TOAW: Design and Documentation Comments [1]

[commentator]

This post is a slightly revised copy of a letter I wrote about a year or so ago to Norm Kroger. I apologize in advance for its length, and for the misconceptions it surely contains, but do feel that there is enough meat here to be worth considering.

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Comments on The Operational Art of War: A Century of Warfare (version 1.0.6)


You've been told it before, I'm sure, but I'll say it again: This is a brilliant game. Your willingness to continue development after a certain game company dropped the ball on one of the most valuable franchises in wargaming history is vastly appreciated.

The below is a long list of critiques and requests, certainly, but I'm having a good time, right now. Please accept them as a thank-offering, a small tip for a game that's worth considerably more than I paid for it. I am deeply impressed. One feature I especially appreciate is TOAW's stability; as I know from personal experience, software that works as intended doesn't just happen, it takes work!

Many of the critiques are informed by two other operational-level wargames: 1) Atomic Games' "World At War" (superb interface and time-handling), 2) Greg Grisby's "War in Russia" (the best treatment of air power I've ever seen in a land-oriented wargame). The comments on documentation are informed by my own experience in writing them for other games.

The comments often do not follow a natural progression of thought. Major themes are developed in fits and starts, interspersed among other topics. Also, there is a fair amount of straight-up confusion working here; there are things about TOAW I do not fully understand. If anything is unclear, or appears misdirected, just let me know.


Respectfully yours,
Commentator



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Supplies:

- No supply by sea or air: if an island, salient, or beachhead does not have its own supply source, it gets nothing. If it does, it gets everything. In reality, one can airdrop supplies, bring them over the beach or (more efficiently) through ports and airports, especially if the enemy isn't nearby. It is amusing to see the contortions that scenarios make to accommodate this.
- All supply sources are the same strength.
- Strange "bulges" of supply around supply points in theatres that would logically seem to have a smoother flow of supply. The Sicily scenario that ships with the game has this problem, and fails to depict Patton's end run in large part because of this (the other problem being overly-determined Italians).
- Supply should be hindered when the supply line has to go through enemy owned terrain. Sure every hex isn't filled with military police, as you say, but it is worrisome to drive a truck through hostile territory - a single machine-gun or a militia roadblock can make for a lot of trouble.
- In areas far from a supply source, locations connected by road to that supply source should do better than locations not connected or offroad.
- It should be harder to supply a lot of units than a few. This is a real problem when representing any amphibious assault or boondocks deployment (North Africa in WW2, say).
- There needs to be more documentation on supply consumption, and on the effect of lack of supply.
- Recently played a scenario depicting the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. Raiding Ethiopians captured all the Italian supply locations, and the entire Italian force began to starve. Their indicators turned red (most of them, anyway), but their strength values were little affected. I only realized that they were easy meat when I accidentally moved a unit into a large enemy stack and got an automatic victory. The display and the battle planner were of little help, and the rules of thumb learnt in other scenarios were totally invalidated. I had to guess-and-by-God the rest of the battles.
- I am given a single value for the effectiveness of my interdiction efforts, even in scenarios with large maps compared to the range of my aircraft. Does this value affect all enemy supply everywhere (this would be strange), or only within the range of the aircraft (this would make it misleading)? Maybe let the mini-map display interdiction zones.


Interface:

