Solving the prestige problems

[Xenos]

The problem with prestige is that it makes casualties irrelevant. So in some ways it win battles. Logically, the idea would be that if I, as a general, keep losing men and equipment in droves I would quickly lose High Command trust and wouldn't be able to ask for more reinforcements. Indeed, it makes no sense to give stuff to the very guy who just wastes it. This isn't the case in the game because prestige is infinite. So that's a whole historical, I would say fundamental aspect of warfare removed from the game. Think of Operation Mercury, the battle of Crete. Germany won, but it took so many casualties that the Fallschirmjäger couldn't be employed in any other large-scale operation for the rest of the war. In PzCII terms, something like that can't happen: even if every single one of your paratrooper units is reduced to 1 strength, you can just press a button, spend a bottomless resource and have them battle-worthy the very next turn. With undiminished experience to boot.

I mean, the game is a beer & pretzel wargame and we all know that, it's not like I'm asking for Gary Grigsby's level of simulation. But casualties being meaningless is very clearly a problem.

You are operating from the opinion that prestige is infinite for everyone. That's simply not true at all. Prestige is set in such a way that no one is left behind. That means that those who are really good at playing the game need to set the rules according to how they want to play, while those who are new, not particularly good at the game, or simply too casual of a player to make things run well, still have a chance to succeed. That is completely normal for the majority of strategy games you can find. Games are never balanced to fit to those who are really good at it, they are balanced so regular players don't rage quit.

Maybe some more tools could be added to influence all the settings, it's not like it would be impossible to adjust the level of prestige you can gain on a scale. Though PC2 in general is already overflowing with options you can set.

Besides, reinforcements were send where they were necessary to accomplish the stated goals. Stalingrad got an endless stream of them, even though soldiers where dying in droves. And while that wasn't the fault of Paulus, it still is proof that soldiers went where the leaders wanted to see success. It's not like you had many leaders who constantly drained their manpower. For the most part, casualties often rose among those units which were particularly good, as they were constantly pushed into important battles.

This is not normal at all. I never played a single strategy game in which a resource was infinite at *normal* difficulty level. Because let's be honest, it is. I wouldn't say I'm a casual player but I can't be bothered with exploits and usually roleplay with less than optimal traits and units. I don't like min-maxing at all, and still, prestige became irrelevant after two missions in the SCW. Sure, you can tweak (a lot of) stuff and kinda make it relevant again. But it should be the other way around: *normal* difficulty should come with some degree of scarcity - that's the point of having resources in a game. And then there could be options to alter the balance in one way or the other. It make no sense for the *standard* economic balance to be like this: really, what game is designed in a way the player need to increase the difficulty level in order to have resources working as resources? I can't think of any. And it actually isn't newbie-friendly: the first time I played the game, normal difficulty, no special options - like any newbie would probably play - I was under the impression that the only resource in the game mattered a bit, so I tried to save prestige by not using elite reinforcements and detached some units to occupy cities to gain more. That's simply the wrong way to play, so as a new player the game actually tricked me.

Now, I was playing Battlefleet Gothic II the other day. The game has a lot of customization options you can set before starting a campaign. You can disable the time limit and AI attacks, so making major mechanics of the game - time management and fleet positioning - completely irrelevant. That's good, maybe some player want to play a very relaxed campaign or whatever. But if you just pick normal and don't look at the options screen, then the mechanic is still there. Because that's, well, the normal way to play. It's expected that you, as an admiral, don't sit on your hands in a war zone, just like it should be expected that you, as a general, couldn't have unbound influence on High Command. It should be the same with PzCII.

And obviously, it's about *wasting* manpower, so reporting a lot more casualties than High Command expected for that specific operation.

[R2G2]

The base mechanics for Prestige will never be changed, but the game needs more customizable options for it. Rommel Mode and the difficulty settings are not enough to create a unique playthrough that focuses on Prestige Management.

A lot of good ideas for Prestige focused Special Challenges and negative Commander Traits have been mentioned here.
- Assigned Heroes Cost X amount of Prestige per turn
- Elite Replacement Costs increased by X amount
- Trophies no longer effects capture Prestige
- Famous and Legendary Heroes provide half Prestige per turn

There’s no reason for any player to be against new Special Challenges and Commander Trait options. The main question is which would be best to increase difficulty specifically for Prestige Management?

[paragan]

The base mechanics for Prestige will never be changed, but the game needs more customizable options for it. Rommel Mode and the difficulty settings are not enough to create a unique playthrough that focuses on Prestige Management.

A lot of good ideas for Prestige focused Special Challenges and negative Commander Traits have been mentioned here.
- Assigned Heroes Cost X amount of Prestige per turn
- Elite Replacement Costs increased by X amount
- Trophies no longer effects capture Prestige
- Famous and Legendary Heroes provide half Prestige per turn

There’s no reason for any player to be against new Special Challenges and Commander Trait options. The main question is which would be best to increase difficulty specifically for Prestige Management?

If it works don't mess it ... i don´t see prestige as problem. One of great things is customizability: choose your challenge (difficulty, traits - as advantages or disadvantages, customize anything ...) and HAVE FUN. There are casual players and hardcore chessmaster level strategists everyone have their place.

practical reasons:
- if you make prestige too small, you will make many traits or their combinations or playstyles imopossible
- someone will have to test hundreds of combinations
- after every patch everything will be messed

[Resolute]

I use my surplus in prestige to reroll unwanted heroes. I dismiss one and then it's 3500 prestige per hero roll. I got a few more self imposed rules in place like no scavenger, never more than one overwhelming attack and envelopment e.g. but overall it works fine for me.

