Axis op DLC - healing and airforce slog

[Valks]

I've played a few missions, few hours and it's an interesting DLC but the direction with the Spanish units being AI is... a bit underwhelming. If there hapens to be a future option where the player could use them (with usual Spain allocated prestige if not outright as Aux units) it would be much! more enjoyable. This imho system belongs more into the HOI category where the AI follows your battleplans rather than a game where you can and should be in charge of individual units.

Otherwise the most annoying feature is the healing rate of the enemy units. With the infantry being under AI control they will also take turns healing themselves even if ordered to attack and so will the enemies. Leaving both in a stalemate and you running constant support as opposed to exploiting line breaks and spearheads with your tanks. AI will also attack random enemies and not the objectives or stronger units you suppressed or damaged hoping to push onward.
Speaking of which, I don't know if anyone ever in PC2 used the 7.5cm Arty - it is about as useful against anything as a wet paper bag against a Tiger II.

Enemies constantly heal with no regard to prestige and you do so little damage in the end just costing you turns of sloggish fighting. i.e. an enemy will heal on a river tile and cannot be pushed out by arty + tac or strat supported AI inf. with them both stopping and healing every 2-3 turns.

And the airforce... the He51's are beyond useless against russian aircraft which belong in 1940. Even a max OS figher will at best go equal even against a tac bomber. The AI is much better now in the fact it sends bombers with escorts but with the healing on the I15's is too much. I understand if the aim was to focus on the "Condor" being a prolonged air battle and perhaps later you get a chance at BF109 to at least marginally even the odds but it takes painfully long (half a game+) to wither down just one or two fighters before you can even think about going after the bombers that exclusively go against your units with the early AA being too slow and too weak to do anyhting about it.

I don't think I will be coming back to this DLC, I've seen some praises from other and perhaps it is just on my end but I feel it is entirely too slow and too bogged down. And takes too much core gameplay that I enjoyed in PC2 (infantry control). Which is a shame really.

It honestly feels like less of a game with you having so much less control over what "your" units do and how they move. I mean the AI if ordered to defend will garrison the objective but every other unit with no objective hex will just beeline into the open to attack a minefield and get properly demolished by the enemy scouts.

[Kerensky]

Unique flavor of DLC will have unique flavors... standard German infantry will of course eventually return.

Surrounding the enemy with encirclements is key to denying their ability to reinforce.

As for air force and your own controlled infantry well:

6. Don't be shy about using non-standard resources at your disposal
Very frequently in the Axis Operations, you will have access to non-standard assets to bolster your CORE force. One prime example of this takes the form of Italian CTV (Corpo Truppe Volontarie) Auxiliaries in the Spanish Civil War. Unlike the usual lackluster performance of Italians during World War II, your Italian allies are extremely potent and a force to be reckoned with during the Spanish Civil War. The only way to directly control infantry is by purchasing Italian CTV infantry. Italian fighter aircraft are also far superior to the German starting He-51 biplane fighter. A very common tactic among our testers was to use the maximum allotment of auxiliary slots to deploy a host of Italian infantry, fighters, and artillery to supplement their primary Condor Legion forces. The extra cost in prestige to buy auxiliary units is more than offset by the extra firepower you can bring to the battlefield!

Being stuck with the He-51 is a fact of history. But eventually the He-112 arrives, and it's a really good feeling upgrade!

[Thorin]

The italians are awesome, probably the first time when i would be much happier to use them as core instead of the germans, not only they have infantry, they have better bombers (those OP commie fighters lose more than the italian superbombers while attacking them), their fighters are on par with the commies, and the italian tanks are better than the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ german one, their recon also quite good, but at least not better in every way.

[Valks]

Originally posted by Kerensky:

Unique flavor of DLC will have unique flavors... standard German infantry will of course eventually return.

Surrounding the enemy with encirclements is key to denying their ability to reinforce.