- When units are engaged in battle, I cannot right-click on them to get more information about them.
- I am aware that you have already considered this, but the fact that any strength 1 unit has the same apparent strength as any other strength 1 unit is indeed a problem in a number of scenarios that ship with the game. There are at least three possible solutions: make it easier to design scenarios that cause normal units to have fairly large strength values, display a second digit, or supply an indicator of how close the unit is to disintegration.
- In after-battle reports, it would be amazingly helpful if I got more hints about what exactly hurt my men when I expected to win easily, or failed to hurt them when I expected a slogging match. I can guess at probable success or failure, but the butcher's bill is almost always a surprise.
- Related to this, perhaps the cause of this: The display of strength and antitank (armour?) values, and their comparison in the battle planner, leads one to expect a strength and AT/armour-based combat calculator. But this is not the case (at least I think it is not the case). All sorts of things, like a few near-unkillable tanks, to terrain, to dug-in positions, to readiness, to proficiency, to heavens-knows-what, can make all the difference. But the interface only vaguely hints at this, and I am fairly confident that it fails to warn of the strength multipliers for terrain or fortifications. I have won repeatedly at odds of 1.5 to 1. I have had my head handed to me repeatedly at odds of 10 to 1 (with no enemy supporting fire).
- To sum up: There is a crying, desperate need to harmonize the display and the internal combat rules.
- In sharp contrast to this lack of information, one gets a perfect inventory of all enemy units whenever one engages in battle. Buzz a mech battalion with some fighters, and the pilots carefully count every squad, every tank, and every gun. But there's no way to recall even a partial order of battle for fully-observed enemy units - all you can do is look at the unit pictures (which, especially for combined-arms units, are often misleading).
- Range values for artillery, planes, and ships are that of the longest-ranged equipment in that unit (even if that equipment type is actually not present). Some warning of disparate ranges would be helpful, if it were clearly presented.
- It would be nice to see a guess of enemy losses or reserves during gameplay. Having some reasonable idea of how attrited your opponent is can make all the difference. Of course, human optimism (and sometimes pessimism) enters into all this...
- Need to see a display of shock values and other "gotchas" in the daily briefing.
- Would like to be able to move ships in groups (as opposed to one by one).
- Display of hex contents on the main screen often runs off the right edge (I use a 15" monitor). Was not able to find a menu item, button, or hotkey to display info on a hex, preferably with reminders of combat effects.
- There should be an option in 2D display mode to show the most "typical" equipment type in a unit as an icon. I find this really helps keep track of my heavy AA guns and Tiger tanks.
- Should be able to rename units and formations.
- Displayed unit strength seems to top out at 99. If display space permits, getting rid of this limitation would be very helpful.
- There should be hot keys to dig in, go to a specific point, and perform many other actions.
- The location of units on the minimap does not update when they move.
- A command to display units on the mini-map of a given formation, or a given type (artillery), or all the air or sea units would help players avoid losing them. Related to this is a way to quickly determine where the enemy has concentrated his armour.
- In short: There is a real need - and opportunity - to allow the minimap to display more things.
- I can understand that deep snow would cover things, but I find the masking of terrain due to "very cold" conditions to be annoying.
- I have seen jungle covered in snow!
- The minimap often does not show units at the edges. This can cause players to miss reinforcements. It displays one side's forces in blue, which is hard to distinguish from water, and gives an often false impression of "good guy, bad guy".
- Need a separation of total hard defence from total hard attack values. Maybe display the hard attack after the soft attack value, and the hard defence strength after the soft defence value? I may well be confused about all this - I really don't know what happens when a 2+10 unit attacks a 2+3 one.
- In the air briefing, many units marked as doing useful things may in fact be reorganizing and not available at all.
- It should be possible for objectives to be neutral at game start (or is this already allowed?).


Combat:

