PBEM newbie

[mrcobbler]

Just started my first PBEM game with my brother, we're 5 moves into 'Fear in the Fog'.

It's great (except he just fried some troops with his flamethrower, bah.....)

Question: are most PBEM games the Quick Game

setup? What is a good amount of points to alot

to each side? I know it can be anything you want, but what is a good middle-of-the-road number for points? Any other need-to-knows?

The Shoe

[ParaBellum]

IMHO it depends on your style of play and your preferences if you like QBs or scenarios and how bif they should be.

Problem with scenarios is that if you already played it, there's not much suprise about objectives and the enemy units and if you know it already and your opponent does not, you've got an (unfair) advantage.

It's the same with the question of "how many points". Just try out some different sizes until you find one that suits your gaming habits.

I like to play battles 1000-2000 points because with that you can choose a nice combined arms force with lots of support weapons.

Many people like small battles with 500-1000 points, great if you don't want to spend too much time for a game.

I wouln'd recommend playing a large battle (2000+) until you're familiar with the game.

It's a lot of work to command entire battaillons...

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Klotzen, nicht kleckern!

[Leonidas]

If you're starting out, it's good not to touch the various Quick Battle setup options, besides setting the battle type, points, and nationality of the attacker. The defaults produce a balanced battle, but messing with them can quickly skew things to the attacker or the defender. Get some experience before you try night battles, heavy trees or no trees, big hills, restricted nationalities and force types, etc.

And when you decide to try out a new set of parameters, it's best to set up a battle against the AI first, to see how it plays. The best way to know if a set of parameters is balanced is to smash the AI from both sides. Admittedly, that's a nuisance, especially if you hate playing the AI as much as I do. But it's usually better than putting both players through all the work of a full PBEM just to discover that armor vs. infantry in treeless farmland isn't quite balanced.

If you don't have the patience for an entire battle against the AI to test your QB parameters, at least generate a couple of maps if you're messing with the map parameters, to get a sense of what you're getting. The map parameters interact in interesting ways. For example, Farmland w/ heavy trees sounds similar to Rural w/ heavy trees, but they are completely different.