, simply because the historical core composition was often forced by a number of highly subjective factors, which are not (and will never be) part of PzC gameplay. Thus, personal opinion of certain people could have dramatic effects on equipment being produced and used. And if historical core is not optimal, why enforce the players to use it and remove the whole dimension of seeking an optimal core composition from the game? To me, it does not make sense (although it can easily be done in custom scenarios, where purchase is not allowed and you deal with what units you've got). On the other hand, the fact that all Tiger II/Me262 core is clearly optimal and no other combinations are viable is probably wrong and detracts from the deepness and fun of the game. This issue must be solved, but there is no easy solution which could be tweaked into PzC. This is an issue to address in the sequel.

But enough philosophy, and back to italians matter. Let us suppose that the concept of per-nation slots is introduced. What will be the result of it? Will it be that bad as Kerensky has said: "If you forced me to have X% of my core be Italian units, I'd buy the cheapest fodder I can to fill those spots (infantry) and use my prestige to buy top tier German equipment and no German infantry." That is the question I ask myself. In case of low prestige german part of the core naturally takes prioritty, but if the player has enough prestige (and after the first few scenarios the balance usually tips in this direction), won't it be better to have experienced and overstrengthed italians with good heroes on them, instead of some throw-away units which can't contribute a lot to the battle anyway? I don't have a final opinion on this yet.

[Chris10]

"I am one of the better players that greatly enjoys a more "historical" core while being very competent at using one." What a blathering, egotistical post. I am so F-ing sick of this argument. Kerensky's post is right on. Get a life deducer.

Iam trying to figure out whats so egoistical about deducters post. Thats how he perceives his own skills and it should not be of your concern ,wherever you like his way of communicating it or not.
You did not adress any of the points Deducter made and which he elaborated nicely and coherently neither you made any additional contribution to the discussion.
Deducter has made very valid points and backed them with plausible arguments and comparisons and I want to thank him for that as I share the basic stance that there shoud be indeed some rough framework in which to play.
The thing here is that people will always exploit the obvious and then complain about a lack of challenge and/or historical uncorrectness..while absurdly contradictional this always happens.

Said that there should be no way to upgrade Italian tanks into German ones as this is encouraging to abandon italian equipment.
But if it must be such equipment swap should worth full unit price and have a 75% exp penalty at leat.

.
An idea could be that via the editor, you can define how many core units of which nation you can purchase/own.

thnx for joining the club Niko ..I suggested exactly this a few posts back ..this would be of great usage for scenario and campaign design too



I would like to point out that Iam still insisting on my petition to add the relative easy function to determine a max AND min unit number for at least one nation on each side (axis/allies) in order to keep a minor in the game for example. Wherever this may be applied to AK core is another question but while fixing things this may be the moment to adress the issue..

[Ballacraine]

Whilst it would be ahistorical to have Italian units on a performance par like for like, not all Italian units were totally ineffective.

As regards unit size numbers, perhaps that might be a preferable way to go.

Later in the war both the Russians & the Americans played the numbers game to good effect.
Find something that is relatively cheap to produce & turn it out in great quantities.

I doubt Italy would ever have had that level of resources, but it may be a viable compromise for gameplay reasons.

So to put it in the vernacular, make the Italian units a little bit less crap and give them a couple more unit numbers & see how that plays?

Another suggestion...
How about not allowing Italian units to be disbanded?
Then over the course of the campaign, only destroyed Italian core units could be replaced by a more efficient German unit.

Balla.

[Longasc]

Hi, first an apology for coming late to this great and constructive thread. I will try to add some new thoughts
Also, another apology for not playing and testing as much as I used to do, but many others things have priority for quite some time by now despite me being a huge Panzer Corps fan.

Xitax mentioned the possibility to supply Italian units as aux units for each scenario.
The counter-argument was that people tend to abuse aux units as cannon fodder while core units are groomed and kept alive.
-> The only way to make players keep, as pointed out by Kerensky, is to make Italian units desirable to have.

But which Italian units really rock?
Bersaglieri and Alpini work nicely, who can name other units that are worth it?
There is a AD that is very much like a 8.8. The tanks in general suck.
* A real problem is that UPGRADING in the Italian tree is a waste! -> you always seem to pay full price!
(Not sure about this: If an Italian unit captures a city hex, can German and Italian units be built there or only Italian units? This would limited the usefulness of Italian units even more.)

There is also a problem if we want to keep the unit composition somewhat historically: The Italians in North Africa were rather weak. Equipment, training, leadership could not compare to the British and German troops. So how can we make their units desirable without overbuffing them and reducing the historical accuracy that many players crave?
It's already bad enough - IMO - that the "best equipment only" core unit strategy is so effective, as this rewards having all Tiger cores and so on. On the other hand things are way more difficult if you restrain yourself in this regard.


Don't restrict players how they want to do things, no German:Italian quota or things like that.

I am afraid Xitax is right: Make most Italian units Aux units. There will always be a spot for great Italian units in my core, like the Bersaglieri. But I see no way how an Italian M-x tank would ever make it into my core without ridiculously overbuffing it.

