My short review

[Ekaton]

Summary

It has its flaws, quite a few flaws, but overall it's probably the best WWI grand strategy currently available on the market (there's hardly any worthwhile competition though, except AGEOD whose engine is terribly unfit for WWI). It's slightly old school, with only one unit per hex and abstracted 1-10 values, and has its flaws, but overall it is quite accurate, easy to learn, and its research and diplomacy are very nice touches. The only thing that truly doesn't work is naval combat, and it has to do with 1 unit per tile limitation.

EDIT: I changed my mind a bit after several sea battles in this game. It may seem to be countering the summary and my multiple praises that you will see later, but the sea battle system broke it for me. It is so unrealistic, gamey and obsolete that it turns sea battles into individual skirmishes between ships, rather than grand battles as in the real world. As you can imagine, the attacker gets to choose what to do and he can use his heavy ships to destroy your light ships before you get to react - you have to wait for your turn, there is no automatic firing. This is something that Panzer General from the 90s did much better and I find this absolutely inexcusable. I tried to love this game, but it's not nearly as good as I expected. The land warfare part is quite decent, except for the hex issues and simplified strength, but naval warfare (quite a big thing in this game) is atrocious.

What works
1. There are many types of units and many countries, covering every major power of the war, as well as some minor nations such as Serbia, Montenegro, Albania or Portugal.
2. Combat is sufficiently detailed not to feel flat like old Panzer General games (although I'd say that Kaiser General is still one of the best WW1 options out there, besides this).
3. Diplomacy and research are both great addition and add a lot of immersion.
4. AI is quite capable, which is a great change from most other strategy games out there. There is definitely a great strength in simplicity.
5. There are only three scenarios, but the Grand Campaign is what I find the best choice in any case. There are multiple choices over time which means that each playthrough can be quite different.
6. The ability to automate one or more of your allies. I like the separation between the western and eastern allies, and left Russia to the AI. It did a bit better than historically, which is fine.
7. Graphics are quite nice, and Blue Max mod available on Matrix Forums makes counters absolutely gorgeous.
8. Economics and convoys are very well simulated, as well as naval blockades.

What doesn't work
1. One unit per hex imposes unhistorical limitations - there are only so many planes and artillery and HQs you can fit in Belgium.
2. One unit per hex makes naval battles especially awful and nothing like their historical counterparts, where whole fleets fought on a relatively small area. Also, ships can only attack an adjacent hex which means that a destroyer has the same range as a dreadnought.
3. 1-10 strength per unit is perhaps too old school. I much prefer more in-depth statistics listing equipment like in Gary Grigsby's games.
4. AI can be a bit odd. Like when it retreated most of its units from France in September 1914, to go to the east. Schlieffen Plan had precise goals and abandoning it in the middle, allowing me to recapture most of Belgium is very odd and a terrible strategic choice, that would have been rather unlikely in real life.
5. For historical purists, the battle ratio is too high. Battles happen all the time in this game, even on a static front, whereas in real life large offensives were separated by longer periods of hardly any action in that particular area.
6. Naval units suffer way too high casualties at sea. You can lose several divisions transferring them from France to Egypt, which is ancient warfare level of attrition.
7. Unit speed is often off, especially land units being transported at sea. Sometimes, I have no idea why, a convoy will stop slow down to 2 hexes a turn, which is WAY slower than sailships. It then takes MONTHS to transport a unit from France to Egypt (I haven't timed it, but I think it's about 8 months in my current campaign and still ticking).
8. U-Boats are way OP. Several U-Boat units can destroy 1/4 of the Royal Navy in a matter of weeks, by swarming blockade ships and destroying their targets before you can react the next turn.

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: Ekaton

What works
4. AI is quite capable, which is a great change from most other strategy games out there. There is definitely a great strength in simplicity.

What doesn't work
1. One unit per hex imposes unhistorical limitations - there are only so many planes and artillery and HQs you can fit in Belgium.

