State of the Game as I see it currently
Posted: Wed May 06, 2026 8:59 am
Hello everyone this is my View of the state of the Game as of right now. These are my opinions and have been gathered over several PBEM games over all patches since the games release. The Message has been posted on Discord but I also wanted to post it here on the Forum to see what others think about the Game state as it is right now.
Having played several games now since release I have to say the engine is great and I see a future for it with other theatres but the way this game is right now. It is simply not fun nor even satisfying to play as the republicans. Its severely unbalanced and will in 9 out of 10 times end in onesided unstoppable steamroller. One can maybe slow it down but never actually inflict a defeat that will stop nor really slow down the nationalist side.
As a Comparison at Game Start. The Nationalist receive 1355 Squads of combat troops per month. The largest part of those are the Volunteer Squads at 550 followed by the Falange and Requets.
All of these Squads not only come in at large numbers while being mostly the equivalent to militias or paramilitary units but also squad for squad vastly outshoot any equivalent militia units the Republicans can field.
As a Comparison the most numerous squads the Republic receives are MAOC Milita at 540 which have a soft value of 14 which is 5 points lower than their somewhat equivalent of nationalist volunteer squads at 19 soft attack the other squads are even better than those and we arent even taking into consideration of the vast amount of much better squads that the Nationalists start with that far outshine even the nationalist volunteers.
A look at the starting build numbers of the Republicans also show that they are actually being outproduced by the nationalists in pure Squads at the start of the game even if at a small margin. This somehwhat get better later on although I was suprised to see that the nationalists for some reason start to get almost 900 lmg squads per month later on. Which is 200 more than even the regular Militia/Infantry squads the Republicans get at the same timeframe. Why is that?
Due to the large difference in EXP and low soft attack rarely will any nationalist squads even die thus just increasing the gap drastically with every single ingame month. Even when caught out of position or stuck in a horrible attack and vastly outnumbered will the nationalists rarely suffer any destroyed squads.
Which brings me to another problem. We cant even dig in nor do Forts seem to particularly matter. They often fall extremely quickly due to extremely large adjusted AV swings in the nationalist favour which can lead to even large forts such as the Iron Ring of Bilbao to fall in single or very few attacks with almost no losses at all. This also makes nationalist troops in defensive battles extremely stubborn even when vastly outnumbered or caught out of position.
The Republican side has no real means of even building the most rudimentary defensive lines which often hinge on bases that are sitting on rails/roads/river crossings. Example for that are Luarca, Ribadeo, Cangas, Pajares which alone make an actual defense against attacks from Nationalist held Gallicia impossible as they are in the best chokeholds but are not able to be build up or fortified. They are thus more of a trap than help and the actual republican defense would be stronger if these places did not exist. There are many more of those examples around the map that make large parts of it impossible to fortify or defensively viable. Another glaring example is Motril perfectly positioned behind a River crossing and an important road crossing but incapable of being further fortified at the moment.
As an example this is Ciudad Real in mid September 1936. It has been a quiet sector for the entire game and been garrisoned by 2 militia columns. 1 almost filled up and combined into its full TOE and the other rather rudimentary. The base although set to fort building has achieved 9% of its lvl 1 fort since the first week of the war. The Units in the City itself are also still at 0 Fort levels.
Nobody can tell me that 1400 men would sit on their hands and make zero preparation to even do the most basic defensive moves to improve their position but that is the current state of the game as it is now. There are no real ways to build forts in these very important places. If I put them 1 hex to the east or west of the town in what is plains they will eventually build themselves some unit forts but why dont they do it in the actual places we need to hold and control?
But this is not even the worst. Due to the lack of any and all engineering capability apart from a miniscule amount of 35 labor/work squads per month and an even lower amount of other engineering units. Any damage sustained to Ports and airfields is incapable of being repaired. Would the dock workers of Gijon, Santander, Cartagena, Bilbao or Valencia just have thrown their hands in the air and done nothing? Would the aviation support guys just have looked at craters in the runway and given up?
My Solution would be to either increase the amount of actual labor/worker squads available or give all combat squads and support squads a tiny amount of intrinsic engineering capability. Enough so that they over a longer period of time can do at least basic tasks which would fall under basically unskilled labor such as digging trenches/filling up bomb holes and other things while being to weak to actually help in a meaningful way with larger construction projects such as Roads/railways and harder to construct fortification projects.
The lack of any fort building also means there is no real way to both prepare and blunt advances apart from just pouring in more and more cannon fooder into a City or small town that cant be fortified. Which leaves the Republicans with very little things to actually do apart from doing the extremely tedious task of sending small companies to eventually combine into larger units.
Due to the imbalance in EXP any real local counterattacks for example against attempts to go around a position by the nationalists is often doomed to fail as even vastly outnumbered and outgunned nationalist units will just hold their position and often not even take any real casualties. Not only does the intercept option never work. (I havent gotten it to work at all. My opponent got it to work at least once).
