Slitherine

It's still way too early for me to give a final verdict on this DLC, but being almost through the 3rd mission, I just wanted to say this is so far one of the best things I've seen in any Panzer General type game! The unique mechanic with only being able to give general directions to your ally is a breath of fresh air in a genre that really hasn't changed much since the original PG. Sure, it means you cannot achieve optimal formations, but I think that's exactly part of the charm. The story stuff in the mission (de)briefings really helps with the immersion. The little family drama introduced in the 3rd mission ties into that nicely and all of a sudden some enemy unit on the field has become a lot more special and interesting. The debriefings with the small historic notes are a small but very welcome addition as well.

Have to say that while it was relatively easy for me to get the bonus objectives in the first 2 missions, I'm probably going to fail those in this 3rd mission. It's nice to have a challenge for bonus objectives that do not block campaign progression. It also adds to replayability value since I already know that I will go for a second play through this whole campaign once I'm done, trying to get all secondary objectives (I'm no genius player btw, I understand the basics well enough but always play on default settings).

The entire setting is nice too btw. I don't know anything about the details of the Spanish Civil War, so there's still some element of surprise that's lacking in the well known engagements of WW2. Maybe you can achieve the same when you get to the familiar stages of WW2 by sometimes focusing on smaller engagements (with fewer units perhaps) within the big conflicts that are not as well known (zooming in on a smaller map instead of always following the big army movements). Btw, it's also refreshing to be playing the German side with inferior planes for once

I'm not a frequent poster, but this has been such a pleasant surprise so far that I thought I'd let you know

Rhaeg wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 4:32 pm It's still way too early for me to give a final verdict on this DLC, but being almost through the 3rd mission, I just wanted to say this is so far one of the best things I've seen in any Panzer General type game! The unique mechanic with only being able to give general directions to your ally is a breath of fresh air in a genre that really hasn't changed much since the original PG. Sure, it means you cannot achieve optimal formations, but I think that's exactly part of the charm. The story stuff in the mission (de)briefings really helps with the immersion. The little family drama introduced in the 3rd mission ties into that nicely and all of a sudden some enemy unit on the field has become a lot more special and interesting. The debriefings with the small historic notes are a small but very welcome addition as well.

Have to say that while it was relatively easy for me to get the bonus objectives in the first 2 missions, I'm probably going to fail those in this 3rd mission. It's nice to have a challenge for bonus objectives that do not block campaign progression. It also adds to replayability value since I already know that I will go for a second play through this whole campaign once I'm done, trying to get all secondary objectives (I'm no genius player btw, I understand the basics well enough but always play on default settings).

The entire setting is nice too btw. I don't know anything about the details of the Spanish Civil War, so there's still some element of surprise that's lacking in the well known engagements of WW2. Maybe you can achieve the same when you get to the familiar stages of WW2 by sometimes focusing on smaller engagements (with fewer units perhaps) within the big conflicts that are not as well known (zooming in on a smaller map instead of always following the big army movements). Btw, it's also refreshing to be playing the German side with inferior planes for once

I'm not a frequent poster, but this has been such a pleasant surprise so far that I thought I'd let you know

Thank you for the feedback! It's always great to receive such positivity.

And yea you really hit all the high notes.

New AI ally and giving AI ally 'orders' to influence them... Wanted that simply because it hasn't really been seen or done in a Panzer General series game. And it fits the Spanish conflict historically very well.

Making the first Nemesis level unit of the Axis Operations be the brother of your female officer... Nothing says 'Civil War' like brother against sister. It drives home what is going on in Spain on a whole different level. It goes a huge distance to explain why Spain was neutral during WW2, despite all the fascist support for Franco. Almost every life lost in the Spanish Civil War was a Spaniard, the country was in no state to participate in a global war in the same year their Civil War was just finishing (March 1939 end of SCW September 1939 start of WW2 proper)

The entire point of having a plethora of bonus objective challenges, and cool rewards to offer in exchange for completion, goes to the very heart of the matter: DO NOT BLOCK CAMPAIGN PROGRESSION. Nothing feels worse than playing a 25 turn scenario, capturing 11 of 12 victory hexes, and being faced with 'defeat' and ejection back to main menu.

