* fixed: "new campaign" uses up way too much VRAM (crashes on certain cards)

Cheers!

The update fixes a couple of issues (see below) and adds some gentle balancing updates to the Victory in the East (Berlin) and Balaton 45 campaigns.

* ger_mot_dlc9 sheet render fix
* enlarged playable in balaton scenario
* river fix (NW of Slonim)
* sov_spec_dlc9_opt "made a little juicier"
* removed amphibious flag from sov_spec_dlc9_opt
* bridge fix (Dresden)
* enlarged playable area in Balaton scenario
* ger_mot_dlc9 sheet render fix
* ss_inf_dlc9 sheet render fix
* fix exploit in Ploesti scenario

We're in a reflexive mood as we're wrapping up our 5-year journey to depict all the main theaters of WWII in Europe. Today I'd like to personally thank the designers whose dedication and love went into making these campaigns the epic journeys that they are: Daniel Mellbin, Charles Berger, Krešimir Čuturić, František Průša, and Hexaboo. Thanks a bunch guys, and remember: this achievement, the 9-DLC, continent-and-war-spanning wargame would never, ever exist without you.

...

Also, please find the developer notes on the Berlin DLC below. You may call them a post-mortem, rather than a dev diary - we were too busy before the release day at any rate.

If I may comment on the notes, I find them unnecessarily defensive if anything. I am reproducing Hexaboo's text without changes though.

The Berlin DLC is a great addition to the DLC lineup, and is doing justice to this final chapter of the story of WWII in Europe. Complaints about unit stats and similar are, to me, myopic at best. We should, in my humble opinion, respect the designers of these wargames (and each DLC *is* a wargame of its own) - in the same way we would respect a book author or a film director.

I don't see how anyone would prefer some sterile lineup of cookie cutter DLCs to the broad variety of approaches to wargame design that we actually got: the staggering losses of Moscow 41, the wild alt-history of Desert Fox, the exhiliration-to-exhaustion arc of Barbarossa. I wouldn't have it any other way!

Anyway, enough of me, I'll let Hexaboo take it from here... cheers from Tomislav!

As we set about working on the campaigns of Berlin, and agreed on their timeframes, it was clear to us that the Soviet and German units in the game simply no longer represented the changing realities on the front. Actually, that was already kind of obvious in Kursk, but for that campaign we decided to keep everything mostly as it had been. For Victory in the East, and Balaton, things needed to change. The Red Army needed to become the well-organised and supplied machine that it was, albeit with rising manpower shortages, whereas the Germans had to be increasingly scraping the bottom of the barrel, dipping into the reserve army and mobilising various militia formations. And all that making sure that the game still had plenty of challenge to offer!



And thus came the new Soviet infantry, with a 4 or even 5 attack rating. This might seem like much, but these units are limited to 5 steps (manpower shortages!), which only results in a 20 or 25 total attack, which is below the 28 of full-strength German divisions. So it’s a fair boost in the power of these guys, but not something that’ll send them into orbit. The defence, notably, hasn’t changed, so Soviet infantry can be somewhat vulnerable to counterattacks, which leads us to the other new feature of the DLC.

The 1-specialist Soviet units are finally gone! This something that has always felt very constraining, because of how tinkering around with specialists is such an enjoyable part of Unity of Command. So we knew right from the start that we’d raise the limit to 2 specs, and then there was a booming voice in the sky that suggested we don’t nickel-and-dime it, and just go all-three. So we have, and you can load 3 specialists into every Soviet infantry unit out there. Later testing revealed that three was a bit too much of a good thing for tank, mechanised, and cavalry units, so we had to downgrade them to 2 specialists.

