Panzer General - Some Comments

Last updated 1996

Panzer General was a very popular war game that was published for the Wintel platform in 1994. It in turn was based on a game that was first created for one of the game consoles (like Nintendo or Sega). These are some comments I wrote up after playing the game for a couple of months.

Units to Buy for the Campaign Game

2nd Revision Jan 9, 1995

Note: Much as I enjoyed playing Panzer General, I must say that it does a very poor job of simulating real battles, especially later in the war. Early on, things don't seem so poorly weighted, but in later scenarios, the game behaves very poorly. So, the early scenarios are fun to play and not too distorted, the later scenarios are a joke and really very ahistorical. -- Colin 5/20/96

The following comments are based on my experiance playing the campaign game. I have played many (but not all) of the scenarios . At present I am trying the Washington DC 1945 scenario just for fun. I have been playing at the medium difficulty setting with hidden units, and although I started out playing with supplies on, I turned them off starting in 1941 (this does make the game easier for the German player).

1. Pioneers are the best infantry. Although they are expensive, they greatly superior to the heavy weapons infantry because they are immune to the "rugged defense" combat result. I have a 15 strength pioneer 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 pioneer can attack any city with near impunity. This unit makes a mockery out of defensive positions unless there are defensive artillery units still alive.
   
   
2. Over-strength units are worth their weight in gold. Over-strength 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 experience, 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 experienced 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 pioneer 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 my Stukas out of harms way at first. Also, I usually 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 useful. 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 anyway. 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 defense 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.
   
   The Bf110 is a better scout by far (scout range of 5 vs. 2 for the transport planes) but, since the Bf110 is a fighter bomber the temptation is always great to "just use him this one time as an attack plane" instead of as a scout. You are never tempted in this fashion by the FJ transport. Still, having used the Bf110, I do like it as a unit.
   
   
5. Keeping a "tame" enemy city. I used to make sure that I did not occupy one of the enemy victory cities after I have destroyed all the defenders. Instead, I stationed an infantry next to it (to keep the computer from building new units there) and each turn I bombed 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 experienced 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 CompuServe.
   
   

   Now that I have more experience with the game I am not so keen on the "tame" city. For one thing I now know how to keep a city from being accidentally taken by my forces. Also, I can keep the enemy away from the final city so I don't have to worry about large enemy forces retaking the final city. The "tame" city is more useful earlier on than it is later.

6. Bad units:
   • Trucks: a bad idea for infantry or any unit that needs to close with the enemy. Trucks are OK for transporting air defense units (but watch out for enemy planes, they really like to strafe trucks).
     
     
   • All towed artillery. The main reason is to avoid giving the enemy nice targets for his planes or artillery. Towed artillery is a prime target, while most SP artillery has a decent defense strength and is not such a great target.
     
     
   • All 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. I never found the range 1 artillery (the StuG units) to be very useful at all.
     
     
   • Most German Tanks: All pre-1940 German tanks are trash. In 1940 (Norway and France) the Panzer IVd is OK, I used them to attack soft targets and I had my Stukas attack the big tough enemy tanks. For 1941 you should upgrade to the IIIj which is barely capable of dealing with the T-34. As soon as the Tiger appears, I buy it. And then the Tiger II is just great, especially for defensive operations. It turns out that the early Panthers are vulnerable to air attack, so the enemy targets your Panthers, while they leave your Tiger II's alone. In Normandy my eight Tiger IIs just mauled the invaders. I even took the English bases by the end of that scenario. In the Bulge scenario, when you really have to cover some ground, the Tiger II is a bit slow and the speed of the Panther is very useful. The good side about the Bulge scenario is that the enemy doesn't get to use his planes much, so your Panther's are much safer. I like the Jagd Panther, it is cheap and fast, but it is not as good as the real thing (a tank).
     
     
   • Towed Anti-tank: These are useless units to the German player. Yes, they are cheap but they are essentially useless in comparison to good tank.
     
     
7. My force. Here is the force I had which won a major victory in the Moscow scenario, along with some comments from later battles.
   
   
   • Infantry: 4 pioneers, 3 heavy weapons (all on half tracks), 1 normal inf, 1 FJ (paratroops). I actually have more infantry than I need. If I could redo my force I would have just 6 pioneers and 1 FJ. I like having a cheap infantry that I leave behind at my initial victory cities "just in case". One scenario I nearly lost because I had no one in the rear and suddenly an enemy unit appeared out of thin air and took one of the victory cities. I was really sweating that last couple of turns as I frantically moved troops back to the city to take it (which I did on the very last turn).
     
     
   • 3 SIG artillery (one used to be rocket artillery but the range of two was not enough to offset the slight increase in soft attack strength). I would like to have four SIG.
     
     
   • 5 Pz IIIj tanks: I used to have 7 tank units 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 have six tank units (or more as the scenario allows).
     
     
   • 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. In a perfect world I would drop these and replace them with fighters, however, this is very expensive. In Normandy I had four of these AD units, the allies start out with a huge quantity of air units and unless you keep them away from your core units, you will be sorry.
     
     
   • 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. As time went on I had more fighters. In Normandy I had 6 and lost 2 before I finally shot down all the enemy planes.
     
     
   • 4 Stukas (Ju 87 D): these are my best weapons, they attack enemy artillery, tough enemy tanks, and occasionally, enemy air defense units. These are about the only weapon you have that can destroy the Matilda and the KV-1 tanks. Later in the game the Stuka is not so necessary, especially when you get the Tiger II. Still, it is always important to destroy enemy defensive artillery before you infantry makes an attack.
     
     
   • 2 Ju 88 bombers: these are left over from the Norway scenario. In battle, I use them to suppress 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. There are a number of scenarios when enemy ships show up (Anzio, Normandy, and many others). Since navel bombardment is a powerful weapon, the Ju 88s were very useful to me as I could kill the enemy ships fairly rapidly. In Normandy I managed to sink nearly all of the huge Allied fleet with my Ju 88s (the Stuka's helped out some).
     
     
   • 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). By Anzio, the last of my recon units was destroyed and I did not bother to replace them. As long as you make good use of your air units, you don't need them.
     
     
   • 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. The anti-tank unit turned out to be useless so I upgraded it to a Jagd Panther. The Jagd Panther was better, but not really worth the money.
     
     

This links to a site about Panzer General. It has some useful information.

Go on to the next page about Master of Orion II.