Game difficulty issues

[Ferg]

so i typically play at the colonel difficulty without touching any of the other settings and i find that the game gets exponentially more difficult in the later missions. particularly when the stronger tanks come out. i cant seem to keep from losisng alot of pieceing during each battle, and im getting a little frustrated when i lose powerful pieces to seemingly weaker enemy pieces. so i guess my question is am i the only one who thinks it gets a little rediculous at times or maybe am i playing with bad tactics/troop mix etc... ?

thanks for any input, i do love this game so dont think im hating on it at all. i like to play this game alot with my father

[Woody]

It does get rather tough towards the end of the war. The Russian armor and the US/British air are hard to take out.

You will start losing core units during the later stages of the game.

I started deploying more AA when fighting in the west and AT when fighting in the east.

When fighting Russians use your superior air force to take control of the air. Then use bombers against their armor. This should soften them up enough so your losses will not be as high.

Fighting the British and Americans use your superior armor and AA to defend your armor forces. Once your AA weakens their fighters send in yours to try and finish them off.

The above is a very condensed version of the tactics I use.

[Patrick]

I recommend for new to players using the classic game rules 1.14 instead the new default rules of patch 1.20.
The new rules of patch 1.20 was introduced to balance out the sometimes extreme jump ahead of good players, but I think these new rules are to strict for new players still learning the game.

An other thing I recommend to study in detail are the combat results (Hotkey L). Learn to understand why units get kills or receive losses. Eventually you must develop a near lossless strategy, but this is only possible with deep knowledge of combat mechanics and game experience. Then you can plan ahead your whole turn like a chess game, because you already know in advance what your combat results will be. Only experience will tell you the importance of 8 points of ground defense for hard units.

As a checklist I would say learn about in that order,
Initiative,
Suppression,
Terrain values and effects,
Soft Target,
Hard Targets,
Attack values,
Defense values,
Close Defense,
Movement speed,
of your and enemy infantry, main armor units, arty and aircraft.

[Ferg]

thanks for the tips, im a look into that

[danconnors]

Almost, or more, important than powerful units is the experience of those units. A unit of PZ4D tanks with over 400 experience can take out a brand new unit of T-34's without much trouble. Something that's always puzzled me with the game is why you can't get rid of an obsolete unit (say some PZ 2 tanks), get new and better tanks and retain the crews from the older tanks.

[Patrick]

Originally posted by danconnors:

Something that's always puzzled me with the game is why you can't get rid of an obsolete unit (say some PZ 2 tanks), get new and better tanks and retain the crews from the older tanks.

You actually can do this.
During deployment click on the upgrade button at the UI sidebar on the right side of the screen, or press U on your keyboard. You can even upgrade units during a mission. Move the unit in question to a city hex over that you had control for at least the last two turns. Aircraft can be upgraded to at friendly airfields.
This is featured on page 12-13 of the manual. You can find the manual in the Panzer Corps folder ..\Steam\steamapps\common\Panzer Corps\Manual

[Ferg]

Originally posted by »Dragoon«:

Originally posted by danconnors:

Something that's always puzzled me with the game is why you can't get rid of an obsolete unit (say some PZ 2 tanks), get new and better tanks and retain the crews from the older tanks.

You actually can do this.
During deployment click on the upgrade button at the UI sidebar on the right side of the screen, or press U on your keyboard. You can even upgrade units during a mission. Move the unit in question to a city hex over that you had control for at least the last two turns. Aircraft can be upgraded to at friendly airfields.
This is featured on page 12-13 of the manual. You can find the manual in the Panzer Corps folder ..\Steam\steamapps\common\Panzer Corps\Manual

NICE! i was wondering if there was a manual...i couldnt find the manual link like they have for some games in steam, thanks

[Delta 66]

I think playing at Colonel level is just fine if you are new to the game.
Then when you are more familiar with the game mechanics, playing on Field Marshall is also a good way to improve your play. Also playing in chess mode for a while is a good way to understand what modifiers matter in combat without the wild swing of the RNG.

There is actually a manual, when staring the game mauncher app, you have a button to access the manual, the pdf file is in the game drawer.

You can also check the beginners guide i write here on steam ;)

[Ferg]

Originally posted by Delta 66:

I think playing at Colonel level is just fine if you are new to the game.
Then when you are more familiar with the game mechanics, playing on Field Marshall is also a good way to improve your play. Also playing in chess mode for a while is a good way to understand what modifiers matter in combat without the wild swing of the RNG.

There is actually a manual, when staring the game mauncher app, you have a button to access the manual, the pdf file is in the game drawer.

You can also check the beginners guide i write here on steam ;)

i read your guide yesterday and it helped me understand some things better and didnt even know about. BTW it was a great guide, thanks for making it. im def gonna check out that manual to understand the modifiers and what not a little better

[danconnors]

@Dragoon: I'm aware of this. But you take a big prestige hit every time you do it. The PZ2 tanks bring no turn in value, and the new tanks cost as much prestige as they would if you just bought them new. What I mean is you turn in the old tanks for, say 200 prestige. You then buy the new tanks for 300, but you only actually pay the 100 prestige difference.

The PZ2 chassis can be converted to antitank units or light, mobile artillery units. So, they are not wasted.

[Delta 66]

If you disband old tanks to get extra pp to purchase new one, the big issue is that you loose their xp. Overall this is fine for me as it lead to interesting campaign choices, especially in the long Grand Campaign. It's up to you to upgrade you units regularly as new improved hardwares become available, or to bypass completly some units to wait for even better models to save pp.
I think this is the heart of your core development strategy, and what make the campaign game interesting, and replayable.


For exemple I can finish the GC39 in FM only with the given tanks, and wait until GC 40 to purchase the PzIV or PzIII, sometime I play a Pz IV only core as it is a tank that you can cheaply upgrade in famil until the Panther or Tiger later became available.
For sure upgrading all your tanks to the Pz 38(t) is tempting but they are very short lived. Actually many Pz Division still had Pz II and I when invading France 40.

Also for GC39, you can do it only with 75mm artillery, yet upgrading to 105mm help gets heroes faster.

Playing on Rommel with only 25% prestige, I also found it was useful not to motorized all your infantry, this is not really needed until the large maps in the Soviet Union. I don't use halftrack either until Barbarossa. leg only infantry cost so few pp they are cheap to replace.

All this with the initial release of the GC before the extra bonus hero units were available. Now with those super strong free heroes it breaks the balance IMHO.

Another common strategy is to have a few units dedicated to absorbing loss in you frontline, keep those units at strength 10 with no Overstrength and replace them with green replacements to save some more prestige.

[skydancer]

I don't get how you understand if a unit is CORE or additional unit from scenario. What i'd too look for?

[Delta 66]

Read the manual!
Core unit have a gold border around their strength value on the map,
Additional units have a silver border.

On the scrollable unit list on the right the border is too gold or silver

[Crazed Possum]

Originally posted by skydancer:

I don't get how you understand if a unit is CORE or additional unit from scenario. What i'd too look for?

You can aslo rename all of your core units too !