Some feedback after finishing the grand campaign

[Alter Native]

So I just finished the grand campaign "Wacht am Rhein" from the German site. I had a great time and really enjoyed the game, it has definitely become one of my favorite wargames, great job!

Here are a couple of suggestions/feedback I noticed while playing the game.

- First, and I think other people have mentioned this before, there should be some mechanism to remove very small units from heavily beaten up enemies from the map. Right now you can't leave them as they eventually block your supply lines or ambush your reinforcements later, even though it's just 20 guys with a truck, which makes no sense in my opinion. Sometimes I had half a division chase down a couple of guys and a truck... it's neither fun nor very realistic, just... annoying.
I'd suggest having something like a "shattered" mechanism that once a unit has lost 90% of it's initial strength the units disbands automatically to simulate that these units would try to reach friendly lines in small groups (too small to simulate).

- In my opinion artillery is way too strong in close combat.
The unit just shows some artillery guns and a couple of guys with guns. They shouldn't be able to put up that much of a fight once you get close to them. Even offensively there were many cases where I just used my Nebelwerferes offensively in close combat as it was just better than firing at the enemy... which imo just makes no sense.

- There is a (possible?) exploit for extra fuel in the grand campaign using depots. Since the PP-price for extra depots does not change you can just always buy medium and major depots that come with 30%-40% of it's maximum capacity and deplete them immediately. Or alternative, place them in Germany and "evacuate" the fuel. This gives you around 6000 extra fuel every turn for 45 PP which is just a fantastic deal.

- PP are kind of useless in the grand campaign once you have captured the first objectives (one of the reasons why the depot strategy works so easily). New units are dirt cheap and you're usually short on fuel anyways, not extra tanks. Reinforcements are also fairly low impact, so PP don't really feel like a valuable currency.
I'd suggest some extra actions for the high command, similar to the Walter Model cards that give a specific division extra readiness, action points (maybe vigor)... something that makes PP more valuable and add more big picture strategy options to the game.

- The AI is kind of terrible, it's really not good. They barely make any threatening attacks, they move their artillery too much leaving them with no action points. They withdraw for strong defensive positions, such as river crossings or cities.
I understand that it usually takes a lot of units preparing and coordinating to make a successful attack and this is not easy for the AI, but other games manage to do it much better.
Imo the AI is the biggest weakness of the game.
I'd be fine with the AI "cheating" more such as extra recon so it's not constantly misjudging the situation or committing to terrible attacks where they loose half their troops. Maybe an easy fix could also be an extra division (for the AI only) that must remain static at certain defensive points (similar to the Sicherung or Volkssturm units) to defend important points.

- Against the AI one gets waaay too many points for a good KD-ratio. In the end I won the game with more than 500 VP and half of it was coming from good KD, which makes the VP on the map completely meaningless. (This is a problem on all maps)

- It seems like the allies don't receive any reinforcements after ~10 days in the grand campaign? Which I don't understand. In the end they were left with around 30 000 power on the map consistently declining after the first week. There was barely any resistance in the western half of the map...

- Imo it's way too appealing to go after the northern and southern borders of the map and don't fight "a battle of the bulge". The big strategic supply bases on both map borders are a super big price and in both areas the roads are fairly good. I don't need to go for the middle as I'm getting all VP from a good KD-ratio and random cities I conquered along the way.
So why would I fight a battle of the bulge, when I can just take the north and the south with half the hassle but twice the reward?
Personally I'd be in favor of getting rid of the VP for KD-ratio entirely and only give victory points for the middeling part of the map, with the river crossing at Celles-Dinant as the big price for a major victory.


Now that sounds all very negative, but as said in the beginning, I had a great time playing the game and some mechanics, such as fog of war and Line of Sight are by the best I have seen in any game. Also great work with the presentation of the game, the map, units etc. It's just very nice to look at, which most wargames totally screw up (I was using portraits, not NATO counters)...
Thanks for the game!

[nikdav]

Thanks for the feedback !
Fine tuning artillery, VP (kill ratio), airborne divisions mobility, supply/fuel and difficult levels are our priority for next update !

Davide

[defekt]

Yes, agreed with all of the above points.

I found the AI to be as good as random in terms of identifying and defending key locations, and attacking intelligently. Often key locations would not be defended _at all_ or, somewhat hilariously, would have a few trucks lingering there instead. Essentially, if the AI is mounting what appears to be a decent defence that's more likely by luck rather than judgement.

The AI seems to be pretty good at manning 'a front' but it does so without regard for the underlying terrain or understanding of the best kind of units to put in said terrain. And artillery is moved around so much it rarely seems to be effective.

Yeah, I know, AI is hard. It really is. Genuinely is. But most other war games seem to be doing a better job than DC:AO.

[Vic]

Already responded to same post on Steam forums. Thanks!
Also thanks for feedback on the AI... i'll be continuing to work on it.

[Alter Native]

The AI seems to be pretty good at manning 'a front' but it does so without regard for the underlying terrain or understanding of the best kind of units to put in said terrain. And artillery is moved around so much it rarely seems to be effective.

Yeah, I know, AI is hard. It really is. Genuinely is. But most other war games seem to be doing a better job than DC:AO.

Yes, I think you're right.
The AI seems to behave like it's defending against a Barbarossa-like invasion on the eastern front, where you have long fronts of roughly equally strong units and the underlying terrain is not very important.
Pulling back entire parts of the front makes sense in the east, same as not trying to defend certain cities or junctions cause then you can get encircled easily.
In the Ardennes the course of a battle is completely depended on the underlying terrain, it's about roads, villages and strongpoints such as bridges or mountain tops. All you need to do cut of half an army is occupying 1-2 key road hexes, not encircle the entire front like in Russia.

[Jagger2002]

- In my opinion artillery is way too strong in close combat.
The unit just shows some artillery guns and a couple of guys with guns. They shouldn't be able to put up that much of a fight once you get close to them. Even offensively there were many cases where I just used my Nebelwerferes offensively in close combat as it was just better than firing at the enemy... which imo just makes no sense.

Yes, I just had a very weird result as the Germans attacking a US artillery battalion on turn one in Skyline Drive. Normally, I find artillery easy to overrun but in this case, it took 4 close combats of which the smallest was 9-1 odds and IIRC, a 56-1 attack failed as well. I also prepped the attack with artillery before sending in the pzgrenadiers and tanks. Maybe bad luck but it felt more like something was wrong.