Panzer Corps 2 changes

*Panzer Corps 2* introduces a large number of **changes**, coming closer to *Panzer General 2*.

## What's changed?

**Aircraft**: Aircraft have been radically changed since the first game. In
Panzer Corps 2, every aircraft is assigned to an airfield (at the beginning
of a scenario, this is the airfield they are deployed on or adjacent to). They
can be ordered to attack enemies as they did in Panzer Corps 1, but at the
beginning of the next turn they will automatically return to their home base
to collect ammo and fuel. Aircraft can be assigned to a different airfield
by using the ‘Rebase’ button, and will automatically rebase if their airfield
is captured during a clear or cloudy weather turn. During bad weather,
aircraft cannot move at all (though this is an excellent time to give them
replacements), and will be destroyed entirely if their airfield is captured.
They will also be destroyed if their side loses control of all of their airfields
and aircraft carriers. As in Panzer Corps 1, aircraft carriers act as mobile
airfields, but now they may have seven aircraft attached to them. Strategic
bombers and jet aircraft may not be based on carriers.

**Support Fire**: Like artillery and anti-air guns in Panzer Corps 1, now anti-tank
guns can provide supporting fire to help defenders attacked by tanks and
other hard units. In addition, fighters can provide more than one instance
of support fire every turn, and are limited only by the amount of ammo they
carry. Naval units are also capable of support fire now: destroyers and capital
ships will fire upon adjacent enemy ground units when they attack friendly
ground units, and destroyers will fire against adjacent enemy submarines
whenever they attack a friendly warship. Finally, capital ships will also fire
on any warship within range that attacks a friendly naval transport.

**Core Slots**: In Panzer Corps 2, units cost varying amounts of core slots:
instead of every core unit requiring just one, heavier units can cost as many
as ten (and even more if overstrength). A core force composed entirely of
heavy tanks and bombers may be very powerful, but now it is going to be
forced to be much smaller than a more balanced force using cheaper units.

**Reserves**: ‘Reserves’ in Panzer Corps 2 no longer refer to units that have
been left out of a scenario. Instead, the reserve is now a special force into
which you may place units that are not needed for a particular map by
using the ‘Move to Reserve’ button. Units in reserve cannot be deployed on
the map, but do not fill up core slots either. Because of this mechanic, you
should always strive to deploy every unit you have either on the map or in
reserve to make the best use of your available core slots.

**Cheaper Upgrades**: In Panzer Corps 1, units could follow an ‘upgrade path’
(such as Panzer IVD to IVE) to upgrade units more cheaply, but following
an unrelated path (such as Panzer II to Panzer III) would cost the full unit’s
worth in prestige. In Panzer Corps 2, these restrictions on upgrade paths are
gone, and all units may upgrade for only the difference in prestige between
the two units. It is also possible to upgrade within related unit classes (such
as anti-tank to tank), although this comes at some cost to experience.

**Replacements**: During the deployment phase, green replacements
are no longer free, although they remain significantly cheaper than
elite replacements and cheaper again during the deployment phase.
Furthermore, during a scenario, a unit may only receive half of its maximum
strength in replacements in a single turn.

**Experience Stars**: Each experience star requires 1000 experience points
now, rather than 100. Each star provides an accuracy bonus to your units
and penalty to your enemies when they attack this unit. Some other units
receive additional bonuses from experience: recon units receive a greater
accuracy bonus than do other units, and experienced strategic bombers will
be able to destroy more fuel and ammo when they attack.

**Overstrength**: Overstrength is no longer tied to experience, but is purchased
when you purchase or upgrade a unit (so when buying a tank, you can
now choose to purchase it at 10, 11, 12 or up to 15 strength), by using the
‘Overstrength’ button. Overstrength units cost more core slots and prestige
than their normal strength counterparts. When an overstrength unit receives
replacements, it does so up to the higher strength it was purchased at (so
you can have a Panzer II with say 6 out of 11 strength points, and then buy
five replacements for it during a turn).

**Suppression**: Suppression losses are much more common in Panzer Corps
2, and can be caused by any attack, not just artillery and strategic bombers.
Suppression will be marked on the combat predictions in blue text when no
outright losses are expected. Suppression remains with a unit until the end
of the turn, not merely until the next time it fights. At the same time, each
next point of suppression is more difficult to achieve than the previous, so
it is much more difficult to fully suppress a unit.

**Retreats**: When you kill 66% of a unit’s unsuppressed strength, it will retreat.
Retreats can now occur over multiple hexes, but they will try to avoid enemy
zones of control and will never retreat into impassable terrain. Units that
have retreated will also have less movement points during the following
turn, or perhaps none at all (such as if they retreated into a river or into
an enemy zone of control), as they use up those movement points in the
retreat, following the usual movement rules. As in the first game, if a unit
cannot retreat (whether due to there being no available hex to retreat to, or
if it has run out of next turn’s movement points), it will surrender, awarding
the victor with a prestige bonus.

