Rasputitsa
Matrix Legion of Merit

Posts: 2903
Joined: 6/30/2001 From: Bedfordshire UK Status: offline
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I have enjoyed ToF a lot, I have never played SC2, so cannot comment. ToF has the right scale to play the whole European Theatre, with enough detail to be interesting, but not so much that you drown in detail, or need forever to play. Much of ToF is abstracted, especially the Naval aspects, there is a lot you can do if you want, but many things are left to the game system. The games plays at the level of Corps and Division, so you don't need to wade through hundreds of units each turn, but units can be split and/or merged, so that you can work down to units the size of a battlegroup/regiment. Which is pretty good for a game covering the Atlantic to the Urals and Norway to the Sahara. ToF is capable of producing quite historic results, but is not in a timeline straight-jacket, so the unexpected can happen, it depends on your attitude, as to whether this makes a fantasy game, or adds to the challenge. What would happen if you invaded Spain, or Sweden (impossible, or intriguing ???). There are some problems and bugs in the game, much of which is in scenario design, some scenarios are better than others. That's the down-side, the up-side is that there are fixes for most of the problems, which can be applied with small adjustments, or mods, in the game files. You may not want to fiddle with the game, but at least it is possible, because with many other games you may not like some of the design decisions, but you are stuck with them, in ToF they can be easily modified. One example is that, at times, a nation may suffer a drastic fall in PP level for no apparent reason (Production Points being the currency of the game), the F12 function opens a game box where you can reset the PP level for the nation in play. Annoying, unnecessary, unacceptable, maybe, but an easy fix is available. Developer Support seems to have faded, so what you see is probably as far as the game will go. The short answer is that ToF can be very good, but you might have to work on it to get the best result, the forum contains the discussion on mods, pleased to help if you need more detail.
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"In politics stupidity is not a handicap" - Napoleon “A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything” - Napoleon “Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress" - Napoleon
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