mavraam

Everyone talks about how well Germany has done. I agree, but what about Japan? An over populated, resource starved island that has developed the second largest economy in the world. Obviously, America won the war by leaps and bounds. But all of Western Civilization (and I include Japan in that because they are so Westernized) and Democracy has won. The next world war (which has already started, btw) is between forward looking, modern, free thinking, democratic countries and backward looking, primitive, despots. It will be ugly and painfull and many people will be duped into killing and dying for false causes. And in the end, it will all be for nothing because mankind marches relentlessly forward and those who try to stop progress get crushed beneath its wheels. They knock down a building, we wipe out a country. We have more buildings than they do countries.

The best use I have found for the entire Axis Navy including those subs is to gather down by Gibralter and break the Italian ships out to the Atlantic. Then move the entire fleet between the US and the UK where you can hammer American tranny's trying to get to Europe. But on their own, they are more or less useless. I never replace them.

I usually just go right after France when the US joins. Up to that point, I spend almost all of my British income on air tech advances so when I invade, I have support from level 4-5 air. The AI generally overreacts to the invasion and the People's Red Army starts cutting through the German lines like a knife through butter. Then it just becomes a race to Berlin! Unfortunately, I have recently had trouble taking Berlin (See my post, "Trouble taking cities...")

My last couple of games I've suddenly run into 2 problems I never hit before: 1) Playing as the Allies, it took me forever to take Berlin. I was hammering it with about 8-10 squads of level 5 planes and could hardly make a dent. Then followed up with level 2 infantry and level 3 armor. It literally took about 10 turns to finally take the capital. 2) When I finally did take Berlin, Germany didn't surrender. I took every other city in Germany and held it for about 5 or six turns before she finally quit. So I have the following Q's: 1) What technology is the AI developing that suddenly makes it almost impossible to damage units in a city from the air. (In another game, I don't think I'll ever be able to take the Russian Capital in the Urals, I can barely knock it down to a strength 7 or 8 from 12 before I'm out of attackers). I can tell this is a technology issue because usually, I can easily take cities if I have enough air support. 2) What can I do to counter this? 3) What determines when a country will surrender? Why do the Germans quit sometimes when I just take Berlin, and other times hold on for 10-15 turns? This delay in surrendering killed my final score.

I think the scale could stay the same! One hex could represent a collection of islands not just one. After all this is STRATEGIC command, not operational or tactical command. I would love to see the game expanded to the entire globe keeping the scale exactly as it is. Obviously some concessions have to be made with the map but there is no reason that every single island that had a battle has to be seperately represented! We are already doing that in SC 1. Look at the low countries, they aren't broken out into individual countries, they are combined into one. We can't re-enact any of the smaller battles that took place in Europe so why would we have to in the Pacific. Simply have 1 Corps or Army on an island group. All we really need is a mechanism for attempting to unload on to territory occupied by an enemy piece. This would be adequate to simulate a series of Amphibious assaults. I think the Winter/Summer rules would have to be looked at because it really has no effect in the Pacific! We would probably have to change to a constant time scale and simply limit movement in the cold regions. Also, we might have some issues with the map scale at the extreme north and south of the globe. Otherwise, I think we can have basically the same game world wide and I would absolutely LOVE it! One of the best things to me about having the whole world involved would be that naval strategy would take on much more importance! Balancing your land and naval forces would become a much bigger challenge. I ran into all of these issues when I tried to write my own strategic level WWII game a couple of years ago. The world is a very big place and if you want to represent all of it, you can only have your scale be so small before it quickly becomes completely unmanageable. Its roughly 24,000 miles around the world which means with 50 mile hexes you need a map that is 240 hexes vertically by 480 hexes horizontally. That's 115,200 hexes. Believe me, you start to run into serious performance issues even on that large of a scale. If you want to get down to division level and 10 mile squares, good luck! Now youre talking about 2.8 million! Of course you can divide that roughly by 3 since only 1/3 of the world is covered by land and there is in effect, no terrain on the water, but still, you have to keep track of what piece is there. And one more thing. If you think the AI is weak right now, (which btw, I don't. I think it is extremely well done since I know a lot about the challenges of writing one) wait till you get on a larger map. You may have to wait 5-10 minutes on a fast machine while it plans its moves or have it play tactically smart but strategically stupid so it doesn't have to take in so much info. So the bottom line is this. If you wan't an SC2 that JUST covers the Pacific Theater, it may be doable on a smaller scale. But if you want the whole echillada, the entire World at War, I don't see the scale coming down at all.

I agree, I mean who is going to take the time to modify the graphics on a game they don't like to play?

No doubt! If it takes me more than 2 or 3 turns to take out Belgium then it means I had horrible luck on my battle results. You're right, he obviously doesn't know what he's doing. Me thinks he isn't qualified to comment on the game!

