AK: Brevity

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VPaulus
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AK: Brevity

Post by VPaulus »

Please post here your comments about this scenario.
billmv44
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by billmv44 »

Playing on General. Starting Prestige 1240, ending 1120. DV on 14/14 (could have been on 13 but I wanted to grab the two airfield hexes for the prestige.

I am really glad I bought the 88 AA/ATG. I'm not sure if I would have been able to effectively deal with the British tanks without it. I'm starting to think that the scenarios may be a turn or two short. Casual players may have trouble getting DVs in only 14 turns.

No issues with game play. No popup messages.
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deducter
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by deducter »

3. Add some more dunes to the desert to break up the monotony. I’d also add more vegetation/greenery near the shores. Scenario 1 had that, and so should this scenario.

I just noticed that exp is apparently capped at 99. I really dislike this, which I find silly. One of the primary advantages of the German player should be having more experienced, higher quality troops than the Allies. An expcap is fine, but it should be about 350 for the early scenarios. The cap was after all 325 in GC40, so why is this cap so much lower now?

MV and DV objectives too similar. If you can get MV, you can surely get DV. MV should probably be to hold just 1 VH.

The British forces seem very formidable, with 12-14 strength units streaming in a very strong attack. Or at least, the attack would be very formidable if the British didn’t just drive up their trucks right next to my units and get them horribly slaughtered. There were a few occasions where the British did use their half-tracks correctly to try to finish off one my weakened units, but this was few and far between. On the whole, the AI is still not capable of using units with motorization.

Historically Brevity was little more than a large-scale raid that didn’t accomplish much. I think this should be reflected by having this scenario be much easier, but the one, Battleaxe, be significantly harder.

DV.
Blathergut
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by Blathergut »

DV on last turn, general level

-very straightforward...the Brit armour is insanely tough...took everything massing on each one to kill it...but no real challenge compared to the previous two...this needs a little something...maybe one of your pop up messages saying some allied dude is trying to evacuate from the far east airfield...try to get him?

...maybe stash some reward in one of the far cities/airfield...

I aggree..the terrain is very bland...it needs something to improve the visual/overall effect

The AI simply drove trucks right up to me. I also noticed units at 99 experience.
Razz1
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by Razz1 »

I won both times on this scenario when I played it.
monkspider
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by monkspider »

Brevity
(forgot to note prestige totals on this one)
No units lost
Marginal victory on turn 14/14

This was a fairly enjoyable scenario. I managed to get all of the victory hexes except Sollum. Once again, it seems that the main enemy is the clock, I would recommend adding at least three turns to this scenario. I highly recommend that we go back to the design philosophy of the Grand Campaign that focuses more on rewarding prudent tactics rather than simply fast tactics. I find that to be a much more relaxing and enjoyable experience that I can lose myself into, rather than having to be on edge and having to constantly go, go, go.

As as has been my preferred trend lately, I have divided my forces into two units for roleplaying purposes, the 8th Panzer division and the 6th Italian Infantry division. Currently, my panzer division consists of a Panzer IV, a Panzer III and a Panzer II Flamm, two grenadiers, a 10.5 artillery, an 88, a recon unit, and a SIG. The Italian division consists of two regular Italian infantry, one Bersaligieri, one Italian artillery, one Italian anti-tank gun. I have a 109, an Italian fighter and tactical bomber and an SE ME-110. I must say, my Flamm Panzer gave a good account of itself in this battle, much better than in the previous one.

My main gripe other than the short clock is that the enemy units seem unfairly experienced. After putting such an artificial handicap on our experience, these AI units are often twelve strength elite units. The Afrika Korps was supposed to be an elite force fighting against the numerically superior British. If anything it is the British units who should generally have the disadvantage in terms of experience.

A good effort though, and mostly comparable in quality to the gold standard of the Grand Campaign.
snakepliskin2010
Corporal - 5 cm Pak 38
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by snakepliskin2010 »

Second time playing mission, in the deploy phase won't allow me to upgrade 3.7cm PAK to Panzaejager B (I have enough prestige)..nothing happens when I push upgrade button.
Correction it says it is a Panzerjager but the picture is the PAK 3.7cm
morge4
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by morge4 »

snakepliskin2010 wrote:Second time playing mission, in the deploy phase won't allow me to upgrade 3.7cm PAK to Panzaejager B (I have enough prestige)..nothing happens when I push upgrade button.
Correction it says it is a Panzerjager but the picture is the PAK 3.7cm
I've noticed that sometimes you need to de-select the transport unit to be allowed to upgrade or even see the unit stats in comparision.
karlto
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by karlto »

I got awarded an SE Ju87R at the start of this scenario, seems that there is a graphics glitch in the unit details, see attachment.

