Unearned Decisive Victory Via Game Exploit.

[rkr1958]

I'm sure this feature/exploit been mentioned before but personally I think it needs to be addressed. Here's the specifics:

It's the April 1940 invasion of Norway scenario. I have an isolated group of 3 ground regiments and 1 airborne regiment supported by three Luftwaffe air wings in the area of Trondheim. This force is doing all it can to hold on to Trondheim much less make a push for the last objective, which is Namsos. I have just completed heavy fighting around Bergen and secured that area. That force has linked up with the main invasion force that took Oslo a couple of turns ago and is pushing on Lillehammer. The objective of this main force is to link up as quickly as possible with the force just barely holding its own in the Trondheim sector. This force is under heavy attack each turn by the RN.

Well, here's the exploit. I had lost two core units in the heavy fighting for Bergen. I found that I could not only replace those cores units during the scenario but place them in the Trondheim sector. With these two sparkling new units added to the force of 4 units already there and supported by 4 air units I had no trouble pushing north to capturing Namsos in 2 turns. Decisive Victory! But it was a hallow one ... due to what I consider a game exploit. That is; the units on the map were 3 to 4 turns away from being able to link up with the forces in Trondheim. However; I was able to place two newly built units in this isolated sector and in the midst of heavy fighting. In fact, I need to replay this scenario and house rule placement of newly built units

[Tarrak]

Well it is not really an exploit. It is simply the way the game works. After capturing a city you can start buying units there within iirc 3 turns. Some people already complained about the "unrealistic" way it works but it is currently the case. The AI could theoretically do same to you tho it's rarely smart enough to even attempt to take any city behind the front line back.

Of course if you do not like it just restrain yourself from doing it. It's your game after all and you can play it the way you like it.

[rkr1958]

Well it is not really an exploit. It is simply the way the game works. After capturing a city you can start buying units there within iirc 3 turns. Some people already complained about the "unrealistic" way it works but it is currently the case. The AI could theoretically do same to you tho it's rarely smart enough to even attempt to take any city behind the front line back.

Of course if you do not like it just restrain yourself from doing it. It's your game after all and you can play it the way you like it.

I play wargames from a simulation/historical perspective. When I call something a possible exploit I'm really saying that it doesn't make sense to me from that perspective. In my example above it would take 2-turns for me to form, move and deploy airborne units to Trondheim. No way I could get any ground units there via sea transport as the RN had that area blockade. And a breakthrough and link up from the south was 3 to 4 turns away.

Before I lost any core units I was looking at 2 to 4 turns to get reinforcements to that area. By losing 2-cores units I could immediately "beam" two badly needed units there. So in fact losing units help me reinforce an isolated pocket of troops.

From my perspective (i.e., simulation/historical) that's a game exploit. That is, the deployment of two new core units to an isolated area is an artifact of the game engine and, in my opinion, not based in combat reality.

Check out viewtopic.php?p=184740#184740 to see, what I believe, is a representative breakdown of the people that play these types of games.

[VPaulus]

Although I think you've a valid point, it's like Tarrak said, it's not an exploit, it's WAD.
IMO, PzC was never meant to be played 100% by the simulation/historical perspective.

[rkr1958]

Although I think you've a valid point, it's like Tarrak said, it's not an exploit, it's WAD.
IMO, PzC was never meant to be played 100% by the simulation/historical perspective.

I'm not familiar with the abbreviation "WAD"; but I assume it means something to the effect the Way As Designed?

I was looking forward to Panzer Corps completing my WW-II trifecta along with Command Europe at War - Grand Strategy (GS) and Battlefield Academy (GS). Kind like in the old days where Panzer Leader/Panzer Blitz fit in between Avalon Hill's 3rd Reich and Squad Leader.

Oh well ... it is what it is.

[AgentX]

If you feel that it takes away from the realism, you can always use your own rules. Lots of people here impose their own rules when playing. For instance, some people frown upon loading a previous save if you have a really bad outcome (you have to live with the results). Or, others restrict their core armies with numerical limits for each unit (like only allowing yourself 2 Tigers). There's no reason you couldn't come up with your own rules. The beauty of the game is how easy it is to adapt to your own personal play style. If you don't think it's realistic to buy/place new units far away from supply lines, then impose a rule on yourself not to do it.

[VPaulus]

I'm not familiar with the abbreviation "WAD"; but I assume it means something to the effect the Way As Designed?

I think it's "Working As Designed".
Like AgentX suggested, I truly advise to create your own rules and play the game by them.
I for example, am one of those who never reload a game from a previous save.

[Mark50]

I for example, am one of those who never reload a game from a previous save.

