Slitherine

Thought I'd share with you the current version of campaign tree doc. Should be more clear this way than in the game's data files...

http://www.rudankort.me/PzC_Campaign_Tree.doc

Comments welcome.

Looks great! I will print this out and keep it by my side as I play. BTW, a tiny nitpick: "Greece" is spelled wrong... don't want to upset our Greek friends! Thanks for posting this!

Dave

I'll make this as succinct as I can. New players probably won't have a problem and will enjoy the campaign for what it is, but veterans will probably be disappointed by what can only be described as "PG light". Past the crying, I'm sure someone will eventually attempt to make a 'true' PG campaign remake even if it ends up being a half finished and bloated monster built for hardcore players.

Rather than go on and on, I'll just ask one thing. No Africa?

I see a whole mess of Italian and early war British units in the editor, why do these units exist? I guess the British see action in Sea Lion, so at least they have one scenario. As for the Italians, M13, M14, and L6 going to make an appearance in.. Russia? Italy 1943/Gustav line? Maybe I need to refresh my history, but I was under the impression that the invasion of Italy caused the formal surrender of Italy, and that the fighting in Italy from 1943 to 1945 was pretty much exclusively done by German units with German equipment.

No Africa?

Not yet, would be a better conclusion.

With a full blown editor I have no doubt even hardcore players will have many more scenario's even before they have finished the game... and who says we will not produce some extra's during the course of the series, we plan to support Panzer Corps for years to come.

That's a huge relief to hear. My dog of 14 years was named Rommel.

I quote a fellow Indie strategy developer here, as he in essence tells how we at The Lordz and Slitherine see game series as Panzer Corps, Commander or Battlefield Academy and the benefit of digital disribution:

The real joy of strategy gaming, is you choose your own way of doing things, control your own destiny, and that every game is different. Which means that, however thoroughly we test, we can never test every possibility. Once thousands of people get their hands on the game, it’s inevitable that some imbalances will be found, the AI may sometimes act dumb, devious players will find exploits, and there may even be some bugs.

Even triple A titles with 100 man test teams suffer these problems, it’s pretty much inevitable with highly complex titles. So rather than pretend it ain’t so, we'll plan to carry on developing the title after launch, issuing patches to fix issues, polish the gameplay, add new features and generally try to make it as near perfect as it can reasonably be.

Not that we plan to launch buggy games though. One advantage of internet distribution is that, unlike retail products, we don’t have to decide a launch date months in advance. If a game’s not ready for release, we simply won’t release it.

No Sealion '43?

Why is that?

So... how do we tell how many turns we have left to get a decisive victory...

Kerensky wrote: Rather than go on and on, I'll just ask one thing. No Africa?

I see a whole mess of Italian and early war British units in the editor, why do these units exist? I guess the British see action in Sea Lion, so at least they have one scenario. As for the Italians, M13, M14, and L6 going to make an appearance in.. Russia? Italy 1943/Gustav line? Maybe I need to refresh my history, but I was under the impression that the invasion of Italy caused the formal surrender of Italy, and that the fighting in Italy from 1943 to 1945 was pretty much exclusively done by German units with German equipment.

There was a plan where Italians would play bigger role in the game then they do and there was plan for Africa in first sequel but because of rationalization on scenario limit Africa is removed because removing part of campaign on vertical axis is the most logical thing to do after bunch of scenarios were disbanded on trough whole campaign. In PG, after Norway North Africa was my favourite scenario. I killed half of myself to make proposal that puts ratio in front of emotions. I noticed Lordz mentioned PzC Afica as possible sequel separately from Allied sequel but I am not convinced German perspective in Desert warfare is enough to make a sequel and AFAIK exploring that theatre was set as probability of Allied approach.

apanzerfan wrote:No Sealion '43?

Why is that?

In PG campaign Sealion and Moscow scenarios set at different date and having both special hypothetical scenarios have great importance in Sealion-Moscow node where East and West fronts were deciding and switching to each other. With different approach that node was most important factor to be dismantled and still existing but made differently. That is why there is no Sealion 43. There would be no logic that after Kursk you leave east to make Sealion and than return to finish Soviets.

Obsolete wrote:So... how do we tell how many turns we have left to get a decisive victory...

For now it is universally set and little bit rigid because we consider it part of scenario balance. If I recall correctly 1/4 less of all time allowed.