I don't think there is a chance to make an all Italian Afrika Korps. They just don't have the tanks and other units for it. But I don't see any reason why people should not want a few kickass Italian units in their core - and that's what I do at the moment.


What to do? -> IMO check for more potentially good Italian units and make sure some of them are equivalent to German equipment or special in a way so that people want to have them. Besides that I see actually no need for change!

[Chris10]

But enough philosophy, and back to italians matter. Let us suppose that the concept of per-nation slots is introduced. What will be the result of it? Will it be that bad as Kerensky has said: "If you forced me to have X% of my core be Italian units, I'd buy the cheapest fodder I can to fill those spots (infantry) and use my prestige to buy top tier German equipment and no German infantry." That is the question I ask myself. In case of low prestige german part of the core naturally takes prioritty, but if the player has enough prestige (and after the first few scenarios the balance usually tips in this direction), won't it be better to have experienced and overstrengthed italians with good heroes on them, instead of some throw-away units which can't contribute a lot to the battle anyway? I don't have a final opinion on this yet.

Good question..I hardly can imagine that people would run scenarios with half a core and not filling the Italian core slots as then its simply impossible to get DVs cause of insufficient numbers of forces so there is absolutely the need to build and maintain an Italian core from the beginning in order to let them gain stars. The constant purchase and loss of lots of core units each scenario as Karensky painted it would drain prestige and avoid having enough for german elite reinforcements and upgrades.
Overstrengthen italian units with overpowered heros is as good as raising their combat values above the german units...it will lead to the absurd fact that these units have equal or more combat value than their german counterparts which I think we all agree would be considered a massive flaw among a wider public.

I dont even rememeber all games I played in the last 30 years..thousands they must be but I remember that it was common mechanic in lots of the better strategy games to have a rough framework which limited the amount of units by classes or participating side, often with slot-points as you very well recalled but that would requiere a lot of recoding whereas a MAX. and/or MIN. Nation Core Slots would be more simple.
This is coherent and plausible. Anything else is fiddlestick if I may add. Forcing rubbish units on players ?...heck..Why are the Italian units even present then ? You could have saved yourself the effort to implement them if they are only meant for the first 2 scenarios and then replaced by german untis. Thats probably what Rommel thought after a while but thats how it has been and I think if the expansion is called Afrika Korps its coherent to have to deal to certain extend with the fact that the majority of the North African Axis Army was Italian..that should be the basic stance.

Absolute freedom in strategy games is not always a good approach as it will lead to absolute exploit and absolute bypassing of a games philosophy, as simple as this philosophy may be
People could always change the assigned nation core unit slots in the editor or even disable them...
As a side effect at least it requieres the effort to get involved with the editor which may lead to more players getting involved into SCN/Campaign building once they realize they can alter/create and influence things..thats how people get hooked up with modding...just remembering

[Rudankort]

Xitax mentioned the possibility to supply Italian units as aux units for each scenario.
The counter-argument was that people tend to abuse aux units as cannon fodder while core units are groomed and kept alive.
-> The only way to make players keep, as pointed out by Kerensky, is to make Italian units desirable to have.

Even if italian units were super stars, nobody would care about them if they were aux. There is no point in investing into them, because this investment is lost at the end of the battle. Besides, aux units do not offer you any choice. You can no longer decide which of the available italian units to choose, and how to mix them with german ones for maximum effect. They are just there - use them. In my opinion, it is very boring.

* A real problem is that UPGRADING in the Italian tree is a waste! -> you always seem to pay full price!

In beta 2 the italians have got their own upgrade discounts.

(Not sure about this: If an Italian unit captures a city hex, can German and Italian units be built there or only Italian units? This would limited the usefulness of Italian units even more.)

In AK all axis flags are shared which means you can buy any units at any cities belonging to you.

Don't restrict players how they want to do things, no German:Italian quota or things like that.

There is no doubt that germans are fun to play, but come on guys - aren't there enough campaigns already where you play the germans exclusively? Aren't you tired of them? A real multi-nation core might be an interesting change. Of course, for us, the developers, the easiest way is to leave it all as it is.

[Rudankort]

Overstrengthen italian units with overpowered heros is as good as raising their combat values above the german units...it will lead to the absurd fact that these units have equal or more combat value than their german counterparts which I think we all agree would be considered a massive flaw among a wider public.

Nobody said that italians with these bonuses will be stronger than germans with the same bonuses. All we need is that italians with these bonuses get tougher than at least some enemy units opposing them. This would be enough to make these units useful, while seeking how exactly to use your italians in a given scenario might add some depth to gameplay.

[Longasc]

There is no doubt that germans are fun to play, but come on guys - aren't there enough campaigns already where you play the germans exclusively? Aren't you tired of them? A real multi-nation core might be an interesting change. Of course, for us, the developers, the easiest way is to leave it all as it is.

