GGWaW Toatal Disappointment

[Jobu]

I was really looking forward to getting WaW but now I doubt I will ever get another Matrrix game. As a veteran developer, I would never have put this game out without assassinating everyone in the QA department. The interface is terrible. The combat animation is reminds me of Pong except that at least in Pong you actually do something. What is the point of it anyway?

The memory usage and issues it creates really has me steamed. I haven't made through one stinking round yet without the game crashing! At first I had 512 meg. Good enough for the most intensive games available like Call of Duty 2 (yeah, graphics and action games ARE the most intense where a CPU, DMA, memory, and math are involved), Rome Total War, and many others but I couldn't make it through more than two cheesy battle animations before it dumped. So I bought another 512mb. Now I get all the way to the end of Japan's move before it dumps in the first scenario . 1 friggin' gig of memory! Hello? A 2gig hyper-threaded processor! What is up with this game?

I read the forums for this and other games before I came to the conclusion that Matrix isn't very committed to support. The same problems exist in their other games too. Painful for me to see that their support is provided by other customers or "gamers". Give me a break, I paid as much for this game as top of the line games. I'm not shutting down my anti-virus, firewall, and yada every time I want to play this game. My video driver is good enough for every other game out there and should be yawning from lack of exertion with this game. What the heck is Direct X for anway??? It is to make the audio and video as seamless as possible to game developers. Which reminds me, I'm not changing my audio driver or screen size to run the game in a window either. That's all just crazy talk.

A few hints for Matrix developers. One, the game doesn't just have a memory leak - it bleeds and I know because I checked it out. Read a little about disposing of memory objects properly and cleaning up the heap after your done with it. Don't leave threads spinning out there that don't have a clue, kill them or better yet don't launch them. If you don't know what I am talking about then throw your game engine out the window and write new code. Learn about how to use Direct-X too, V9 isn't the bane of your games memory leaking existence, it's stable. I noticed that your implementation of it is pretty ragged - not smooth from desktop to game launch...something isn't right. If you don't come up with a patch for this game - basically a whole new execution engine, I will never buy another one from you. If I would have done the smart thing and bought from a brick-and-mortar, I'd be holding an in-store credit right now.

[Joel Billings]

I'm sorry you've experienced problems with WaW. Can you tell me what version of the game you are using? Also, it would help if you could post a dxdiag for your computer. I've sent your note along to our programmers. I can't speak to the memory leak issue, but we haven't had many reports of crashes in combat animations (none that I know of since the bug in very large battles in the original version was corrected nine months ago). 512 MB should be fine, so it shouldn't be a memory issue but is likely something else like a driver issue.

To be honest, if we had it to do over, we wouldn't have bothered to have the combat animation screen. It was intended as something to show new players exactly what was going on in a combat, but we expected players to turn it off once they understood the sequencing of combat. We don't have the kind of dev budget to invest in the art and programming needed to do more with the combat animations, especially given that it is something most players will want to skip (since there are no player decisions to be made). Given that we ended up with something that took so much flak, we would have done better to have skipped it and invested the time in other features. Our feeling is that if you need the combat animations to enjoy WaW, then you're probably not going to like WaW anyway.

As for support, when players post in the support forum, we try to help them. Matrix and 2by3 employees (along with help from other WaW players) have helped many users overcome various problems. As this is your first post, I can only assume that this is your first attempt to get help. We'll try to help you if we can, and the more information you can provide, the better. You can also email support@matrixgames.com with your problems. Since a lot of problems can be addressed by other users, I always suggest posting here, but sending an email to Matrix as well is a good way to increase your chance of getting the right level of support that you'll need.

[JanSorensen]

I have played WaW for quite a while and I too have some experience being a programmer/developer.

I concur that the battle animations are neither pretty nor needed. As Joel already posted those are an error for this type of game and should simply be turned off.

Apart from the combat animations the interface is actually very good though. It might not seem so for every novice but its a highly effective interface once you learn how to play the game. Thus I have to dismiss your claim that the interface is terrible. By all means give constructive examples of things in the interface you find lacking so we can debate the details rather than your blanket statement.

As for the memory leak. I also have 1gb and I never once ran into anything resembling a memory leak. I have even been running 2xWaW at once on occasion when testing tcp (it didnt run well, but it ran) without experiencing a memory leak. Could you be more detailed about the problem as you experience it please? Not just that you crash but what kind of memory useage you see allocated by WaW as the game progresses. The normal useage for me is around 534mb so if you are seeing significant more something is indeed amiss. While I concur that the game may be using a bit more memory than one would expect from this type of game I do not see any signs of a leak. If there is one though its obviously very high priority to have it found and fixed.

