Fundimental Balance Change to Capture.

[Horseman]

I am ootl here. What exactly is Power4? The trait that doubles the punishment for encirclement?

It's what Edmon called the 4 traits that make encirclements deadly.

Deadly grasp.
Master of blitzkrieg.
Flexible command and
Perimeter control? (The one the allows you to negate enemy zoc)

I think the last one is trophies of war, that doubles the prestige rewards for captures. The problem with it is that it gives you very high amounts of prestige compared to what you get for anything else in the game. One capture often equals several turns of prestige, especially with trophies of war and special heroes.

I also feel there is a problem here, it feels unbalanced to be able to gain near infinite amounts of prestige with these traits. And then the equipment you capture is near useless as it is generally worse than your own equipment, comes a scenario later and has reinforcement restrictions. I would say that the free prestige should be reduced a bit overall and the equipment should be made a bit more useful.

Making the captured units not cost any core slots would be interesting, but might also unbalance the game by ending up with many more units than intended. Perhaps a middle ground would be to do the following:

1. Reduce the prestige and core slot cost of captured equipment by 50%.
2. Reduce the bonus prestige of captures by 50%

That way the free prestige doesn't get so out of hand and there is actually an incentive of using the captured equipment.

No. Trophies makes it so you make tons of prestige.

The 4 I listed make encirclements easy and uber

[NotOneStepBack]

The problem with the Power4 isn't the prestige you pick up. It's that it totally breaks the tactics and strategy of the game.

You don't have to think about terrain, weather, turns remaining, supply, really....anything. Just split every unit you can, surround, capture, repeat. It's not fun. The game is supposed to be challenging & fun. It negates any advantage the AI brings to you.

I was all in favor on capturing and gaining prestige until I realized this synergy is game breaking. I was doing it in games where I didn't have these traits combined and it was well balanced. But when you have all these traits combined you can just split 1 unit and easily encircle another unless you are in total mountain terrain.

Just split and capture, over and over and over again. The AI cannot cope with this.

You might say, "oh just don't pick those traits". Sure, you can not pick those traits. But that also means that this combo somehow wasn't picked up in playtesting, and I should really be able to fully min/max as I choose.

Eliminating prestige from capturing is a bit of a problem too because I don't see how you'd get the ahistorical path on higher difficulties without capturing. It's why I started using this strategy in the first place...just to pay for the ahistorical path. So really, both of these game mechanics need changed, imo.

The issue is really perimeter control. You shouldn't be able to negate enemy ZOC without the hero. When every unit can do it, it's ridiculous.

[Wushuki]

The problem with the Power4 isn't the prestige you pick up. It's that it totally breaks the tactics and strategy of the game.

...

The issue is really perimeter control. You shouldn't be able to negate enemy ZOC without the hero. When every unit can do it, it's ridiculous.

I see your point and it makes a lot of sense.

[Edmon]

Not one step back has highlighted one of the most insane aspects of the power4.

Something I also showed in my video, which is that you can split units 1 for 1 and win without any engagement whatsoever.

You have 10 tanks, he has 10 tanks. You spilt your tanks into two sets of 5 and "surround" him with these two half units. Now at the start of his turn he takes 4 suppression. There is literally no chance of escape, since he's rocking a 6/10 unit against two 5/5 ones. Next turn, he's 8/10 disabled minimum and effectively dead.

If you work in a few single slot strat bombers and keep your units on the cheaper side, you can have a unit crippled by about 7 or 8 literally on the first turn it gets.

It's not even like you need a numbers advantage to make it work, or some bit of terrain with which to surround them. You can just run at them, split & pin and they are done. Often with no response possible.

[NotOneStepBack]

I would suggest that perimeter control be changed so that once encircled, the enemy has to break the pocket externally, NOT negate enemy ZOC as it does now. I would also suggest that master of blitzkrieg give +X more initiative to tanks rather than cross minor rivers. Bridging units are needed to cross rivers imo.

Deadly grasp can remain as normal grasp 2x suppression a turn, but also impact fuel and ammo per turn. I don't think it does currently, which is kind of odd too.