And of course we want to explore as much 'new ground' as possible. The original Grand Campaign was huge, but WW2 is still so much bigger. Not only are there opportunities for more variety of content (who knew it would be feasible to make a full 16 scenario campaign with not a single German infantry unit available?!) but as you said, there is a mystery to some of these events. Everyone knows D-Day and Stalingrad, and any self-respecting World War II game includes these historic and iconic battles. But we've seen them so many times, we know how they play out. But why the Battle of the Ebro was fought, and how important it was of a battle to the entire Spanish Civil War... history just waiting to be rediscovered.

Rhaeg wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 4:32 pm It's still way too early for me to give a final verdict on this DLC, but being almost through the 3rd mission, I just wanted to say this is so far one of the best things I've seen in any Panzer General type game! The unique mechanic with only being able to give general directions to your ally is a breath of fresh air in a genre that really hasn't changed much since the original PG. Sure, it means you cannot achieve optimal formations, but I think that's exactly part of the charm. The story stuff in the mission (de)briefings really helps with the immersion. The little family drama introduced in the 3rd mission ties into that nicely and all of a sudden some enemy unit on the field has become a lot more special and interesting. The debriefings with the small historic notes are a small but very welcome addition as well.

Have to say that while it was relatively easy for me to get the bonus objectives in the first 2 missions, I'm probably going to fail those in this 3rd mission. It's nice to have a challenge for bonus objectives that do not block campaign progression. It also adds to replayability value since I already know that I will go for a second play through this whole campaign once I'm done, trying to get all secondary objectives (I'm no genius player btw, I understand the basics well enough but always play on default settings).

The entire setting is nice too btw. I don't know anything about the details of the Spanish Civil War, so there's still some element of surprise that's lacking in the well known engagements of WW2. Maybe you can achieve the same when you get to the familiar stages of WW2 by sometimes focusing on smaller engagements (with fewer units perhaps) within the big conflicts that are not as well known (zooming in on a smaller map instead of always following the big army movements). Btw, it's also refreshing to be playing the German side with inferior planes for once

I'm not a frequent poster, but this has been such a pleasant surprise so far that I thought I'd let you know

+1, I also completed the 2nd mission and I'm in the middle of the third...
I found PzC2 to be extremely solid after the premiere, then I found it to be a very good and interesting game a few months later when I finally learned most of the new rules
After 2 SCW missions I will name PzC 2 an excellent game, almost perfect in its genre

EDIT. I admit that I'm probably losing the third scenario
I'll start again with a different pool of traits

kondi754 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:29 pm EDIT. I admit that I'm probably losing the third scenario
I'll start again with a different pool of traits

The first two missions are easy, it is from the 3rd mission that the serious things begin

Ok, I've just started Corunna Road
I play for the second time but I'm still not completely satisfied with the selected traits.
I think I should opt out of Flexible Command + something for 1 point but I have to choose Infantry General, because a large part of the temporary units are Italian infantry, and the resources are limited

Nevertheless, I really like SCW, the best is combining, thinking, calculating with purchases, improvements and captured equipment so as to use all available slots before the mission.
I also really like the way I command nationalist troops.
The game is outstanding

I like the new dlc .... many good things. But the ai troops ... i liked it in the beginning. But when i lost my fst. scenario, only because of the ai ignoring the near undefended vic. hex, that changed. It feels more like herding cats then commanding soldiers.

o_t_d_x wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 2:47 pm I like the new dlc .... many good things. But the ai troops ... i liked it in the beginning. But when i lost my fst. scenario, only because of the ai ignoring the near undefended vic. hex, that changed. It feels more like herding cats then commanding soldiers.

The AI should go to the nearest vic hex if AI=attack.
The AI must be used as a support unit.

Well, I finished the dlc so I might as well write down what I thought of it after having played it all. Sorry for the long post if you don't like reading through these, but hey, you can always decide not to read

Some (minor) problems aside, I enjoyed the rest of the DLC as much as the first few missions after which I wrote my initial post. I have the FM edition so didn't have to pay for this one, but I saw it listed on steam for €12,50 and it's not an unreasonable price... a bit steep perhaps, I think €10 would have been better. I wouldn't mind paying this kind of amount for lots of future dlc, but it could scare away people once you have multiple dlcs out... the Paradox problem, just check what you need to pay nowadays to get all of CK2's dlc's. Personally I'd be happy to pay for lots more dlc with the amount of quality content like SCW had, but at some point having hundreds of euros or dollars worth of dlc might give you a bad reputation.