The number of crashes I have experienced have been very low too - on par with most other windows applications. I know some people have even gotten the game to run with only 256mb though I would not recommend that.

Maybe if you want to enter into a constructive dialog the problem can be fixed - once the frustration that lead to your first post settles down a little.

[Jobu]

You are right Jan, I'm much less frustrated than my first post. Joel and yourself contributed a lot to calming me down, thank you. I found two basic issues last night that resolved the crashing problem. First, Microsoft recommended that I remove an mpeg codec (Morgan) and I did that. It helped but I still had random crashes. Next, figuring on memory I shutdown services that have a lot of threads and use memory. It seemed to help too (I can't really say because by this time it was late and I was pretty bleary eyed and unhappy so I'm not sure if it helped or not). Then I went after my paging setup. My system is set for 4g size and a drive other than the boot drive. This is the same drive I installed WaW on so...maybe....I changed it to the root to see. Not a big impact if at all. Finally, I checked my screen settings (for the millionth time) and turned off hybernate - that typically chews up memory in the paging file. So....got rid of Morgan Layer codec, relocated paging, and turned off hybernation. It hasn't crashed at all in a one hour play. I will likely put the paging back to the drive I had it on today or tomorrow and leave it there. If it is a key contributer then I likely won't play the game. What bugs me up to this point is that I've had to do none of this to play any other game. Most of them logically much more resource/processor intensive.

Getting specific requires verbosity so please forgive the length here...

I do appreciate Joel working OT late on Saturday and responding to my gripes. Sorry I bashed the game and especially support Joel, you take pride in the work and took it well. No further bashing here either, I hope this is constructive.

You basically said the same thing I did about the interface Jan. "It might not seem so for every novice.." That would have to be a WaW novice. I've played many war games from Harpoon and SSI games on the Commodore 64 right up to the present. My favorites are typically RTLS but have played many moved-based games like Risk, Command and Conquer, and Axis and Allies Since you are a developer you know that everyone is a novice when they pull your product off the shelf. The last thing you want them to do is STAY a novice. Nearly all of WaW customers will understand the concepts of the game that are inherent to the games' genre. Supply, movement, strategy, maps, unit strengths/weakness/movement capabilities (air, land,sea), and capacities. That said, ALL of them will be be using Windows and many have never seen MS-DOS games. There are some things that make the experience of managing all this information typical and familiar to Windows users. The first and most important is the parent/child concept. Take maps and views. You start with a menu button and once actived or (in focus), it shows you all of the possibilites for maps (global/strategic, esource, transport, unit, regional relationships, ect.). This beats having a button (or icon) for each of the possibilities and limits the need on the players part to search for the item they need. Note that a player generally knows what they want to do by concept (ie, looking for a map that shows transportation routes) but not the developers concept for the picture or placement they put on such a button. The gamer will quickly tire and find the game tedious if they have to search for everything they want to do. No one has time to blow through three or four games to figure them out. (Read the reviews about this game on the web if you doubt me.) What is more, no one has the time to ask themselves "what does this button do?" Buttons that may improve the gameplay significantly may never get used.

Another big interface problem is the right mouse click. Typically in Windows, the right mouse click as an extension of the left. In other words, the right click brings up options in context with whatever is highlighted (or selected by the left click) on the screen. It is very out-of-character to use the right mouse button as another left button. I think any Windows user (or gamer for that matter) would find it hard to feel at home with this. Case-in-point question; what does the tool-tip apply to, the left or the right button?

This game depends on the tutor/examples (which for this game don't sparkle either) to educate the novice. Consider that in a game this complex, the tutoring walk-through is a single play-by-play that the developer devises fully knowing the game, not neccessarily in the order or reaching the same objective the player will. In WaW, the "movement phase" tutor features an airborne drop into Norway or Sweden (I'm not looking at it now so forgive the details). The drop and invasion of the country is for a very good reason concerning the ports it has. During actual game play you find that the exact scenario isn't possible. Small thing? Not really if you tried it. (what is a "frozen" country anyway?). You find yourself frustrated when trying to figure out how to "unlink" the airborne unit from the bomber. I went out of the game and into the manual to figure it out. Honestly, when I figured out how to do it my first thought was "kludge". That thought stayed with me when I battled the interface to put troops back when rolling back a move into a region. Like you Jan, I could get used to it after some time. The points are that I shouldn't have to, it is very tedious to learn, and the reward for learning isn't that high. Here are some more specifics for you:

1. Unit movement. The shift click is great but the having to right click on the map to stop moving troops isn't. I have accidentally moved trops that I never intended to move because the right click wasn't done. (I did that a lot and it was REALLY annoying.)

