Important changes

[KuniworthII]

Road to victory is a game of great potential made by people obviously lack of ww2 knowledge which makes city names turn up wrong etc. I thought to myself no I dont have the strength to go through the development of a game again but yet again it’s to fun to play. Ive played the game on 1.0 version and just some on 1.21 version so some points might have been corrected.

And besides, and this is serious, with ww2 generation soon to be dead the developers of ww2 games can atleast have the decency to correct the most outrageous errors. If younger generations are to play a game that claimes to depict ww2 they should get that and no errors. Young people learn more about ww2 from games than books so work hard to get it right.


1. Lots of errors in naming of cities:

Gdansk – Should of course be Danzig. Would feel better to use this name than the polish one.
Donetsk – Stalino(you used post-stalin name not the correct one)
Im sure there are plenty more but I hadnt had time to look.

2. Missing cities and resources
Include Maikop(ant the oil there thank you), Brest-Litovsk(or add a fortress square), Novorossiyisk, Batumi(Black sea fleet base), Cherbourg(I dont know how you thought a D-day would succeed without one fleet city to get in supplies), Oran(Operation Torch anyone?), Constanta, Tula(Guderian and 50th rifle army dec 1941, ever heard of it?), debrecen, Bryansk(and the Bryansk forrest where partisans florished is not there), Chelabinsk(Tankograd), Orel, voronezh, Tula, Vyazma, Demyansk, Dvinsk, Uman. Krivoy Rog you can change into a resource instead of a city.

You are also missing resources at Baku(USSR). Strange as the main oil resources of the Soviet Union was found here...

Overall you picked cities with little imporrtance during the war and left out the vital ones nearby of great strategic importance and were great battles were decided. Needs to be reworked. Check your ww2 history for the corrections.

And how about adding Taranto-port for Italy. After all it was thier main base located south of Bari.

And Scapa flow, ever heard of it? No? UK:s home fleet base, located in the Orkneys.

3. Swedish iron ore mines missing
There is no Gällivare iron ore resources and no Luleå-port. Add this to map, Sweden should send convoys thorugh Luleå and norweigan Narvik to Germany.

4. Why no territorial desputes?
Add winter war, Bessarabia, Memel, transylvania and the historical territorial desputes.

5. Geography is off
There are no revensburg forrest, no Lake Balaton, crimean mountains, valdai hills and more(like Vienna not on the Donau, ehhh whats going on????).

6. Delete the siberian transfer.
It's a long standing myth that huge mass of siberians arrived to save Moscow, this never happened. Instead troops from the far east were shipped in during autumn and winter 1941. The counteroffensive at Moscow 1941 were performed by STAVKA built up reserves, not hordes of siberians. Myth originated in german and western sources.

7. Commander ratings
My favorite topic, well they are simply off. Im not gonna go into detail here as this naturally is hard to call but I must point out some obvious errors. What you need to do is simply to decide what you aim for here and then do the reworking. Is it a mix, the most famous ones, the army group and army commanders or what? Decide and then correct. Some real errors on current ratings though:

Germany:
Kesselring, Model should be increased to 8
Kluge 7
Kuchler you have overrated, lower from 8 to 6

Also some of the most famous and important commanders are missing, like Kleist, Heinrici, Balck, Leeb(funny you included Bock and Rundstedt but not him, after all those 3 held the army command leadership together up till dec 41), Paulus, Schörner, and Reichenau ofcours to mention a few. List goes on but difficult to know what you are looking for. Ratings are wrong aslo as I mentioned.

USSR:
Budenny change from 8 to 3, what were you thinking?
Vatutin 7-8
Voroshilov - lower from 7 to 4
Rokossovsky 7-8
Kulik 3, completly incompetent
Im not sure what you are aiming at here(level of command) as you mix them together but you seriously need to look at inserting Malinovsky, Meretskov, Chernyakhovsky, Vasilevsky and more.

UK
No Cunningham or Wavell, Ritchie or O'Connor but Alanbrooke(staff not front commander) Insert those with proper ratings please. And how about Gort(BEF commander).