Yes, but I assume you`re more familiar with the game than the regular player at the start of a new campaign. I used to have your rule when I was playing PG. Maybe I should have taken the briefing more serious, but I completely underestimated the avalanche of events that followed the "capture" of Giraud for example. I just had to replay that one. I also had to replay some missions at first because I rushed things. In Panzer General - much as I remember - the key was the start. You generally had a tough enemy line in front of you and needed some skill to burst through, but once that was done you were largely free to run amok. In Panzer Corps it seems to me that the first couple of turns are very easy and invite you to expand, but then you get hit with big counterattacks that can mess you up. Got this happening in the polish campaign where you had to defend the line(btw, if Poland had that many tanks I`m not sure it would have lost ). I did it successfully and eliminated the opposition. Then thought I can take the rest of the map just as well, crossed the river and in turn got ran over by the next wave of attackers. I pretty much learned the hard way that the key to success in PC is to be very careful for a number of turns and advance very orderly.

[Longasc]

Only an enemy ground unit next to your city would prevent you from buying units in/near Trondheim.

Basically, you secured the city and can start building stuff there. You can even say there is an airfield nearby, you could fly units in.
It's indeed working as it intended, this is the general rule for building stuff.

There is no option to allow buying new troops only at specific places, for better or worse.


The "Crete" scenarios will really test you:
You can deploy your tanks and artillery, basically everything, on the Island. Not only Infantry.
I suggest you take the "NAVAL" option in this case, as you can only deploy a few units on the island or restrict yourself to Infantry and Light Artillery.


By the way I find you deserved it well to deploy troops near Trondheim.
Taking the city up there that early in the battle is not trivial and very risky for the involved units, so you really deserved it.

[rkr1958]

By the way I find you deserved it well to deploy troops near Trondheim.
Taking the city up there that early in the battle is not trivial and very risky for the involved units, so you really deserved it.

Thank you! I agree with you from a game only perspective. From a military gaming perspective I still feel it's a hallow victory.

Only an enemy ground unit next to your city would prevent you from buying units in/near Trondheim.

This is good to know. I guess against a human player they would know this and at all reasonable costs fight to keep me from taking Trondheim and once I did (if I did) fight to keep units adjacent in order to prevent me for using this game "feature". My experience playing the AI is that it isn't programmed to do this and; therefore, I would have to house rule myself from placing newly built units in any hexes isolated from supply. In fact, I think from a military gaming perspective the house rule that makes sense to me is: (1) Newly built units can only be placed in hexes owned by you at the start of the scenario. (2) After initial placement no more than one newly built unit per turn can be placed in or adjacent to the same city.

I realize that Panzer Corps, as other Slitherine games, has a fairly diverse fan base. But, I'm part of the fan base that's 50+, cut their teeth on Avalon Hill/SPI board wargames in the 60's, 70's & 80's and have an interest in accurate wargaming. I think a number of us in that base are primarily interested in WW-II games because (like me) our fathers and uncles fought in WW-II and we grew hearing their war stories. My father was stationed in India in WW-II as part of a communication's team in the US Army Aircorps. While planes from his base saw action he didn't. So I grew hearing lots of non-combat war stories from him. My uncle fought in the USN and did see a lot of combat. He's still alive (90-years old) and to this day I've never heard him talk once about his wartime experiences. Sorry I digress ...

I certainly understand the tradeoff in game design/implementation versus realism and that no war game can be a 100% accurate simulation; however, I tend to invest my limited "free" time in enjoying those that feel reasonably accurate to me given the scale of the game. When I play CEaW-GS or Battlefield Academy I can feel history come alive and though that game history might (and usually does) take a different direction than the actual historical record it still feels believable against that record. That is, I can play these games over and over and explore historically believable what-if's. To quote myself from, What Type of Gamer are You?, "But if the choice was between a perfectly balance game (i.e., 50/50) with a C for historical accuracy and a slightly imbalanced game (say, 30/70) with an A for historical accuracy I would chose the later, which I guess puts me in category 1 [The Historian]. "

[brettz123]

I certainly understand the tradeoff in game design/implementation versus realism and that no war game can be a 100% accurate simulation; however, I tend to invest my limited "free" time in enjoying those that feel reasonably accurate to me given the scale of the game. When I play CEaW-GS or Battlefield Academy I can feel history come alive and though that game history might (and usually does) take a different direction than the actual historical record it still feels believable against that record. That is, I can play these games over and over and explore historically believable what-if's. To quote myself from, What Type of Gamer are You?, "But if the choice was between a perfectly balance game (i.e., 50/50) with a C for historical accuracy and a slightly imbalanced game (say, 30/70) with an A for historical accuracy I would chose the later, which I guess puts me in category 1 [The Historian]. "

While I understand what you are saying you are still knocking the game for something it doesn't claim to be. Panzer Corps (and indeed Panzer General before it) are not geared towards ultra-realism. They are aimed at getting the feel of the period but not being an actual simulation of WWII warfare. Personally I think they do a pretty good job of capturing the feel of WWII warfare without creating a complicated game.

