Big day this week. I finally started a real game. Not a test game, not a debug game, not a looking for errors game (OK, I'm always looking for errors, but that wasn't the primary purpose), but an actual game. I started off as the Soviets and in a day's playing I completed one (1) turn.
So that's the extreme if you like to micromanage, but breathe easy if you want a simpler game because other nations move much much quicker. No crashes at all.
The game went well. I've been used to this map for four years so I'll familiar with the areas, but it was still a lot of planning and moving. The order in which you move, bombard, bomb, attack, and so on is extremely important if you want to maximize your assets. The Bundeswehr got throttled in northern Germany and I managed to overrun three west German airbases. I captured Hamburg and Nürnberg (and subsequently lost both), but just like a normal game of Civ 3 you have to secure good ground and let the dumb AI squander his best units in unfavorable counter-attacks. Soviet units get mauled quickly attacking strong defenses and you have to use your artillery wisely. Also, Poland on the map is designed with very limited rails across its forests. If you are the Soviet player, make sure to keep units on these to keep your reinforcements flowing. If you are NATO, make sure to bomb these roads with Tornados and Aardvarks. Even a 3-turn delay to Soviet reinforcements can save your life at the front.
The naval front went very well... I got two American carriers and did a lot of sub hunting in the Barents and Greenland Seas. Amphibious attacks nabbed me all of Norway over to Bodø. There was a lot of furious surface and diesel sub action in the Baltic and the Black Sea. I was very conservative with my carriers and heavy cruisers...don't want to lose them too early.
I figured out one mystery. The reason for the long American turn time in the first couple turns is the air attacks. I knew that air bombardments (and the rare, magical AI land bombardments) slowed the game after each attack. But the U.S. has so much air power in the early game that the cumulative effect adds the extra time. No way around this, but it's not hard to deal with for a short few turns before things speed up. If you are the Warsaw Pact, I can only warn you to dig you holes deep and have your air defense radars spinning because the sheer weight of Allied air power is devastating. I had four divisions pushing into Schleswig-Holstein and they were utterly shredded by A-10s, F-16s, and F-111s. At sea, the heavy bombers smashed one of my Kiev carriers. They even found one of my subs off the East Coast with a P-3 Orion, which waited on station while land based air attacks sank my sub.
Sometimes it's working too well.
Well, I just wanted to jabber on about that for a minute since it was pretty rewarding to actually play the game for a bit. I'll put the call out now: if you want to playtest, let me know because closed beta time is probably going to start here in a week or two. Only hard core, no nonsense playtesters need apply.
Right now my goal is to have the thing done, like all wars, by Christmas. More to follow soon on naval war.
Great work, Tony! 
I'm gonna put the link in the second thread of the discussion group when it's ready and we can work out of there. I miss SOC though. 
I hate doing graphics. More to follow soon.