The good

• You tried something new with this. As I mentioned before, the Panzer General type games have not seen much (or any IMHO) innovation in the past decades apart from graphical upgrades. I was really, really pleasantly surprised by what you have done here and hope you are not afraid to try more unique mechanics like the Nationalist infantry only able to receive general orders. I've read some of the criticism and yes I would perform better if I could directly control the infantry, but the thing is that this is exactly the main charm of the dlc for me. You are a commander of German expeditionary forces, so yes, it makes perfect sense that you do not get to order Spanish nationalist troops around. This idea has been used to finally (finally) introduce some new mechanics to the genre and I think this is the way to go for future dlc. A very different type of strategy game, but the people at Creative Assembly have successfully done this kind of innovation with TW:Warhammer and its many dlc's. It might be hard to come up with something new and unique for every dlc, but I hope that the predictable criticism ("AI units do not behave perfectly!11!! *shake fist*") won't dissuade you from trying new things.
• I loved the small story bits, especially with mr. Wagner and his Capitana I was more immersed than I've ever been in any Panzer General type of game. Nemesis heroes add to this too.
• The addition of secondary objectives that do not have to be met are a simple but superb addition. As I mentioned in my original post, it does not just add an extra challenge to a scenario but also adds replayability value. I missed most of the secondary objectives during my 1st play through the game and now I'm looking forward to trying again to get those done. Have to say some seem almost impossible to n00b me, like taking all victory hexes in the Ebro river scenario or keeping that medical evac truc alive, but I know I'm not an elite player so I don't mind missing out on a few of these objectives. You did a good job of making it possible to get the best commendation point reward available to everyone: Galland seems to be the one you want to take with you going into future dlc and you can get him by paying a big amount of prestige even if you don't have the points to buy him through secondary objectives.
• Zooming in on lesser known conflicts of WW2 (and what happened before it, in this case) works very well. I learned a thing or 2 about the Spanish Civil war and it kept me wondering about what was coming next. The zoomed out Grand Campaign held zero surprises... a bit too much of "been there, done that", perhaps.
• Varying degree of difficulty for the scenarios: while in general it does start easy and ends hard, there are a few easier scenarios in between too. Not only does it fit the historical context, it also allows me to relax a bit in between scenarios in stead of getting more and more stressed as you progress.
• I liked the length of the campaign. Feels just right: after having played through all of the scenarios, it feels like it's time to go to the next campaign, but it also doesn't feel too short. Value for money too.
• Some unique units that haven't appeared yet in any game in this genre and they looked as good and detailed as the rest of them.

The bad

There's not a lot I have to mention here.

• Lack of information/clarity. The player pays for Nationalist AI replenishments and I needed to figure that out by noticing my prestige amount lowering between turns... There is no way to check the amount of commendation points I have, if these are here to stay for all future Axis Operation dlc, they really need a place in the UI... "Why hasn't my new tech I purchased with commendation points arrived? --> You should have hovered the mouse over the purchase button so you'd have read the tooltip stating it arrives on turn 2... don't just click it!" - that's not a very ideal way to inform players, why not just give all relevant information in the pop up box?
• Bugs, obviously. I can live with imperfections at launch and I have not encountered anything game breaking yet. Support units not working in conjunction with allied PC controlled faction is a bad one and I had one scenario in which the Spanish Nationalist infantry did not respond to my attack order (I reported that in the bugs thread). If these get fixed in the foreseeable future I can live with it.
• Minor issue: heroes that cannot be used at all in the entire campaign. In this case, infantry heroes cannot be applied to Italian infantry, making them completely useless.
• Possible issue: I'm not one to cry too quickly about stuff being too hard and unfair and I understand this is supposed to be the biggest and hardest scenario of the campaign, but... the Ebro river scenario felt like a bit crazy... getting pounded by 15+ artillery per turn and new air units showing up even after you downed over 10 of them combined with hordes and hordes of tanks and strong recon units felt unbalanced to me. Then again, I'm no l33t player at all, so maybe the professionals will show me how it should be done. I'm going to replay the entire campaign to try to get the secondary objectives, but I absolutely dread having to tackle this one.

