Total War in Europe Series

[Stejones82]

Greetings all,

Looking at this ladder, I do not see much activity for Tiller's Total War in Europe seeries, The First Blitzkrieg, or War on the Southern Front.

1. Is it fair to say that not many guys are playing these games?

2. If so, is that a reflection upon the quality of the game or just that they do not PBEM very well?

Is the AI as good as cracked up to be - i.e. is an entertaining solitaire game, and so far I do not find JT's solitaire games very challenging.

Thanks for your help in my purchasing decision!

Steve

[Mr Grumpy]

Greetings all,

Looking at this ladder, I do not see much activity for Tiller's Total War in Europe series, The First Blitzkrieg, or War on the Southern Front.

1. Is it fair to say that not many guys are playing these games?

2. If so, is that a reflection upon the quality of the game or just that they do not PBEM very well?

Is the AI as good as cracked up to be - i.e. is an entertaining solitaire game, and so far I do not find JT's solitaire games very challenging.

Thanks for your help in my purchasing decision!

Steve

1) Yes i am afraid there has been very little interest in the series, a number of TFB games were reported when it came out, but that tailed off after 6 months or so and there has only been a couple of WSF games ever reported.

2) The conclusion that i draw from that is that players tried it and didn't feel inspired enough to carry on playing, i have never played the series so i cannot speak from personal experience.

No idea about the AI.

[jonnymacbrown]

[i]"The conclusion that i draw from that is that players tried it and didn't feel inspired enough to carry on playing, i have never played the series so i cannot speak from personal experience."[/i]

Maybe if they designed an Operation Barbarossa game the series would pick up steam. jonny

[Al]

[i]"The conclusion that i draw from that is that players tried it and didn't feel inspired enough to carry on playing, i have never played the series so i cannot speak from personal experience."[/i]

Maybe if they designed an Operation Barbarossa game the series would pick up steam. jonny

If you look in the rule book there are some special rules regarding Soviet units so in that respect, at least, there has been some thought given to that idea.

I'm not sure why this series didn't take off. Just my opinion but I think perhaps compared to Panzer Campaigns the units are not actual numbers of men, vehicles and guns but a more abstract strength value. Also, as you set up an attack, a little on-screen icon shows up giving the attacker an estimation of the probability of success for the attack; overrun, advantage, superiority, etc. Some people didn't like that aspect - or so I've heard.

Regarding the AI I believe it to be more of a challenge that Panzer Campaigns. But, I've played a lot more PzC than TWIE so that may bias my judgement. I have yet to beat the AI in the France 1940 scenario. I'm playing the invasion of Poland (hypothetical stronger Poland) right now and the AI is playing competently, if not inspired. At this point I don't know if I'm going to pull off a win or not.

Tank and motorised formations are especially powerful in this game since they can potentially move and attack several times in a turn. There are three types of engineer units and all play an important and unique role. Airpower is included and can be decisive in helping ground units win an attack.

I did ask about a year ago if the series was going to be continued and I was told yes - but not which area would be covered. I hope the series does continue.

Both titles have a lot of scenarios included. In my opinion, they're worth getting.

Hope this helps.

[Liquid_Sky]

I bought both titles at xmas, but was unable to really get into playing them as the counters are just too darn tiny. The game needs the x2 treatment that the PzC games have gotten before these tired old eyes will be able to play it.

Barbarossa would be very nice too :)

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

I've mentioned the same thing as Al about the strength and the estimation of success. I personally think it should be set with actual number of men, weapons and the different types of AFVs. Replacements should be allocated by player as to how many men and tanks, guns etc get assigned to which units. Also, at this scale, especially if it continues into post ww2 possibilities, that the units should be set up with sub unit trees so that if you have a div and you wish to detach part of it to garrison a port, for example, you should have the choice of what sub units to drop off, say, an inf rgt with arty and possibly a tank company or whatever is attached to the div that you detach for garrison. Post ww2 could get as low as a company detached and left to garrison or sent ahead hoping you might not have to commit more or larger units to a situation.

Do away with the estimation hints and make one have to figure it out and make a decision as to do it or not.

More than anything, the sub unit tree is a must. Maybe the detached unit was a bn that got mauled and will be rebuilt slowly. IMO, that gives great potential to a ww2 and post ww2 game series.

[PzKw43]

I have been playing John Tiller games since 1997 (EastFront). They are well researched with numerous scenarios. Unfortunately the map graphics have not changed. One or two more 2D map views need to be added. The 2D Magnified View is terrible. The screen resolutions are much higher than 15 years ago but no change in the graphics! I was disappointed with an abstract strength point assigned to each unit like a board game and would have preferred the number of men, vehicles and weapons in each unit.

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

Need more map details to go witht he sub unit tree for attaching/detaching units. That includes a rgt from one div assigned to another div like the 106th in the Bulge. Definitely though needs better maps and probably a different scale to warrant the sub unit tree. Especially for post ww2 where specialized TFs seem to be the norm most of the time. Something like a global map similar to the old Superpower game and the ability to click on a country that would zoom into to that country with something similar to PzCs/MCs. All countries that you could control as many as you want or part time to build/maintain forces based off of economy, but with the flare of combat usually going on somewhere in the world and options for all countries whether to get involved or not. Maybe U.S. player decides not to commit to South Vietnam or go the aid of France in Indochina in the late 40s, early 50s. Anything could happen that might trigger ww3 at some point or even ww4 later in the game. The possibilities are almost endless. You have your men, tanks, guns etc assigned to units, individual ships, Air squadrons. I know, somebody will say War in the Pacific, I say sort of but not quite, much more detailed land game to say the least. Also, if controlling third world countries, you are trying to build their military as best you can. Every country included and you manage as many or as few as you want.

[-72-]

It's funny, as I really like the concept that was outlined in the designers' notes - about a linked game with (I believe I read it was 5) all 5 titles of the series that were planned -which was going to be WWII in Europe.

The only thing that is really available are the designers' notes in terms of what is happening.

But for me, I never really got into the scenarios so much mainly because I considered that the whole game was going to be the combined sets of games (which is where you'd find the real capabilities of the engine) - I didn't buy SPI's War in Europe to play the Poland or France scenarios...


Plus- I really don't know how you go about breaking a game down into individual men, tanks, etc at this scale (forget Grigsby and Koger- frankly they don't count) -and not still have to rate things mathematically). One is still talking about an operational level game -and these are really operational level in the truest sense ( even more so than the Panzer Campaigns' series.).

[Stejones82]

Thanks all for the comments, and I would truly like to hear more from others.

As I do not play the PzC series, this might be a better operational level game for me. As a veteran of board games (3rd Reich, The Russian Campaign, Ardennes Offensive, et al), albeit in my youth, I don't think the abstracted values would be a concern to me.

I have noticed that no one has offered a PBEM match if I do purchase.

If anyone is still playing, can you give me an estimate of the time required to play one turn as solitaire? As PBEM?

Would you consider this a session game, one in which you would want to spend many leisure hours in a dedicated session?