Country selection changes for V1.07 and/or SC2.

[Rabtherab]

One thing that all WW2 games seem to have in common is this:

You may select which SIDE you wish to play.

I'd dearly love to see a game in which you may select a single country. I've always wanted to play Italy alone, and let the AI handle Germany. This possibility fascinates me.

I've seen a few games that alow you to divide the alies, where you could play the western allies, and/or Russia and vice versa. But none that allow you to select only one of the axis powers to play.

The idea of playing one country, and not knowing for certain if your allies plans will mesh with yours or not, is a level of intrigue that would greatly benifit this game.

The other advantage of this greater flexability in selecting a power to play, is the capability of have 1-5 player games. That would really make for interesting player-player diplomacy, et cetera, as well as making a much more interesting game vs. the AI.

Just my own personal.

I don't know if this sort of modification would be to abmitious for the final 1.07 patch, but I sure would like to see it in SC2.

Regards,

Rab The Rab.

[Piumarcobaleno]

That's a good point, but you should remember that in many games where u can ally with AI, you get all the time yelling "why the hell has he declared war", or "sued for peace", or "moved like that". The real problem is that you can hardly explain yourself with the AI.

Anyway, on this setting you will find "Fields of Battle", an abandonware game based on 1st world war, very interesting: there are 6 playable countries, uk+france+italy, russia+balkans and northern africa vs. germany, austria\hungary and turkey, every player can use one to three from one side, and you can set the AI handling the others; say, you are germany, your friend A is russia, and another friend is turkey, everyone else is AI. It's a very good game, with different settings, worth the little time of download from www.the-underdogs.org (look for it in the search engine as "fields").

[Comrade Trapp]

Thanks Piumarcobaleno, I going to have to download that.

Another game that allows you to choose one country is "Hearts of Iron". You can play any country you want, whether it be Germany or Switzerland, you can play any country that existed during WWII.

If only you could take the SC and HOI and turn them into one big game.....

Comrade Trapp

[Rabtherab]

I didn't like HOI, or the EU/EU2 engine in particular. I find that very little of it works well, and all that detail just bogs things down. I've never even really bothered to learn the interface efficiently, but I think thats because I never really spent the effort to learn it. It just didn't grab me from the very beginning. Too me, realtime and grand strategy don't mix well. I think real time and tactical actions work well; I really enjoy Shogun/Medieval: Total War, for example.

Whenever I see a person on some forum rave about EU's engine, I think, "What sort of Masochistic, Crack Inhaling, variety of creature is this?"

So to be fair, I'd say that HOI/EU/EU2 are, just to give them the benefit of the doubt, probably good, realistic systems. They just don't do it for me at all. I'll probably take them down to the local used game/cd shop whenever I get the motivation to do a spring cleaning of me CD's.

[Comrade Trapp]

I'll agree with you there, that is one of the major downsides to HOI. The reason I like HOI is because of the amount of freedom you have to make decisions as the country your controling.

For example: As Poland you can give in to German demands and hand over the Danzig Corridor in order to prevent a war between Poland and Germany (or a least put it off for a while).

As the United States you can even choose which president gets elected during national elections(It might be the same for other countires too).

But at the same time I like how SC looks at movement, combat, and MPPs from a strategic point of view and not with graphics. I personally think high-tech graphics (for units and engagements) and strategy games don't mix too well.

Like I said, if only we could take HOI's freedom to make political decisions and add that to SC's gameplay. What a game it would be.

Comrade Trapp

[Rabtherab]

I'll agree with you there, there is a lot of freedom, and plenty of history altering ramifications to your political actions in HOI, and I agree that something similar would benefit a games like SC.

I'd like to see a game that manages to get it right, and for my money, I'll wager that SC2 will come close, if not win the big cigar.

I really like the fact that Mr. Cater uses this forum to get design feedback from the community. SC, is the first WW2 grand strategy game to do this, and I think this will give it what it needs to be the game that all us old-timers have waited for since we first opened the box containing, AH's "Third Reich."

It's nice to see a game influenced by the fans, rather than another one tarnished by marketing dufusses, who change the game in order to allegedly sell more copies.

I truly believe that the first game that actually gets it right, will have steady sales for some time to come, once word gets out.

With or without large scale promotion.

P.S. I'll certainly look into that WW1 game, I believe I've played it before, but I'm not sure just from hearing the title.

[HankWWIIOnline]

Unfortunately there just isn't enough variety to make playing a smaller country exclusively worth while.

In HoI, that is a viable way to play the game. In SC, playing just Italy would get pretty boring. Watching Germany do all the fun stuff, and fight the big battles...nah.

[JerseyJohn]

Piumarcobalenco

Thanks for linking that website, it looks pretty interesting.

[ April 13, 2003, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[santabear]

In SC, it seems like the useful choices would be to play Hitler, Churchill or Stalin (though Mussolini might be fun if you went wild in the Med).

As it is now, the Axis player IS basically in the role of Hitler; the Allied player has more of a dual role. I think it might be fun to play just Russia or just Britain/US. This might be another way to add diplomatic variety to the game without having to make major changes in the fundamental design.

[JerseyJohn]

As the Axis I try to have Italy gain control of Yugoslavia, Greece, Vichy and, when they're strong enough, Egypt and Iraq. During the early campaigns Italy needs help from Germany, but becomes much stronger very quickly through Yugoslavian and Greek plunder.

In addition to relieving the sense of only playing Hitler (Italy also emerges after a while) the Axis suddenly has two truly major powers, both of which are conducting independant research. It seems more interesting than having Germany bulldoze it's way through everything.

[ April 13, 2003, 03:06 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Rabtherab]

Hank:

What I was suggesting was that just playing one of the axis or allied powers was an option, you could still elect to play the complete team. In this way, those who would not find great interest in playing just Italy for example, could choose not to play that way.

I think it's safe to say that most hard-core wargamers are piqued at the idea of playing and hopefully winning as the historical underdog, and would at least like to explore the possibility of being just italy, if only to see how much better or worse they could do.

Also, the advantage of being able to have a truly five-player game (six if you allow France to be seperate from britain), is another real plus there.

As it is, with an entire alliance being controlled by a single player, all countries in the alliance fully co-operate with the overall goal of the player. Historically, the various countries in each alliance often had conflicting interests, and didn't alway follow a single overall plan. This is another thing that would be nicely modeled by allowing seperate players for each nation.

I think having this flexability only improves the game. And of course, playing the entire alliance is still the default, so those not wishing to use this feature don't have to.

Any time you can inject greater freedom to explore an historical situation, the better. In my opinion. I'm fairly confident that everyone will agree to that, at least. More options is a plus.