- It would be nice if unit-by-unit or local-area shock effects were possible, triggerable by HQ damage, events, surprise, etc..
- When units are forced to retreat into already filled hexes, they apparently are crushed entirely. This is most unrealistic; a better rule might be to retreat them several hexes and cause them to rout (or, if of good quality, merely to reorganize).
- When cut-off forces are attacked, they can sometimes escape through a weakly held part of the encirclement, but only if it is involved in the battle. They should be able to escape through any adjacent weak unit, but normally just force it to retreat instead of crushing it.
- The documentation on terrain effects is hard to remember. In addition (or even instead) of listing by effect, consider listing by terrain type. There are also some uncertainties; I know attacking /from/ a super river is trouble, but how about attacking /into/ a super river? The problem is that a good case can be made for either penalties or advantages; the only certainty is that there should be /some/ effect. I know of some games that have rivers between, not in, hexes.
- There should be a "great canal" terrain type, with effects identical to the "Suez canal" terrain.
- Setting units on local and tactical reserve does not seem very useful. The computer is very fond of this, and it seems to do little good - I still win or inflict great losses.
- Anti-air units seem to be pretty useless, even when large numbers of them are massed to defend airfields. But it is hard to be sure; no report of the planes they shoot down is available.
- I was not able to learn anything about long-range (multiple hex) AA fire from the documentation.
- The rules for artillery are curious. An artillery unit, even a towed one, can strike at (full?) strength after spending its entire turn moving. It can support (at half-strength) early-round attacks regardless of movement points remaining. Artillery that bombards loses any dug-in advantages. There appears to be no counter-battery fire, unless an artillery unit is actually being attacked. Enemy artillery that fires is revealed, but when your turn comes, you can't see them any more.
By careful attention to combat rounds, you can make artillery advance, attack, retreat, dig in, and stand ready for defensive fire missions, all in the same turn. Artillery that can raid like this is a recent development, available in few armies even today.
All in all, I much prefer a single choice between targeting a given hex, opportunity/harassing fire, and defense and counter-battery missions, with strength dependent on time invested (a certain amount each round) and time spent moving and setting up. Some guns are much less affected by set-up time than others: I have heard that some WW1 heavy artillery took several days to set up, while American MLRS systems take only minutes.
- Maybe formation proficiency should improve with battle.
- Allow scenario designers to tweak the rate of learning (proficiency gain)?
- When a unit bombards an enemy off to one side (nearly east or west), the attack direction indicator is often (always?) incorrectly placed.
- The combat planner claims that limited attacks are carried out with half defence? If this is true, it would seem to largely defeat the advantage of taking half normal casualties.
- Artillery units cannot bombard enemies adjacent to them - they instead conduct conventional attacks. Because of the large number of scenarios in which most artillery pieces only have a range of one, this is a real nuisance.
- Enemy air interdiction levels sometimes rise absurdly high (20%, say), then decline over time. This only happens in some scenarios, usually at or near game start, and so far only when the enemy has a weaker airforce than mine. It's no fun getting zapped every other move!
- I should like to be able to give infantry units with attached artillery pieces bombardment orders. No reason why I shouldn't; an artillery piece is an artillery piece.
- The documentation has no indication that mountains improve any defensive value, despite the fact that hills do.
- A unit marked as "retreated" can become "mobile" by assigning it to attack, and then canceling.
- One can issue bombardment commands at a range that no remaining equipment in the unit can actually reach.


Naval Rules:

- Ships should not get Automatic Victories, nor should they suffer them.
- Ships should be able to be moved in groups, like land units.
- They should not be able to move freely within bombardment range of hostile ships.
- It should be less effective to move and attack in the same turn.
- Naval attacks should not be so difficult. 2 to 1 odds is dicey on land, but at sea it is very effective. I have taken greater losses than my enemies when attacking at about 10 to 1 odds! If this is not changed, people will continue to abuse the computer player (who seems to have a need to attack at all times).
- Ships should not be able to inflict so much damage on hostile ships in a single turn. One ship-to-ship combat a turn is enough for most scenarios. This applies with double force to bombarding enemy ships outside of their own range - in real life, they normally would either charge or flee.
- It should be harder to wipe out enemy fleets with airpower. It was actually kind of difficult to kill large numbers of destroyers with planes in WW2.
- Land units are sometimes found floating on water (not in transports or near the land) after a sea-to-sea attack. Either find a transport or drown, boys!
- Amphibious assaults might be modeled better if units of two sides could occupy the same hex - "locked in combat".
- The combat speed of ships is crucial. A slow ship with heavy guns can't catch much; a fast ship with popguns can often run away. A fairly good, and simple-to-code method is that of the game Imperialism, by SSI.
- There should be less information on ships far away from friendly units, and more on those within sighting or radar range, including a guess of their numbers.
- In general: Sea-to-sea and land versus sea combat is modeled poorly. This is important; many of the battles people like to turn into TOAW scenarios are amphibious assaults. One good way to improve matters is to allow "opportunity fire". Another is to change from a hex-based to a zone-based depiction of watery areas.