Using normal difficulty settings with the invasion of France campaign (which starts in June of 40 I think) I managed to hold France untill August 1, 1941. I think that works out to over 30 turns. The key was not giving up the low countries for as long as possible. I did this without buying an HQ for France, just kept building corps, rotating out the injured and hammering armor everytime I got the chance. I also transported all Brittish troops to France including HQ and retreated the corp out of the Low Countries capital so I could move in an army. I spent absolutely no Brittish money on research, saving every penny for reinforcements and new corps. I also used the French Navy to hammer coastal units which distracted German planes. And I used about half of the Brittish navy to take out the North Sea German Navy which also distracted the German Air Force. Because of all this, Germany didn't attack Russia till Spring of '42 which means if I'd been using the historical model, the US would have entered the war 3 months before Russia! That would have been interesting. As it was, they came in about 2 turns after. The down side was that it took quite a while for the Brittish to develop the Air Force needed to support Overlord. Once the Americans landed with Brittish arial support, the German position crumbled in a matter of 2 or 3 moves as they scurried to defend France and it wasn't fun to play any more. Looks like its time to move to a higher difficulty level!

I tried to set up the most handicaps I could in favor of the Axis when I played Allies so I used the following settings: FOW - Yes (of course) Free French - No Yug Partisans - No Russian Partisans - No Scorched Earth - No War in Siberia - Yes I've reached an equilibrium point where the US and Brittain invade Western France and the Russians can just barely hold the line against the Germans. This is about the end of '42. Production is in this ballpark: Germany - 455 (That no scorched earth really hurts) Itally - 150 England - 135 US - 180 Russia -400 So I have a 715 - 506 advantage, Moscow is under very heavy pressure and I'm not sure if I'll be able to win this one. I think I can hold out indefinitely, but not sure I can break the stalemate. Boy that Siberian Army would be huge right now! As a comparison, if I set all of those options pro Allied, I can win easily with the Axis. Anyone else have better luck with these settings?

I would also like to add my sincere thank you to everyone involved in creating this game. I have literally waited 10 years for this! With all the FPS and RTS clones out there, I had almost given up on someone creating a quality turn based strategy game about WW2 that actually makes you think and plan, not just click faster than the other guy! Now if we can only find a way to include the Pacific theater or better yet, both in the same game...

I like to play the Allies with all of the pro Axis options set and play the Axis with all of the pro Allies options set to get a better challenge. Which option (other than FOW) do you guys think has the biggest impact on the game? The reason I'm excluding FOW is I'm more concerned about how it affects the play balance (Axis vs. Ally) My vote goes for War in Siberia with a very close second to Scorched Earth. I've found that turning WIS off (so the Siberian Army is free to shift west and defend Moscow) has such a big impact that it basically negates an early attack on the Balkans. With this option on, I was able to attack the Balkans immediately after taking France which brings the Russians in very quickly but also give me a capital I could build troops in very close to Moscow. I could then blow by Moscow and quickly secure the cities east of it making a quick end to Russia once I took Moscow. Now with it off, the Siberian Army can delay and even push back my forces if I go this route. Therefore, I can't affort to attack the Balkans untill I've taken the time to build a much larger force. This delay usually allows Russia to Anex the Balkans and take away my easy Capital launching point. Scorched Earth also has a huge effect because it deprives Germany of a lot of valuable resources and makes it take much longer before you are out producing the Russians. What do you guys think has the most affect?

Stumbled on to a trick last night. I managed to break 3 tank groups through the Russian lines and started heading to Moscow. When I arrived, I realized I was too far ahead of my support and it was too heavily defended to even try to take it. It would have been suicide. So I bypassed Moscow and went straight for the Urals (the place the AI moves its capital when you take Moscow). To my shock, it was completely unguarded! So I took it over with my 3 armor. A few turns later, when I'd had time to move my HQ's and air support in range, I took Moscow. Russia immediately surrendered even though I hadn't come close to Stalingrad (the third city in the capital shell game). Apparently, if the city they want to move the capital to is already taken, they surrender instead of going to the next city! This of course was a HUGE time saver because normally I need 3 consecutive full sieges to take Russia. Probably saves 8-10 turns and many casualties. This allowed me to take England and then the US by Fall of 43. My quickest so far. +218 victory score. This does seem a little gamey but it does reflect the Blitzkrieg tradition of bypassing the resistance with your armor and striking deep into enemy territory against softer, less heavily defended positions.

I would have to agree about toning down jet development. I think a good idea on all techs is to have the max level for each tech go up over time. So, lets say, in June 1942, the max tech level you can have on Jets is 2 no matter how much R&D you put into it. Then maybe Jan of 43, that max level goes up to 3. By Summer of 44 its a 4 etc. I don't know, its just an idea. The bottom line is right now, after Industrial tech, max Jet level is almost a no-brainer. And one thing us strategy nuts hate is no-brainers! There should always be trade-offs for different choices, that's where the challenge is.

I like to hammer one point with as much firepower as possible (starting with planes) then blow through with the tanks. This leaves them 2 choices: 1) They can retreat and try to join up their lines or 2) Let me romp around in unguarded territory and wreck havoc with my armor.

I pointed this out in the demo days. I pretty much ignore Africa, don't really see the point. About the only thing to do is maintain a sub in the Med as the Italians. I've even transported the two Italian armies from Africa to Itally and then on to Russia.