**Entrenchment**: Each hex still has an associated base entrenchment value
that will determine how entrenched a unit will be after they end their turn
on that hex. In Panzer Corps 2, units can no longer be reduced to a level of
entrenchment lower than the base value through combat, unless they are
forced to retreat and abandon the hex. Many units, including artillery and
strategic bombers, are now able to reduce multiple points of entrenchment
with a single attack, and military engineers help adjacent friendly units
ignore 50% of enemy entrenchment (including base entrenchment). When
military engineers attack, they still ignore all entrenchment, including base
value.

**Dismounting from Transports**: When a unit travels far enough that it must
use its attached transport, but not quite the maximum distance that
transport offers, it will automatically exit the transport immediately upon
reaching its destination, allowing it to fight, or provide support fire, in the
opponent’s turn as if it had never used the transport at all (although it
must give up its attack for this turn). When planning a unit’s movement,
hexes where this will occur will be marked with a small triangle next to the
transport symbol.

**Embarking and Disembarking**: Units seeking to use rail, sea or air transport
need not begin their turn in a train station/port/airfield, but may move into
that hex and then embark immediately provided they still have an unused
attack action. Similarly, they may disembark during the same turn that
they moved into a suitable hex. Once embarked, they will be able to move
immediately, freeing up the embarkation hex for other units.

**Heroes and Awards**: Heroes and Awards have been significantly improved in
Panzer Corps 2. Instead of providing a small combat bonus (e.g. +1 defence),
heroes now provide units with a special trait. For example, the ‘Survivor’ trait
prevents a unit from being destroyed unless it has been reduced to just one
strength point. Heroes are given at the beginning of every scenario after
the first, and can be assigned to a unit during the deployment phase, by
opening the unit details (the ‘i’ button below the unit’s portrait in the bottom
left corner of the screen, or alternatively by right-clicking a unit or using a
hotkey – I by default), then going to ‘Heroes’ and then ‘Assign’. Awards are
no longer merely cosmetic, and now give an appropriate stat boost when a
unit accomplishes a particular feat, such as destroying 100 strength points
of enemy aircraft (in that case, it will receive +1 air attack). A unit is limited
to three heroes (and a hero may only be associated with one unit at a time),
but there is no such restriction on the number of awards it may win.

**Capturing Flags**: Any unit, with the obvious exception of aircraft, may now
capture a flag from the enemy, even artillery, anti-air guns, and ships.

**Limited Undo**: The ‘Undo’ function is now limited on a per-turn or perscenario
basis. The exact number of undos may be set in the Advanced Options when beginning a game, and is disabled completely in multiplayer.
If you wish to use undo an infinite amount of times as in Panzer Corps 1, set Undo to ‘Unlimited’ in the Advanced Options.

**Bonus Difficulties**: Guderian, Manstein and Rommel modes are no longer
separate difficulty levels, but can be enjoyed as special rules that can
be selected under the Advanced Options when you begin a campaign,
labelled ‘Race Against Time’, ‘David vs Goliath’ and ‘Europe on a Shoestring’
respectively. They can now also be combined with each other and with the
regular difficulty levels, allowing further customisation of the challenges
you will face.

**Mass Attack**: Mass Attack can now give normal (-1) or double (-2) penalty
to enemy initiative, depending on the distance between the attacking unit
and the unit providing mass attack. If the distance is two hexes (implying an
attack from the flank or rear), the mass attack penalty is doubled.

**Combat Randomness**: The ‘randomness’ of combat, or variance of combat
results around the predicted results, can now be chosen by adjusting the
‘Combat Randomness’ slider in Advanced Options when you set up a game.
If you played with Chess mode in Panzer Corps 1, we recommend you set
this to zero. Similarly, Dice Chess is equivalent to setting the slider to 20,
and the default random setting is equivalent to 100.

## What’s new?

**Supply Hexes**: Important cities and other locations in Panzer Corps 2 are
designated as supply hexes, marked with a half-filled circle symbol. Instead
of manually resupplying your units with fuel and ammo, they will now be
automatically resupplied every turn that they can trace a path back to one
of these supply hexes without passing through enemy units, their zones
of control, or any impassable hexes. Supply hexes are also now the only
places where units may be upgraded, purchased, deployed or disbanded
outside of the deployment phase.

**Encirclements**: Encirclements are created whenever one side’s units,
and their zones of control, as well as any impassable terrain, surrounds
one or more enemy units, cutting them off from supply. Units that have
been encircled suffer significant combat penalties, including losses to
both accuracy (a new combat stat) and initiative, as well as additional
suppression every turn (which will not reset at the end of the turn as long
as the encirclement remains). They will also not receive any fuel or ammo,
and cannot be replaced, leaving them exposed if the encirclement is not
quickly broken.

**Accuracy**: Combat in Panzer Corps 1 was calculated on the assumption
that every ‘shot’ that a unit’s strength point made against an enemy it
was attacking would ‘hit’, with some of those hits translating into kills or
suppression for the enemy unit. In Panzer Corps 2 this is no longer true:
accuracy for most units is set at 50%, meaning only 50% of those shots
actually hit the enemy unit, and even fewer of those become kills. Accuracy
can however be increased with experience and adjacent friendly recon
units, and can be decreased by enemy entrenchment, bad weather, and their
experience level.