2. Often (usually) after moving some units into an enemy region, you are presented (locked) into choosing an action type (like general attack, etc.). It is annoying especially when you intend to move units from another region to support the attack. The game sticks at that point until you left click somewhere else on the map.

3. The transport concept - moving units across water - isn't intuitive at all. Making a bridge with the transports is just plain silly not to mention that they are very vulnerable to attack and very nearly impossible to escort in a bridge configuration. WaW's moving troops across the water in general is very kludgy for a many good reasons. You simply can't escort them. You can't surround them with all the love and protection of a battleship, cruiser, or destroyer because at the end of the day, AI randomly decides if an airplane is going to take them out. Consider the one-on-one odds. If you send a transport alone and it is attacted by a plane, it has just as much chance of losing it as if you had it surrounded with escorts. The same is true of land battles where artillery (normally to the rear) is sitting out front in the animation and shot at just the same as infantry. Speaking of transports and intuitive, I ended the game last night just when I got it working good. Why? I couldn't land German troops on Malta. I still don't have that figured out. How to fix this? I'd say take formation into account in the AI and use some logic around building them. Let the user mess with the resulting formation.

4. WWII definitely demonstrated the awesomne capabilities of air power and it is true that an occassional GI (or even a host of GI's) might shoot at a fighter. The odds aren't very good at all that they will bring it down and where high altitude, heavy bombers are concerned the thought that the might even be damaged is ludicrous. More recent conflicts and conflict scenarios show that battleships are not the effective platforms we thought them to be. In neither case mentioned here can I find a historical example of where fighter planes or heavy naval units have single handedly removed all occupying forces from a land region. Nor can I find a historical case for a fighter group occupying a region to prevent an uprising. These all occur in WaW and the battering between computer forces (like Allies and Japan) as weak forces are driven from territory accounts for more than 1/2 of all the action in the game. Japan takes it, Allies take it away, etc...

5. The "frozen region" either needs to go when the player alters other historical factors (like victory conditions) or dropped altogether. The allies are already way to powerful in this game. Note that strategically, the Germans have to go through extrodinary lengths to occupy land. The whole of South Africa us barred by the use of frozen territory giving the allies the benefit of a HUGE amount of real estate that the Germans will never likely touch. That is just one example.

6. Which reminds me, where is Rommel's vaunted Afrika Corps in Africa? All I have is some cheesy militia there. The Suez does have enormous Allied naval power and does eventually build up to where you could see Monte there whipping your weak force butt. Getting German's there in force with a totally inadequate German fleet and the crazy transport scheme is challenging enough to call it impossible without losing the war elsewhere. Both accesses to the Med are blocked solid.

7. When highlighting opposing forces, you do see a nice unit window showing what you are up against. What those units are is another thing altogehter. I don't have the experience you do Jan so telling a "light" naval group from a "heavy" one is pretty confusing. Or a "medium" fighter/bomber from a fighter.

8. Artillery units don't shoot at planes and are typically worthless without supporting tropps or aircraft spotters.

9. The "shadow of war" should be realistic. If it exists, so should the ability to send units (like planes and subs) out on patrol. Conversely, without it the idea of sending a transport out for all the world to see in WaW is Russian Roulette.

10. The "partisan" or "uprising" concept is good and I especially like the fact that the game indicates the level of forces needed to maintain order - most games don't. The problem is that there aren't enough unit types to support the concept. It really grinds on the nerves to know that you have a perfectly good infantry unit or tank unit holding down the fort out in nowhere land when the Russians are taking Poland away from the militia stationed there. If you are brave and patient, you can work through the transportion mechanics to get a militia born and bred in Romaina across Europe (which doesn't make sense) but you have no way to invest in the local infrastructure to make the people happier about having an occupier or raise a less expensive paramilitary force. The effort involved in moving "militia" around is boggling after a few turns.

That is all I can do here without rambling more. It is already more than I expexted to do when I sat down this morning and it is playoff season in the U.S....

