Very upset.

[MartyWard]

So, changing the ruleset would give me an edge?

If you go back to the 1.14 rules you get rid of the soft cap. You keep the new heroes and units you find though and you can customize the settings. It should let you get back to pretty much the same as they way you use to play.

Now that sounds like a plan. If I can just fool about with stuff and get it around the way it was before GC42 I will be very happy.

Now it doesn't change the scenarios themselves, it changes how you are effected. You can use the custom setting to help or hurt the AI. Going back to 1.14 will let you over strength for the same cost for each point, give you standard prestige for capturing cities etc. Also you can bounce back and forth it you like, play with the soft cap for one scenario then switch back but you need to do that on the end of scenario screen, click the difficulty tab.

The number of Russians in the scenarios won't change though

[Muddy]

This is hilarious. I tried again on a much lower difficulty and, near first encounter, a 2 star soviet cavalry hit my 3 star T-34 for 7. I mean, I really don't have the words anymore.

[MartyWard]

This is hilarious. I tried again on a much lower difficulty and, near first encounter, a 2 star soviet cavalry hit my 3 star T-34 for 7. I mean, I really don't have the words anymore.

Was it is clear terrain?

[Muddy]

This is hilarious. I tried again on a much lower difficulty and, near first encounter, a 2 star soviet cavalry hit my 3 star T-34 for 7. I mean, I really don't have the words anymore.

Was it is clear terrain?

Yes, and my t-34's returned a 1. I might be in the minority here, but I would say that was balmy. I was playing with the 1.4 ruleset and the AI on 1, dice/chess, Lieutenant

[MartyWard]

This is hilarious. I tried again on a much lower difficulty and, near first encounter, a 2 star soviet cavalry hit my 3 star T-34 for 7. I mean, I really don't have the words anymore.

Was it is clear terrain?

Yes, and my t-34's returned a 1. I might be in the minority here, but I would say that was balmy. I was playing with the 1.4 ruleset and the AI on 1, dice/chess, Lieutenant

It does sound a little flukey but it could happen once in a while. A heads up for you though, if you play GC West watch out for the airborne at Bastogne. I lost a number 12 point infantry and tanks to them. They are juiced!

[ThvN]

Freak results can happen, but that is why the 'dice chess' option was added. If you are going to customize the difficulty, you can select it and see if you like it better that way. I found it a little boring after a while but a lot of people really like it.

About the 'soft cap', I think the idea in principle is sound, there was a nice discussion a while ago with Rudankort (the lead programmer) about the 'snowballing' problem, which happened when average to good players would max out their cores relatively early on and steamroller the AI without taking many losses because they all had max overstrength Tigers. This would start a chain reaction where victories became easier and the player took fewer losses, which means that very expensive cores were cheaper to reinforce between scenarios and kept all their experience and became more and more powerful. This is not a bad thing but it happened quite early in the game and players who tried to have a more realistic or diverse core had to pour in a lot of extra resources, although the units were on average a lot cheaper.

Beyond a certain point, the game actually got a lot easier when playing with a power core, because the AI is hesitant to attack such powerful units and you can inflict crippling damage without taking much in return. And although the better units are more expensive, because they take fewer losses they become the cheapest choice and actually save prestige. To counter this, the idea was that such expensive cores would have to have some penalties, not to eliminate the effect but to make sure it is slowed down and is harder to achieve.

Several ideas were put forward, but the big problem here was that the goal was the system shouldn't affect the difficulty and playing experience to much. Another problem was that any changes have to work with all the existing content, so unit prices and scenario rewards all had to stay the same. For example, I proposed a 'maintenance' system but this would have added a new mechanism to the game for the player to deal with.

So in the end the soft cap system was chosen, along with making overstrength a lot more expensive. Both are inobtrusive and work quietly in the background. But the values that were set for the softcap are not set in stone, and it was expected that they might need some additional tweaking, which I think is also the reason Rudankort added the extra option to switch between the old en new rules, in case people found the new rules not to their liking.

My personal impression is that the softcap should be tweaked a bit, preferably with slightly different values for each GC year (easily moddable, BTW). But any change in values takes a long time to test and you can't please everyone.

[MartyWard]

There are a lot of other ways to reduce the steamroller effect, if it considered a bad thing, than by changing the prestige. The availability dates of unit could have been changed, the core size could have been reduced or they way experiance was gained could have been changed. Limiting the amount of prestige is really a shocker when you don't realize the long term effect.

I'm no expert, I play on Colonel, have had the game for a long time, played it plenty along with a lot of mods and can usually win some sort of victory in every scenario with the 1.14 rules but with the 1.20 rules I can't get to 45. I think for the average player it was a 'bad' default choice. As an optional choice I think it makes sense but any new player to the game will probably get frustrated. This is a fun, entry level type game that is the successor to a very sucessful and popular series that should attract new players easily. Most people are not 'grogs' and will play this game casually and want to get through it not shelve it because they can't finish it. Just my 2 cents.

