Frontlines - Cyrenaica - Review

[DefiantXYX]

Part 1 - Italian Campaign

First of all, I am not a big fan of single campaigns about a short time period. Why? Well, for me a very important part of the game is to manage my core. In this campaign you have nothing to do. There is nothing to upgrade, no new stuff, no captured stuff, no events with unique units...just nothing. You dont get more core slots, so you do not even buy new stuff.
You wont be able to take your core to another campaign, so who cares if some core units die?

I played on hardest difficulty.

- I cant remember a single map. Maybe the one with the battle ship. The campaign feels extremly repititive. Its always the same. All you have to do is to find out where the enemy is coming from and just kill everything.
- no events, no optionals, no alternatives. Yeah, there are some secondary objectives, but there is absolutly no reason to not do or get them. It will even snowball, if you keep failing the "optionals". Could be frustrating when you realize at some points, that you have to start all over again.
- bad story telling. The maps are designed that you have to kill a lot but losing almost nothing but the story tells you, that you get beaten all the time. I cant remember a single general or person. Sure, they are not famous, but Wagner and la capitana do not even exist. I cared more about both of them after 3 maps like for anyone in this camapaign after the whole game.
- broken blance/heroes and stuff. There are no puzzles. How can I take this city? How can I break this line? How can I hold my position? Nothing. Always the same units and battles. You can easily abuse some scripted heroes to break the whole game.
- smart AI? Nope, nothing. Stupid AI, wasting everything for the chance to kill one of your units, fighting stupid battles and all we know from the past.
- infantry: why do you get italian paratroopers? There isnt a single mission for that. And the italian infantry just sucks. If you start the campaign, just sell them and get artilley and tanks instead.

Well, I cant really mention some good stuff, besides: its still panzer corps 2, which is an amazing game. If you like the base game, you can have some nice hours with this DLCs. But dont expect something on the level of the AO DLCs. This is just like a filler episode. You wont miss anything, if you skip this one.

I will now start with the british part, but I am quite sure I will never ever play this one again. I see no added value in this and I think if you play it again its even easiers, when you know where the enemy is coming from.

[DefiantXYX]

Part 2 - British Campaign

Feels better. The first part was interesting, I was low on prestige and had to plan every single step. It still was no real defense, but you could not just attack. I even had to restart one scenario.
The offensive part was getting boring again. You get too much powerful heroes and even too much core slots. I never ever had a problem in this game to fill up my core, but this time I even wasted it with transports und useless overstrengh.
Unfortunately once again it feels just stupid, that the italians are alwasy on the run an disorganized but there are somehow getting stronger, having 3.5 star units out of nowhere. Most of the "events" make no sense.
I spend the last scenarios with just rushing forward and waste my prestige so save time. No reason to care about my core or the prestige, if the campaign just ends...

Like I alread said, if you have nothing better to do you can have good hours with this dlc. But thats all. If anyone was really hoping for some new features he will get dissappointed.

[Tassadar]

The offensive part was getting boring again. You get too much powerful heroes and even too much core slots. I never ever had a problem in this game to fill up my core, but this time I even wasted it with transports und useless overstrengh.

If you ever re-try this DLC, do it with Poor Ground Control general trait. I'm halfway though the British campaign and I must say this single trait elevates the experience to a whole new level. I am having signification more fun with this on compared to the Italian campaign where I did not have it active. What it does, it makes the heroes, while powerful, not auto-solve every issue I encounter. I can only imagine Slow Reaction having a similar impact, if not even more punishing in some missions. Of course I realize the balance should be so that it fits regardless of traits, but desert combat and Poor Ground Control really like each other in practice, even if it sounds a bit scary at first. The maps terrain use is also very smart, so it further increases the importance of unit placement and showcases how much thought went into terrain creation in this DLC.

[DefiantXYX]

If you ever re-try this DLC, do it with Poor Ground Control general trait.