Karl H.
Tarrak
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by Tarrak »

deducter wrote:3. Add some more dunes to the desert to break up the monotony. I’d also add more vegetation/greenery near the shores. Scenario 1 had that, and so should this scenario.

I just noticed that exp is apparently capped at 99. I really dislike this, which I find silly. One of the primary advantages of the German player should be having more experienced, higher quality troops than the Allies. An expcap is fine, but it should be about 350 for the early scenarios. The cap was after all 325 in GC40, so why is this cap so much lower now?

MV and DV objectives too similar. If you can get MV, you can surely get DV. MV should probably be to hold just 1 VH.

The British forces seem very formidable, with 12-14 strength units streaming in a very strong attack. Or at least, the attack would be very formidable if the British didn’t just drive up their trucks right next to my units and get them horribly slaughtered. There were a few occasions where the British did use their half-tracks correctly to try to finish off one my weakened units, but this was few and far between. On the whole, the AI is still not capable of using units with motorization.

Historically Brevity was little more than a large-scale raid that didn’t accomplish much. I think this should be reflected by having this scenario be much easier, but the one, Battleaxe, be significantly harder.

DV.
I just finished this scenario on general difficulty and got DV at 14/14 turn. Only loss, an annoying one tho as it was a SE unit, was a SE Panzer IV which got slaughtered by a Matilda II which brought him down from 10 to 3 and a following attack of a Dingo to finish it off. I quoted Deducter because he said exactly what i think about this scenario. I just want to add: not being quite that tactical genius he is i still had my problems to get a DV even with the AI letting me slaughter a few of it's units in the Lorrys. I just managed it on last turn. A casual player may have problems to get a DV in time here. Either weakening the attacking forces or adding maybe two more turns could be in order. Except of that a quite nice scenario imho.

One more point: i wasn't able to find out what kind of unit is in the Lorrys when they was loaded. There seems to be no info about that, or at least i can't find it. Am i blind, is this intentional or just an oversight?

EDIT: It seems to me that the German airfield in this scenario only refuels units directly above it and not in the adjacent hexes. Is this a bug, an intentional change in the mechanics or am i just making up things?
OmegaMan1
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by OmegaMan1 »

Brevity. DV in 14 turns (colonel).
2 medals, 2 heroes.
New units: Recon (deploy, T5), Bersigliani (T6).
Units lost: Recon, Bersigliani.
End prestige: 714.

A brief scenario that features the first British offensive in the campaign. I was able to survive the inital British assault, and quickly went over to the offensive to take my objectives. This scenario featured an old PzC issue -- namely, the AI placing its units into transport mode and then driving them straight up to my units. While the "suicidal transports" weren't a game-breaker, I do think the AI needs some work in this regard.

I was also a bit confused by the pop-up message in this scenario. It seemed (to me) that it added more objectives, but the wording was very vague and thus I didn't grasp what was happening. Still, I assumed I should continue to go after the VP hexes, and this indeed seemed to win the game. Again, I really like the idea of variable mission goals, but the pop-ups need to be more prominent (made to look like the opening briefing) and come at the beginning of a player's turn, rather than in the middle of it.

In summary, a good scenario, but needs some AI work and better-worded pop-ups.
produit
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by produit »

FM, DV 10/14. Nice map, lot of movement. I am happy that I bought a 2nd 88 to strike against the 4 enemy fighters.
uran21
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by uran21 »

Thanks for the feedback.

As an improvement for this scenario I see prolonged duration of it and remodeled border between decisive-marginal victories and loss.

Regarding experience cap. The idea behind it was to cap experience early on because first stars are gained very quickly and to help stall snowball effect early on. Consider it removed.
deducter
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by deducter »

uran21 wrote:Thanks for the feedback.

As an improvement for this scenario I see prolonged duration of it and remodeled border between decisive-marginal victories and loss.

