I come to conclusion Army General is broken

[SaS TrooP]

I come to this after long long hours in this game. Note I am not a phaghot rabbing AI and I only play AG as versus PvP with my friend. We are both good and experienced in this game overally.

Generally we played every campaign from both sides. It is incredible to say, but only Bobruisk could be won by attacker, and it was fairly cose in Finland. All other campaigns are unwinable as attacking nation, whoever it might me. It is mostly due to:
- First and foremost: way too little time for every-single-campaign. It might work against some retarded AI (though I played them against the AI and each one is super easy to win in all variants, particularly as defender)
And I mean it. there are campaigns where you can score one total/major victory after the other, and it is still not viabily possible to break through with at least slightly reasonable enemy;
I mean... did someone like test it prior? Take Iassi for example. If you count only road squares from Iassi towards Barlad, it geographically takes you 12 turns (!) to reach Barlad. 12 turns of continious driving with trucks WITH NO enemy opposition, no traffic jams and so on.
- Battalions are ahistorical as ♥♥♥♥. Romanains are my favourite. Romania in August 1944 was absolutely broken, it would require an essay. Here they have extreme manpower in the battalion, as well as numbers of heavy weapons exceeding the German battalion several times. German battalions are absolutely lacking MGs - the main damn German workhorse. Soviets have extreme amounts of 45mm AT guns. Historically they had 2 in battalion and 6 in regiment (thus regiment had 12 total), here they have 24 - which renders any mechanized force or scout cars unusable;
- Broken AA mechanics. First of all, AA defends even without AA weapons. I ♥♥♥♥♥ you not, if you do not believe me try assaulting a single AA unit with all your aircraft up until it will exhaust its AA weapons. You will stop scoring any kills and single remaining 20mm gun will force your air wing to flee. You will never be able to kill it;
- Campaigs are won by remaining in AA cover. This is OK, though since you cannot plot paths of aircraft... you win by deploying AA weapons on the flight paths. Iassi is a good example again. Starting from turn 2, Axis player can deploy his AA by moving it slightly forward. It will protect about 99% of all Axis units on the map. From this point onward you do not have to buy and use aircraft, there is just no point;
- Most Soviet artillery cannot do bombardments. Not sure why: it won them the Bagration, as well as Iassi-Kischinev offensive;
- In many campaigns attacker does not begin deployed for attack. This allows the opponent to channel his attacks as he approaches with artillery as well as wastes precious time. Just... why?
- Whoever is without AA cover is in deep ♥♥♥♥. There is the other problem: often attackers have no aerial supremacy. Who the ♥♥♥♥ attacks without such supremacy in the first place? Often it is quite ridiculous (particualrly Turda here);
- Generally the best tactics is to choose the most narrow point, create ~3 layers and channel the attacker further by artillery bombardments. It might sound logical, but is often completely away from actual operational situation whatsoever;
- Victory conditions are broken. Literally. Eg. the points table says one thing while the final condition says something else. Eg. I had minor victory on Baranovitchi by literally destroying the German army and game said so, though I did not take the town. Result: German victory. My opponent did see his loss on the points too;


Random thoughts on various campaigns:
- Orsha: this one is actually thought about, I have no serious commentary on this, except (as in all campaigns) there are no effects of historical preparatory bombardments xD
- Berezina: winable for defender pretty much by the "retreat one square" rule, campaign effectively ends if 4th Panzer arrives by the bridge. It is however mental challenge for defender to sustain one defeat after the other;
- Bobruisk: this one is generally OK, though we played it least;
- Baranovichi: ORBAT here is competely broken, Soviets have less troops of all sorts. Historically 28th Jager were remnants at this point and Panzer Division arrived all over the front;
- Vistula: this one is quite OK and thought roughly as it should be, ORBATs also seem to be quite fine;
- Tali-Ihantala: why the ♥♥♥♥ Andrushas everywhere. Super easy to channel all assaults with somehow superior Finnish artillery. In worst case the one square rule;
- Iassi: unwinable for attacker unless AI or mentally challenged opponent. Also this one can be won without fighting at all, as Romanians have sufficient force to continue blocking squares;
- Kishinev: probably the most boring one, this one we never completed mostly because we were dead inside;
- Burning Baltics: reasonable Soviet player holds with ease;
- Turda: XDDDDDD I have actually wrote a historical paper on this very battle as well as I run entire operational campaign I designed for a different game. Literally nothing is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ correct there, it would require an essay. But as usual, unwinnable for attacker. Also I take it as a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insult, because we savoured this campaign, like sort of creme de la creme thingy. What I got is an abomination;