To my mind this is the key design tradeoff. One unit per hex and no stacking imposes limitations, so does having one production resource and 1-10 strength points. Some people will find those limitations frustrating and want a much more detailed game - but a much more detailed game would probably not have an AI that's actually challenging, nor the level of accessibility.

[Ekaton]

ORIGINAL: The Land

ORIGINAL: Ekaton

What works
4. AI is quite capable, which is a great change from most other strategy games out there. There is definitely a great strength in simplicity.

What doesn't work
1. One unit per hex imposes unhistorical limitations - there are only so many planes and artillery and HQs you can fit in Belgium.

To my mind this is the key design tradeoff. One unit per hex and no stacking imposes limitations, so does having one production resource and 1-10 strength points. Some people will find those limitations frustrating and want a much more detailed game - but a much more detailed game would probably not have an AI that's actually challenging, nor the level of accessibility.

I understand that, that's why I noted that there is strength in simplicity, even though I don't think that one unit per hex is the best system, when you consider its limitations. TOAW IV and Gary Grigsby's games have decent AI even though they have unit stacking.

[Edorf]

An honest review I guess. Since you mention that you feel the battle ratio in the game is too high compared to reality I must disagree a bit. On the western front at least there was an everlasting artillery barraging almost continuously in between offensives thus high and steady casualty numbers. This was no sitzkrieg from the next war. Later came decease, also causing high death rates on both sides. Initially the French also had a naive doctrine consisting of storming German lines head on with thousands of men only to be slaughtered by German machine guns. The western front turned in too virtually a moonscape pretty early. The French alone lost over 200 000 men the first month of the war. Some stalemate did occur in shorter periods but in the end ww1 was a slaughterhouse.

[IslandInland]

I detest 1-10 strength values. As far as I am concerned that abstraction should have died a death with Panzer General/Panzer Corps.

I bought WarPlan recently and that treats grand strategy and the strength of units in a much more intelligent way.


Thanks for the mini review Ekaton. Given this and the lack of a discount on Matrix for owners of the previous two SC games I think I will give this one a miss.

[Ekaton]

ORIGINAL: Edorf

An honest review I guess. Since you mention that you feel the battle ratio in the game is too high compared to reality I must disagree a bit. On the western front at least there was an everlasting artillery barraging almost continuously in between offensives thus high and steady casualty numbers. This was no sitzkrieg from the next war. Later came decease, also causing high death rates on both sides. Initially the French also had a naive doctrine consisting of storming German lines head on with thousands of men only to be slaughtered by German machine guns. The western front turned in too virtually a moonscape pretty early. The French alone lost over 200 000 men the first month of the war. Some stalemate did occur in shorter periods but in the end ww1 was a slaughterhouse.

That is true, losses were very heavy, but really, not that much happened between offensives - sides conducted trench raids and snipers kept shooting, but nothing like what happens in the game, not whole corps disappearing in a week, not on the western front anyway. It is not a major issue, but I just noted that AFAIK, this is a bit unrealistic.

ORIGINAL: IslandInland

I detest 1-10 strength values. As far as I am concerned that abstraction should have died a death with Panzer General/Panzer Corps.

I bought WarPlan recently and that treats grand strategy and the strength of units in a much more intelligent way.


Thanks for the mini review Ekaton. Given this and the lack of a discount on Matrix for owners of the previous two SC games I think I will give this one a miss.

I usually don't bother buying games with 1-10 strength values, unless the game has something extraordinary to offer. I'm a huge WWI buff and had spent a while waiting for a WWI game that would be deep enough and have a good AI. I bought this one after reading about it a lot and watching YT videos about it and it seemed to fit the criteria well enough.

