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[Inbrainsane]

Played a few times now with axis and allies.

Well done with this game. It "feels" even more stable and smooth than the last release of HOI1. No CDT, and i noticed no major bugs.

Noticed some issues though:

1. In the list of the leaders, only one of their special abilities is displayed. How about little symbols in this line, that represent all special abilities?! I am still searching for some time to find the leader i actually need in a special situation.

Another possible solution... Expand the zone that will show the pop-up window a little bit to the right(in the leader-list), so that it pops up even when my mouse is on the srollbar and scrolls through the list(like it was in hoi 1 IIRC).

2. The Airforce: I see the reasons, why no bigger stacks than 5 are allowed. But my method for creating my troops is, i make one big stack, and then out of this i form the different armies. This is a very fast and easy method. But doesnt work with air, because i cant make the big stack, so its much more difficult to search the units i want for each stack.

3. I am from Germany. There is one Province named after this City Friedrichshafen. But you write Friedrich-shafen instead of correct separation: Friedrichs-hafen

*edit*
4. Playing as allies one time, one of my leaders dissapeared. Was he killed in battle 0o ?

Ok.. game is probably finished, but at least point 1 and 3 could be solved in first update.

 

[unmerged(29126)]

Played a few times now with axis and allies.

Well done with this game. It "feels" even more stable and smooth than the last release of HOI1. No CDT, and i noticed no major bugs.

Noticed some issues though:

1. In the list of the leaders, only one of their special abilities is displayed. How about little symbols in this line, that represent all special abilities?! I am still searching for some time to find the leader i actually need in a special situation.

Another possible solution... Expand the zone that will show the pop-up window a little bit to the right(in the leader-list), so that it pops up even when my mouse is on the srollbar and scrolls through the list(like it was in hoi 1 IIRC).

2. The Airforce: I see the reasons, why no bigger stacks than 5 are allowed. But my method for creating my troops is, i make one big stack, and then out of this i form the different armies. This is a very fast and easy method. But doesnt work with air, because i cant make the big stack, so its much more difficult to search the units i want for each stack.

3. I am from Germany. There is one Province named after this City Friedrichshafen. But you write Friedrich-shafen instead of correct separation: Friedrichs-hafen


Ok.. game is probably finished, but at least point 1 and 3 could be solved in first update.

1. Yeah. I noticed that too ... I'd prefer the abbreviations WS=Winter Specialist, DD=Defensive Doctrine etc. should do the trick ...

2. Are you sure this isn't because of the Airfield-capacity ? I know an Air Lt. General can command 4 squadrons now instead of 3, so I would assume an Air-general or a Marshal can handle more than 5 ...

3. One of my pet-peeves: it's also Wilhelmshaven not Wilhelmshafen ... but the map is done and I understand it can't be changed now. That would require a complete new recompile of the map and a 100+ MB download

 

[thorpemark]

1st.. agreed on finding leaders. I also noticed in reorganizing units I had difficulty getting the right leader with the right forces. And each time you change a leader you lose org. Is RANk a definitive way to know how many divisions a leader may control? I noticed..

Field Marshall
General
Lt. General
Mj. General

Are they, from bottome to top, 1,3,9 and 12 divisions?

And what I liked is that the AI did seem to do react differently to different approaches on my part.

My first Allies game I was rather conservative, not knowing what I was doing, it being my first game. But then I played Axis twice and came back to try Allies one last time.

This time I tried to be more aggressive.. and I found it to be rather difficult to get that Strategic victory... mostly because the AI did some smart things. I was driving up through Cologne and they put a huge force back in Dortmund.. making it quite difficult to take Essen and Arnhem and Saarbrucken. They also left enough force in the southeast ro counter attack and take the province below Strassbourg.. and I became worried about a break-out for them. In the end they had counter-attacked to take back Utrecht and Aachen and still had me worried about Strasbourg and them having a path to Paris.. but I was able to take Essen and within hours of game end, I achieved Dortmund for exactly 100 points.

I think I'd like to try the faux-MarketGarden approach someone described earlier here. Driving north to Arnhem and parachuting farther North.. can't wait to see what the AI does with that. What I was most impressed with was that the AI seemed to try to regain the initiative. I did not let it succeed.. but you gotta love that.

 

[Registered]

2. Are you sure this isn't because of the Airfield-capacity ? I know an Air Lt. General can command 4 squadrons now instead of 3, so I would assume an Air-general or a Marshal can handle more than 5 ...

