Trying and liking new game (TOW2)

I've been anxious for Battlefront and IC to release Theater of War II Kursk.

I thought it might be a good idea to see how the game mechanics worked so I bought the previous release titled Theater of War II Africa.

I haven't had this for very long but I'm quite impressed so far with the way this game plays.

I was actually in the middle of writing up a thread for this forum which described what the perfect WWII RTS game would be for me. It would have to;
1) Have a lot of attention to realism in balistics and the way the units fought in battle.
2) Have a good interface for keeping track of the units who were in battle
3) Have decent graphics
4) Have realistic confrontations (not a base building game)

So far I've found this game excels in all these areas. In reading about this game I find that the game makers prefer to call the game's genre Tactical Realism and not a RTS game. Just like Combat Mission this game does take into account balistics, sloped armor and damage modeling. If you click on a damaged unit you can see where it is damaged and it's resulting effects are evident.

This game incorporates bombing raids. The Stukas really softened my defense the 1st time I tried the Faid Pass scenario.

You can capture enemy equipment and even incorporate it in upcoming campaign missions. (Of course the ammo won't regenerate between missions). You can modify your army and replacements by the point total you are alloted. Calling in reinforcements reduces the ammount of points you can carry into the next mission.

I really like the way this game plays. I confess that I was leary about getting this game at 1st because of issues I ran into in the demo. Battlefront.com - Theatre of War 2 Demo So far though with every issue I've faced there has been an answer.

I am not sure why this was not a good selling game; perhaps I will run into this reason as I go. For now however I'm enjoying this game as it is an RTS the way I'd like to play.

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Yesterday I completed the US campaign. I really struggled with the last mission Tebessa but when I finally got the right mix on the field and had everything set up optimally I finally was able to not only win the battle, but also route the enemy.

Overall I found this game very rewarding. I like a game that challenges you to think tactically and not be just a series of key mashing; in fact if you play this game with quick reactions to threats you will most likely lose everything you reacted with. This game reminds me of a real time Combat Mission.

Amongst the negatives, I find that my units sometimes want to face in the wrong direction. I believe you can lock a unit in place but many times the AI does react correctly with threat assessment. The game did seem quite challenging even at the novice level I played. I would have been tempted to move up a level but the enemy always outnumbers you greatly.

I bought this in preparation for Theatre of War Kursk but have found this to be a great game in it's own rights.

 

game looks interesting, I might have to try it.

 

Battlefront and IC are companys which seek to reward their customer base with games that feel quite realistic.

My initial concern even after trying the demo was that the game interface was going to be clunky. For instance the zoom in with the mouse wheel seemed to go in the wrong direction. I wanted to zoom out further but the zoom was limited. There did not appear to be a way to rotate the playing field. The game paused and zoomed into every dead soldier on the field. (That was very agravating). The troops seemed to make up there own mind on where they wanted to be. All of these issues (which I believe the game considered preferences) could be resolved through revising the game settings. I still consider Company of Heroes a slightly better interface because I prefer their mini map but Theatre of War let's you concentrate on the game and not on how to get something to work right.

As in Combat mission you do need to put a lot of emphasis on your setup. You need to view the battlefield through the eyes of your most important units to check your line of sight and make sure you don't leave yourself exploited. Infantry is quite vulnerable to armor. Armor is quite vulnerable to howitzers in the distance but the tables are turned up close. When the armor gets in close there is an additional problem of units breaking away from their duties due to fear.

Try out the demo before you buy the game. I didn't think I'd actually buy the game, but the more I played it the more I liked it. (I was just wanting to see what a Theatre of War game played like prior to Theatre of War Kursk.) Here is a link to the demo Battlefront.com - DEMO

One thing you will not get a sense for in the demo is how every individual of your army gains experience relative to how well he performs on the battlefield. After each battle your surviving troops can be upgraded in different aspects of ACCURACY, SCOUTING, DRIVER SKILLS, and GUNNER SKILLS. Where this soldier serves will determine what skill you would want upgraded. You can also just press the button auto upgrade.

After upgrading your individual personnel you will go to an Order of Battle screen. Here you can tweak the units which will be fighting in the next battle based on how many points you have and the ammount of units allowed for each classification type. For instance I prefer having Sherman Tanks instead of Stuart Tanks. The Sherman Tanks are more costly so I often trade in an infantry or HMG unit along with the Stuart to obtain a Sherman. The next tab over in the Order of Battle is the STAFF. Here you can trade personnel from the RESERVE side (which may or may not have a chance of being deployed later into the upcoming battle) over to the DEPLOYMENT side. For instance I will make sure my Sherman tank commander is a Staff Sergent with good scouting skills. I will look for a good driver. I will also want to get the best gunner available.

I may have given a lengthy description but I consider everything to be quite simple to set up. Tomorrow I plan on starting the British Campaign.

I will attach a screen which shows the RESERVES and DEPLOYMENT setup.

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I haven't yet finished TOW2 Africa yet because of the TOW Kursk demo diversion and playing HOI3.

I got repelled as the Germans in the Sbetta battle.

I found an interesting strategy article on this very same scenario.

Battlefront.com - Tactics of War

Sometimes when you attack an objective you see things completely different than another person might. The 2 times I've tried this I've failed but the author of this strategy article took an entirely different approach than I did.

I ended up losing all my tanks on the left flank from concentrated fire looking down on my position.

The strategy article suggests leading with infantry after the initial conflict to scout the position ahead. What this does is draw the enemy fire which will reveal the enemy position. The good thing that this does is not make the tanks vulnerable from a bad position.

I'm anxious to try this out.

I thought that anyone who was curious about this game might enjoy the content of the attached article as it shows the strategic thinking which can be applied.

 

I gave one of the Combat Mission games a try, Strike Force to be exact, and honestly I hated it. The interface was horrible as were the controls, there was no tutorial so I was stuck figuring out how to do everything on my own, artillery strikes that were called in never seemed to come, and various graphical short comings. I might give one of the other games in the series a try, so long as at the very least the interface isn't terrible. Though if you like RTS' that don't have base building and make you use tactics then I would suggest playing World in Conflict if you haven't.

 

To describe TOW II's interface; I wouldn't say it is super easy like Company of Heroes, yet it did not take very long for me to figure it out and I've recently tried games which I've just given up on because I can not figure out what they have in mind. It would almost be like playing the game of chess; a child can play it but it would take a lot of study to master it. Add the immersion factor of real world graphics paired with real world physics and I personally really love playing it.

 

Well, i eventually worked out the interface for Shock Force, but that didn't keep me from hating it, having to reach across the keyboard to hit the "O" key just to make a unit move doesn't exactly appeal to me. I might give ToW2 a try though.

 

I can't really comment on Shock Force because I have not played this.

I guess I haven't found the TOW controls to be very restrictive but I have not tried using hotkeys yet. I always have been mousing over to the command interface on the bottom right.

Eventually I will work into the hotkeys however. I personally don't worry about this because I will configure this to my liking. Yes; I do believe you may be able to change key commands but I will be putting the key commands on my N52TE gamepad to my own taste.

 

well many of the reviews of Shock Force that I've read have complained about the interface. Also, the "O" was just the hot key to move, it was the only real way to do it, the only other way to move was to dig through a few layers of menus to find the correct buttons to click to make your units move, there was not "right click here, move here" like most RTS', or at least most that i have played, have.