MThomas722
Recruit
First of all – thank you for this excellent scenario. Over the years it’s given me more hours of entertainment than I’d care to count-up (right up there with things like ‘M1 Tank platoon’ on my Amiga, ‘Lords of Midnight’ on my Spectrum, or playing ‘Counter Strike’ against a room full of other games-devs in terms of best game experiences of all time). The amount of work that must have gone into it staggers the mind. I don’t really play TOAW anymore, but I do play EA :laugh:
After coming back to EA after quite a gap, and enjoying it again immensely, I do believe there’s now an issue with balance. I played 5 long games of EA back around 2001/02 (ACOW), and one in 2007 (TOAW3) . Most went past 100 turns with a clear decision, one way or the other. I played as the Allies and Axis in equal measure, so saw it from both sides.
Recently I’ve been playing 2 games under TOAW 3.4, one as the Axis (on T126), and an ‘eastern crusade’ as the Allies (my first EC – on T56). So I’ve recently seen Barbarossa from both sides. It’s been great fun to get back to EA, but the thing that’s struck me about the recent games is that the defence is now king.
As the Axis I barely took Paris (v.heavy losses) and when it came to Barbarossa got badly stuck on the Stalin-ine forts in north and central Russia. I did do well in the south, largely because the Russians don’t have quite enough units to make a solid line in Ukraine early on. I took Lenningrad with the help of the Finns, but all of this has cost the Germans dearly. My opp is a very good defensive player, but it’s dawned on me there’s more to it than that.
In my EC game as the Allies my Russians in the north are holding the Stalin-forts with ease, even during the ‘Barb’ shock. My opp makes breakthroughs in the south with the help of paras, but they will soon be used up. With my massive reinforcements there will soon be a solid line from Orel to Rostov. I’m not doing anything particularly clever as the Allies.
My point is that EA didn’t used to be this way. It used to be quite easy to knock out the French (was under TOAW3), and Barbarossa used to be a sweeping battle of maneuver from north to south. The Germans could do ‘anything’ but couldn’t do ‘everything’. The skill was in picking the targets. Of course this might not have been strictly historically accurate, but it was a fun challenging game that both sides could win. Under 3.4, with good defensive players, EA seems to bog down into WW1 too easily. I might still be fighting for Paris if I hadn’t had some luck from an unexpected direction.
I don’t believe EA has changed greatly since my last 2007 game(EA1.7?), but I’ve read that TOAW 3.4 made some changes that marginally favor the defence. The most significant to my mind are that retreats are now less likely to happen, as terrain is now taken into account. I remember from old-EA that the Germans got a lot of push-backs on French/Russians, and also lots of over-runs in the movement phase. This doesn’t seem to happen so much anymore.
Game balance is a delicate thing for a monster like EA. I seems to me that with 3.4 the balance has shifted. Note that this is not the same thing as historical accuracy. I’d tend to believe that EA and TOAW3.4 is now a more accurate sim of WW2, as with good allied commanders, a knowledge of WW2 history, and perfect C2 WW2 would no doubt have bogged down into a re-run of WW1.
EA is still great funto play, but baring an Allied player that makes bad strategic mistakes (of a massive kind) I think the scenario will reach equilibrium far too early. I can’t see how the Axis can take Moscow+Stalingrad. I’m sure the later war allied offensive will run into the same issues, but I’ve not got that far yet. I just wanted to know if anyone else has shared this experience of EA under TOAW3.4, as compared to earlier versions, and if there’s any belief that the defence is too heavily favored, and if so is there a workable fix?
Perhaps a way to asses this would be to keep a ‘master log’ of EA results under different versions, and see if a pattern emerges. Something that includes a brief one line summary of how the game went at the top level. This would be very interesting regardless of the above issues.
Thanks for reading so far. I wouldn’t make the effort if I didn’t love this scenario so much.
Cheers,
Matt Thomas
After coming back to EA after quite a gap, and enjoying it again immensely, I do believe there’s now an issue with balance. I played 5 long games of EA back around 2001/02 (ACOW), and one in 2007 (TOAW3) . Most went past 100 turns with a clear decision, one way or the other. I played as the Allies and Axis in equal measure, so saw it from both sides.
Recently I’ve been playing 2 games under TOAW 3.4, one as the Axis (on T126), and an ‘eastern crusade’ as the Allies (my first EC – on T56). So I’ve recently seen Barbarossa from both sides. It’s been great fun to get back to EA, but the thing that’s struck me about the recent games is that the defence is now king.
As the Axis I barely took Paris (v.heavy losses) and when it came to Barbarossa got badly stuck on the Stalin-ine forts in north and central Russia. I did do well in the south, largely because the Russians don’t have quite enough units to make a solid line in Ukraine early on. I took Lenningrad with the help of the Finns, but all of this has cost the Germans dearly. My opp is a very good defensive player, but it’s dawned on me there’s more to it than that.
In my EC game as the Allies my Russians in the north are holding the Stalin-forts with ease, even during the ‘Barb’ shock. My opp makes breakthroughs in the south with the help of paras, but they will soon be used up. With my massive reinforcements there will soon be a solid line from Orel to Rostov. I’m not doing anything particularly clever as the Allies.
My point is that EA didn’t used to be this way. It used to be quite easy to knock out the French (was under TOAW3), and Barbarossa used to be a sweeping battle of maneuver from north to south. The Germans could do ‘anything’ but couldn’t do ‘everything’. The skill was in picking the targets. Of course this might not have been strictly historically accurate, but it was a fun challenging game that both sides could win. Under 3.4, with good defensive players, EA seems to bog down into WW1 too easily. I might still be fighting for Paris if I hadn’t had some luck from an unexpected direction.
I don’t believe EA has changed greatly since my last 2007 game(EA1.7?), but I’ve read that TOAW 3.4 made some changes that marginally favor the defence. The most significant to my mind are that retreats are now less likely to happen, as terrain is now taken into account. I remember from old-EA that the Germans got a lot of push-backs on French/Russians, and also lots of over-runs in the movement phase. This doesn’t seem to happen so much anymore.
Game balance is a delicate thing for a monster like EA. I seems to me that with 3.4 the balance has shifted. Note that this is not the same thing as historical accuracy. I’d tend to believe that EA and TOAW3.4 is now a more accurate sim of WW2, as with good allied commanders, a knowledge of WW2 history, and perfect C2 WW2 would no doubt have bogged down into a re-run of WW1.
EA is still great funto play, but baring an Allied player that makes bad strategic mistakes (of a massive kind) I think the scenario will reach equilibrium far too early. I can’t see how the Axis can take Moscow+Stalingrad. I’m sure the later war allied offensive will run into the same issues, but I’ve not got that far yet. I just wanted to know if anyone else has shared this experience of EA under TOAW3.4, as compared to earlier versions, and if there’s any belief that the defence is too heavily favored, and if so is there a workable fix?
Perhaps a way to asses this would be to keep a ‘master log’ of EA results under different versions, and see if a pattern emerges. Something that includes a brief one line summary of how the game went at the top level. This would be very interesting regardless of the above issues.
Thanks for reading so far. I wouldn’t make the effort if I didn’t love this scenario so much.
Cheers,
Matt Thomas