As for air force and your own controlled infantry well:

6. Don't be shy about using non-standard resources at your disposal
Very frequently in the Axis Operations, you will have access to non-standard assets to bolster your CORE force. One prime example of this takes the form of Italian CTV (Corpo Truppe Volontarie) Auxiliaries in the Spanish Civil War. Unlike the usual lackluster performance of Italians during World War II, your Italian allies are extremely potent and a force to be reckoned with during the Spanish Civil War. The only way to directly control infantry is by purchasing Italian CTV infantry. Italian fighter aircraft are also far superior to the German starting He-51 biplane fighter. A very common tactic among our testers was to use the maximum allotment of auxiliary slots to deploy a host of Italian infantry, fighters, and artillery to supplement their primary Condor Legion forces. The extra cost in prestige to buy auxiliary units is more than offset by the extra firepower you can bring to the battlefield!

Being stuck with the He-51 is a fact of history. But eventually the He-112 arrives, and it's a really good feeling upgrade!

I'm glad innovation is taking place and new things are tried but the core issue with this is just that due to the balancing as is it's not... say 109 vs superior spitfire you meet in the core campaign or PzIII's against T-34's. The amount of damage you can do and the damage you take is more on the scale of making the fighting take longer than the difficulty.

The expanded objectives and narrative is fun, I've used Italians extensively but for me it's the AI part just in the way that I want to order them where to go and how to move, support them even with the trash arty, have them hold on to defensible cities and mountains...
I don't think relinquishing large amounts of troops to the AI and taking it away from the player is a "fun" move. Even in the campaign (i.e. Stalingrad) the AI never quite does what you'd want it to do or how to use certain units.

I'd love to try the He-112 but I doubt I can handle that "order AI box" any more

[Kerensky]

Originally posted by Valks:

I'd love to try the He-112 but I doubt I can handle that "order AI box" any more

So noted. I think it's too historically inappropriate to give direct control over Nationalist units. Nationalist and Germany and Italy in Spain were a coalition, not a completely unified command structure.

AI Allies is an important advancement in the mechanical gameplay of Panzer Corps 2 over similar games, such as the original Panzer Corps that didnt even have this mechanic in any form.
Or other games that have AI allies, but you have zero influence on their behavior and they just run a predetermined script.

But does that mean it will be plugged into every single DLC? No.
Does it mean it won't ever be improved if and when it does return? Possibly, why not.

It's just one more tool in the toolkit of making potentially new and different designs for content. =)

Perhaps we could have a gameplay 'option' along the lines of 'no heroes' and other such customization that allows directly control for those who really want it? That might be a nice future improvement to integrate if its possible. Right now, I have no idea. Wont make promises I cant keep.

[Thorin]

Strange, not only like the order the spanish troops and hope they will do what i want, in some maps it was even a question whether my troops did anything meaningful? Yes, the airforce bombed the hell out of everything and made it a bit simpler for the groundhuggers, yes, the trubia and the unl solve some tricky stuff (and the german scrap also was in the vicinity), but most of the kill went for the spanish troops.

[Valks]

Originally posted by Kerensky:

Originally posted by Valks:

I'd love to try the He-112 but I doubt I can handle that "order AI box" any more

So noted. I think it's too historically inappropriate to give direct control over Nationalist units. Nationalist and Germany and Italy in Spain were a coalition, not a completely unified command structure.

AI Allies is an important advancement in the mechanical gameplay of Panzer Corps 2 over similar games, such as the original Panzer Corps that didnt even have this mechanic in any form.
Or other games that have AI allies, but you have zero influence on their behavior and they just run a predetermined script.

But does that mean it will be plugged into every single DLC? No.
Does it mean it won't ever be improved if and when it does return? Possibly, why not.

It's just one more tool in the toolkit of making potentially new and different designs for content. =)

Perhaps we could have a gameplay 'option' along the lines of 'no heroes' and other such customization that allows directly control for those who really want it? That might be a nice future improvement to integrate if its possible. Right now, I have no idea. Wont make promises I cant keep.

No worries, I have high hopes for the future DLC and find the game amazing. I guess one DLC would be absolute no-go for me.
Just wanted to voice an opinion on the matter of higher AI involvement and large amounts of friendly units you have no control over. To be fair for me Kursk was one of the least chosen maps due to the sheer amount of Aux's I don't like to micromanage next to an already 100+ slot main force at that point.

If there is ever an option prior to starting the game to be able to control the Spanish units I think it would solve everything through giving players a choice on AI involvement.

[seasider66]

Originally posted by Valks:

Originally posted by Kerensky:

So noted. I think it's too historically inappropriate to give direct control over Nationalist units. Nationalist and Germany and Italy in Spain were a coalition, not a completely unified command structure.