Must be the airfield, there is one leader, German i think, that can handle 13 squadrons IIRC.

 

[Zuckergußgebäck]

I think Germany is seriously overpowered, a thing that explains my ease as Germany and extreme difficulty as the Allies.


In my allied game I found myself beeing outflanked on the channel coast while my troops were all trying to hold back the germans around Luxemburg. I then began a withdrawal to a new defensive perimiter around Paris. Unfortunately, I quit before the retr... withdrawal was complete.

 

[Steel]

Try playing more than once as Allies before declaring the scenario unbalanced

You need to roll with the initial blow, but a strategic victory is quite possible as Germany runs out of steam after a while.

 

[unmerged(31131)]

i think ithat it is pretty balanced...because the fact that i had a hard time with Germany the first time(my first time playing it and i quit because how hard it was) then i played the US and had marginal victory. Then i played as the Germans and got pretty far before i had to quit.

So maybe try playing each one several times before declaring it uneven.

Airforce is key for the USA and armor is Key for the Germans

 

[grumbold]

You can set the game to give you a popup every time there is an aerial engagement.

True, but the messages are either on every encounter (too frequent) or on defeat (too late to do much good.) It would be nice to have an alert for air/sea/ground combats that are finely balanced or heavily in the opponents favour so you can attempt to affect the outcome, without being alerted to all the encounters where you don't need to be directly involved.

 

[GrimReaper]

I felt frustrated in my first game as Germany too, i got stopped dead in my tracks. The second time I achieved a major victory.

IMHO part of the problem is that there are a great deal of new things to learn; have not got the hang of them (and this with a demo, imagine the full version ).

 

[Wolf52]

Ok, i got one of the leader disappearing bugs too. I was attacking into Bastogne from Cologne with Model in command of an hq, and lesser units following up, Model got there first after the battle, was bombed by the air force, then he disappeared. The hq unit remained though. Weird.

 

[Dalwin]

The debate on the pros and cons of the movement is combat system and the problematic arrival times of attacking forces is interesting.

I see a few possible tactics to help deal with this, but keep in mind that I have not yet played the demo since I am at work. I do not want to resort to micromanagement of corps composition and the constant shuffling of leaders that would also be involved.

It seems to me that to reduce the risk of the units advancing into the newly conquered province you should be launching attacks into the bordering provinces on either side. Since these pinning attacks will naturally be weaker and are not intended to take those provinces, you should not begin those attacks until the defenders have fled from the main target or just before that point.

Another tactic borrowed from history is the use of reserves to exploit gains. The use of HOI1 tactics would naturally see the first advancing units to arrive be at low org from the battle they just fought. It seems to me that any such units should have cancelled their move and not gone all the way into the territory. A few fresh units that did not originally attack should be given the order to advance into the territory after it changes hands.

I assume this timing based on the way units moved much faster into friendly controlled territory in HOI1 than into enemy territory. Perhaps this is not a valid assumption.

Please feel free to explain how these tactics are invalid. As I said, I have not actually had the chance to play the demo yet.

 

[unmerged(29126)]

...
It seems to me that to reduce the risk of the units advancing into the newly conquered province you should be launching attacks into the bordering provinces on either side. Since these pinning attacks will naturally be weaker and are not intended to take those provinces, you should not begin those attacks until the defenders have fled from the main target or just before that point.

Another tactic borrowed from history is the use of reserves to exploit gains. The use of HOI1 tactics would naturally see the first advancing units to arrive be at low org from the battle they just fought. It seems to me that any such units should have cancelled their move and not gone all the way into the territory. A few fresh units that did not originally attack should be given the order to advance into the territory after it changes hands.
...

I tried your first suggestion there. I attacked the provinces on the flanks of my advance with the units that had supported my initial thrust (after the 24h delay of course) ... my tank corps "sped" through the gap ... the relief-attack had to dure as long as it took my second echelon leg-infantry to catch up with the panzerkorps ... but the tanks already had to fight against troops counterattacking from the enemy's hinterland ...

the panzers could take care of themselves for long enough, fortunately there weren't many enemy divisions in the second line ... otherwise it could have been deadly ...

but a side-effect was that the units from the initial supporting action were now unavailable for the support of the main-thrust and were suffering even more in the relief/pinning-attacks ... I had to abort the relief-attacks, then the enemy counterattacked using the previously pinned units ... the leg-inf arrived shortly afterwards to save the day ... but my supporting units were close to 0 org and I couldn't exploit the gap by launching another attack

with a coupla more resources I think it can be done, but one would need a lot of mobile assets to pull of a Sickle-stroke ... we'll have to see


I have a feeling (still need to play it out) the reserves-idea for an exploit wouldn't work as well. If you dog-pile the reserve into the initial attack ALL units would benefit from it and the Armoured units would suffer very little damage ... and it doesn't matter much whether you order reserve units to be the first in a "liberated" province or if those units suffered slight damage while participating in the initial attack ... they'll still be on their own ... all alone ... with lots of firepower coming their way ...

