Soviet Corps feedback

[Xenos]

I'm on the last Soviet Corps mission, and wanted to share some thoughts. The DLC is good fun, but there are two things that I find subpar:

1) The briefings. The old PZGII soviet briefings were great. The general staff guy went on preaching about Marxism, described the situation in detail and got drunk after every victory. Here, instead, the briefings are incredibly dry and written in a dull english. Apart from Stalin's name, they are wholly generic: you don't feel like a USSR general at all. And when you conquer Berlin? No celebration, no singing the praises of Lenin and Stalin... I've won World War II for communism, I expect a little more than some half-hearted congratulations... maybe it could be considered a minor thing, but atmosphere is important in this kind of "light" wargames.

2) Scenarios are, for me, about at the right difficulty (on FM), but the Germans have too many troops. Most missions I had to smash across countless enemy units with an almost unstoppable core of tanks, marching through the blood of the enemy. I know that the "human wave" thing about the Soviet Union is partly a myth, but here the thing seems reversed: the Whermacht is a endless tide of men and equipment. It's not really hard, but it can become tedious. I would suggest less units with more experience, some tough veteran troops with heroes instead of countless masses of zergs, at least for the first part of the war. Trampling scores of poor infantry is fine in '44-'45, not so much in '42.

Beside this two points, it was a nice ride.

[FOTUS (Felon of the U.S)]

I bought the game already but I like to see other player feedback. A note about your first point, I've felt this way about all the Panzer Corps campaigns. The endings have all been dull and there doesn't really seem to be any sort of climax which is a letdown. However the ride up to that point was so much fun it can be forgiven this time. Hopefully for PzC 2 we get treated to some nice cinematics or at least something more than a block of text that ammounts to a pat on the back.

[Xenos]

Originally posted by Cable Guy:

I bought the game already but I like to see other player feedback. A note about your first point, I've felt this way about all the Panzer Corps campaigns. The endings have all been dull and there doesn't really seem to be any sort of climax which is a letdown. However the ride up to that point was so much fun it can be forgiven this time. Hopefully for PzC 2 we get treated to some nice cinematics or at least something more than a block of text that ammounts to a pat on the back.

I found the other campaigns to be better in that regard. At least you knew what was going on on the strategic level. Here it isn't even clear if it's the Soviet Union attacking the Western Allies in the end or the other way around.

[RobOda]

I agree.

The Soviet briefiings are just as dull, I have no sense of interest because of the way he speaks. There was more flavour in the Allied Corps dialogue, and the Grand Campaign (non-voiced iirc) was also better.

I think moving forward, they'd be better off scrapping the voice-overs and just writing interesting briefings and endings.

I'm only as far as Dnieper at the moment and I've lost count of the amount of times I've been told "You have been given a set of objectives", yeah, no duh... It is like they wrote it expecting the Soviets to be robotic persons devoid of humanity.

Point 2 - I also kinda agree with, mind you I have a HUGE core as the Soviets requiring constant rotation, something I don't do in general. The amount of forces I'm encountering is impressive at times, I never quite feel like I'm outnumbering my opponents. Early on, due to the lack of quality Soviet units the game was a more tense affair, but as I gain the upper hand, particularly with tanks, it becomes a slog fest trap that the later GC fell into.

[Cmdr.]

I'd like them to brief you about more important things relating to new equipment, give some tips on how you can save units. I found myself losing all my tank army in stalingrad, tried to play uranus last night and got stopped. I can't win that mission now because I lost all my armour in stalingrad. Such a pain...How do you complete Uranus? They have sooo many men. Surely it should be more historically accurate...where are the romanian and italien armies that are weak? All I see are reinforced heavy wehrmahcht devisions blocking me at the second cities. It's a pain.

[Xenos]

Originally posted by Cmdr. Wulf:

I'd like them to brief you about more important things relating to new equipment, give some tips on how you can save units. I found myself losing all my tank army in stalingrad, tried to play uranus last night and got stopped. I can't win that mission now because I lost all my armour in stalingrad. Such a pain...How do you complete Uranus? They have sooo many men. Surely it should be more historically accurate...where are the romanian and italien armies that are weak? All I see are reinforced heavy wehrmahcht devisions blocking me at the second cities. It's a pain.

I would advise not to deploy your tanks at Stalingrad at all. It isn't easy to mantain a solid core of infantry because armor+artillery is so overpowered in most maps, but you kinda have to for those two or three urban battles. Alternatively, go all-out assault with fresh recruited infantry, shrugging off heavy casualties.

[Klydon]

Actually, deploying armor in the early part of the Stalingrad map is not a bad move. You have some open area to play in and your armor is going to be better in dealing with almost anything the Germans bring in than your infantry is going to be. This also allows you to keep your infantry somewhat fresh.

As the map shrinks and you start running out of space to keep your armor out of rough terrain/city hexes, then let it redeploy off the map and bring in fresh infantry so that by the end, you have almost all infantry/artillery.

I basically bought extra infantry units (no vehicles) just for this map.

[RobOda]

Originally posted by Cmdr. Wulf:

I'd like them to brief you about more important things relating to new equipment, give some tips on how you can save units. I found myself losing all my tank army in stalingrad, tried to play uranus last night and got stopped. I can't win that mission now because I lost all my armour in stalingrad. Such a pain...How do you complete Uranus? They have sooo many men. Surely it should be more historically accurate...where are the romanian and italien armies that are weak? All I see are reinforced heavy wehrmahcht devisions blocking me at the second cities. It's a pain.

I think you need to go do the tutorial again if you're putting tanks in a city scenario. Stalingrad should be 95% infantry and artillery. It is pratically made for that.

[charles_d_berger]

No, tanks are very useful in Stalingrad. In the first half of the battle they are great for the open spaces in between the urban hexes, they anchor your lines and slaughter German forces with ease. Adn they can advance forward to wreck German artillery, without much fear of getting counterattacked - unlike infantry.

And don't forget - the KVs have an OK urban assault rating, and the lovely OT-34 tanks are just made for urban assault, with flamethrowers and a fantastic 6 close assault rating. Swap your T-34s for the flame version for this scenario, then back to regular tanks thereafter.

A KV tank backed up with artillery is perfectly fine in an urban hex.