Slitherine

@Rudankort, will more attention be given to the smaller factions in PzC2 than in the original?

Since you say there is still time to change some things, may I just say that there were two major interrelated aspects in the original PzC that for me made the gaming experience very underwhelming:
1. the clear disregard for most factions outside of the big 4 (Germany, UK, USA and Soviet Union).
2. limited - and let`s call it conventional - approach to the campaign tree.

In PzC, nations like Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands etc. had no aircraft, no tanks and generally lacked the units that were needed to truly use them in game. You weren`t involved in the DLC campaigns afaik, but according to their developer Italy was used at Stalingrad instead of Romania because Romania did not have the necessary units in game:
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 19#p303219
In other scenarios, factions that should have been there are just missing. What I`m saying is that I`m tired of playing Poland->Norway(skipping any mention of Denmark)->Low Countries(without the Dutch)->France(limited French army roster which results in D.520 and Char B1 everywhere)->Greece(no Yugoslavia)->and then Army Group center from here on end (with the mandatory pass to Stalingrad where you get a couple infantry units for the Axis "minor" allies that are graphically indistinguishable from one another). Honestly, I can`t do this one more time.

If you`re making a campaign for Germany please give the player the chance to "fight" in the invasion of the Netherlands, invasion of Yugoslavia, in Army Group South or Army Group North sectors (no more mandatory Minsk!), cross to Africa and maybe even spice it up by including something like the need to capture the Danish key areas as part of Operation Weserübung or battles where your allies have a substantial presence (PG2 had fresh scenarios like Soumussalmi and Kishinev). If you make a campaign for the British start in Norway, give the player the option to fight against the Italians from the start, maybe even in East Africa and so on.

This, of course, would require you making some decent rosters for all smaller factions involved so you can work with them. Otherwise future development will once again be limited and we`ll hear the often repeated line for PzC: we need to be careful when we add new units and develop factions so as not to unbalance older scenarios. Basically what I`m asking you to do is: think more of what would be a new approach in terms of scenarios and campaign options and prepare for them so that you have the necessary units in game.

I thought this post was a very good start for discussion on "minor" factions in Panzer Corps 2, so I split it into a separate topic. Hope you don't mind. Although the four "big ones" will always take priority, I also agree that for progress of the game series in general, it would be good to improve this particular aspect as well. However, we'll need to consider this on a case by case basis.

For example, I'm not sure how to incorporate Denmark in the big picture of events. Operation which lasted only 6 hours, it's less than one turn in a typical Panzer Corps scenario. Very few casualties, no real tank vs. tank or aircraft vs. aircraft action. This does not seem to warrant a separate scenario, and adding them to Norway map would only make this map (which is already very big and complicated) even bigger and more confusing. Another possible approach is to bend history somewhat and at least allow the Danes to actually use what little they had. But some people might have a problem with this solution as well. How exactly do you imagine this?

In other cases, like Stalingrad, better represented Romanians could be useful, but this would not affect campaign structure per se, something which you want to achieve. In general, I'm afraid that there is no escape from Poland-Norway-France etc. structure, if we want to stay historical. But our take on these events can be very different. Vaniulla PzC campaign and Grand Campaign are two examples. Once Panzer Corps 2 revisits these events, it will use an approach different to both.

When you say minor nations "lacked the units that were needed to truly use them in game", what exactly do you mean by "truly use"? For example, do you expect them to be playable in a balanced MP battle against "the big four"? This would of course be very nice, but it might be very difficult to achieve. If you only want more historical flavor, it should be much easier to do.

2All: How do you see the role of "minor" factions in Panzer Corps 2?

Some minor factions are screaming for a campaign. Especially the Romanians, Italians and Fins. I know that a German campaign is compulsory but it has also become much harder not to fall in repetitive early war operations.
An Axis minor campaign can be challenging, especially in terms of equipment and just for the sake for once not ro play Germany.

nikivdd wrote:Some minor factions are screaming for a campaign. Especially the Romanians, Italians and Fins. I know that a German campaign is compulsory but it has also become much harder not to fall in repetitive early war operations.
An Axis minor campaign can be challenging, especially in terms of equipment and just for the sake for once not ro play Germany.

