Peregrine
12-04-2007, 09:44 AM
I recently purchased the game Commander: Europe at War from Slitherine Strategies, after I read several good reviews of it, including an excellent one by Bill Trotter on The Wargamer. Over the last few days I have really enjoyed playing the game, which is a very approachable and easy to play World War 2 operational level game.
The basic gameplay reminds me a lot of the classic Panzer General series, your units, whether infantry, armor, air, or ships, are a simple icon with a starting strength of 10. As they fight, that strength is reduced, though you can repair and reinforce them or pull them out of the line if they are almost destroyed. You only have to deal with a few units which makes the gameplay fun and easy. For example, playing as Germany about to invade Poland, the Germans have (roughly) two armor divisions, a couple of motorized infantry units, and four or five infantry ones. That's it. when units attack, you get a rough estimate of the losses on each side, which is affected by a lot of factors, including the attack and defense strengths of the units, terrain, supporting units, etc. Then you attack, each side takes appropriate casualties, and you can take ground if you win or retreat if you lose. The whole combat sounds very simple, but it has some depth, the depth is just managed by the computer.
All of your alliance's activities are limited by your Production Points. These points are used for everything, from repairing and reinforcing your damaged units, to buying new units, setting up research labs, and even declaring war. You get a certain amount of PPs to start and have to take over territory to get more of them. You can buy several types of units and ships, and even buy leaders who can really make a regular unit a great one. However you never have enough PPs to do all the things you want to. You only play as an alliance, not as an individual country, but each country in your alliance has separate pools of PPs and research.
Research in the game has been very abstracted, but is still interesting. This isn't like Hearts of Iron where you have a million things to research, essentially you choose between Infantry, Armor, Air, Navy, and General. Each of these has three categories, you can focus in one or just get general research across all three. You have to buy research labs in a particular category before you get any research, so if you don't have an Air lab your Air research won't increase. The General category is very useful, as its sub-categories are Radar, Industry, and Organization, all of which are very useful. Once you get enough research in an area, you get a new level in it, and those units get a particular bonus. It's fun to watch how the research gives one side or the other a bonus for a while, if you're cranking sub research and they are lower in ASW, your subs run wild, but eventually they catch up and it's even again.
Well I guess that's all I've got on the game. I like it a lot, it's easy to play but has a lot of re-playability, there are several scenarios, as well as a great war game. You have the option to have an open-ended war, so if you want to see a German controlled Europe slug it out with the USA, you can.
The game is available via digital download through Matrix Games or via Slitherine. The latest patch for it is 1.04. There's no demo that I know of.
War on the Eastern Front
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/krm123/game_990855634.jpg
Research Screen (Looks a bit different in the final version)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/krm123/research.jpg
The basic gameplay reminds me a lot of the classic Panzer General series, your units, whether infantry, armor, air, or ships, are a simple icon with a starting strength of 10. As they fight, that strength is reduced, though you can repair and reinforce them or pull them out of the line if they are almost destroyed. You only have to deal with a few units which makes the gameplay fun and easy. For example, playing as Germany about to invade Poland, the Germans have (roughly) two armor divisions, a couple of motorized infantry units, and four or five infantry ones. That's it. when units attack, you get a rough estimate of the losses on each side, which is affected by a lot of factors, including the attack and defense strengths of the units, terrain, supporting units, etc. Then you attack, each side takes appropriate casualties, and you can take ground if you win or retreat if you lose. The whole combat sounds very simple, but it has some depth, the depth is just managed by the computer.
All of your alliance's activities are limited by your Production Points. These points are used for everything, from repairing and reinforcing your damaged units, to buying new units, setting up research labs, and even declaring war. You get a certain amount of PPs to start and have to take over territory to get more of them. You can buy several types of units and ships, and even buy leaders who can really make a regular unit a great one. However you never have enough PPs to do all the things you want to. You only play as an alliance, not as an individual country, but each country in your alliance has separate pools of PPs and research.
Research in the game has been very abstracted, but is still interesting. This isn't like Hearts of Iron where you have a million things to research, essentially you choose between Infantry, Armor, Air, Navy, and General. Each of these has three categories, you can focus in one or just get general research across all three. You have to buy research labs in a particular category before you get any research, so if you don't have an Air lab your Air research won't increase. The General category is very useful, as its sub-categories are Radar, Industry, and Organization, all of which are very useful. Once you get enough research in an area, you get a new level in it, and those units get a particular bonus. It's fun to watch how the research gives one side or the other a bonus for a while, if you're cranking sub research and they are lower in ASW, your subs run wild, but eventually they catch up and it's even again.
Well I guess that's all I've got on the game. I like it a lot, it's easy to play but has a lot of re-playability, there are several scenarios, as well as a great war game. You have the option to have an open-ended war, so if you want to see a German controlled Europe slug it out with the USA, you can.
The game is available via digital download through Matrix Games or via Slitherine. The latest patch for it is 1.04. There's no demo that I know of.
War on the Eastern Front
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/krm123/game_990855634.jpg
Research Screen (Looks a bit different in the final version)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/krm123/research.jpg