I tried this trait once in a AO series. I am not a big fan of all the traits who completly change the game mechanics in some way. Difficulty should be determined by unit strength and numbers, experience, prestige and the smartness of the AI.Unfortunately there is no AI, so for me its just numbers. I really like David vs Goliath and Uphill Battle would be also nice, but its not balanced. You cant fight units with +10 defense at some points.
Thats why I am always waiting for more sliders

[RVallant]

I agree, it's a bit lacklustre. I agree with a lot of your complaints, the story is iffy, the game relies too much on 'oops you've failed' even when you haven't, which is a bit of a no-no.

Also, the crutch of the AI having hero combinations to one-shot certain troops sometimes, makes the game 'gamey' rather than tactical.

There was some very odd design decisions with regards to unit strengths, recons were unusually overpowered compared to tank units, but also I felt that British tanks felt undergunned.

Nearly everywhere I look suggests the Italian tanks were vastly inferior to the modern British tanks that we're fielding in this campaign, and even that the Matilda 2 was nearly overarmoured to hell vs conventional AT guns at the time, yet I think the M11 seems to be the better tank overall than some of the Crusader models its supposed to be inferior to? (I cba to re-install the game and triple check tbh.)

The result was it never really felt like the British had any particular feeling of overpowering the Italian armour, as you might have expected, and as usually did happen in PZC1 at least until the later years or the Germans hit the scene.

Same with the RAF, I never quite felt that the RAF were the ace in the hole for the British, the Italian air force seemed to be on par, when it probably wasn't quite the case?

I guess, it is an interesting introduction to the early stages of an African Grand Campaign of a sorts, but the balanced just seemed completely off, and I felt like it was just a turgid campaign rather than an enjoyable one, especially given the restrictions on air power, and the odd unit strengths. (IMO anyway.)

[adiekmann]

Here's the problem with most campaigns/DLCs as I have observed.

Players want it to be historical, but challenging, and these two things rarely both will work.

If you make this campaign historical, then the Italians have few mechanized vehicles, are very infantry heavy, and will pose little threat to a good player. For example, it always bugs me that a zero star Italian infantry unit has virtually the same stats as a zero star British infantry unit. There is no way that they in real life were equally competent forces! The British infantry had better training and weapons. Or simply had a weapon.

If on the other hand you try to make it challenging for the player, then there will be complaints of imbalance, unrealistic units/strengths, and so on.

I read all of these complaints about all the campaigns, not just this one, and find them often contradictory. You simply can't have it both ways. Something has to give. Imagine everything is as accurate as possible. Units types, stats, numbers, etc. So what is going to happen? The player will walk all over the AI and win the entire war in three scenarios. How happy will that make you? A weak AI has much to do with this too, but that apparently can't be fixed in this game. Maybe for Panzer Corps 3 they can use AlphaZero https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/a ... gi-and-go/ by Google?

Something to remember is that they are also a company trying to appeal to as broad an audience or player base as possible. Now I personally feel that veteran players are the main purchasers of these DLCs so they can/should cater to a better player by making them harder by default. But that once again means making it unbalanced or unhistorical in force composition.

Grondel and Andreas have made their mod of AO pretty challenging. Some real excellent work with some very creative ideas. Bravo! But as with any project, I do not agree/like everything they have done, and they probably compromised on things and don't either! But...I really don't see many casual players of this game being able to handle it at even default level.

And therein resides the problem. You can't make everyone (me included) happy all the time. No matter what one does, mod or official release, someone isn't going to like this or that while some others do.

I had fun playing this DLC and that's what's important. Is everything perfect? No, and it never will be no matter what the developers do for every player.

[Tassadar]

If you make this campaign historical, then the Italians have few mechanized vehicles, are very infantry heavy, and will pose little threat to a good player. For example, it always bugs me that a zero star Italian infantry unit has virtually the same stats as a zero star British infantry unit. There is no way that they in real life were equally competent forces! The British infantry had better training and weapons. Or simply had a weapon.