All great points, I fully agree.

I like the idea of more involvement from the "minor" nations. Might I also suggest if the point has not already been made, the ability of "minor" units in your core army. For myself I am thinking mostly of Italian and Romanian units on the eastern campaign. However the Germans had several volunteer units from various nations that fought on the eastern front.

For example, I'm not sure how to incorporate Denmark in the big picture of events.

I`ve kinda used it as an extreme example of how far you can take things. OoB for example only limited the operation to a message in between scenarios that detailed the event. It`s something at least.
The way I would incorporate it and other similar missions is to add them as small and optional, bonus type missions in between the main scenarios (in a few places along the entire campaign). They would not be those type of scenarios where it`s really tricky to win, but more of a sideshow to add more colour to the campaign tree and maybe replayability. What the player would actually get out of them would be along the lines of:
- an incentive to do great in the previous mission to unlock the bonus
- a little distraction from the linear path of the campaign
- a bit of extra prestige
- some more experience for a few troops.
I say a few troops because being secondary operations I`d offer the mission on the grounds that, if he accepts, the commander(the player) flies there quickly, takes command of the operation and the already existing troops on the ground(auxiliaries) and only brings or purchases a limited number of mobile, elite troops from his own core army (otherwise it might be harder to justify the shift of large forces from the bonus scenario to the larger one that follows). The difficulty of such historically one-sided engagements could be done by a set of requirements based on speed (destroy the Danish Fokker D.XXi squadron in the first turn, capture this by that turn etc.)

Btw, the DLC had such an optional mission (the Spoils of War iirc) where you could accept the offer of the Soviets to have a "duel" with them after the conquest of Poland. The problem with that in my view was not that it was fictional (if was optional after all), but that the premise was completely ... someone used a term that I`d rather not repeat.

In other cases, like Stalingrad, better represented Romanians could be useful, but this would not affect campaign structure per se, something which you want to achieve.

You should take into account that for both historical (I try not to use the word "accuracy" because it`s tricky) and emotional reasons it can be very disheartening, especially for players from the respective countries, to start a scenario and begin a fruitless search for their nation`s troops on the map (even though historically they were there). It kinda leaves you feel excluded.

In general, I'm afraid that there is no escape from Poland-Norway-France etc. structure, if we want to stay historical.

Certain scenarios are unavoidable, but you could vary things in others, both in content and actual direction. The Netherlands, as I`ve said, is pretty neglected in this genre. Then there`s the Eastern front. PG, PzC and the PzC DLC Eastern campaign all followed the path of Army Group Center. PG2 on the other hand started Barbarossa with Army Group South and concentrated on Kishinev, which is the area where the Romanian armies were most present so you had plenty of them on the map. It felt different. You`d see an odd looking plane and say hey, what`s that? Let`s put it to the test. It broke the monotony of the usual calculations Bf 109E versus I-16 will likely mean... etc.
Ideally I would give the player the option at the start of Barbarossa to choose what Army Group sector he wants to be involved with and than, along the campaign tree, maybe offer him one or two more chances to switch.

what exactly do you mean by "truly use"?

I`m not advocating for a fantasist approach that would result in a certain smaller nation`s unit being so much better than whatever the larger faction has so that the player feels compelled to add it to its core army. I think the option to take other nation`s units as part of you core should be given, but left to the player.

What I`m mostly saying is that you should give each nation enough useful and representative equipment (that they historically had) so that they can play their part in scenarios where they`re supposed to hold important sections of the front. Stalingrad is a good example. Crimea and Kharkov 42 are others. As far as what a reasonable roster would constitute I think PzC Poland is a good example. If we talk Romania (for example), well, it started the war with 126 R-2 tanks (Panzer 35(t)) and it got more later from the Germans. From 1943 it received a similar number of Panzer IVH. It produced several hundred IAR-80
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAR_80
it had significant numbers of Bf-109E and G (given plenty great aces) and it manufactured significant numbers of AT and AA guns. What I`d do is choose one or two of the most representative and useful weapons from each category and give it to them. In this respect, PG2 actually did a great job.

