Sunday, May 07, 2006

Seeking Strategy


I tried Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday, and I just have to face the fact that I'm not cut out to be a world leader.

The tutorial was pretty spot on, so I thought that, finally, I might be able to handle a complex wargame. I was very wrong.

I was hoping there might be a kind of sandbox-mode, where you could run a country at your leisure and things aren't immediately SNAFU.

Instead, there are a bunch of scenarios, all of them chockful of military-occupied fronts just waiting for orders. It was a bit much for me.

The capstone, the doomsday scenario, was impressive, at first. All those nuclear strikes wiping out cities across Russia and the United States. After a few minutes of that, however, I realized that I wasn't fit to be the ruler of an industrialized nation during a worldwide nuclear holocaust. I was paralyzed with fear, completely incapable of making a rational decision.

Send tanks toward Stalingrad in the winter? No problem!

Airstrikes against Australia for no good reason? Done!

Researching Mechanized Doctrine with no intent to build mechanized infantry? True leadership!

So I gave up all hope of stomping the Soviets in an alternate timeline. It's probably for the best.

I guess I'll work on my Russian, Comrades.

1 comment:

Troy Goodfellow said...

The 1936 starts slow. You have lots of time to get ready for war.

If you want to get to the Cold War in one piece, I recommend taking the Allies or Soviets in the 1944 scenario. Germany doesn't last long.

The historic strategies seem to work fine most of the time. Soviets need lots of cheap infantry with artillery brigades. Germany has to count on technical and organizational superiority. Britain and Japan needs navies.