Jump to content

First impression (mainly comments on rules and game balance)


Recommended Posts

Hi all

Am on my first real game of AoD as AXIS and its April 1941 (after 1 short practice run for the first few months). Great fun and a very worthwhile purchase.

Here are some observations/thoughts so far.

ARTILLERY - at the moment i am thinking they are a bit overpowered, though i know you can only have limited builds. Should they have slightly less effect against forts/cities?

UNITS GIVEN BY EVENTS - it would be nice to see these in the build que.

OPERATIONAL MOVEMENT - it would be nice to see where the units can move to before i pay the MPP cost.

SUBMARINES - As GER these really don't seem worth it as the MPP they cost to replace losses feels like its way more than they take off the enemy. So i have stopped research and am not building any new ones. I regret paying the 100MPP to upgrade the port in France.

GARRISON UNITS - MPP cost seems very high for what they are.

REINFORCEMENTS - these seem to cost a LOT - too much?

EXPERIENCE LOSS ON REINFORCING : the loss of experience seems very high.

DIPLOMACY - partly because of some of the items above i seem to never have the MPP to spend on this and trying some different strategies what with new units and reinforcements taking top priority. This may be because its a bit of investment in the future and i have no real idea yet (as i have not played enough) of the returns.

ZONES OF CONTROL - it seems there aren't any, which took a bit of getting used to. It just feels wrong at the moment to move past enemy units with ease.

BESIEGING ENEMY CITIES - at first i was thinking the supply rules were ridiculous because cities could never be out of supply so there seemed little point in pocketing units. Then i saw the rule about having 4 units adjacent to a city reduced supply level by 2 per turn (i.e. 1 in friendly turn and 1 in enemy turn) which made more sense. Not had the need to use it yet but on the face of it having to have 4 units adjacent seems excessive. Also, surely this rule should also apply to Capitals and forts, though maybe just make the supply reduction happen in enemy turns only so you only get a reduction of 1 per turn rather than 2.

VICHY EVENT- All my Italian units got stuck in southern France and couldn't return to Italy through Vichy - seems a little unrealistic. Would be nice to see an option to "return all Italian units to Italy" when the Vichy event fires (or just let Axis units move through it).

Your thoughts/comments would be very welcome as i appreciate i probably need to be schooled in the game mechanics and game balance by people who have played the game a lot more than i have :D

Many thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Sanderz

With Operational Movement, if you say yes to paying it and then look around the map for where to move the unit to, you can just cancel the Operational Movement by right clicking anywhere on the map.

Left clicking moves the unit, while right clicking cancels the Op Move.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quick answers:

- There are ZoCs but not for single units ! Any land tile with two enemy units adjacent will cost 2 AP more :) .

- I'm still toying with subs so i'm not sure where they stand yet but you get many of them for free as Germany and if you hit sub technology level 2 (free research chit at start) before they come out of the production queue, upgrades for most of them will be free.

- Also, by targeting main naval lanes (Canada, India, Australia), you can kill around 20 MPPs a turn by convoy, that's huge. So best case you can "get your money back" for a sub in less than 10 turns. And that doesn't count the possible damages to allied ships !

- However, if you target a multi-convoy naval lane there is a chance your sub will only hit a small convoy with less than 10 MPPs.

- Subs won't win the war alone but at worst they can buy you time by slowing UK development :) .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi sanderz.

Artillery - not sure if they are too strong. Like you said: there are not so many on the map. And they should offer something in return, else it would make no sense to use them at all. I can imagine a scenario where a nation builds artillery strongpoint for major offensives. And when several hundred or thousand artillery units fire on a single tile, that has to have some effect.

Units from event:

Agreed, a special section in the production menu would be nice. Maybe something for SC3.

Operational Movement:

Bill already said all there is to say about this topic.

:)

Submarines:

Well, they were pretty usefull in GC / GC GOld. But with the newly introduced jump arrows i tend to agree. Only that i would enlarge this point to all naval combat units. I do understand why the red arrows were installed, but for my taste they kill the naval warfare.

Garrison units:

Wouldn't agree here, but in such kind of questions everyone has probably a different taste.

Reinforcements:

same as Garrisons

Experience loss on reinforcing:

same as Garrisons

Diplomacy:

once you start to optimize your gameplay you will find enough money to spend. Or once you have tried several different approaches to win the game you will find a way to use diplomacy for your favor.

But i would agree that it would be a nice addition to the gameplay if every diplo chit could trigger decision events with these countries, or if minor advance would create single income events or trade line or convoy route or if you could deliver weapons to strengthen a minor country etc.

SC3, hopefully.

ZOC

See Strategiclayabouts answer

Besieging enemy cities

Hmhm. Well. War is hell.

Vichy Event

Agreed. It would be nice if the player could decide once the "do you want to create Vichy" event pops up where to place his german or italian units placed (setting a flagg to France, Italy or Germany).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thanks all for the input

SUBS- hadn't picked up there was 2 sorts of naval lanes - but in any event the problems is more that my subs seem to get found and die very quickly/easily (and this is in 1939/40)

OP MOVES / ZOCs - thanks for the tips

MPP FOR DIPLOMACY - i haven't spent any on diplomacy and am just about to start barbarossa for which i seem to be short of units so it will be interesting to see how things go as maybe i have overbuilt - we'll see

BESIEGING - SeaMonkey - fair comment but a city may well not be able to trace to any other supply point (where the front line has moved past it) so it seems like overkill to have to have 4 units actually next to the city to reduce its supply level

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm in agreement sanderz. Bill and Hubert are in receipt of a supply model that uses a mutually supporting resource supply degradation model, and with it a supply / communication net that is the underlying foundation for creation of a world war game.

I'm sure it will need some tweaking but it is there for them to use, or some modification of, in SC3. The present model is a compromise using the base code available for SC2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Sanderz

I just want to clarify something in the discussion on supply and resources.

The supply of a town or city will fall from 10 to 5 if it is cut off from a friendly Major's Capital, Industrial Center or a Primary Supply Center, even without the presence of 4 enemy units adjacent to it.

Correction: supply will fall to 3 if cut off from any of the above, unless the town or city is connected to a Secondary Supply Center, in which case it will only fall to 5.

If the town or city is a friendly Major's Capital, Industrial Center or a Primary Supply Cente then its supply value will not fall due to being cut off, but the besieging rule will work on it.

This besieging rules doesn't apply to forts in these scenarios because they are deemed to have a stock of supplies and munitions within them.

We also exempted Capitals, because otherwise such a reduction could have impacts elsewhere which would require some significant engine changes to prevent. Plus once the enemy is near a capital a decisive battle usually occurs, so it will only be on rare occasions when it applies. Plus as administrative centers they may have more potential for resisting - which is why your idea of them only losing strength every other turn is an attractive one.

Bill

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...