For example, do you expect them to be playable in a balanced MP battle against "the big four"?

No. I`d like to take one of them and really struggle against one of "the big four opponents". It makes for a real challenge, especially for experienced players in search for something harder, but you have to give them something to use. I`ve had great fun playing the PG and PzC scenarios as Poland trying to stop the Germans, but this would not have been possible if Poland, like Romania, Hungary and the like, would have no tanks, no aircraft, no aa guns etc. In this respect, as I`ve said, I think Poland is a good example of what a decent roster can be for a small faction.

I understand that as a developer you tend to approach things from a very practical side. Poland has those units because it is the only opposition the Germans have in the first scenario(s) and Romania on the other hand is generally only part of conglomerate armies so in terms of ones and zeroes its units can be substituted successfully. But you should not underestimate the power of emotional and role playing sort of speak. I`ve seen people mod in ECM aircraft in other games and take them in the mission even though the game actually lacked mechanics for the ECM to do ... anything. Others modded in traits that would say a certain Roman character is a consul (and have no other effect) just so that they can pretend they lead a consular army and not just a bunch of Roman units. I think you know what I mean and while certain things may be best left to modding you should still try to form a base in the main game.
Imo the time is right to do things like these, because the genre is already getting saturated and for older players it might be important to try new things.

nikivdd wrote: An Axis minor campaign can be challenging, especially in terms of equipment and just for the sake for once not ro play Germany.

If a "minor campaign" is actually done (by this point I think Romania is both feasible and also not done before by any game in this genre) you could always do an invert on the German campaign to ease the gaps in specialised equipment. If in the German campaign you had smaller nations present so in a Romanian (for example) campaign you could be given command of auxiliary (I`d advocate for a few core slots too) German units to beef up your operations. After all, this is what historically happened at Odessa:
http://www.worldwar2.ro/operatii/?article=7
This site btw is a great resource for a Romanian campaign and it has the advantage that is in English too.
EDIT: Odessa btw could be used both as a scenario in a Romanian campaign and as one of those small involvement bonus missions that I`ve described at the start of the post in a German campaign.

Also, one more thing to add in case campaigns for smaller nations are considered. I think that in terms of how the gameplay works in PG/PzC they are actually the best suited. When you play the Germans the designers are usually forced to do all sort of tricks to make the early battles harder for the human player, usually meaning unhistorical and unreasonably strong (both numerically and qualitative) opponents. When you take a smaller faction, the weaknesses are inherent so you could actually start with a very historical army disposition of the opponent.

Honestly even the Polish and French scream for a campaign. Sure they lost in the end, so what? So did Germany and we still play them. France and Poland had certainly chances to hurt the Germans and made counter offensives. Some of them failed, some were delayed and therefore not effective but they existed. Those campaigns wouldn't be super long but I'm sure you could easily make 10 or so scenarios waround Fall Weiß from the Polish perspective. The entire Bzura counter offensive, the slow retreat out of the Polish corridor (which worked, Guderian totally failed to destroy those forces, they escaped instead and later took part in the bzura offensive. We could play those forces. Nice retreating battles, local counter offensives and a final standoff at Warsaw, maybe giving the German panzers an even bloodier nose than they had been given historically. Maybe that would even keep the Soviets from invading. That alone would be victory enough.

The loser nations should still be playable despite them losing their campaign historically. After all Germany lost in the end also, which doesn't make 1943-45 less fun. Especially France certainly had nice equipment to play with, they had tank divisions and mechanized cavalry forces, certainly worthy of a Panzer game.

Mark50

I agree with most of what you are saying. However, I do believe that every mission we provide, mandatory or optional, should be interesting and fun to play in the first place. For example, in case of Denmark, maybe the objective could be to force fast surrender of enemy units, instead of killing them (you need to make it a "peaceful" occupation and score propaganda points), so you would need to think how to use game mechanics to your advantage and fulfil this goal. Just getting some more prestige and a little bit of experience on your troops is poor excuse for including any kind of content, if it's not interesting enough to play.

