Just finished Barbarossa

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funky_trader
Major
Posts: 62
Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2015 4:35 pm

Just finished Barbarossa

Unread postby funky_trader » Tue Jul 13, 2021 12:02 am

So it took me a bit longer than expected to finish the Barbarossa campaign. Life got in the way, but so did it's scenario lenght and (I believe) higher difficulty. In no particular order, and not particularly criticising anything, just sometimes vanting, here are my main thoughts after this:

  1. Initial Difficulty level. It took me an extremely high amount of restart to get me going in the first three scenarios. The AI seems more aggresive than when playing as the Allies vs. the German. Tweaked script, better use of AI hints, or different sort of units stats leading to AI "seeing" the offensive in a more positive light? I'm not too sure. Some of the optional early objectives for the Germans are also those that trigger the strongest counterattacks in those scenarios (less so later on). Combined with high odds of losing steps even when the odds favour you, I think I got paralyzed into getting the "perfect starting run" such that I wouldn't be out of prestige/steps in the later scenarios (which, given the starting difficulty, I extrapolated into being 20x harder lol).
  2. Later Difficulty level. Surprisingly, later scenarios turned generally easier as time got by. I think a combination of mastering the German playstyle, an overly cautious approach to losses, getting all objectives/most side objectives on time (i.e. loading up on prestige), and long scenarios really played in my favour. Taking Moscow was somehow a breeze. The city fell on turn 6 I believe? Just as I was closing the encirclement. I got busy paiting the map a sweet tone of grey afterwards :P
    taking moscow on the march.png
  3. Long Scenarios really put the AI at a disadvantage. The UoC AI has never been good at recovering from a bad turn, and the longer the scenario, the higher the odds that something truly bad will happen. Long scenarios are also a huge boon for the player: more turn to farm XP, swap steps, disband units that will disappear, recover specialist steps, etc.
  4. Yet, Short Scenarios always left me wanting more :P . I'm hard to please.... But I wager the ideal scenario length is 5-7 turns max? It seems a sweet spot
  5. Elite Units. Have you noticed in the screenshot how most of my units are nearly full steps elite? I have no regular ones, and barely a few rear echelon troops that are veteran. XP farming my puny infantry into ubermensch is key to victory and making the end so much easier than the start. Probably something that new players struggle to master.
  6. HQ. This is the single most frustrating issue with the German playstyle. And not annoying as in "good challenge", just frustrating. The Panzer HQ have too short of a range to be useful, they're always lagging the panzers, or if they're keeping up, half of the time they will be useless due to all the interesting powers being suppressed. The Army HQ do have range, and I like the movement limitation most of the time (6 on rail, 3 on ground, makes you really think although sometimes... :x ). However, they cover too many units. This causes two problems. First, a quarter to half of the HQ units will likely be out of range at any point in the scenario. Second, given the large number of units per Army HQ, the absolute sheer importante of certain actions (feint attack/set piece attack/suppressive fire), the cost of these actions, and the number of typical action points (6-8), this implies that you will likely never have any HQ points left for any other options. Counterattack and recon in force are two very interesting action to play, but cost 4 points :shock: ! I can probably count on two hands the number of times I've used these during the whole playthrough. This is even without mentioning the emergency supply, oversupply, and repair bridge actions which are also terribly important. When leveling up the HQ, getting a cost reduction of one point in feint attack/set piece attack/suppressive fire is such a no brainer! This issue seems already clear to me in the Blitzkrieg campaign, but gets put into overdrive in Barbarossa on account of the longer and larger scenarios.
  7. Romania getting no love. I want to upgrade my Romanian HQ so damn much... It should really be one of the upgradable ones given how many times it appears.
  8. Starting position. In my opinion, while it's normal that you can't reinforce units outside of HQ range during a scenario, this rule shouldn't apply at the start of a scenario. Some units seemingly start most scenarios out of HQ range. Sometimes, a unit gets destroyed, and restarts on the front lines but out of HQ range in the next scenario. While not gamebreaking (or rarely), this should be fixed. Reinforcing prior to the start of a scenario should have no limits. This is akin to the rest & refit that most units would get in between operations.
  9. Unit Roaster. I would suggest to add an option to see which units, along with its steps and veterancy status, are in a scenario prior to starting that scenario? One of the issue that I struggled with was insuring that I had enough replacement steps as I started a scenario. For example, in between conference, you'll likely only have 6 armor steps that you can pay for that start in the OKW reserve (i.e. 3 total panzer steps). Where should I use them? Which units need them most? I often had to manually start all scenarios one by one to compile in Excel a list of units that needed reinforcements. Then, given their likely combat perspective and objectives, I would assign replacement steps in priority to certain units only. I loved that aspect of the game. However, UoC makes it extremely clunky (start scenario, note everything down, restart scenario to clear it, start a second scenario, etc.). Obviously, my total score suffered tremendously from all those restarts (although I didn't particularly care). Still, maybe allow scenarios to be "looked at" without actually needing a restart if you want to look at another scenario?
  10. OKW reserves. It wasn't clear to me if they were pooled across all HQs (north/center/south) or if each had its own pool. Could this be clearer? If they are seperate pool, could they be better labelled? OKW North for example. Sometimes, I would over optimize thinking "well, I only have those x steps available for all HQs" when in fact all HQs had the same total reserves independant of each other.
  11. Recycling units that disappear. This is extremely cheezy I feel, but without a solid game mechanic making it less of a clear cut choice, I will always disband units that will never reappear in future scenarios. At Moscow, some of my HQs had 20-25 infantry steps in reserve... Long scenarios also gives me a lot of time to ensure that the critical steps are recycled (first specialist, then armor, then motorized, then infantry). This way of playing is also not obvious to new player, and yet so critical IMO. Perhaps giving bonus prestige based on the number of units that don't reappear but still have 6 steps and over at the end of a scenario could be a solution?