AI Allies is an important advancement in the mechanical gameplay of Panzer Corps 2 over similar games, such as the original Panzer Corps that didnt even have this mechanic in any form.
Or other games that have AI allies, but you have zero influence on their behavior and they just run a predetermined script.

But does that mean it will be plugged into every single DLC? No.
Does it mean it won't ever be improved if and when it does return? Possibly, why not.

It's just one more tool in the toolkit of making potentially new and different designs for content. =)

Perhaps we could have a gameplay 'option' along the lines of 'no heroes' and other such customization that allows directly control for those who really want it? That might be a nice future improvement to integrate if its possible. Right now, I have no idea. Wont make promises I cant keep.

No worries, I have high hopes for the future DLC and find the game amazing. I guess one DLC would be absolute no-go for me.
Just wanted to voice an opinion on the matter of higher AI involvement and large amounts of friendly units you have no control over. To be fair for me Kursk was one of the least chosen maps due to the sheer amount of Aux's I don't like to micromanage next to an already 100+ slot main force at that point.

If there is ever an option prior to starting the game to be able to control the Spanish units I think it would solve everything through giving players a choice on AI involvement.

Thanks for your review , I am put off playing it now , I will do as brought it in the Package just very disappointed in what you say , Cheers for your opinions

[PatRat]

It wouldn't be very historical for the player to be able to completely control the nationalist units. Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen was a commander of air units during the Spanish civil war, and his diary is full of complaints about how the air and tank units would do their job, but the nationalist infantry would either not advance, or even worse, attack the wrong objective.

I myself am actually very impressed with how effective the nationalist infantry can be, if you understand how to issue orders and support them with artillery and a couple of ground units. I've seen the nationalist infantry actually pull off a couple of pretty large scale encirclements with only minimal help from me. It is also a very good idea to let the nationalist infantry capture all the victory hexes, this keeps them heading in the proper direction when on the offensive.

He51s are pretty terrible. So I rely on Italian fighters for the 1st part of the war. I also purchase Italian infantry and cavalry to back up my panzers. In my current campaign I have the auxiliaries trait, so I also purchase extra German 105mm artillery to backup the nationalists.

I am extremely happy with how this DLC turned out. When I first heard that it was going to be the Spanish civil war, I wasn't to enthusiastic. But after playing it pretty extensively, I'm now loving it and have learned a lot about the war. And the new AI allies system is really quite amazing.

[Concerned West Virginia Resident]

I think the Nationalist automated infantry is an interesting gimmick, especially once the bug with shared support goes away. It'll always be disappointing but the colonial infantry qualitative and quantitative advantage they have over the enemy AI lets them push pretty hard when they're not dealing with certain brick wall units. The big thing to understand is that you want to clean out supporting enemy artillery and look to suppress the better enemy units like guardia civil, as the AI just likes to throw in.

I think to make the SCW scenarios interesting with the player controlling the Nationalist infantry, you'd have to tone them down a lot- the colonial infantry is so insane compared to their opponents that you'd probably have to downgrade them a lot.

[Kerensky]

Originally posted by Concerned West Virginia Resident:

I think the Nationalist automated infantry is an interesting gimmick, especially once the bug with shared support goes away. It'll always be disappointing but the colonial infantry qualitative and quantitative advantage they have over the enemy AI lets them push pretty hard when they're not dealing with certain brick wall units. The big thing to understand is that you want to clean out supporting enemy artillery and look to suppress the better enemy units like guardia civil, as the AI just likes to throw in.

I think to make the SCW scenarios interesting with the player controlling the Nationalist infantry, you'd have to tone them down a lot- the colonial infantry is so insane compared to their opponents that you'd probably have to downgrade them a lot.

Not many people noticed this, good on you for paying attention to the details. ;)

That said, I don't think it's too problematic. As the Merida debriefing explains, this qualitative advantage was 100% historical. Professional Army of Africa vs whatever the Republicans could scrape together on the spot.

Which is why France and company advanced from the southern tip of Spain to Madrid in like 3 months... and then spent 3 whole years fighting and sieging Madrid itself.

Because now more regular units start to be fielded, and of course International Brigades and Soviet equipment starts to arrive in quantity as well.