One shot game

[patagonie69]

I started wargames at 14, i have played dozens for the last 30 years. I created mines, including a monster game.

Barbarossa is a one shot game, you play it for weeks, with pleasure, because the HQ system is unique and very interesting. Many features are worth on.
You capture by the end of september Leningrad, Moscow, Kharkov and you are at few hex of Rostov. All relationships were between superb and good, only Goring is neutral. You have signed 2.6 millions of russion losses (and more to come as you have trapped probably 30 more russian divisions behind their lines) with less than 0.46 million for the axis. Not even a single unit lost.
And you have lost. That's it. You cannot even play further for the pleasure, till the end of december.
[8|][8|][8|]
SO that's it. You buy it, you play it (with pleasure, i love Barbarossa) and you put in the trash.

You buy an other or replay some you like an try to forget your disappointment (and that's not about money, i buy all my games and i am happy to pay the work done by the designers).

I think that the designers shouldn't raise the bar too high. I have replayed many turns and three times the beginning of the campaign to understand step by step how the game was reacting. Sometimes i spent two hours for a turn. And i am far from being a beginner.

[ernieschwitz]

First off, I think you are posting in the wrong subforum. This is the After Action Report section, which this is not.

Secondly I think you are off-base. Sure the game can be viewed as a one-shot and you are done. That is, there is some replayability, in that your officers are never of the same attitude to you, and the objectives you choose for the scenario, don't have to be the same, and neither does the Soviet ones, if you are playing Germany. You could of course play the Soviets too.

Thirdly, even if you get tired of that, all DC series games have access to the DC: Community Project (I know: sounds leftish... ) which is a stand alone editor with most of the features of DC:B, and if you are nifty with your programming you can even do alot of that too. That is if you just want to edit. Of course when someone edits, like I have done, it makes a scenario for people to play.

I have made three scenarios, if I don't recall wrongly, and they are all free to download, from the VRDesigns Scenario bank. They are in short order: The finnish winter war (1939-40), a Scenario called Hokushin Ron, which is a surprise attack by the Japanese on the Soviet Union, just after Barbarossa. The final one, which is not released yet, mostly cause I lost some steam making it, is the Summer War, which happens just prior to Czechoslovakia being invaded, and is a what-if the Vienna Award had not gone the way it had in real life.

There are other Scenarios too For instance a Congo War, and a Drive on Smolensk scenario. Really there is much more to come for, than just the one-shot game, you are describing.

[patagonie69]

I found a post similar to mine and so i dropped my post here. Mods are free to move it.
Yes you can play it on the russian side, but considering the result of my campaign compared to the historical one i am done with this game for a moment.

I found your scenarii, interesting! Good work! You found interesting historical topics.
I am searching a wargame about the Yom Kippour war, involving all theaters, all forces, from the day one till the end, if possible with the AAA and aviation threat, probably at the brigade scale, do you know one? Cannot find it...

[ChuckBerger]

I don't quite follow... you're saying you lost the game, even though it was only September and you had captured two of the main objectives? Sounds like a bug, did you get an end-of-game pdf report outlining the victory points etc.? Would need more info to evaluate...

But on replayability generally, I've found the game does keep on giving. Once you've squished the AI on normal, play a few games on harder difficulty levels. The top difficulty is nearly impossible to beat, the one below gives a great game that is well worth playing 4-5 times. Variable setup and other differences from game to game keep it interesting. Or play with some of your own goals, for instance win with fewer than x casualties, win with a certain loss ratio, win by a certain date, win with the assumption that 12 extra divisions are needed in the Mediterranean (just park them in Berlin and don't use them), etc.

Yes, the AI will get old after a while. The game really is outstanding when played against another human, I've had a good dozen games which I've thoroughly enjoyed. Alas, the forums have now totally dried up... still, I probably have 150 hours or more in the game, haven't regretted the purchase one bit!

[patagonie69]

The game stopped end of september.
It was about to deliver a report in pdf but i never got it.
Don't know why, perhaps it had been dropped in a directory but i don't want to search.
For the moment i have lost interest in this game.
I can spend a lot time in wargaming per day but not too long (few weeks maximum, generally two or three), it's why i only play against AI.

