macroeconomics
Posts: 126
Joined: 7/28/2004
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Quickly: I like the game. It's like an unpolished gem.
In more detail, it goes something like this:
UI: I give it a B+. Overall framework with control icons on the top and right side of the screen work well. So do the pop up mini-boxes on the left side of the screen. UI however doesn't take advantage of Crtl + mouse key combinations and thus sometimes winds up requiring more mouse clicks to accomplish a task than is necessary. Screen scrolling sometimes gets bugged. I am not referring here to the screen rolling to the right when you move your mouse to the right side screen icons. I am referring to the screen sometimes refusing to scroll down at all when you are in windowed mode. Other times in windowed mode, the screen will lock into a scroll right mode, requiring a game shut down. Why play in windowed mode? Because the the game can take awhile to process the AI's moves, and the game does behave well in multi-tasking mode with other apps.
Physical attractiveness: I give it a B+. Good variety of map icon skins and unit skins. You won't mistake this game for Battlefield 3's graphics, but for a hex based wargame, it's good and it's functional. In particular, map distortion in the northern climes is held in check for the most part.
AI: From what I've seen so far, I have to give a split grade. AI for the Allies is pretty good, A-. AI for the Germans is not so good, C. I think this is a function of attacking (hard for the AI) and defending (easier for the AI). But there is also another effect in play here. The AI has a hard time thinking about stacking (there is no stacking in the game) and the bottlenecks it causes. In one game I played as the Slovaks (I do this so I can observe the AI more easily). The Germans broke through the French lines just south of Luxembourg in the winter of '39. They blew a two hex gap in the French lines and about six panzer units roared through. For the next two months (8 turns) the Allies chased those six units around and around to a depth of about 6-10 hexes behind the Allied front lines, slowly grinding them down to dust. The two hex gap in the Allied lines remained in place the entire time. But no additional German forces came through. Instead the two German units on each side of the gap didn't move, thereby trapping 40+ German divisional equivalents on their side of the lines. AI needs to be able to think properly about unit congestion (it does better on the attack in Poland and Russia than in high density areas like France). Eventually I manually switched to playing the Germans for one turn and moved the blocking units forward. The game then proceeded more normally until....
About Feb 1940, the Germans attack the Low Countries. Swarms of infantry divisions advanced towards the Belgian/Dutch lines. And were promptly mowed down. I saw at least 30 German divisions wiped out. Not defeated, not retreated, but eliminated. By the Belgians, Dutch and some expeditionary force French/British. The Allies were all in corps formation and when the German divisions moved up, they were attacked by two or three adjacent Allied corps and destroyed. Not until several turns later when all the German divisions were wiped out could the stronger German infantry corps behind them move up and conquer the Netherlands and Belgium. Stacking. Congestion. AI needs to be able to think about it better. A short term solution might be to have the German build only corps, not divisions from 9/39 to 6/41.
But as bad as the example sounds, on the plus side, I was impressed by the counterattacking/defensive strategy used by the AI for the Allies.
Production: A. Maybe an A+. Easily the strongest part of the game. You get the flexibility of picking what to build without the nonsense exploits that riddle some other WW2 big strategy titles. I'm looking at you, HoI. A very clean, easy to use design that works and still forces the player to think about what units he needs in the future.
R&D, Diplomacy: Eh, this isn't a game that focuses on those areas. Yes, it touches upon them, but basically this game is attempting to give you a computerized version of the biggest board wargames of the past, i.e. Europa, War in the East. So not a lot here, but also by corollary, no exploits here as occurs in some other games.
Learning curve/Tutorials: B-. Easy game to learn, but the tutorials could use an additional module on how to move ships. The existing tutorial module on naval units just shows how to fight with them. It took me quite a long time to realize that bodies of water are divided into zones, despite there being a hex overlay on them, and that ships need to be targeted onto a specific "hot" hex in each sea zone.
Compute speed/resource demands: This is not a resource hog app. Easy to run the game with other apps and switch between them if ToF is in windowed mode (scrolling problems noted above excepted). No problems with mouse responsiveness. No crashes to desktop. No hanging. Despite that, this is however still a long game to play. Weekly turns for WW2. LOL. I will make one comment here however about AI/human control selection that relates to compute/game speed. Because you can select human/AI control for each and every country, you can actually do some interesting things. If you are real time constrained, find the prospect of completing multiple Grand Campaign games daunting, and yet want to try out multiple countries, this game allows you to do that. Play as Italy AND the USSR for example in the same game and experience both countries in one sitting! Talk about real time hours saved! This is a brilliant facet of ToF that you don't see in other WW2 grand strat games.
Overall as I said before, I like the game. It has flaws. But the scope of the game is massive. It matches the biggest board wargames ever conceived and makes them playable. In an enjoyable fashion. And unlike other massive WW2 computer wargames, it doesn't get bogged down with tons of rules that the AI doesn't understand and that humans exploit. This is an enjoyable game right now at version 1.00. If the dev makes certain improvements, it will get better with age.
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