Curious about Panzer Experience

[Michael T]

I note that in the 1940 Scenario, the Germans at start Pz/Mot units all begin with 75% experience (it's 70% in the 39 scenario).

Yet if we start in 1939 it is unlikely we will get even the starting 2 Pz units to 75% by May 1940. And impossible the additional units as they will only be on the map a few turns prior to the invasion.

And in the 1941 scenario they are all at 80-85%. I just don't seen how it is possible to reach those levels from a 1939 start.


So what is the reasoning behind that?

[AlbertN]

The problem is the formula - which I do not know - about experience gain.
Mixed it up with the incognita of combat, and the bogus system where even at 10:1 you can get slaps in your face - it is pratically impossible to gain adequate experience.

Each loss a unit takes it is replaced with a new levied piece (which I -assume- has the basic national experience).

It is a struggle to get experience up, and is too easily knocked down.

Pratically the logic is, in a scenario Experience is a field to fill with two digits in the editor! In the '39 campaign it starts in same fashion, and sort of remain stuck there. The average experience of German troops is 71-73 and it floats there.

Already advocated in another thread a rework of the Experience model (Which I fear it's the same of Strategic Command, a highly disfunctional one).

[Essro]

Agreed.

[AlvaroSousa]

Everyone's style of play is different in how they handle their armies. This will result in different outcomes.

The more attrition you inflict despite results the less experience will be gained as replacements come in at your default.
As for the scenarios they are based on an estimate of what was at the time of the scenario. These are always subject to change.

Consider that say I program an A.I. to play absolutely historical as the Allies. A human player will slaughter it with hindsight and you may very well get the experience results you want.

But casualties are higher as the A.I. doesn't play that way and neither does another human opponent. The French won't run up to the Dyle and get surrounded. The Russians won't screw up as badly as they did. If the Russian leadership was as competent as the Germans in 1941 they would have beaten them handily.

So you can't replicate results. You can only balance for play per scenario.

Also you can load up the editor and change the experience model and save a new scenario like "Better than WarPlans 1939 Scenario" scenario. That's why I built the editor. If you like 80% of the game with the editor you can tweak it to like 90% of the game. That was the main reason I got SC2 when it came out. The editor.

And if you find a better way I am happy to hear it.

[Michael T]

I agree with your estimate of the experience level at each point 39(70), 40(75) and 41 (80-85). I like that.

I would just like to be able to get my 1939 units and others to those levels by the date. I can't see how it can be done, even following strict historical timetable.

Also the problem is new units, they default to 70. But in reality the new Panzer/Mot units should default to higher levels as war progresses as they were founded on a number of experienced officers and nco's and improved doctrine training etc etc. So I think the game would be well served to have default experience levels going up for some units. So for example new Pz/Mot units arriving in 1940 should start at 75%, not 70%. And those arriving in 1941 80%.

For example the number of Panzer Divisions went from 10 to 20 in 1941. How? They simply took an entire Panzer regiment from each Division, reducing from 2 to 1 per division and added the INF component. So the Panzer Regiment was already seasoned, not raw recruits.

[Jim D Burns]

Something to consider. Many of the US divisions that landed at Normandy and fought through the hedgerows and on into Belgium, the Hurtgen Forset and on to final victory in Germany were raw green units upon stepping ashore. By the time the war ended just under a year later, they were some of the best fighting units on earth.

The thing is, they had all replaced their total paper strength 3-4 times or more in less than the six months from Normandy to the Bulge, and some of the ones who fought in the Hurtgen campaign replaced their strength far more than that. But they continued to get better and better overall, because it's not the raw recruits that make up the ability of large combat formations like divisions, corps or armies, it's the officers and NCO's and how well they work as a team.

The German army was all but destroyed in August of 44 after the Falaise pocket disaster, but 4 months later it had rebuilt itself around the very small cadre of experienced men that had escaped and managed to bash the allies on the nose hard at the Battle of the Bulge. Reading some of the accounts of the fighting shows that units led by experienced NCO's and officers fought like veteran units, and those led by new leaders fought like green conscripts.

So taking on replacements shouldn't necessarily reduce experience of a unit unless its a very large percentage of the total strength of the unit. Front line troops simply don't matter much at the scale of the units in game here. So a unit that takes lots of casualties can be assumed to lose a good chunk of its leader cadre, but average to low losses should be business as usual and not count for much loss to a units current experience.

