That said, I have some areas of concern with the game as it currently is. I am in Sept. of 1936 in a Nationalist grand campaign. I wanted to learn the game system and so have been doing a couple reloads, but not as many as I would have expected given that I have almost literally fallen asleep at the wheel on a few turns
. I will start by saying I am very bad at wargames generally, and so it came as a surprise to me that I am predominantly ahead of the historical front lines in 1936. I have taken Malaga in the South (falls in 1937 in history) and the gates to Jaen are wide open. I have seized Barcelona (falls in 1939) by an overland campaign and am currently fighting to expand my control of Northeast Spain. The AI has finally recognized its peril and is surging troops to Barcelona, but I was able to ship up troops from Africa into Barcelona, avoiding naval aviation by swamping the AI with targets and packing the transport with my only active Destroyer.The "strategic move mode" also seems to be perhaps not working as intended. I find it needs 3 days to pack across the board, plus another day to unpack at the end. However, cancelling it has been spotty- I have some units that are still seemingly caught in a packing/unpacking loop for a few weeks, and the benefits do not seem apparent. Losing about four days to get faster movement has never been as useful as just walking the troops in regular movement, and I've never needed to "strategic move" to conduct any of my seaborne transportation missions.
I have lost 40 something transports, but not enough to seriously impede my ability to shuffle various troops and supply around the map. I have lost some decently serious investments in naval attacks, but not enough to stop me from risking doing them again.
I also lost 1.5k men in a behind-the-AI attack on Santander and watching those units reconstitute and struggle to gain experience has been fun and a good reminder to secure my lines of advance.
But this brings me to the other area of concern here. The casualties. I would presume the system reports are lying to me, but back of the napkin math suggests that if the Republicans are losing about 2k a day (a rough average accounting for higher and lower days) by September they would have lost something to the order of 60K soldiers. Some days, however, I have seen the Republicans lose 10k to my 1.3k. I should rather like to say it's because I'm a brilliant genius, but I suspect players with more experience could get those numbers even higher.
I suspect total Republican casualties so far are around 80k-100k (the 100k of course being my pipe dream, but after nearly 20k in two days, a wanna-be warlord can dream) which seems like it would have been disastrous to the relatively un-mobilized forces of either side in 1936. While certainly there were many volunteer militias, I believe the draft for the Republicans began in Oct. 1936. Again, I have no idea if the casualty reports are correct, and I suspect they probably lie just as people in real life do, but it paints the picture of the Republic on the verge of collapse.
Yet, the AI just kind of shuffles militia squads around in lines on offensives instead of pulling back and trying to secure cities. I get the feeling sometimes that I'm playing whack-a-mole, and while it's fun to watch squads get wiped out, it does tend to slow my more organized advances, which would seem to be a viable strategy for the Republican side if not for the fact that again, generally, I am ahead of historical lines.
I have no doubts that a competent Republican player would have wiped the floor with me. But I also feel like a competent (not even exceptional) Nationalist player would have aggressively used naval assets and conquered even more of the Spanish coast, not to mention pushed the Republicans out of the North entirely.
This is an immensely fun and addictive game, to be sure. I have played it more or less continuously since launch with that "just one more turn" hallmark of a great game. I definitely do not feel like I understand supply or hexside control at all, and I believe that there are many more hours of fun to be had.
Excellent work and congratulations to the team, and I would appreciate the thoughts of others and if they have had similar results.
; Julia Child
