First impressions - Matto

[Matto]

So here are some my "first" impressions:

I'm playing it actually second week, in "all war" campaign I started Barbarossa now ...

So first minute: "Omg, it looks really old style"
First five minute (playing tutorial): "It is not like Panzer General ... it is Panzer General ... and blue side in tutorial is little bit strange"
First five minute of campaign: "Nice map, bigger ... more units. I know now all hot keys and all tools and buttons. Fine, lets go to play"
Finishing first map of campaign: "Hmm, it is like PG, but it is fun like PG was ... lets play one more"
...
After two weeks playing: "I love it like I loved PG ..."



Some notes:
I cannot rename unit without hot key ...
Some units have the some or similar statistics (StuG IIIA and B, PzIIIF and G ...).
Some units are unusable expensive (like pioneers). What about make them cheaper but max only one or two units?
When walking with Inf unit, which has trucks ... I'm not sure if some fuel is used
Usually first turns are deadly, when I won first battle / battles, rest of scenario is usually easy. Try make some donations to AI in second part of scenarios ...
What about units history (list of killed units, list of captured cities ... it was nice feature)
Leaders ... I'm not sure about it, but it is usually better, when included ...

[OmegaMan1]

Usually first turns are deadly, when I won first battle / battles, rest of scenario is usually easy. Try make some donations to AI in second part of scenarios ...

I recall that in PG1 the AI would receive a prestige bonus ("dump") on a later round in some scenarios. This helped it to rebuild lost units and make repairs on damaged units. Might be a good way to address this in PC, as well.

Dave

[Razz1]

They are working on AI experience in campaigns.

[eskimo68]

Consider adding some randomness to the AI experience. It would even be ok if it sometimes cheats. The idea behind this is that playing a scenario 10 times and it's always the same with a few factors more or less in losses here and there is not very rewarding. However, let's say there was an option giving you a 0-100% slider for randomness. Then you could use random events to spice things up, like:

- additional prestige
- loser benefits (maybe a new unit popping up from the side of the map)
- air raids bombing a city preventing reinforcements for a turn
- unit breakdowns (unit immovable for a turn while repairing threads)


This would make one on one games against your buddy a lot more interesting because mastering a scenario wouldn't necessarily mean you win it every time (and it's your option whether to have the slider at some insane level or not). As a purist I kinda don't like this but I can see the benefits from making things more exiting for non-purists. If we use something classic as an example like Red Alert one of the most successful games there became our multiplayer game of choice for 5-10 years simply because it allowed us to generate random maps. Replayability is huge win-win situation for a buyer. Maybe not for marketing the sequel .

[Rudankort]

Consider adding some randomness to the AI experience. It would even be ok if it sometimes cheats. The idea behind this is that playing a scenario 10 times and it's always the same with a few factors more or less in losses here and there is not very rewarding. However, let's say there was an option giving you a 0-100% slider for randomness.

Exact implementation needs some more thinking, but general idea sounds very reasonable.

[Rudankort]

Hey Matto, thanks for your impressions! This sounds really reassuring, especially since you have played the game for quite some time:

After two weeks playing: "I love it like I loved PG ..."

I remember that you experienced crashes on the deployment phase. Did this issue ever repeat? Can you provide any additional details on it? Any crash is a very serious problem for us and top priority.

A few comments:

I cannot rename unit without hot key ...
What about units history (list of killed units, list of captured cities ... it was nice feature)

The button will be available in unit info screen, when it gets added. Same is true for units history. I posted some screenshots of the upcoming unit info screen here:
viewtopic.php?p=217874#217874
Any comments on this are welcome!

When walking with Inf unit, which has trucks ... I'm not sure if some fuel is used

Good point, I'll doublecheck.

Usually first turns are deadly, when I won first battle / battles, rest of scenario is usually easy. Try make some donations to AI in second part of scenarios ...
Leaders ... I'm not sure about it, but it is usually better, when included ...

Again good point, I'll see what we can do, because this really detracts from the playing process.

[Kerensky]

Good point, I'll doublecheck.

Double checked. Infantry who 'walk' instead of using transports still consume an appropriate amount of fuel.

[Matto]

I remember that you experienced crashes on the deployment phase. Did this issue ever repeat? Can you provide any additional details on it? Any crash is a very serious problem for us and top priority.

I tried it manytime, but it never happened again ... so I cannot say anything about it. Maybe some bad day of my computer (I'm sure I have one game, which has problem with memory leaks and applications started after it sometime crash because of memory).

The button will be available in unit info screen, when it gets added. Same is true for units history. I posted some screenshots of the upcoming unit info screen here:
viewtopic.php?p=217874#217874
Any comments on this are welcome!

Wow, looks really good ! It is spice for the game, great !!!

[Matto]

Good point, I'll doublecheck.

Double checked. Infantry who 'walk' instead of using transports still consume an appropriate amount of fuel.

Thank you for checking, good to know