First off, Stug Life . MVP specialist step for the on-the-go German panzer with a busy conquering schedule to meet. If only I could put an engineer/recon/stug combo on those tanks, that would be deadly
General thoughts:
- The Polish campaign was the hardest. You have weak units and need to use speed/avoidance to reach those objectives. It really required a different mindset from how the Germans operate in the rest of the UoC franchise (massively strong units that can also go deep in the rear). Took me quite a few tries to get it, but by the time I hit Belgium and my tanks had upgraded to something decent, I had mastered that style to get all those objectives far in the rear easy enough. I don't remember much else as it was two weeks ago.
- Scandinavian campaign. Pretty fun, but I had some issues with Trondheim.
- First off, the standalone scenario and the campaign version are slightly dissimilar. In the scenario, those troops up north at Trondheim start with steps suppressed. In the campaign, all steps are in supply. I believe I've seen this bug with the Yugoslavian scenario as well.
- Second, getting Hamar on turn 2 is quite frustrating and is likely one of the reasons people talk about the "puzzle" nature of UoC. There is only one set of things that you can do to get it on time. And it all relies on IR 307 not having been mauled in the previous scenario (which was my case). Compounded with bad weather starts, it meant lots of "unfun" restarts.
- Third, that one step fallschirmjager south of Dombas causes weird behaviour by the AI. I found out through trial and error that if you send it on the mountain on turn 1, the AI removes its unit from Dombas, leaves it empty, and sometimes sends its HQ down south. So on turn 2, I can put it on Dombas and all ennemy units plus HQ turn out of supply. The AI generally can't take it back before its units run out of supply: I have a one step veteran unit with 4 defense/step defending in a city against a six step regular unit with 1 offense/step offense
- Low countries to Dunkirk. The high point definitely.
- The Netherland capitulation took me by surprise. It wasn't listed anywhere that taking this "optional" objective would remove all Netherland units from the map. How can it be optional? You can't take Amsterdam (on time) without taking that optional objective. I had already mentally given up in mind that I would be able to take all main and optional obkectives on time. Once you learn how to use this new mechanic, the scenario "makes sense". I'll admit there are some variants so it's not a linear thing, but this should really be a main objective to make the player understand the consequences of its action. Perhaps introducing the mechanic earlier in Poland in a less powerfull and truly optional fashion would also insure that players are familiar enough with it. This is the standard "player training" that most video games would use.
- The Belgian capitulation in Dunkirk by contrast was already quite easy to understand by then. It's also a "real" optional objective in that scenario.
- Sickle Stroke. Loved it. The balance is extremely tenuous. The supply lines always threathened/uncertain. And yet, there is no way but forward, harassed by surprise counterattacks on your weakened, out of supply units. Not sure if WAD, but the British unit spanning in Calais defends Boulogne instead of the optional objective. I was pleasantly surprised as I could not have dislodged it on time otherwise.
- Dunkirk. A tasty reward for having encircled the French and English. Only cristicism, the counter attacks near Amiens are just badly handled by the AI. Sure, they mauled a few infantery divisions, but those are easily rebuilt. Moreover, it often left the Allied units with most steps suppressed or destroyed. I had cleared all of the Allied units from the area around Amiens before I had even reduced the Dunkirk pocket.
- Fall Rot & Tannenbaum. Fall Rot was challenging in taking those objectives far far in the rear, but otherwise easy enough. Tannenbaum has some issues. The listed HQ in the scenario chart is wrong. It's not OKW, it's HG A. They also really need another supply source in Zurich. If you take Luzern by turn 4, the Swiss will be out of supply for 3 turns by the time you need to take Zurich. Meaning that you don't even need to do anything, you can just walk some units on the out of supply steps by then. I would also recommend making Lichstenstein an optional objective. It's far in the rear, requires planning, and would be a tough nut to crack if it, and that fortress in front, are still in supply.
- Eastern Europe. A bit of an annoying campaign with several little frustrations (more details below). Still fun. I got so overprepared for Merkur (extra battleship card, extra air bombardment card, extra paratrooper card, and extra fliegerkorps card) that it ended up being won by turn 6 or 7 lol
Main criticisms:
- In UoC 2 base game, you get the feel that you build up your units over time. I really like having mostly elite units with 3 specialist steps in the final scenarios. Here, there's no real carry through. A few units have more than 1 appearance, but most don't. That means I spend the last few turns of each scenarios systematically stripping units of their specialist steps and/or base steps. HG A had something like 20+ infantery and 10+ armor steps in its force pool by the time of its last appearance ...