[Khanti]

ORIGINAL: patagonie69

(...)

I am searching a wargame about the Yom Kippour war, involving all theaters, all forces, from the day one till the end, if possible with the AAA and aviation threat, probably at the brigade scale, do you know one? Cannot find it...

If you are so desperate you can always grab old, good Empire II The Art Of War PC DOS game and try it.
[;)]
A good game (my favourite of THAT time, back in 95.)
I still have half a dozen Israeli scenarios for it, but unfortunately not Jom Kippur.
(they represent hypothetical 1993 conflict just before Oslo talks).

Cheers.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/empire-ii-the-art-of-war

[Philippeatbay]

http://www.johntillersoftware.com/Moder ... ast67.html

with the Middle East Art pack mod that you can get here:

http://volcanomods.com/index.php?option ... ods.com%29

[Petiloup]

ORIGINAL: ernieschwitz
Secondly I think you are off-base. Sure the game can be viewed as a one-shot and you are done. That is, there is some replayability, in that your officers are never of the same attitude to you, and the objectives you choose for the scenario, don't have to be the same, and neither does the Soviet ones, if you are playing Germany. You could of course play the Soviets too.

To be frank I tend to agree with the comment that it's a bit of a one shot game.

It's a beautiful game, great attention to details, a great WW2 feel on a Blitzkrieg campaign but... I didn't feel it was Barbarossa.

The map is there, the units are there, and everything else but the Russians are just not the one in Barbarossa. Frome Case Blue maybe but not Barbarossa.

All it's about is retreat while they had no orders historically and when they had it was a lot of counterattacks at dismal odds.

So it took me quite a few games to win my first time as German which is great as I hate a game where winning is so easy it has no appeal.

But then I'm thinking... do I want to try again... to have to kill 4 millions Russian again to then win... with the heavy line of defences... the lack of fuel... the units suddenly not moving...

Don't get me wrong as it's all brilliant ideas about fuel, fatigue, cold, and so forth but I tried to manage it via the decisions and it was just facing wrong results on what I thought would be a good decision.

And then I realized that strategist are delegating that sort of thing for that reason. So I removed the decisions.

Then I used the cards more and noticed you suddenly don't have PP to do something that militarily make sense and that a commander should just do like attaching an army to another group when crossing theatre boundaries. There are cards that I don't see the point of using when all you want is fuel, more fuel and still more fuel. I used the Siege Artillery and didn't even notice an impact.

Meaning if I play again I would just look at getting fuel and forget the rest as anyway you don't have the PP to do basic stuff like moving to new airfields, resting troops,...

So I didn't care about the VP cost for it which downgraded my Decisive victory to a minor one as if taking Leningrad, Moscow, Rostov and finishing the USSR will get you a blame because the unit X when from AGN to AGC without approval.

The AI was great a building lines of defences but very poor at exploiting opportunities like going around flanks, massing an army where there are few Germans forcing a redeployment but on the contrary sending quite a few armies to stop the Finnish to go somewhere in the Toundra and then losing Moscow.

In summary, I don't do the decisions as it just add another level of frustration and you don't really feel the good results if any, the cards can be all removed but one for fuel, the VPs are not worth counting,... that leaves fighting and that part is at the end just about grinding units after units after units and hope you start to see the Russian army numbers going down... way down.

At the end, yes the game is hard to win and is a great challenge, there are many options, the AI is quite ok overall but it's not really fun so you end up thinking... do I want to do it all over again???

And playing the Russian? I tried and seems to me the AI has way more troops then I'm getting but I'll give that and try again.

[Yogi the Great]

As I posted in another way under Thread (An awful lot of Russians" I agree Polonthi. This is a great game on one hand but I'm finding I am loosing interest quickly because of the Russian with the amount and behavior of Russian units early in the war. It just takes the fun out of it.

On another thread I keep seeing people posting this game as having one of the best AI's. I disagree as it is easy to have the AI do well when the developer gives them artificial numbers and artificial behavior. I understand why a lot of posters think this is a great game and parts of it are, but for me personally instead of many replays it will collect some dust on the shelf for long periods between plays as of the disappointment described.