As I mentioned above, I <3 my Bersaglieri!
I really think the easiest and best way is to leave things as they are.
The way to make players have more Italian units in the core is to have some competitive Italian units, equal, special or maybe even better than their German counterparts.
Which is very hard to do when it comes to tanks, but the Italian fighters were not that bad (maybe some have better range than the BF109F?) and the Italian Elite Infantries like Alpini and Bersaglieri are for already viable alternatives to Wehrmacht Infantry.
Maybe there was historically also a capable Italian AT gun?

I will for sure add more Italians to my core, just give me a reason to add units other than the Bersaglieri. You don't really expect me to buy a M13-40 or sth like that!


OT: Time for an Allied Campaign! You just said it, we always played exclusively Germans so far!
Time for a Panzer Corps version/take on "Allied General". It will be interesting to see how the offensive scenarios of the Red Army will be handled by the Panzer Corps team, as there was a rush, rush, rush kind of strategy to all of the late war Russian offensives. I found defending Leningrad way more interesting than steamrolling weakened German forces and only fighting against time. Though I admit it was also kinda special and interesting in a way. Maybe you could also divert from the Allied General approach and rather make Italy/Normandy/Africa campaigns for the Allies.

[Longasc]

Regarding "Nation slots":

Maybe we could have quality "tier" slots: Few "high" quality slots, a lot of "medium" and infinite "low" quality slots.
But this would not work right now and is more something for future Panzer Corps games, as it would change things too much.

It would be like having only 4-5 "high quality" units available in every scenario.

Say 20 units can be deployed, 4 of the "High quality" tier, 10 of the medium quality tier at max the rest can be filled up with "low" quality units.
This would allow for only 4 Tigers or 3 Tigers and 1 Me262 setups, making things more difficult but also preventing 16 Maus Tanks and 4 Me262 or something like that defensive scenarios.

But for PzC Afrika Korps this is of course too late, more something to think about for the future.

[Rudankort]

Maybe we could have quality "tier" slots: Few "high" quality slots, a lot of "medium" and infinite "low" quality slots.
But this would not work right now and is more something for future Panzer Corps games, as it would change things too much.

This is exactly the approach which I don't want to take. In a PzC sequel, if it is ever created, I'll try to make different combinations of units in the core viable, but I won't explicitly rule out any of them. Provided that you saved enough money and can afford one more Tiger II, who am I to prohibit buying it?

But with nations it is a bit different. We are used to play for certain nations and accept the limits imposed by their available equipment. Suppose you play a campaign for italians. Will you still complain that you need to use crappy units, if this campaign is well balanced? Probably not. This is confirmed by the fact that in MP we have a number of scenarios with one side inferior to the other (Poland vs. Germany, Italy vs. Russians etc.), but I don't remember complaints about this, even though in MP battles your opponent is human whose tactics and strategy are superior to those of the AI.

Now, a pure italian campaign is probably not that much fun because they do not have enough units to choose from, but in combination with germans which constitute increasingly larger portion of the core it could work very well. And in Africa such approach also makes sense from pure historical point of view, and also from variety point of view.

[Tarrak]

Is it only me that find the Italian units now with the upgrade families not that bad? Yes the regular infantry is a steaming pile of crap but the Bersaglieri are great alternative to the German infantry. Almost the the same attack as grenadiers but 3 movement. I like them a lot.

The Italian tanks and fighters while worse then their German counterparts are, at least early on, not that bad and i am keeping my two little Italian tanks and the fighter with me. Maybe making them a bit cheaper could give them the needed edge.

Maybe we could have quality "tier" slots: Few "high" quality slots, a lot of "medium" and infinite "low" quality slots.
But this would not work right now and is more something for future Panzer Corps games, as it would change things too much.

This is exactly the approach which I don't want to take. In a PzC sequel, if it is ever created, I'll try to make different combinations of units in the core viable, but I won't explicitly rule out any of them. Provided that you saved enough money and can afford one more Tiger II, who am I to prohibit buying it?

Yes this seems to be the way to go but i personally think instead of having different slots and enforce certain core compositions i would rather let the player compose a core he likes but stronger units would consume more close slots. Let assume the player got 30 core slots: Infantry, light artillery and light tanks consume 1 slot, medium tank, fighters, light bombers, medium artillery costs 2 slots, heavy tanks, heavy bombers,heavy artillery and top end fighters consume 3 slots, super heavy tanks consume and some other super duper end game units consume 4 slots. A player can chose now if he wants to field 10 Panzer IVs or 5 Tiger IIs in his core. Both use the same amount of core slots so its quantity vs quality. Of course the classes and costs i just made up on the fly and they will require more elaboration but such system gives the player maximal freedom of composition of his core while still opening niches for older or worse equipment.

[Rudankort]

I think, it is clear by now that, whatever approach we choose, making Italians as useful as possible will benefit the gameplay. They do have some nice units already, like the above mentioned Bersaglieri. They've also got some pretty special units, like the Sahariana recon which can switch to infantry. What else can we do to improve them, without bending historical reality and unbalancing the equipment file? Please post any suggestions to this topic too. Stats changes, price reductions etc. Maybe making (some of) their AA units switchable like FlaK88? Any ideas are welcome.