**Splitting and Merging Units**: Units can now be split into two equally sized
smaller units, allowing them to cover more ground and potentially aid in the
creation of encirclements, at the cost of one additional core slot. Units can
be split by pressing the ‘Split’ button and then selecting a suitable hex for
half of the unit to move into. Later when you wish to recombine the units,
make sure they are within movement radius of each other and then, with
one half selected, click the other half to merge them into the hex of the
unit not presently selected. If one half of the unit is killed, the other half will
consider itself a full-sized unit again but will require replacements to restore
its strength.

**Exchange Units**: Units that are in adjacent hexes can now ‘swap’ positions
provided they both have an unspent attack action. To do so, select one unit
and then shift-click the unit you wish to swap with.

**Dirt Airfields**: Some scenarios include a smaller type of airfield, known as
the dirt airfield. Dirt airfields work exactly the same as regular airfields in
Panzer Corps 2, but are limited to hosting only five aircraft, and no jets or
strategic bombers, at the same time.

**Captured Equipment**: When non-infantry units are forced to surrender, their
equipment will now be captured, and stored in the Purchase screen. If you
acquire 10 strength points’ worth of equipment, it is possible to purchase
‘captured’ units, turning the enemy’s guns against them. Captured units are
used the same way as any others, but any replacements they are given will
be taken from the pool of captured equipment (so you may want to capture
more than 10 points before building them), and when that pool runs out
the unit can not receive further replacements until more of that equipment
is captured. Note that captured units cannot be obtained in the main
campaign by occupying specific hexes or other bonus objectives offered
in the first game.

**Prototype Units**: Occasionally some particularly powerful units such as the
Tiger I will become available for purchase before the date that they entered
service historically. Such units are known as prototype units and, like
captured equipment, will be limited to a given finite pool of replacements.
Once they enter production, this restriction on replacements will be
lifted and they will operate like any other unit. If you choose the ‘Industry
Connections’ trait at the beginning of a game, you will receive prototype
units as purchase options regularly.

**Recon Bonus**: When a recon unit is placed adjacent to an enemy unit and
then another one of your units attacks that enemy, your attackers will now
receive an accuracy bonus. This bonus can also be obtained by flying a
recon plane (found in the tactical bomber class in the purchase screen)
over the enemy before attacking.

**Overrun Attack**: When a tank (or some other units with the ‘Overrun’ trait),
kills an enemy unit that is not backed up by support fire, or in close terrain,
it will not count as that unit’s attack action and if the unit has any remaining
movement points it will be able to move again. This can be used multiple
times the same turn, allowing tanks to pick off large numbers of weakened
enemies at once and potentially limited only by the tank’s ammo supply.
Note that if the attacker takes any losses during the attack, it will not count
as an overrun attack.

**Snowy Ground**: In scenarios taking place in warmer climates, several turns
of snow will result in the ground becoming snowy instead of frozen. Snowy
ground is still an obstacle to movement similar to frozen, and rivers do not
freeze over in such conditions.

**High Ground Bonus**: Units on hills and mountains now benefit from +1
spotting. Ranged units also receive +1 range, while non-ranged units
receive an accuracy bonus when defending against attackers coming from
low ground.

**Commander Traits**: At the beginning of a campaign or scenario, you will be
given a choice between a large number of player traits, both positive and
negative (picking negative traits will allow you to select more positive traits
as well). Some of these are based on Steam achievements from the first
game (such as ‘Denied Air Force’), and can have significant effects on how
you build your core force or play scenarios.

**Submarines**: Submarines can now use the ‘switch’ function to submerge or
surface. Submerged submarines have reduced speed and spotting, and are
exempt from zones of control, but have better ground and air defence than
when they operate on the surface.

## What’s Gone?

**Decisive Victories**: There is no distinction between Decisive and Marginal
Victories in Panzer Corps 2, so you will not have to worry about winning
scenarios several turns early in order to enjoy the ‘Axis victory’ path of the
campaign. Winning scenarios quickly will still grant you the prestige from
all remaining turns however, as well as a further bonus on top of that for
every turn early that you win (from 1% for winning on the last turn, up to
200% if you win with twenty turns to spare).

**SE Units**: The special units that used to be awarded to you throughout the
campaign have been removed. Instead, Panzer Corps 2 offers new ways to
make your units special, including SE-style camouflage (as well as many
other designs) and heroes that reduce core slot requirements to zero.

**Reform Units Option**: Units can no longer be brought back from the dead,
and new purchases will be needed if you wish to replace a destroyed unit.
A list of the fallen may be found in the Unit List in a scenario, by clicking on
the skull icon.

**Submarine Evasions**: In Panzer Corps 2, submarines will never randomly
evade attacks. No longer will you miss several attacks due to bad luck.

**Neutralising Flags**: Strategic Bombers cannot ‘neutralise’ a city or airfield in
Panzer Corps 2. However, they still deliver suppression losses to units and
destroy fuel and ammo supplies.

**Rugged Defence**: Entrenched enemy units cannot benefit from random
defensive bonuses in Panzer Corps 2. The regular benefits from being
entrenched still apply however.

**River Boats**: These small naval units are not present in Panzer Corps 2.