As a developer Jan, you know that memory leaks in Windows are very much the most difficult thing in the universe to troubleshoot. They are right up there with quarks and strings. The only way to fix them is to start out with nice tight code. Beyond that, the methods used to detect them are as varied and treasured as are developers. I have to suffice it to say that your own post should give you pause; "...534mB...While I concur that the game may be using a bit more memory than one would expect..." . That is usually the first sign. The second is when the heap usage starts at a value and continually rises then levels off and never drops - in most cases this is where a program will die in XP/W2K (that and an overactive swap file). Note that the value you give automatically requires a large amount of paging memory on a 512mB machine. You might say it is running from swap space, actually not a great thing. The next check would be to watch what threads are being spawned and what happens to them after they are. Do they go away or just stick around? I was cued to leakage after noting that memory usage increased after each battle animation and didn't go away. It does level off - or this game would never work anywhere - but you get my drift. I would suggest to you that "a very low" amount of WaW crashes on your box may mean a huge amount on someone elses. For myself, I rarely get crashes on my box period unless I'm monkeying around - for any game. Two crashes from the same application usually tells me that there is something very wrong with either the application or the platform or both. In this case, I'd be quick to site memory leakage based on what I've seen. I'm confident in my diagnosis but unfortunately I'm not getting paid enough to troubleshoot or go into more detail around fixing/detecting memory leaks, it's too much for a Sunday. [:)]

[ravinhood]

You'll be amazed how much better games will perform if you disable that Hyper Threading feature as well. I had issues with several games until disabling it. Hell my ISP service wouldn't even connect correctly at one time when it was active (but, that was that cheesy cheap Netscape, so I switched and my current ISP service works well with Hyper Threading.)

[JanSorensen]

Jobu,

You bring up a lot of points. Some of those have to do with the interface - others have to do with the design or the rules of the game - others again with the setup/units of the game.

Interface
It may not be entirely Windows standard but I dont agree that its kludgy or hard to learn for the most part. Its around 8 months ago that I first saw WaW and while it took a while to learn to play I contribute very little of that to the interface and most of it to the fact that its simply a more complicated game than Axis and Allies. Any interface has to be a compromise between the ease a new user will learn it and how well it will work for the veteran. Sometimes a solution can be found that are optimal for both but other times you have to decide which way to go. I think the points you bring up concerning the interface (1 and 2 mostly) may indeed be a bit confusing for the new player initially but I believe they are made that way for a good reason because they make the game play better for the veteran. I know I dont personally find that the interface hinders my play. I will give you though that the attach/detach process is complicated and somewhat hard to learn.

Game design/balance
Some of your points (3 and 5 in particular) concern the design. While this design might not be mainstream or even how I would personally have made the game I feel that they work quite well. Despite being more complicated than A&A the game is still a 3 month turn IGOYOUGO which can be played in a single evening. This means that some parts have to be abstracted as more detail often means the game will take longer (I played WiF for many years, that took 50 hours while WaW takes a fraction of that) - including to a degree naval transportation and the political aspects (frozen rules). Sure, they could have been made differently - and they have been in other games too. If you do not like the design then thats fine - but saying that it does not work wont fly. Your criticism here is a matter of taste and not of logic in my opinion.

Your points about play balance/units contains historical wrongs (Rommel didnt leave for Tripoli with DAK until early 41 for example), ask for a degree of detail that is outside the game's level of abstraction (partisans) and game wise errors (your claim that FTRs prevent partisans is incorrect). Some of what you post is opinion which I can agree or disagree with but I see few factual items that are actually correct.

Memory leak
I already agreed that WaW probably takes up more memory than it should. That, however, does not indicate a memory leak as I am sure we can agree. I have played WaW for hours before without noticing any increase in memory or resource useage so barring further information I have deny that WaW should leak. I had the AI play itself 10 times in a row just the other day - memory useage seemed to be stable throughout.

When I say that WaW has crashed only a few times for me thats maybe twice in hundreds of hours of play and both times when I started several applications at the same time so blame is hard to place.


In closing. WaW takes a while to learn to play (days atleast) and longer to learn to play well (months). It has a strange mix of complication and simplicity and in some ways its design is not mainstream. Some people wont like the complexity, others wont like the simplifications and others again wont like the design. But in my personal experience its a game that grows on you if you stick with it. Personally, I think its a mix of the old board/war games (complexity and depth but loong learning curve) and the new computer games (rather low on complexity but smoothly easy to learn). Its not the perfect mix getting the best of both worlds in all ways - but in some it is. I have had games I learned to play, mastered and tired of faster than I learned how to play WaW. I consider that a plus but others will prefer something with less depth I am sure (and others again something with even greater depth).

