What is Army General?
I still haven’t thought of a succinct way to describe it. The best quick comparison I have is to think of it like a Wargame: AirLandBattle or Red Dragon campaign with the scenario scope narrowed down to focus in detail on a specific small part of Operation Bagration on the Russian front in World War 2.
On a nuanced level it is much more than that simple comparison can fully convey, but there’s a video that shows off the nuts and bolts of AG for those who have time to want to know more.
Multiplayer campaigns is interesting to me, but sadly the era is not. I’m still burnt out on WW2 games from the last big glut of them. Here’s hoping they return to a contemporary setting with those features :)
Good news everyone, MP campaign confirmed :)
Does anyone play this anymore? Is it any good? Its on sale for a DEEP discount on Steam.
I have it but was just about to ask here too. Mostly wondering about the AI as most negative comments mention cheating. I’ll play almost exclusively single player as even in my twitch days, I wasn’t a strong RTS multiplayer.
I can say that the AI in this is better than the AI in any previous Steel Division or Wargame entry, but if anyone tries to tell you it doesn’t cheat that person is not to be trusted. The AI has perfect information on your deployments and largely plays by the rules, but the one place where it blatantly abuses that knowledge is to counterbattery your artillery. Once an artillery piece starts shelling the AI, the AI gets to use its perfect information to shell you back to the stone age in turn. It’s not really the end of the world as everything else is halfway competent for a game this complex, but is occasionally aggravating until you know what’s going on under the hood.
Thanks for the info. So long as it’s just artillery that makes the cheating obvious I can deal with that. Now if I can just take the time to learn how to play. Hehe
Just found out, you can play this in MP campaign now, awesomesauce.
Paging @Otagan
I see this is up for 60% off sale. Every time it is on sale I get tempted. I last played these games in the European Escalation time I think. I found it pretty complex which was a turn off as I stared at a million little symbols from afar. At the same time, I loved zooming in and seeing the extreme battles. So I am torn; I could go for some modern, pretty WWII RTS. I am not going to play against people. I would likely only dabble in campaign or co-op against the AI. Is this one worth it for that? Is 44 the better choice? Should I just continue to evade and play CoH every now and then?
Also, I am confused about the Western unit DLC (or DLC in general) work for Steel Division 2? If I buy the Total Conflict edition that is on sale, it doesn’t include either the Tribute to D-Day nor Back to War pack? It just has the History pass I guess. What might be the priority of DLC to pick up? Is the Conflict edition even worth it?
Do I need Steel Division Normandy 44 or any of its DLC for some sort of cross unlocking? Heck is Normandy 44 maybe the game I should be looking at instead?
Steel division 2s campaign is no light weight affair, but as a game it’s way better than SD 44.
The Steel Division AI does cheat, but it’s overall more competent and convincing than any Wargame AI ever was. It is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination (i.e. uncanny knowledge of your units that it really shouldn’t have, etc.) but will manage to put you through your paces. SD2 has better AI than SD44, as well, or at least more effective AI as SD2’s design is more compatible with Eugen’s general AI design due to the much larger scale.
For reference, SD44 being set in Normandy results in a lot of maps with hedgerows and small towns all over the place for significant line-of-sight blocking. The game also features much lower ranges on most of its units, capping out at some high-velocity and large-caliber tanks getting direct fire up to 1.2km. In SD2, the Belorussian terrain is more open and sparsely populated, and basically every tank has 2km range. The AI can handle that much more easily as it requires less finesse.
Total Conflict includes neither Tribute to D-Day nor Back to War. Back to War is given to anyone who owns SD44 for free, and Tribute to D-Day was made because people wouldn’t quit asking for more SD44 divisions to get ported over so they insisted on charging for the extra time and effort (which is a reasonable ask IMO).
The General Deluxe edition is pretty good value as it buys you the History Pass which comes with even more than is actually listed on the store page. You have to decide if you’re comfortable paying $10 now or $17 if you decide you want it later as a separate purchase, but that’s nearly double the content right there. There’s basically no reason to buy the three components of the pass separately.
