Slitherine

Hi,

im curious to know how often do save during a mission - or if you save at all. I had a lot of trouble with the Hague Scenario and saved every second turn. Afterwards i felt very bad as if i was cheating... Now i think i will only save halfway through a scenario so i dont have to start from turn 1 if i make a mistake on the last turn.

I save at the end of every turn. If it were easier to save--say, if there were a "save" button on the main screen--I would save more often. I don't actually go back and restart from a previous turn very often, but this way I can if I want to.

It's not fun with saving. It's a game. It's a WAR - deal with losses.

yarco wrote:It's not fun with saving. It's a game. It's a WAR - deal with losses.

I'm more worried about my laptop running out of power or the cat jumping on the keyboard.

I usually only save at the begin of a scenario. If i mess up to much i restart it from scratch. Sometimes tho during particular hard scenarios or when i am trying something new and quite risky and the scenario is going well until then i save as well but more often then not i simply forget.

Yeah i'll save at the start of a scenario.I've had a few cases where the AI has jumped my guys and with little or no prestige,i'm screwed.I play with Dice Chess.Even so,you still get a few WTF moments and the rage quits

Start and end of a scenario. In the future I'll actually save before the last turn so I'm sure I can get back to the result screen to save the replay.

Having a save of the last turn at end of scenarios is always a good idea, especially if you modify the game all the time and most changes will only take effect if a scenario is loaded anew. Restarting doesn't work. It's also handy if you reconsider different campaign paths, replacements, purchases and yes the replays now quickly.

I play FM mode and save only at the start of a scenario. So it takes much more discipline to each turn.

I keep only one save but might make a copy of a savegame and "zip" it when the campaign is branching.

I play Panzer Corps like XCOM: Enemy Unknown in "Iron Man" mode. Only one savegame done at the start and end of the scenario. I only reload if the entire scenario failed terribly hard, having to deal with annoying losses is the only thing that makes Panzer Corps challenging and fun IMO, otherwise it would just become too easy for me.

edit: IRON MAN mode for Panzer Corps... sounds good to me!

When I am done for the day or before deployment on a new map.

AI is so lame....

Just playing through the GC 40 and with a few of the later scenarios you'd be totally screwed without saving before hand.There's one scenario,capture the General,if you go for the DV in that one there'll be a French counter attack.Fair enough i thought,i can deal with that.Two minutes later it's a WTF moment as units are spawning all over the map and you have no chance.There's another scenario like that shortly after.It would be great if you could go through the campaigns playing a no-reload game but at times it's not possible.

It's a great game but boy does that AI piss me off at times.

Brindlebane wrote:There's one scenario,capture the General,if you go for the DV in that one there'll be a French counter attack.Fair enough i thought,i can deal with that.Two minutes later it's a WTF moment as units are spawning all over the map and you have no chance.

You do have a chance, but without knowing beforehand that units are going to materialize out of thin air, the normal player will have moved the bulk of his forces to where the final fighting occurs and thus be caught completely off guard by the turn of events. I haven't played all of the DLCs yet, but of those I have played, this is the worst scenario by a huge margin. Even with hindsight it can be hard, depending on how the RNG treats you, but if you are unaware, it's just unfair. Materializing troops right in your controlled territory was the stupidest scenario design idea EVER, imo.

Ah well, sorry for the derail everyone.
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rezaf

save when the wife gives me the "time" sign, or at the beginning of each scenario.

rezaf wrote:Materializing troops right in your controlled territory was the stupidest scenario design idea EVER, imo.

Well I have always thought that AI counterattacks from the front ONLY are kind of unrealistic. If you think of it, when you make a huge advance on the front, that front usually doesn't involve the whole country or whole area controlled by enemy. Assuming that other parts of the front cannot be perfectly advancing in correlation with you, there should be no reason why the bulge you made in advancing couldn't be counterattacked by enemy on the flanks. Counterattack on the rear is kind of unrealistic unless a para-drop or partisan activity though. However I think that flank counterattacks are absolutely possible, and that kind of scenario should be keeping player on the edge at times (maybe message or briefing should warn of such possibility).

Of course this wouldn't be the case everywhere, but only in broader fronts such as Russian, French or similar...

And answer on the topic: I save now almost on every turn. I play a mod with 55 core slots and it is hard to keep absolute discipline of moves in this case and not spend a whole day playing single scenario. So every now and then I need a reload to save some unit from stupid destruction. Also I like to save when I attack subs since the whole evade thing can really piss a man off. For example a sub evades bombers several times in a row and destroys half of your major ships since you don't have any destroyers left to protect them.

timek28 wrote:Well I have always thought that AI counterattacks from the front ONLY are kind of unrealistic. If you think of it, when you make a huge advance on the front, that front usually doesn't involve the whole country or whole area controlled by enemy. Assuming that other parts of the front cannot be perfectly advancing in correlation with you, there should be no reason why the bulge you made in advancing couldn't be counterattacked by enemy on the flanks. Counterattack on the rear is kind of unrealistic unless a para-drop or partisan activity though. However I think that flank counterattacks are absolutely possible, and that kind of scenario should be keeping player on the edge at times (maybe message or briefing should warn of such possibility).

