Some thoughts on Panzer General
by Colin Glassey
1st Revision December 5, 1994
You can redistribute this as long as you mention the author.
The following comments are based on my experiance playing the
campaign game. I have played: Poland (2), Norway, France (2),
Balkens, Crete, and Russia (3). I just finished the Moscow
scenario. I am playing at the medium difficulty setting with
hidden units, and although I started out playing with supplies
on, I turned them off in the Balkens and the Russian scenarios
(this does make the game easier for the German player).
1) Pioniers are the best infantry. Although they are expensive,
they greatly superior to the heavy weapons infantry because they
are immune to the "rugged defence" combat result. I have a 15
strength pionier which is able to completely eliminate a Russian
strength 10 infantry unit, entrenched to level 8, in one attack
without suffering any losses. A 15 strength pionier can attack
any city with near impunity.
2) Overstrength units are worth their weight in gold.
Overstrength units are usually able to eliminate their enemy
counter-parts with just a single attack. This is especially
valuable when your fighters are able to shoot down enemy
fighters in one attack, so the enemy can't retreat them and
rebuild them. You can gain air-superiority that much quicker
and free up your Stukas for wide ranging air support missions.
Strength 15 units tend to attack first, because they have more
experiance, and since they do so much damage, they don't tend to
suffer any losses.
Because of their great effect, I make sure I spend the last 5
turns adding elite replacements to my experianced units so I can
bring as many as I can up to full strength. This is quite
expensive to do, especially for Stukas and fighters, so some
hard choices must be made. I make fighters my top priority
since getting air superiority is essential for most German
victories. Infantry and Tank units are next on the list. Full
strength pionier units are great offensive units, as are tanks.
Stukas are a lower priority because I usually have them sitting
on an air field at the start of the game. Before you shoot down
the enemy fighters they will concentrate on killing your Stukas,
so I keep them out of harms way at first. Also, I usualy have a
fair number of prestige points at the start of a scenario (by
virtue of major or minor victories in the previous scenario).
Recon units, though cheap to upgrade, are very low priority
because they are supposed to go out and nose around, so they
tend to take losses.
3) If you play with supply rules off (as I have started to do),
the German self propelled artillery becomes much more usefull.
With supply rules on, the first German SPA has only 3 rounds of
Ammo. This makes the SIG greatly inferior to the Stuka, and
very vulnerable to counter attack. With the ammo supply no
longer a factor, the artillery can come into its own as the
prime source of battle support, not subject to weather
conditions. I am not convinced about the realism of the supply
rules anyways. Halting a unit for a day or a week to take on
replacements is reasonable, but not for resupply. Who is in
charge of the logistics here, the three stooges?
4) Scouting with paratroops. I use my FJ and one normal
infantry to do scouting, once the enemy fighters have all been
shot down. I scout by flying over an enemy city. As long as
you end up 6 hexes away from the city, you are safe from any
enemy air defence units. Sometimes, towards the end of a
scenario, I will land the FJ to take a weakly held enemy city,
but the scouting role these planes provide is quite valuable. I
suppose I could buy a couple of Bf110s instead.
5) Keeping a "tame" enemy city. I now make sure that I do not
occupy one of the enemy victory cities after I have destroyed
all the defenders. Instead, I station an infantry next to it
(to keep the computer from building new units there) and each
turn I bomb it with my Ju 88s. If I use two bombers I can knock
off 40 to 80 prestige points a turn. The other big advantage to
this is that the scenario ends when I want it to end. So I can
build up my experianced forces to the best of my ability and
then end the scenario (hopefully still with a major victory). I
picked up this idea from one of the player comments on CServe.
6) Bad units: Trucks: a bad idea for infantry or any unit that
needs to close with the enemy. Bf110s: They may be good for
scouting but they are useless for attacking ground troops.
Artillery with a range of 1 or 2: you need the range of three to
stay out of the way of your own infantry and out of range of the
enemy artillery. In Poland, all German tanks are trash. In
Norway and then France you should upgrade to the IVd. In Kiev
you should upgrade to the IIIj. Eventually you get the Tiger,
and then the Panther A! Most anti-tank units are useless in the
early scenarios because you are never on the defensive.
7) My force. The force I have which just won a major victory in
the Moscow scenario consists of the following:
4 pioniers, 3 heavy weapons (all on half tracks), 1 normal inf,
1 FJ (paratroop). I actually have more infantry than I need.
If I could redo my force I would have 6 pioniers and 1 FJ.
3 SIG artillery (one used to be rocket artillery but the range
of 2 was not enough to offset the slight increase in soft attack
strength). I would like to have one more of SIG.
5 tanks: I used to have 7 but I lost 2 in the first Russia
scenario (those T-34s and KV-1s can chew up your IVd very fast).
I would like to get one tank.
2 88mm air defense units: at the start of each scenario the
enemy planes come swarming out, but they stay away from the AD
units and my fighters. If I could redo my force I would drop
these and replace them with fighters, however, this is very
expensive.
4 FW 190a fighters: essential for getting air superiority, the
strength 15 fighters can also do some serious damage to soft
targets that aren't entrenched.
4 Stukas (Ju 87 D): these are my best weapons, they attack enemy
artillery, tough enemy tanks, and occasionally, enemy air
defence units. These are about the only weapon you have that
can destroy the Matilda and the KV-1 tanks.
2 Ju 88 bombers: these are left from the Norway scenario. In
battle, I use them to supress units defending key locations).
They aren't the most effective units but they help keep down the
number of enemy units later in the game by strategic bombing.
2 recon units: I used to have 3, they keep getting hammered. In
a perfect world I would drop both of these and replace them with
Bf 110s but these sure are cheaper (and in Poland, they are
about as effective as the worthless Pz I, Pz II, and Pz 38
tanks).
1 88mm anti-tank unit: things were looking grim for a bit in the
Kiev scenario so I bought this to shore up the southern forces.
Normally the anti-tank unit is not usefull.