Another balancing idea that went into Berlin is the ‘debasing’ of the statistics the specialists have. If you want a recipe for a snowballing disaster, keep the statistics of the specialists as-is, and suddenly let the player have two or three times more of them. So to make a situation like this workable you either make the opponent a lot stronger, or do what we did: halve the stats! The twist here is that in doing so, we always rounded the stats up, especially the important armour and artillery shifts. This resulted in two ‘new’ specs stronger than one ‘old’ spec overall. Additionally, specialists in the game come not just their raw stats, but with functions and special abilities, and being able to combine these in a single unit is a huge benefit of its own. So what if they are half-strength? You can have something like an engineer/special forces/artillery combo in a unit, with all the associated perks. The bottom line is that 2 or 3 new Soviet specs are effectively equivalent to 1.5 or 2 old specs, plus choices, choices, choices.



Meanwhile, the German infantry got split into three tiers. As you can see, this was a great excuse to also give them new models (partially based on what we’d already had for Desert Rats/Fox).

Tier 1 is your good-old infantry, covering virtually all of the units that were around in Kursk, except for a little defensive armour hike. You can say it is to represent the anti-tank capacity the Germans were flooding into their forces, but mostly, it’s there just to add some gameplay spice. Tier 2 is the same as the old guys defensively, but is much less capable in attack, and these troops were intended primarily to represent the mobilised reserve army (Grenadiers/Volksgrenadiers), but we’ve frequently used Tier 2 infantry for various ad-hoc units, blocking detachments, nearly-destroyed units, and so on.

Finally, Tier 3 is for all sorts of glorious 1945 German militia. Low stats, low speed: these guys just sit there and hope for the best. In Berlin, in addition to the obvious Volkssturm, you can see them as territorial militias, construction battalions, factory security, fort regiments, firefighters, and anyone else who could hold a Panzerfaust. All this means that the Germans are made weaker on paper, but you still have to choose your targets carefully, as Tier 1 stops being the primary type only very late in the campaign.

Meanwhile, the stats the tanks and mechanised units had on both sides in Kursk felt mostly alright. The Soviets got their specialist buff, which is nice enough, and keeping German tanks and tank grenadiers strong is a reasonable representation of historical reality, and most importantly, the best way to make sure the AI remains capable of launching damaging and dangerous counterattacks.



As a final point for today, let’s talk about something people have been wondering about since release. Yes, what about the bloody prices?! Those of you who have played Kursk may have noticed how easy it is to hoard up thousands of prestige by the end of that campaign. From the game design perspective, that is a problem. This means that, on the one hand, the player has virtually unlimited resources to snowball, and on the other, prestige is no longer a resource that forces the player to make interesting decisions about what to buy, and what not to buy. In Kursk, the 1-specialist limit was a bit of a moderating factor, but with 3-spec Soviets in Berlin, it all went out the window, because you can now technically stuff your infantry full of ISU-152s and make all challenge go away.

To make this work better, we did a study of the amount and type of losses usually sustained in the campaign during testing. This gave us a good-enough picture of how much the player needed to replenish their force to roughly its original state. And with these data in our hands, we set up two price ranges for specialists (and steps). The first range is the low-price stuff, it’s the stuff that is commonly lost and that you’ll need to ‘replenish’ your force. It’ll still eat up most of your prestige, but you are virtually guaranteed to afford this. The second range is the premium specialists, which you don’t necessarily need, but are there for you if you want to give a particular unit extra punch, a bit more of that armour or artillery. These are priced in a way that prevents the player from buying more than a handful per conference, and makes these specs compete for prestige with other types of purchases, i.e. paid HQ level-ups and cards, which is ultimately the point. Get that prestige account as close to zero as possible, and make shopping a bit more of a meaningful event.

So, with these burning questions out of the way, let’s end this post. Happy 5-year anniversary everyone, and until the next post, when we’ll talk about discarded campaign variants, HQs, and historical research!

Berlin DLC is now available!

Lead the Red Army on its historic march to Berlin, facing off against the remnants of the Nazi regime.

Command the Soviet forces as they drive westward, determined to complete the liberation of Europe from the Nazis. With new units, maps, and historical events, Berlin DLC offers the classic operational experience you've come to expect and love from Unity of Command II.