Topics for discussion

• How to deal with unit experience. At first I thought it was going nice and slow, but still I already have a lot of units with 2 stars and some extra XP at the end of the Spanish Civil War. At this rate these units would be 5 stars before the battle for France starts... It's a difficult thing to deal with when you go for a mega campaign that will end up having dozens and dozens of scenarios (if all goes well with PC2 franchise). Hard caps work but are not ideal (it sucks when your units stop getting XP rewards). The only solution I can think of is that the old trusted 5 star system needs an overhaul. The simplest thing to change in this regard would be going from 5 stars to for instance 10. The progression speed would be the same, so you would end up with 2 out 10 instead of 2 out of 5 at the end of SCW. Bonuses for each star would be cut in half then. Effectively, this means your unit XP would advance at 50% speed, but at least there would be some smaller intermediate rewards. Maybe you could spice things up by adding unique rewards at certain levels, like a +1 movement at 5 stars out of 10 or a better movement table or immunity to ambush for high level veterans, though I understand you would get overlap with the hero and medal system. However you would solve this, I do think the granularity of the 5 star system is too low for a large campaign. The interval between XP rewards cannot become too large, nor can you hit the final cap too soon. Just my 2 cents.
• The amount of available heroes is growing as fast as the unit XP. Is this a bad thing? Does this mean enemy units will have more and more heroes too later in the timeline? You could choose not to use all of your heroes I suppose, but that feels kind of lame: you could also decide to play the game with only one arm or blindfolded or after drinking 1 bottle of wine in 10 minutes...
• Should your whole core force from SCW go over to the next dlc or should you only be allowed to pick a few units and lose the rest? It would obviously disappoint people if you could only take along a couple of your units, but being able to take all of them along with you from AO dlc to AO dlc could mean you would never need to purchase a new unit again, just upgrade them. Not sure how I feel about this btw, but it is a topic for discussion I would think.
• Should you take all prestige points with you from dlc to dlc? The good players could end up with crazy amounts of prestige at some point, making future content trivial because access to veteran reinforcements is limitless. Putting a hard cap on transferable prestige has its disadvantages too: "Oh, I can't take the prestige with me anyway, so I might as well go crazy in spending on reinforcements and elite auxiliaries right now".

A lot of these discussion points have to do with good ol' power creep, I guess. These issues probably have been discussed before, but if so I'd still be very interested in what the results of these discussions have been.

Final verdict

All in all I'd give this dlc a score of 85 out of 100. I give you 100 out of 100 for trying some serious new game mechanics though, not because the implementation is perfect, but because it's the first time I've seen any serious innovation in the series of Panzer General games and its successors (that's in one quarter of a century). Kudos to you and keep showing some guts with the future dlcs (and no, I don't expect miracles for every new dlc you bring out. Just do your best to introduce some unique mechanic whenever you find room for it. Working along closely with an AI faction that you do not directly control was very fitting in the context of the SCW).

Edit: lots of spelling and grammar

Rhaeg wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 8:34 pm Well, I finished the dlc so I might as well write down what I thought of it after having played it all. Sorry for the long post if you don't like reading through these, but hey, you can always decide not to read

While I always want a perfect score, I think fair is fair. The reports of various issues do knock it down a bit.

To address some points:

1.Always super happy to see people enjoying the minor story elements of Stefan and Ana Sofia. Such characters and drama won't ever take over the campaign design, but we hope this positive reaction means we can continue to use it to sprinkle personality and flavor on future content to come.

2.Non linear scaling scenario difficulty is indeed intended and carefully baked into historical context and campaign difficulty curve. It's nice to have a rest between the big crazy stuff. Pure escalation bigger and bigger and bigger... is fine in a small campaign. But if the Axis Operations reach the size of the Grand Campaign at 10 DLC and 144 scenarios (or bigger)... pure escalation is not appropriate to content on such scale. There are breaks between DLC, and there are breaks within the DLC as well.

3.Well Battle of the Ebro sounds perfect from your description. It is quite daunting.... but that is why it is a one of a kind battle. Both historically and within the content. Imagine if every scenario was on scale of Battle of the Ebro in terms of unit count, right from the start of Seville? Bigger is not always better. I would expect each DLC to have at least one of these 'epic' battles, but making sure they are rare (1 out of 16 scenarios) is important to keeping them epic and not just a never ending chore to see scenario after scenario after scenario.