(see reply post for remainder)

[commentator]

(posted as reply to avoid cluttering up the ng with threads)


Loss Tolerances:

This part of the game is very confusing, and I don't think the problem "exists between chair and keyboard".
As a newbie, my greatest concern was matching the computer's ability to force back my defending troops. I would stack 'em high, keep 'em green, and dig 'em in like Alabama ticks, but still they were forced to retreat. Having learnt that it had a habit of using ignore losses orders, and understanding the documentation to say that ignore losses made my troops attack more recklessly, I monkey-saw-monkey-did with some apparent success.
Imagine my surprise to learn (from a website) that perhaps the most important effect of using ignore losses orders is to increase the number of rounds before your troops stop attacking! I would /never/ have understood this by reading the documentation, although it does drop hints here and there.
I would likely not have easily found it out by practice, because it makes no immediate sense. "Ignore losses" surely means "attack with little regard for losses", and not "attack with little regard for time". As it is, I'm using mostly "limit losses", and making multiple attacks on the same hex. I recommend either a rethink of the underlying concepts, or (failing this) a renaming of the options, or (failing this) a revision of the docs.
Similar comments apply to the effects of setting defending units to "ignore losses".

- Need to separate loss tolerances on the attack from those on the defence. There is no reason why units that conducted a "minimize losses" attack should then defend weakly.


Unit Quality and its Effects:

- The variance in proficiency makes for somewhat "messy" formations with units of widely disparate quality. Many scenario designers seem to think that it causes too much variance, and have units (especially good ones) start out as "veteran".
I suggest:
Unit by unit calculation --> Units in a formation to get nearly the same adjustment
Variance of 33% of normal proficiency --> Flat 10% (modifiable by scenario designer) maximum possible adjustment. If values near the untried proficiency were more common, than a maximum possible adjustment of 20% might be OK.
- Unit quality should /not/ affect how much time units spend continuing attacks, because an obstinate attack can waste the entire turn!
- Overall proficiency (number of attacks) -> formation-specific number of attacks.


Reorganizations:

- I hate reorganizations of entire formations when only portions actually engaged in combat, especially if the formation is a significant portion of the total troops available. I can see it happening to individual units, or if the HQ unit actually got destroyed or routed, or if the formation quality were really poor indeed, or if losses were horrific, or the enemy offensive shocking and overwhelming, but not in many of the situations where it happens. Also need some news reports (answering who? and why?) when entire formations break down.
- Reorganization is particularly troublesome when it happens to air units, because enemy air can do a lot of damage in a single turn.
- Paralyzing units and formations that reorganize is rather harsh. What I /think/ is being simulated is a combination of shock, communications failure, and disorganization. There needs to be a clear distinction between the first and the last: outright shock is unusual but can be paralyzing, disorganization is ubiquitous but normally not disastrous.
- If one wishes to stop players burning out their units (and this game is quite generous here), then add a "morale/weariness" value. Including morale would also solve other issues, such as the need for local shock effects, overly useful low-quality units in many scenarios, and of better indication of how close units are to their breaking point (this last is a significant problem with the game interface).
- To sum up: I recommend explicit values for morale and organization/disorganization, and rarer and less widespread paralyzation.