This just reinforces the spiral of The nationalists not losing devices, getting even more stuff which leads to losing even less devices since they can just swamp the republicans even more.
As Aexpert has already brought fourth it is almost impossible to generate a real threat to ships trying to bring troops from Africa. The Nationalists have a very easy time transfering troops from there at close to 0 risk. One of the problems being that as he mentioned the straits can be easily closed and Warships often not really following up against defenseless enemy ships or shooting at them from vast distances. This leads to a lot more power much easier and earlier available than it was historically.
Navalbombardments especially against bases are vastly overtuned at least in accuracy.
The use of the Suez to just avoid any and all real danger to Nationalist/Axis shipping between Naples and Spain plus the fact that Naples being offmap means that it is impossible to do anything against it.
The Naval battles while nice to look at are chaotic and do not offer any real information to the player. We cant really see damage effects like we did in WITP and thus its often impossible to even judge if a hit has caused any damage at all or was catastrophic in nature. This is especially bad with sub and aerial torpedoes.
Ships in general are way to sturdy. I have had dozens of ships that managed to limp away with close to 100 sys/float or other damage. Sometimes even over dozens of hexes and turns.
Even US Damage control in WITP would have failed but here it seems that inexperienced crews be it merchant marine or navy can do conjure pure wonders.
AA guns especially the larger ones seem to underperform extremely. I have only seen a single actual shotdown by AA and that was from dozens of AA machineguns against a single extremely low flying Italian bomber that directly attacked the Port of Cartagena and that was after a dozen or so attacks before that.
In Summary. The Gameplay for the Republican side is extremely dull and mostly evolves around sending the myriad of tiny units that spawn around the map to combine. Then placing them in chokepoints they cant improve to get rolled over eventually just to repeat the same thing over and over again. The Republicans have no agency of their own. Even local counterattacks when there are signs of overextension are doomed to fail due to the stark exp difference and the large differences in adjusted AV because of it. The only way that seems to have any chance of disruption is to cockroach tiny republican units into the enemy rear to die.
This leads to very quick and onesided games where the Northern Republic is already close to capitulation before the Winter of 36 and the rest of the Republic follows very quickly.
The Game either needs a way to give the Republicans at least a minimum amount of agency, a way to tie Squads and reinforcements to actual controlled territory or a 1937 Grand Scenario.
Also can there be a way to tell if “Scorched Earth” had any success or what sort of engineering capability is needed to blow up Rails and or bridges? Because there is absolutely nothing to tell you if it was a success or why it fails. Its incredibly frustrating to bring the miniscule amount of engineers to a place to just press the button several turns in a row and not even know if it did anything.
Having played several games now since release I have to say the engine is great and I see a future for it with other theatres but the way this game is right now. It is simply not fun nor even satisfying to play as the republicans. Its severely unbalanced and will in 9 out of 10 times end in onesided unstoppable steamroller. One can maybe slow it down but never actually inflict a defeat that will stop nor really slow down the nationalist side.
As a Comparison at Game Start. The Nationalist receive 1355 Squads of combat troops per month. The largest part of those are the Volunteer Squads at 550 followed by the Falange and Requets.
All of these Squads not only come in at large numbers while being mostly the equivalent to militias or paramilitary units but also squad for squad vastly outshoot any equivalent militia units the Republicans can field.
As a Comparison the most numerous squads the Republic receives are MAOC Milita at 540 which have a soft value of 14 which is 5 points lower than their somewhat equivalent of nationalist volunteer squads at 19 soft attack the other squads are even better than those and we arent even taking into consideration of the vast amount of much better squads that the Nationalists start with that far outshine even the nationalist volunteers.
A look at the starting build numbers of the Republicans also show that they are actually being outproduced by the nationalists in pure Squads at the start of the game even if at a small margin. This somehwhat get better later on although I was suprised to see that the nationalists for some reason start to get almost 900 lmg squads per month later on. Which is 200 more than even the regular Militia/Infantry squads the Republicans get at the same timeframe. Why is that?
Due to the large difference in EXP and low soft attack rarely will any nationalist squads even die thus just increasing the gap drastically with every single ingame month. Even when caught out of position or stuck in a horrible attack and vastly outnumbered will the nationalists rarely suffer any destroyed squads.
Which brings me to another problem. We cant even dig in nor do Forts seem to particularly matter. They often fall extremely quickly due to extremely large adjusted AV swings in the nationalist favour which can lead to even large forts such as the Iron Ring of Bilbao to fall in single or very few attacks with almost no losses at all. This also makes nationalist troops in defensive battles extremely stubborn even when vastly outnumbered or caught out of position.
The Republican side has no real means of even building the most rudimentary defensive lines which often hinge on bases that are sitting on rails/roads/river crossings. Example for that are Luarca, Ribadeo, Cangas, Pajares which alone make an actual defense against attacks from Nationalist held Gallicia impossible as they are in the best chokeholds but are not able to be build up or fortified. They are thus more of a trap than help and the actual republican defense would be stronger if these places did not exist. There are many more of those examples around the map that make large parts of it impossible to fortify or defensively viable. Another glaring example is Motril perfectly positioned behind a River crossing and an important road crossing but incapable of being further fortified at the moment.