4.We actually have many plans to deal with experience:
At the start of the campaign, it tells you what the experience cap is.
DLC campaign also have a slower rate of medal awards (anyone notice it takes forever to earn a Steamroller award?) and also slower experience rates.
There are also future plans for experience that I can't talk about, because they are new features and mechanics we haven't seen in a Panzer Corps game before... Suffice to say, we are acutely aware of this particular issue, and have an arsenal of tools and ideas to address it.

5.As for heroes, this has been asked repeatedly, so I will repeat my position on it, which is just let the player decide what they want to do with their glut of heroes:

Plaid wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2020 7:18 am Generally speaking one hero per map is too much.
Player will be swimming in super-units of all sorts by mid-war.

Each individual campaign has to be playable by itself. Which means the 1 hero per mission rule must stand.
But perhaps imported COREs should be limited to 1 new hero per 3 missions? That kind sucks, it's like punishment for importing.
What's wrong with continuing to give the player heroes, and letting them decide for themselves to continue to power inflate their force, or to voluntarily choose to opt out by disbanding/ignore new heroes?

6.There are no plans for a CORE shrink, a la DLC 42/43 West. Proper utilization of the reserve system plus non-linear content difficulty scaling should be more than enough to prevent the need for slashing the player CORE down to size.

7.Prestige is meant to carry over. But each DLC has that 'destroy fraction of your prestige' event. So.... the more you carry over, the harder it will hit you when losing half or even 75% of your prestige will hit. As before, my opinion on these matters is always to just let the player choose.

If someone wants to never invoke the prestige sink event in any DLC and they just inflate their prestige levels into practical infinity... more power to them. Freedom of choice includes the freedom to choose a non-optimal path. Fun for them is perhaps different than fun for me. For the rest of us, generous prestige amounts to make sure players are never starving (on default difficulty,if people opt into Rommel mode thats their business) and occasional % prestige sinks should be enough to ensure every DLC has enough prestige inside of it to see the average player through to completion. No more hoarding from 1939 to survive 1944.

The reason prestige was a problem in late Grand Campaign is because sinks didn't exist. We couldnt give large prestige numbers because prestige was the primary driver of balance in original Panzer Corps. Now in Panzer Corps 2, slot limit is the primary driver of balance and we also have prestige sinks. So we can very readily not be so damn stingy with prestige rewards (again talking about default difficulty mode) and we have the tools to make sure it's not just scaling to meaningless infinity.

Also, making the 'best' rewards not be the most expensive ones was 100% deliberate decision making. As you noticed, and pointed out... we want as many players as possible to enjoy the best rewards. The full completionists can be the ones to get EVERYTHING, but there's no value in having something super cool and unique and unseen as a Verdeja 2 if we just hide it away.

Original plan was to award the Verdeja 2 at the very end of the Spanish Civil War, as a sort of reward for having completed it. But you know... the journey to reach the end is a reward in of itself. Well that, and Ana's letter

The new gift system is a great way to hand out a very special (and crazy good stated) unit without breaking game balance entirely. You can only get one full unit's worth. That only reinforces how special of a prize it is!

Rhaeg wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 8:34 pm [*] Possible issue: I'm not one to cry too quickly about stuff being too hard and unfair and I understand this is supposed to be the biggest and hardest scenario of the campaign, but... the Ebro river scenario felt like a bit crazy... getting pounded by 15+ artillery per turn and new air units showing up even after you downed over 10 of them combined with hordes and hordes of tanks and strong recon units felt unbalanced to me. Then again, I'm no l33t player at all, so maybe the professionals will show me how it should be done. I'm going to replay the entire campaign to try to get the secondary objectives, but I absolutely dread having to tackle this one.
[/list]

Also, I hate to be the harbinger of ill news but...

The next time you play Battle of the Ebro, you might find the experience to be somewhat different. The position, and composition, of enemy attack waves are randomized on every playthrough.

So if last time you got overwhelmed in the center sector, and decide to throw all your forces into the center to massively reinforce that part of the line.....
Well the AI may attack you in the extreme south in that game. Or in the extreme north. It's not predetermined where the enemy will attack. Sure you can look at the LUA game files to determine what turn a reinforcement wave will arrive... but you won't know where it arrives, or what composition it has, until you detect that enemy force on the battlefield.