Honestly what would have to be improved is:
- Units should have at least 4 movement points so they can slightly modify deployments prior to actual attacks, as well as you could launch attacks without being fully in contact with the enemy;
- Fire all Turbo-Romanians, stop cooperating with Romanian Ministry of Propaganda;
- Bombardment action should decrese action points, not zero them, so that unit is delayed into combat, not fully blocked;
- Fix the damn German formations, what even is that;
- Mechanics to allow aircraft to fly on paths instead of the closest line;
- Fix victory conditions, make them more versatile, so that bashing onto one obvious position when it is encircled does not define the win or loose;

Your thoughts?

[Novak]

Don't forget the unkillable recon plane units.

[denis08131]

How do you play 1v1? Do you Manage all 5 regiments, or give some to AI control?

[SaS TrooP]

Originally posted by Novak:

Don't forget the unkillable recon plane units.

Ah well, this is generally that something is broken with airwings that are badly damaged. I believe it is the part of this broken mechanics.

[SaS TrooP]

Originally posted by denis08131:

How do you play 1v1? Do you Manage all 5 regiments, or give some to AI control?

We manage all 5 regiments, usually it is 1-2 leading units and others supporting while not really deploying. This is also quite normal from realistic point of view. Why the question tho?

[SKL-1]

It is clear that the campaigns were designed/tested against the AI only, if you could recall one of the first campaigns could be totally cheesed by the Germans as you could sneak a units and kill all their aircrafts on turn 2 if I recall correctly, beside some other stuff.

Some of the points there are fixed/done in the "sequel" yet I still question the change from 3 to 5 regiments turning it into a spam game. It was clear that such decision wasn't thoroughly made both on strategic and tactical maps, also the fact after Vistula the campaigns took a hit as you said.

Though I doubt they'll spend a single dime on improving any of the released campaigns I wish for some fixes/improvements, better AA cover/interception mechanic not just in terms of success or failure but also losses, but most of all better map pool options an variety.

[Novak]

The campaign can be fun and interesting but the main issue that kind of ruins the fun and dynamics is that airplanes decide everything, if you attack your opponent with planes and he does not have AA cover there is usually nothing that the defender can do and its almost impossible to defend if you are defending without AA protection and its just a plane spam fest and you get tired and annoyed by the loud sound when aircraft enter the map and it just gets tiresome.

[Herr Robert]

I agree that the balance of AG leaves much to be desired. As you said, on many campaigns it's practically impossible to win against human opposition as the attacker because it simply takes too long to move from point A to point B. But overall it's a fun experience and I think that when you play this kind of gamemode you can't really expect perfect balance. There are simply not enough players who can provide feedback for AG and that makes balancing difficult (I believe we are only 2-3 players in ST who have played AG in PvP mode).

Personally I think the air and AA mechanics should be reworked. It should not be possible to use AA BGs to block air units from being used altogether, and the AA BGs should only be able to repel air units trying to join battles in their zone. However, the air BGs should be smaller than they currently are to make them less oppressive when they can be used.

[Shirome Artiste]

I've extensively played all AG campaigns and they indeed aren't well suited for actual player v player setup. If only because the mechanics are unfortunately too easy to "exploit" by a human - whereas the AI only incidentally and by sheer accident stumbles upon those same exploits.

