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First impression (after only 10 minutes played)


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Boy, i looove this large map.

Man, the european and pacific map ist soo small compared to the excellent maps in PDE & PT.

Great: new and so much better statistics!

Yikes, less unit types and less levels to research.

Hurray, AI play so much faster.

Hrmph, the map scrolls somewhat slower than in PDE / PT.

Yeah, my CA raids convoy lines!

Wait, the UK raids MY norwegian convoy lines in 1939?

This much from my first ten minutes: uncut, unfair and uneducated.

Now i know i HAVE to read the manual, as there are new symbols i don't know from any other SC release, and probably new game mechanics and concepts as well.

Well, anyway, it is so very nice to be a part and player of this first and important GC release.

I hope and pray (and feel pretty sure) that Hubert and his team will grace us with some performance patches and further improvement, as well as bigger maps.

After the first ten minutes i would like to share this thought:

Gentlemen, buy und this game and starrrrrt your engines!

:)

Sorry if i offended the developer, playtester or publisher with my stupid first impression!

If needed, just delete it!

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After playing my next 20 minutes i have to admit that right now (now as in "having played only 30 minutes") i tend to dislike the map more and more, minute after minute, as it has been compressed too much in the regions where the descisive action takes place.

Please let me explain this at a simple example.

Central Europe, Germany & Danmark.

As the standard international or american / candian player this might doesn't interest you, but if you know the reality than the GG map is no fun to look at.

In reality the distance between Hamburg (B) - Munich (A) is about twice as long as the distance between Hamburg (B) - Copenhagen ©.

no4.jpg

In the compressed map of GG the distance between Hamburg and Kopenhagen is even LONGER than the distance between Hamburg an Munich.

no1.jpg

I don't need to be a prophet to assume that there are plenty other examples like the one above.

This wouldn't be so annoying for me if the former maps wouldn't have been so much closer to reality, of course not perfect, but still so unbelievable much more acceptable than the european map of GC.

I think i wrote and hardcopied all this only because the sea movement in this region is brutaly ahistorical as well (and both issues together somehow brought me to post all this).

Example:

Start of the 1939 axis game:

Within one game turn my sub or CA from the Kiel region (not the port, but the tile above the port) isn't even able to reach Bergen / Norway.

I would guess that they have to end their voyage at the height of Stavanger / Norway (which is somewhat more in the south than Bergen).

I took the liberty to calculate a bit:

stopping near stavanger after 14 days sea voyage implies that my CA or sub would have traveled only meagre 700 km.

700 km distance after 14 days, well, that implies an average travel speed of something about 2 km/h. So we are talking here about a travel speed 1 up to 1,5 knots an hour (!?!).

That might be the correct speed for a galley of ancient rome, or mabye a viking rowboat 1000 years later, but clearly not for 1939 warship of any nation. At least not after the hell of war has broken loose.

Call me a nitwit, but "something is rotten in -and around- the state of danmark".

I can understand that somewhere you have to make concession for a world wide map, but i still hope that some corrections will be made in the future.

If not with a patch, than hopefully with an expansion.

:)

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Something else:

441.jpg

The army in the yellow circle isnt' able to reach the tile between Brussels and the german tank unit.

The programmed formular for movement in mud may work correctly, but it still feels WRONG that i can't reach the tile, having motorization lvl 1, sitting so close by, and this on roads and rails.

As if i'm playing a competly different game (compared to SC, SC2, WAW, PDE or PT).

If i make a right mouse click on the yellow circled army and choose from the context menu "properties", i can't see the properties of the tile, only the properties of the army - Is this a bug, or a feature, or did i simply made a mistake? :confused:

I have the strange feeling that i would love GC MUCH MORE if i hadn't had the pleasure to play all its predecessors.

Btw.: dear reader, don't get me wrong, there is very much i like about GC.

I simply write (probably too much) about the things i don't like more and sooner than about the good, enjoyable things...

edit:

the more i think about it the more i feel sure about it: there shouldn't be any "mud" weather results, or better: land movement limitations in Germany at all. "Mud" was much more a russian (no proper streets) problem than a german one (nearly everywhere a perfect road and railway net).

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I love to get the Admiral Graf Spee at the start of the 1939 game, and i love that i can raid the convoy lines and blockade a port.

BUT:

the AI has obviously no idea or no ships to do anything against the Graf Spee, as the ship blockades the port since months without any AI reaction.

Knowing that the Admiral Graf Spee is a single CA, the strenght "8" is probably WAY too much for a single CA.

If you grant the Axis the Spee with 8 strength points, than it is hard to understand why you didn't added any else (in 1939 existing) CA as a single unit as well. Correct me if i'm wrong, but i feel that you made the Graf Spee too strong. If not, it would be helpful and nice to enlighten me once more about the naval philosophy in GC (after all the Graf Spee wasn't even the best german CA).

