A lot of people on this forum recommended Panzer General, after it was announced that Civ 5 would use a hex grid with only 1 unit allowed per hex. I had never played that game before, but I thought it was strange that people were so fanatical about a game from 15 years ago, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
My first impression was, wow, this game is complicated. Lots of units, lots of rules, and very little documentation to help you. There's several hundred different units, all with slightly different stats and bonuses, and sometimes a particular unit will seem weirdly strong or weak, and it's hard to see why. It took me a long time to understand why sometimes my tanks could roll over infantry with no losses, while other times 1 infantry could shred my entire force of tanks.
I'm still not very good, but I think I've at least figured out the basics now. Here are my thoughts on how this game plays, and how it could change civ:
-a few quality units are MUCH stronger than a lot of garbage units. The one-per-tile rule means it's hard to bring a large force in to attack at the same time, and often they just don't do any damage at all to the elite units. I notice it the most with fighters- one elite fighter unit can bring down almost infinite numbers of lesser fighters.
-bonuses are really important. In Civ, even when you have a massive defense bonuses, the unit will still usually die when it's attacked by 2 or 3 units. In PG, they can hold out almost forever. This is especially noticeable when experienced infantry is entrenched in fortifications, supported by defending artillery. Even when your troops are much better overall, it's really hard to clear out those units. The best way is to go around the sides and take out the artillery first.
-infantry and tanks are great, but they NEED support. From artillery or aircraft, either one seems to get the job done. But you need at least one of these to weaken enemy defensive positions, and to defend against enemy artillery/bombers.
-units do get stuck in a bottleneck sometimes, especially the slow ones, but it's not as bad as i thought. They're only not allowed to STOP on the same tile, they can pass through each other, which helps a lot.
-you need to either win air superiority or have anti-aircraft guns everywhere. I think either way is OK, but you need to do something, or else your losses to the enemy air force will be massive.
So here's my conclusion. Panzer General is a really cool game, with a LOT of strategic depth. Check it out if you can (I THINK it's legal to download free now, but I'm not sure about that). But I'm skeptical that they can make this model work in Civ. For one thing, they combat style requires very large maps, but in Civ, you usually have to control every single tile of your cities, so a very large map means a very slooooow game.
The other thing that could be a problem is technology. I think Civ 4 had a nice balance between giving you an advantage for having better technology, but still allowing obsolete units to be useful. In the PG system, a few advanced units would completely dominate even a huge army of obsolete units. And, if the map is small enough that you could make a line of units across it, it would be almost impossible to break through that line. You wouldn't even want to try, because you'd take massive damage from attacking and the defender would take none.
Anyway, that's my speculation as someone who knows just a little about Panzer General, and almost nothing about Civ 5. Hope you enjoyed reading my random thoughts.
My first impression was, wow, this game is complicated. Lots of units, lots of rules, and very little documentation to help you. There's several hundred different units, all with slightly different stats and bonuses, and sometimes a particular unit will seem weirdly strong or weak, and it's hard to see why. It took me a long time to understand why sometimes my tanks could roll over infantry with no losses, while other times 1 infantry could shred my entire force of tanks.
I'm still not very good, but I think I've at least figured out the basics now. Here are my thoughts on how this game plays, and how it could change civ:
-a few quality units are MUCH stronger than a lot of garbage units. The one-per-tile rule means it's hard to bring a large force in to attack at the same time, and often they just don't do any damage at all to the elite units. I notice it the most with fighters- one elite fighter unit can bring down almost infinite numbers of lesser fighters.
-bonuses are really important. In Civ, even when you have a massive defense bonuses, the unit will still usually die when it's attacked by 2 or 3 units. In PG, they can hold out almost forever. This is especially noticeable when experienced infantry is entrenched in fortifications, supported by defending artillery. Even when your troops are much better overall, it's really hard to clear out those units. The best way is to go around the sides and take out the artillery first.
-infantry and tanks are great, but they NEED support. From artillery or aircraft, either one seems to get the job done. But you need at least one of these to weaken enemy defensive positions, and to defend against enemy artillery/bombers.
-units do get stuck in a bottleneck sometimes, especially the slow ones, but it's not as bad as i thought. They're only not allowed to STOP on the same tile, they can pass through each other, which helps a lot.
-you need to either win air superiority or have anti-aircraft guns everywhere. I think either way is OK, but you need to do something, or else your losses to the enemy air force will be massive.
So here's my conclusion. Panzer General is a really cool game, with a LOT of strategic depth. Check it out if you can (I THINK it's legal to download free now, but I'm not sure about that). But I'm skeptical that they can make this model work in Civ. For one thing, they combat style requires very large maps, but in Civ, you usually have to control every single tile of your cities, so a very large map means a very slooooow game.
The other thing that could be a problem is technology. I think Civ 4 had a nice balance between giving you an advantage for having better technology, but still allowing obsolete units to be useful. In the PG system, a few advanced units would completely dominate even a huge army of obsolete units. And, if the map is small enough that you could make a line of units across it, it would be almost impossible to break through that line. You wouldn't even want to try, because you'd take massive damage from attacking and the defender would take none.
Anyway, that's my speculation as someone who knows just a little about Panzer General, and almost nothing about Civ 5. Hope you enjoyed reading my random thoughts.
