GC difficulty recommendation for average players?

[canuck97]

I'm just staring the GC mega pack and was just wondering what difficulty setting to choose? Since it will be a long walk to the last GC scenario and I'd like to play without changing the difficulty, I'd prefer to have the right setting for me from the get go. I played the original PC campaign with the third difficult setting and it was just right to get decisive victories without too much trouble (except 1-2 scenarios). So is the GC mega pack much harder to master? Any recommendations? I'm not the player who likes to restart the scenario over and over again.

[GSlapshot]

I find that the Colneral level is great if you just want a straight forward challenge with playability throughout all the GC's. You will not get much prestige in 1944-45 but it will give you an excellent experience playing the game for the first tine without frustration with the over strength & spam units since the AI has gobs of prestige at the higher levels. There is also. REGEDIT cheat to unlock the higher levels also so you don't have to play the base game to conclusion.

[canuck97]

Thanks for the reply GSlapshot. Colonel is probably the setting to choose for me as well. However, I really had some problems with the harsh turn limits in the original campaign (esp. USA). Will this be a factor again in the GC?

[Tarrak]

Thanks for the reply GSlapshot. Colonel is probably the setting to choose for me as well. However, I really had some problems with the harsh turn limits in the original campaign (esp. USA). Will this be a factor again in the GC?

It should be not the case. GC is more about fighting the enemy while the vanilla campaign was more about fighting the clock imho. In GC the objectives vary a lot more. There are of course always certain victory hexes to conquer but there are a lot other missions you have to achieve. Since the patch 1.21 you can even modify now the built in difficulty levels to your liking using the sliders on the advanced tab. For example if you think that colonel is fine for you but you would like 20% more prestige and two additional turns you can just do that.

[canuck97]

Yep, maybe I'll just keep going with the Colonel difficulty and just turn up the available turns a notch.

[Brindlebane]

Colonel is quite a good setting.Some scenarios will be a walk in the park but others will be quite challenging still,especially for those,"Jesus,where did that lot spring from" moments.

[KeldorKatarn]

Thanks for the reply GSlapshot. Colonel is probably the setting to choose for me as well. However, I really had some problems with the harsh turn limits in the original campaign (esp. USA). Will this be a factor again in the GC?

It should be not the case. GC is more about fighting the enemy while the vanilla campaign was more about fighting the clock imho. In GC the objectives vary a lot more. There are of course always certain victory hexes to conquer but there are a lot other missions you have to achieve. Since the patch 1.21 you can even modify now the built in difficulty levels to your liking using the sliders on the advanced tab. For example if you think that colonel is fine for you but you would like 20% more prestige and two additional turns you can just do that.

Yeah I have to say that the GC plays a LOT better than vanilla. Now that I've tried vanilla again I feel that the PG style was really a bad design back in the day. The PzC approach with the Panzer Corps specific campaigns is a LOT nicer and feels better.
In vanilla I always feel rushed. I can brutally rape the enemy but miss that last hex by one or two turns and that gives me basically something that's just a bit above a loss. That always bothered me.
In the GC you always fight the clock sometimes, but usually when you miss getting a victory hex it is due to your inability to defeat a counter attack fast enough or running into heavy resistance or failing to rush forward after the resistance has been cleared in an area. It is never due to your failure to do suicidal rushing and "getting that last unit in that hex, in impossible positions, surviving with 1 strength point but at least I got the hex" crap. Africa Corps was kinda the same. Some fighting the clock but nearly always just being able to break through certain points and making decisive terrain gains. When I won DV in those scenarios I'm nearly always really in a decisive victorious tactical position on the map and not in a situation like in the vanilla campaign where I broke through one defensive line then sent all my unit madly rushing forward without being able to support eachother, taking huge losses just to make sure I get units next to hexes fast enough to prevent unit spam which will make a victory totally impossible despite me being in the overwhelmingly superior position. In fact... I just nearly finished my 2nd playthrough of the main campaign (on Rommel which makes DV on most scenarios a real pain or impossible) and it might be my last playthrough. It's just not fun compared to the other campaigns. Its just mad rushing, taking unnecessary losses just to save that one more turn, then limping into victory with half my units at bad health. In the GC I feel like I actually command my units responsibly. I have to keep the forward momentum and can't be too careful, but I can always keep a strong front line and advance in task group and I never have to madly rush or attack entrenched positions without support because I'm running out of time. In the vanilla campaign the responsible approach just doesn't work. You will win fantastic minor victories nearly every time, but DVs are just a pain. And usually it's either fantastic minor victory with your core intact or decisive victory and half your troops are dead. In russia I conciously settles for MVs where possible because in Rommel I can't afford elite reinforcements and too many losses in a DV is nearly worse than a loss since I'm losing all experience on my troops.

