Old Panzer General 2 junkie

[thirsty]

Well, I'm not old, but PG2 was released almost a hundred years ago...

Anyways, just wanted to say this is where the whole Panzer General series should have headed. Good job guys, after playing a half dozen scenarios I'm convinced this is the sequel I have been looking for all these decades.

Stable, polished, nice art/graphics work, good game mechanics, its all in there. My one sole, solitary gripe is (lack of) fog of war. At 20 km a hex there should be no way an opponent can 'see' 200 km into enemy territory and know what a unit consists of. I think the best fog of war model I have played with is the one in People's General, where you have to spend 'air' points in order to run recon flights, bombing missions, interdiction, etc., and you have to fly recon deep into enemy held territory to find out what your opponent has way back there. If I recall correctly it only allows for so much info, not exact stats, but at least type of unit but not size and what not.

Anyways, good job, I'll be starting a campaign real quick here and then later looking for a couple real live meatbags to play against.

[Tomislav Uzelac]

Thanks thirsty, it's reelly always good to hear comments like that

Re: FoW, we are not against it at all, but I'm still struggling as to how to incorporate it precisely. The system from People's General could be a starting point but at the same time it doesn't feel like it could copied directly. There has to be something better, more elegant... I'm still chewing on that whole thing.

[Spooner]

You might want to consider FoW as an option only in MP games. The big problem with FoW in the SP game is that strategic AI will almost certainly fall down in a big heap with it in the game.

I also think it would change the base game too much and completely change the balance of some scenarios, but I would like to see it in future versions of the game (MP only or in all games).

I think Kaiserbill made a suggestion in the beta scenario about having on-map, capturable, air-bases and this affecting the regions of the map that could be air-attacked/supplied. If implemented, these bases could, automatically have a small fog-free zone around them in, as well as allowing you to make recon sorties.

[Imperial Dane]

How about something like Ruse.. You know something is there.. Just not what. and as you get closer, details get better. Perhaps that might be something ? That way recon units could gain some extra usage as well by giving you better chance at spotting and such i suppose, and mobile units as well.. At least, that's an idea.

[Tomislav Uzelac]

@Spooner: I agree FoW is mostly useful for MP, which is precisely why we sort of "left it for later". Players seem to overwhelmingly go into SP, you and Kaiser were one of the few who played with any regularity.

@Imperial Dane: I am not sure. This is the way it's done in the better games in the genre (SSG games for example) but I'm still unhappy with that. If you read the in-depth books (Glant'z "After Stalingrad" has a bunch of Soviet intelligence assements copied verbatim) you see that commanders often had a very clear picture of what's happening behind the enemy front. At the same time, they were often in the dark as to what happens at the front.

So FoW yes, but it has to be... qualitatively better than that. I don't know precisely how yet.

[Imperial Dane]

Well that might be because things happen so quickly at the front.. In which case you'd need some system that rather smoothly simulates some sort of chaos in terms of intelligence at the front. Perhaps you don't get results until the next turn ?