Mutual Support:

- This part has me confused. I'm the Commonwealth, fighting in Normandy. I set up an attack with some Canadian infantry (belonging to a formation with internal support) and a British commando (with free support). If I take the Canadians as the base of comparison, they will attack at full strength and so will the commando. If I take the commando as the base, the Canadians will offer him only partial support (and take extra time to enter the battle, I think?). The battle planner can make me suppose either case, but both cannot be correct. So which way should I figure?
- Similar questions arise about bombardment support of the defence and supply bias. Does a free support HQ improve the supply of adjacent internal support units? Or is it the other way around? Or both?
- There are all sorts of ways to work this problem. I can't immediately think of a better way then "whichever formation contributes the greatest strength", but even this needs to be made explicit in the battle planner ("Primary Formation: 3rd Canadian Infantry"), and encourages gamey player tactics.


Movement:

- The route-finding is very, very poor. A human player can deal with this; the computer is stuck. This is probably a good thing to prioritize - a clear, fixable, important problem. If there is one actionable request in this entire list, it is this one.
- Ships and aircraft are far too mobile in large-scale games (~10 kilometers/hex and above). I can send out packs of vessels and planes to distant locations, hit the enemy a few times, and (often) retreat again before his vessels get a word in edgewise. This gets really abusive when I do an air-sea Pearl Harbor. When 100 planes shift airfields, it takes time to set up supplies and get ready for combat again.
- The same problem - I can do too much damage in a single turn - exists with enemy strongpoints. Early rounds are spent surrounding the foe, later ones on crushing him, and all the while he just sits and stares. Then he does the same to me.
- It would be nice to be able to set up multiple-turn movements and issue "assemble at this location" orders. Having to move every unit, every turn, can be wearisome.
- Should be able to use rail and air movement past stacks of nine units.
- Limits on stacking also get annoying when air units use up space needed for ground units. Sometimes said air units are paralyzed through reorganization.
- Would like to be able to assign units to new formations. Between fully supporting formations only? Inflict temporary unit quality penalties based on level of non-support?
- When divided units recombine, they lose their dug in status, even if all of the sub-units were dug in.
- When units recombine, the average of their remaining movement is used for the combined unit. It should be the minimum movement; everyone has to wait for the laggards.
- When units move and spot something new or are engaged (active disengagement), the player should not be able to undo the move. But getting used to this change will be very annoying...
- Units that cannot move should not be able to use transport (by default).
- Units able to make airfields (Seabees) and fortified lines (construction engineers) would be cool.
- Headquarters can be air-transported, even when they are not marked as being air-transportable.
- Super rivers should cost a lot of movement to cross, even when bridged by a (land) ferry unit, especially if the enemy is on the opposite bank or can bombard the hex.
- A number of scenarios have roads on the sea. This causes a number of strange results, but accomplishes at least four things: 1) allow supplies to flow "over the beach" to a variety of possible landing points, 2) allow these supplies to be intercepted by enemy sea units, 3) allow extra sea transport in favoured areas, and 4) make the computer player better at reinforcing landings. What the game needs is an "official" way to do these things, sealanes and localized transport.
- Moving stacks of units is too slow, especially when moving long distances (although turning off unit visibility helps, it makes it harder to avoid overstacking and traffic).
- Units (some units?) seem to gain entrenched and fortified status more quickly when you manually dig them in than when you let them continue digging in automatically.
- It makes sense that motorized units move more slowly when low on supplies. Should the same be true for foot infantry, planes, or ships? How about rail and sea transport movement?
- If you ask a unit to move to a distant point, the movement path should take enemy ZOCs and disengagement attacks into account. When the unit is moving, it should stop if it sees enemy units. It should definitely not try to walk past newly spotted enemies.
- Paratroopers who move cannot use air transport, but those who attack can. They should not be able to attack, paradrop, and attack again.
- Should paratroopers and planes be able to land with full movement in airports captured late in another unit's move? As it is, paratroopers can "hopscotch".
- You can paradrop into excluded hexes.
- You can paradrop beyond the range of any plane. In reality, paradrops didn't happen beyond fighter cover.
- If paradrops were required to be scheduled a turn or two in advance - in reality they took time to plan - this would seriously cut down on the abuse of these troops we now see.
- Units in excluded hexes can strike at units moving adjacent to them. They can be struck by airstrikes.
- When groups move, they do so across terrain best suited for the topmost unit. This can be troublesome...
- Embarked units should not be able to inflict disengagement attacks on units moving past them.