Sorry for potential bad grammar, I wrote it mostly in one go without proof reading. I'll go cool down in the burnt out husk of the Kremlin now 8-)
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Danielefc
2x2 Games
Posts: 1142
Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2011 10:03 pm

Re: Just finished Barbarossa

Unread postby Danielefc » Mon Aug 02, 2021 10:39 am

Hey man, glad to hear you enjoyed it! :)

RE: decreasing difficulty

This is very much tied to how much you min/max the early campaign. For a better roleplaying experience I would recommend not milking units for excess specs and steps and not to restart early game scenarios for 100% runs. The thing is, if we balanced the campaign for min/max'ing it would force players into this playstyle and this is something we are trying to avoid. All in all there are some inherent parts of our system that don't meld well with units that carry over. For instance, the reason we didn't include unit "futures" at release was fear that it would result in milking exiting units... which it did. But there was a large and vocal community "mood" for such a feature, so we added it later on... To my great regret :ugeek: (For the "intended" difficulty you can try the standalone scenarios - try taking Moscow in those :twisted:).

Cheers!

aguvenli
Cadet
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2019 6:46 pm

Re: Just finished Barbarossa

Unread postby aguvenli » Tue Feb 15, 2022 1:22 pm

Hi,

Long time player (since UOC 1) and lurker.

Persistence across scenarios (in the way certain units, specialist steps, reserves) are done in a half-baked fashion. Either go all-in with it and implement a full UI for us to manage our units in between scenarios, or don't do it all. Current implementation is very frustrating to deal with if one takes the idea seriously.

My own take is that all persistence should be disabled and we should go back to a UOC1 campaign style, where what happens to my units in one scenario stays in that scenario. Otherwise, it becomes all too 'gamey', milking xp, reserves and specialists, restarting at step/specialist loss, etc.

Anyway, just wanted to chime in. I am sure this is nothing new to the devs, who must have had such conversations a thousand times over by now.