As an example this is Ciudad Real in mid September 1936. It has been a quiet sector for the entire game and been garrisoned by 2 militia columns. 1 almost filled up and combined into its full TOE and the other rather rudimentary. The base although set to fort building has achieved 9% of its lvl 1 fort since the first week of the war. The Units in the City itself are also still at 0 Fort levels.
Nobody can tell me that 1400 men would sit on their hands and make zero preparation to even do the most basic defensive moves to improve their position but that is the current state of the game as it is now. There are no real ways to build forts in these very important places. If I put them 1 hex to the east or west of the town in what is plains they will eventually build themselves some unit forts but why dont they do it in the actual places we need to hold and control?
But this is not even the worst. Due to the lack of any and all engineering capability apart from a miniscule amount of 35 labor/work squads per month and an even lower amount of other engineering units. Any damage sustained to Ports and airfields is incapable of being repaired. Would the dock workers of Gijon, Santander, Cartagena, Bilbao or Valencia just have thrown their hands in the air and done nothing? Would the aviation support guys just have looked at craters in the runway and given up?
My Solution would be to either increase the amount of actual labor/worker squads available or give all combat squads and support squads a tiny amount of intrinsic engineering capability. Enough so that they over a longer period of time can do at least basic tasks which would fall under basically unskilled labor such as digging trenches/filling up bomb holes and other things while being to weak to actually help in a meaningful way with larger construction projects such as Roads/railways and harder to construct fortification projects.
The lack of any fort building also means there is no real way to both prepare and blunt advances apart from just pouring in more and more cannon fooder into a City or small town that cant be fortified. Which leaves the Republicans with very little things to actually do apart from doing the extremely tedious task of sending small companies to eventually combine into larger units.
Due to the imbalance in EXP any real local counterattacks for example against attempts to go around a position by the nationalists is often doomed to fail as even vastly outnumbered and outgunned nationalist units will just hold their position and often not even take any real casualties. Not only does the intercept option never work. (I havent gotten it to work at all. My opponent got it to work at least once).
This just reinforces the spiral of The nationalists not losing devices, getting even more stuff which leads to losing even less devices since they can just swamp the republicans even more.
As Aexpert has already brought fourth it is almost impossible to generate a real threat to ships trying to bring troops from Africa. The Nationalists have a very easy time transfering troops from there at close to 0 risk. One of the problems being that as he mentioned the straits can be easily closed and Warships often not really following up against defenseless enemy ships or shooting at them from vast distances. This leads to a lot more power much easier and earlier available than it was historically.
Navalbombardments especially against bases are vastly overtuned at least in accuracy.
The use of the Suez to just avoid any and all real danger to Nationalist/Axis shipping between Naples and Spain plus the fact that Naples being offmap means that it is impossible to do anything against it.
The Naval battles while nice to look at are chaotic and do not offer any real information to the player. We cant really see damage effects like we did in WITP and thus its often impossible to even judge if a hit has caused any damage at all or was catastrophic in nature. This is especially bad with sub and aerial torpedoes.
Ships in general are way to sturdy. I have had dozens of ships that managed to limp away with close to 100 sys/float or other damage. Sometimes even over dozens of hexes and turns.
Even US Damage control in WITP would have failed but here it seems that inexperienced crews be it merchant marine or navy can do conjure pure wonders.
AA guns especially the larger ones seem to underperform extremely. I have only seen a single actual shotdown by AA and that was from dozens of AA machineguns against a single extremely low flying Italian bomber that directly attacked the Port of Cartagena and that was after a dozen or so attacks before that.
In Summary. The Gameplay for the Republican side is extremely dull and mostly evolves around sending the myriad of tiny units that spawn around the map to combine. Then placing them in chokepoints they cant improve to get rolled over eventually just to repeat the same thing over and over again. The Republicans have no agency of their own. Even local counterattacks when there are signs of overextension are doomed to fail due to the stark exp difference and the large differences in adjusted AV because of it. The only way that seems to have any chance of disruption is to cockroach tiny republican units into the enemy rear to die.
This leads to very quick and onesided games where the Northern Republic is already close to capitulation before the Winter of 36 and the rest of the Republic follows very quickly.
The Game either needs a way to give the Republicans at least a minimum amount of agency, a way to tie Squads and reinforcements to actual controlled territory or a 1937 Grand Scenario.
Also can there be a way to tell if “Scorched Earth” had any success or what sort of engineering capability is needed to blow up Rails and or bridges? Because there is absolutely nothing to tell you if it was a success or why it fails. Its incredibly frustrating to bring the miniscule amount of engineers to a place to just press the button several turns in a row and not even know if it did anything.