Jim

[AlbertN]

No one will play with a custom scenario / house ruled one in Multiplayer.
That is the problem Alvaro.

You cannot say it's how people manage their forces. To gain experience you need to fight, and to fight when even at 10:1 you get slaps in the face for 0 enemy losses means that you cannot really manage your forces.

A player cannot 'plan' to gain experience, they have to just pray the gods of luck.
In general I think people want to play Warplan and not Warluck.

Dices are dices - and they are in 99% of the strategy games.
But players know the odds and the tables for their possibilities, to -plan- around and decide if to do this attack or not.

What Jim above said is key - there should be a trashold of losses where there is no experience loss.

So taking on replacements shouldn't necessarily reduce experience of a unit unless its a very large percentage of the total strength of the unit. Front line troops simply don't matter much at the scale of the units in game here. So a unit that takes lots of casualties can be assumed to lose a good chunk of its leader cadre, but average to low losses should be business as usual and not count for much loss to a units current experience.

The large portion of a fighting unit that is veteran 'teaches' the new recruits. So pratically a few losses should not net a loss of experience when replaced.
If a unit is hammered and loses a large portion of its experienced troops then yes.

[karonagames]

On a similar note, the specialities do not seem to be carried forward from one start date to the next nor does there seem to be any allowance for speciality points earned from the beginning of the war in the later start dates.

[OxfordGuy3]

ORIGINAL: Cohen_slith
What Jim above said is key - there should be a trashold of losses where there is no experience loss.

In Commander Europe at War GS, I know that the threshold at which replacements would dilute the experience level of units was reviewed and adjusted a number of times, until a good balance was achieved where units neither gained experience too quickly, nor lost it too easily. I seem to recall it was also different for land / air / naval units. That game also allowed you (at fairly high cost) to over-strength units, which provided some additional protection against experience loss, as effectively increased the threshold.

[AlbertN]

SC allowed too to overstrength unit, but the problem was that for 1 strength point you wasted 1 entire turn of a veteran unit, that strength point was overpriced, AND it was also easily lost.
Not a functioning mechanic from my perspective.

So it was like - uh, buy +1 strength, ehm combat and attack and 90% of the chances are you get at least 1 hit unless the enemy unit is already super mauled or poor (in Strategic Command that sort of worked only in Japan vs China front, occasionally, and because fronts were mostly static in WW1 style), so you were pratically not netting much gain.

[AlvaroSousa]

ORIGINAL: karonagames

On a similar note, the specialities do not seem to be carried forward from one start date to the next nor does there seem to be any allowance for speciality points earned from the beginning of the war in the later start dates.

I pretty much let people start from scratch and even here. There is no way for me to predict which historical units had what. So everyone starts at zero.

[AlvaroSousa]

ORIGINAL: OxfordGuy3

ORIGINAL: Cohen_slith
What Jim above said is key - there should be a trashold of losses where there is no experience loss.

In Commander Europe at War GS, I know that the threshold at which replacements would dilute the experience level of units was reviewed and adjusted a number of times, until a good balance was achieved where units neither gained experience too quickly, nor lost it too easily. I seem to recall it was also different for land / air / naval units. That game also allowed you (at fairly high cost) to over-strength units, which provided some additional protection against experience loss, as effectively increased the threshold.

You only start losing experience if your manpower is under 50% of its maximum. Just FYI I have gotten units above 80% experience play testing. I'm not purposely trying though.

[MOS96B2P]

[/quote]
You only start losing experience if your manpower is under 50% of its maximum. Just FYI I have gotten units above 80% experience play testing. I'm not purposely trying though.
[/quote]

Interesting. Does this refer to the manpower percentage as shown on the countries production panel? The green manpower number under Stockpile has a percentage next to it. So if this percentage goes under 50% units will start to decrease in experience?

[Essro]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

Also you can load up the editor and change the experience model and save a new scenario like "Better than WarPlans 1939 Scenario" scenario. That's why I built the editor. If you like 80% of the game with the editor you can tweak it to like 90% of the game. That was the main reason I got SC2 when it came out. The editor.

