The End of the Road

[numdydar]

This is the second half of The Road so Far thread http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=110590

Well I won the game as the Axis in Aug, 1946, but it was not easy.

I have discussed the Naval and units 'magicly' appearing in pockets in other threads and will not go into details about those here other than to say these have a major impact on the game and should be addressed somehow in a patch.

Russia fell in Jan '46 and India in March. China was defeated in mid '45, six months after I thought it would. It is a LONG way to the last city.

ETO

Absolutely no effort by the US to invade VF or anywhere else in Europe after the failed invasion in the UK. It did take me quite a while to root out the invasion remains in the UK as the Scottish help the defense a lot.

Most of my German subs and fleets were sent to the US coast to disruot shipping there. I was surprised that all those ship icons around the coast only affected a few cities. And only one unit was needed. The rest did nothing. Also surprising is I could resupply all my ships from Fort de France so never had to go back home

I kept waiting for the US to attack with planes/ships or something, but from mid '43 on but nada. Not a single Allied ship was seen in the Atlantic for the rest of the game. I did find a few ships 'stuck' in the Artic in Russia and on Russia's west coast, but nothing major when I looked at the map after the game.

I did take Malta finally. mainly because I got so annoyed with the NA supply event. Especially since the Med was an Italian lake at that point. Found out that you cannot paradrop on a unit, the space has to be vacent. Not sure how that can be fixed, but you should be able to para drop since that is what the Germans were planning on doing there. It seems very anticlamtic to destroy the unit with planes and bombardment and then just pop in.

But other that the entire ETO was a snooze fest for the rest of the game.

Russia

I am treating Russia as a seperate theater since it extends way beyond the ETO for the rest of my game.

The breaking point was taking Lennigrad. This allowed me to take those troops and swing south and attack Moscow from behind. Plus I THOUGHt it would cutoff lendlease through Murmask and Acrangel. But apparently it did not which was very annoying. Of course I did not realize this until much later.

Russia proper cracked pretty fast after the fall of Moscow. However it is a LONG road to the last capital. The Urals were a pretty hard fight but circling around from the south helped outflank them. Then is was just a slow slog to the end. Of major reason, was the Turkish border.

This and Burma was the hardest fight in the game. I lost most of my units in the figthing around Turkey/Russia border. Even when I finally cut the region off from the rest of Russia it was still a mjor struggle. I was actually past the Urals before I finally killed off everyone in the pocket.

Definately not sure it was worth the effort. Since when Russia surrendered all the units go away. I sould have just left them alone and just kept pushing past the Urals faster than I did. I could have left the pocket alone (since they were not going anywhere lol) with a lot fewer units than what I needed to actually reduce the pocket.

Once I realized that Russia seemed to still be getting lend lease, I captured the entire rail line going north hoping it was a trigger in a square or something. But could not get the actual port since I just took a single unit to do this.

I also did not leave a lot of units in the area since I assumed that no further units could appear at Arcangel. Boy was I wrong. Imagine my suprise when all these units started pushing towards Finland :eek: So I threw some ad hoc units togeather but could not stop them from getting to the Finish border. I was able to hold them from going further south and was able to take new units that were built up to the area to finally push them back and actually take both Murmansk and Arcangel.

I took Murmask first and the lend lease finally ended. Howerver the next turn, it started back up again to Arcangel. Which makes sense. Also when the Artic froze over the lend lease went away too. So good job on that. However, I do not think lend lease should be active at all through these ports if there is no rail connection to the rest of the country.

One more issue with lend lease. The US started the Pacific route to Russia at some point. So at some point, I decided to send a German and Italian sup to interdict it. So I send them all that way and the route has vanished and never went active again. No idea what happened and why it went away.

What was cool was the subs could resupply but not get replacements from Japanese ports. I am not sure how two different torpedo systems could be adapted to a third, but for subs, I can live with that for now. While it may or may not make the game more complex, splitting supplies into non-weapon replenishment and weapon supplies. non-weapon supply could be gotten from every port while weapon supply can only be gotten from ports that are owned by that country that the unit belongs too.

