How is US corps?

[econ21]

I bought this game on Saturday afternoon and had finished DLC 42 on Sunday evening - it's very compelling! After finishing GC 44 East, it was nice to get back to a small core - the scenarios go faster and somehow it feels more personal.

I'd read that the game was difficult and think that's true - so far, it's a step up from GC 39-42 and probably later ones. The first "real" scenario, Casablanca, was a wake-up - turn 1, the French navy sallies out and sinks one of my landing transports! Dorothy, we are not in Poland 39 anymore! Sometimes the scenarios have quirky elements which you have to figure out, so sometimes I have to reload once I've figured out the "puzzle". And the timer for getting a triumph is not that generous - for me, at FM, I have to play well and it often comes down to the last turn. It's a different experience from cruising through GC 39-42, but perhaps not as fiendishly difficult as Steve Brown's North Africa campaign mods for Panzer General 2. The Axis forces are presumably beefed up from what they were historically, to give the player a challenge, but not as much as in Steve Brown's mods.

One thing I do appreciate is the sense of history and detail in the scenarios - on a par with those in the German GC. They "feel" authentic and varied - it's not a "by the numbers" design, so provides an enjoyable and rewarding, if challenging, experience. I do feel the Sherman is ahistorically weak (and TDs a little overpowered to compensate), but that's not something the campaign designer could alter. I struggled to create a historical core - the American divisional structure (3 regiments of tanks, infantry and artillery per division) doesn't translate quite as well into game turns as the German (where I'd work with twos, rather than threes). By mid-42, I'm a Corps commander but still only have one division. I may have to break with history and work in multiples of twos, to field three divisions - which is the typical number of battlegroups that works for PzC scenarios.

[DocTsiolkovski]

"Steve Brown's North Africa campaign" - wow. This was the BEST PG2 Mod or Scen I played, incredibly well balanced and challenging. Only time ever I understood why Matilda II are useful...oh, the times