Regarding experience cap. The idea behind it was to cap experience early on because first stars are gained very quickly and to help stall snowball effect early on. Consider it removed.
Yeah, the snowball effect can be problematic, it'd be rather silly for the player to have a dozen 14-strength Tiger roaming the middle east after Suez Canal. I think one good way to limit the snowball effect is to just to tune prestige levels to be fairly tight, so that the player needs to be careful about not elite reinforcing too much and preserving unit strength. I think the current prestige levels are pretty good. If you let the Germans get some experienced units to start, then they will have to decide between elite reinforcing/overstrength and upgrades.
Longasc
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by Longasc »

3. Brevity
Field Marshal, all options checked
Start: 1286 Prestige
Prestige before turn 1: 1004
Bought/Upgraded: Stuka Ju87R
Losses: -
End Prestige: 1905
Result: 14/14 DV
Comments:
Strong enemy air power. The ground forces could be a little stronger. In fact I am shooting down way more British Fighters than anything else, I suggest making the scenario a little harder and shifting power from air to ground for the British.
This is a general complaint about PzCAK: Please add some dunes or some nice pretty tiles, the desert map looks incredibly dull and lacks any markers/tiles that could be used for orientation. It doesn't look good and is hard to the eyes.
DownriverRick
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by DownriverRick »

dshaw62197 wrote: I was also a bit confused by the pop-up message in this scenario. It seemed (to me) that it added more objectives, but the wording was very vague and thus I didn't grasp what was happening. Still, I assumed I should continue to go after the VP hexes, and this indeed seemed to win the game. Again, I really like the idea of variable mission goals, but the pop-ups need to be more prominent (made to look like the opening briefing) and come at the beginning of a player's turn, rather than in the middle of it.

In summary, a good scenario, but needs some AI work and better-worded pop-ups.
Agree. When I replayed the scenario, I got a popup that stated "Generalleutnant enemy gives up from some of his objectives. For sure they don't want to be caught in the open." Were the British giving up their objectives, as in hexes, or mission objectives, such as cutting their attack short and pulling back? From the second sentence and subsequent turns, I gathered it was the latter, but still vague and confusing.
uran21
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by uran21 »

Agree. When I replayed the scenario, I got a popup that stated "Generalleutnant enemy gives up from some of his objectives. For sure they don't want to be caught in the open." Were the British giving up their objectives, as in hexes, or mission objectives, such as cutting their attack short and pulling back? From the second sentence and subsequent turns, I gathered it was the latter, but still vague and confusing.
What happened is one Axis held town was removed as an objective. After the message map should be centred on it. This caused British to swing from offensive to defensive.
So the correct statement is they are giving up from mission objectives. What message would you suggest?

We can continue this discussion in another topic: AK: In game messages - Editing
El_Condoro
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by El_Condoro »

14/14 DV, Colonel. I took all the objectives on Turn 13 but I suspect, because the AI is on the offensive, the victory conditions will go to 14 no matter what.
Lost my SE Me110 gift. Also a recon.

I have the last scenario to thank for the ease of winning this - all Pz IVs, pioneres and artillery now!

All comments above +1 from me. I didn't get any pop-up message, though and the XP cap seems to have been removed in the update.
tmgiles1
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by tmgiles1 »

14/14 Lt. 687 prestige at end.

I had the same thing happen; I took everything but the airfields but no DV until the end of 14. After Ras el Mdauuar I was afraid that my corp was too far destroyed to continue much further, however playing a good game in Brevity (2 attempts) got me back on track.
nikivdd
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Re: AK: Brevity

Post by nikivdd »

Brevity Beta2
Colonel.

Upgraded SdKfz 10/4 to SdKfz 7/1, gave all italian infantry a transport, bought 2 Bf109e's and 1 Ju87R.
At first i let the British come. When lots of their units were in their transports, i started to counterattack. The Mathilda's got hit hard by my stuka and finished off by artillery and the panzerjäger (it got +3 def).
I was very pleasantly surprised when my "Ariete" tank received a medal:
Image

The biggest fights were at Fort Capuzzo and point 208. Afterwards all resistance was broken. I could have finished at turn 10 but out of prestige hunger i went for the airfields too.
DV 13/16, 1634PP.

Units lost: a lot of auxiliaries.

An enjoyable mission, probably too easy on this difficulty level, but very much fun nonetheless.
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