Slitherine

I thought the high price would warrant a perfect game. Well, perhaps I was wrong. Here are the major issues I have with this game. Any feedback/additions/corrections are welcome!

1. why can I "move and attack" but not "attack and move"?
2. why can't I stack multiple units per hex?
3. why can't I fly over water (keyword "Battle of Britain")?
4. why can't I name units (it's so much more fun when units become personalized by name)?
5. why can't I buy units for other Axis powers than Italy and Germany?
6. why can't I order a unit to move over multiple turns to a final destination?
7. why don't troops ever surrender?

If anyone knows the answers, please let me know! I still cannot believe that PanzerGeneral was a more sophisticated game in the mid 90's.

1/ Because.
2/ Scale.
3/ You can
4/ Hardly a game breaker unless you're setiously picky!!
5/ Dunno
6/ See 1
7/ Err.......what makes you think they don't? What is it you think that removign a unit as "destroyed" represents?

Pg was not more advanced - it had no strategic component at all (production, research), and it's scale was....um...flexible - I hated it - it was a candy-floss game - all good looks and no substance.

please enlighten me: ad 3, why is it that my fighters and tactical bombers (playing Axis) only allow me to fly up to the mainland coastline. What do I have to do to reach England?

are you at war with England?

it's in the tutorial mission. i didn't declare war officially, but they are bombing me (Axis) and I can invade England

The only things I can think of is that you're not close enough or there's some sort of limitation in the tutorial (which I've never played)

Certainly I've never had anything like that in the substantive game - you can attack into England to your heart's content....amd PP limit.....

Air missions to UK are easily done. Your tactical air will reach farther than your fighters. Fighter interception model is quite good. If an Axis tactical air attacks a target in UK, the nearest Brit fighter will intercept. In turn, if an Axis fighter group is in range, it will also join in. In the abstract, this simulates Battle of Britain fairly well.

A good way to protect Axis tactical air when attacking UK is to put your fighters near the coast of France, and attack any Brit fighters visible. If none visible, just strafe some land targets, the Brit fighters will be forced to come up. Of course, they can only come up once per turn, so once you have used up all the enemy fighters (or at least think and hope that you have), send in your tactical air. Ahhhhh, no enemy fighters----sweet! The only losses you might take will be from anti-air factors of your ground targets.

Thanks for all your feedback!

I am a PG II vet, and I like the game - you just have to get used to how it works on a different scale. For instance, the move/attack was something I missed at first, but then realized the limitation makes sense for the way this game works.

Concerning air attacks on Great Britain, I note that the Axis player can strike any target within range of their continental based aircraft, but they can not follow up with movement of the air unit until they actually own the land terrain. Once hexes inside Britain are occupied by land units, aircraft can be moved across the channel. This seems to be a realistic feature of the game to me.

You can take islands with ac, like corsica and sardinia for example.

#1 Actually there is some realism in this. Units will march uncontested or when in the presence of the enemy be catious. You just dont march then charge into a prepared battalion of units. Tactics, experience, positioning all are important. Why do you think the Germans were the best units from that point. They just didnt throw mobs and mobs at the enemy. Even the Russians planned their attacks, although they did try to bum rush a lot. So stopping when engaging is actually fairly accurate. You need time to get your supplies up, new supplies, run recon on the defence, and so on.

#2 its a corp scale game, the hexes are appropriate to corp level. Also it would be a pain in the ass to have the game stackable. The map is large enough to make it one corp per hex. Perhaps on layer for land, air, and navel units would be nice.

#3 you can. I attack convoys a lot with strat bombers. I also attack UK airbases.

#4 Thats frosting on the cake. A game is good because of useability, leaning curve, playability, scope, plausability, content, flexibility, and fun. This game is fun and its cool to have named stuff but really what diff does it make. If they had individual ships you wouldnt get past turn 1 before nightfall. I played ETO/PTO (board game) where they have individual ships, 6 DDs per counter. ITS A PAIN IN THE ASS!!!!

#5 Because powers like Romanis, Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria had a limited amout of units to place. Romania for example had at most 32 divisions in the field. most were ill trained, ill equiped and probably under strength.

#6 Not in the scope of the game and it would actually take more time for this scope.

#7 They technically do. Effectiveness measures that. A 10 strength unit with 100 Eff is a hell of a lot stronger than a 10 strength unit with 10 Eff out of supply. This is an easy way to rep units. Also if they cant retreat they surrender.

vypuero wrote:You can take islands with ac, like corsica and sardinia for example.

IIRC only islands that have no ports - otherwise you'd be able to land units, but not get them out again, and units in the game are effectively only the front line forces, not the vast bulk of occupation forces that would be expected to stay behind.

PG 1&2 were great for what they were, but the scale always seemed off to me. And so much of those games was just so unrealistic... They didn't even really have a supply system in the PG games.

winky51 wrote:#1 Actually there is some realism in this. Units will march uncontested or when in the presence of the enemy be catious. You just dont march then charge into a prepared battalion of units. Tactics, experience, positioning all are important. Why do you think the Germans were the best units from that point. They just didnt throw mobs and mobs at the enemy. Even the Russians planned their attacks, although they did try to bum rush a lot. So stopping when engaging is actually fairly accurate. You need time to get your supplies up, new supplies, run recon on the defence, and so on.

Actually there were plenty of battles (the biggest being Prohorovka) when one side just charged the other, with no preparation often using melee weapons. Last bayonet charge I can think of was in... 1982. And it was successful.

winky51 wrote: #2 its a corp scale game, the hexes are appropriate to corp level. Also it would be a pain in the ass to have the game stackable. The map is large enough to make it one corp per hex. Perhaps on layer for land, air, and navel units would be nice.

What is a corpse scale?? I can name WW2 corps consisting of 2-3 divisions but also those of 4-6. That's 100% difference in size. Plus one corps per hex does not result in a historical scale, have a look at Stalingrad for example.

VonManteuffel wrote:They didn't even really have a supply system in the PG games.

Yes they did. Unfortunately it was not that realistic and for some strange reason they got rid of it in PG2, but PG1 had both fuel and ammunition represented.

PG II has fuel and ammo

vypuero wrote:PG II has fuel and ammo

Ok, It's been a while since I played PG2, but I distinctively remember that e.g. in PG1 your planes that did not comeback on time to refuel at an airport were lost while in PG2 it was not so.

air does not have fuel in PG II - but does have to return for ammo. Fuel was just too much of an annoyance to track and just didnt work well, but the ammo does the trick. For my own PG II campaign game, I reduced most air to 4 ammo so they have to frequently return to base

vypuero wrote:air does not have fuel in PG II - but does have to return for ammo. Fuel was just too much of an annoyance to track and just didnt work well, but the ammo does the trick. For my own PG II campaign game, I reduced most air to 4 ammo so they have to frequently return to base

So, land units still had fuel in PG2? Anyway I liked PG1 approach with high possibility of losing planes due to lack of fuel, after all it was very typical of the period, it together with navigation errors and mechanical malfunctions were the reason US army lost many thousands of planes during WW2.