Uncle_Joe
Posts: 1985
Joined: 8/26/2004
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First off, I’m a huge fan of Napoleon in Europe (although it doesn’t hit the table anywhere near as often as I’d like). So when I saw V&G, it looked like an evolution of NiE and of course, I was all in for it (PC and board game) .
I picked up the PC game on Steam the first day and finished my first campaign (1805, General difficulty) last night. I had previously played a few turns to learn the mechanics and then restarted to get a full game campaign in. Result: ‘Epic’ victory. I enjoyed the game very much but I can see that it might not have a lot of replay value in the long term if it’s just France vs AI. Here are a few impressions/suggestions:
1) There should always be terrain on the battlefield (randomly assigned and including the middle ‘neutral’ zones). After the first 10 battles or so I noticed that almost all of them were starting to play out the same. I was able to use the same basic strategy almost every battle and won the overwhelming majority of my battles without much difficulty. Some random terrain might help break that up a bit, especially if there is key terrain in the middle ground. The cards can be used to place it for that battle, but it should always be present to some degree for variety in the battles and to encourage some differing tactics.
2) The AI is OK in battle, but again, it becomes somewhat predictable. Part of that is the system which greatly encourages very similar deployments (1 arty + 1 cav + 1 inf + 1 whatever). I understand what it’s encouraging but with a stacking limit of 4/sector, you kind of start to be pigeon-holed pretty quickly. If the stacking limit was even 5, at least you’d have some room for variety (ie, heavy on one of the arms). The problem is that the AI doesn’t really react to the battle itself. It it’s defending, it’ll sit back and wait, even if it’s being pounded by superior arty. In some cases it had strong cavalry that could have advanced and threatened the arty but it just sat and let me pick it apart. By contrast, on the attack, it moves EVERYONE forward leading to a predictable battle….sit and wait for it to walk into your guns and feed replacements into the line.
One suggestion for combat would be for cavalry charging a square, there should be a decent chance of the cav being routed/destroyed rather than simply Disordered. On the flip side, once infantry squares, cav should be given the option to pull up and not complete the charge (as in NiE). This way you can use your cav to ‘square’ the enemy troops but you’ll need infantry of your own (or luck and a lot of cav) to reduce the squares. Arty should work of course, but shooting at long range through friendly troops should be more heavily penalized based on the number of friendly troops ‘in front’ of the arty (ie, the penalty scales up the more units in the middle zone). This would encourage bringing the arty up (riskier) or else needing infantry to fire on the squares.
3) Territory doesn’t seem to matter much. I found myself annexing this or that, but the only real benefit I see is a generic score at the end of the game. Sure it opens up some movement options, but I never really had much of a problem before I annexed half of Europe either. ;) I think I preferred NiE’s income system where every territory lost/gained had an impact.
4) Lack of ‘income’/cost. Given that territory doesn’t seem to matter, there is no underlying ‘economic system’ in the game, there is no reason not to just pick all of the best units when recruiting. Early in the game this leads to some weird armies that are heavy on arty and cav. And unfortunately those unbalanced/a-historical armies are frighteningly effective. They just need a few infantry for the combined arms and then steam-roller the enemy. I’d prefer if infantry made up the bulk of the forces selected but if there is 3 and 4 strength arty/cav available, I’m going to grab those over 2 strength infantry… ;)
5) Diplomatic system – it seems like an lot of mechanics for not a lot of effect. Since you can’t sway anyone to your side (not even the Ottomans who will activate once and then only with a specific card), there isn’t a whole to do here. It’s just a little bit of damage control/mitigation. In NiE, Political Points were GOLD! You never had enough and they were used to compel or ask neutrals to join, to declare war (or peace!) and most importantly, to claim territory during peace accords. By halfway through my V&G game, I was barely bothering with my Political Points. The effect they have is so negligible on the game as a whole (nothing I can do except mitigate) and I honestly wasn’t concerned if some of the majors did DoW me. I used most of them on Germany/Italy just for form’s sake of preserving the Empire rather than for any practical game value (I’m not even sure what happens if Germany/Italy get too low lol ;) ).
6) I never had much trouble beating each of the Allies in turn. (Austria three times, Russia twice – once by Treaty of Tilsit, Prussia twice – before forcing them out, and Spain twice). I had 2-3 ‘uber-stacks’ and they pretty much steam-rolled all opposition. The rest is just feeding in replacements. I never once had to defend the Empire for long and I routinely just marched to their capital and forced them out within a few turns of their DoW. In between waiting for the DoWs, I’d simply get into position for the next one and then ‘Consolidate the Empire’ repeatedly while I waited.
7) Naval system – It feels a bit too cut and dried. In NiE, it was a bit more dynamic and often became a cat and mouse game between the Allied and French/Spanish squadrons. The Brits had an advantage in NiE, but it wasn’t so pronounced as in V&G. In addition, it seems much harder to avoid contact in V&G leading to instant death for leaving port unless you’ve built up a massive numerical advantage later in the game. In any case, I didn’t feel any need to waste activations on losing squadrons for no purpose. In NiE, the French could spread out a bit to threaten Brit lines of amphib invasion. If the Brits massed to ‘search’ they got one roll. So they often broke down into smaller groups to hunt, which lead to a more dynamic feel of back and forth. In V&G, I just let my fleet rot in port and let the Brits amphib where they pleased. In the end, I simply crushed any army they left on the continent (see ‘2’ and ‘6’ above).
Now with all of that said, you’d think I didn’t enjoy the game but I really did! Lol. I just don’t see a lot of room for replay in the long term as it stands. Maybe if it was multiplayer, the opponent could vary it up enough to replay but I’m not seeing much that I would need to differently to win in the future. Sure, I could give the AI artificial bonuses which make it harder, but I’m not a huge fan of doing that in a historical(ish) game. I mean, I could give them M1 tanks too and it would definitely be harder, but not much in the history department… ;)
I’m looking forward to the games continued development and hopefully a chance to play the Allies (and especially for multiplayer). In the meantime, I’ll try another campaign to see if maybe I just got lucky. ;) And of course, I’m looking forward to the board game!
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