Thoughts from an old Panzer General grognard

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Eqqman
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Thoughts from an old Panzer General grognard

Unread postby Eqqman » Tue May 12, 2020 10:04 pm

Hello all-

As somebody who grew up with SSI's 5-Star series (skipping Fantasy General and People's General, since they weren't WWII) I'm thrilled to find a worthy successor to the Panzer General line that I encountered quite by accident browsing through Steam. How accidentally? Well, this is UoC 2 and I didn't know UoC 1 existed! When playing I have to keep reminding myself to judge the product on its own merits and not be biased about differences from PzG as the developers did an excellent job making UoC its own thing. That said with being a PzG guy for 25+ years some comparisons are inevitable that I thought I would share.

1) It felt strange having only an Allied campaign available. Players are usually more excited for conquering than liberating, but if Axis/Soviet campaigns are forthcoming as DLC in the future, these are the times we live in now.

2) I really miss having an air game and this is the main nitpick that would keep me rating UoC as highly as PzG. In PzG it was an enjoyable (for me) added layer of tactics to decide how to manage your air power and how much of your ground force (if any) should be devoted to AA. And another layer of puzzle-solving on top to decide how to wipe out an opponent's AA to get your own bombers in for a crippling blow. UoC's air power, while present, is incredibly anemic and doesn't give the same level of satisfaction to use. In fact most times it's just frustrating. If I see as much as a "-1" on a unit I can often expect to fail to score even a single point of suppression. Air power helps me kill enemy units less than 50% of the time... maybe even less than 25%? It's hardly representative of Allied air power post 1943 and a bit of a joke that units can't even be suppressed at a time when Allied bombers were razing entire cities to the ground. Improving the air game (well, more like actually implementing one) would be my strongest recommendation for UoC 3 if it's doesn't make UoC 2 DLC.

3) It surprises me that artillery has no range and can only be used to 1 hex distance. I'm much more used to artillery attacking from range like in PzG and Blitzkrieg, but you can argue that the operational scale of these games is much smaller. However some of the UoC scenarios take place in very small scale maps. This can lead to oddities like you're playing the Normandy map and then suddenly you're in northern France at 2x or 3x scale but the unit ranges are all the same.

4) There doesn't appear to be any way to grind down enemy strong points reliably. If I am willing to sacrifice all my men you might think that repeated assaults on a position would accomplish *something* even at huge cost. But here you could fail to get even a single point of suppression. You might think that repeated assault might at least drop the supply capability of the hex down or increase the chance of suppression. Sending in the human waves is a huge gamble (which it should be, but it feels a bit extreme here).

5) The naval landing card is odd. I would have expected to be able to make landings anywhere along a coast, or at least within range of an existing unit like with paradrops, but it appears there is a limited number of allowed landing points on each map and they always appear to be in places where having an extra troop is not a pressing need. This card feels like it will only really shine in D-Day, making its utility quite limited. The only time it's really helped me is in Dragoon since it opens up ZoC to get the tank deployed on turn 1.

6) Not sure why the ability to pass steps around in the planning phase between units is limited by your HQ's command points. Since the units themselves can't be re-positioned it would have been nice to at least be able to freely pass your steps around.

7) Point 6 segues into this- I miss being personally attached to the individual units. The game doesn't appear to store any stats for units, so I can't beam with pride over reviewing their kill rates or seeing their campaign ribbons or such like. Coupled with the previous point, I don't know who or where my best units are so I can't see a tactical challenge and say "ah, this looks like a situation for 1st Armored!" or whatnot. All the units are basically faceless. Something that might help is being able to assign the HQ's commanding general to a subordinate unit so you can at least have some kind of personal connection. Maybe it could allow you to give a +1 overstep capability or some other small bonus that wouldn't require every scenario to be retested extensively.

8) I'm surprised that the oversupply ability is basically defense only. Given that nearly all scenarios require offense the main time you will run out of supply is pushing ahead, making this ability mostly moot the majority of the time. Given that it comes so "late" in the tree it's a very expensive upgrade that you're only going to use once or twice.

9) Related to this, it's a surprise that you have to pay for "upgrades" to HQs simply to provide basic abilities that you would assume are possessed by all armies the world over by default, such as the above carrying extra gas or doing basic entrenchment.

10) The campaign requires too much foreknowledge and prior planning to make sure some situations are not unwinnable. As I mentioned in another post it's a design red flag if you actually have to make a tool-tip warning players they can't win if they don't do certain things at a point where it could now be too late for them to do so. In some cases this means you have to waste prestige upgrading an HQ (I'm looking at you, Free French) that only critically appears in one or two scenarios. At least in this case the warning is direct. Some scenarios things are more subtle- like in the scenario where you need to get Appennine Pass, I cannot break the entrenchment level of the defenders in classic difficulty unless I use units with Engineers. Minor footnote- the special ability to reduce entrenchment seems to fail to do so a lot unless you have Engineers.

Listing so many things might make it seem like I'm down on the game, which is not the case (I have 224 hours in my first 2 1/2 weeks; being Covid-19 unemployed helps). I only consider the lack of a real air component a serious weakness, the rest of these are just raisins in the cookie. I tip my hat to the development team, and also to Sampstra Games for the tutorials.

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Danielefc
2x2 Games
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Re: Thoughts from an old Panzer General grognard

Unread postby Danielefc » Wed May 13, 2020 3:04 pm

Thanks for the feedback. Just to address a few of the points:

1.) Game has twice the content of the original - and with the free updates even more than that. We are not blind to the fact that there is a large portion of players who enjoy playing Germany in these games. And yes, future DLC will cover German campaigns.

2.) We had an entire set of air mechanics designed. But it made the game overly complex for very little gain. And in hindsight; having a detailed air component on an operatinal scale doesn't really "fit".

4.) Two words: "Feint attack" ;)

5.) We are not entirely satisfied with how the naval landing card turned out either. It's very "meh", except in a few very specific circumstances. In future content it will be changed or removed.

6.) This is for balance purposes. It may change in future content though.

7.) If there is time we would very much like to add stuff along these lines - but no promises.

8.) Yep - totally agree. We have some plans for making it more useful.

Cheers

Eqqman
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Re: Thoughts from an old Panzer General grognard

Unread postby Eqqman » Tue May 19, 2020 4:20 pm

Forgot to add-

11) Why can't the game be saved/loaded on demand? I get the idea of penalizing players for not getting a scenario right the first time, but why do they have to be continually punished every time it is necessary to restart a scenario? If you're stuck somewhere having to keep restarting over and over gets tedious, especially in a scenario where you have to do a lot of rigmarole in the starting setup to get things how you need them.

Carlec
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Re: Thoughts from an old Panzer General grognard

Unread postby Carlec » Mon Jul 27, 2020 7:16 pm

As another old warmer player, from back in the Avalon Hill '70s days, I urge you to also pick up UoC1. They have the German campaign there, and though slightly dated, it remains a wonderful game. Sadly, they haven't released 2 on a Mac, so I can't compare the two for you. In 1, they also did not emphasize the air portion of the game. I understand your complaint, but I contented myself with assuming the fine folks here at UoC simply wanted a ground game only. The air does have its moments, and for me, was often the key in taking a major position. And, lastly, in 1 you can save...or if you leave the game, it saves for you so that you can come back and pick up (or at least that is how I remember it).