No Game-play or 'what if logic'! Rubbish!

[leci]

Playing as the Axis, I eradicated all Allied forces and occupied all locations in Italy inc. Sicily. Moved onto NORMANDY re DDay - logical in historical terms and Allied strategic terms. Fine.

However, after defeating all Allied forces and retaining all locations re DDay, my next mission was the Ardennes. Excuse me! If the Allied forces were defeated on DDay plus x days, there would not have been an Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge) battle!

Indeed on that basis, my Axis Forces would have been redirected to the Eastern Front etc., or at least offered the option.

If I win the Battle of the Bulge ie the Ardennes scenario, I should/would have taken Antwerp and other ports ie the Allies are finished. The only battle is now the Eastern and NE fronts - I doubt, based upon empirical evidence, that Panzer Corps is that sophiscated .....! I shall see.

This is a poor game which has no allowance for campaign 'what if' heuristics. The same poor heuristics were evident in the North African campaign. Why play this game and incur the purchase expense?

Gilles

[huertgenwald]

Why? Because that would defeat the purpose of selling DLCs.

[timek28]

Well there has to be some limit on the number of available scenarios and paths. That is why if you get some historic victory as you did, the briefing states that you performed greatly but the commanders on other fronts failed to do the same thing and that is why you have to retreat into defensive positions again. And to be honest you are rarely controlling the whole front. Be it western or eastern. So for example in D-Day the excuse could be that US troops broke through front on landing in southern France. That is a good excuse to drive campaign path in the way developers want, as it is much easier way to develop the game. I'm not saying that I like this though, but I understand it.

[leci]

Hi - I too understand the 'developer' logic, but given that game is based on actual events, my victory in France etc would have curtailed the Western Allies' capabilities in the West (remember I had already defeated them in Italy). Given Japan, the Western Allies would not have had the resources to continue in Europe other than commando raids and the bombing campaign. Plus, the denial of France to the Allies would have not resulted in Allied troops

Therefore a number of game outcomes present themselves: invade England making invasion of US and Caribbean certain; Western Allies call a truce? Invade Gibraltar/Malta? After 1945, US deploys atomic bombs on Germany? And so on.

Gilles

[Molve]

Gilles, do you have any idea how much work goes into crafting a good campaign scenario?

Saying Panzer Corps "is a poor game which has no allowance for campaign 'what if' heuristics" is quite telling, I'm afraid.

[leci]

Sorry, you misunderstand me. As a war game, fine and I enjoy. As a game with a published 'campaign tree' this is poor. The two things are incompatible.

Axis and or Allied outcomes would have altered WWII and thus should alter the game. Other than playing the game, why play a campaign only to find onself playing an illogical campaign? May as well save the money. And that is the point, why sell the game as a logical campaign tree! when clearly that is not the case. There are cheaper games to indulge ones strategic and or tactical gaming ambitions.

Gilles

[ruggs215]

One that really should be fixed is having you take Moscow twice. If u already get a marginal victory in Moscow 40 I believe, than why do you need to retake it in 1943?

[Tarrak]

One that really should be fixed is having you take Moscow twice. If u already get a marginal victory in Moscow 40 I believe, than why do you need to retake it in 1943?

Read the debriefing. You conquered Moscow to late and can't reinforce and refit you troops in time before the Russian counterattack and you have to pull back to avoid the danger of being encircled and destroyed.

In a war only because you conquered a certain point it often doesn't mean you can hold it as well. Even if you can the situation on your flanks is important as well. It doesn't help you at all if you keep a certain position while the troops protecting your flanks get pushed back. All it gives you is being encircled, cut off from your supply and destroyed. Stubborn defense instead of a tactical retreat is often way more disastrous. Best example is the 6th German Army at Stalingrad.

[Molve]

Sorry, you misunderstand me. As a war game, fine and I enjoy. As a game with a published 'campaign tree' this is poor. The two things are incompatible.

Quite the contrary!

Much of the success of this game is precisely because it offers linked scenarios (=campaigns) allowing to bring along your ever-improved core of units.

If the game was to cater for all possible outcomes of a scenario the campaign would cover only Poland '39... And more importantly, most scenarios would remain unseen by most players...

If you truly feel this is the most important facet of your dream game, then I strongly recommend looking up the Europa Universalis series... then Panzer Corps simply isn't for you.

Best,

[Blathergut]

design the what-if scenarios

[IainMcNeil]

Unfortunately its completely impossible for a game like this to cover the what if possibilities. E.g. As soon as you break from the main campaign flow with a significant change every scenario after that has to change. There are 150+ scenarios in the gran campaign and you'd need to create different versions of each for each alternate reality.

Each deviation from the path requires an entirely new set of scenarios after that point.

You would need thousands to do it right and clearly its not possible. It would be very cool but you just can't do it.

[rezaf]

Well, the original campaign DOES contain this possibility, so it's more honest to say it was a concious decision not to include this in the DLCs.

Making every DLC self contained and playable without the others pretty much made this impossible - though I imagine making a minor engine improvement which allowed "global flags" to be handed down with the savegame/core files would have been an option.
I understand your reasoning for the most part, but not at least allowing SOME victories to have an effect down the line was very disappointing to me.
Especially in the east DLCs it's immensely disheartening to face "You won against all odds. Too bad, now you have to retreat anyways because designer middlefinger." time and time again for YEARS, literally.
I for one would have purchased one (or even more) "hypotheticals" DLC where different things happen depending on your successes.