Berlin DLC includes two separate campaigns:

Soviet Victory in the East campaign: the full late-war Soviet experience with 25 scenarios, starting in January 1944 and culminating in the fall of Berlin.

Balaton 45 Axis mini-campaign: the last-ditch offensive in Hungary and Romania in 1945, a 7-scenario banger with an alt-history branch, a hallmark of Unity of Command II DLC.

...

From the team here at 2x2 Games: thanks for sticking with us for wonderful 5 years with our game. ❤️

Cheers!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2711100/Unity_of_Command_II__Berlin/

Minor fixes and content changes.

With the beta testers hard at work for the last couple of days, we can now announce the release date and show the scenario charts for the two campaigns included in the upcoming Berlin DLC.

The Berlin DLC releases on October 24th, and includes two late-war campaigns with 32 scenarios total. The price will be $11.99.

Soviet Victory in the East campaign: 25 scenarios, starting in January 1944 and culminating in the fall of Berlin.



Balaton 45 Axis mini-campaign: the last-ditch offensive in Hungary and Romania in 1945, a 7-scenario campaign with an alt-history branch.



Enjoy!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2711100/Unity_of_Command_II__Berlin/

Unity of Command II completes its mission, covering all major WWII campaigns in Europe!

The Berlin DLC is content-rich again, with 32 scenarios included. The price will be $11.99.

Soviet Victory in the East campaign: the full late-war Soviet experience with 25 scenarios, starting in January 1944 and culminating in the fall of Berlin.

Balaton 45 Axis mini-campaign: the last-ditch offensive in Hungary and Romania in 1945, a 7-scenario banger with an alt-history branch, a hallmark of Unity of Command II DLC.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2711100/Unity_of_Command_II__Berlin/

The DLC will be released on Steam in Q4/2024.

Cheers!

* restored the "Second Front" campaign that was accidentally left out in the previous build
* fix: crash when unit has no legal positions to move to (dunes)
* fix: crash with movement bubble on map boundary

Cheers!

Fix: the game displayed placeholder models for certain types of security units

The Kursk DLC is now live, and you can enjoy this 31-scenario work of beauty from Hexaboo and Frank. Here is the second part of their dev diary:

In our first dev diary, we offered you a look at what you can expect from the two campaigns of Unity of Command 2’s latest Kursk DLC, and by this point, if you’re interested in it at all, you’re sure to be well-familiar with all its specs and features. So for this dev diary, we’ve decided to share a few insights into the personal stories and design process and ideas of Frank and Hexaboo, for whom this expansion is their first.


Hexaboo
It all began last autumn when Daniel, one of the game’s developers, approached me and asked (making sure there was a little suspense) if I wanted to make a DLC campaign for Unity of Command. Which was a bit surprising, given that the last time I made anything for a video game had been about twenty years ago, which I made sure Daniel knew.

Nevertheless, a ‘soft yes’ was said, with a few ideas for what that campaign could be. A mini-campaign dedicated to the Spanish Civil War was a less-obvious favourite at the time, particularly attractive because I know the language and could get deeper into the research. But then everything froze, as 2x2 were busy putting their finishing touches on Desert Fox.



Fast forward to December 2022, and the vague proposal of ‘what if you make a campaign’ crystallised into ‘let’s do Kursk’. Which is where it all began. Given some initial hiatus, figuring out how to work with the scenario editor and sharing thoughts about what unit parameters and new sets of specialists we could use in Kursk, I took the ‘canonical’ list of Red Army operations covering a period of about six months starting with the Battle of Kursk, arranged them month by month and put it all on a map. As you can see, there was a fair bit of space left for ahistorical battles, but 16 scenarios was our limit, so it was an easy decision to keep things between 4 July and 1 December 1943, and strictly historical.



For half a year, talks and videos about this period of the war became the background noise in my home. Books and memoirs, too, gave a general understanding of the events, as well as the mood on a personal level, but everything you see on the map in the game — individual units, their relative strengths, even the locations of individual specialists — would have simply not happened without archival documents, including the massive daily German Situation East maps, captured Army Group Centre maps, online collections like Lexicon der Wehrmacht, and even the occasional browsing session in the Bundesarchiv.

