mazorj
Posts: 19
Joined: 6/1/2004
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Being a war game player going back to Avalon Hill in 1960, I have greatly enjoyed the evolution of simulations on the PC. Series from the premier companies like SSG just keep getting better with each iteration.
Sometimes it's the apparently simple improvements that really make a difference. Displaying all of a unit's parallel units in the unit box, with the ability to move among them by clicking on the icons, GREATLY simplifies coordinated unit movement, which is critical in games with unit cohesion and supply rules. Likewise for displaying the unit's HQ icon (which in turn displays the supply truck icon), switching back and forth, and for the ability to highlight all the units under a HQ. It beats the heck out of scanning the map for the green outlines (not always very visible in earlier games), especially when replacements come in from some faraway location. (The green outlines still are useful for getting a quick read on unit dispersion.) This featue alone justified my purchase of their newest offering.
New features such as river ferry crossings are logical, imaginative extensions of features from previous games. They add greatly to the realism, as do the limitations imposed by supply and other constraints. Game design always involves striking the best balance between realism and playability (with busines considerations having a thumb on the scale, too). For those who are relatively new to these games, take my word for it - you never had it so good. Each new SSG mark in this long-running series has managed to increase both realism and playability. 
The fact that BF shipped with only 2 major and 2 minor scenarios doesn't bother me that much. I never bothered with the minor ones, even in BiN or BiI. I go right to the Big Cahuna and play it twice against the AI as the default player (usually the Allies). Then I play once or twice against the Allies' AI. Then I play a hotseat game as both players. This is the best test of play balance, since by then I can squeeze the most out of the rules and each side gets maximum performance. By then, it's getting close to the next SSG release and I gleefully start all over again. IOW, I'm an automatic sale for this line of SSG games.
That's not to say that I'm perfectly satisfied with every aspect of these games.
The most common and obvious shortcoming is the AI. Short of building a game on a mainframe with millions of lines of code, the AI always will come up short. SSG's gets better every time, although sometimes it's two steps forward and one back. BF has some glaring gaps. Some are the same as in previous iterations, but not all. Unlike BiN, HQ, supply trucks, and artillery just hunker down in one spot and refuse to move even when adjacent units are under attack. They set up in the same spot, so on the second playing, I dispatch mobile units to do search & destroy on them ASAP. Knocking out the HQ, truck and arty units greatly cripples the AI's side. The AI also is oblivious to supply except perhaps on a local unit basis. Send a few mobile units on a territory-grabbing sweep and you can isolate most Axis units early in the game.
Regarding territory, the AI apparently is programmed to guard certain key areas and ignore the rest. Not only are the Italian units pretty timid - which does emulate reality - but even the strong German formations in the south will only venture so far from the surrounded French garrison. This allows you to leave long stretches of your line totally unguarded, when a human opponent would be probing and exploiting those corridors. Rather than have the Allies units in the south get ground up piecemeal by the aggressive AI, I pull them back "out of range" and wait until I can concentrate them into a formidable phalanx which I then "march and entrench" very slowly to the west. Eventually the AI's trip-wire activates a furious attack, but it's habit of leaving weakened units out in the open allows you to focus on eliminating them one by one with the forces thay you have carefully conserved and assembled there. With proper execution you will win this kind of localized war of attrition. Previous games would occasionally park an HQ or truck or arty unit in an exposed position. BF seems to do it wholesale by design, even with combat units.
And what's with the constant "musical chairs" movement of units around the French garrison? I haven't played as the Axis player yet, but I can't imagine that all of this is the "resupply two-step" where units in unsupplied hexes are pulled back to a supplied hex for a supply refill. Why does the AI keep all these units buzzing around the perimeter when they should be grinding down the fortifications and attacking the garrison?
The other big shortcoming is the manuals. If you haven't already played a predecessor game, learning even the basics from the manual is like trying to understand the third movie in a trilogy without having seen the previous installments. You get most of it but you know you're missing a lot, too.
Part of the problem is missing or poorly constructed text for some of the rules and features. However, an even bigger flaw has crept in over time. For whatever reason, sections are out of logical sequence. An early section will give details on something that has not yet been adequately explained to the reader, which makes that important bit of information useless until the player grasps the concepts that are explained later on - and then stumbles across it while rereading the manual. Sometimes these important details are in sections where the reader would not intuitively expect to find them, which ought to be in the section that explains the basics. I suspect that what is happening is that each new manual starts with the one for the previous game and the details on new features are plugged in willy-nilly. Each new manual grows by accretion rather than by deliberate, thoughtful design. This can happen when business pressures to work on parallel or new game development make activities such as manual writing a low priority. As someone who does communications and writing for a living, many is the time that I've been exasperated to the point that I was tempted to do a complete rewrite from the ground up.  Note to Marketing: If you want to attract newbies, the manuals do need a complete overhaul. It's hard enough for experienced, determined grognards to ferret out the new features and rules. I can only imagine how confusing it must be for anyone who comes new to the game.
None of the above should be interpreted as "complaints". They are just observations about the limitations of the craft. Five stars to BF and to SSG - please, keep 'em coming!
Sorry about running on so long, but this is my first post here and there were a lot of things I wanted to get off my chest.
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