For the record: I'd be fine with counterattacks from any border of the map - though I'd prefer it if there was some kind of forewarning (like a message: Strong troops have penetrated our line south of your position and will likely attack you in two turns) - what I have a problem with is the troops materializing right in the middle of the map, like it happens in that mission. Maybe this would be tolerable with a bunch of partisans, but not regular units.
And then they appear out of thin air on multiple fronts where you have nothing if you're a remotely ordinary player. Normal scenarios are balanced around the strict limits about how many units you can bring to field, and thus nobody has older troops to spare to use as garrisons behind the frontline - and normal scenarios don't require nor reward that anyway. So this mission sticks out like a sore thumb.
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rezaf

rezaf wrote: For the record: I'd be fine with counterattacks from any border of the map - though I'd prefer it if there was some kind of forewarning (like a message: Strong troops have penetrated our line south of your position and will likely attack you in two turns) - what I have a problem with is the troops materializing right in the middle of the map, like it happens in that mission. Maybe this would be tolerable with a bunch of partisans, but not regular units.
And then they appear out of thin air on multiple fronts where you have nothing if you're a remotely ordinary player. Normal scenarios are balanced around the strict limits about how many units you can bring to field, and thus nobody has older troops to spare to use as garrisons behind the frontline - and normal scenarios don't require nor reward that anyway. So this mission sticks out like a sore thumb.

I don't remember this mission very precisely, but now I vaguely remember what you are talking about. There are around two French missions that spawn counterattacks, one regularly on the front and this one I assume you are talking about spawns on multiple sectors? Front, back, left and right? And you as a player progress from east to west? Once you reach west and get the general you need to retreat rapidly back as there are attacks on multiple sectors if I remember...

Yes that mission is hard and unorthodox. I believe that it has design flaws, since such "thin air" attacks shouldn't be realistic. Generally spawning of enemy hasn't been handled very well IMO in the game. For example a whole armada of tanks spawning from just one city in late Soviet scenarios, or lurking enemy groups glued to the corners of the map in AC scenarios which can be destroyed before counterattack triggers if you notice them with your planes fast enough.

If the French had used their armour as the Ai does in the game,WW2 would have been a short lived affair.It's the only issue i have with the game,the Ai spawning.You spend quite a few scenarios taking care of your units,getting experience,medals and heroes and you'll get quite attached to certain units.Then comes that certain scenario and it's wham,bang,thank you ma'am and your entire force is wiped out.

A challenge in the game is one thing,the game giving you the finger is another.So for the early campaigns anyway(i'm still on 39/40s time period)Stukas,fighters and plenty of arty and try and get your 38s/P3s to hold the line for as long as they can.

The fact was that French had more and/or stronger tanks than Germans at time. So that is simulated correctly. The fact is also that Luftwaffe made the difference, and that should be recognized by player on time so there is no nonsense in that.

It's not that the french tanks are better, it's that the AI is better than the real-world french at using them. Yeah, the Panzer Corps AI...
The french had an OOB that didn't exploit the advantages tanks brought to the warfare-table and many of their commanders were rather inept at using them to full effect as well.

However, I don't have any actual problems with the french army in PzC, it's just this one mission which I hate with a passion, and not because of the french, but because of the creation of units out of thin air.

timek28 wrote:The fact is also that Luftwaffe made the difference, and that should be recognized by player on time so there is no nonsense in that.

The problem with air units in PzC is that air combat is often very deadly and flak hits (imo) unhistorically hard and/or is unhistorically common. This was MUCH worse in the vanilla campaign than it is in the DLCs, but even there, in many cases all targets you may want to attack are covered by flak. And flak always hits over long distances, and often causes massive losses. Which, in turn, means if you don't want to lose the air unit, you have to retire it to a friendly airfield, spend a lot of prestige to bring it up to fighting strength and then fly back to another target of opportunity, which is three turns (and the prestige) lost - in many missions three turns is a LOT.
In later missions, the enemy has (historically) a stronger airforce, so you have to play conseratively just to keep your units alive, which further limits the usefulness of the Luftwaffe. And let's not mention rain/snow, which render your expensive toys completely useless.
Long story short, airforce is a LOT less useful in PzC than it was in Panzer General. I used to get a strong bomber formation covered by fighters as fast as possible in PG, but in PzC, it's not so important to me.
I tend to make use of artillery instead, which I tended to neglect in PG.
Btw., in PG, aa cover was actually a bit more diverse - you could get strong AA units that could cover, but usually only had a range of 1, and you could get weaker AA units that were unable to cover, but could shoot farther. These two unit types have been folded into one in PzC - it's one of the simlifications Rudankort undertook which I never quite understood.

Anyway, apart from that one mission, I think the '40 DLC is still rather easy.
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rezaf