Compare with Commander: EAW?
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- blackcloud6
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Compare with Commander: EAW?
How does this game compare with Commander: Europe at War?
- Templer_12
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RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
1. The much better AI!
2. SC3 remains more interesting and exciting.
3. The dedication of Hubert and Bill.
2. SC3 remains more interesting and exciting.
3. The dedication of Hubert and Bill.
RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
Great question. I hadn't thought about that until you asked. I still think Commander EAW is better for PBEM. It feels like it models the war better to me. Of course it has the downside of people being able to cheat which I feel some of my opponents did unfortunately and that detracts from the enjoyment. I say this having played some SC2 and only a few years of SC3 against the AI. However I think the SC3 and SC2 systems bear some resemblance to each other. SC3 doesn't model war attrition as well in my opinion. It's often possible for the side with an experience/tech advantage and attacking to take very very small losses which feels "off" a lot to me and that's my biggest complaint with the game.
SC3 is waaaay better against an AI - the AI if given advantages like +spotting, +MPP, and maybe half-star of experience actually plays a decent game overall (with some big mistakes of course).
I'm glad I own both but I definitely would not pass up SC3. I'd rate it a 9.5 out of 10. I think for someone who enjoys TBS and strategy (as opposed to tactics) games it's a total must-buy. I may post more detail after I've spent more time with SC3.
SC3 is waaaay better against an AI - the AI if given advantages like +spotting, +MPP, and maybe half-star of experience actually plays a decent game overall (with some big mistakes of course).
I'm glad I own both but I definitely would not pass up SC3. I'd rate it a 9.5 out of 10. I think for someone who enjoys TBS and strategy (as opposed to tactics) games it's a total must-buy. I may post more detail after I've spent more time with SC3.
- Jim D Burns
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RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
I generally agree with jjdenver, but I don't think the main problem is attrition. I think it is allowing infantry units to move after conducting an attack. It leads to a situation where the attacker can move a unit in, attack, move the unit away, move a new unit in, attack, move it away, etc. etc.
As long as there are fresh units and empty hexes nearby the attacker can do this until the defender is worn down and killed. With no reserve function to allow depleted defending units to swap with fresh units nearby, it gives the attacker an unfair advantage he really should not have.
I can see armor and perhaps mechanized getting this ability, but there is no justification to allow infantry or other types of units to move after conducting an attack. Were defensive reserves in game I'd say fine, but in its current form its not a good simulation of WWII combat.
Jim
As long as there are fresh units and empty hexes nearby the attacker can do this until the defender is worn down and killed. With no reserve function to allow depleted defending units to swap with fresh units nearby, it gives the attacker an unfair advantage he really should not have.
I can see armor and perhaps mechanized getting this ability, but there is no justification to allow infantry or other types of units to move after conducting an attack. Were defensive reserves in game I'd say fine, but in its current form its not a good simulation of WWII combat.
Jim
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RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
CEAW has the nice features of Oil and Manpower. Otherwise it's SC by a long shot .
RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
I generally agree with jjdenver, but I don't think the main problem is attrition. I think it is allowing infantry units to move after conducting an attack. It leads to a situation where the attacker can move a unit in, attack, move the unit away, move a new unit in, attack, move it away, etc. etc.
As long as there are fresh units and empty hexes nearby the attacker can do this until the defender is worn down and killed. With no reserve function to allow depleted defending units to swap with fresh units nearby, it gives the attacker an unfair advantage he really should not have.
I can see armor and perhaps mechanized getting this ability, but there is no justification to allow infantry or other types of units to move after conducting an attack. Were defensive reserves in game I'd say fine, but in its current form its not a good simulation of WWII combat.
Jim
The flip side of that is, short of a bad supply situation, that nothing dies over two turns. If as often happens you have 4 corps and you have 0:2, 0:2, 0:2, 0:2 looking results of your attacks on a defender there is not much point to attacking because odds are you will not kill the target and nest turn in will be a 10 again. Granted they have to chew up MPP but for a generic infantry unit that isnt much and for the Soviets who are trading units for time a highly worthwhile trade off.
RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
I generally agree with jjdenver, but I don't think the main problem is attrition. I think it is allowing infantry units to move after conducting an attack. It leads to a situation where the attacker can move a unit in, attack, move the unit away, move a new unit in, attack, move it away, etc. etc.
