I strongly suggest you play the campaign several times on your own on lower difficulties before following this walkthrough. If you are new to the game, check my Tips for Beginners guide on Steam and at least discover each scenarios events and flow by yourself first. Some information here may spoil the fun of discovery.

To me the Grand Campaign East is the most interesting and challenging, and the more epic campaign. It offers many choices for units upgrade paths and core building strategies.

My main goal is to show some guidance for players who struggle with the campaign or specific scenarios, as well as provide food for though for the more experienced players. Above all, I hope to show some good strategies and tactics and I think they should be solid in any lower difficulties, moreover this will provide some references and pointers for the grand campaign. Hence this guide is intended as a general Grand Campaign East guide rather than a guide for specific settings. Yet I plan to reap all possible benefits from playing in Chess mode. For example if the combat prediction says zero loss for me, I might fire right away, whereas with the RNG I might add more suppression. There is not one single best way to play the game, it’s up to you to choose a difficulty setting and house rules that work for you.

The base game as 5 difficulty levels up to Field Marshall (FM), then there are 3 special unlockable difficulty levels. And finally an Ultimate difficulty combines the 3 special difficulties of the base game. The combination of the three makes for a formidable challenge, akin to what is called Nighmare difficulty in other games.

- Rommel, you earn only 50% prestige points. This is manageablen indeed once you are familiar with the game I recommend Rommel as the standard difficulty setting.
- Manstein, each enemy units has +5 strength points. This not only make the enemies tougher to kill, but more importantly it makes the AI much more aggressive, as the AI usually only attacks when the combat predictions favor it. And obviously +5 strength increase the AI predicted damage.
- Guderian, each scenario last 5 less turns. On scenarios with many turns this is not a major problem, but in sharp contrast for scenario with a low turns number this can be extremely hard.

Chess Mode neutralize the RNG altogether. Most of the time I play with the RNG, but here, the main reason I choose Chess mode is because I find it is a great tool for study. You can reload as much as you want but you won’t get any better die rolls. If you want to have better results you must improve your tactics and strategies. It also makes it easier to compare one scenario playthrough to another.

It is somewhat easier than with the RNG, but certainly harder than RNG with reloads. In practice you might take less damage if you are careful, but on the other end you also tend to do less damage. Which is a problem in Ultimate with stronger enemies and less turns on the clock. Moreover using Chess mode I will set some extra challenges for myself along the way.

So playing with un-modded Panzer Corps Gold edition, rules 1.20.
The challenge is reload as much as you want and try to get the best result. I might reload poor heroes, but I won’t reload to get defender surprise when the AI attack. Above all this is a simple rule anyone can follow without having someone watching over your shoulder to see how you handle the wild RNG.

Please note that this guide is for CG East in Ultimate difficulty and Chess Mode, which is a big topic in itself. And not to discuss other campaigns. If you so desire that’s totally fine but please go make your own guide.