Would I still buy it now? Probably not. What breaks it for me is the sea combat. The engine is really awful for that and old Kaiser General (Open General mod, based on old Panzer General) handles sea combat much better, with battles that involve many different kinds of ships, and at least an attempt to make them have historically accurate ranges. In this game sea battles are skirmishes between individual ships (or groups of ships of the same class, I guess). It doesn't matter that your dreadnoughts are in the adjacent hex, they still won't do anything when enemy cruisers slaughter your smaller vessels. It is really unrealistic and feels stupid.

[seydlitz22513]

Regarding the naval game, I agree 100% it is just plain stupid and totally unrealistic, has been since Strategic Commands very first release many many years ago.

[shri]

One of the guys in the WW2 game of Strategic command made a mod- Submarines are still the same, but rest are different. Battlecruisers and Carriers and Battleships are bunched in sets of 2 with some allied ships within and Destroyers are a set of destroyers. makes naval battles far better. DDs no longer run rough shod on Capital Ships.

The Belgian mess i understand, its a pain, but the Land Combat is good. I have played WW1 Gold which was a great game but the engine was so terrible that it used to randomly crash every 6th turn or something.

[sol_invictus]

The way the game engine handles naval combat is the sole reason I never bought any of the WWII titles; though I was very tempted to get WAW on several occasions. I just couldn't get past the naval gameplay. I heard the Task Force mod for the WWII titles was coming to this game so hopefully that will make the naval game somewhat acceptable but they really need to get serious with naval combat for the next title.

[Edorf]

So which ww1 or ww2 strategy pc game(s) of this scale, new or old, have modeled the naval part very good in your opinion? Apart from the more obvious War in the Pacific ae.
As far as I can tell there’s not many options.

[IslandInland]

ORIGINAL: Edorf

So which ww1 or ww2 strategy pc game(s) of this scale, new or old, have modeled the naval part very good in your opinion? Apart from the more obvious War in the Pacific ae.
As far as I can tell there’s not many options.

WarPlan. You can buy it here.

https://www.matrixgames.com/game/warplan

In this game naval units are assets to be preserved and kept as fleets in being just like real naval units.

[seydlitz22513]

ORIGINAL: IslandInland

ORIGINAL: Edorf

So which ww1 or ww2 strategy pc game(s) of this scale, new or old, have modeled the naval part very good in your opinion? Apart from the more obvious War in the Pacific ae.
As far as I can tell there’s not many options.

WarPlan. You can buy it here.

https://www.matrixgames.com/game/warplan

In this game naval units are assets to be preserved and kept as fleets in being just like real naval units.

Warplan naval game is far superior to the system used in Strategic Command games.


This is a plea to anyone who has anything to do with the design of the Strategic Command series of games. In order to improve the naval game you need to increase the Zone Of Control for Dreadnoughts, Pre-Dreadnoughts, Battlecruisers, Armoured Cruisers, and Light Cruisers, plus give all these ship types much higher evade ratings! Plus the naval unit scale does not work with the map scale. The game needs to implement historical Squadron sized units as per the example below of the British 1st Battle Squadron.


First World War

August 1914

1st Battle Squadron

On 5 August 1914, the squadron was based in Scapa Flow and consisted of the following 8 Dreadnoughts.

HMS Marlborough
HMS Collingwood
HMS Colossus
HMS Hercules
HMS Neptune
HMS St. Vincent
HMS Superb
HMS Vanguard

[Sugar]

While I guess the concerns about the modelling of naval combat are comprehensible, there are 2 issues with the comparison regarding "Warplan":
it does not cover WWI afaik, and the AI can't hold SC's beer imho. And naval combat doesn't play a key role in this game either, if you don`t like it you may fully concentrate on land battles.

[Simulacra53]

I haven’t used the TF mods, in practice how does it deal with ship losses and new ships?

In order to have fleets you need to be able to manage them.
You cannot simply apply the create corps approach on fleets - it would take much longer and be massively expansive.

So how did you tackle this?
A 5 DN squadron takes 5/10 damage, you just reinforce with increased cost?
You lose a squadron you produce a new 5 DN squadron?