Kerensky wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 10:34 pm
The next time you play Battle of the Ebro, you might find the experience to be somewhat different. The position, and composition, of enemy attack waves are randomized on every playthrough.

So if last time you got overwhelmed in the center sector, and decide to throw all your forces into the center to massively reinforce that part of the line.....
Well the AI may attack you in the extreme south in that game. Or in the extreme north. It's not predetermined where the enemy will attack. Sure you can look at the LUA game files to determine what turn a reinforcement wave will arrive... but you won't know where it arrives, or what composition it has, until you detect that enemy force on the battlefield.

Personally I will never replay DLC1 because of Battle of the Ebro. Too boring and disappointing with it's infinite spawns of units. Hope there'll be less such battles in the future.

"Well Played!":

I'm currently on the Mission to rescue fellow Nationalists... so I haven't played too much yet!.

Even so!... i had no-idea that the SCW-Campaign was going to turn out as good as it has!. What a big surprise!.

I am enjoying it very much... nothing much else at the moment 'Game-Wise' interests me too-much... and I am looking forward to much more of this. "I pity those" who spit on this Campaign Effort!... it's their 'Tragic-Loss'.

I don't know for sure if it is only just "Kerensky" who is making these Campaigns... what-ever?... this has been a 'Job-Well-Done'... keep up "the good-exceptional-work!".

Moransky wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 11:40 pm

Kerensky wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 10:34 pm
The next time you play Battle of the Ebro, you might find the experience to be somewhat different. The position, and composition, of enemy attack waves are randomized on every playthrough.

So if last time you got overwhelmed in the center sector, and decide to throw all your forces into the center to massively reinforce that part of the line.....
Well the AI may attack you in the extreme south in that game. Or in the extreme north. It's not predetermined where the enemy will attack. Sure you can look at the LUA game files to determine what turn a reinforcement wave will arrive... but you won't know where it arrives, or what composition it has, until you detect that enemy force on the battlefield.

Personally I will never replay DLC1 because of Battle of the Ebro. Too boring and disappointing with it's infinite spawns of units. Hope there'll be less such battles in the future.

Infinite spawns - and infinite prestige to repair both.

This made me stop playing in turn 25. I would have won, but really.

nexusno2000 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 5:46 am Infinite spawns - and infinite prestige to repair both.

It's strange how the perception of the AI having infinite prestige comes to be. AI has near 0 prestige, with always 0 to start and only a per turn income of about 100 or 200.

Compare that to the tens of thousands of prestige put at the players disposal, and still people manage to run out somehow...

I get it that the AI is all about not preserving their units as the player chops down legion after legion of units, but is that not the core gameplay of Panzer Corps? It's all about destroying hordes of enemy units, for the most part.

I enjoy a shooting war much more than a moving units war personally. I dunno, but I do have some ideas for mixing up the enemy in future DLC that doesn't involve just packing on the pounds. A Grand Campaign environment is so long, just packing more fodder into mission after mission is certainly going to be tiresome, which is why we so badly need to inject as much variety into the scenario designs of the new Axis Operations. So far so good, but it's clear from people who like, and also dislike, large mega battle scenarios that these missions need to remain the exception, not the rule. 1 or 2 per 16 scenario DLC? I think that expectation for 'bigger battles' needs to be fulfilled at this very minimum.

Rhaeg wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 4:32 pm It's still way too early for me to give a final verdict on this DLC, but being almost through the 3rd mission, I just wanted to say this is so far one of the best things I've seen in any Panzer General type game! The unique mechanic with only being able to give general directions to your ally is a breath of fresh air in a genre that really hasn't changed much since the original PG. Sure, it means you cannot achieve optimal formations, but I think that's exactly part of the charm. The story stuff in the mission (de)briefings really helps with the immersion. The little family drama introduced in the 3rd mission ties into that nicely and all of a sudden some enemy unit on the field has become a lot more special and interesting. The debriefings with the small historic notes are a small but very welcome addition as well.

Have to say that while it was relatively easy for me to get the bonus objectives in the first 2 missions, I'm probably going to fail those in this 3rd mission. It's nice to have a challenge for bonus objectives that do not block campaign progression. It also adds to replayability value since I already know that I will go for a second play through this whole campaign once I'm done, trying to get all secondary objectives (I'm no genius player btw, I understand the basics well enough but always play on default settings).