Except since these stats are not the same, even if only slightly, makes a massive difference. Regular IT infantry has 2 Ground Defense less than British, 1 less Initiative, and for some bizarre reason, one more Ammo. British infantry is on par with German units and the Italian is one tier lower, making a massive difference in combat predictions. Now, I'd give it 1 less point of soft attack as well since the old Carcano rifle ammo was absolutely horrible, but that's nitpicking. The point is, that difference between infantry of major nations in the conflict vs. ones such as Italy, Romania or Hungary that struggled with the same level of modern equipment is well represented and all the way since the original Panzer General. The difference here is subtle, but I feel adequately represented.

I'd agree the overall army composition would have to be different - as you said, less tanks, more infantry, but for the same reason you don't see players doing Barbarossa as Germans with mostly horse-drawn artillery, as it in theory should be. So yea, some level of inaccuracy is needed for gameplay purposes, I just don't think infantry stats are an issue.

There was some very odd design decisions with regards to unit strengths, recons were unusually overpowered compared to tank units, but also I felt that British tanks felt undergunned.

Nearly everywhere I look suggests the Italian tanks were vastly inferior to the modern British tanks that we're fielding in this campaign, and even that the Matilda 2 was nearly overarmoured to hell vs conventional AT guns at the time, yet I think the M11 seems to be the better tank overall than some of the Crusader models its supposed to be inferior to? (I cba to re-install the game and triple check tbh.)

The result was it never really felt like the British had any particular feeling of overpowering the Italian armour, as you might have expected, and as usually did happen in PZC1 at least until the later years or the Germans hit the scene.

Same with the RAF, I never quite felt that the RAF were the ace in the hole for the British, the Italian air force seemed to be on par, when it probably wasn't quite the case?

I need to defend the quality of Italian equipment this time, as there seems to be a common misconception about their armor and planes compared to Allied equivalents at this stage of the war. It is true that a lot of it was obsolete or inadequate, but it was the same on the British side at that point in time and only started to rapidly change in 1942 as the Italian industry could not keep up with production numbers or simply did not have the tech (kept producing riveted plates for tanks out of necessity). M11/39 was able to deal with Cruiser tanks just fine, but the issue was not having the main gun in a turret and being less mobile. The M13/40 was on the other hand still slow, but perfectly able to deal with any British tank of the period aside from the Matilda II. In terms of in-game stats I recon the M11/39 should have worse initiative and slightly lower both soft and hard attack, but overall I can see some compromise for the sake of gameplay. As for British A10 and A13 Cruisers, had thinner armor than Italian M13/40 and the 2 pounder wasn't really that much different from the cannone da 47/32. Only after the 6-pounder was applied to later variant of Crusaders, did the situation change noticeably. The advantage British forces had over Italians in tank warfare was much better doctrine, better mid-level officers, communication advantage and mobility, not that the Cruisers were significantly better than Italian vehicles (and the Matilda while great and indeed overpowered in terms of defense, was too slow to be universally used for every purpose).

Same for air combat. The CR.42 was maybe interior to the Hurricane Mk.I, but not to a degree where it could not compete as it had great maneuverability being a biplane and being an overall sturdy machine. You can see it in stats. It's weaker than the Hurricane, but still able to damage it. Then there was the MC.200, only very slightly inferior to the Hurricane in some aspects and mostly plagued with maintenance issues that affected its performance.

Of course, all of this changed in 1942 where Italians were unable to keep up. They still produced good stuff like the MC.202 Folgore fighter, Cannone da 90/53 AA piece or the semovente assault guns, but that was too little, too late and often plagued with inadequate supply. Italians equipment was often much better than it is given credit for, but it's mostly a case of Rommel stepping in and being much more successful in battle.

[DefiantXYX]

Players want it to be historical, but challenging, and these two things rarely both will work.

First of all its a game, not a documentory. I know there are people who are too deeply involved in the WW2 subject, but I guess for 95% of all players its fine if the game is freestyling if necessary.
The main part of the game is managing your own core and I can have only tanks if I want.