[JanSorensen]

Just to adress two of your specific problems:

1. Unit movement. The shift click is great but the having to right click on the map to stop moving troops isn't. I have accidentally moved trops that I never intended to move because the right click wasn't done. (I did that a lot and it was REALLY annoying.)

When moving units its very common to want to move more than one but not all the units of a specific kind. Its also very common to want to move units of more than one kind.

Now, after I move a unit there are two possible design choices.
Either
- the game will assume that I want to move another which would then require me to perform an action (right click) if I do not want to move another OR
- the game will assume I dont want to move another unit and automatically abort the state where movement is directly available. This would mean that I would have to perform an extra action if I did infact want to move another unit.

Now, either design works - the former is preferable in some situation while the latter is preferably in other situations. Neither is more or less cumbersome than the other in their preferable or non-prefered situation. So, it comes down to this - which of the two situations occur more often or is more "core". I believe the former occurs more often which is also why I believe the design is the correct one.

In WaW, the "movement phase" tutor features an airborne drop into Norway or Sweden (I'm not looking at it now so forgive the details). The drop and invasion of the country is for a very good reason concerning the ports it has. During actual game play you find that the exact scenario isn't possible.

This puzzles me. You can do the exact same in the normal game that you are doing in the tutorial - definitely with respect to the airdrop on Norway. So, what is it that you cannot make happen during normal play concerning this?

[Lebatron]

I'd like to help on some points.

2. Often (usually) after moving some units into an enemy region, you are presented (locked) into choosing an action type (like general attack, etc.). It is annoying especially when you intend to move units from another region to support the attack. The game sticks at that point until you left click somewhere else on the map.

Have you just tried to use the closing X to make the action bar disapeer? Thats what I do when I intend to add other troops from another location.

3. The transport concept - moving units across water - isn't intuitive at all. Making a bridge with the transports is just plain silly not to mention that they are very vulnerable to attack and very nearly impossible to escort in a bridge configuration. WaW's moving troops across the water in general is very kludgy for a many good reasons. You simply can't escort them. You can't surround them with all the love and protection of a battleship, cruiser, or destroyer because at the end of the day, AI randomly decides if an airplane is going to take them out. Consider the one-on-one odds. If you send a transport alone and it is attacted by a plane, it has just as much chance of losing it as if you had it surrounded with escorts. The same is true of land battles where artillery (normally to the rear) is sitting out front in the animation and shot at just the same as infantry. Speaking of transports and intuitive, I ended the game last night just when I got it working good. Why? I couldn't land German troops on Malta. I still don't have that figured out. How to fix this? I'd say take formation into account in the AI and use some logic around building them. Let the user mess with the resulting formation.

I think the developers design for transports is brillant. The way they get left out in the oceans is intentional and represents the constant and ever present flows of merchant traffic across the oceans. What sense would it make if on the Allies turn they left from the US and then entered a port in the UK? On Germany's turn there would be no transports in the ocean to sink. Since the game isn't real time you must give the German's a shot at them on his turn. And to address your point about escort ships. There are good places for the Allies to place them to maximize their impact but there will usaully be some left exposed, as it should be, so that the Germans can get some with little risk. As the game progresses the risk increases. As you become more familiar with this game you will see its a good design. Conserning your comment about the artillery sitting out in front. Its placement in the animation has no direct role in how it actually works. It does fire from long range. It has a range of 2 and is the only land unit that does. It fires twice every combat. Once at range 2 then again at range 1 when infantry and tanks shoot. Another thing to consider is that like units shoot at like. If your artillery are getting shot at its either another artillery shotting at it or the number of your enemy is so great that he has enough units to fire at all your like units and then some of his left over shoot at your artillery. Example. 5 inf and 5 art fight 10 infantry. At range 2 the art fire, lets say they kill 2 inf. Now we goto range 1. 5 inf and 5 art fight 8 inf. Now everybody fires. 5 infantry on each side pair off. 3 of the excess inf are going to get to attack your art. See how that works? The combat system does have logic but its not aparent to beginners. Take a look at the patch readme and find the combat order chart. This may help clear some things up. Keep in mind the combat animation is there only as an aid to help newbies see how combat actually takes place. Now to help you with Malta. You will need at least 2 transport to amphib. Each of your transports have a value of 3 for amphib. Infantry and the like need 5 points and tanks reqiure 10. Since tanks reqire so much they are almost never used in amphibs. Two transports will give you 6 points so you will have one point to spare. In most case its wasted, unless you shoot for a perfect match. 5 transports will give you 15 amphib points which can do 3 infantry. You follow me? Ok,now before you try to take Malta you must destoy any artillery there. Otherwise the op-fire from it will sink your transport. The rule book covers how this reduces in effect each time but in this case you will not have the transports to spare. Use bombers to destroy the art and hopefully the infantry there too. If the infantry survives it will be a long shot. Italy only has the transport capacity to land 2 inf unless you build a fifth transport. So it will be 2 inf vs 1 inf in some cases. If you hit you win, if not then you get booted and will have to try again next turn.

