Hi Koby,
Now feeling better I will post my turn in the pbem games shortly.
I haven't played with the latest patch yet, but I just recently halfway completed the previous version, with two players as Allies and Axis. We reached week 136, and it ended with the Axis invading Yarmouth and taking London two turns after that. They had 8 Pz6, covered by a longdistance fighter and AA guns, and was virtually unbeatable.
First, it was an extremely exciting game, with lots of intriguing, really interesting strategies and change of pace etc. Most of the time the allies led the way economically and scientifically, but got involved too late on the continent to stop german invasion schemes.
The allies was pretty successful, however, in France, deploying an unusual strategy of reaching Italy through southern France, with a perfect line from London to Genoa and Northern Italy. The Axis bit the bullet against the russians, but managed to secure Leningrad and Scandinavia, but not much of the balkans until late in the game. In Africa, the italians beat the allies in the first round, but as technology and ressources improved, the allies slowly beated the minor axis from the continent.
Well, this scenario has got to be one of the most thrilling games I've played -much akin to the excitement of the Axis&Allies board game.
I just wanted to comment on the 'fighter-cover' concept that you employ in ZWK, which has good aspects, but also some aspects thats bears on the unreasonable. It seems like you've done everything you can to make everything in the game be reasonable and historically justifiable in one way or another. And the 'fighter' cover concept (where fighters protect more vulnerable units beneath) leads to unusual unit combinations, where virtually every unit is important. But, and this is the unreasonable part : Is it really reasonable, that one single lousy fighter squadron can protect 8 divisions of Pz6's from the wrath of 6 strong lancaster bombers, which is basically the only offensive weapon available against these beasts, at this point in the game? (at least when dealing with a surprise invasion, in which lots of armor cannot be gathered etc)
Since only fighters can engage fighters, but repeatedly find, that what they're actually engaging, is not the fighters, but usually an AAgun, capital ship, massive divisions of armor with good defences, such a combination is virtually unbeatable, since no fighters exists to take on such a combination. (as far as I know)
It'd be perfectly reasonable that fighters needed to fight it out with the fighters before bombing can start. But when fighters cannot be removed by fighters, because the fighters engage everything mightily stacked underneath, fighters get too strong for their own good, and even if you have tons of bombers, you're pretty much powerless. It seems unreasonable that there's no units on the tech tree to remedy this. All the fighters the allies get along the way are no good for this problem. And when they cannot beat this, why research the fighter techs?
I bet the answer will be, yes, but bombers were never meant as a defensive weapon etc. But the fighters you get are simply not strong enough for the defence. So now what do you do?
In a way, it works ok. The game needs to have an end. And this really helps to make it pretty decisive. And there are other things to consider, productive, economic, blockades, preventing the enemy from gathering enough ressources together for this kind of enterprise, stop the problem before it gets there etc. But in another way, war is pretty much about dealing with problems when they're there, so there ought to be a solution. (which of course, might be submission to Hitler-germany...
)
I'd just like to hear if you thought about this, and if it is intentional all the way. What did you consider about this?
.Thanks for all the hardwork