To be fair - the turn time limit is more than enough to either wrap up as the attacking side against the AI or, if defending, to cripple the attacking AI so harshly that it will essentially skip turn endlessly because its calculations say no autoresolve victory is possible.

If they intend to upgrade upon AG in the future or in their next installments I would love to see the following:

1: More integrated AA
Right now, if you defend with air with the opponent unable to bring meaningful AA/air you basically shut them out with a total defeat. Against the AI you're also going to be hard-pressed to manage to lose more than a token unit card.

2: AA zone-of-denial only affecting planes targeting into that zone (Or if NO 'safe' passage can be found, anything targeting the 'dangerous side' of the AA zone) - but punishing flying into an AA zone more harshly. planes fly in a straight line, which is of course stupid as can be. Although "caught" planes tend to somehow trade 1-1 against AA guns even if the caught air regiment has no GA capabilities. Which is silly as can be.

Why harsher punishments for flying into AA zones? Because right now it's stupid that you can either have an AA zone trading flak-plane on near 1-1ratio, or you take take a battle and bring the AA along (doubly so when defending!) and essentially wipe out an entire air group each battle. It even pays off to just defend further back and deliberately lose some flags, just for the AI to spawn in more planes to blow up.

3: More meaningful main/side objectives - and coupling turn limit increases/decreases on taking/losing midpoint objectives. If you need to cap a solitary flag on the other side of the map it becomes frustratingly easy to stall out the clock. Some AG campaigns inch toward this idea by giving you benefits such as free regiments if you hold/take certain secondary objectives - but this needs to be expanded upon heavily. Not just an arbitrary "reach the other side of the map in X turns".

4: more counterplay to bombarding. Right now you can e.g. win the Finland campaign as Finland by just sitting at your startpos and shelling each chokepoint's lead russian unit each turn - which causes the AI to just sit there because it cant reach with sufficient force to try and fight. That's exploitative, sure, but shouldn't be a valid method of winning an entire campaign.

[Herr Robert]

Originally posted by Shirome Artiste:

4: more counterplay to bombarding. Right now you can e.g. win the Finland campaign as Finland by just sitting at your startpos and shelling each chokepoint's lead russian unit each turn - which causes the AI to just sit there because it cant reach with sufficient force to try and fight. That's exploitative, sure, but shouldn't be a valid method of winning an entire campaign.

To be fair you barely need to do anything to win a campaign as the defender vs the AI. In some of the campaigns you can literally do nothing and simply use autoresolve whenever the AI attacks to save time. I have completed most of the AG campaigns as the defender by just autoresolving my way to victory, because playing defensive battles vs the AI is too easy and boring.

[denis08131]

We manage all 5 regiments, usually it is 1-2 leading units and others supporting while not really deploying. This is also quite normal from realistic point of view. Why the question tho? [/quote]
looking for a pvp AG. and I wanted to know what control you ended up with. Because you have played many campaigns.

[Herr Robert]

Originally posted by denis08131:

looking for a pvp AG. and I wanted to know what control you ended up with. Because you have played many campaigns.

I can play for 1-2 days per week if you are interested. But what's your 1v1 win rate like?`I'm a pretty good player with 80% WR and it might not be fun for you if the skill gap is too great.

[denis08131]

I don’t have many 1v1 games. But we can try, I think something like the USSR in the Burning Baltic can give me a boost.

