Overall, the game has been quite satisfying, although I am now finding the Soviet opponent a bit too easy to beat even with a beer and pretzels approach to my game play. The right balance might be somewhere between the initial release and where it is now, but the general improvements to the game are impressive.
My main observations:
1. The AI does a goo job of maintaining its defensive line, using river lines very effectively, and makes moves to cut off spearheads.
2. The AI is less focused on avoiding pockets (or I am better at creating them) and once pocketed it seems to take a bit longer to eliminate the remaining units. I had some Soviet units still up by the Romanian border on turn 12, and after I surrounded Moscow the Soviet units still had decent CV values after 3 turns. Much improved here.
3. The AI now garrisons its cities, but once they are threatened with encirclement the garrisons invariably flee, even if they can only move 1 hex and remain pocketed. There seems to a be a prioritisation of keeping lines of supply open over holding urban terrain that might need to be looked at.
4. CV values during Mud turns now drop to 1 across the board - no more attacks during the mud phase, but without resorting to 'freezing' the front as some games do. I like this also.
5. From the onset of the mud in T19, I have been experiencing 1-2 partisan attacks each turn. All of my cities are Garrisoned. About 50% of these attacks hit 5-6 hexes of railroad at a time and the other 50% only affect 1 hex. I would go for the 1 hex impact and would accept the number of attacks and their frequency so far.
6. Soviet strength might now be too low - there's no way the AI could launch any serious counter attacks up to T19, but at the same time the vast carpet of AI units is gone. We are almost there, IMO, and the Soviets just need their summer 41 strength to be upped a tad.
I will report back on the winter/blizzard experience.