FRANCE
Hard to fight battle of France without Bilotte and Weygand


8. OOB
The OOB is not terrible but lacks much details. SOmethings are really wacky like dispositions of Romanian forces in 1941, however this is of inferior concern to the problems mentioned above. What you should do is add a really user-friendly editor so people can change this and make own corrections.

[KuniworthII]

I just keep posting..
 
More missing stuff - Liverpool!!! Christ man, it was through here UK received the lend lease and you have it not listed, please add as a naval city.

[KuniworthII]

Stettin missing a vital naval symbol, infact it's port, Swinemunde, should be further north. This was a key port for Germany.
 
Finland is missing Hanko. It was annexed by Soviet Union after the 1939-40 war.
 
 

[James Ward]

Concerning missing cities, given their importance in the game as supply points adding to many new ones might cause some unforseen consequences.

[KuniworthII]

ORIGINAL: James Ward

Concerning missing cities, given their importance in the game as supply points adding to many new ones might cause some unforseen consequences.

Oh that's not a problem. The devs should delete the unimportant cities they are using now and insert these. I gave an example in another thread how Grodno should be deleted and instead insert Brest-Litovsk.

[KuniworthII]

Something is also weird with Tallinn. On fleet screen ity is a port but you cant ship units from it, it doesnt carry the fleet symbol. Tallinn was the primary base of the soviet baltic sea fleet. It moved back to Kronstadt after fall of tallinn august 1941.

Im not sure if this is problem with other ports too.

[KuniworthII]

As I said I keep on posting and hopefully devs pick it up for next patch. Just talking basics here.

Finland should not be pro-axis, but turn pro-axis after a much needed winter war event in which the Soviet Union should capture Vyborg and Karelia. It should enter war automatically if Germany declares war on Soviet Union(not if Soviets declare war on Germany, has to do with winning back territory). Otherwise Finland will stay neutral and not be persuaded to go to war with Germany, only if barbarossa is commencing.

Yugoslavia should start pro-axis but be couped into pro-allied camp(not enter war) in 1941. With high percentage this would most certainly mean a german player would probably invade(as what really happen) instead of risking a threat in the flank with barbarossa coming up.

[KuniworthII]

Ah what more, change invasion terms for Denmark. If Germans mass on border and Dow Denmark should surrender. No need for invasion. Historically it took 4 hours for the dane goverment to surrender after luftwaffe made some flying over Copenhagen.

[KuniworthII]

Oh what more, can explain Stalino name, it was the name of the stalinist era, after that it was changed to Donetsk.
 
Anyhow you also left out Zagreb but included Ljubljana. Wrong choice. Zagreb was the capital of Croatia, the fascist state created from some of the yugoslavia territory in 1941. If you dont want to include another city please swap with ljubljana.

[LarryP]

While you're teaching history here, I'm going to go play the game and have some fun. [8D]

[KuniworthII]

Yeah you do that Larry, why not mod some aliens into the game while you're at it. Why care if a wargame depicts what it says.

I have been active over at Strategic Command community for last 6 years and improved that game, even created the corps-sized eastern front scenario for SC2 Weapons and warfare. I don't really have the energy to start that refining process yet again and I really enjoy and support the SC series and Hubert Cater. Just want to see some basic improvements at least to this game.

Just realized that all names are in the native languages of that country. Nice touch but not particulary useful as all who come here will discuss cities in english anyway. Change to english.

Oh and please look into which cities that got PP levels. As it is now, cities like Kursk got equal PP as big cities Kiev and Kharkov, very annoying.

[James Ward]

I think a fe more cities could be added and not unbalance the game. An additional port in France would help with invasions. Perhaps a city east of Warsaw and port in west north Africa might work.
Certainly you can tweak the PP distribution and name the cities in any language, though I wouldn't question the naming of Polish cities seeing s how the designers are Polish and probably are much more familiar with the names
I think this game is a lot of fun and has great potential. A few tweaks with production, possibly a few force pool limits and a little work on the AI massing troops in far off theaters will go a long way.