I can play for 1-2 days per week if you are interested. But what's your 1v1 win rate like?`I'm a pretty good player with 80% WR and it might not be fun for you if the skill gap is too great. [/quote]

[Timmer120]

I'm not the biggest expert on PvP AG but I think you are going too far when you say that the Attacker can't win on any AG except Bobruisk, my thoughts:

Orsha: top flank is easy to cave in considering that the German Infantry defending the top flank are just...... worse than normal Strelki since Gren(DP) have the same general loadout but with less men which will force Companies(? honestly I don't really know since the early AGs are derpy and some of those "Battalions" have VERY few men)/Battalions of 78th to defend up north or risk encirclement, add on top of that you eventually get a T-34/85 '44 battalion and a IS-2 Battalion as long as you dodge the 3 or so battalions of PaK-43/Nashorn units it isn't that hard to force either the objective or Orsha itself

Barazina: The answer for this one is straightforward and the historical path. Historically 5th Panzer held back many times their number at the southern river crossing at the map and was forced to withdraw after the northern river crossing on the map was overrun, for this purpose you get recce battalions which IIRC are able to force engagements(even if you have to have the Recce Battalion live through A Phase so you can get your actual forces on the board) and enough forces to utterly smash the initial forces the Germans can muster, so the goal would be preventing KG Kona from getting on the board and getting past the river crossing before reinforcements from 5th Panzer can chock up the Northern River Crossing. IIRC Victory requires just one of the two major victory points on this map, but tbh if you breach the river crossings then a German Collapse is imminent because even with 5th Pz you can just bring too much force for them to defend everywhere

Bobruisk: of course the only map you see as viable as Soviets is the map where the Soviets get a utterly disgusting armor advantage XD

Baranovichi: I find this kinda fair, especially considering that Axis can easily cement the northern flank by applying a early-showing 52nd Sicherungs plus initial Tiger Battalion and just have the rest be Jagers and Panzers smashing their face against Soviet Armored Regiments

Vistula: This is the start of the "Both Sides start with control of several Major Objectives" design for AGs it seems, Honestly combine with Baranovichi its another one where against a competent opponent you can't shove the Germans back by significantly much since it has a LOT of pain considering that there's Panthers Galore and you don't get much of any Superheavies to punch through them. Honestly results in kinda a historical outcome of it being miserable for Soviets but its booring for Germans since the Soviet AI becomes passive and there's just nothing to utilize to punch through a well-made defensive line considering how many Panzer Battalions that the Germans get that are stock full of Jagdpanzer IVs or Panthers

Fate O' Finland: Each of your 3 initial Armored Groups get some form of heavies that will dunk on the combined Pansaridivisioona, much less forcing progress in the Western part of the map to get to the Finnish Major Objective that's very close to the starting front lines. I don't know if this got easier or harder for either side, on the one hand Kiivari got a major buff and the Swedes got SCARY compared to prior where they had sad swedish BARs of depression(they were worse than all the other BARs in the game). However on the other hand you can actually apply radio to the M30s every Battalion seems to get

Black Sunday AGs: Going to say fair on those, even then its just depression because of how big they are . I mean its fair considering the Devs were ambitious and tried to model an offensive that had about 2/3ds of the men as Barbarossa dedicated to it. Still is utter cancer though and a slog even on Single Player

Burning Baltics: Yea gotta agree with you here, 52nd Sicherungs going for Round 2 against the Soviets and Panzerverband Strachwitz are already having to do some REALLY fancy manuvers and hard fighting to win against AI, against someone who isn't utterly dumb makes Tukums out of reach without significant aid from AG Nord, meanwhile to the south you have enough men combined with some Superheavy Support to delay the Panzer Armies to get your PLENTIFUL armored reinforcments there

Turda: Whose supposed to be attacking on this one? Honestly this one is fairly heavily Soviet-Biased IMO considering that SOV rocks up with WAY more armor than the Germans do, and the Romanians provide plenty of meat for the grinder, not to mention I'd take Recruti over Tatalek Lovesz any day of the week. Though this one is far more.... Special and not in the good way considering that against AI Allies can just Autores the first battle AI Axis will do and neuter 2nd Pancelos in exchange for 1 or 2 of the Militia/Reservist Battalions you get plenty of in this campaign. As for the Axis, for the most part the Resitas that you get a surprising amount of in this campaign might as well be PaK 43s to terrify the poor singular decent Tank Battalion

