Axis Operations FAQ and Tips

[Snake97644]

Good to know, thank you sinamora and dalfrede

[Kerensky]

Unlike old Grand Campaign, new AO GC has new tricks and designs up its sleeves.

Hoarding prestige from the get go isn't necessary anymore, and in fact it's very much discouraged. Every DLC will have a 'prestige sink' event, and it destroys a percentage of your total prestige. So the more you hoard, the harder it will hit you.

We're no where near late war scenarios, but expecting to need prestige from 1939 to survive that far off isn't really very reasonable. Not growing the player force in a linear progression will help keep late war in check as well.
There are many bridges to cross before we get to that point, and I'm more than confident by time we get there, it should be a non-issue.

Each campaign will have more than enough prestige inside itself to play through to completion. For some, that might mean skipping some of the harder bonus objectives, and opting to skip the prestige sink rewards though.

[Horseman]

In the pc1 GC the need to hoarde prestige in the early years was a result of changing rulesets and introducing a prestige cap which made later war scenarios hard to earn prestige on.

Without the prestige cap it was all fine - IIRC the prestige cap was introduced after the GC was made so it wasn't really designed with that in mind.

[dalfrede]

The obvious solution to the prestige sink issue is to buy a large reserve force, which you can sell for prestige later if necessary.
For example for Ebro I bought 3 new AA units, which will be rarely used, but very necessary for defensive scenarios.
A store of 'protected prestige'.

If you actually build up experience on your reserve force, you will be better off later anyway.

Plus selling minor heroes can beef up prestige if necessary.

[Moransky]

The obvious solution to the prestige sink issue is to buy a large reserve force, which you can sell for prestige later if necessary.
For example for Ebro I bought 3 new AA units, which will be rarely used, but very necessary for defensive scenarios.
A store of 'protected prestige'

Great idea! Thx for it.

[adiekmann]

The obvious solution to the prestige sink issue is to buy a large reserve force, which you can sell for prestige later if necessary.
For example for Ebro I bought 3 new AA units, which will be rarely used, but very necessary for defensive scenarios.
A store of 'protected prestige'

Great idea! Thx for it.

Yeah! Great idea. Now the devs are aware of it and will probably design a way to short-circuit it as well

[Moransky]

Yeah! Great idea. Now the devs are aware of it and will probably design a way to short-circuit it as well

I think that they can't cut all interesting ideas. And if they try to short-circuit all these ideas and will ban normal playthrough, they'll get many negative reviews.

[Kerensky]

Hiding prestige in the reserve system isn't the biggest problem in the world. Even if we clamp down on that, and punish players who use the reserve system genuinely as a probably side effect... people are still going to figure out ways around this. I mean there is a literal prestige cheat available at all times.

I can imagine a change to reserve system (can only hold 2X slot limit) will make people who collect trophies of their DLC in their reserve furious when they have to discard their trophy captures and units.

The bottom line is if people take advantage of a system for their own benefit... I'm not seeing the harm. It's a singleplayer campaign, some degree of a person applying their own definition of 'fun' is part of the singleplayer experience. Why else are there such a crazy amount of customization options in difficulty and settings and player traits?

But it's equally important to not design around such shenanigans. If we make prestige so stingy that we force people to opt into tricks like overloading their reserve to dodge prestige sinks... we failed at the whole point. Average players should not be required to invoke crazy weird systems interacting with other systems in unintentional ways to produce unforeseen results just to be able to play the content to completion.

[sakura006]

The game has 3 major ways to get prestige. 1. Taking cities. 2. Force surrender. 3. Hero trait legendary and fame. Since the city prestige income is the same all over the time, but early unit cost is much less than the late one, you inevitably get redundant prestige in the early war era. So why not just making a progressive city income. Let's say 50 per city in the early game, and 100 in the middle, 150 in the late game. That effectively reduce your early prestige gain, and also you will not be too annoyed with the lack of prestige in the late game.

There is also another game changer in PZ 2, which is the hero trait legendary. You get 20 prestige per turn, and most of missions in the AO is above 20, so you get about 500 free prestige per mission. Since AO is going to be a very long journey (assuming 100 missions), and you still get 1 hero per mission, you probably will get at least 4 to 5 heroes with legendary, including those historic overpowered heroes. That means you will get at least 2000 free prestige per mission in the late game. Actually I have already got 2 heroes with legendary after I finish the SCW, including Galland, so I guess I will probably get more than 5 heroes with that trait in the late war era. Personally I think this will be too overpowered. Probably limit the hero gain in the AO? Let's say 1 hero per 3 missions. Or probably we can be given opportunities to exchange the commendation points for common heroes rather than gaining them for free after a mission.

[Plaid]

Generally speaking one hero per map is too much.
Player will be swimming in super-units of all sorts by mid-war.

[Kerensky]

Generally speaking one hero per map is too much.
Player will be swimming in super-units of all sorts by mid-war.

Each individual campaign has to be playable by itself. Which means the 1 hero per mission rule must stand.