But there is no way I couldn’t mention the fact that Soviet military documents from the period were declassified wholesale back in 2008, and in recent years, Pamyat Naroda (‘People’s Memory’) has become a vast and continuously growing repository of digitised stuff*, with first-hand operational maps, often meticulously prepared, sometimes at as low a level as the regiment, and obviously colossal quantities of other documents. So when I wondered what weather to set in the Kiev mission, I looked up Voronezh Front’s operations record log for late November, found the reported temperatures and allusions to ‘roads only passable by tracked vehicles’, and BAM! the scenario is full of dirt now! You can rely on us going the whole nine yards, to make your playing experience a gloopy living nightmare!

* As an aside, if you happen to read Russian, you can easily choose a random research topic and become a citizen historian. Because you wouldn’t believe the incredible amounts of overlooked original materials that are really out there.


Frank
When creating the initial concept for the campaign structure of Zitadelle 43, a sister campaign to Kursk, we were looking at a very clear design problem. The Germans were on their back foot for most of this period of the war, and besides some of its summer offensive, the Wehrmacht really didn’t have a great time. So we tried to figure out how to turn this period into actual scenarios, and eventually a full campaign set from the German perspective.

In a bid to escape the obvious and terrifyingly repetitive pattern of fighting endless retreat scenarios, I looked for the most interesting and fluid offensive or defensive battles waged by Germany’s generals in 1943. This effort proved largely successful, especially thanks to German operational maps and digitised maps from the Soviet archives, leading to a relatively short but original historical line of scenarios for the German Zitadelle campaign, featuring the work of many well-known commanders like Erhardt Raus, Hermann Balck, Walter Model, Paul Hausser, and others. I focused on the engagements where the Germans either decided to stand and fight or even took to the offensive again, even if in a limited capacity, making it possible for the player to mirror or even surpass the achievements of real, historical generals.


The Zitadelle campaign branches into some alternative history, offering a couple of new fronts, and one of the trips it takes the player on is to the north. Specifically to Karelia and the almost encircled Leningrad. But the Germans aren’t the only ones flexing their muscles here, as the Finns make their entrance as well. Bringing back the Finnish army for a few scenarios let a breath of fresh creative air in, with Goran, our talented artist, making a new and stunning model for the Finnish armoured division and the motorised infantry Jaakari unit. Facing plenty of terrain obstacles and led by two persistent HQs, the Finns make sure the alt-history branch in the north runs well.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Europe, the Allies also have got some new toys of their own. The co-belligerent Italian army makes a return in this campaign, this time as the opponent of the Wehrmacht. They have their own HQ, commanders, and specialist steps, and I hope you find them to be memorable opponents. Not leaving the Axis empty-handed though, since after all, they were supported by a number of Italian units still loyal to their cause on the Apennine Peninsula. These include, the paratroopers of the Nembo division, or ‘La Decima’, appearing in that game as the RSI Paracadutisti special forces specialist available to the Germans in limited numbers in Italy. There are also a number of captured and re-purposed formerly Italian vehicle specialists like the Semovente or M15/42.


It would also be unfair to not mention the amazing and diligent work our colleague Daniel invested into the game’s maps. Thanks to him, the main Europe map has expanded into Eastern Karelia reaching the White Sea and the town of Belomorsk. There is now also a new and gorgeous map of the Island of Leros and a more detailed map of Ukraine created specifically to accommodate this expansion. His advice and coordination skills were crucial to making sure that the campaigns you get in Kursk DLC are as high-quality as possible.

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And thus, 9 months in the making, Kursk DLC is about to fall eagerly into the hands of the players. We sincerely hope you enjoy playing these campaigns at least as much as we have enjoyed taking this long creative journey, and who knows, it may not be the last time you find us posting dev diaries and feeding you tiny glimpses of our work?

Cheers!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2307940/Unity_of_Command_II__Kursk/