Ah well, at least it was all great in the Afrika Korps addOn.
_____
rezaf

[IainMcNeil]

Anything is possible given enough time but the point is it was for all practicable purposes impossible as it would have taken decades to make!

[Mark50]

it would have taken decades to make!

Come on now...

[rezaf]

Anything is possible given enough time but the point is it was for all practicable purposes impossible as it would have taken decades to make!

Yeah, don't be silly.

You're taking a "all or nothing" position, where every single victory (or defeat) would have major impact, which would require a huge amount of extra or edited scenarios, but in reality, it would have been sufficient to make a couple of extra scenarios, maybe worth an additional DLC or two, dealing with the most drastic "alternate histories".
In practice, I'd have imagined each DLC could have had no more than one "fundamental" decision which would have long lasting effects - defeat the force at Dunkirk and get a possibility for Sealion. Seize Moscow early and get a possibility to kick the soviets out of the war. Or win decisively at a later battle to get a chance to do so.
Anyways, obviously you guys are arguing semantics about why this was impossible when it was indeed not, and it matters little - you made your calls and it's too late now, unfortunately.
_____
rezaf

[nikivdd]

Each and every DLC East have the potential and offer the opportunity to create a brandnew what-if DLC afterwards. I was already thinking about such possibilities when i was working on the two "More Panzer Corps' mods.
DLC '41 East could move on in What-if DLC '42 East with German victories in Stalingrad and/or Moskou or DLC '39 could move on to DLC '40 East with a whole battery of new missions if Germany would invade Russia in 1940... I think there is hardly any limit what could be done. I wouldn't think in factors of steel, oil, manpower - or those kind of scenarios would be historically impossible - i just think of the additional hours of gameplay and fun.

[IainMcNeil]

It simply isn't true but I'm not going to spend any more time discussing it.

Anything that changed the flow of history would have to modify all scenarios beyond that point. How can you have Germany perform a Sealion in 1940 and then continue the grand campaign. It would make absolutely no sense whatsoever. The German forces in the East would be completely different. Lend lease would not occur - every scenario after that would need to be changed. The same is true of any major change in the time line, which is why we could not have any. It took 2+ years to build the GC scenarios we have in the game. You only need a small multiplier to make this decades (all that requires is 3 timeline twists to multiply the workload by 8 as it grows exponentially - slightly less as it only effects those after it but you get the point). And when you get that much content testing becomes completely impractical.

It simply isn't possible

[Mark50]

Anything that changed the flow of history would have to modify all scenarios beyond that point. How can you have Germany perform a Sealion in 1940 and then continue the grand campaign. It would make absolutely no sense whatsoever. The German forces in the East would be completely different. Lend lease would not occur - every scenario after that would need to be changed.

Worse case it would mean changing some British supplied units with soviet counterparts. Aside from that, the eastern front can stay as it is without the British too. Honestly, before going into the argument about closely following history in the DLC don`t forget things like:
- Romania participating in the attack on Belgrade when it did not even took part in the invasion of Yugoslavia. Not to mention that it is equipped with French Somua tanks when in reality it had no medium tanks up to Stalingrad.
- your developer replacing Romanian units in a Stalingrad scenario with Italian units because the game did not contain sufficient Romanian units to properly set the battle:
viewtopic.php?p=303219#p303219
- the Netherlands had around 3 dozen armoured cars in 1940, but in the Hague scenario they have 6 french R35 and H35 tanks units and 2 Matilda I tank units if I remember correctly and that weights heavily on the battle. And that`s besides the point that the Netherlands did not have such types of tanks in service so I`m not gonna make a fuss on such facts like the dutch flying Belgian and french planes, the Yugoslavs having soviet aircraft and soviet T-26 tanks instead of their historical Renault tanks and so on. The first counterattack at Stonne included FCM 36 tanks and you have no such unit in the game, but you`ve included several Somua tanks that were not part of the 3e DCr in reality. The Polish regiment equipped with R35 did not take part in the battle of Bzura, but made it across border into Romania.
One could find such things in almost every DLC scenario. The point here being that there`s no strict historical accuracy in the existing DLC that you could spoil by the introduction of what if scenarios. The only problem would be the amount of extra work. And I don`t think people were asking for the same amount of scenarios added into what if campaigns. You could for example add a few scenarios to have Sea Lion 1940 and only at the cost of the western DLC campaigns, without changing the eastern DLC campaign. That in turn could be made winnable in 1941 or 1942 at the expanse of it continuing up to 1945. People who want long path in their campaign have been deliberately wining minor victories or losing certain battles to take the longer path ever since PG so both the lossing streak and the short wining streak of scenarios would make sense. The difference being that you could win when you`re wining and lose when your losing as expected.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

I think the best way for more what-ifs is the base campaign. DLC campaign plays following the historical path (if you ignore 45 West) with minor changes here and there (escaping Stalingrad etc.)
If you're that concerned about something, it isn't hard to mod stuff within the game. The engine is powerful enough to handle things outside of European WWII, such as WWI.

- BNC

[Victor_K]

Wow, I have enjoyed this game so much. I have the original, Africa Corps, Allied Corps and all the DLC's. Now that is a lot of game to play through. I have not even tried the mods.

I suspect I am one of the majority that hugely enjoy the game without being caught up in minor issues such as this.