5. The "frozen region" either needs to go when the player alters other historical factors (like victory conditions) or dropped altogether. The allies are already way to powerful in this game. Note that strategically, the Germans have to go through extrodinary lengths to occupy land. The whole of South Africa us barred by the use of frozen territory giving the allies the benefit of a HUGE amount of real estate that the Germans will never likely touch. That is just one example.

Instead of using things like an Axis tension table to represent US or Russian entry. This game keeps it simple and it works great. This allows the Axis to decide when to do Barbarossa or Pearl Harbor at their leisure. If they decide not to then at the start of 1943 both the US and Russia attack. When you talk about the whole of Africa being blocked you must mean the desert. Its realistic to prevent armies from marching across it. The Suez is the key to getting to South Africa. Most well designed games do it this way. Recently Axis and Allies received an update that prevented troops from blitzing directly south. Have you seen A&A revised? It placed the Sahara on the map as the old map didn't have it. So in the new A&A you have to take Egypt if you want to blitz into the south of Afica to get them IPC's. Yes its true in most games the Germans will never likely touch any of Southern Africa. That doesn't mean they can't win. WAW doesn't play like A&A. In A&A, if the Germans don't get them IPC's from Africa its game over for them. A&A just placed way to much importance on this area. But I can understand the design reason. Since there are so few map areas in A&A the whole of Africa had to be opened up so there would be some troop movement in the game. A&A would have been very stale if all we did was trade 2 territories in Eastern Europe back in forth.

6. Which reminds me, where is Rommel's vaunted Afrika Corps in Africa? All I have is some cheesy militia there. The Suez does have enormous Allied naval power and does eventually build up to where you could see Monte there whipping your weak force butt. Getting German's there in force with a totally inadequate German fleet and the crazy transport scheme is challenging enough to call it impossible without losing the war elsewhere. Both accesses to the Med are blocked solid.

As a beginner you should try what the German AI does. Place the fleet in the Central Med and place an air cap over it. This should hold for a while so you can get troops into Africa. You can take the Suez from the AI and still have time to lanch Barbarossa around the historical time. If it comes a few turns late no big deal.

10. The "partisan" or "uprising" concept is good and I especially like the fact that the game indicates the level of forces needed to maintain order - most games don't. The problem is that there aren't enough unit types to support the concept. It really grinds on the nerves to know that you have a perfectly good infantry unit or tank unit holding down the fort out in nowhere land when the Russians are taking Poland away from the militia stationed there. If you are brave and patient, you can work through the transportion mechanics to get a militia born and bred in Romaina across Europe (which doesn't make sense) but you have no way to invest in the local infrastructure to make the people happier about having an occupier or raise a less expensive paramilitary force. The effort involved in moving "militia" around is boggling after a few turns.

You lost me here on several points. But I got some simple pointers. Just so you know Infantry, Para, Militia, and tanks can do partisan pest patrol. Other units can't. Also keep in mind a militia does just a good a job at controlling partisans as an infantry for instance. So at places that are behind your front lines use miltita there. For instance use 3 of them for Yugo and forward the infantry up. Also there are places you can just let get out of control so dont bother with a garrison. Those would be places that have no valuable infrastucture to protect.

[toddtreadway]

As for the combat animations, I think that although they may look silly, they do perform some invaluable functions.

1) New players should watch how combats are actually executed, to see how certain units interact. For example, as a new player you might not know that fighters target other fighters first or that when a sub hits a ship with a torpedo the sub's evasion is raised against the return shot, or that artillery target other artillery first, etc. (the list really does go on and on). It might or might not be in the rules, but it is definitely implemented and can be seen when you watch it.

2) There are lots of bugs that wouldn't have been discovered in the combat system if players couldn't watch the combat.

3) Sometimes I will just watch the combat for the nail-biting experience, if the battle is going to be a close one.