The entire setting is nice too btw. I don't know anything about the details of the Spanish Civil War, so there's still some element of surprise that's lacking in the well known engagements of WW2. Maybe you can achieve the same when you get to the familiar stages of WW2 by sometimes focusing on smaller engagements (with fewer units perhaps) within the big conflicts that are not as well known (zooming in on a smaller map instead of always following the big army movements). Btw, it's also refreshing to be playing the German side with inferior planes for once

I'm not a frequent poster, but this has been such a pleasant surprise so far that I thought I'd let you know

Wait until you hit Ebro and then pls repost your impressions

Kerensky wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 6:21 am

nexusno2000 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 5:46 am Infinite spawns - and infinite prestige to repair both.

It's strange how the perception of the AI having infinite prestige comes to be. AI has near 0 prestige, with always 0 to start and only a per turn income of about 100 or 200.

Compare that to the tens of thousands of prestige put at the players disposal, and still people manage to run out somehow...

I get it that the AI is all about not preserving their units as the player chops down legion after legion of units, but is that not the core gameplay of Panzer Corps? It's all about destroying hordes of enemy units, for the most part.

I enjoy a shooting war much more than a moving units war personally. I dunno, but I do have some ideas for mixing up the enemy in future DLC that doesn't involve just packing on the pounds. A Grand Campaign environment is so long, just packing more fodder into mission after mission is certainly going to be tiresome, which is why we so badly need to inject as much variety into the scenario designs of the new Axis Operations. So far so good, but it's clear from people who like, and also dislike, large mega battle scenarios that these missions need to remain the exception, not the rule. 1 or 2 per 16 scenario DLC? I think that expectation for 'bigger battles' needs to be fulfilled at this very minimum.

Oc it isn't infinite. But it is effectively infinite, as you only damage a limited number of units each turn. Plus, with major new waves incoming, you've not the luxury of pushing hard enough to make the AI run out.

Which effectively leaves you with only annihilation in 1 round or encirclements.

Just a quick one: On the one hand, a lot of fresh ideas and a campaign not so well-trodden like the rest of WW2. On the other, all those flimsy biplanes and minuscule tanks barely make a dent in anything. And really big numbers of AI enemy units and allies make turns you are not playing quite long. I am not sure what to think of this yet and I have only won three missions so far. But the first comparison I drew in my head was OoB's Burma Road: Unusual scenario and equipment, original, but the units and missions feel sometimes a bit off from the usual wargaming experience. Cant really put my finger on it, yet. But I do miss the firepower of my Panther Gs and HS 129s one-shotting Shermans.

Andy2012 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 4:02 pm But I do miss the firepower of my Panther Gs and HS 129s one-shotting Shermans.

Why would you expect that from Spanish Civil War era equipment...?

Andy2012 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 4:02 pm all those flimsy biplanes and minuscule tanks barely make a dent in anything.

Try playing the Italians in random scenarios. As much as I love the Italians , almost every unit they have seems to hit like a girl.

On the other hand , playing the Italians in random scenarios seems like very good training and education for SCW.

I suppose the best way I can think of to explain / describe that , is to say it conditions you at least to playing with a high tech 1920's army , not a high tech 1940's army.

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As I have said elsewhere , it so happens that a Spanish Civil War campaign wasn't just on my top five wargaming wish list.

It was number one on my wargaming wish list !

And it so happens that quite a few other items on my wish list are checked off in SCW :

-- Access to the original Junkers Ju 87 A "Jolanthe " . I have an irrational love of that plane .

-- the ability to use the Junkers Ju 87 A in conjunction with another tactical bomber I adore ; the Breda Ba 65.

-- some scenarios , or better yet , a whole campaign , where horse - drawn artillery is the norm and a practical option . Not something you spend your way out of as soon and as fast as possible.

-- some scenarios , or better yet , a whole campaign , where cavalry is still a practical option / can have SOME practical use.

-- the opportunity to work hand -in - hand with allies. Ever since , in real life , I had the opportunity to work in a foreign country among foreigners , I have had a peculiar taste for that sort of thing. On that account , I suppose , is why I like the Condor Legion , the 13th SS Handscar Division , the Blue Division , the Eastern European Axis allies , and the Afrika Korps so much.

So , basically , for me , SCW is Christmas in July.