My problem with the DLC is, the devs already made it work. SCW was just fine, challenging from the beginning to the end.
And I was expecting too much. Smart AI, new game mechanics...but I dont see anything that was promised.

[Retributarr]

Realism Verses-Game Competitive Playability:

The above discussions are good and informative... which is great!. Now i would like to add just a bit more constructive criticism to the above posted narratives.

What additionally i find missing is... something like... "the basic effects of "Fuel and Ammunition Shortages" being put into effect in some kind of reactionary form in the Campaigns.

Also!... "resulting reactions to stressful situations" such as... being surrounded with the very-real possibility of having to surrender en'-masse... then being translated into some-kind-of-Tangible-Panic-Situation.

"Shortages of Various Military-Equipment"... should be an integral part of the Game... and surface on occasion when "Historically Applicable"... such as for example... lets say that the Allied-Bombing-Effort over Germanys Industrial Complexes results in an acute shortage of specific models of Tanks or Aircraft or what-ever-else!. Then!... in such situations... "An-Information-Blurb" could be introduced during 'Game-Play' to inform or notify the Player... what shortages to expect when replacements are needed... and as well... when and if the production issue will be or can be resolved.

"Replacement-Recovery-Rates"... should be determined based on the current situations of the Task-Forces or Units Involved!. For-Example!... If a Combat-Group is not at an orderly rest... where full replacement is readily available... but instead has just been engaged in combat possibly even resulting in some form of retreating and regrouping... then the replacement rate should reflect or take into consideration those factors and then permit replacements to fit the situation.

I hope some others can add some of their ideas to what i have just listed.

[RVallant]

I need to defend the quality of Italian equipment this time, as there seems to be a common misconception about their armor and planes compared to Allied equivalents at this stage of the war. It is true that a lot of it was obsolete or inadequate, but it was the same on the British side at that point in time and only started to rapidly change in 1942 as the Italian industry could not keep up with production numbers or simply did not have the tech (kept producing riveted plates for tanks out of necessity). M11/39 was able to deal with Cruiser tanks just fine, but the issue was not having the main gun in a turret and being less mobile. The M13/40 was on the other hand still slow, but perfectly able to deal with any British tank of the period aside from the Matilda II. In terms of in-game stats I recon the M11/39 should have worse initiative and slightly lower both soft and hard attack, but overall I can see some compromise for the sake of gameplay. As for British A10 and A13 Cruisers, had thinner armor than Italian M13/40 and the 2 pounder wasn't really that much different from the cannone da 47/32. Only after the 6-pounder was applied to later variant of Crusaders, did the situation change noticeably. The advantage British forces had over Italians in tank warfare was much better doctrine, better mid-level officers, communication advantage and mobility, not that the Cruisers were significantly better than Italian vehicles (and the Matilda while great and indeed overpowered in terms of defense, was too slow to be universally used for every purpose).

Same for air combat. The CR.42 was maybe interior to the Hurricane Mk.I, but not to a degree where it could not compete as it had great maneuverability being a biplane and being an overall sturdy machine. You can see it in stats. It's weaker than the Hurricane, but still able to damage it. Then there was the MC.200, only very slightly inferior to the Hurricane in some aspects and mostly plagued with maintenance issues that affected its performance.

When does historical agreement (nearly universally) become a 'common misconception'?

A lazy google of the M11/39 showcases multiple sources, from wikipedia and so on that all universally agree that the tank was comprehensively outclassed, with thin armour, terrible reliability and a weapon that whilst okay, was limited in terms of manouverability. In fact, nearly everywhere suggests that the M13/40 was the better tank design, and the only attribute difference between the two tanks in this campaign? 1 defence point. Eh?

By contrast, everything points to the Cruiser tanks (A9 in particular) being a fairly capable tank with the QF2 pounder being a reliable weapon, but the tank suffered due to weak armour itself.

