First impressions of Strategic Command WWII War in Europe

[Goodmongo]

Spent all day Sunday playing the game as Germany 1939 scenario. Only spent about 20 minutes in the manual. Strongly suggest everyone read up about HQ's and supply. Will make the game much easier to understand why things happen. Even subs need to return every so often.

It is a load of fun, has enough weather and other things to wreck the best laid plans and the events are great. I need to read the manual about them because I had no clue what some of them did or didn't do.

I look forward to sinking in hundreds of hours playing the game. There are many possibilities. I did have a few CTD's which seem to happen if you quit and reload more than once or twice. Bottom line is well worth the money.

[Dorb]

First impression... the manual is big. (use dropbox to put it on your tablet to read in bed at night while the better half sleeps)

[Templer_12]

Graphic
Rain is sometimes hard to see.
I don't know if I like the previous 3D models better. For the tanks graphics, I do.

The game information area
Display info at the bottom left hand corner of the screen.
You know, if you use a wide screen monitor, it's a bit tiring to move your eyes to this place back and forth.

Gimmick
Joe DiMaggio is in the game!
I miss the national anthems. [:(]
I miss the attractions of the main cities. [:(]
I miss the muezzin who calls for prayer in Africa. [:(]

Great game

[Hartmann]

At the moment I'm just playing around familiarizing myself with the game. It looks and feels fabulous! My favorite game has always been "Clash of Steel" and there was never a later game that quite replaced it. This finally might be it!

I bought all entries in the series, but my playtime dwindled to almost 0 when Hubert introduced isometric view and tiles with SC2. I'm so happy we got hexes back, I could cry (well, not really cry, but almost).

I also love the decisions and events in this game. In other games, the Weserübung and Africa Corps things were often a drag. I hope that future patches and mods will bring even more flavor events, I especially like small historical border adjust-events like annexation of Alsace or the creation of Croatia. (There could be a few more of those e.g. for the Balkans and Greece.)

Finally, I'm happy that we have Nato counters right off the bat without a mod. I like 3D units in Panzer General-style games, but here they clutter the map too much.

[mavraamides]

My first game as the good guys. Poland fell quickly, I held out in France till early August. Was pissed that I allowed one of my BEF units to be trapped in France and destroyed! Ugh.

Struggling with German subs and their hit and run tactics. Dealt the German surface fleet a couple of big losses though.

Germany did not honor the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty (bastards!) and now I'm quite concerned about an early Barbarossa. After seeing German troops chew up the French Army, I don't know how I could stop them from reaching Moscow with the meager forces at my disposal.

What's worse is my fear of invasion has made me focus more on building an army than research which is a bad long term strategy. I'm going to have a million peasants with pointy sticks at this rate.

North Africa has been quiet. So far.

I really like this version.

Pros:
Hexes are back!
Many more unit types.
More research options.
Lots of interesting events and decisions.
AI seems good and especially effective at swapping units around in attack.
(Just learned this) You can selectively turn AI control on or off for any country on your side!

Cons:
Haven't seen any yet.

[JWW]

Playing my first game, playing as Germany, I'm in June 40 and in the second turn of my invasion of France. There is a lot I don't know, but so far I'm having fun. I'm sure I'm making a lot of mistakes, but I'm just throwing things out there and seeing what happens. The Poland conquest took me three turns. It seems the gold standard is two. I then moved my units to prepare for the attack on France. Note -- Don't forget about forced march. I read about it and then forgot and then accidentally rediscovered it when I accidentally double clicked on a unit. I invaded Denmark with one infantry unit and an airborne unit with naval support. I have screwed up my naval game just seeing what would happen. I saw a lone UK destroyer on the Norway - Germany supply line and sent two cruisers, a destroyer, and a sub after it and of course got ambushed by a bigger UK naval element. I managed to escape with all my unit but all heavily damaged. Got into another naval engagement while bombarding Copenhagen. Lost a destroyer. Kept my sub and raider out that start in the north Atlantic. Raided toward Canada. Did some damage but eventually lost both of them, mainly just wanting to see what happened. Got a damaged Deutschland nearly back home before it was caught and sunk off the coast of Norway. Still trying to figure out how to most effectively employ headquarters. I have questions but want to do a play through before asking anything. Most of all, I'm having fun.