Questions about long campaigns

[willmontgomery]

I've searched the manual, and I've searched the forums. I never played the original SP games, so I have no manual or experience to draw upon there. I have just finished the first battle of the long WWII campaign. My questions seem like really basic stuff, but I cannot seem to find the answers anywhere:

1) As I progress through a long campaign, my units will gain experience. Does this mean their effective point value will go up, so that 1) the OPFOR in successive battles may get larger and larger to be fair in point value, and/or 2) my units become worth more VP to the other side if they are destroyed?

2) After a battle I receive points to upgrade equipment. Does that affect my total effective point value?

3) Will a unit lose experience if I change its equipment? If so, how much?

4) What happens to the experience rating of a unit that must be repaired? Is that the same as replacing it? What if a unit sustains partial casualties?

I guess I could find out by playing, but the long campaign seems like it will be such a significant investment of time that I'd like to find stuff out _before_ I learn the hard way.

[Jim1954]

1. I believe the answer to both questions is yes.

2. Not completely sure but I think yes. Consider if you had a force of King Tigers, had a couple of the knocked out and only had the points to replace them with Pz IV's. The overall "value" of your force would actually be less than before, even if you had crews that survived and gained experience levels.

3. This one I know. Definately yes, probably on the order of 5 points or so per upgrade. This is a good reason NOT to constantly upgrade a unit. Give it time to learn the new piece of eqpt.

4. As long as the unit is not completely destroyed, then it's surviving cadre will carry over it's previous experience level and accompanying kills. If it is completely replaced (eliminated) then the quality of the replacing unit is influenced by nationality and time frame. i.e Early war German losses may have a replacement unit with higher values than the original, but you would certainly not expect the same to be true of late war casualties.

Hope these help

[willmontgomery]

Thanks for the information. I appreciate your taking the time to answer.

[rbrunsman]

Make sure you rescue your skilled crews in the campaigns.

My experience is that after about 2 years (game time) of fighting, your units have such high experience and the AI is so poor, that you pretty much walk all over the opposition. There is not really much of a challenge in long campaigns, but they are great for learning the equipment. When a new unit becomes available, it is very exciting and you get to see how it performs against the older equipment. It's a wonderful thing when your Panzers get upgraded to 50mm guns from the lowly 37mm guns you start with in Poland.