As long as there are fresh units and empty hexes nearby the attacker can do this until the defender is worn down and killed. With no reserve function to allow depleted defending units to swap with fresh units nearby, it gives the attacker an unfair advantage he really should not have.
I can see armor and perhaps mechanized getting this ability, but there is no justification to allow infantry or other types of units to move after conducting an attack. Were defensive reserves in game I'd say fine, but in its current form its not a good simulation of WWII combat.
Jim
Also remember each turn is a week or more. So in that timeframe you could easily have had units start an attack, pull back and have fresh troops move up. If the time scale was less, then I would agree with you [:)]
- Jim D Burns
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RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
ORIGINAL: ILCK
The flip side of that is, short of a bad supply situation, that nothing dies over two turns. If as often happens you have 4 corps and you have 0:2, 0:2, 0:2, 0:2 looking results of your attacks on a defender there is not much point to attacking because odds are you will not kill the target and nest turn in will be a 10 again. Granted they have to chew up MPP but for a generic infantry unit that isnt much and for the Soviets who are trading units for time a highly worthwhile trade off.
Units do gain experience and become more powerful over time, so in your example I would most certainly attack.
WWII didn't see a lot of units outright destroyed from frontal assaults very often. Maneuver warfare was the main reason units died in large numbers. Armored forces with the help of infantry, artillery and air power would punch a small hole in the lines and then race to cut off and isolate large pockets of units and the infantry would then wear down and destroy the pocket over time.
Jim
RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
ORIGINAL: Numdydar
ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
I generally agree with jjdenver, but I don't think the main problem is attrition. I think it is allowing infantry units to move after conducting an attack. It leads to a situation where the attacker can move a unit in, attack, move the unit away, move a new unit in, attack, move it away, etc. etc.
As long as there are fresh units and empty hexes nearby the attacker can do this until the defender is worn down and killed. With no reserve function to allow depleted defending units to swap with fresh units nearby, it gives the attacker an unfair advantage he really should not have.
I can see armor and perhaps mechanized getting this ability, but there is no justification to allow infantry or other types of units to move after conducting an attack. Were defensive reserves in game I'd say fine, but in its current form its not a good simulation of WWII combat.
Jim
Also remember each turn is a week or more. So in that timeframe you could easily have had units start an attack, pull back and have fresh troops move up. If the time scale was less, then I would agree with you [:)]
In my limited playing time, I see it as an abstraction that allows a side to conduct a concentrated attack against one target within the constraints of the no stacking rule. A way to put a little uncertainty into the tactic might be to have a certain percentage of attacks result in an "engaged" result that does not allow a withdrawal after the attack even if movement points remain. But in general I like the way the system works now for attacks.
- Jim D Burns
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- Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2002 6:00 pm
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RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
ORIGINAL: Numdydar
Also remember each turn is a week or more. So in that timeframe you could easily have had units start an attack, pull back and have fresh troops move up. If the time scale was less, then I would agree with you [:)]
Yeah but the defenders are stuck and unable to react in that same two week period. It was mobile reserves that raced to threatened areas that saved Germany from utter collapse in late 43 and early 44 in Russia. With no reserve function the defender is treated as a static unit and the attacker has total flexibility and can destroy him at will.
If both forces are equal both sides can do this. But in a situation where you are outnumbered and lack enough units to counter-attack the attacker in your turns, this system magnifies your weakness 10 fold and accelerates your collapse.
Jim
- mavraamides
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RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
I'm a little torn on this. I think the ability of infantry to attack, move and allow another infantry to move in and do the same allows for breakthroughs that would be impossible otherwise. Playing France against the AI I felt that if the Germans weren't able to make those kinds of maneuvers I could probably have held out till 1941, maybe indefinitely.
I think it's a kind of clever way of getting around the lack of stacking and the ability to attack from multiple hexes at the same time like say WITX. In games where you can do those two things, it's possible to bring overwhelming force to a weak point and breakthrough. Without stacking or the ability to attack and move in the same turn, trying to take out a unit with only two hexes to attack from would be very, very unlikely.
It would quickly devolve into WWI style attrition.
