Slitherine

I played around with the game for a couple of weeks and then had a go at the Campaign on the hardest difficulty level.
Have just finished the Belgium scenario and it just all seems a bit too easy. Have won every scenario having taken all of the map with time to spare. Am up to over 4k of prestige points and building every game.
So there is no time pressure. There is no resource pressure. There is no shortage of units, have only lost one unit so far and that was getting careless because the game is so easy. Every turn you just surround as many enemy units as possible and force them to surrender.

Does the campaign get more demanding later on ?
It looks like the only way to make challenging would be to select some command traits that would make the game more difficult. I could understand if that were the case after playing the game for a few months and knowing all the scenarios that you might need to do that sort of thing. I did the same playing PG2, like trying to play without aircraft, but that was having played through the Campaign a couple of times and some months down the line. For all the scenarios to be too easy after one play through and some too easy the first time doesn't create much enthusiasm for playing the next one.

Any suggestions for appropriate traits to make a good game of it, have been playing with: Panzer general, Blitz, No Overstr, Trophies, Anti-air, Green, Chaotic, Perimeter.

tyronec wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 7:25 pmIt looks like the only way to make challenging would be to select some command traits that would make the game more difficult.

This , basically.

tyronec wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 7:25 pm Every turn you just surround as many enemy units as possible and force them to surrender.

tyronec wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 7:25 pmPerimeter.

I have never played with Perimeter because , as I understand it , Perimeter is one of those traits , commonly referred to around here as , " Edmon's Power 4 " , which makes the game as you describe it above.

Granted , surrounding enemy units and forcing them to surrender does indeed sound sensible , practical , realistic and historical.

--- Except , as you indicate , for the purposes of this game , it makes it too easy.

I prefer to play with traits , or without traits , that force you to actually fight the enemy. That force you to take casualties . Encirclements still happen --- when the enemy is broken / thrown into chaos already anyway , when you are mopping up , almost as an afterthought.

Sort of like the taking of prisoners in real life. As I understand it , in real life as opposed to in fiction , nobody wants to take prisoners in the assault because they worryingly may slow you down , and constitute a security risk when the issue is in the balance. And nobody wants to take prisoners on the defensive , because it is just another liability when you already have enough liabilities , and , again, prisoners constitute a security risk when the issue is in the balance.

So , generally , prisoners are taken when the ball is over / winding down .

I apply the same sort of thing to encirclements. The enemy is going to fight like hell to avoid encirclement , of course. So encirclement becomes something you read about / hear about a lot , but rarely actually ever see in practice. And , when it does happen , like I said , the show is practically over anyway.

tyronec wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 7:25 pmAnti-air

Again , AA that actually shoots down aircraft seems perfectly sensible.

For the purposes of this game , though , I find that managing air defense is a lot more involved and interesting if AA deals primarily in suppression .

Your AA will still gain experience over time , they will still occasionally shoot down enemy aircraft. But AA / air defense is now primarily a pure support function , like Bruckenpioneire , artillery , or AT. In this case it is primarily a support for your fighters , and a so - so supporting defense of your ground units.

Support , support , support. Like it or not , it's your fighters that have to make the kills. ( After , hopefully , your AA has softened up / disordered the enemy air. )

One apparent drawback without Anti - Air , though , is that not only do you get few kills in the air , but in ground support against either soft or hard targets AA is absolutely lousy.

But , then , how many Knight's Crosses were won in AA units ? As only a supporting service , it isn't a very glamorous service.

Like I said , though , for me , running AA as a purely un-glamorous support service makes using AA more interesting and more involved .

tyronec wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 7:25 pmTrophies

Again , I have never played with this trait . The way I hear it , it is one of those traits that makes acquiring prestige ridiculously easy ?

The flip side , though , of playing without traits that generate a lot of prestige , is that you are chronically starved for prestige , or even run out of prestige !

What can I say ?

Keep tweeking it, and tweeking it , and tweeking it , until you find your happy medium ?

---

To me , the genius of this game , and the attraction , is in the tweaking. Via a combination of traits and --- dare I say it --- cheat codes --- you arrive at a rule set THAT YOU LIKE / AGREE WITH / APPROVE OF.

It's roughly a war game - equivalent of paint - by - numbers. That is , you are given a ready - made framework to work with . But , within that framework , you can create what you want.