KeldorKatarn

Good point on Poland and France too.

In my Total Realism Mod I have all factions working. They are also timed so they are available historically. For example You don't start the campaign with the ability to buy Hungarian, Romanian or Bulgarian units.

You have to wait until the correct date of the scenario.

Also, all the awards and heroes work for each minor faction.

For Hero,

Please give the AI separate data parameters for Hero's. That way we can assign Hero of AI units to become available much sooner than the Human.

For example Eligible for Hero 100 kills human. If unit AI, then Eligible for Hero "xx". Let the designer define eligibility for each map, like 25 kills 50 kills, 38 kills, 5 kills, 10 kills etc...

Right now if you change the setting it effects both the AI and Human.

Just think how difficult it would be when the AI gains a hero before you and it makes it harder and more enjoyable to win the scenario because the enemy force has hero/heroes.

I think this option would go along way in improving the AI along with a "Reinforce" trait where it gets an increase in strength one point per turn.

I know we ignore minor nations but I think the customer base would be much wider if we made this available.

Playing Poland provides the advantage that you can play with historical justification from 1939 as Poland and then as Free Polish forces from France 1940 to conquering Germany in 1945 in most European and North African campaigns. You could even start in 1938 if you wanted to include the intervention in Czechoslovakia.

If you start with the Saarland invasion (as I have done do in my very slow-growing French mod) you can play France in 1939 and 1940, and then either play the Free French forces up to 1945 or take the unhistoric path in which the French commanders decide that a reserve would be a good idea so that they have a chance of holding and eventually driving back the invasion, which allows you to use the technology that was nearly ready (Somua S40, Char B1Ter, HEAT grenades for rifles or PIAT type launchers, general issue of semi automatic rifles and 47mm AT guns), plus the under development units (D550, Char G1 APDS rounds).

You could get a lot of mileage out of Canadian or Australian forces as well even within Europe and North Africa.

The French fought in Norway so you could definitely start there already. Same for the british. The phony war could be done also yeah but I think Norway would be a coolers start, maybe the Phony war as an eary few units tutorial mission. After all there wasn't really anything happening there.

Small suggestion.

Would it be possible to make 1 separate equipment file for each nation?
At the start of each scenario the appropriate nation's files would be loaded.

I believe this would make it much easier for modders and designers to create new nations or new units for already existing nations, because there would be no, or at least much less, compatibility issues with unit numbers.
Also no need for reserved numbers, etc...

_____


On a different note, small DLCs with minor nations campaigns would also be nice.
Yes, I can imagine, and would buy a Polish Campaign DLC, a French Campaign DLC, Italian, Hungarian, Spanish Civil War, etc...

If not a DLC, separate nation equipment files would make it easier for modders to create these campaigns...

Given PC is a "beer and pretzels" kind of game rather than a hard-core simulation, I'm pretty comfortable with the game pulling at history a bit this way and that, in the interest of making interesting and enjoyable (and replayable!) campaigns.

I love the idea of a Polish campaign. Start off defending Poland through a few scenarios, then be allowed to evacuate say 6-8 core units through Hungarian or Lithuanian border to be interned, then give the player the choice to fight with the Polish corps that fought with the Russians, or with the Western Allies through Norway, North Africa, Italy and ultimately France!

Or a Greek campaign... defend Greece, then fight through North Africa, Tunisia, Italy, and ultimately against Greek communists in 1945 in Greece again!

Spanish campaign focusing on Spanish Civil War and then operations of the Blue Division. Lots of potential for interesting French and Italian campaigns.

Or my own personal favorite - the incredibly illustrious career of the 4th Indian Division.

I like the idea of having a mixed core. Perhaps there could even be campaigns where a certain number of forces deployed in certain battles must be from certain minors. EG, in Afrika Corps campaign, say you have to deploy 12 German and 12 Italian core units at Gazala, etc. Or in an Allied campaign, ability to have Commonwealth and/or Free French or Free Poles as part of core would be awesome.

