Slitherine

I was playing the grand campaign at a difficulty that was perfect for me, not too hard, not too easy.
All was going well until I started GC42 Vitebsk. WTF! My vet units were getting one-shotted by Russian peasants armed with pitchforks. For crying out loud, at least keep your difficulty level consistent.

What a waste of time.

Had a streak of bad luck combined with a bad troops setup? No reason to cry, Vitebsk is as easy as it can be even NOT exactly knowing the first time where Russian partisans and even AA shows itself in the first turn.

Regards,
Thorsten

My rant was about the change in difficulty between GC packs. I play on General, and have been getting along fine up until now. From my units being able to take some punishment to them being made of glass.
They should not crank up the difficulty level, that should be left to the user, that's what the custom difficulty options are for.

I guess now that I have calmed down, I will have to knock the difficulty down a few notches and start the map again.

Hi Muddy, it sounds like you had a run in with the RNG. If you were playing on Dice setting you might find Dice Chess provides enough variety but with fewer horror results. It worked well for me after some bad experiences.

Thinking aloud, the lowest combat odds for a kill I have seen (other than artillery and strat bombers which use a different system) is 6%. My trusty pen and scrap of paper says the odds of getting 7 or 8 of the conscripts rolling the 6% is around 2 in 100,000. Though this is quite unlikely it is not impossible when you think of how many units roll for combat - my rough calculation shows maybe 1,200 rolls each scenario, and for the first three DLC there are 10 or 11 scenarios so maybe 12,000 combats each DLC. Also remember that each 6% chance is independent - if 14 conscripts have already got lucky, the fact that this is very unlikely doesn't have any effect on the 15th roll which is still a 6% chance of a kill.

Now of course, you won't always fight conscripts and not all are at full strength but then not all are at 6% chance of a kill.
allowing for the roughness of my numbers, what this means is that you should pretty much expect a rogue result every campaign and shouldn't be too surprised if you get a wtf moment every few scenarios. The way averages work out it's quite likely you'd have a quiet patch followed by a cluster of surprises.

No matter what the cause, the bad experience still sucks - I moved to dice chess after a few too many of these.

PS
For those of you who don't believe in statistics, ignore the above. Your bad results are because the computer has taken a personal dislike to you (and probably unfairly - computers take offence all too easily!).

I am playing full random on General for quite some weeks now, gone through all the dlc including 43 more than once.

I had my fair share of RNG horrors and mircales, but I never experienced an unit wiped out in 1 or 2 attacks if at full strength, properly deployed and in the frontline backed by artillerly except for 2 cases - Recon units and attacks from SMG infantry in city hexes (Stalingrad). One of the many reasons for no core losses is a back up of at least all front line units with artillery. If turn 1 reveals a flaw in the setup, I regroup before advancing further. In fact I never lost more than 1 core unit throughout ONE entire dlc and if I did, it was never due to bad rolls but always due to my mistakes.

That leaves me to conclude the poster had done something wrong, which is quite easy in Vitebsk if you get nervous the first turn after detecting all the Russian units inside your defensive perimeter.

And btw - difficulty does only influence RNG indirectly, by weakening the AI or strengthening the player. It does not influence the RNG.

Regards,
Thorsten

ThorHa wrote:I am playing full random on General for quite some weeks now, gone through all the dlc including 43 more than once.

I had my fair share of RNG horrors and mircales, but I never experienced an unit wiped out in 1 or 2 attacks if at full strength, properly deployed and in the frontline backed by artillerly except for 2 cases - Recon units and attacks from SMG infantry in city hexes (Stalingrad). One of the many reasons for no core losses is a back up of at least all front line units with artillery. If turn 1 reveals a flaw in the setup, I regroup before advancing further. In fact I never lost more than 1 core unit throughout ONE entire dlc and if I did, it was never due to bad rolls but always due to my mistakes.

That leaves me to conclude the poster had done something wrong, which is quite easy in Vitebsk if you get nervous the first turn after detecting all the Russian units inside your defensive perimeter.

And btw - difficulty does only influence RNG indirectly, by weakening the AI or strengthening the player. It does not influence the RNG.

Regards,
Thorsten

Well, maybe I was a little cocky. But I didn't expect the Russians units to be mega elite Rambo units with nuclear tipped bullets.
I think my next best course of action would be, to make them suffer for my indignity.

Muddy wrote:I think my next best course of action would be, to make them suffer for my indignity.

Beating up SMG units is a good cure for being tricked by elite conscripts. Good luck!

You are not alone bro. I always get butchered when get into year 1943. Maybe because I refuse to buy all best stuff available. Another thing is I dont keep any reserve units. Only enough units to fill core slots because of role play element and unit list gets too confusing if there is over 40+ units. Reason I only play multiplayer scenarios.

Check the detailed combat results and you'll see why it happened. Maybe it was bad luck or some factor you hadn't noticed. If you try again I'm pretty sure you'll find it easier!

I'm off to play Battle Academy, less frustrating.

Just a thought. Is there a cheat to progress to the next map?