Africa

Once NA fell, the italians headed south. It took forever to capture the Suden and clean out Eteopia. Once that happened, then the Italians just marched West and South.

Once they started getting close to the West coast, the US planes arrived in force. Not sure why they though Africa was that important versus the Pacific of the ships raiding the East coast, but there they were. It took quite a while to overcome this since I just wanted to use Italian forces. But finally Africa mostly turn green.

Mid-East - not including Turkey

While India was being attacked, British and US troops defided to push up to towards Iran from India. Which of course caused me issues lol. So I had to pull some Italians fron the Africain pacification program to stop them. Once the Turkish border dispute was solved, the Turkish army headed down to take care of the pesky Allies.

Turkey and Japanese forces met at the border and great celebrations were had

Far East

As I noted in the other thread, India was mostly empty EXECPT for the India/Burma border. Just like the Turkish border, the fighting took forever and Japan lost several units in it. Major forces had to be committed in order to counter the Allied forces, including a BB and three CVs. Of course this lead me to speculate that Oz was pretty empty too. And indeed it was.

Overrun most of northern Oz before I met resistance. But the forces were all US.

The invasions in Java and Solomans were all wiped out. Again massive US fleets visted Japan and ended up with an undersea tour.

There were no further invasion in the Pacific for the rest of the game either.

General comments

I completely ignored the following techs

Artilery

AA (1st level only)

Shells

Rockets

ASW (japan 1st level only)

Heavy Bombers

AT

All three countries, I maked out on both production tech and Inf warfare

I built every Inf and tank unit I could. Only built SF for Japan and no engineers for anyone. I did buy the German rail gun. How could I not Ended up using it against partisians of all things lol.

Also built every AC I could expect Strat bombers. Japan and Italy built every ship they could too. With japan building all the CVs first. Never build a CVL though. Also did not build any light tanks. I also maxed out all the minor troops. Spain and Turkey are great to have as Allies since both have large forces you can build out. Which is surprising since Rouminia's Army was the 4th largest in the war. So I think the Romainians need to have a larger force pool than Turkey or Spain.

Also why no lend lease to italy from Germany?

I feel artilery is totally useless. Only the Russians had artilary formations sthat large. Artilary should be 'baked' into the actual units versus being a seperate research and unit. Plus it would simpilfy the AIs decision making if they were removed from the game. The AI seemed to make too may of them versus actual units that could hold ground better.

It also seems that AC units are too strong against INF and tanks. They should be much easiser to kill off than they are. I actually would put AC in an exposed city on several occasions to stop the Allies from taking it. In Africa, I had two AC units hold off a Corps AND a Army for months. Also fighter AC should do a lot more damage to non-fighter AC than they do now as well. Once soultion would be for the AC to immeadately fly away after the first attack by a ground unit and lose half or 2/3rds of it's strength to represent the hasty nature of its departure.

Bottom line

Was the game fun? Yes.

Did it capture the realities of the period? Absolutely not!

Would I paly it again? Doubtful. If I did it would not be with any country that had a navy. So I would play with just Russia if I played again. And it will be a while before I do.

As the team has mentioned in other threads, many of the issue I have brought up will not be addressed in a patch. Which I can understand, but is disappointing all the same. From an outside view, some I feel are easy enough to do as a patch, while others may not be. But I will defer to their judgement since they are the ones that need to make money off these games.

Was my money well spent for AoD, AoC, and Gold? Not sure at this point. I am disappointed in the sacrifices with reality for game play. I would not have made those choices (so it is probably good I am not the one making these games lol).

I wish the team the best and will visit back every now and then, but it is time to move on. I hope all my comments have been taken in the light to improve the game and make it reflect the realities of the period better than the game does now.

Thanks for reading

[Big Al]

All comments for improvement are appreciated. Its incredibly difficult to design a global campaign. This one expanded the map and the units so it presents its own sets of challenges. The testing takes longer on a larger map so it takes more time to hammer out the bugs.

[Bill101]

Thanks for taking the time to write this, and as Big Al said, we do appreciate the feedback.