DBaron

For me its a lot of little things that add up over time and suck the enjoyment out of it. These observations were taken from playing as Italy in 1.2 1. The AI is not very good, for the most part each country does their own thing regardless of whether or not they are in an alliance. For example greece and romania had formed an alliance, but in name only. I attacked Romania and Greece did nothing. Rep Spain was in the allies, and didn't move at all to help France until after France was defeated. Had spain decided to send some divisions to help out in southern france it would have made it much harder for me. Playing as France in 1.1 Germany couldn't care less about what happens to Italy, until you show up on their borders, which made for an easy game as France. Playing as poland in 1.1 I fought for 8 months and none of the rest of the allies even bothered to do anything to help me. (1/2 the world was in the allies including the USA). Britian did some strategic bombing, USA just built division after division, Finland sent me one division, and France was struggling for its life after getting mauled by Italy (common problem in 1.1). There is no real way to co-ordinate their activities, so its a free for all. 2. The intelligence system isn't very good, and currently I am stuck with unkillable spies disrupting my research. Very frustrating. 3. Playing as Italy I cannot declare war on Iraq which has brought my middle east campaign to a halt. 4. Also, Italy gets robbed by the Vichy event. I lost all my gains in Southern France thanks to it. I was pushing on Paris when it fired. I had to declare war on the Vichy government to get some of them back, but one lone german tank division made a bee line for Marsielle and grabbed it for Germany before I could, splitting my empire in two. Since there is no way to trade provinces (that I know of), it makes managing my empire that much harder (supplies, moving troops back and forth, etc). Things like that which keep adding up making it either a headache to play, or just not fun.

I wouldn't touch it until next year at least. Currently it's at patch 1.2 and it has a long way to go. Maybe after the new year people might get some decent mods out, or they might be able to patch it into something that is playable, but until then save your money. I wish I would never have bought it.

Are you referring to "Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific " by Eric Bergerud?

That was a roller coaster of a game. I didn't think the wings were gonna win that game after Anaheim scored to tie it up in the third. Despite all the wings efforts, Anaheim kept coming back, and it seemed that all the breaks were going their way. But wings finally caught a break with cleary's goal, and that was it. Ducks couldn't do anything after that. Now I hope the wings have something left for Chicago after that exhausting series.

Tonight was a crazy night for hockey. Both games were outstanding, but the chicago game was insane. Multiple lead changes, each team comes back from behind, the star forwards for each team showed up, and Luongo of all people lets in 7! goals. If this keeps up people are going to be talking about these playoffs for a long long time.

I think the ducks have one more period's worth of decent hockey left in them. If they can jump out to a lead then they might have a chance, but I doubt it.

Boston down 2-1, Wings down 2-1, Chicago down 2-1, and Pittsburgh down 2-1. This sucks. All the teams I thought would be up are losing. I think Detroit and Chicago have the best chances of coming back, and I hope Pittsburgh - Wash goes to seven, but whoever wins I don't care. I would'nt cry if Carolina bumped Boston either. The wiznewski injury is really going to hurt Anaheim, if not now, then definetly in the long run, as he has been playing so good for them. I like Detroit's chances in the next two games, and by then Raf and Draper should hopefully be available. Oh, and goodbye Phoenix.

Second round should be awesome. Ducks and Wings, Pens and Caps. So far this year's playoffs have been epic.

Sharks are done. I can see them getting one more at home, but they have no chance of winning the next 3 in a row, not against that ducks team. What a terrible performance last night. It's a pity because if my team doesn't make it, I was sorting of hoping for a sharks boston finals as a consolation prize. Not gonna happen now.

Ha sharks suck. At least philly showed up today.

I was surprised that no one made a thread until after the playoffs started. This years first round match ups are almost perfect. Could be one of the best playoffs in awhile.

Goalies....

You can play the game offline, steam still needs to be running though.

Steam isn't that bad. Not that it doesn't have its flaws, because it certainly does, but for the most part I find it to be useful. I have been using it on and off since its inception back in 2002-2003. It's far better than some of the other options developers use, for example the debacle that was spore. I think in the Jutland thread there were some complaints about activation as well. I like it because it's easy way easier to keep track of games, and to purchase them. I currently have about 20 games that I have purchased through steam that are not installed at any one time. Most of these are valve games that are bundled together (i.e. Half life 2, + CS source, + endless other valve games), but I have several third party titles as well. When I feel like playing through Half life 2 again, I simply re download it, and when I am done, just uninstall it. I don't have to keep track of discs, and steam will bring it up to date for me, so I don't have to go running off to the internet to look for patches, and try to figure which is the most recent patch, or what order I need to patch the game, etc. Same for the silent hunter series. For comparison, I wanted to replay Diablo 2, but since I have lost my expansion disc case, I can't enter the CD number, and I don't feel like paying for a replacement key. This is not a problem when I use steam. Transferring a game from one pc to the next is fairly easy, just install steam and redownload everything that you want. I've done this several times, with no problems. AFAIK there are no restrictions on how many times you install or uninstall. I think the downside is that you are tied to one machine. My biggest complaint is customer service. I bought the silent hunter gold pack, and while SH III runs fine, and is easy to mod, SH IV with the expansion has never run right when I let steam download it the way it wants to. The steam forum for SH IV offers no official solutions, mostly frustrated users coming up with work arounds. Also Hearts of Iron 2, which is playable fine when you download it, you can't install the 1.3 beta patch from paradox. You need to hunt around to find a patch that will work with the steam version. I am about to go pick up ETW tommarrow. It requiring steam to run doesn't bother me at all, since I am so used to using it.

I hear some skipping in the audio when the video finally manages to launch, but by then I don't have any patience for watching it, and push the usual suspect buttons until it stops and I get to the game menu. I did change some graphics settings, but it still took a long time for them to implement and I had to restart the training scenario. I know I have a pretty marginal system (by the games standard anyway), but it's still the biggest hang up for me. Thats good to know that it was scripted, I was wondering if that was the case. I didn't really see any option to change the difficulty, but with the long loading times, I didn't have much tolerance to go back and look for them either. I think for now I may pre-order it, and then wait a few to days for the reviews to come in before I actually purchase it outright. Thanks for the response.