[zekius]

The 4 I listed make encirclements easy and uber

I don't know about easy and uber. You do take marginally less losses, but the turn management clock is still there. Since there is no AOE effects, you still have to execute your captives. And give those T34 and KV2s gentle pokes. To get the most value out of the pockets you still have to take losses, replace, and take further losses. Accumulated across terms you are taking only marginally less loses, but you are doing it in a more manged way, rather than having the AI knock you down by 6 in one shot, you may be taking losses in 1s and 2s spread over a few turns.

Also, the power 4 doesn't stand on their own, taking them separately, and you are back to fielding a slightly awkward, numerically inferior force that could end its run because of couple of rain days again.

Just split and capture, over and over and over again. The AI cannot cope with this.

I also suspect the power of the P4 lies in AI's limits, and not the players. It is obvious with how certain units never leave their hexes, tank forces that doesn't move until you fall into their spotting range, the AI is really set to stubbornly hold on to the objectives. This means the empty spaces on the maps are undervalued by the AI in the "game economy" - they become an alternate resource that is invisible to the AI. The hex 1 away from a group of entrenched enemy by a victory hex has zero value to the AI, but tremendous value to you. The hexes next to the sea in Belgium is zero value to the AI, but gold to you because they are 3 hexes away from the 2-spotting defenders. The AI is under valuing and thus under-consuming empty hexes. That tells you other combinations that let the player eat up more space and make a surround will still generate value.
And that means the way to convert the invisible alternate resource of space back into combat power is what the AI can't cope with. It's baked into the game, but also you don't have to pick power 4.

I don't see how you'd get the ahistorical path on higher difficulties without capturing.

Still, P4 isn't truly outrageous, and capture isn't outrageous, because the money you have are not really a "working capital", the slot system prevents you from doing that. The spending power is gated, best you can be is Trust Fund General, and you need it to unlock the ahistorical battles. But it does allow you to play with all of the toys: you get to play with the Karl Gerat, you get to play with the Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, you get to be the general that shows up in a stretched 8Rad with salopes and cykas hanging off your arms, making it rain prestige. I would rather the function persists and the knowledge out there, so even first time players and people intend to play the game only once or twice can get to play with all the units with no compromises. I shouldn't get to insist someone else play New Game Plus to get the most out of the game.

[NotOneStepBack]

Still, P4 isn't truly outrageous, and capture isn't outrageous, because the money you have are not really a "working capital", the slot system prevents you from doing that. The spending power is gated, best you can be is Trust Fund General, and you need it to unlock the ahistorical battles. But it does allow you to play with all of the toys: you get to play with the Karl Gerat, you get to play with the Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, you get to be the general that shows up in a stretched 8Rad with salopes and cykas hanging off your arms, making it rain prestige. I would rather the function persists and the knowledge out there, so even first time players and people intend to play the game only once or twice can get to play with all the units with no compromises. I shouldn't get to insist someone else play New Game Plus to get the most out of the game.

It does allow you a lot of replacements in battle which is a key to easy victories. Lots of prestige --> more replacements --> faster victories.

Also considering turn management, the capture strategy actually saves you time. If you try to kill a unit vs. capture, killing a unit means you have to shoot at it over and over until it dies. When you capture, it's out of the game in a maximum of two turns. Since you can capture entire groups at a time, you can easily gain time when you split/capture. There's really little comparison.

[RandomAttack]

Generally, I side with "more options are better". Let us play the way we want. But if you read a lot of the prior comments about "perimeter control" & "power 4", many are REALLY focused on the impact of "splitting units". Sooo, if you just did away with splitting units, lots of the other problems would be solved. You would mostly no longer have the unit density for super-large encirclements, etc. Forget all the other stuff, splitting units is just about the gamiest, most easily abused mechanic in the game-- the AI can just not cope with it. How could it?

[zekius]

Lots of prestige --> more replacements --> faster victories.