The Total Conflict edition has some extra cosmetic junk with no gameplay impact and some out-of-game reference material that I’ve never once looked at so you can totally live without that.
The Pre-order pack has a couple of extra divisions to play with, one of which is quite good (3rd Guards Tank Corps) and one of which is gimmicky as all hell (1. Skijager Division).
Back to War and Tribute to D-Day are pretty clear about what you actually get. There’s more content in Back to War but the Tribute to D-Day content is a bit more refined and interesting.
I didn’t much care for SD44 due to the smaller scale and somewhat rougher gameplay mechanics, but it did have a certain personality that SD2 is missing in its division design. SD2 is hewing back toward the Wargame formula and is more open-ended as a result, but as we briefly discussed before, you’ll still have the issue of trying to determine how much better the Panzergrenadiers with MG42s are relative to the ones with MG34s, or if you really want to spend extra points for T-34-85s with the 1944 turret or if the less expensive 1943 variant is adequate.
What’s the difference between Steel Division and Steel Division 2?
Well the difference between being on the Western Front in SD1 and the Eastern Front in SD2 changes the dynamics of the battles. SD1 being largely focused on Normandy and hedgerow country constricts lines of sight compared to the more open expanses of the steppes of the Eastern Front, so engagement ranges can be far longer in SD2. Obviously, SD2 is primarily focused on Eastern Front divisions as well so SD1 is probably preferable for people more interested in the armies and equipment of the Western Front.
Last I checked, I believe SD2 has a more active online community if you want to play some multiplayer games. Then there is the difference in how the singleplayer campaigns work as well, SD1 is similar to the first Wargame (European Escalation) in how it is a series of handcrafted missions whilst SD2 is more akin to AirLand Battle and Red Dragon where you have a strategic meta-map layer that ties together your battles and gives your overarching strategy objectives to work towards.
SD2 iterates on the groundwork built by SD1, and the continual improvements and content drops (DLC) that SD2 has received over time arguably make it the better game from a purely mechanical perspective. Otagan also touches on some of the differences in their post above, (IIRC) there is more freedom in deck building with SD2 compared to SD1 due to Eugen re-incorporating many of the popular elements people loved in the various Wargame games.
SD2 also has a bit less micro due to some features with units to “auto” do things than SD1 that frankly would be nice if they would patch into SD1.
Is there a way to see what units are available in each pre-made deck in SD1 like the armory in previous Warland games? I don’t see an armory button. Also, I made my own custom deck. It’s pretty heavy on units, but it won’t show up as a deck for a single player skirmish. How do I fix this?
I want to have a battlegroup that has loads and loads of artillery because I love raining death and destruction upon the enemy.
There is an armory, but I don’t recall what menu it’s hidden in. The armory also unfortunately won’t tell you what’s in a specific division since it’s divided by nationality, so you’ll have to actually take a look at the divisions themselves to see what you want.
Not sure what the deal is with that. Short of asking to see the deck and what your lobby deck menu looks like, I can’t think of anything else.
Plenty of decks have stupidly huge artillery tabs, but take a look at some of the infantry divisions (such as the US 2nd Infantry, UK 15th Scots, and the German 352nd and 716th Infanterie, as well as the 21st Panzer if you want some really bizarre artillery pieces). Some of the divisions have huge off-map artillery, as well, such as naval and railway artillery that you can call in, but that is all limited use and can’t be resupplied or rearmed. It definitely would qualify as “raining death and destruction” though.
Oh, you made a Breakthrough deck. That’s only usable in the specific Breakthrough game mode and won’t show up in a normal skirmish deck list.
My guess is it’s too heavy on units and AP or something, but I don’t understand when it would be available for a skirmish match?
In the description of SD2 it says some thing about turn based strategy gameplay. Is this phased time combat like the original Combat Mission game? I loved how that game worked.