I never got around to picking up Panzer Corps and now I guess I’ll be getting this instead at some point. Although my PC is kind of overflowing on unfinished games right now so probably not any time soon.
You guys just convinced me to drop $30 on an indie game during a Steam sale. Well played.
Have fun storming Stalingrad in 8 turns!
Stalingrad in eight turns? Impossible!
If I only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.
Stalingrad was a tough one… I have to watch my replay to see how I cracked it, can’t remember exactly but I think I focused in the south approach and joined up with the center across the bridge. But it was still hairy with a make or break attack on the last objective at the very last turn with my very last unit still having action points!
I think I replayed that scenario like 6 times! Great fun.
Is the introductory scenario supposed to have some more advanced tutorial stuff? The briefing seems to indicate that it does, but I don’t get any new tips.
Edit: Nevermind. It turns out that they had to cut that in order to ship.
I decided to forgo this game for now. I don’t like the “time limit” approach to these types of games. Seems like an artificial way to create a challenge.
Or a method for modeling historic battles.
I’m not saying time doesn’t have its place, but saying I have “8 turns” to capture Stalingrad has nothing to do with the battle in the larger context of the historical campaign. As a gaming mechanism it works, but its still an artificial imposition and something I didn’t like in the Panzer General series either. Other games cover the same battles without resorting to that approach.
How is it artificial if historically a battle had a similar non-artificial deadline? The whole point is to light a fire under your ass, and while hard turn limits fail in certain contexts they seem a natural fit for Unity of Command.
Even with the turn limit constraints his seems to be far less puzzle-oriented than PG but I honestly haven’t played it enough to form a valid opinion in that regard.
For most games of this type, there’s a time limit–traditional board games, for instance, usually have a turn limit. But I think the biggest reason may well be that the AI can easily be defeated if you give the human unlimited time.
Unlimited is ridiculous, but I see Sarkus’s point of hard turn limits sometimes being substituted for design. It really does suck to play a game where you have everything in position to swoop down, or the enemy is hanging by a thread that would unravel in the slightest breeze in reality, but you lose completely because … no valid reason. I don’t think this is that type of game, but I need to play it more.
I would guess that many Turn Based gamers (myself included) enjoy playing without a tight turn limit. Part of the appeal of turn based gaming is the low stress gaming environment. I’d rather have a goal that limits the number of casualties I can suffer etc.
Having said that, I enjoy Panzer General and its spiritual successors (Fantasy Wars, Elven Legacy) and they rely on tight time limits.
The thing that always gets me about the turn limits is the ‘you have x turns to accomplish your goal, however, if you don’t want to be crippled you have to beat it in y’
I’ve really enjoyed the grand campaign DLC scenarios in Panzer Corps. They give you a set of objectives, if you get all of them in the time limit, decisive. If you only manage to get a portion, it’s a marginal. They also have more variety of objectives than just ‘take this point’.
Which also made going back to the base campaigns pretty painful.
The 8 turn time limit for Stalingrad is actually for achieving a brilliant victory. The normal victory is like 14 turns if I recall correctly.
In any case, both Panzer General and Panzer Corp have time limits for decisive victories as well. So if those didn’t appeal, better skip this title as I feel that the time limit on the scenarios for brilliant victories (the most difficult) make the victory much harder to achieve than PG/PC decisive victories.
This game is officially Geryk-approved.
Is there a “Compendium” of Geryk-approved wargames somewhere on the web? I’d love to see a list of PC based wargames with the Geryk seal of approval. :)
You can get that right now as a free gift with your purchase of the Best of Bruce Geryk Volume 1. Each month, a new volume will be mailed to you until your ten volume set is complete.
Where do I sign up?
I’d prefer a “Bruce Geryk thinks you’re stupid” feature, where Bruce explains (rants) why the game you like is bad.