Some general discussion about this game

[rsunley]

Hello everyone - first time poster but I think this is the appropriate forum for this.

I was one of the contest winners, so I got the game for free .. anyway, I've been playing the full campaign game from September 1939 as the Axis.

In general I think this title has quite a lot going for it but there are quite a number of issues that I wanted to raise. It may well be that some of them are addressed in the next patch but there are some points which are probably more design related.

I am trying to be constructive, this is in no way any kind of attack on the designers - simply my observations. I tip my hat to anyone who could put together an undertaking of this size, as I know it would be beyond me.

The Good

- I really like the map graphics, especially the different depictions of rought terrain. I do however wonder if there shouldnbt be quite a few -
more mountain hexes around - the Carpathians and the Urals seem to be a littel bit flatter than I would otherwise have thought.
- The unit descriptions, especially of units appearing as reinforcements (SS for example). There is enough information to give flavour without overwhelming the screen with text.
- Events. Although not a new game mechanic, these are mostly well written and there is even an undercurrent of humour in some. 'Great'. 'Damn' etc sure beats a boring 'OK' button.
- Units - the units look good, though I have only really used the 'symbol' type. I like the flags on each one and also the ability to assign commanders
- Tactical doctrine - I like this mechanic, though its a bit uncelar how a country progresses through the levels.
- AI - It isnt perfect but its a lot better than other similar games I've tried. The AI does tend to get a bit freaked out when there are few/no enemies to attack. I was able however to crush France the USSR and Britain on 'Normal' by August 1944.

The indifferent

- Its nice to be able to play minor countries separately but it does become a drag when you are the Axis and you have to order them all around separately. The game also almost totally precludes any kind of cooperation between allied forces - which is ahistorical. It would be good if you could set them to AI and define broad objectives for the AI to achieve (eg defend home country, take Rostov etc).

- Technology research - this is handled well (quite similar to the old SSI game Clash of Steel) - however it sure would be nice if a message appeared telling you that a new level had been reached without having to go into the research screen to check.

- Some events were triggered incorrectly (Barbarossa preparation after USSR surrender). A couple had bugs, an example was when GB received the HMS Ceylon and went with the ZID_13008_op2 option - there were a couple of these but I didnt write them all down. I am guessing that 1.7 will iron these out.

- A number of nations have units with names in the language of the nation, yet others merely receive 'Infantry' - Persia as an example.

- When loading a saved game - the 'No description.txt file' message looks bad. Why not just copy the description.txt of the original scenario and use that?

- Aircraft carriers - it should be possible to use these for air missions, rather than just naval combat.

- Performance - the game often became very slow, the mouse almost unresponsive - at other times it was fine. My machine is about 4 years old, so not the best but it is difficult to explain these changes in speed.

- Naval transport - It was very easy to transport a lot of Axis units through the Med while Malta was still in Allied hands. I was able to easily overwhelm Alexandria and push through to Iraq and the Caucasus.

- Reports - it was annoying how if you selected a country in the bottom window then a report , that the country always then resetdefaulted to the first one in the list.

- Convoys - a number of countries set up convoys exactly matching those of the germans when they joined the Axis - Croatia was defintely one of them and I cant remember the other - unnecessary.

- Social unrest event - apart from 'Covince' being misspelt, I am not sure of the purpose of choosing this option for Social unrest - you lose a bunch of PP and unrest goes up by a lot more than simply ignoring the issue. Am I missing something?

- 1 on 1 naval combat, mostly raiders. This kind of combat was observed to be 100% harmless to eother side in every instance.

- Production times - 8 months seems to be a very quick time to build an aircraft carrier. Other naval units seemed to roll off the slipways just as quickly. It is also possible to instantly buy unlimited Amph and Sea Transport points - not historical.

- Naval repair - I dont think you can repair a badly mauled battleship in a single week and send it back out at full strength.

- 1 week per turn does make for a very loong 1939 campaign game.

- There was an issue where red hexes with 0 in them (marked for air movement I presume) remained on screen in enemy territory even though it was my turn. This only started happening once the Soviets were tettering on complete collapse.