Side-Notes:
Yea, the Andrushas from Fate O' Finland to Black Sunday are FAR too common, it shouldn't be the case where Andrushas are more common than Katyushas XD

I wouldn't say that the Romanians are unfairly OP compared to IRL in the AGs, remember that each Romanian Battalion are faced by each Soviet "Battalion" being a Rifle Regiment, Vistula onwards Soviets get a honestly unfair advantage with concentration of force considering that they just get more stuff to bring to bear per "Battalion". Additionally I'd say about 1/3rd to 1/2 of the Battalions in Iasi and Tiraspol have Recruiti instead of Infantresti which is showing that the Romanian Army is on its last legs and considering that MPs only come with Corps HQs are quite a serious downside

I gotta wonder where a bunch of the Soviet Units are, I don't remember seeing a singular Strelki(SVT) and the times I've seen Chernos are VERY few, especially when compared to Erstatz, just something else that makes playing Soviets more boring(a particularly egregious example of this is the 358th Strelki, in AG its just a 1 star veterancy basic infantry division with none of its unique Trench Clearers or ANY of the supposedly large amounts of drafted Chernos in its ranks)

I really wish the Devs would just get an idea or another on how they're going to treat Foot Infantry since for some reason the Devs are still withholding transports from battalions as Blood Feud

[SaS TrooP]

Originally posted by denis08131:

We manage all 5 regiments, usually it is 1-2 leading units and others supporting while not really deploying. This is also quite normal from realistic point of view. Why the question tho?

looking for a pvp AG. and I wanted to know what control you ended up with. Because you have played many campaigns. [/quote]

Always full human control.

[SaS TrooP]

Originally posted by Timmer120:

I'm not the biggest expert on PvP AG but I think you are going too far when you say that the Attacker can't win on any AG except Bobruisk, my thoughts:

Orsha: top flank is easy to cave in considering that the German Infantry defending the top flank are just...... worse than normal Strelki since Gren(DP) have the same general loadout but with less men which will force Companies(? honestly I don't really know since the early AGs are derpy and some of those "Battalions" have VERY few men)/Battalions of 78th to defend up north or risk encirclement, add on top of that you eventually get a T-34/85 '44 battalion and a IS-2 Battalion as long as you dodge the 3 or so battalions of PaK-43/Nashorn units it isn't that hard to force either the objective or Orsha itself

Barazina: The answer for this one is straightforward and the historical path. Historically 5th Panzer held back many times their number at the southern river crossing at the map and was forced to withdraw after the northern river crossing on the map was overrun, for this purpose you get recce battalions which IIRC are able to force engagements(even if you have to have the Recce Battalion live through A Phase so you can get your actual forces on the board) and enough forces to utterly smash the initial forces the Germans can muster, so the goal would be preventing KG Kona from getting on the board and getting past the river crossing before reinforcements from 5th Panzer can chock up the Northern River Crossing. IIRC Victory requires just one of the two major victory points on this map, but tbh if you breach the river crossings then a German Collapse is imminent because even with 5th Pz you can just bring too much force for them to defend everywhere

Bobruisk: of course the only map you see as viable as Soviets is the map where the Soviets get a utterly disgusting armor advantage XD

Baranovichi: I find this kinda fair, especially considering that Axis can easily cement the northern flank by applying a early-showing 52nd Sicherungs plus initial Tiger Battalion and just have the rest be Jagers and Panzers smashing their face against Soviet Armored Regiments

Vistula: This is the start of the "Both Sides start with control of several Major Objectives" design for AGs it seems, Honestly combine with Baranovichi its another one where against a competent opponent you can't shove the Germans back by significantly much since it has a LOT of pain considering that there's Panthers Galore and you don't get much of any Superheavies to punch through them. Honestly results in kinda a historical outcome of it being miserable for Soviets but its booring for Germans since the Soviet AI becomes passive and there's just nothing to utilize to punch through a well-made defensive line considering how many Panzer Battalions that the Germans get that are stock full of Jagdpanzer IVs or Panthers