Correct, I am playing this way. In fact I take Green Army. My units are not precious to me, they are shells for Heroes to ride in. I spent prestige to make prestige. It's sort of a "moneyball" of wargames, but the least sweaty way for playing with all of the toys. and the best way to see how the units function. All wargames have certain aspects of resource management like this. Since there is no real "Major/Minor Victory" anymore, prestige is the measure of how much you get out of each mission.

I don't want to type in any cheat codes, but I do want to wring every ounce out that I I can. Now that I know how to trade prestige for units, trade units for space, space for encirclement, encirclement for prestige, there is no going back. That "busy trade" is fun by itself. I assume we all had years of playing games under our belt, prioritizing Dust in the Endless series, capping Ion Frigate in Homeworld, building dex/pyro in Dark Souls, frequently cited naval abuse in Civ.... trade life for cards in MtG. I don't see how power 4 is egregious, they do have to be taken all together.

[NotOneStepBack]

Lots of prestige --> more replacements --> faster victories.

Correct, I am playing this way. In fact I take Green Army. My units are not precious to me, they are shells for Heroes to ride in. I spent prestige to make prestige. It's sort of a "moneyball" of wargames, but the least sweaty way for playing with all of the toys. and the best way to see how the units function. All wargames have certain aspects of resource management like this. Since there is no real "Major/Minor Victory" anymore, prestige is the measure of how much you get out of each mission.

I don't want to type in any cheat codes, but I do want to wring every ounce out that I I can. Now that I know how to trade prestige for units, trade units for space, space for encirclement, encirclement for prestige, there is no going back. That "busy trade" is fun by itself. I assume we all had years of playing games under our belt, prioritizing Dust in the Endless series, capping Ion Frigate in Homeworld, building dex/pyro in Dark Souls, frequently cited naval abuse in Civ.... trade life for cards in MtG. I don't see how power 4 is egregious, they do have to be taken all together.

I had this same realization in my let's play. Green army is one of the best negative traits since newer models > experienced units. That's kind of a problem in my opinion, since in 1943 there are a lot of upgrades to be made, so you might as well just cash in and re-buy all your units that do not have medals.

In my opinion, Panzer General / Panzer Corps is all about keeping a "core" of units and watching them "grow up" through the entire campaign. This type of playstyle is the antithesis to the traditional model. But it's much more powerful. Buy lots of units with low core slot price, split/encircle, make a ton of prestige, use it to spend on new units, repeat.

I talk about this here: https://youtu.be/_JhdO_6V3lI

[zekius]

In my opinion, Panzer General / Panzer Corps is all about keeping a "core" of units and watching them "grow up" through the entire campaign. This type of playstyle is the antithesis to the traditional model.

I have played through the Panzer General line of games too. And yes, cultivating a highly elite force is still appealing, but the experience bonus, when detached from overstrength, is just not that great anymore. I find my self using more armored artillery vs. 15cm or open top arty like previous games. Keeping a mobile wedge before I fan out is more important, as is taking that 1st-turn retaliation after encirclement. Plus using more AT units than I used to. Because of how often they fire, experience is being accumulated onto my specialist arty, AA, and AT units, tanks & pionieres just take too much beating to get past 2 stars. You can still accumulate XP, you just have almost no decision on which unit gets to keep their XP. Once again, that goes into the whole moneyball/probabilistic army management thing. Not wrong, just different.

[eddieballgame]

Generally, I side with "more options are better". Let us play the way we want. But if you read a lot of the prior comments about "perimeter control" & "power 4", many are REALLY focused on the impact of "splitting units". Sooo, if you just did away with splitting units, lots of the other problems would be solved. You would mostly no longer have the unit density for super-large encirclements, etc. Forget all the other stuff, splitting units is just about the gamiest, most easily abused mechanic in the game-- the AI can just not cope with it. How could it?

I concur.
I like to think of my armored vehicles as 1 Unit per deployment.

[Horseman]

I still don't think anything needs to change.

Yes it's powerful (op) and yes the AI can't cope with it.

But some people like to play this way. I can choose not to. So why ruin others fun for something that literally does not impact me?

The only issue will be if the devs start balancing scenario difficulty against this strategy and it becomes to hard not to play like this.