Yet, for some reason the M11 has superior defence (13 vs 11-12 for the Cruisers) and better initiative (with that gun? I don't think so, and with the training and lack of radios? Really?) and effectively shoots at 13 vs 11 to a cruiser's 13 vs 13.

That's just flat out wrong going by all the historical sources I've lazily found, if anything it sounds like it should be the other way round.

It's the same as you suggest with the planes, nearly everywhere online suggests that whilst the CR42 was an exceptional plane for its time, it relied very much on pilot and manoueverability and was outmatched by modern craft. There's even sources suggesting that the Gladiator, outdated as it was, had a slight edge with the CR42, and yet the stats in this game has the gladiator practically comprehensively outmatched (lower def, almost zero initiative etc).

No, for me the units just don't look right. Maybe that's a 'common misconception' but the majority of sources I can see online seems to suggests that my line of thinking is correct, that perhaps the Italian units here are given too much credit than they might deserve. (They were abysmal in PzC1, but here they're far too decent IMO.)

[Tassadar]

A lazy google of the M11/39 showcases multiple sources, from wikipedia and so on that all universally agree that the tank was comprehensively outclassed, with thin armour, terrible reliability and a weapon that whilst okay, was limited in terms of manouverability. In fact, nearly everywhere suggests that the M13/40 was the better tank design, and the only attribute difference between the two tanks in this campaign? 1 defence point. Eh?

I agree that the difference should be more pronounced between the two, as I said mostly about initiative - this would reflect the limited traverse of the main gun and how it impacts the ability to aim on target. Similarly lower attack (both soft and hard) to reflect the smaller caliber main gun. However, this I already noted and the point we're looking at is not the marginal differences that could be made between comparable vehicles in the roster of the same nation, but how they stand up to the British ones, and that's not that badly. So on that we 100% agree, the issue is that the game is full of things like that. Have you ever noticed that Panzer IB has 3 more points of soft attack and 2 more points of hard attack? All of that despite in reality the only the engine and suspension differed noticeably, the armament was the same (they even had the same ammo supply despite in-game the B variant having one more!). That makes absolutely no sense historically, but it is there I assume so the player can have a meaningful upgrade available. All the titles since Panzer General had this issue to some extent I'm afraid and none have yet accurately dealt with the stats. I think for balance reasons we will never see anything that accurate aside from maybe some ambitious mod.

I won't argue thus that the stat often don't make sense, but my point is that the idea about Italian equipment being universally outclassed is a common misconception, which I stand by based on my sources. In 1940 in Africa most of the cannon equipped tanks used were not that different from each other (again with the exception of the Matilda II) and same goes for various aircraft.

As for being more specific, sure, M11/39 was by far the worse of all the tanks used in Africa by the Italians, but it was still capable of knocking out every British tank besides the Matilda II. So while some the stats of M11/39 and M13/40 are better, others are not, and you thus get an overall feel for the performance. Cruisers have weak armor, so you need to use them carefully in-game, but their extra mobility allows for tactical advantages, so the most important aspect is preserved. Plus, there are some elements that are hard to present by sheer stats. For example, how does one showcase the fact that the main advantage of the Gladiator over CR.42 was having a radio? Or how do you implement the fact that Italian armor was brittle due to higher sulfur content (quality issue of the plate itself) that alongside having the plates riveted meant higher chance of casualties upon hit due to accidental shrapnell? These are really tricky things to represent and you'd probably need some main benchmark document to track them and balance them out, which would be a a massive undertaking.

When does historical agreement (nearly universally) become a 'common misconception'?

(...)

No, for me the units just don't look right. Maybe that's a 'common misconception' but the majority of sources I can see online seems to suggests that my line of thinking is correct, that perhaps the Italian units here are given too much credit than they might deserve. (They were abysmal in PzC1, but here they're far too decent IMO.)