I think it's a kind of clever way of getting around the lack of stacking and the ability to attack from multiple hexes at the same time like say WITX. In games where you can do those two things, it's possible to bring overwhelming force to a weak point and breakthrough. Without stacking or the ability to attack and move in the same turn, trying to take out a unit with only two hexes to attack from would be very, very unlikely.
It would quickly devolve into WWI style attrition.
RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
Jim, I realize that it seems "unfair" for units to do this ganging up act, but as the other posters have noted it's basically necessary for an accurate portrayal of WWII given the existing parameters of gameplay. As the Axis I've invaded GB and it's already very hard to shuffle units against defenders in that low supply environment. Without the ability to shuffle to even the limited degree I can would really doom any such invasion like this. It just isn't really a problem even if there's a few egregious instances of it (like what I've seen in N Afr).
- Jim D Burns
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- Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2002 6:00 pm
- Location: Salida, CA.
RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the game a lot and believe it will become one of my all time favorites. I was just disagreeing with the premise that attrition is the biggest weakness with the combat system.
Because infantry is so flexible, I find I build far fewer armor and mechanized units than perhaps I would otherwise. If those were the only units that could do this I suspect I would build far more of them and they would come to spearhead all my advances. Thus losses would be more expensive to replace and the attrition problem would be mitigated somewhat.
But because infantry is so flexible I spend most of my build money on infantry. Who needs armor when your infantry can do the same job far cheaper?
Jim
Because infantry is so flexible, I find I build far fewer armor and mechanized units than perhaps I would otherwise. If those were the only units that could do this I suspect I would build far more of them and they would come to spearhead all my advances. Thus losses would be more expensive to replace and the attrition problem would be mitigated somewhat.
But because infantry is so flexible I spend most of my build money on infantry. Who needs armor when your infantry can do the same job far cheaper?
Jim
- mavraamides
- Posts: 424
- Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2005 8:25 pm
RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the game a lot and believe it will become one of my all time favorites. I was just disagreeing with the premise that attrition is the biggest weakness with the combat system.
Because infantry is so flexible, I find I build far fewer armor and mechanized units than perhaps I would otherwise. If those were the only units that could do this I suspect I would build far more of them and they would come to spearhead all my advances. Thus losses would be more expensive to replace and the attrition problem would be mitigated somewhat.
But because infantry is so flexible I spend most of my build money on infantry. Who needs armor when your infantry can do the same job far cheaper?
Jim
True.
Almost every strategy game I've ever played suffers from this sort of 'magic unit' syndrome. No matter how hard the developers and playtesters try to achieve balance, you always seem to end up with one specific unit type that is the most cost effective in terms of bang for the buck and building anything else simply becomes a sub-optimal strategy. A waste of valuable resources.
RE: Compare with Commander: EAW?
In my first few moves, I didn't fully realize that infantry could attack and then move out of the way; I'm so accustomed to static infantry attacks that it didn't occur to me to try it! The result was that my offensives were more like static WWI attrition than mobile WW2 blitzkrieg. Within the context of this game, the infantry shoot-and-scoot ability does seem essential to model the fluid warfare of WW2.
As for Jim's point about mobile reserves: the defender *does* have mobile reserves -- in an I Go You Go system, he just uses his mobile reserves in his turn. He can fight fire with fire: shuttle infantry in and out to attack the weak points in the "offensive" player's line. Once I started using my infantry as the designers intended, it was still not a panacaea, as the AI was annoyingly good at using its own turn to fill the gaps I created -- and to use the same tactics on me. Even now that I've got the hang of the infantry-shuffle tactic, my offensives are still slower than the historical timetable.
Also, armor still seems pretty useful to me: two attacks per turn is great, and its combat values are higher in many instances than infantry. Plus, it's not that much more expensive than infantry, is it?
As for Jim's point about mobile reserves: the defender *does* have mobile reserves -- in an I Go You Go system, he just uses his mobile reserves in his turn. He can fight fire with fire: shuttle infantry in and out to attack the weak points in the "offensive" player's line. Once I started using my infantry as the designers intended, it was still not a panacaea, as the AI was annoyingly good at using its own turn to fill the gaps I created -- and to use the same tactics on me. Even now that I've got the hang of the infantry-shuffle tactic, my offensives are still slower than the historical timetable.
Also, armor still seems pretty useful to me: two attacks per turn is great, and its combat values are higher in many instances than infantry. Plus, it's not that much more expensive than infantry, is it?