Some detailed thoughts on Army General

[plc]

Just finished the first campaign as NATO. Overall I had a good time, I can understand why people who played skirmish in solo for more than a year may feel like the experience isn't as groundbreaking as they hoped but that's a general issue with early access games and people getting burned out before the game is finished. My early feedback would be as below:

Positive side:
+ the AI on battle maps feels a bit smarter compared to SD2. It will often change its axis of attack and more than a few times I've found myself with APCs and infantry infiltrating my rear. It also uses a mix of vehicles and calls artillery when available.
+ I agree with the decision to make ammo trucks and command vehicles less costly. In the past they felt like an annoying tax you had to pay.
+ On the strategic map one thing I disliked with SD2 was that victory objectives were entirely tied to capturing or holding certain locations. It made it virtually impossible to lose the game when playing as the defender because the AI lacked aggressiveness and would often sit on its positions if its frontline units became attrited instead of rotating them and pushing for the objective. Here in the campaign you need to earn victory points by both capturing locations and destroying enemy forces. In general I would really like to see more diverse primary and secondary objectives during the campaign, such as destroying a certain enemy formation, extracting troops from a pocket, keeping a certain % of your forces alive, etc.
+ I like the increased amount of action points that units have. In SD2 things could feel slow when you had to move units close to the frontline and then wait another turn for them to be able to engage in an attack. It also made for weird situations when freshly-moved units could be very vulnerable for one turn because the lack of action points made it difficult to reinforce them.
+ Planes were overpowered and too spammable in SD2 so the new system where you have to wait before the plane reaches the battlefield makes more sense. On the other hand it made me barely use them but I haven't played enough to form a final opinion.

Cons:
- The AI still behaves weirdly on the campaign map and doesn't seem to be actively trying to complete the victory conditions. After a couples of assaults on Alsfeld some of the most intact and dangerous enemy regiments broke contact and wandered up north for no obvious reason (perhaps they were trying to capture empty land that was still flagged as NATO-controlled). Other units just shuffled around the town without purpose. I also never saw the Soviet and reserve regiments that were apparently available to the AI (could be that they spawn under certain conditions that the AI didn't fulfill).
- Something that seems to have carried over from SD2 is that the AI sometimes doesn't reinforce the regiments that are under attack on the campaign map even if other units are available nearby. It seems to happen when the attacked regiment is severely under strength, and perhaps the AI doesn't want to commit units to a lost battle. It makes the process of mopping up depleted units too easy (and tedious).
- Reinforcements show up late in the campaign. This is partially mitigated by the action point system that allows them to move and engage faster but like in SD2 it feels a bit like you are given toys during the last part of the campaign and barely get a chance to use them.
- The AA suppression from SAM networks it very strong, I barely used planes as NATO. Perhaps there should some sort of countermeasure like artillery strikes.
- Logistics and C&C on the campaign map is still very basic. A unit that sits in the middle of a dense forest and a unit that sits on a highway are both resupplied the same in terms of action points despite the former presumably being harder to resupply. Also, destroying the HQ of a division should cause the child units to suffer a penalty of some sort to reflect the resulting lack of command. Right now the real life organisation of the big units is meticulously reproduced in the game but all the pawns act independently of each other without clear coordination. There's also little concept of keeping your rear secure. That was another big issue in SD2 where behind the line partisan units served little purpose other than flavour and where you could move all your security, HQ and garrison units to the frontline and leave your rear totally empty without suffering any sort of issues.

Overall I enjoyed the experience but I feel like there's untapped potential, although I'm aware that developer time and resources are not infinite.

[plc]

Originally posted by Nero:

Keep in mind the following campaigns will be more substantial, will be bigger and so on.

Of course, but the points I tried to make have more to do with the structure and mechanisms than the scope. I also find that smaller scale campaigns can be more enjoyable than the bigger ones where you have to grind through dozens of samey Soviet rifle regiment or German infantry battalions before you manage a breakthrough.

[Catchy]

I agree with these, but the AA part, if you use ARM squadrons PACT interception will fail.

Did you also have issues with NATO AI during tactical battles where they were just not involved in the fighting at all? During my battles they didn't try to go for victory points, just gathered forces in the middle of nowhere.

[Makka Pakka Attorney at Law]

Do we know if they will allow user made Army General Campaigns via the workshop?

[Belisarius]

Good point bout the possibility for artillery to suppres AA.