About Africa, I know it is painful, but I think that removing it from the campaign was the most logical step. It just cannot compare in scale with "big" WW2 battles, it was a very interesting and special theatre, but much smaller in scale. So, going to Africa with full core seemed rather strange. Also, in PG going to Africa meant you get a rather strange campaign path (with more fictional scenarios than real ones) and miss a scenario as important as Barbarossa. Also, we felt that making one big scenario per year (using PG scale) would not really do this campaign justice. If you break it into more separate operations, it should be more fun.

So, in the end we felt that to remove Africa was the best compromise. Main fronts (eastern and western ones) would suffer much more if we kept Africa within the same constraints on scen number. Of course, most people would prefer to get ALL scenarios, and also some more on top of that, but alas you can't have all good things at once. In you count tutorials, we already have ~30 scenarios, we may also need a few separate maps for multiplayer, so in the end it is already close to what PG had. Should be good enough for the start.

About Africa, I know it is painful, but I think that removing it from the campaign was the most logical step. It just cannot compare in scale with "big" WW2 battles, it was a very interesting and special theatre, but much smaller in scale. So, going to Africa with full core seemed rather strange. Also, in PG going to Africa meant you get a rather strange campaign path (with more fictional scenarios than real ones) and miss a scenario as important as Barbarossa. Also, we felt that making one big scenario per year (using PG scale) would not really do this campaign justice. If you break it into more separate operations, it should be more fun.

So, in the end we felt that to remove Africa was the best compromise. Main fronts (eastern and western ones) would suffer much more if we kept Africa within the same constraints on scen number. Of course, most people would prefer to get ALL scenarios, and also some more on top of that, but alas you can't have all good things at once. In you count tutorials, we already have ~30 scenarios, we may also need a few separate maps for multiplayer, so in the end it is already close to what PG had. Should be good enough for the start.

No Africa may have players, give you some heat for that one, i see the Africa campaign to be a must, i mean, one of the main goals was to drive to the oil fields way in the east, in Iraq and Saudi-Persia regions. And if it was added to this game, you could of had what-if options like when going for the Caucasus regions in Russia having units on both sides from the Crimea and Near by Persia region in one battle.

I personally hate it but if always felt that game developers , dont give there all,(to a degree) because they know that a mod-based community can make a game what it was meant to be or better. When the creators them selfs dont. This is like Africa, sure fans will add this to the game, ofcourse they will whats a PG like game without Africa. And i hate the fact that your just pass up some of the smaller battles, or theaters, because you know mods will do it. The mod creaters shouldn't have to do it, if it was done right the first time.

I agree on having a huge amount of Core units in Africa, i see that has a problem, and if theres no way to restrict on having units in the field, which wouldn't make since anyhow, then the battle map size would just half to be big wouldn't it. And if needed so have like a 1/4 of Africa on one map.

The game seems great at this points and sure it will be even better in the future, but no Africa-why even have a Norway then?

I found an error.

Scenario Decisive Marginal Loss
Moscow 43 Overlord Overlord Bagration

Should be

Scenario Decisive Marginal Loss
Moscow 43 OverlordNoE Overlord Bagration

Kerensky wrote:I found an error.

Scenario Decisive Marginal Loss
Moscow 43 Overlord Overlord Bagration

Should be

Scenario Decisive Marginal Loss
Moscow 43 OverlordNoE Overlord Bagration

Thanks. Fixed. As a side note loss in Sealion 40 is changed to Greece.

Also, Bagration is the worst name for a scenario in the history of... history, even if it is historically accurate. Every time I see it, I say "Bag Ration" in my head. I suggest calling it "Panther Line" just like you have "Gustov Line".

uran21 wrote:Thanks. Fixed. As a side note loss in Sealion 40 is changed to Greece.

Son of a... you would change that, wouldn't you?

lol sorry if I seem belligerent, I'm just really tired, but I can't sleep until my work (For PzC) is done. And you just gave me more!

Kerensky wrote:

uran21 wrote:Thanks. Fixed. As a side note loss in Sealion 40 is changed to Greece.

Son of a... you would change that, wouldn't you?

lol sorry if I seem belligerent, I'm just really tired, but I can't sleep until my work (For PzC) is done. And you just gave me more!

Sorry I completely put it out of my mind.

uran21 wrote:Sorry I completely put it out of my mind.

No worries, I made my adjustment.