Or can you still built ships and create squadrons (with a cap)?

[Ekaton]

A fleet mod could help, but how would you deal with the fact that ships don't help each other in defense? If the enemy detects your fleet, they can pick out one or two fleets a turn, and just swarm them and leave, and with no defensive fire or nearby units moving to help the defender, the attacker can do anything he wants. Attacking a weak fleet with 3-4 strong ones, leave, rinse, repeat. That's both awful from the game perspective, and completely unrealistic.

Unless nearby fleets can somehow act as artillery units and assist each other, I don't think there's anything to be done here. This engine is by far not designed for naval warfare.

ORIGINAL: Edorf

So which ww1 or ww2 strategy pc game(s) of this scale, new or old, have modeled the naval part very good in your opinion? Apart from the more obvious War in the Pacific ae.
As far as I can tell there’s not many options.

It is very hard to combine both good land and naval warfare, it's usually a tradeoff. War in the Pacific AE land warfare is not nearly as good as in dedicated land warfare titles. War in the West dealt with it really well, IMO. It was never the main focus, and naval warfare wasn't that important at that time, so he abstracted the U-Boat warfare, and tied it to production, rather than have AI move lackluster hexes around the map.

This game tries to do both and fails flat. Devs should have understood the limitations of their system and abstract it more, if they were unable to deliver proper battles. HOI4 did a rather decent job with ASW, but it took years for them to balance it properly. At times it was awful, with U-Boats either being too strong or too flimsy. HOI3 had the same issue, even with some of the best mods - I remember sending several U-Boat fleets to the Atlantic Gap only to see them destroyed in about 2 months.

[demyansk]

I looked on Steam and it's $10 cheaper. I have both of them and I think I bought them from Matrix. I have the keys on Steam as well.

[Simulacra53]

Regardless of fleets or ships, this is a turn based game and not a real time simulation.

Losing a complete (or multiple) corps isn’t realistic either, it should be pretty rare, but here it is part of the design - in absence of smaller units, shorter turns or WeGo system there is little you can do about this.

In warplan I’ve hardly looked at the naval aspect, focusing on the land battle instead - which is not that much different compared to SC3.

[ivanov]

ORIGINAL: Ekaton

A fleet mod could help, but how would you deal with the fact that ships don't help each other in defense? If the enemy detects your fleet, they can pick out one or two fleets a turn, and just swarm them and leave, and with no defensive fire or nearby units moving to help the defender, the attacker can do anything he wants. Attacking a weak fleet with 3-4 strong ones, leave, rinse, repeat. That's both awful from the game perspective, and completely unrealistic.

I don't pay much attention to the naval war, especially in the WW1 game. But if I send a naval group somewhere, I screen it with the subs, then with some less valuable vessels, keeping the battleships and dreadnoughts inside the group. If the enemy encounters my group, he will first bump into the screening force, and getting to the battleships and dreadnoughts is almost impossible. Even if a sub bumps twice into the screening force, it doesn't have much action points left to move further. So the key is to operate with strong, mutually supporting naval groups. But as I said, in this game I focus on the land warfare. In terms of navies, the Entente's blockade is important and the German submarine warfare, which works well IMO because the subs are practically stealth in silent mode.

[ivanov]

Double post - I'm dumb.

[ivanov]

ORIGINAL: Simulacra53

Losing a complete (or multiple) corps isn’t realistic either, it should be pretty rare, but here it is part of the design.

You rarely lose the land units completely. The fact that they disappear from the map means IMO, that they become combat ineffective and you can bring them back quickly for the reduced cost. You only lose the units completely when they got destroyed with a low supply, meaning that they got cut off and the men become POWs. But this happens very rarely in this game. Without mechanized units it's very difficult to cut off the enemy forces. This game is about grinding forward with a massive artillery support. I love the deliberate pace of this game in comparison to the WW2. Even conquering a weak minor country like Romania requieres time and effort.