Love it or Hate it? Panzer General "Pop-Up" Battle

[orlinos]

I just love the fact that someone found my 2+ year old post!! I'm actually still all for the pop-ups. I understand it slowed down the play, but that was part of it. The interaction of the 2 circles, and the destruction animation, added to my game play. It also heightened the suspense of the combat decisions I made. Yes they were repetitive and often not reflective of the true equipment model, but that could all be changed in a new game. The approach to the original was to build a force, beef up its strength, and limit casualties through good decisions. A map could take 2-6 hours or more. Now its just plow through the map, rebuild, plow through the next map. I bought and started Allied yesterday and blew through 7 maps fairly quickly. Yeah I'm beating the game, but the value per hour played is very low.

Play deducter's mod on low prestige settings. I've been trying not to get my core smashed in Kremenchug in DLC 1943 and I am banging my head against the wall in vain. (Not that it is so hard a scenario, I am just that bad lately). And the scenarios can take a long, long time, just trying to outsmart the AI...

I even started playing Disciples II during the weekend, to get back into proper battle mood. ;-P

[DerTroof]

This combat bubbles became very quickly repetitive, boring and slowed down the game pace quite a lot. Which is not easy to do in turn based game.
Fantasy general had some nice combat animations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of2vTEoMEaA

Thinking about those cartoonish popups makes me nostalgic but I agree with the quoted. At the time they were a real novelty, though!

That said, I also wouldn't mind if the in-game sprites were more discernible (larger?) and animated. Panzer General II had pretty good in-game combat animation, IIRC. I think PC could be improved in this regard.

Also... and this may sound a bit morbid... but showing rubble, vehicle wreckage and maybe even casualties would add to the verisimilitude of the game. I recall the "wreck" counters in Panzerblitz and Squad Leader really added to the flavor of the game. The Talonsoft Battleground games depicted casualties left on the field. This dramatized the flow of battle and the seriousness of what was being depicted. Not for everybody, I know...

I would emphasize none of this, however, over improved gameplay and AI. Those should always take priority.

I would also love to see a fantasy version of PC along the lines of Fantasy General. Never got to play it, heard it was a great game!

[Longasc]

Panzer Corps has such nice sound effects and animations that the "on map" battles look so good that I don't feel I am missing eye candy.

Sure, some might like a pop-up battle now and then but you also know many units shared the same model in these battles in Panzer General and then I would rather say save a lot of work and let it be as it is. Rather create more nice unique unit on-map models instead of pop-up battle models.

[Cristi97]

I absolutely loved them. Don't complain about graphics and/ore lack of depth, remember, it was 1994. 25 years later, I miss those like hell. I wish Panzer Corps 2 would implement them, they can be redone to a much greater scale. They were PG1's trademark, just like the "3D" units were the trademark of PG2.

[3156Regt]

I guess I'm an odd bird. Back in the 90s I ALWAYS played Panzer General with the battle animations on! I must have seen them 1000 times. They always reflected the type of terrain/weather hex the unit was in, even though the exact unit models got kind of approximated..! Even when I played through the original PG again a couple of years ago - Yep; I kept those little animations on through the whole campaign! I can see how repetitive and annoying they must be to some people, but I love them.. they are part of the original game I would not want to be without. It's a PG addiction!

[goose_2]

I liked it, but would shut it off eventually because I wanted to fast play, I get a little click happy, and that click happiness really throws off the game for PC, as it will shut it down and you have to reload.

[IttoOgami]

My favorite sequence was that when you hit Shermans and their towers flew away, burning and spinning (which was, as I read about recently, not that much common, and its almost a legend that Shermans would burn so fast.
But at one point in old PG I shut the pop-ups off, because it was saving a lot of time.

[captainjack]

They were kind of fun, but I switched them off after about the first scenario or two as they slowed things down too much.