It may be a deformacion professionelle - but I do expect things to run badly.

What everybody seems to forget are good RNG results. For example - a strength 10 Pioneer in a 43 scenario driving with a truck into a wood. Taking arty fire, attacked afterwards by a T34/41 at strength 10. No arty cover. The Opel Blitz put up a heroic defence, the result was zero strength losses. Uff.

Regards,
Thorsten

Muddy wrote:Just a thought. Is there a cheat to progress to the next map?

Yes, there is: press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + C to enter the cheat mode, a small window should pop up. Enter 'endscn 0' (without the quotation marks) for a decisive victory, or 'endscn 1' for a marginal victory, if you want to finish with a loss use 'endscn 2'.

see here: viewtopic.php?f=121&t=25990

endscn #N
Ends current scenario with outcome #N (in campaigns 0=decisive victory, 1=marginal victory, 2=loss).

ThvN wrote:

Muddy wrote:Just a thought. Is there a cheat to progress to the next map?

Yes, there is: press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + C to enter the cheat mode, a small window should pop up. Enter 'endscn 0' (without the quotation marks) for a decisive victory, or 'endscn 1' for a marginal victory, if you want to finish with a loss use 'endscn 2'.

see here: viewtopic.php?f=121&t=25990

endscn #N
Ends current scenario with outcome #N (in campaigns 0=decisive victory, 1=marginal victory, 2=loss).

Thank you. I will use that and get back to my game, hopefully things will get back to normal.

Muddy, GC42 is indeed very difficult. And it doesn't get easier on the Eastern Front DLCs.

If you don't have a lot of Prestige at the start, you are in trouble. Most people seem to have a lot more than 10k, but I got there with mere 8. You should not have less and get used to losing core units in Stalingrad.
200% Prestige and maybe "Reform Units" to preserve Oleh Dir e.g. might help if it gets too difficult!

Before doing that, save and adapt to much better Russian tanks with 2 stars experience and watch out for "Guards" or other better than Conscript Russian Infantry, they are very dangerous indeed.
Your Airforce is still superior, but even upgraded to IVG your tanks are fighting 2 star T34/41 and KVs in scores, so you should consider backing them up with Artillery even more than before and make even better use of terrain.

Vitebsk is also a kinda special scenario as you get attacked from many directions and fight a lot of mini battles. The next two scenarios are more standard and easier to manage.

Give it a try, it's difficult but when you got so far, you can do this, too, without having to resort to "endscn" or Prestige injections.


Good luck!

Thanks Longasc. I couldn't bring myself to cheat, so I persevered with Vitebsk and finally completed it, with only one elite unit lost. There was a post that asked, what is your most hated map? Vitebsk, without a doubt.
I have had to drop a difficulty level to compensate for the rapid increase in enemy strength, but it's all about enjoying yourself, so I don't think that matters.

Until you get your Tigers, you should look for any captured Soviet tank you can get your hands on. KV´s work wonder for you, too. Also, use tank destroyers. They are the best you can use to destroy enemy KV´s.

T-34/41 with 12 STR and 2 stars can destroy 7-8 Strength points of an experienced Panzer IIIJ/1. That's what happened to me yesterday in the scenario after Kharkov.

Yeah, sorry, forgot the name. It's the scenario before Sevastopol. Ah! Simferopol! (All those Russian tanks are actually Pro Russian Milita or so <g>)

So what Snowball said, KV-1A/B work very nicely as they have high armor value. They are also great to stop a flood of Infantry.

Clever use of terrain and plenty of artillery to back you up is essential for any aspiring field commander, dont give up and give that scenario another try. (and make sure you save your prestige for later, those Tigers and Panthers dont come cheaply in 1943 )

Sigh!
The next scenario is much the same. The game now seems hell bent on smashing all of my core units that I have spent age's building up.
If you can understand that when I set up the game for semi-casual play I think that it should stay that way. It was absolutely great up until GC42. Now I can't enjoy myself anymore the addiction has faded away.
I just hope that Battle Academy doesn't go the same way.

I have read and absorbed all of your suggestion, just in case I find a way to return to the level of difficulty that I was enjoying.

BTW: I kept all of my capture Russian tanks, it's the first ones they go for and try to destroy.

When a Russian BA-64 can attack a 4 star Panzer IVF with 2 heroes across a river hex, and nearly obliterate it, then I say Slitherine are having a laugh.

The KV1 B is very good until well into 43, especially if you get a good A or D hero. However, the captured Char is also pretty useful in 41 and much of 42. It has SA 8, which is better than KV1A and B, and though the armour is slightly weaker than KV1 it is still better than most German tanks. A bit like Shermans and Grants, it is good for getting rid of infantry in the open and suppressed infantry in cover. With the good GD, they cope OK defensively against most tanks, but can't do enough damage to be used offensively against anything much better than BT5 and BT7.

As with the Char, the good armour means the Matilda can take on exposed infantry and defend against tanks with little risk, though the poor hitting power limits usefulness.