7711.jpg

What about the UK in South Africa? Don't you think that even IF there wouldn't have been any fighting force to chase the Spee away, the South African authorities would have simply shifted the convoys away from Cape Town toward Durban? It is hard to imagine that a single CA can "close" a UK harbor in WW2 for weeks. But much harder it is to imagine that there would have been no reaction to such a thread.

Convoys would be shifted to different routes and harbors, war ships would be sent to eleminate the thread. This picture is from march 1940, after nearly half a year of blockade.

I would be SO VERY GLAD to hear from one of the playtesters why you accepted this, as it would help to understand the whole situation.

edit:

this is the first SC game i don't want to play any further after having spend one - two hour of playtime.

2 tries, and always to the same end.

Map size, army movement limitations, strange design descisions - maybe it is me or the weather, but i simply ended both games against the Allied AI after a couple of turns. I probably hoped for for too much, as this would explain why i feel so empty and somewhat dissapointed now.

Sigh.

:(

I have to leave the game for a couple of days, than starting new from scratch.

Maybe this will help me a bit to finaly get into it.

In the meantime back to PT and PDE.

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Hi Xwormwood,

Thanks for the feedback and I can try and give you a reasonable answer to some of your queries even if it is not a complete and fully detailed one. I think the easiest thing for me to say would be that essentially you are correct in that many concessions have to be made and that for the most part once these concessions are made the focus shifts to the bigger picture rather than dwelling on a lot of the smaller details.

Naturally this just happens as eventually you want the game to be completed, as otherwise, and believe me this does happen, we could spend weeks if not months on what ends up the most trivial of items rather than maintaining the overall focus of the big picture.

Is the game perfect? Of course not but overall it plays very well and we also have a situation where we needed to balance the game for not only the AI but for Multiplayer as well. In fact this game was probably one of the more heavily tested Multiplayer releases we have put together so far... so unless a specific strategy was tested and reported for AI games then there is little for me to eventually edit/change. Problem is of course that there are many different strategies that can be implemented but the good news is that I am listening and will gladly adjust minor items like the blockades/raiding for the next patch.

Hubert

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Thank you for your good and honest answer, Hubert!

I think i'll relax a bit for the next couple of days, and return back refreshed and with a better mood soon after the first mods and / or the first patch is out.

Cheers

Claus

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Well since Hubert said this is the last incarnation (whats he doing next:)) and he wanted feedback from non-reg posters.........

I've played all from SC1 on (including the great 3R mods) 4 turns in campaign on intemediate diff (+50%)...

re: map scale. I like it and think it fits army sized units which do not "manuever" at this scale.

The small manuever terrain in sw china is great...ie: challenging. If a game isn't challenging..it isn't a "game"

Not sure on the comments on the Brits not going after U boats.

Lost one U boat and another damaged sitting on the north atlantic convoy so...

re: japanese havr to much money. Good explanation Hubert. But at intermediate I can barely build inf,one armor and make up losses. So I don't have too much especially knowing my oil will be cut off:)

France seems easy but big deal..they're froggies.

Thats all I have for now. I love it as I did the past ones and this as I would expect is the best.

Good job Hubert. Whats next? ;)

-pete

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No worries xwormwood and I think a part of this might just be getting used to the new scale, i.e. it is immediately different from what everyone is used to in the previous releases so it is of course very understandable.

Even for me, the scale was noticed right away when we first made the switch from Pacific Theater development to Global, but once you start playing the game you begin to appreciate what the game actually delivers and in that sense some of the compromises that needed to be made.

Long story short, while you initially feel that there is a bit of a compromise on movement and tactics relative to the previous releases, what you do gain is the sense of playing out the war on a Global scale, i.e. balancing out the decision making process for either the Axis or Allied side and planning for the long term both economically and diplomatically keeping in mind the various players and triggers that bring the various nations to war. As mentioned prior to release, one of the biggest challenges is getting Japan played just right as it is tough to get all your resources and units prepared for the long drawn out war it is about to be engaged in by late 1941.

After that everything is still in place, there is still a technology race, unit purchase planning, production placement and diplomacy and the overall grand strategy. Then after a while you find that the military tactics are still there it is just that we are talking about shorter distances and once you get used to the reduced movement, again only relative to previous releases but still appropriate for this scale and turn lengths, it is still a game of tactics and strategy just at a different scale, i.e. you quickly forget that there were any compromises even made. Why? Well the game is very playable and it won't take you a lifetime to complete whereas if the scale was much larger it naturally would take that much longer to play out a turn.

I'll also say the following, and this goes directly to the initial point made above relative to how it might just come down to what you are used to... after playing Global for over a year now and switching back to the older releases every once in a while my initial impression is that the maps for ET and PT seem so big!

Hubert

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