I love the idea so much, oh what a nice idea. I love looking at maps and just seeing markers of units, of their sizes and types just duel it out. Not even seeing the actual combat, I love it. Its one of the reasons why older HOI games like HOI3 and HOI Darkest Hour are some of my favs even if their actual gameplay and all kind of sucks, its because I get to look at a bunch of NATO symbols and see them fight. I adore it. Its one of the reasons why I love trying to use the map as much as I can in games like Arma. I just enjoy keeping track of things like this, its one of the reasons why I love games like Radio Commander. I love the idea of this so much, it takes all of that and just turns it into its own game. Look at a map, look at symbols, look at their types and sizes, look at the hierarchy and just duel it out. The idea is there but... The execution... Oh god the execution... Ordering your units around requires a lot of micro-management and while you can order units around en-masse they won't do their orders properly. If an unit on the hierarchy gets killed, every unit underneath it is lost as well because the hierarchy is broken. Great idea but it sucks in practice when you order units around en-masse and they go to their locations and instead of taking up any positions they just sit in a circle and the HQ unit gets ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and now every unit underneath it is lost and unrecovarable. How do you avoid that? Micromanage and tell every single squad where to stay and tell every single HQ where to stay. This gets annoying easily. The other incredibly annoying part is that while the enemy AI can do smart "oh wow I didn't expect" tactics and ruin your day they more often then not rush you with 60 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ units and pool up all their bigger, higher on the hierarchy, important HQ units in one position so it becomes either "hold the line against impossible odds, outnumbered 60:1" or "hide and seek with enemy HQ while the grunts buy us time" sounds cool, not that cool to go through.
+I love the idea so much. It gives me something that I've been looking for a long time. Looking at a map and dealing with symbols is something I enjoy oh so much.
+I love the hierarchy system and I love how big things can get. I love how you can order platoons, squads, companies etc. individually or you can give out orders en-masse so if you give an order to idk a company HQ every unit underneath it will get the same orders, you can go as high up on the hieararchy or as low as you want.
+Quite a few unit types. From the basic tank, artillery, infantry, mechanized and so on to more "elite" stuff with helicopters and planes.
+/- Only 3 (4 if you count the lakes) terrain types. Cities which is very close, no one can see or shoot ♥♥♥♥ without being right up against each other. Forests/Greenery where units can see further away and the open desert in which the units can see as far away as their eyes and sights will allow. Some units are amphibious and some do fly so they can cross lakes and stuff but they still get blinded when they're in a city or they see less in greenery and so on. This is not bad, good enough terrain types but I do wish it was a little more varied from map to map rather then every map having all the terrain types all the time. Wouldn't some mountains, ridge lines, rivers and so on be cool?
-While the hierarchy system is cool and while you can mix units up, try and do some combined arms warfare stuff, try and just make one type of army if you want, move entires armies or just single squads around like while all of this is really cool it ends up being problematic the more units you move at once. If some unit thats high on the hierarchy gets killed, every unit underneath it, connected to it is lost. Cannot recover, command chain is broken and they're gone. Now thats fine, no issues with that but that becomes really annoying when you try to move huge formations around and you tell them where to go and they go there and they sit in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ circle and wait. Oh you wanna send them to a part of the city and you want this Platoon to use the Squads under its command to set up some defensive lines? You'll order them to that part of the city, they will get there, they will wait then you need to select the squads one by one, send them where you want them one by one and then send the Platoon HQ where you want, somewhere where they won't immediately come under fire. You can't just let the game do it no you need to micro manage otherwise they all sit in a circle, enemy units come, HQ is immediately under fire and as soon as it dies the units under its command are gone too, congratulations you wasted resources on units that did ♥♥♥♥ all for you because they cannot understand that they have to have some distance between them and not sit in a circle with a campfire and wait for orders. This gets incredibly annoying especially as your formations get bigger. HQ units have a tendency to be on the front instead of putting the units under their command there and staying behind. So you lose everything in an instant if you don't micro manage.
-The AI, while at times doing smart and unexpected things, usually sucks. They usually just rush the flags which give you resources and they will rush it with 60 units. Your Squads or Platoons or even a Company that you set up manually in a defensive line? They get overwhelmed and it very quickly turns into a game of "who can throw more units in the same 5 hexes" So when you figure out the 2-3 paths the enemy will use to rush you, you can just put everything you have in front of these paths and watch. Tactics go out the window in seconds. Aside from this rushing, the AI usually just bunches up their important HQ units all in one place so you can play hide and seek with units like helicopters while the grunts fight endlessly. It gets repetative. Like you can set up an ambush in a city, enemy mechanized can roll through it and they will just overwhelm you not even in the "your guys ambushing will all die" sense they will just send formation after formation, some will break through simply because your infantry can't shoot and kill fast enough, some will get unlucky and die and your infantry will sit there and wait for the next wave and it repeats endlessly. The AI doesn't say to itself "maybe I should stop sending 50 vehicle long convoys through that city" no the AI says "I will grind them down eventually" and then sends a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HQ unit through your ambush. You can do the same to the AI but whats the fun part in rushing a point?
-The hit chances suck. It all works on a dice roll, a percantage based system. You shoot? 12% chance to hit. Shoot till you get lucky and pray they aren't fast enough to run away from your units range before you can kill them. You will see units survive imposibble odds due to simply luck and while it can be cool/horrifying to see, it gets annoying when it happens all the time, again and again, for 5 straight minutes. It feels like if you're on the offensive you need to do like the AI does and rush with WAY too many units against nowhere near enough units and if you're on the defensive uhh good luck and pray the AI's rush comes one by one and not all at once.
-All of this combined with the maps always looking the same even if procedurally generated, even if there's differences, it always looks the same visually all of this combined turns the game into a repetative and at times annoying mess.
But I still love it. It gave me something I've been wanting to have for a long time and now I have it and I'm happy with it. Yes, its not perfect and in fact there are big issues that really annoy me. But it exists. I'm glad it exists. Buy it in a big, big discount, 8 dollars is WAY too much.
