Tried the Demo

[GrumpyMel]

Tried the Demo. It has the potential to be a very fun game. There are a few areas where I think the game misses the mark (for me). If these were changed, I'd say you'd have a real winner on your hands.

1) Air war seems broken. Ground strikes seem to do more damage to the (very expensive) planes then they do to the ground units being hit....making it generaly counter-productive to do ground attacks....even if you have air superiority and can fly unopposed.

This should be changed...in general doing ground strikes against enemy units should be advantageous from a PP perspective...unless the enemy has strong air defences....should be pretty rare for an air unit to take damage from doing so (unless it was intercepted).

2) Stacking.... The ability to put multiple units in a hex would (IMO) add hugely to the game. This would also allow you to put air units and ground units in the same hex. A big change, but I think it would allow you to do alot more then the game currently supports. Obviously there should be some maximum stacking limit.


3) Air-fields..... Rather then allowing air units to be based anywhere, putting actual airfields on the map where the planes had to be based out of would add more strategy to the game.

4) More unit types.... The games a little bland with the small variety of unit types.... for ground really you just have infantry, motorized, armor and airborne. The corps sized units are just larger formations of the same type....which is bit of a quirky way of doing things (IMO).
If you were able to impliment stacking you wouldn't need to worry about units of different sizes (corps/divisions)....and you could also open up different types of units with a little more variety to them...

Just off the top of my head you could have...

- Mountain/Alpine Div's
- Garrison/Militia/Reserve Div's
- Marine/Naval Infantry Div's
- Elite/Guard Divisions (for Infantry, Armor and Mot)
- Partisans
- Armored Infantry/Panzer Grenadier
- Air Defence/Flak

[Joram]

Hi Grumpy, I tried the demo too and had similar reservations at first but still took the plunge. I don't have any regrets either. While not as experienced as some of these people who have played it awhile this is what I've found,

1) Initially I agreed with you 100% but the more I play, the more I think it's because the mechanic isn't documented well. Or, the AI has some kind of bonus effect because I am finding the AI is devestating some of my stronger tank corps out east. They do sometimes take quite a few hits but on a PP basis they are coming out ahead as fixing a tank corps is expensive. In any case, it is a little bit of a moot point as they are changing it a bit differentiating between fighter units and tactical support units now. You can read this thread. So I'm adopting a wait and see attitude on this particular point myself.

2) I have found this to be completely unnecessary and appreciate the simplicity that the game offers in this regard. There have been no cases that I can think of where this has really mattered the way the game is designed.

3) Airfields could be made virtually anywhere and quite quickly. Often just a reasonable level field of grass would suffice. I may agree with you if you wanted to restrict it from rough terrain (forest, mountains, swamp) but to be honest I don't think it makes sense otherwise. Also consider the very long range air units have in this game, even if you had airfields, having more than a handful would be pointless. Not sure if that's what you'd really want anyway.

4) I find that there really is no need for a Panzer Grenadier unit as the difference between motorized and armored units leaves little room for this unit IMO. In fact you could consider a higher level tech motorized unit the same as a PzG unit. Similarly, elite units you will find are handled by tech level. Having an advanced tech unit is quite expensive, thus you won't have many of them. These are really your elite units. Similarly with Garrison etc, those are essentially just tech 1 infantry. And I don't think air defence units are appropriate at this scale (never heard of a flak division myself!). With that said, I did suggest something very similar to your suggestion as I think it could use a little more variety so it's still a good discussion to have. For instance, I like the idea of an alpine unit as you would really use them and not just be there for the sake of it.