But perhaps imported COREs should be limited to 1 new hero per 3 missions? That kind sucks, it's like punishment for importing.

What's wrong with continuing to give the player heroes, and letting them decide for themselves to continue to power inflate their force, or to voluntarily choose to opt out by disbanding/ignore new heroes?

[Schlack]

I don't want anyone to have their expectations raised too high on this, so I will be very honest about this feature. It is strictly limited to specific historical scenarios and circumstance. It is NOT an ability for normal units to invoke at will at this time.

Spoilers....




it plays a role in the Saar Offensive scenarios of DLC 1939, which historically was battlefield where mass minefields had a significant impact on the French attempts to advance in the region.

Probably for the best, i had planned on completely breaking the game with the mines!

[adiekmann]

Generally speaking one hero per map is too much.
Player will be swimming in super-units of all sorts by mid-war.

Each individual campaign has to be playable by itself. Which means the 1 hero per mission rule must stand.

But perhaps imported COREs should be limited to 1 new hero per 3 missions? That kind sucks, it's like punishment for importing.

What's wrong with continuing to give the player heroes, and letting them decide for themselves to continue to power inflate their force, or to voluntarily choose to opt out by disbanding/ignore new heroes?

I agree. Plus, let's face it, but some heroes just kind of suck, while most are somewhere in between. It's not like you're getting Double Attack/2x Rapid Fire/Zero Slots/etc. at the end of each map. Chances are that you'll want to ditch some of those "less appreciated heroes" for the 1,000 prestige and that's mainly because you want/need the infusion of prestige.

[Moransky]

Each individual campaign has to be playable by itself. Which means the 1 hero per mission rule must stand.

But perhaps imported COREs should be limited to 1 new hero per 3 missions? That kind sucks, it's like punishment for importing.

What's wrong with continuing to give the player heroes, and letting them decide for themselves to continue to power inflate their force, or to voluntarily choose to opt out by disbanding/ignore new heroes?

I think that we should have 1 hero per 1 mission as usual. It's interesting for me to make different builds and try them on the battlefield.

And if someone doesn't like super units he may give up and don't use heroes at all.

[monkspider]

You know, I have started changing my mind about how new Killer Teams every year are going to be OP. I restarted several campaigns until I got a reduced slots hero so I can use the four range super artillery and it struck me how inconsequential the vast majority of heroes are, even those that are part of the killer team group. I think I have come around to your thinking on this Kerensky.

[monkspider]

You know, that might be a good trait to add to the game, only get a new hero every other battle. It could be -1 and would work pretty well in the grand campaign environment.

[Kerensky]

You know, that might be a good trait to add to the game, only get a new hero every other battle. It could be -1 and would work pretty well in the grand campaign environment.

A much better solution than a blanket rule mandated to everyone.

You should make a new thread on 'suggested new character traits' so it gets more visibility than this long thread.

[Kerensky]

I added a section on description of various language regarding Victory Hex Ownership: Capture, Control/Hold, and now Raid.

[P5138]

I have a question that doesn't seem covered by the FAQ (but probably should be somehow): When the next AO campaign comes out (and for the ones after that one), how will it handle importing generals/forces? Will there be a list of the finished campaigns you can choose between? Will it only take the last-finished campaign and overwrite previous ones? Are there save files that we have to make? I assume it will act like PC1, where there's a list to choose between of automatically created save files, but it would be nice to know for sure.

[Kerensky]

With 1939 coming out to FM Early Access this week, I added a small update to cover your questions on campaign importing:


How does importing my army between Axis Operations campaigns work exactly?

One of the most important features of any Grand Campaign is to allow players to play the individual parts of the campaign, but still keep their forces between campaigns. This system allows players to experience the campaigns as one long adventure. It also is a nice way to partition up hundreds of scenarios into much more bite sized campaigns.

The game handles all CORE saving pretty much automatically, the user needs only to play, and complete, each individual campaign, and the game will know what force is allowed to import to what following campaign.

It works in just a few simple stages:

For example, at the end of final the Spanish Civil War scenario, you will see this new message when returning to the main menu after debriefing.



If you choose the next campaign immediately, you will simply be sent directly into the first scenario of the attaching campaign. Making this choice allows you skip needing to re-pick your your character traits over again. To do that, you need to select the next campaign (in this case Axis Operations 1939) from the 'new campaign' menu. When you do that, you will see this new prompt.



Now if you have more than one saved CORE, you can select which one you would like to import, and upon importing, you will be allowed to re-pick your character traits.

As mentioned, importing your CORE is not required to play any DLC content. For anyone who hasn't completed the previous campaign in the Grand Campaign, or who doesn't own that previous DLC, a ready made CORE of decent size and strength (with heroes) will be provided when starting a new campaign without importing a force.

What exactly is saved with my imported CORE?

1. Your units, both deployed and reserve units.
2. Their experience, awards, and medals.
3. All heroes, including special Commendation Point awarded heroes.
4. Your prestige.
5. Your stockpile of captured enemy equipment.

So... pretty much everything that makes your army uniquely yours is preserved!