The issue here has two main reasons. First is that most sources you can find on the web will be American or British ones, and they naturally tend to be slightly biased toward their perspective. Only recently some more interesting content on various tank topics started to pop-up in the anglosphere showing the point of view of less prominent nations. The other two main sources, Russian and German ones are also not that reliable, as the former have limited exposure to the Italian topic and the latter are even more biased thanks to the way for Germany undermined Italian performance even when it was successful. I based my information on specific offline sources out of my stockpiles, shown below. They overall seem to paint a much better picture of the equipment itself than it is commonly believed, at least for some specific cases.

[Hohenhole]

I finished the British campaign and honestly it seems like a wasted opportunity, below Allied corps.

I found a couple of interesting missions, at this point they could have put some optional ones where maybe you could only control certain units like in the case of the previous DLCs.

Regarding the allied factions they seem useless to me, the British India appears in a single mission, while the Australians divisions are limited only to infantry units; honestly it would have been better to be able to get some exclusive units (like the Azul Infanterie) maybe with secondary missions.

Instead I really appreciated the sandstorms that often force you to change your approach during the mission; still on the subject of missions, the air forces seem to me that between the bad weather conditions and the airports not always present are less effective.

Now I understand that we are talking about a video game and not a historical simulation, but honestly some choices really annoyed me.
From this point of view the last mission is disconcerting; in fact the Commonwealth forces cannot use aircraft (in reality the defenders of Giarabub were subjected to several air attacks) while the Australians also have only infantry units, furthermore the order of battle of the 6th Australian division included an armoured regiment and five artillery regiments.
They seem like minor details, but it is as if in a reproduction of the battle of Waterloo the French cuirassiers were missing.

In the end the British campaign is dignified, but it lacks that little something extra that would have allowed it to excel, a pity.

[adiekmann]

If you make this campaign historical, then the Italians have few mechanized vehicles, are very infantry heavy, and will pose little threat to a good player. For example, it always bugs me that a zero star Italian infantry unit has virtually the same stats as a zero star British infantry unit. There is no way that they in real life were equally competent forces! The British infantry had better training and weapons. Or simply had a weapon.

Except since these stats are not the same, even if only slightly, makes a massive difference. Regular IT infantry has 2 Ground Defense less than British, 1 less Initiative, and for some bizarre reason, one more Ammo. British infantry is on par with German units and the Italian is one tier lower, making a massive difference in combat predictions. Now, I'd give it 1 less point of soft attack as well since the old Carcano rifle ammo was absolutely horrible, but that's nitpicking. The point is, that difference between infantry of major nations in the conflict vs. ones such as Italy, Romania or Hungary that struggled with the same level of modern equipment is well represented and all the way since the original Panzer General. The difference here is subtle, but I feel adequately represented.

I'd agree the overall army composition would have to be different - as you said, less tanks, more infantry, but for the same reason you don't see players doing Barbarossa as Germans with mostly horse-drawn artillery, as it in theory should be. So yea, some level of inaccuracy is needed for gameplay purposes, I just don't think infantry stats are an issue.

I disagree. When the game first game out back in 2019 - and I believe it remained true in AO - I remember the Italian and German stats were identical. I complained about it back then. I pulled up a saved game from this campaign and yes, you are correct, they are pretty close now. That was not always the case. Something must have changed because I find it hard to believe that I missed the differences in key things like initiative and ground defense. But, maybe I did and was just objecting to the fact that they were still as close as they are now anyway.

Now, I've played this genre to death starting with Panzer General 1 in 1995. In that game Italian infantry had soft and hard attack values of 1!! German and British were considerably higher though I don't feel confidant enough to state what they exactly were. But there were differences, even if small, between all the other major powers. Non were cookie-cutter. But the Italians' stats are burned into my mind. It was ridiculous! No matter how much you want to make fun of the Italian army in WW2, that was just silly and virtually useless.

Then I thought they swung the other way and made them too close, even with the current stats that you've pointed out. History aside, it adds flavor to find differences between units. But I digress, because I only used the infantry as an example. This applies to other units' classes too as others after my post have pointed out, but I was trying to avoid writing a wall of text. Grondel and his co-conspirators have tinkered with the stats among other things in their AO remake. I am not a big fan of all of them, but it does add a different twist to gameplay and usage. I may be alone in that my core in an AO campaign does feature up to 10-11 infantry units, not counting bridging, so for me the differences should be greater and do matter.