[canuck97]

Very good and detailed summary. Often I really didn't feel like playing a strategy game in the original vanilla campaign because you needed to rush all the time and risk everything. But maybe it was also due to the larger scale of the scenarios? In the original campaign you have one map for the whole east coast of the U.S. for example while there's a whole map in the GC just for one larger city (Moscow, Berlin etc.). So there's more of a tactical approach in the GC I guess - while in the vanilla campaign it was a strategic perspective (e.g. covering the whole invasion in only one scenario etc.). So I'm really looking forward to play the more tactical and hopeful slower paced GC scenarios. So Colonel might be the right difficulty for me then.

[GSlapshot]

I haven't replayed the basic PzC since the GC's came out. With the new features for AK & AC such as heroes and captured units they are much more interesting with better replay value.

George S

[tmiranda]

I haven't replayed the basic PzC since the GC's came out. With the new features for AK & AC such as heroes and captured units they are much more interesting with better replay value.

George S

I have to agree with that as well, once you get sucked into the GC, or even AK, the vanilla campaign is so . . . well, ...vanilla

[boredatwork]

IMO the best way to play is set the difficulty *higher* than you feel comfortable with, then use the cheat codes to balance on the fly - there are no achievements in the game so the only thing that should drive you is your own enjoyment.

For me if my skill level were a nominal 99/100 I would rather play at 100% difficulty and cheat the 1% difference with the occasional extra turn, additional core unit, or prestige on credit and play at "100%" difficulty then scale the difficulty back to a boring, "safe" 80% setting and find the game overall too easy.

I play at +3 AI strength and as the scenario progresses I may use the +core cheat to add a couple of reinforcements if I'm finding the difficulty just too tough.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

If you rather not use cheat codes, go 1 difficulty lower than your preferred level in vanilla, Afrika or Allied Corps until you have got a good core set up (39 and 40). '41 can be played on the same as your vanilla level. '42 is quite hard in a number of scenarios, so go 1 easier on that as well. '43-'45 East can be played on your preferred.

If starting '42-3 W by itself, go 1 easier as well.

- BNC

(I have not played '44 W, or either '45 campaign so actually don't know much about these)

[captainjack]

I learnt with the weather off and at Colonel, so I could better understand what was going on and how the different troop types combined.
After a bit of experience and having read several forums I switched the weather on and eventually learned how that works and now play at General, often with a slightly reduced exprience gain (usually 80%) and AI prestige limit 133% rather than 150%.

If you are always running out of prestige, I would think Lieutenant would help as you get lots more than at colonel. It didn't work for me as usually I had problems other than (just) running out of prestige and found that I got most help out of Control +L for last combat (great for after your own attacks, but not so good when the AI is attacking as it doesn't always catch the combat you are interested in and combat carries on while the screen is up). The forums and after action reports are also helpful to see what others do that works, and some Beta tests and AARs also warn what doesn't work. However, a lot comes down to playing experience, reading the briefings carefully and understanding how attack defence terrain and weather interact. A bit of basic awareness of statistics can help to understand after a combat whether you were unlucky or reckless - three rolls of 100% is a lot more common than you might expect, especially when you think of how many combat rolls there are in each scenario.

Bear in mind that some of the updates may mean that excellent advice under older game rules might not be as good now. For example, my playing style has had to change a bit to accommodate differences between version 1.14 and 1.21 - I just completed DLC 41 and was rotating my core from reserves a lot more - some scenarios I used almost no air power (Rudel, a fighter escort and the hero 110 with a +3 defence hero were too good to leave at home), and in others I was using three Ju87, two strategic bombers, five fighters and a 110. I also seem to use even more artillery than before - mainly because of the changes to entrenchment. I also use more ground recon than I used to, mainly because the changes in 1.21 seem to make enemy AAA (especially 3 range 85mm) far too powerful onc eit has any experience, so that aircraft can't be risked for reconaissance as they could before.