Fate O' Finland: Each of your 3 initial Armored Groups get some form of heavies that will dunk on the combined Pansaridivisioona, much less forcing progress in the Western part of the map to get to the Finnish Major Objective that's very close to the starting front lines. I don't know if this got easier or harder for either side, on the one hand Kiivari got a major buff and the Swedes got SCARY compared to prior where they had sad swedish BARs of depression(they were worse than all the other BARs in the game). However on the other hand you can actually apply radio to the M30s every Battalion seems to get

Black Sunday AGs: Going to say fair on those, even then its just depression because of how big they are . I mean its fair considering the Devs were ambitious and tried to model an offensive that had about 2/3ds of the men as Barbarossa dedicated to it. Still is utter cancer though and a slog even on Single Player

Burning Baltics: Yea gotta agree with you here, 52nd Sicherungs going for Round 2 against the Soviets and Panzerverband Strachwitz are already having to do some REALLY fancy manuvers and hard fighting to win against AI, against someone who isn't utterly dumb makes Tukums out of reach without significant aid from AG Nord, meanwhile to the south you have enough men combined with some Superheavy Support to delay the Panzer Armies to get your PLENTIFUL armored reinforcments there

Turda: Whose supposed to be attacking on this one? Honestly this one is fairly heavily Soviet-Biased IMO considering that SOV rocks up with WAY more armor than the Germans do, and the Romanians provide plenty of meat for the grinder, not to mention I'd take Recruti over Tatalek Lovesz any day of the week. Though this one is far more.... Special and not in the good way considering that against AI Allies can just Autores the first battle AI Axis will do and neuter 2nd Pancelos in exchange for 1 or 2 of the Militia/Reservist Battalions you get plenty of in this campaign. As for the Axis, for the most part the Resitas that you get a surprising amount of in this campaign might as well be PaK 43s to terrify the poor singular decent Tank Battalion

Side-Notes:
Yea, the Andrushas from Fate O' Finland to Black Sunday are FAR too common, it shouldn't be the case where Andrushas are more common than Katyushas XD

I wouldn't say that the Romanians are unfairly OP compared to IRL in the AGs, remember that each Romanian Battalion are faced by each Soviet "Battalion" being a Rifle Regiment, Vistula onwards Soviets get a honestly unfair advantage with concentration of force considering that they just get more stuff to bring to bear per "Battalion". Additionally I'd say about 1/3rd to 1/2 of the Battalions in Iasi and Tiraspol have Recruiti instead of Infantresti which is showing that the Romanian Army is on its last legs and considering that MPs only come with Corps HQs are quite a serious downside

I gotta wonder where a bunch of the Soviet Units are, I don't remember seeing a singular Strelki(SVT) and the times I've seen Chernos are VERY few, especially when compared to Erstatz, just something else that makes playing Soviets more boring(a particularly egregious example of this is the 358th Strelki, in AG its just a 1 star veterancy basic infantry division with none of its unique Trench Clearers or ANY of the supposedly large amounts of drafted Chernos in its ranks)

I really wish the Devs would just get an idea or another on how they're going to treat Foot Infantry since for some reason the Devs are still withholding transports from battalions as Blood Feud

Most these tricks do not work well against AI opponent or work, but very slowly. Players generally value better units, withdraw them, prepare ambushes and so on.
Romanians are plainforward impossible, essentially Soviet advantage at Iassi was historically massive, while here Romanians can easily hold on their first positions (!). The y are also capable of stalling advances with massive amounts of MGs and Calarasi. When having 3 supporting battalions you can have 24 Calarasi deployed in several big groups and use salvos of 12-15 sniper rifles drastically delaying your opponent. I have no issue with the fact this unit exist - it just makes typical Romanian battalion to be elite. When we played I PREFFERED to attack German units rather than Romanian ones as they are just much much weaker.