[RandomAttack]

Agreed. I wasn't really advocating to change anything (I just don't typically split units). Just seemed the argument wasn't really aimed at the root cause of the issue. Lot's of talk about changing multiple traits, etc., to tone down captures, yet almost every example relied on splitting units to actually pull off...

[Horseman]

Agreed. I wasn't really advocating to change anything (I just don't typically split units). Just seemed the argument wasn't really aimed at the root cause of the issue. Lot's of talk about changing multiple traits, etc., to tone down captures, yet almost every example relied on splitting units to actually pull off...

Indeed. It's a combo. You want lots of units - cheap ones split to encircle and also weaker units to attack so as not to cause too much damage when you force the surrender.

The thing with prestige is that it's only useful to a limit....

Some of those AARs have what 30/40k+ prestige. What use is it? What use is gaining another 30/40k?

Are they really doing better than a player sitting on 5-10k consistantly with a full core?

Who cares if there's a way to earn infinite prestige? Ultimately it was unit slots that stopped me fully upgrading my corps.

[panzeh]

While i'm not sure I want radical changes, it would be pretty nice to see captured units be more viable. Part of it might be the campaign moving pretty quickly in time which rapidly makes stuff obsolete, but still, actually incorporating captures in the army is pretty rare(aside from the occasional T-34 on the east front). I could see having some captures added to the stock without paying out between missions just so you can more easily use them, and possibly giving a slot discount for captured units to encourage their use.

[Rudankort]

Interesting topic. I have not arrived at any definitive conclusions yet, but it does give a lot of food for thought. During the beta, splitting units was pretty much universally considered meh and something you'd never want to do. In part, cheap Flexible Command was an attempt to motivate people to use it more. Perhaps, it's OP as a result. But in general, people finding unlikely and unobvious combinations of synergistic traits is the whole point of commander and hero trait game. I might need to adjust some of the most outrageous combos, but I'll approach it carefully, because it's a game and it needs to be fun in the first place.

Making captured units using less slots is an interesting idea. But it might have significant implications in longer campaigns (Grand Campaign style) where you can have lots of captured equipment and where at the same time progression of equipment is much slower. You could end up fighting with captured army which will be much larger than normal as a result. Even in Wehrmacht campaign people manage to fight mostly with captured units, even if they need the right traits for that. But imagine a campaign which is several times longer.

I'm curious if the "power4" approach is equally powerful in FFA games against several AIs. Scenario design could have a lot to do with these issues.

[Horseman]

Interesting topic. I have not arrived at any definitive conclusions yet, but it does give a lot of food for thought. During the beta, splitting units was pretty much universally considered meh and something you'd never want to do. In part, cheap Flexible Command was an attempt to motivate people to use it more. Perhaps, it's OP as a result. But in general, people finding unlikely and unobvious combinations of synergistic traits is the whole point of commander and hero trait game. I might need to adjust some of the most outrageous combos, but I'll approach it carefully, because it's a game and it needs to be fun in the first place.

Making captured units using less slots is an interesting idea. But it might have significant implications in longer campaigns (Grand Campaign style) where you can have lots of captured equipment and where at the same time progression of equipment is much slower. You could end up fighting with captured army which will be much larger than normal as a result. Even in Wehrmacht campaign people manage to fight mostly with captured units, even if they need the right traits for that. But imagine a campaign which is several times longer.

I'm curious if the "power4" approach is equally powerful in FFA games against several AIs. Scenario design could have a lot to do with these issues.

I'm not convinced the Power4 need any sort of nerf. I don't think the sort of encirclements we see for example in the AAR section would work against a human opponent. Lots of units that are weak to start with then split are easy prey. What would probably be beneficial is tweaking the AI somewhat- maybe make it prioritise breaking units out of encirclements. Also perhaps tweak it so when an inactive units is encircled (or indeed attacked) that it triggers a change of behaviour.

Of course I don't know how hard these things would be to program!

The easiest direct nerf if that is the way you decide to go would be to make flexible command either give X amount of free splits or say they can split for 0.5 slots instead of 1. Again I'm not sure how easy that would be to program.