The bad

- Duplicate unit IDs when buying more than one of a unit at a time
- Unimaginative unit names - 'Fleet #454', 'Battle Group #78' and so on. I'm afraid this really annoyed me. A pool of appropriate names would be so much better, historical and/or fictional ones, as long as they made sense.
- Inappropriate build choices. I'm sorry, but Slovakia should not be allowed to build aircraft carriers, regardless of how many PPs they have. There are many countries that should have restrictions placed on what they can build.
- The reports and loss tables look very messy - the wrong font has been used. Lists of numbers should line up
- The loss tables are also seriously flawed - when a country surrenders all reference to it is removed - not really very useful after the USSR has surrendered to see that 95% of the losses caused by the Germans were to GB!
- Die rolling - I think this is the first game I've seen where a 5 sided dice seems to be used. Not one of my strategic bombing missions (dozens) ever rolled a 6, and I cant actually remember seeing many during land or air combat either.
- Invasions - When I invaded the UK, I was allowed to land an unlimited number of units in a single hex, which all then received their full movement allowance after landing. Thus I was able to deposit 20 corps in Britain in a single week from one small patch of beach. This is impossible in the real world. There should be a limit on how many units can land in a hex and/or they should not receive their full movement allowance upone landing.
- Air/naval interaction. It was far too easy to sink almost the entire Royal Navy from aircraft located on the shores of the North Sea. Air units rated 7 or more scored a hit nearly every time, suffering relatively few losses in the process. IMHO it should be a different process - it should be difficult to find the enemy but once located subsequent aircraft should find the target. It would be a bit more realistic to allow an aircraft to score multiple hits. I didnt like the fact that aircraft that didnt find any ships still retained an action point- surely they would have spent a week looking for the enemy to the exclusion of other missions. It should also be possible to attack ships in port.
- Crashes - I had a lot of crashes - I do have wireless network connectivity problems sometimes and these caused the game to crash. I am also unable to load my last saved game at all (only the USA is left standing).

Whew that took longer than I expected. I am hoping that the 1.7 patch sorts out some of these issues. I think this game does have potential to be great, it just needs a few things ironing out.

Hope you are enjoying the holiday season

Regards
Ralph Sunley

[Harbinger]

- Social unrest event - apart from 'Covince' being misspelt, I am not sure of the purpose of choosing this option for Social unrest - you lose a bunch of PP and unrest goes up by a lot more than simply ignoring the issue. Am I missing something?

...my understanding is that if you pay, then SU is no longer an issue, ever...

It is also possible to instantly buy unlimited Amph and Sea Transport points - not historical.

...this topic has been hotly debated, although not always in the context of AIP and STP. The PP bank that accumulates is IMO a reserve that is deployable in any fashion the owner see fit...

- Naval repair - I dont think you can repair a badly mauled battleship in a single week and send it back out at full strength.

...agreed...

- Inappropriate build choices. I'm sorry, but Slovakia should not be allowed to build aircraft carriers, regardless of how many PPs they have. There are many countries that should have restrictions placed on what they can build.

...lol, agreed...

Invasions - When I invaded the UK, I was allowed to land an unlimited number of units in a single hex, which all then received their full movement allowance after landing. Thus I was able to deposit 20 corps in Britain in a single week from one small patch of beach. This is impossible in the real world. There should be a limit on how many units can land in a hex and/or they should not receive their full movement allowance upone landing.

...absolutely agree! In no way should a hex gained from amphib, port or not, be useable by any other than the invading unit for at least one turn...

- Air/naval interaction. It was far too easy to sink almost the entire Royal Navy from aircraft located on the shores of the North Sea. Air units rated 7 or more scored a hit nearly every time, suffering relatively few losses in the process.

...poor AI choices to not move away from enemy air...

[vonRocko]

ORIGINAL: rsunley



I am hoping that the 1.7 patch sorts out some of these issues.

1.7 solves NONE of these issues.

[Harbinger]

Here is the official list of 1.7 changes and fixes.
tm.asp?m=2313962

As you can see, 1.7 wasn't aimed at the issues rsunley writes about. I guess one could stipulate that the addition of Carrier Air Attacks on ground units and ports does address the Air issues mentioned.

I too, have a wish list for ToW. But that's all that it is, a wish list.

Overall I'm quite satisfied with the way the game plays. It has several elegant systems that allow for tons of replayablity. There are multiple strategies to choose from in order to achieve victory, none of which are guaranteed. It also has a level of forgiveness that is unusual in a Grand Strategy game. LOL....whew!, thanks for that!

I admit, my initial reactions to several game mechanics had me scratching my head with a lot of "why's?" and "wth's?". But, after hundreds of turns and more study I began to see some nice intricacies and subtleties. I was pleasantly surprised at the sophistication I discovered.