[Bee1976]

I use my surplus in prestige to reroll unwanted heroes. I dismiss one and then it's 3500 prestige per hero roll.

How ??

[Resolute]

I use my surplus in prestige to reroll unwanted heroes. I dismiss one and then it's 3500 prestige per hero roll.

How ??

I dismiss a hero and then just use the chat window "cheat NewHero" and after that I deduct 3500 prestige by using the chat window again "setany prestige x" where x is my previous prestige -3500.

[Bee1976]

I use my surplus in prestige to reroll unwanted heroes. I dismiss one and then it's 3500 prestige per hero roll.

How ??

I dismiss a hero and then just use the chat window "cheat NewHero" and after that I deduct 3500 prestige by using the chat window again "setany prestige x" where x is my previous prestige -3500.

Ah thx mate I was hoping for a heroexchange without cheat and /setany :/

[DefiantXYX]

Tbh, coming from the goold old panzergeneral, I do not understand why they changed the whole prestige system.
I mean prestige is not money or a resource like oil or something like that.
If you kill units in panzercorps 2 you get 0 prestige.
"Hey, high command, we killed 100 spitfire in the battle of britain!" HC: "Well, who cares..."
"Hey high command, we captured 100 shit tanks and 1000 soldiers. We dont know where to imprison them and how to feed them...." HC: "Wow nice job general, we grant you unlimited prestige!"

In fact when I played the core campaign like in the good old days I had to give up in 1941, since I was completly running out of prestige, which means game over.

In SCW I started with encircling which can be very annoying. You could easily take a city or kill several enemy units, but you are forced think about how you can encircle them, because you need the prestige. In SCW I did not use the skills (Power of 4), which make it very easy, so the whole campaign was not that easy. Especially since the german units are inferioir and you need to use captured tanks and stuff...
Well, in 1939 I picked the skill that doubles the prestige and stuff you get when the enemy is surrending. At the latest in 1940 the game was "broken", I had endless prestige. It was like walking in a park, impossible to lose. The whole balance is broken.

For me the solution is very easy: If you capture cities and kill your enemies you get some prestige. If you are very good and take more and kill more that necessary you get more prestige.
So good player will get more prestige, but that can play on harder difficulty.

If you catpure enemy stuff you can use it, but you dont get extra tons of prestige for that.
So you wont have the problems, that unexperienced player will run out of prestige and experienced have to think about house rules, because the game is way to easy.

[Edmon]

My top tip here if you feel you have "infinite" prestige is to put "Ruthless" on. That will pretty much ensure that even if you don't bleed prestige, you certainly won't be farming any.

If you are having trouble making money, then the easy way to make money is to capture more, which is exactly what ruthless prevents.

Once the patch goes in for limited reinforcements, I recommend playing that, then it won't matter if you have infinite prestige because you won't have infinite units.

[George_Parr]

"Hey, high command, we killed 100 spitfire in the battle of britain!" HC: "Well, who cares..."
"Hey high command, we captured 100 shit tanks and 1000 soldiers. We dont know where to imprison them and how to feed them...." HC: "Wow nice job general, we grant you unlimited prestige!"

Actually, that's very much how it should be. If there is an issue with that, it doesn't come from getting prestige from surrendering units, but it being too easy to kill units.
The comparison doesn't really fit though, because fighting planes comes with no surrendering, while fighting fround troops does.

In reality, an army would be very happy about the enemy mass-surrendering, because that means it doesn't have to fight them. Fighting means losses, it means an increased use of supplies and ammunition, and wasting time you could be on the move. Ideally, you force situations in which the enemy surrenders in masses while you have to fight as little as possible to get there. The more you have to fight, the worse off you are. It makes you men more tired and drastically reduces your manpower, and it wastes tons of resources that you don't spend if you don't have to fight.

Look at all the islands the Americans took from the Japanese. They often had to fight to the bitter end, because the Japanese didn't like to surrender. This was always a drain on American resources, and it caused battles that already were decided to drag on much longer than planned for.

[nexusno2000]

I'd like to be able to capture, bc that's great fun.

But I don't want that to equal swimming in prestige.

Gimme the ability to tweak capture % for parts & prestige as 2 separate difficulty settings.

[DefiantXYX]

The comparison doesn't really fit though, because fighting planes comes with no surrendering, while fighting fround troops does.

Haha, thats true. Let's substitute spitfires with Russian T-26 tanks in 1942.

In reality, an army would be very happy about the enemy mass-surrendering, because that means it doesn't have to fight them. Fighting means losses, it means an increased use of supplies and ammunition, and wasting time you could be on the move. Ideally, you force situations in which the enemy surrenders in masses while you have to fight as little as possible to get there. The more you have to fight, the worse off you are. It makes you men more tired and drastically reduces your manpower, and it wastes tons of resources that you don't spend if you don't have to fight.

That depends on how you fight them. If you can easily overrun the enemy you wont have much losses and you wont waste much ammunition and supplies. But thats what I meant when talking about prestige. The high command doesnt really care if you take Stalingrad by destroying everything or if you do this by capturing men and stuff.
Although I fear it could make the gameplay to complicated, maybe another currency could be interesting.
Prestige depends on the result of a mission. If you are fast, if you do more that neccessary and if you destory more enemies you get more prestige.
But you also have to pay your supplies (fuel, ammo) with prestige. If there is another currency, something like "supplies" and you get it either with prestige or by capturing enemy stuff, I could make the game more strategic and more realistic. How does prestige help you, if you are stucked in snow ,your tanks got no fuel and your men are starving?