[Muddy]

Up to this point the joy for me, was the planning, execution and adjustment of my moves. This doesn't seem to work in these new scenarios, try to carefully plan your moves and you will be headed for disaster.

I think I have found a tactic that does work very well, the same tactic I used in Vitebsk.
Leave a small throw-away force around your starting point to keep the AI busy for a turn or two and then take everything else and swamp a enemy controlled corner of the map, wash and repeat. This seems to confuse the hell out of the AI, and any ground lost is easily recoverable. It takes a little bit longer, but seems to work a treat.

The only problem is that this sort of play is not very interesting and is basically, a cheat. I don't think I could handle playing the same tactic for the next 6 GC packs.

[captainjack]

Thanks for the explanation ThvN. I hope I'm not getting too much off Muddy's original topic, although I was thinking that some of the problems Muddy had were related to soft prestige cap, so there's a bit of a connection.

The increasing rates for overstrengthening makes sense, and makes me think about how much I want overstrength, what the unit does and whether it's likely to be lost quickly or not. So for me it works as intended.

In contrast, prestige soft cap works invisibly. I recently switched off prestige soft cap and at the start of DLC 42 - with no soft cap 53 units (4SE) and 46,253 prestige. Previous play through with soft cap active, 56 units (4SE) and 32,896 prestige. I was amazed that soft cap was working as early as DLC41 and had no idea I was anywhere near the level it would cut in. I have a reasonably mixed force, though with a bias to best available equipment but I certainly don't have everything at max overstrength, and my play style, settings and playing ability were pretty much the same.

Even if I had known the prestige cap was there and how it works, it is very difficult to work out what to do about it because it is based on an average cost of units at whatever strength they are deployed. This isn't displayed anywhere and (nor are the limits and their effects). This means I can't plan and trade off. So for me, it doesn't work as intended and instead causes me frustration.

A big simplification is in order. My tuppence worth.
Prestige cap should have nothing to do with overstrength. Gratuitous overstrength is already discouraged by increasing cost. Prestige cap could be used for a specific purpose eg to encourage use of mixed forces, or at least make you think before selecting 100% Tiger 2s.
It should be clear how it works and easy to understand. Eg at the start of each DLC, the screen says you can have 2 SE units, experience limit is 225 and your prestige will be reduced if you deploy more than 2 units that cost over 400 prestige. Clear, simple and obvious, and no calculator required. I can deploy my seven tigers, but if I want to accumulate a lot of prestige for upgrading my fighters later on, I might decide to take two tigers and a few AT guns and Flammpanzers. This approach would also make it easy to change the limits with each DLC, and a scenario specific change could easily be introduced. For this scenario, high command has mobilised additional resources so you can field an extra 5 premium units.

For info, I play on General and while reasonably experienced, I'm no military genius. I agree that 46,000 prestige by the end of DLC 41 looks quite a lot, so maybe prestige could be restricted a bit, but the mechanism should be understandable and clear - maybe there could be a link with difficulty level so that General setting gets 75% player prestige or an extra level (Captain or Major?) allows 100% prestige and AI 1, Colonel uses 100% prestige and AI2, General 75% prestige and AI2.

[Muddy]

So that would explain my 13 strength units going up against 15 strength units, yes?

[Naxor]

Is there any GC east 39-45 field marshal video AAR available played under 1.20 rules and prestige soft cap on?

[Tarrak]

Is there any GC east 39-45 field marshal video AAR available played under 1.20 rules and prestige soft cap on?

No but there are Deducter's video AAR's available where he plays his moded version of the GC. In his mod he massively reduced prestige gain and raised the prestige costs so it's probably even harder then normal GC under 1.20 rules and with prestige soft cap. Sadly he stopped his video AAR series in the middle of DLC 44 East and kind of disappeared.

[endur]

One of the things I noticed about the AI was counter-attacks.

The AI pays attention to the odds when deciding whether to attack a unit.

The AI loves to attack artillery and unprotected bombers. The AI also likes to attack infantry that is not well entrenched or protected by artillery.

So I try to protect my vulnerable units. Bring lots of self-propelled artillery to cover infantry advances and fighter escorts for vulnerable bombers.

I also try to make it a goal to not lose more than one unit in a scenario (while using the reform option for that one unit). In the later years, I may often fail this one unit goal, but I try to keep it close.

I also avoid the prestige cap as much as possible by keeping unit costs down (i.e. no over-strength for non-SE units, panthers instead of king tigers for regular tank units, no vehicles for move 3 infantry, etc.). I have noticed that my core may be above the prestige cap at the beginning of a battle, but by the mid-point I'm usually ok with the prestige cap and getting full prestige income.

[ThorHa]

About the 'soft cap', I think the idea in principle is sound, there was a nice discussion a while ago with Rudankort (the lead programmer) about the 'snowballing' problem, which happened when average to good players would max out their cores relatively early on and steamroller the AI without taking many losses because they all had max overstrength Tigers ...