Another interesting suggestion i saw relative to deadly grasp. Make it so that the additional 2 suppression is applied at the beginning of YOUR turn. This (maybe combined with AI tweaks as above) would give the AI a chance to break out before it got really bad.

[impar]

PC2 is a game, it has to be fun.
If players want to impose house rules, apply cheat codes or use cheese, let them.
Discussions about traits and heroes are pointless, let the ones who want to use them, use them, and the ones that dont want to use it, just dont use it.

That said, two things:
* Dont agree that the prestige awarded to the player has to be the value in prestige of the captured enemy unit.
Capturing twice 5/10 of an enemy tank worth 400 (for a full 10 strenght tank unit) is not the same thing as "purchasing" a 400 prestige worth of a tank.
You have just captured the tanks, not the all logistical support, instruction manuals, mechanical know-how, spare parts, etc to maintain it working in good conditions.
I would propose half the value.
Capturing 5/10 of an enemy tank worth 400 twice, would get 100 on the first capture and another 100 in the second capture, next scenario you want to use that tank? Pay 400. You already got 200 for the captures, now invest 200 more to make it work.

* The suppression given to the encircled units should be balanced by the weight of the "encircler" units.
If an enemy 15-strength infantry unit is being encircled by two 15-strength comparable infantry units, sure it should suffer 2 suppression by turn. However, if the same 15-strength enemy infantry unit is being encircled by one comparable 15-strength infantry unit splitted in two (8 + 7) it should only get 1 suppression.
And, yep, a 15-strenght infantry being encircled by six full strenght comparable infantry units would get six (!) suppression. Using six full strenght units is a major investment that should be rewarded.
The same thing for large encirclements, the weigth of the encircled units should be compared to the weigth of the encirclers units to reach the suppression rate. If the encircler is using half-strenght/depleted units he should not receive the same rewards as someone that uses full-strenght units. Applying always 2 supression is an oversimplification.

[Horseman]

PC2 is a game, it has to be fun.
If players want to impose house rules, apply cheat codes or use cheese, let them.
Discussions about traits and heroes are pointless, let the ones who want to use them, use them, and the ones that dont want to use it, just dont use it.

That said, two things:
* Dont agree that the prestige awarded to the player has to be the value in prestige of the captured enemy unit.
Capturing twice 5/10 of an enemy tank worth 400 (for a full 10 strenght tank unit) is not the same thing as "purchasing" a 400 prestige worth of a tank.
You have just captured the tanks, not the all logistical support, instruction manuals, mechanical know-how, spare parts, etc to maintain it working in good conditions.
I would propose half the value.
Capturing 5/10 of an enemy tank worth 400 twice, would get 100 on the first capture and another 100 in the second capture, next scenario you want to use that tank? Pay 400. You already got 200 for the captures, now invest 200 more to make it work.

* The suppression given to the encircled units should be balanced by the weight of the "encircler" units.
If an enemy 15-strength infantry unit is being encircled by two 15-strength comparable infantry units, sure it should suffer 2 suppression by turn. However, if the same 15-strength enemy infantry unit is being encircled by one comparable 15-strength infantry unit splitted in two (8 + 7) it should only get 1 suppression.
And, yep, a 15-strenght infantry being encircled by six full strenght comparable infantry units would get six (!) suppression. Using six full strenght units is a major investment that should be rewarded.
The same thing for large encirclements, the weigth of the encircled units should be compared to the weigth of the encirclers units to reach the suppression rate. If the encircler is using half-strenght/depleted units he should not receive the same rewards as someone that uses full-strenght units. Applying always 2 supression is an oversimplification.

I actually really like your suggestion that the weight of encircled units would impact the amount of suppression granted. You can prevent them getting fuel and ammo but you cant impact their ability to fight unless you use sufficient force.

I also think your idea on unit captures has merits - Just because I captured 10 T34s doesn't mean I have 10 ready for action unless I expend some resources (including crew......the way it is right now its like you capture the equipment with its crew and they're willing to fight for you!)