[adiekmann]

Players want it to be historical, but challenging, and these two things rarely both will work.

First of all its a game, not a documentory. I know there are people who are too deeply involved in the WW2 subject, but I guess for 95% of all players its fine if the game is freestyling if necessary.
The main part of the game is managing your own core and I can have only tanks if I want.

My problem with the DLC is, the devs already made it work. SCW was just fine, challenging from the beginning to the end.
And I was expecting too much. Smart AI, new game mechanics...but I dont see anything that was promised.

Correct. I have said this many times. The tricky aspect of this topic is that people can't agree on is what the correct balance between the two is. I think it's impossible to answer because there is no one correct answer handed down from the Almighty. Everyone has a different take on what that should be and as a result this will always be argued about. I've seen it even in the days of Panzer General 2.

[Retributarr]

Players want it to be historical, but challenging, and these two things rarely both will work.

Correct. I have said this many times. The tricky aspect of this topic is that people can't agree on is what the correct balance between the two is. I think it's impossible to answer because there is no one correct answer handed down from the Almighty.

"I-Have-THE-ANSWER!!!"...
~~~"Keep-it-as-HISTORICAL-as-possible:~~~
What i mean is make both-sides as close to what they were in the actual war... don't manipulate the numbers or the difficulty.

~~~For Example!... in "CYRENAICA"-('Operation COMPASS')... don't have 4 to 5 times the number of 'Italian Forces' in the Game then were actually in that historical campaign conflict. INSTEAD!... for the BRITISH-AUSTRALIANS and the ITALIANS... fudge or manipulate their "Unit-Capabilities" to the point where-then... that the actual 'Pre-Testing Game-Play' does result in as close to the actual historical results outcome that did finally take place.

It's Called: "K.I.S.S."... "Keep-It-Simple-Stupid".

[Thunderhog]

I enjoyed it but as others have said in this thread, I much prefer AO and long multi-year campaigns. I think this campaign was more standard than Frontlines Poland but I still don't think I can forgive them for hyping up the story elements and then it releasing and having worse story elements than AO. All in all, it was an alright experience that gets extra points for being able to play as both sides.

[Tassadar]

When the game first game out back in 2019 - and I believe it remained true in AO - I remember the Italian and German stats were identical. I complained about it back then. I pulled up a saved game from this campaign and yes, you are correct, they are pretty close now. That was not always the case. Something must have changed because I find it hard to believe that I missed the differences in key things like initiative and ground defense. But, maybe I did and was just objecting to the fact that they were still as close as they are now anyway.

Interesting, I can't rule out the possibility it was like that initially upon release, but for sure it was already different by the time Axis Operations came out, as I had a run in which I edited the sides taking part in the campaign to play as minor Axis nations instead of German and I know for sure that back then I had noticed their infantry having lower stats. If they were ever identical, it must have been much earlier, but would be tricky to check at this point as I'm not sure if any store version allows reverting to an older build.

Now, I've played this genre to death starting with Panzer General 1 in 1995. In that game Italian infantry had soft and hard attack values of 1!! German and British were considerably higher though I don't feel confidant enough to state what they exactly were. But there were differences, even if small, between all the other major powers. Non were cookie-cutter. But the Italians' stats are burned into my mind. It was ridiculous! No matter how much you want to make fun of the Italian army in WW2, that was just silly and virtually useless.

Then I thought they swung the other way and made them too close, even with the current stats that you've pointed out. History aside, it adds flavor to find differences between units. But I digress, because I only used the infantry as an example. This applies to other units' classes too as others after my post have pointed out, but I was trying to avoid writing a wall of text. Grondel and his co-conspirators have tinkered with the stats among other things in their AO remake. I am not a big fan of all of them, but it does add a different twist to gameplay and usage. I may be alone in that my core in an AO campaign does feature up to 10-11 infantry units, not counting bridging, so for me the differences should be greater and do matter.