So in the end the soft cap system was chosen, along with making overstrength a lot more expensive. Both are inobtrusive and work quietly in the background. But the values that were set for the softcap are not set in stone, and it was expected that they might need some additional tweaking, which I think is also the reason Rudankort added the extra option to switch between the old en new rules, in case people found the new rules not to their liking.

I am sorry to say - you invented a solution for a non existing problem. As difficulties can be chosen from dlc to dlc, for the "steamroller" players the solution was very obvious - raise difficulty. Either from the start or in between. It might have been necessary to create a combined "Rommle/Manstein" difficulty, but that is all that was necessary.

Professionally and personally I hate "solutions" if there is not a problem. Because the only reliable result is the creation of a real problem.

Regards,
Thorsten

[MartyWard]

I am sorry to say - you invented a solution for a non existing problem. As difficulties can be chosen from dlc to dlc, for the "steamroller" players the solution was very obvious - raise difficulty. Either from the start or in between. It might have been necessary to create a combined "Rommle/Manstein" difficulty, but that is all that was necessary.

Professionally and personally I hate "solutions" if there is not a problem. Because the only reliable result is the creation of a real problem.

Regards,
Thorsten

I agree. There wasn't any real problem. If you wanted to use a 'historical' core nothing ever prevented you from doing just that, just don't buy all the best equipment.

If this had been a new series or the game was advertised as an accurate historical representation for the experienced wargamer or if just it had been in place from the beginning then ok. To change the game so significantly after so many patches doesn't make sense, especially without any clear information as to how the soft cap changes the game.

[dks]

I agree, where was there a problem that a power user could not over come?

now we have a game that is locked to patches that I did not want to pay for.

I don't have a choice if I want to install AC/AK...I'm stuck withh a patch I don't want if I want to play Wehrmact and the DLC content that followed.

I don't want to reconfigure backwards to what I purchased in the beginning of Whermact...by that have to edit outside of the game so I can play the game that best suits me...not the power player.

to me the buyer of PC and and the DLC content was lost to a few.

sorry if that irratates someone...but I'm irratated myself.

I no longer have the option if I go forward with installs of new content to the game I purchased without accepting a power player's choices.

it appears if there is a SC...if I cannot have the options I started with in Wehrmact...then no SC for me as a buyer.

[ThorHa]

... I have noticed that my core may be above the prestige cap at the beginning of a battle, but by the mid-point I'm usually ok with the prestige cap and getting full prestige income.

There is nearly no such thing as game rules that a thinking player can not live with. The real question is - why force a player to concentrate on anything else than the game core? Which are battles in the PC case?

I have no specific personal problem with the soft cap, just started a 44 campaign with 40 k prestige and a mixed core, having lost just 2 core units during 39 to 43 dlc campaigns. BUT the soft cap enforced another style of play, chasing for specific SE units, going for MVs instead of DVs in certain cases etc. Which is not always fun.

Regards,
Thorsten

[ThorHa]

No but there are Deducter's video AAR's available where he plays his moded version of the GC.

Yes, that is what I think - the developers have been deducterized.

Regards,
Thorsten

[ThvN]

I am sorry to say - you invented a solution for a non existing problem. As difficulties can be chosen from dlc to dlc, for the "steamroller" players the solution was very obvious - raise difficulty. Either from the start or in between. It might have been necessary to create a combined "Rommle/Manstein" difficulty, but that is all that was necessary.

Professionally and personally I hate "solutions" if there is not a problem. Because the only reliable result is the creation of a real problem.

Regards,
Thorsten

You don't have to be sorry, not everyone sees things the same way, that would be boring. I got the impression that Rudankort thought it was a serious issue. And if he sees a problem (and the logic behind is, well, logical) and wants it fixed than I'll try to add to the discussion, but it is his call in the end, I'm just a mod after all. Rudankort put forward some very firm limitations: the existing scenarios, units & AI could not be changed. This also limited the options to fix this issue, of course. But this fix does in fact raise the difficulty, similar to but better than the 'Player Prestige' setting, I think. But I also think it needs tweaking.

The problem as I understand it was that the difficulty was actually decreasing past a certain point; if a good player managed to assemble a power core a tipping point would be reached and the game would get a lot easier, while an average player (like me) would have a much harder time even at lower difficulty settings. You can read the thread here: viewtopic.php?f=121&t=41657 Just read his posts to get an idea of the problem he wanted to solve. The idea was to move that tipping point further along, to keep the difficulty more evenly distributed.

I agree with the saying: 'if something isn't broken than it doesn't need fixing'. Although my work requires that I detect and anticipate potential problems that clients might encounter, and if a client has a certain focus I'll have to look into it, regardless of my personal opinion... BTW, Rudankort often reacts to suggestions by people on the forum with: "What problem will this solve?" So he does not come across as someone who likes to create problems.

Maybe it is a good idea to start a thread about the softcap to give Rudankort feedback about the softcap as soon as the focus is back again on Soviet Corps (right now all time seems to go to the upcoming WH40K Armageddon game). He is quite keen on (constructive) feedback, and like I said, it isn't all set in stone.

[boredatwork]

Double post