Anyway, perhaps now I will need five provinces (in an ideal situation) to conquer one ... one that the main-attack comes from, 2 to support that main-attack, and then somewhat later 2 more to distract the enemy's front-line-provinces that border the break-through ...

looks like A LOT more planning and QUITE some more micromanagement is needed for the land-campaigns ...

*one-smiling-eye*one-crying-eye*

 

[The Wookiee]

Jesus christ... This game blows away all competition! I love it \o/
THANK YOU PARADOX!

 

[unmerged(10750)]

looks like A LOT more planning and QUITE some more micromanagement is needed for the land-campaigns ...

Luckily, just about everything else, from reinforcement to logistics to supply lines to air and naval missions, has been automated and streamlined, so one can focus more attention to where it's needed.

This is exactly the kind of thing that I like to be doing - coordinating lines of advance.

 

[grumbold]

The pinning attacks would need to be viable attacks in their own right or you're just throwing away your own org to little effect - org plummets if you execute an ill thought out attack. Its also not doing anything to affect enemy units behind the newly won province. A couple of fresh ones can be enough to repulse your disorganised advancing troops. Unless we get a coordinated arrival time, halting the troops and sending in fresh mechanised reserves is the best option yet, but that does require micromanagement to assess and halt all your victorious troops and send in others.

 

[unmerged(15483)]

Best treat in a long time and as I always say - 'a playable demo tells a thousand pictures' - lol

Seriously, this game is just ace. As with everyone else, I had my reservations with movement-is-attack but OMG it just rocks - gives so much possibility to counter-attack without losing a province. And aerial units? OMG AMAZING. I just wish there were some naval units

Now I am going to go and see what else there is to drool about...

 

[Darkrenown]

It feels different as someone said smoother, cooler.
Its hard atleast for me to see what is going on the map its so clustered (is that the right word?) when battles going on everywhere and in small provinces you dont see the troops sometimes.

The battle overview screen is your friend

 

[danoh]

What a nice Christmas present. It arrived the day winter vacation started. Thanks Paradox. Every Dec. 16 I start itching for a Bulge game. Usually it's SPI's old "Battles for the Ardennes," although if I'm feeling ambitious it could be "Wacht am Rhein" on the ping pong table. . .

It all looks great and was overwhelming at first but things are starting to make sense. The historical popups like "Goering finally finds a couple air wings for the Western Front" really lend themselves to great mod possibilities.

I'm glad I'll get to develop basic combat tactics and learn that end of the interface before the REST of the game arrives in a couple weeks.

 

[Deaghaidh]

Okay, I'm completely lost with the demo. I have no idea what I'm doing.

The luftwaffe is just flying through my provinces, despite the fact that I *thought* I'd ordered my fighters to the province to interdict them. I gave them interdict orders, and the little icon moved, but they didn't fight the germans

I should probably say that I was bewildered and overwhelmed by HoI, but not this lost.

IMHO, a better idea would have been to do like Rome:TW did and include the tutorial plus one battle instead of just a fairly large front with lots of units. Throwing unfamiliar users into the deep end is probably not a good idea.

Now, looking through the tech tree I like that part much better, since the tech system in HoI confused me quite a bit and this seems more intuitive to me (instead of researching 6 different things for a tank I tell it to research an improved tank).

I think I'd probably like the game but without a manual or tutorial I'm just lost and frustrated. A 'beginners guide to HoI2 Demo' thread would probably be a good idea.

 

[Sindai]

The luftwaffe is just flying through my provinces, despite the fact that I *thought* I'd ordered my fighters to the province to interdict them. I gave them interdict orders, and the little icon moved, but they didn't fight the germans

Tooltips are your friend. "Air superiority" is the mission you're looking for. "Interdiction" is just like "ground attack" except that it targets org while GA targets strength.