No worries, I am just so bloke on the Internet who thinks Italian equipment was better that it is given credit for based on the things he read, but it's just based on these various sources which might themselves be biased or not 100% accurate, so I won't die on that hill. Just feeling a bit differently about the whole situation and I'm easily jumping in to defend their planes and tanks.

In any case, of the two extremes I prefer the one where Italian units are slightly too good, then criminally too bad. I too remember Panzer General, it was one of my first games and some of the stats there were quite silly (but infantry did work slightly differently, so even regular German infantry had initially just 2 hard attack). We can have our hopes up for Panzer Corps 3 and further enhancement of this I guess, since any official major stats overhaul is out of the question due to the effect it would have on already existing content. Hopefully the mods you quoted can serve a balancing purpose. I wonder if there ever was a master document that had some specific rules assigned to values, or was this tailored slightly differently. I even played around in the past with trying some rebalances, but quickly realized that it would be close to impossible without setting up some general-level guidelines first.

[adiekmann]

Correct. I have said this many times. The tricky aspect of this topic is that people can't agree on is what the correct balance between the two is. I think it's impossible to answer because there is no one correct answer handed down from the Almighty.

"I-Have-THE-ANSWER!!!"...
~~~"Keep-it-as-HISTORICAL-as-possible:~~~
What i mean is make both-sides as close to what they were in the actual war... don't manipulate the numbers or the difficulty.

~~~For Example!... in "CYRENAICA"-('Operation COMPASS')... don't have 4 to 5 times the number of 'Italian Forces' in the Game then were actually in that historical campaign conflict. INSTEAD!... for the BRITISH-AUSTRALIANS and the ITALIANS... fudge or manipulate their "Unit-Capabilities" to the point where-then... that the actual 'Pre-Testing Game-Play' does result in as close to the actual historical results outcome that did finally take place.

It's Called: "K.I.S.S."... "Keep-It-Simple-Stupid".

Yes, Retributarr, much easier said then done. And what is exactly "historically correct?" Especially when relative to other units?

The nuances are often slight, but definitely there. This is especially true with weapon systems like tanks, artillery, and aircraft. Reliability, range, fuel consumption, ammo, side armor vs. frontal vs. rear armor, rotation speed of the main turret, radio equipment, targeting optics, welded vs. riveted armor, type of AP ammunition, and on and on we go! The considerations can be nearly endless! And through it all, it is a game that needs to not drift too far from playability. These are the types of issues that players are bringing up and I for one cannot say, "No, you are wrong!" Most have good points but where do you draw the line?

[adiekmann]

No worries, I am just so bloke on the Internet who thinks Italian equipment was better that it is given credit for based on the things he read, but it's just based on these various sources which might themselves be biased or not 100% accurate, so I won't die on that hill. Just feeling a bit differently about the whole situation and I'm easily jumping in to defend their planes and tanks.

Here I am in agreement with you, especially early in the desert war that this campaign covers. British tanks were pretty weak too and they were the slowest in upgrading their main guns to something that's comparable to the Germans and Soviets throughout much of the war. I think with equipment it should be judged or stats set according to how good they were in the hands of a similarly trained crew. A good crew can make all the difference to the performance of a tank, at least within reason. A Panzer Ib will never succeed vs. a T-34/85. Stars/experience are there to take care of that aspect.

[VirgilInTheSKY]

I enjoyed it but as others have said in this thread, I much prefer AO and long multi-year campaigns. I think this campaign was more standard than Frontlines Poland but I still don't think I can forgive them for hyping up the story elements and then it releasing and having worse story elements than AO. All in all, it was an alright experience that gets extra points for being able to play as both sides.

Just to clarify, Poland is War Story, not Frontlines. That campaign has a core save function script in the end, unlike the Frontline ones, including Cyrenica, that just ends there.