Great suggestions guys, keep them coming.

hs1611 wrote:Would it be possible to make 1 separate equipment file for each nation?
At the start of each scenario the appropriate nation's files would be loaded.

I believe this would make it much easier for modders and designers to create new nations or new units for already existing nations, because there would be no, or at least much less, compatibility issues with unit numbers.
Also no need for reserved numbers, etc...

New game will probably provide a dedicated unit editor, so internal data organization will be much less of a concern for modders. Also, I think we will go away from numerical IDs, because they created too many problems for everybody.

Sourdust wrote:Start off defending Poland through a few scenarios, then be allowed to evacuate say 6-8 core units through Hungarian or Lithuanian border to be interned

Actually most of them stepped over the Romanian border

Rudankort wrote:Mark50
I agree with most of what you are saying. However, I do believe that every mission we provide, mandatory or optional, should be interesting and fun to play in the first place. For example, in case of Denmark, maybe the objective could be to force fast surrender of enemy units, instead of killing them (you need to make it a "peaceful" occupation and score propaganda points), so you would need to think how to use game mechanics to your advantage and fulfil this goal. Just getting some more prestige and a little bit of experience on your troops is poor excuse for including any kind of content, if it's not interesting enough to play.

The fact that you get some prestige and experience is besides the point of how interesting the mission can indeed be made by a good designer. You probably know this better than me.
From my perspective the very fact of encountering the distinctively looking Danish helmets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_M1923_helmet
20mm guns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madsen_20_mm_cannon
and Fokkers D.XXI
http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/inde ... okker-xxi/
would make the scenario fresh. You don`t see them anywhere else (save for the Fokkers in a different camo). There was a discussion somewhere else about the PG2 maps btw and I`ve noted your reservations, but what I`d like to add is that after all this time I can still remember how each of those PG2 scenarios looked and felt while at the same time I`m somewhat struggling to remember how those from vanilla PzC looked and generally they never felt different from one another (as an atmosphere). I think it`s worth that, besides good mechanics, you delve a bit into local flavor so to speak so that the player really feels he`s been all around the world not just attacking this time from the left and this time from the right.

That aside, I`d create a range of objectives for this scenarios, as I`ve suggested. The Fokkers need to be destroyed right away to be historical (and of course from the practical perspective to stop them interfering with the rest of the operation which included airborne landings), the royal family needs to be captured etc. and of course everything needs to be done against the time to allow for a successful Norwegian campaign. There are simultaneous land, air and naval invasions so it could be made fun and a sort of rehearsal for Norway. Besides, if you are allowed to take your paratroopers with you to Norway then Denmark would serve as a good opportunity to get the player to invest into paratroopers and have them gain a bit of probably important experience in advance of the next scenario. You could also throw in a capturable equipment, the 20mm Madsen gun which was said to have been quite effective for that stage of the war (plus it would be switchable from AA to AT):
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic ... 8&start=15

KeldorKatarn wrote:

Sourdust wrote:Start off defending Poland through a few scenarios, then be allowed to evacuate say 6-8 core units through Hungarian or Lithuanian border to be interned

Actually most of them stepped over the Romanian border

I was just about to point that out too. A Polish campaign (from the Polish perspective) should not end with the siege of Warsaw, it should end in Poland with the Romanian Bridgehead:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Bridgehead
By this point the player would already have some experienced and dear units and should be allowed to save a number of them in order to continue with a second phase (in France and so on). The evacuation of the Polish treasure and leadership should also be included, thus giving the chance for extra prestige, room for defining victory or maybe even as a condition for the second phase of the campaign (with the Free Polish forces). A Polish campaign would indeed be very interesting, spanning the entire duration of the war and several equipment upgrading phases (Polish, French, British) and covering some well known battles later in the war (Monte Cassino, Market Garden)

Mark50 wrote:There was a discussion somewhere else about the PG2 maps btw and I`ve noted your reservations, but what I`d like to add is that after all this time I can still remember how each of those PG2 scenarios looked and felt while at the same time I`m somewhat struggling to remember how those from vanilla PzC looked and generally they never felt different from one another (as an atmosphere). I think it`s worth that, besides good mechanics, you delve a bit into local flavor so to speak so that the player really feels he`s been all around the world not just attacking this time from the left and this time from the right.

