Gamey Element

Piercing Fortress Europa is a new game from veteran game designer Frank Hunter, which covers the campaigns of the Western Allies from July, 1943 through the end of April, 1945 in Sicily and Italy. Each area has its own map and time scale to best represent the campaigns for Sicily and Italy and the player is offered complete freedom, limited only by a historical order of battle and logistics model, to plan his operations and explore all of the many “what ifs” that the Italian theater has to offer.
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conger
Posts: 73
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2009 3:18 am

Gamey Element

Post by conger »

After securing the airbase at Foggia, the Allies can Para Drop as far north as Livorno. Doing a drop here kills the AI, as it will then start pulling everything back north to deal with this threat, thus allowing the Allies to march steadily and unopposed up the boot. I haven't played a PBEM, but I could see this strategy being exploited (there are other choice areas to land as well). Has anyone else noticed/used this?
pzgndr
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Joined: Thu Mar 18, 2004 12:51 am
Location: Maryland

RE: Gamey Element

Post by pzgndr »

Other than the AI over-reaction issue, which probably isn't worth it to "fix", solitaire players can simply avoid using this gamey exploit in the early game. For PBEM perhaps a house rule would work, but having a dangerous Allied airborne and amphibious threat behind your lines is just something the German player needs to deal with. The Allied airborne units get withdrawn soon enough for D-Day. The amphibious landings remain a viable threat throughout the game, although they become more costly to the Allies for supply points needed to launch later invasions and then reinforce the bridgeheads. I've fended off Allied AI landings north of Rome in 1943 that had me scrambling and took damn near 6 months to finally defeat. It's not so much a gamey element as it is an important Allied strategic choice; is an Operation Shingle landing at Anzio or elsewhere a risk or is it a gamble?
Bill Macon
Empires in Arms Developer
Strategic Command Developer
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