Tactical Point of View: Hearts of IronDD vs SC2WAW

[Liam]

Alright, here is for some of the souls here to contemplate

I decided to reopen my Hearts of Iron II Doomsday Game, and learn it. Just because I was bored and I wasn't able to play Europa Universalis III, my Machine is too ancient

First off I will say this, at the fastest Speed the game moves, I was able to make it to 1939 in 10 hours from 1936. This was build time, I decided to play Italy and I nearly Doubled it's Income to Create More of a War Machine to fight against this AI. I have by the way played 4-5 Previous games that are incomplete to prepare myself

Italy's Air force is modest but the advanced in the World, after 4 years of Conflict on and off she has given away Libya and Ethiopia in exchange for Yugoslavia and Greece. In her attempts to invade France she captured 1 province and nearly was defeated until Hitler bailed her out then back at France with my 3 new improved Panzer Divisions, the only units I've been able to create all game!

The level operation is Divisional, the Technology Development is as lowly as a Pak Gun, or a Battlefield Doctrine, i.e. Static Defense, or Attrition Warfare. The difference in 1 slider choice or another is about never more than 5-10% on the whole... The difference ultimately is that this game is about 100-200Xs more complicated and indepth than SC2 including the WAW package.

I decided to quit my first game as Italy as I was winning too easily. Their AI is easy to beat as well, and not too the smartest, my current game I've gone the route of History, make conquest Vichy and All of North Africa-MiddleEast and Turkey, I think what I shall attempt to accomplish is to learn the game engine, so far I've not lost any units and only reloaded saves and autosaves due to bugs

I can imagine a mutliplayer game of this requiring at least 10 hours a week, to do a few years. At least! If there are frequent combats, perhaps double that, as the game is RTS not turn based. Strategic Command 2 is nowhere near this level and their WAW package doesn't even graze the surface of that sort of detail. It's still in it's simplicty the original package with a few new units, and improved Map, some improved features. It's much more cosmetic and I doubt a game will take much longer than Vanilla SC2 once very efficient strategies are studied.

I did the comparison and the Example of another leading wargame to make people griping understand that SC2 WAW is still very much Strategic and Abstract, you're not controlling 200-300 individual units, 20 combats at once, 15-25 different aspects to your Government.

[PanzerMike]

I have played Hoi2/DD/ARMA a lot. I love it, despite some really nasty bugs remaining (come on with that ARMA 1.2 patch Paradox!). I don't play vanilla anymore, only the TRP mod (fantastic mod, greatly improved AI).

Hoi might be a bit too much at first with the plethora of detail. For me, it is second nature and I don't even think about it anymore. Once you get past the (steep) learning curve, there is a real gem. I can play it quite fast now, but it will still consume a lot more time than a game of SC2WAW!

I have only very recently bought SC2WAW. Compared to Hoi it is SO much simpler. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I like some of the abstractions. Im some ways Hoi could be improved by less detail and more abstraction.

For me, Hoi is the benchmark. It is the mother of all strategic WW2 games in my book. But there is room for SC2WAW in that book too

[SeaMonkey]

There in is the real beauty of SC, a game that can actually be completed many times over against other humans in a reasonable amount of time.

What's reasonable? That is each persons definition, but in most real life situations many SC strategies can be pursued over and over again with significant variation.

Gives you kind of a feeling of conclusional success. I like that, something I usually didn't experience when initiating the Mega-games.