Replacements:

- What is needed is not a given /number/ of replacements per turn, which breaks down over the difference between one Tiger tank or battleship a turn and none at all, but a /percentage/ of on-board inventory (so we're allowed one battleship a year, say).
- Disbanding the units of a weak formation or nationality (Militia) to add to a global replacement pool that is mostly used by a strong formation or nationality (Shock troops) is very weird, especially when the units being disbanded will only activate 20 turns from now. Perhaps a more explicit treatment of infantry replacement quality is needed, nationality-specific infantry allowed, or disbanding severely limited?
- It is strange that Heavy Rifle, Rifle, Light Rifle, etc., or the zillion different kinds of German half-tracks, tanks, or armoured cars can never substitute for each other. It is strange that I cannot mobilize make-shift (ersatz) units, even when in mortal danger.
- I managed to get a paratrooper unit totally destroyed. When it reconstituted, it couldn't use air transport anymore. I was sad...
- Maybe allow units to replace old equipment (Shermans) in its order of battle with new (Pershings) when the old equipment stops being supplied (most units) or the new starts to appear (elite units)? Right now, scenario designers have armoured divisions with Panzer IIs, IIIs, IVs, Panthers, Tigers, etc..
- When units reconstitute, their loss tolerance should normally be at "limit losses", not "Minimize losses".
- Reinforcements are blocked when a hex becomes full; they ought to (optionally?) appear in adjacent hexes or nearby airfields.
- When a unit is eliminated and reconstituted, it should not have both the proficiency of the old, veteran unit and be "untried".


The Computer Opponent:

- The computer opponent is not good at setting up and digging into defensive lines, especially the doubled-and-tripled-up defensive lines that human players can create. It does a very poor job of restoring defensive lines that you are partway to breaking through. The easiest problem to fix, it seems to me, is to make the computer player keep units dug-in that are adjacent to yours and not attacking.
- It is not good at stopping encirclements, protecting critical hexes, or guarding its supply lines and airfields. See for example how easy it is to drive into Caen in some Normandy scenarios. It tends to ignore its flanks. It will drive merrily down a road with insufficient force, suddenly get surrounded by my hordes, get annihilated, and repeat the same performance - same tactics, failure to bring a bigger hammer - again.
- It is not good at encirclements. While it can and will outflank you, it tends not to exploit gaps with enough force, use the multiple round system to surround and crush salients, or to deliberately shift the main focus of the attack based on new opportunities. This actually increases the pleasure I take in the game; I really would not want to face someone who knows how to exploit game rounds and easy encirclements. Having my fortified Tiger tanks surrounded and wiped out without a chance to react is no fun.
- It is not good at maintaining formation integrity.
- It does a poor job of responding to harassment fire. It builds up juicy stacks, I pound them, and it doesn't either pound me back or at least redeploy.
- It does a poor job of guarding vulnerable, almost-irreplaceable units (like HQs, or Battleships when I have air superiority).
- I often see it moving units when such movement does no good (not building up either an attack or the defense, or maintaining unit integrity, as far as I can see), and just wastes supplies. This really causes problems when I've encircled the units in question.
- When cut off from supplies, it should get desperate about restoring them.
- When a scenario makes a particular hex crucial (a force disbands if it is taken, say), the computer player should watch for any threats to it, but only if such threats are possible. Certainly, it should never leave the hex empty.
- It often continues attacks (airfield and naval attacks in particular) after they have been proven to be disastrous.
- It /is/ pretty good at grinding through defensive lines, at least the ones I know how to set up. However, it has a hard time actually busting though, and does a poor job of shifting reserves to exploit success.
- It is too willing to advance units with low supplies/readiness into danger.