I would guess that when / if we finally get a Steam Workshop , this game will really blossom in the hands of modders ?

The very thing that constitutes a positive for some , though , for others is a negative. What is attractive to some , is off - putting for others .

tyronec wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 7:25 pmDoes the campaign get more demanding later on ?

With AA as strictly an un- glamorous support service , no easy way to generate prestige , and encirclements / mass surrenders a rare event , Poland through France was , yes , easy.

But then , wasn't the war basically just a picnic for Germany until the Autumn of 1941 , anyway , historically ?

When I went to North Afrika , though ....

At Gazalla ; It took ten turns to take Tobruk . And your forces are a bit battered . But , no biggie , you still have ten turns to go , and only a little mopping up to do ---- Wrong !

You then run up against an entire army , new , fresh , and armor - heavy , to tackle , and only ten turns in which to deal with it !

I had to use a cheat code to give myself ten more turns . Otherwise , I would go from total victory to Custer's Last Stand in ten turns.

Same story at Baghdad. You have two major rivers to cross , a massively fortified city , and victory objectives on opposite sides of the map. ( Think of a drive toward Stalingrad AND , AT THE SAME TIME , a drive toward the Caucasus / Tbilisi. )

I can either simply lose , literally wipe myself out trying to take the victory objectives , or give myself ten more turns.

Finally there is Sealion. It takes ten turns alone just neutralizing the Royal Navy / Royal Air Force , so that my invading ground forces don't get chopped to pieces just crossing the channel. ( And that seems pretty historical to me , too. No amount of fancy footwork would have abrogated the fact that you MUST neutralize the British air and sea forces . UNLESS you neutralize the British air and sea forces , you will either suffer horrific losses , or suffer horrific losses AND lose. )

I'm hoping we will eventually get an Italian campaign , either from Slitherine or from modders , and then I can have fun trying to win the war with an antique army that punches like a girl.

tyronec wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 7:25 pm I played around with the game for a couple of weeks and then had a go at the Campaign on the hardest difficulty level.
Have just finished the Belgium scenario and it just all seems a bit too easy. Have won every scenario having taken all of the map with time to spare. Am up to over 4k of prestige points and building every game.

Try adding Delayed reinforcements and Fear of the Unkown. Green army doesn't matter that much in the first half, it will get significantly more impactful in the second half.

In PC2 the general traits impact the real difficulty of the game massively:

If you use "anti air" its two diffs easier.
If you use "perimeter" its two diffs easier.
If you use "trophies" its one diff easier.

So basically you play on the lowest difficulty even if you choose "generalissimus".
Never use the above traits, if you want a challenge. (and dont use liberator too)

A challenging setup would be: Generalissimus with: no overstrenght, green army and bad logistics (its just realistic not to have an elite only army and the germans always had bad logistics in rl.)
If thats too hard use the pos traits: panzer general, good contact to industry (prototypes)
I never tried it but maybe double entrenchement without timelimit is fun.

And even then, i would suggest dont farm too much prestige through capturing, go for the kill and do it only (farming) when you really need it.
Remember: Prisoners need food - and the wehrmacht struggled to feed its own troops. So its unrealistic anyways, too capture so many enemys, because reality showed us what happened, when the wehrmacht captured 2 million russians.
They died of deseases and hunger, nearly all of them. And even if the germans would have wanted to save this poor prisoners, they couldnt have done it without making their own troops starve. Many people underestimate, how difficult (and often impossible) it was, to supply millions of soldiers, for years, every day, over vast distances (russia).

Thanks for the feedback.
Have started again without anti-air, perimeter, trophies or liberator and it is making for a better game.
Not playing to capture units feels just a bit too odd for me, it's like deliberately playing badly to compensate for a game design issue. Though having said that the 'one unit' surrounds are odd. Am hoping further along the Campaign the line the AI will turn up with a more solid front line rather than isolated units spread across the map.

Russian Prisoners of War!:

I am now venturing onto ground that I have never stepped into before!... so please!... bear with me.

"Would-Could" it have been possible to re-locate these Russian and other prisoners to 'Large-Farming-Camps'... where they could grow food for themselves as well as manage to produce even a surplus that could be used elsewhere?.

Maybe... such areas of farmland were not readily available or even for it to be practical to then even cordon off the farm-reserve with a security perimeter?.

I just thought that there must be some alternate solution to this predicament other than letting the prisoners starve to death.