Slitherine

I have just finished DLC 42 and I have some comment on the difficulty level.
I played this DLC at the FM difficulty level, and imported my last save game from the DLC 41. Starting prestige 23329 (accumulated during the other 3 DLC. I didn't play all the DLC at the same level:

Prestige at the end of the DLC:
- DLC 39 (Colonel): 3'977
- DLC 40 (Colonel): 14'199
- DLC 41 (General): 23'329
- DLC 42 (Field Marshal): 34'528

I use a lot of artillery to reduce loss and take a lot of care of my units. However, I have always the best units and some spare units. But that is still a lot of prestige.

I was not really able to observe a lot of differences between the Colonel/General/Field Marshal, concerning the prestige that I collected. Concerning the difficulty, I didn't see a lot of differences either. Perhaps more new units spawning, but not so many.

I was wondering if the difficulty level could also be bound to the experiences of enemy troops, like in the old PG game. At that time, the difficulty level allowed to increase enemy prestige, but also to add from 1 to 3 stars (100-300 experiences) to the new enemy units.

Like I saw during the last scenario of the DLC, increasing the experience of the enemy really increases the difficulty of the different map. Could it be possible that FM level could add 100-200 more experience to all units ?

Wow, how do you save up so much prestige? Do you never use elite reinforcements, or even lose units at all?

It seems clear to me that the only solution to you problem is to play on a higher difficulty, say, Manstein, or Rommel, or Rommel with -75% prestige (requires modding).

A simple option (but it will affect all games that use it) is to change the prestige for flags by 50% (?) in gamerules.pzdat so that a flag will give 25 and an objective 50 - I think that would make a big difference to the prestige situation, but not the actual combat difficulty.

deducter wrote:Wow, how do you save up so much prestige? Do you never use elite reinforcements, or even lose units at all?

It seems clear to me that the only solution to you problem is to play on a higher difficulty, say, Manstein, or Rommel, or Rommel with -75% prestige (requires modding).

It's been said before, but it's worth saying again.
As deducter said, your solution is going to be to expand to the highest difficulty levels (Manstein or Rommel). There's no other way to accommodate player skill on this level without seriously damaging our ability to provide broad appeal.

Blathergut wrote:Play without the imported core so there is some feedback about the core that starts with the campaign! It sounds like most here have imported. I'm finding the scenarios tough. The third one is impossible so far. The swarms of Russians wear down the German units and the prestige (not elite) is used up about 8 turns in.

deducter wrote:Wow, how do you save up so much prestige? Do you never use elite reinforcements, or even lose units at all?

I never lost a core unit. I will replay a map to be sure not to loose a unit. I always use elite reinforcements and unit are always at maximum strength (over-strength). That is also the key, if your units are more powerful, you are sustaining reduced loss.

produit wrote:I never lost a core unit. I will replay a map to be sure not to loose a unit. I always use elite reinforcements and unit are always at maximum strength (over-strength). That is also the key, if your units are more powerful, you are sustaining reduced loss.

Ah well then.
While this is a perfectly valid way to play the game, I'm afraid we can't balance content around it.

All I can recommend is a higher difficulty setting.

Kerensky wrote:All I can recommend is a higher difficulty setting.

OK, but playing the DLC 42 as Field Marshal means that there is no higher difficulty setting (or I missed something ?). That was the reason why I asked if it would be possible that higher difficulty settings also encompass an increased experience for enemy units...

My problem is not really bathing into prestige (it is nice, as it lets you make all the upgrades you want) as having more difficult maps. I remember that playing PG with max prestige for the enemy and 3 more stars for new enemy units was really difficult to handle sometimes.

In PC, having 1-2 more stars for each unit (100-200 exp) would really add to the challenge at Field Marshal difficulty...

It gets much harder than Field Marshal.

viewtopic.php?t=27338

produit wrote:OK, but playing the DLC 42 as Field Marshal means that there is no higher difficulty setting (or I missed something ?).

There are bonus difficulties on top of FM. You missed this: viewtopic.php?t=27338

AI performs as with FM but:

Longasc wrote:Guderian lowers the number of turns you have to complete a scenario or to achieve a decisive victory
Manstein sets enemy unit strength to 15
Rommel reduces your number of core units and prestige

And last but not all, there is the "Ultimate" mode: viewtopic.php?t=30415

Try not restarting a map to save your core units. The thing is, no difficulty will be hard if you do that, so I'm not sure even the extra difficulties will be much of a challenge for you if you have to preserve your core units.

I agree you are free to play the game however you like, but I don't think you are free to say the game is too easy if you restart like that. I stopped restarting in DLC 1940, and it is certainly harder.

I would like to second what deducter said.

I played Panzer General a lot and well... things went bad? RELOAD!
... and after a while you reach the point where you think about it.

You win when you play it "hardcore" and live with "unfair", "surprising" or whatever stupid losses due to the AI being lucky or you making a stupid mistake or both.
I can totally recommend it. Sure, it sucks when the Recon unit that survived from the start in 1939 gets killed because some lowly Conscript suddenly got lucky and smashed it. It really hurt to lose tanks in the USA in the default campaign.


But it's worth it. I can only recommend what deducter suggested. I even consider not cheating for SE units anymore. I am sure this spells bad luck and I will soon lose some. XD
Which doesn't mean I will stop campaigning for a "better" way to award them than a 25% random chance at scenario start! I only got one SE unit during the whole default campaign and it really pissed me off a lot as this randomness was totally out of my control.

Simply second to deducter and Longasc's opinion. I even kind of hate it to play the maps again when I bought the official DLC as part of the surprise is gone.

HeinzG wrote: There are bonus difficulties on top of FM. You missed this: viewtopic.php?t=27338

Thank you for this information. I wasn't aware of it...