This would be nice for sure, but it is easier said than done. Any ideas how to do it on a tile-based maps? Going for full-blown hand-painted maps, like PG2 did, is unfortunately out of question.

Rudankort wrote:This would be nice for sure, but it is easier said than done. Any ideas how to do it on a tile-based maps? Going for full-blown hand-painted maps, like PG2 did, is unfortunately out of question.

Maybe it's out of the question to produce because it's so far removed from the design of Panzer Corps's tile based systems... but if the editor can accept a pad image, I'm just imaging a pad image that is on the top visible layer instead of the bottom.

It's a quick and dirty answer, like you won't get things like destructible terrain unit husks, which I recall Panzer General 2 having, but it's a thought.

Rudankort wrote: This would be nice for sure, but it is easier said than done. Any ideas how to do it on a tile-based maps? Going for full-blown hand-painted maps, like PG2 did, is unfortunately out of question.

The unique/particular feel (from a visual perspective) of a certain scenario can be enhanced in a few ways in my opinion, even if you don`t have the sort of maps PG2 had. In no particular order:

1. as I`ve said above, it helps to have distinctive graphics for units. When I played the Hague scenario in the PzC `40 DLC I rushed through and thought I fought a sort of "what if" battle, because of all the R35 French tanks and Matilda British tanks, with French Potez 63 bombers overhead and so on. In fact ALL the units in that scenario were actually meant to be Dutch (had Dutch ownership) which I only noticed when I started modding the thing. Yugoslavia in the PzC DLC is another good example with all their tanks and most aircraft being Soviet even though at that time they had no Soviet equipment (historically). What I`m saying is that if you play in a certain country the units (a few of them at least) need to look the part.

2. I think it might be worth considering different vegetation graphics (and perhaps settlement styles) for different theatres. In PzC the forest looked exactly the same in Norway as it did in Greece. Hard to notice things change geographically in such circumstances. I`m not saying you should make complete sets of very different vegetation, but the base grass at least can be made with relative ease to be more green or brown depending on where you play (and the season) and this would be imediately noticeable when you start a scenario. You could also make a couple forests that look more Scandinavian or Mediterranean to spice things. Settlements too need more variety depending on where you are. A town in Russia should not look like one in Britain or like one in Italy. Basically you could choose a handful of different areas and make more distinctive settlements for them. Since you work in 3d it should not be that hard since you could just adjust positioning and only add a couple new buildings in the set to give the impression of localization.
PzC btw introduced the Mediterranean city style and this really helped, but it was introduced with Africa Korps and scenarios from the previous releases did not benefit from it.

3. add more little items that can customize appearance. In PzC you had those small bits of trees in the overlays which could be used to change the shape of a forest patch (by adding an extra corner and so on) or even a hill or river if you were creative, but unfortunately there were only five of them so the possibilities were limited. Even more so for the settlements where there were only 3 extra bits to change the appearance of a city hex. Besides these that add to the larger graphics (cities, forests, hills) it would be useful to have several smaller bits that could be used individually (small earth mounds, a puddle, a patch of a few trees, maybe some human arrangements). The thing is to make these small enough so that it`s clear they are cosmetics and do not reflect changes in the terrain type.

4. if you have what to work with you can create via the scenario design some areas that look distinctive enough from one map to the other. One example (maybe not the best) is that in PzC the Canal graphics are unused. If you use them for the Albert Canal in the Low Countries (it had the generic river graphics in PzC) or as the Corinth Canal in Greece (ignored in game) it makes for more memorable maps.

Postby Mark50: 3. add more little items that can customize appearance.

Great dissertation!, your idea's are definitely headed in the right direction.