[LarryP]

ORIGINAL: Kuniworth II

I have been active over at Strategic Command community for last 6 years and improved that game, even created the corps-sized eastern front scenario for SC2 Weapons and warfare. I don't really have the energy to start that refining process yet again and I really enjoy and support the SC series and Hubert Cater. Just want to see some basic improvements at least to this game.

I play the SC series a lot too. I have been playing Storm Of Steel in Patton Drives East lately. I am playing as Axis. Currently in August of 1942 I'm getting my butt beat. I may be able to hang on until the start of 1943 but I kind of doubt it. That AI is really tough. [X(]

I have both SC's and both expansions too. Great fun. [:)]

[KuniworthII]

Another thing: how come Spain can chose elections but not Italy motivate by it's a regime. Well let me tell you Spain was a regime too, should stay facist not swing.

[wargamer123]

Kuniworth, the guy I beat down in SC1 last time we played? Remember the great battle for the Caucasus Mnts, how historical was that?

I agree with you here though, there does sound to be some great historical inconsistencies. But what I would really like to know if you own this what's game play like?

Might be best if the creator modded out the additions and simplified history like most WW2 ETO's do if they run amuck...


P.S. Franco didn't strike me as a gambler, I feel he didn't join the Axis and wouldn't until he knew they were the winning side. Plus its seems to be he was interested in Domineering Spain, not some UberEspanolian Empire

[KuniworthII]

Wargamer, hm who are you? Caucasus mountains? Anyhow Franco should'nt join axis easily. But during ww2 with half the world DOW:ing Germany in 1944-45, Spain stayed neutral.

[wargamer123]

Kuniworth, it's Liam. Yes, Spain stayed neutral. Obviously they saw nothing to gain either way? Had they joined the Allies, aligning against their fascist ideals, what would they have gotten?

Anyway, what's the game like?

[KuniworthII]

Hi Liam! how's it hangin? [:)]
 
PRO:
Game is hexbased, you attack via order your units to do combined attacks. Without combined attacks your units suffer more damage. There are automatic retreat rules, abstracted naval action, units move via movement-points so you can shift unit and then come back to move, research is simple and more predictable than SC, diplomacy points instead of buying them(each country gets a fixed number each month based on I guess how influential they were. All in all the apporach of the game "feels right", loading time for AI is fast.
Another thing I like is that the dev team seem to have no trouble creating events of certain types.
 
CONS:
- Game freezes sometimes when you have highlited a unit and then misclick on another unit. Have to restart the computer.
- AI is bad, very vunerable to flank encirclements and mass troops on certain places. It seem incapable of a coherent frontline.
- Lots of historical errors, makes you bit annoyed playing the game.
- Very difficult to plan wars as all memember of your alliance act on their own behalf, you cant use them in your planning as you dont know what they are doing. Bad design choice.
- Hard to edit the game the way you like it as there are no editor, you have
- No troop limit make it unrealistic, no yugo partisans what Ive come across, and there are no weather except an effectiveness penalty for axis units in soviet winter.
 
 
All in all game could be really good if they would work hard to improve it. As it stands now it's not competitive. But it could be.

[KuniworthII]

Another flaw:
 
Airborne divisions can do a parachute jump AND THEN MOVE 4-5 hexes. Well feels like HOI para jumping all over again.
 
Naturally a airborne divsion that jumps should have the possibility to move maybe max 1 hex not more if even that.

[KuniworthII]

More errors:
 
Mentioned in another thread the problems with frontline in the 1941 scenario, with the missing biyalostok-bulge and Grodno in german hands.
 
Turns out a quick glance turns up even more flaws:
 
Vyborg and Karelia starts controlled by Finland. But come on, this was annexed in the winter war, this was the reason Finland EVEN EVER did join the invasion in the first place!
 
Oh and rremove the finnish fortifications. Don't know what you are aiming at? Mannerheim line? Well it was firstly overrun in the winter war and secondly did not even consist of more than a few bunkers and dug in trenches. Remove.