Long Time Motivation

[sonrix]

Hello,

I have bought the game a few days ago and played about 30 hours so far.
First tried on the hardest difficulty and got wooped once the enemy got tech rolling.

Then went a step down and got wooped again.
Tried then normal difficulty and gave the computer plus two observation range.

Now the computer gets wooped... Pointless to play on after the balance of power has cleary been shifted. Would take hours and hours just micromanage a won game into victory.

The turn takes a few minutes to play and more than 3 minutes to compute even after disabling all animations.

The play in the beginning is repetitive there is not much variation. It takes ages to find out, if the difficulty is valid or if those hours playing just were wasted.

The whole navy thing feels to useless. Once you get to the convoy regions you take 8-12 income from UK and shortly after loose a sub worth 200. Even if they manage to stay there for 5 turns they barely made half of what they cost.

I would give the game maybe a 4 out of 10 and would not consider the game worth more than a few bucks.
Maybe playing vs humans by email may change the feeling.

But nothing compared to the 100rds of hours I played other strategy games that have a high replayabiltiy.
I would like to like the game, but I can't find reasons.

There are strategy games, that I have played hundreds and hundreds of hours and one even a couple of thousand.
Making this historical valid by scripting events and limiting options, just makes it no fun in the long run at least not for me.

Or are there any people that still repeat the same game over and over again?

[mdsmall]

I have spent a several hundred hours happily playing the game against the AI at different settings and have found new variations and strategies to play each time. The interest lies in the slow unfolding of long term strategic and investment decisions and decisive events are few and far between - just like WW1. The scripts add a great deal of historical depth and interest for me. You would probably find PBEM play more challenging - but this game might just not be your cup of tea.

[Bo Rearguard]

ORIGINAL: sonrix

The whole navy thing feels to useless. Once you get to the convoy regions you take 8-12 income from UK and shortly after loose a sub worth 200. Even if they manage to stay there for 5 turns they barely made half of what they cost.

Considering that as Germany you get most of your subs for free in the production queue that's hardly a big loss.

[Sugar]

You can adjust the difficulty settings during an ongoing campaign when reloading a savegame. I`m playing Strategic Command since 15 years and have more than 250 PbEMs on my back; must be something in it I suppose. Before quitting you should try PbEM, this is where the game really shines. But be aware it`s as brutal as chess.

[Torplexed]

I enjoyed this title a great deal. I had no games in my library that covered WWI on a grand strategic level, so it was good to finally get one, and it gave me a chance to brush up on the history of this conflict which always seems to be overshadowed by it's bigger brother, WWII.

As for replayability, I'm certainly not the type to instantly go back and start another grand campaign soon as I finish one. I'll probably move on to another subject for a while. Give it some time and I will go back and play it again, especially if there are any changes made in the meantime. Any game title would get stale for me if I just played it over and over.

[FOARP]

I've got a few hundred hours on this game not counting modding time. The one thing I'd agree with is that this game is slow, but on the other hand is fairly easy to play a few turns of it and go away and come back to if you've got a busy life with work/family commitments.

In terms of long-term motivation, I've never played a game where early decisions have such long-range consequences and where the game can push you so far. If you want to see how close you can come to getting beaten in this game and still bounce back, have a look at my most recent AAR here. I was a hair-breadth from France surrendering and still managed to win. I absolutely disagree that this game is simply taking early decision and then letting things play them out because although early decisions have long-range consequences and this is resolutely not a Candy-Crush-style "twitch-game", you can also turn around a bad situation by planning out your strategy. It also offers opportunities and possibilities I've not seen in any other game, including HOI and C:TGW.

The stuff about subs being useless just shows up a learn-to-play issue because frankly subs are OP.

[lwarmonger]

Agree with FOARP.... subs are way stronger then they should be. As Germany I have successfully broken the British blockade in every game I've played because subs+German fleet working in tandem can wreck the British fleet. And that is against human players.

Learn to play against the AI... this game was really designed to be PBEM just like the other games in this series.

[Xsillione]

Hmm, so you gained experience against hard AI and than beat the normal one and you find it boring. Usually it is done in the other direction for a reason. You play against normal and learn the game, than as you beat it, you up the difficulty, to keep the AI on par with your better gameplay, until you run out of interest or difficulty.

And the motivation comes from defeating the AI with the right amount of boost. On normal, it is cakewalk, on veteran triple alliance, playing as entente, now that was some fight, where the germans even took paris for a few turn, but only the moral collapse saved the germans from losing berlin to the russians in the end. And on expert as CP, you need to do everything near perfect and still have a hard time, a single mistake cost me nearly the entire ottoman-russian front, and a brutal massed artillery formation just cleared right now the neatharland defensive line. (and the italians decided rome is not important enough to lose morale over it)