DoveBrown

So thinking about why some genre standard bearers suck all the air out of genre while others don't. I think a large part of it comes down to while Masters of Orion II is a great game but it's not a perfect one. There are clearly places where you would want to add to the design. SimCity2000 on the other hand has almost no minor tweaks screaming out to be done. If you want to make another city builder, you have to radically change your assumptions from those chosen by Will Wright. So you can get the Impressions walker city builders and the Anno series which don't work anything like SimCity. People seem to like the skeleton of the MoO design but the perfect version hasn't been done yet. It's an unsatisfied market so any space 4X will always get pulled towards that black hole of demand. Where as people who want SimCity can just play it (or Cities Skylines ^_^) but the demand for that exact design is filled.

The problem with the first Kane and Lynch is that it is a bad mechanical remake of Io's own Freedom Fighters. Freedom Fighters has a much better focus on the directing NPC co-belligerents. The shooting isn't particularly great in either. The art style is much more defined in Freedom Fighter rather than let's badly attempt to hit something that is kinda like a Michael Mann movie. I find the cynical characters of Kane and Lynch just pretty unpleasant to be around compared to idealistic US plumber Chris who just wants to stop the Soviets trampling our freedoms.

So with *mumble mumble* hundred hours of play my opinion of the DLCs ( http://www.eu4wiki.com/Downloadable_content for a list of major features). Conquest of Paradise: Not unless you want the random new world to explore or want to play a native american tribal nation. Wealth of Nations: Must have, it makes trade sensible. Res Publica: Not unless you want to play a merchant republic or one of the Dutch republics (and I'd say you want to) Art of War: Must have, so many quality of life improvements for army management and warfare. El Dorado: Very much for colonisers. Also making custom nations is a lot of fun. This is also essential if you want to play one of the American Empires (Inca, Aztec and Mayas). Common Sense: Must have. Adds the provincial improvement system and lots of subject interaction quality of life. The Cossacks: Essential if you want to play a Stepe Horde nation. The diplomatic improvements are good. Reaction to the Estates system is mixed. Mare Nostrum: Must have Better espionage and naval management. Condottieri (hiring out your army) are fun when you're at peace and waiting for something to happen. Rights of Man: Since it came out yesterday, your guess is as good as mine, my feeling is that it will be a must have as the Institution based technology system is such an improvement on the Westernisation/Tech Groups for people playing outside Western Europe. Of course I'd say take the plunge. I found EU3 very cold but got hooked on CKII and love EU4.

I "finished" my first game as Germany during the weekend. I stopped in 1942 after completing the invasion on the UK. I was expecting the Western War to end then since all Europe and African was in mine or the Italian hands. The USA was fascist and I wasn't yet at war with the Soviet Union. The Allies were done but refused to recognize this. Canada and Australia weren't places I cared enough to build up the Kriegsmarine to go attack. It kind of felt like a let down and couldn't be arsed gearing up for Barbarossa. I really really like the battleplan system. It feels really good to have my main infantry armies set up to just sweep a long line into enemy territory. My armor and motorised is staged on tiny fronts, aimed directly at far objectives and out strips the infantry line. Watching it go with only the odd manual control to push a panzer division into a gap feels very much like blitzkreig. Something about the way it plays feels slightly off. Maybe that it is too balanced. I think it might be that every focus tree is kind of the same (flavour text differences) but mostly the same tracks to be followed. As a result all the countries seem to be in roughly the same position after a couple of years. I think the elements of the focus trees should have different costs, it's all well and good having 90 days for Germany to justify going back into the Rhineland but Plan Z should be longer than 90 days. How quickly the national focuses come and after you have filled your cabinet, political power seems very easy to come by. The air war is very definitely broken though. From elsewhere it seems the only winning strategy with fighters is to use them as a doomstack as splitting into 200 plane wings just sees them wiped out piecemeal. I lost most of my fighters in the first month of war on the Western Front and despite building all the time. I was only able to recover air superiority after to using the old park a tank on their airfield trick.

I think this is the article on why Warsaw Pact tactics work in wargames mentioned by Rob. It's an interesting read. https://20thcenturywargaming.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/why-cold-war-warsaw-pact-tactics-work-in-wargaming/ Edit: So on review that looks pretty much exactly like a Spam bot comment. The link goes to an article by John Curry (an academic/professional wargamer) about how he is pretty sure he has never lost a wargame when playing the Soviet side. He talks a little bit about how the simplicity and expectation that they will be implemented by a "poorly trained, illiterate army with communication problems" leads to quicker decisions which can unsettle an imperfect commander attempting to use the NATO tactics designed to overcome the Soviet numbers advantage.