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I forgot what a rulebook was like. Lately you could buy a game and go. Information displayed for strategy moved aside for glitz with your twitch. Glad to see a step back in detail. Still with the first days of dl it. Everytime a game is started another fact hits home, so I start over. Good thing the rulebook runs in the background.

Glad you're enjoying it; I like it too. Hang in there. After a couple of games, it all starts to fall in place. A PBEM game is a good way to learn too -- but that can be a school of hard knocks.

School of hard knocks was my first nursery. Give me another day to go over the gameplay one more time, then off to war! Still hedging my bet, let me play the allied side. It's not the move/combat that is slowing me down. It is the planning ahead and such loggistics bogging me down. Too damn stubborn to let the computer do it.

Don't get me started on what the game industry means by "strategy". This game is strategy. You think and plan your way to victory in this game, and how fast you can click your mouse doesn't matter one little bit.

Just got this game Sunday, and I'm on my second game. The first one I had to ditch after a couple of years as I was aware of how much I'd done wrong in that first start. The second was a little better, but I think I still messed up in 1943 as the WA.

One thing I've definitely noticed is that time goes by so very, very fast with the quaterly turns. A mistake happens and before you know it half a year is gone. Here's my second game noobie mistake.... I'd done ok in the North Atlantic. I'd poured some research into ASW, and had enough light fleets, carriers in planes in the NA that I could handle it when some German U-boats came out to play. Gradually I realized that the AI as Germany had decided to completely leave Britain alone. No Battle for the North Atlantic, no Battle of Britain, and nothing happening in North Africa.

My mistake was in being slow to react to that. I sat their passively just glad to survive for a few turns. OOOPS, most of a year is passed now and its getting deep in 1943. Russia was getting hammered, and I belately realized that I wasn't taking advantage of the German lack of U-boat action by pushing lend lease aid to Russia. And I was just sitting there in the Med not pushing the fact that the Germans weren't putting any resources there.

So now its 1944. I'm doing ok in Europe, but maybe a bit behind. I'm probably in awful shape in the Pacific as I've never gotten an offense going there. Actually, I just had my Midway in 1944, with two Japaneese CV's sunk, two disabled, and the naval air wings with two destroyed and two disabled. (The AI sailed is four CVs up to Midway when I had ground based air both their and in Hawaii, and my own three CVs all in HA ready to nail him).

So now I'm finishing up this game, but I'm so very, very anxious to start again and see if I can do it better.

But this game taught me a lot. Time passes so very, very quickly, and the Allies have to sieze that exact moment when the momentum swings. If they don't recognize that, they can be six months behind so very, very fast.

And I love all the strategic choices and balances. Even playing with the resource rich WA, there are so many choices to make.


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[8D]

I've started half a dozen games, dumping them once another leason learned. This game is a cross between chess, the history channel and plate spinning. My plates keep falling off before I can get back to them. Or, shot off. Not yet use to looking that far in the future, yet. Great game.

How far are you from a PBEM game?

I hear ya. I've only played one game, but it took me more than a week to play it. I went very slowly, partly learning mechanics, partly puzzling of strategy choices, and partly reloading to recover from mistakes. As it was, I still let a lot of mistakes go.