- Same goes for HQ, but to a lower extent. I guess it really becomes apparent in the Eastern Europe scenarios where you have all these new HQs that appear and disappear. I would suggest cheating a bit, and saying that certain HQ turn into other HQ just to allow the player to level them up and have a certain sense of ownership.
- In certain scenarios, it is critical that some units start out with specialist steps and veteran/elite status in order to execute a few critical moves early on. If you fucked up in a previous scenario, and that key units is in less than stellar shape, or doesn't have the required specialist steps like engineer or artillery, the difficulty level of that scenario goes up exponentially. It's an old critisism of mine. I would suggest allowing the player to distribute his starting units in certain areas. Perhaps putting everyone in the force pool with a spawning turn of 0 would do the trick. Allowable spawning points should obviously be restricted to the proper areas.
- Units that are not in HQ range at the start of a scenario cannot be refitted/upgraded with specialist steps. This is an issue especially in Eastern Europe. In the Greek campaign, you have two units alone on the extreme eastern edge that would benefit from specialist steps if you want to make them usable against the entrenched Greeks in fortresses in the area. And simply in general, if again you fucked up in the previous scenario, and a mauled unit carries through and starts in a spot outside of HQ range, you can't refit it. During the planning phase, you should allow any units to be reinforced from the force pool or with prestige. Once the scenario begins, it's understandable that you would need to be in HQ range.
- Army HQ vs Panzer HQ. The army HQ works great. I love the balance between its long command range and small movement range. The panzer HQ doesn't work as well. In most campaigns, you need to send your panzers far out ahead. Generally, by the end of turn 1, you should already have most of that HQ's units out of range. That means you need to move it. However, it will suppress 2 power level, recovering only 1/turn. The next turn, you need to move it again. So you are faced with either having a badly crippled panzer HQ covering your panzers or having it falling behind. In both case, that means I rarely used the panzer HQ's powers past turn 2 in scenarios where there's a lot of ground to cover (Fall Rot, Poland, Eastern Europe). Especially since in Eastern Europe, you have those 1 scenario only panzer HQ that have little to no upgrades and never reappear. If I could at least built up panzergroup Kleist to its max, there would be more usefulness out of it since it can take more suppression before you run out of abilities.
Suggestions:
- Have you considered a Spanish or Czech scenario for tutorial purposes? Especially to teach the "surrender" mechanic. The Czech one would be a fun alt-hist scenario.
- Encirclement mechanics. Often, you end up encircling a unit with yours. However, you get no attack bonus which feels wrong. Here's a potential new mechanic:
- Any unit in direct contact with 3+ ennemy units gets a -1 modifier to its defense roll, scaled by the number of units above 3. So, a unit in contact with 3 ennemy units gets -1, but -2 for 4, -3 for 5, and -4 for 6 (completely surrounded).
- As a counterbalance, units with allied backup (i.e. in direct contact with allied units) get positive defense roll modifiers. So +1 at 3 (negating the -1 from 3 ennemy units), +2 at 4, and +3 at 5 (making it quite hard to dislodge massive lines of interlocking infantry units). Obviously, you can give +4 at 6, but that doesn't really mean anything since there are no ennemy units that can attack...
- When attacking, to get that encirclement bonus, those supporting units need to each have their action point left. If they can't attack, they can't support. Giving their support also means spending their action point and remaining movement points, if any. So it's more of a combined attack from all sides that overwhelms the defender.
- I feel it gives a good balance and some interesting choice to the player. You can combine force to take out a troublesome unit, at the cost of having all those units be unable to push forward if you breach. Moreover, it takes care of issues where a lone infantery unit entrenched in a city can hold off assaults from all sides with ease. In WW2, intense urban combat happened mostly when the city was on the front line, with solid support from the rear. Cities that got fully surrounded tended to fall quickly. Plus, since the big cities tend to be split by major rivers in UoC 2 (Paris, Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, London), they can't get surrounded as much, and so the bonus wouldn't be too strong. Meanwhile, the Maginot line would truly become impenetrable due to all those bonuses from backup units. Finally, it would fit quite fell within the spirit of the game. This game is based on mobile offense and breakthroughs. This would be one more tool in your arsenal.
Hope it helps! I'm going to try the alt-history variant now