39-1 Poznan

39-2 Danzig Corridor

39-3 Lodz

39-4 Piatek

39-5 Kampinsoka Forest

39-6 Modlin

39-7 Warsaw South

39-8 Spoils of War

39-9 Oslo

39-10 Lillehammer

39-11 Narvik

40-1 Eben Emael

40-2 Albert Canal

40-3 The Hague

40-4 Sedan

40-5 Stonne

40-6 Wassigny

40-7 Amiens

40-8 Dunkirk

40-9 Reims

40-10 Dijon

40-11 Maginot Line

41-1 Belgrade

41-2 Metaxas Line

41-3 Crete Airborne

41-4 Minsk

41-5 Smolensk

41-6 Ostrov

41-7 Novgorod

41-8 Leningrad

41-9 Vyazma

41-10 Streets of Moscow

41-11 Demyansk Pocket

42-1 Vitebsk

42-2 Kharkov

42-3 Simferopol

42-4 Sevastopol Assault

42-5 Voronezh

42-6 Novoanninsky

42-7 Ilovlya

42-8 Buzinovka Depot

42-9 Storming Stalingrad

42-10 Stalingrad Docks

42-11 Stalingrad Ruins

42-12 Kotelnikovo

43-1 Kharkov

43-2 Belgorod

43-3 Orel

43-4 Yakovlevo

43-5 Oboyan

43-6 Kursk Armoury South

43-7 Prohkorovka

43-8 Dnipropetrovsk

43-9 Kremenchug

43-10 Kiev

44-1 Korsun Pocket

44-2 Korsun Breakout

44-3 Jassy-Kishinev

44-4 Poltava South

44-5 Mogilev South

44-6 Babruysk South

44-7 Minsk south

44-8 Vilna South

44-9 Warsaw Uprising South

44-10 Return to Kishinev

44-11 Budapest

45-1 Goldap

45-2 Pelleninkin

45-3 Parck

45-4 Laptau

45-5 Osterode

45-6 Poznan

45-7 Breslau

45-8 Budapest

45-9 Seelow Heights

45-10 Berlin


45-11 Berlin Redux

45-12 Epilogue

- The key point I want to highlight in this walkthrough, is that you can play aggressively without bloodying your units. As a matter of fact, despite playing with 5 less turns per scenario and facing opponents with +5 strength (because of Ultimate difficulty) I managed to find ways to get decisive victories while almost never taking attacks that incurred damage for my units. Obviously if you play with the RNG you will get some damage even when the combat prediction mentions no damage. But there are no reasons to initiate combat predicting adverse effects for your units. There are a very few exceptions like 1939-6 Modlin scenario for example, where assaulting the final fort may require some casualties.

- On your turns you should strives to make attacks that yield no return damage. Then on the opponent turns you should be aware that the AI usually don’t make attacks which predict more return damage from you than the AI will inflict on your units. So showing your muscles is often good enough to discourage any attacks altogether.

- I cannot overstate the importance of suppression. Suppressed enemy steps don’t return fire, so even with unfavorable dice they can’t cause return damage. Artillery is the favored way of suppressing the enemy, but don’t underestimated the value of strategic bombers, they are weak early on, but they get really good with experience.

- Other ways to improve your combat predictions is to use mass attack bonuses and to reduce enemy entrenchment level, even if the attack cause no damage. For example a fighter attacking a heavily entrenched target will often causes 0, or at best 1 damage, still it reduces the entrenchment by one level making any further attacks easier. Units initiative is a key value, the higher the initiative differential is the higher the percentage of your strength steps fire before the enemy steps roll their dice for return fire.

- Units experience is extremely important higher experience means increased units values, check my experience guide for a complete breakdown. Gaining an experience level by itself gives more benefit than purchasing the extra strength point. And obviously combining extra experience levels with overstrength is extremely powerful.

- Whenever you have auxiliary units, they should take damage before your core units. Here it is important to be aware that the AI, usually, attacks the target on which it can inflict the most damage. So if you have a unit in a bad spot put an auxiliary in a worse situation, like in a river or in transport mode.

- Understanding the implications of spotting ranges and fog of war is also critical for success. If the enemy don’t see you, either he will not attack at all or if he attacks it will be in a sub-optimal way.
Moreover you can also use the spotting rules to direct the enemy the way you want, in particular to set ambushes.

- It is also worth knowing that the AI always moves units following a strict order:
artillery in position may fire,
recon,
ships,
strategic bombers, tactical bombers, fighters,
tanks,
infantry,
anti-air,
anti-tank,
and finally artillery.
Units in landing ships move according to their own type, that is infantry in landing ship move in the infantry segment.

- The AI behaviors are mostly deterministic, hence more or less predictable. In the same situation it will make the same moves. Nevertheless some unexpected events like weather change or rugged defense may change its course of actions. Yet sometimes an apparently innocuous move on the other side of the battlefield may change AI behavior. Finally, though I can’t assert it for sure, I have the feeling that when the AI smells blood it becomes more aggressive. I mean in a certain situation the AI may not attack a position, but if you give it some target on another part of the map it may make attacks on units that were previously safe.

- Making a good setup is important, as it helps you to a good start. Even as an experienced player whenever I make a setup, I can improve over my first idea. Knowing the positions of the enemy is extremely useful. Just put your units on the map following your first idea, then try to incrementally improve on the initial setup. In particular Range or Movement heroes may allows for more options.

- Then obviously your global scenario strategy is paramount, and here again there are often room for improvement on your first idea. Some scenarios are strategically straightforward and success lies mainly in tactical optimization. But others are much more complex and fights can go in many directions, so keeping focus becomes crucial. For example in 1940-6 Wassigny, I was not satisfied with my first playthrough, so I replayed and reached the final objective 3 full turns earlier which was a big difference.

- Finally, if you play with reduced prestige income, which you should once you are familiar with the game, you want to have a good purchase and upgrade plan for the whole campaign. Skipping some upgrade branches can result in massive prestige saving. You don’t need to upgrade to each new available equipment especially if this is an out of family upgrade. Moreover as overstrength points get increasingly more expensive, try to avoid boosting units to 14 or 15 strength if you plan to change family afterward. Conversely once you know you’ll stay in family until the campaign end you can push to higher strength.

- Forcing surrenders is an important way to get prestige. And disbanding captured equipment is also a good way in particular because it is neither affected by the difficulty setting reduction nor by the Soft Cap penalty.

Completing and editing this series of videos was a massive endeavor. So if you find it useful please give it a like.