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macroeconomics -> RE: Grand Campaign V1.00 (12/15/2011 1:17:01 AM)
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Some random notes:
Northern Finland - this actually became an interesting front by mid 1941. The dynamics here are completely different from the rest of ToF. It's almost a mini-game within the game. Large expanses of terrain with no rail lines and few cities, make this almost like the desert war in North Africa - except with forests. The primary characteristic here is how far away you are from your supplying city. If the Finns advance to Murmansk, their divisions are rated 0-1 and their infantry corps are 1-1. When the Soviets rail in three armor corps they show up as a 10-4s and you are thinking all of Finland is lost. But if you retreat all the way back to Petsamo before getting blasted by the tanks, your infantry corps is now a 4-2. And those Soviet tank corps are now 2-2s. So there can be some big swings back and forth here despite the low unit density.
Egypt - hard to reach a lot of conclusions here because in this game all the results in North Africa were a consequence of the British AI forgetting to garrison Alexandria, which is a simple fix in a patch. Some PvP games may shed better light on what to expect from the theatre. I can say that Malta is going to be an important facet of whatever happens in the Med.
Germany - it's all about the panzers! Well at least if you want to defeat Russia. The key is getting to tech level 2, so you can build and upgrade to tech 2 panzer corps. Those are your virtual cardboard counters of destruction!
And speaking of cardboard counters, ToF does remind you in lots of ways of certain old big board games. Now I know some people might expect big to go along with complicated. And in computer gaming that typically is so. The HoI series is perhaps the poster child for that - each step of the series has increased the map size, unit density and rules complexity. But in board war gaming big size and big complexity don't always go together. Certainly it did in some titles, like War in the Pacific (the board game, not the computer game). But in a lot of other big wargames, "big" just meant a big map and lots of counters. The rules remained clean and simple. Wacht am Rhein, Drang Nach Osten, and of course War in Europe are examples. ToF is more like those games. Very playable despite its size. And a very polite multi-tasking program when run in windows mode.
Well that's a wrap then. Hope the AAR was useful. I think I'm now off to see what happens if you don't sign that Ribbentropp-Molotov treaty...
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