Reconnaissance:

- Air superiority or inferiority seems to have no effect on spotting within the range of the aircraft.
- Do I understand correctly that a recon unit will each see /all/ units in a hex or /none/? Instead of each hex having a given chance to be spotted, perhaps each unit should. Naturally, distance from spotter, terrain, weather, and fortifications would all affect the chance of spotting.
- Once spotted, units should have a greater chance to stay spotted. If they move, the opponent should not know this unless the unit (or the old location) is spotted again "Hmm. 3rd Guards Tank /was/ there..." or "3rd Guards isn't in front of me, it's behind me!".


The Passage of Time:

- The battle planner needs an indication of the longest expected time for a battle this round, so one can be careful about exceeding this. Its display of attack and defence values for units is also rather confusing - why worry about defensive strength when planning an attack? Are "attacks" actually meeting engagements in which both sides use their offensive values against each other? The documentation leaves this important point unclear.
- The game needs to display the passage of time (rounds) better, unit by unit. It needs to allow the quick scanning of planned battles from the main screen, so I can get a warning if I properly time all my attacks, except one, and waste 80% of a turn for a hundred units. What this game really needs is a clock, always visible on the main screen. The documentation also needs to treat this subject much more clearly and explicitly.
- The number of attacks a unit can make should depend on its quality and on the quality of its parent formation. High-quality units (might) get a bonus to remaining movement (time) after attacks are resolved and low-quality units should be penalized. It should not be the case that WW2 Italian armour be able to keep pace with Rommel.
- Instead of a random chance to end the turn entirely, have a (larger) random chance to lose individual combat rounds. Or calculate this formation by formation, with better formations (or units?) losing less time. This would greatly reduce the chances of players carefully using up half a turn, and seeing the other half wasted.
- Can ranged units really move large distances, and then support early-round attacks?
- Can recon units really move, see enemies after moving 80% of its allotment, and pass this information to units that have not moved at all?
- The combination of random ends to turns after rounds have elapsed, and the often unpredictable shifts in player order in a turn, make for a lot more gaminess (strange side-effects of artificial rules, leading to unrealistic player exploits) than I like to see. The discussion of opening Axis moves in the Kasserine scenario was a real eye-opener.
- Summing up: The whole IGO-UGO system, while convenient to use, always leads to gameplay iffyness. For example, it is simply absurd that the order of play in relation to end-of-turn bookkeeping should be significant. Because of the amount of damage a player can inflict in a turn, and the fact that one can move units one at a time, this game seems to have more trouble than most.

[JAMiAM]

This post is a slightly revised copy of a letter I wrote about a year or so ago to Norm Kroger.
It's Koger...not Kroger. Not like you're the first to have made this mistake, though... ;)

I apologize in advance for its length, and for the misconceptions it surely contains, but do feel that there is enough meat here to be worth considering.
Not too long, considering you have clearly spent some time accumulating what many of the rest of us have already forgotten, or learned to deal with. Some misconceptions, here and there, but many valid points still extant. If I have time later, I might reply, point by point.

Comments on The Operational Art of War: A Century of Warfare (version 1.0.6)
Do you mean version 1.06? If so, that was only released late March of last year, and several months later, was found to contain a serious flaw in anti-armor combat, while introducing no discernable benefits or upgrades that were not already present in 1.04. If you are still using 1.06, you should definitely go back to using the version 1.04 patch for the Century of Warfare.

[RandallW]

The designer of War in Russia is Gary Grigsby, not Greg.

Another little thing about supplies: in the Korea 50-51 scenario if one of my units can't trace supply by ground, it may be supplied by air ( sure, sure, ok )....but that unit also seems to be able to get replacements if it's short on equipment ( supply planes droping replacement squads and artillery? hmmm :p )....seems a bit unrealistic?

Computer movement: sometimes the computer moves a unit a single hex, then has it backtrack ( return to previous hex ) on the same 'move'....how odd.