The other thing I would say is that if you feel it is "gamey" or "unfair" then don't do it. At the end of the day it is a choice you make. It would be like complaining that the game lets you reload your game if you don't like a combat result. It is up to you to decide how you want to play the game.

For a more serious game you might want to try Hearts of Iron II. It is a pretty good game at a grand tactical level.

[rkr1958]

The other thing I would say is that if you feel it is "gamey" or "unfair" then don't do it. At the end of the day it is a choice you make. It would be like complaining that the game lets you reload your game if you don't like a combat result. It is up to you to decide how you want to play the game.

That's fine for play against the AI ... but for multi-player play that's not really an option for logging in and making or accepting a challenge in general.

Personally I think they do a pretty good job of capturing the feel of WWII warfare without creating a complicated game.

I 100% totally agree! I'm having a lot of fun playing it and I love the way air and naval units are handled and the scale of the game.

]While I understand what you are saying you are still knocking the game for something it doesn't claim to be. Panzer Corps (and indeed Panzer General before it) are not geared towards ultra-realism. They are aimed at getting the feel of the period but not being an actual simulation of WWII warfare

This is what I don't understand. It may be me, but I seem to be picking up a lot of resistance to capturing and potentially "correcting" a realism issue that seems straight forward to "correct". Why wouldn't you want to the most realistic game possible within constraints of the existing game engine and development/support resources?

And by the way in no way am I knocking the game. It's a great game! I guess what I'm knocking is the resistance I'm sensing to improving realism ...

Anyway, I plan to continue enjoying Panzer Corps. I guess the question I have is does anyone want these type of issues captured for discussion and possible "correction"?

1/4/2011 - Corrected for grammar. Isn't it amazing the number of grammatical mistakes you catch when you read through your own post.

[El_Condoro]

You're not the only one who thinks the current city supply/reinforcement/supply point system should at least be modified to allow designers the option of selecting which cities act as such. I have advocated this since the beta days. Anyway, it can be worked around - not entirely satisfactorily - by making the underlying terrain of cities entrenchment. That way it looks like a city but cannot be used as a supply point.

BTW PG2 had supply hexes - ones that were special because they allowed the player to reinforce only from them. That is the system that I hope will be adopted (even if as an option) in later versions of the PzC Editor.

[brettz123]

The other thing I would say is that if you feel it is "gamey" or "unfair" then don't do it. At the end of the day it is a choice you make. It would be like complaining that the game lets you reload your game if you don't like a combat result. It is up to you to decide how you want to play the game.

That's fine for play against the AI ... but for multi-player play that's not really an option for logging in and making or accepting a challenge in general.

Personally I think they do a pretty good job of capturing the feel of WWII warfare without creating a complicated game.

I 100% totally agree! I'm having a lot of fun playing it and I love the way air and naval units are handled and the scale of the game.

]While I understand what you are saying you are still knocking the game for something it doesn't claim to be. Panzer Corps (and indeed Panzer General before it) are not geared towards ultra-realism. They are aimed at getting the feel of the period but not being an actual simulation of WWII warfare

This is what I don't understand. It may be me, but I seem to be picking up a lot of resistance to capturing and potentially "correcting" a realism issue that seems straight forward to "correct". Why wouldn't you want to the most realistic game possible within constraints of the existing game engine and development/support resources?

And by the way in no way am I knocking the game. It's a great game! I guess what I'm knocking is the resistance I'm sensing to improving realism ...

Anyway, I plan to continue enjoying Panzer Corps. I guess the question I have is does anyone want these type of issues captured for discussion and possible "correction"?

1/4/2011 - Corrected for grammar. Isn't it amazing the number of grammatical mistakes you catch when you read through your own post.

I think it would be a good idea to work this out but I am not sure it is a big issue to be honest. Of course there really is no reason not to fix this. I think a good fix would be to limit which cities you could spawn from. My only concern would be that on some of the larger maps if you had to respawn the units would take four to five turns to get into the battle.

I think another good fix might be to make you wait more turns before you can spawn from a city. It is also possible that you just found a map in which this can be used to your advantage much more readily than other maps. Perhaps a better fix might be to not allow you to build if a naval unit is present or even mark cities that can not be built from at all.