I've been spending more time in the editor than playing the game. I've probably gained a better understanding about how the engine works by just going in there and looking, even if I don't adjust anything.

The editor is powerful and appears simple to use (though I have yet to get a map import to work correctly). A word of caution, however, even a small adjustment can really change things quite a bit. I've been known to adjust a small value just to test it. In one case I adjusted German infantry by just one number...the result: they steamrolled Poland a little too hard. So....be careful.

I'm unlikely to play against the AI very often, and the only other human player I play against is always the same person so anything he and I mod will be fine for our use. Otherwise I do a ton of solo play because what I enjoy is experimenting with different outcomes (e. Roundup 1943, Sealion, UK invades Norway, various craziness in the Med, etc).

other things I've adjusted for my own use:

-adjusted experience gains
-added two PzK to Germany at start
-added an under strength air unit at Malta---just to give it some over stated impact. I want Malta to be a pain for the Axis (interesting side note: against the AI, it immediately flew off to Poland to support the Poles--unexpected but interesting)
-added level 4 AA to Ploesti
-reduced cost of several of the constructed items--not because I necessarily think the value is off, but these features are just too cool to pass up so I made them slightly cheaper so that I'm more likely to use them
-reduced build time for HQs and reduced strength to 5, reduced firearms by 1--these HQs need to be just a little more fragile

[AlbertN]

I've tested and tried out - not that it's hard. Note down experience of units that took damage, see if they lose some when repaired.

It's in the first turn, so Germany has plenty of morale in their pools, well above 50%; pratically almost 90-100%.
But experience is lost, and troops go down to 70, and planes to 50 (or in that direction) as they suffer hits.

So pratically it makes it hard if not impossible to get experienced troops on the board, and the German barbarossa army of '41 will be pratically same experience of the one that fought in Poland in '39.
Attack, gain experience, get a loss, lose experience.

It would do much better to the game if the original statement of the 50% Manpower treshold for experience.

[MOS96B2P]

ORIGINAL: Cohen_slith

So pratically it makes it hard if not impossible to get experienced troops on the board, and the German barbarossa army of '41 will be pratically same experience of the one that fought in Poland in '39.
Attack, gain experience, get a loss, lose experience.

It would do much better to the game if the original statement of the 50% Manpower treshold for experience.

Thanks for testing. I'm trying to be clear that I understand where this 50% number comes from.

Does this 50% refer to the manpower percentage as shown on the countries production panel? The green manpower number under Stockpile has a percentage next to it. So if this percentage goes under 50% units will start to decrease in experience?

Or is it referring to one of the percentages shown on the individual unit panels?

[apec]

ORIGINAL: MOS96B2P

ORIGINAL: Cohen_slith

So pratically it makes it hard if not impossible to get experienced troops on the board, and the German barbarossa army of '41 will be pratically same experience of the one that fought in Poland in '39.
Attack, gain experience, get a loss, lose experience.

It would do much better to the game if the original statement of the 50% Manpower treshold for experience.

Thanks for testing. I'm trying to be clear that I understand where this 50% number comes from.

Does this 50% refer to the manpower percentage as shown on the countries production panel? The green manpower number under Stockpile has a percentage next to it. So if this percentage goes under 50% units will start to decrease in experience?

Or is it referring to one of the percentages shown on the individual unit panels?

My understanding is that refers to the maximum Manpower shown in the production panel, i.e. if you draft too many men then the overall troop quality suffer.

[AlbertN]

Pratically when 1 new replacement is taken it comes in at the national experience, and then it is averaged out - no matter what is the national manpower stock %.
If the national manpower % drops too low, your national experience lowers (ie for Germany instead of being 70, may be let's say 50?)

[MOS96B2P]

ORIGINAL: Cohen_slith

Pratically when 1 new replacement is taken it comes in at the national experience, and then it is averaged out - no matter what is the national manpower stock %.
If the national manpower % drops too low, your national experience lowers (ie for Germany instead of being 70, may be let's say 50?)

Okay, thanks. I guess this information makes the "Elite" specialty even more valuable since it grants a permanent +10% experience. I just did a quick check of my units and I have a panzer corps at 86% experience with the "Elite specialty.

[AlbertN]

Yes the Elite Specialty comes quite handy as all around, all weather and situations kind of thing.