Panzer General

The Good
I don't know what it is about human nature, but why do we like playing the underdog so much? I mean even when it's and underdog that was represented by what is perhaps the most evil man in history? I don't know why, but I love playing the Germans!

And boy can you do that in Panzer General. Not only can you re-enact famous battles, the branching "storyline" allows you to build on your past victories and end up battling for Washington itself. Add to this an encyclopedic selection of weapons and units, and this is the wargamer's dream come true.

Panzer General is a turn based game. By today's standards this would be seen as a bad thing, but when you're moving so many units (it's not uncommon to have 50 or so) there's really no other way to do it.

Moreover, it doesn't use simultaneous movement. In many wargames both sides enter their moves at the same time, and then all movement occurs. In Panzer General the German side moves, then the allies. Thus rewards far-reaching thrusts to capture important points - typically cities. Cities and other strategic points award you with "prestige", which can later be traded for new or upgraded units. So if you capture those points, you not only gain points for yourself, but remove them for the other side.

Upgrading is one of the keys to the game. At the beginning of every scenario you have a chance to upgrade your units, and YOU MUST. By the end of the game you'll need to be using the latest of everything, or you'll be crushed by the huge numbers of allied units.

The other key is experience. Units gain experience in combat depending on "how well" they do. In some cases, like artillery, it may take a long time for units to built up experience points (from 0 to 499). These points are vital though, a single 400 point unit may be the replacement for four or five 100 point units. Zero point units are almost incapable of combat, except in supported defense. Managing the battlefield thus requires you to move damaged but experienced units to the rear, losing that unit is very costly in strategic terms.

Battle damage is also replaced by using up prestige. In this case you have two options, normal replacements, or experienced replacements. The former have no experience, and the overall experience of the unit is averaged. The later do not lower the experience, but cost much more. Use nothing but experienced replacements!

So as the game continues, you need to carfully dole out replacements to units. Don't do it too much though, or you'll run out of points to upgrade them. This balance is the hardest part of the game in the long run.

Units start out with "ten units" of strength. Combat can damage a unit, which then requires replacements. A unit can be brought to "overstrength" by adding addition replacements over 10, up to the experience divided by 100 (rounded up). For instance a unit with 220 experience points can be brought to 13 units of power, 10 for the normal strength and another 3 for the experience. These overstrength units will walk over almost anything in their way, their odds in combat are amazing.

Mixing units can also be important, because of the way "combinations" are used. For instance an attack by enemy fighters on a Stuka unit can wipe them out no matter how experienced they are. However if you have a fighter unit within one square, they will defend in a sneak attack, and typically do terrible damage to the attackers. An even more important combination is with land units, artilery and either infantry or an anti-tank unit. When the later is attacked, the artillery will help out and again the attacker is typically massacered.

By the end of the game you'll find yourself being overwhelmed by numbers. This is where the last careful balancing act comes in. Do you spend those points on upgrading that panzer to the new Panther, or by buying a new Panther unit fresh from training? Either way has it's good and bad points.

The Bad
The biggest flaw with Panzer General is that it has no real concept of supply lines beyond the most basic. As a result the grand sweeping move that is what makes the Blitzkreig work simply don't do anything at all. Sure, you can run past the front lines and deep into the heart of France, but this has zero effect on those units defending the cities where you started.

This has a number of spin-off effects, all of them bad. For one you need to have a large enough number of forces to be able to attack every strongpoint in a mission. This is counter to the entire concept! Another problem this cause, and MUCH mroe annoying, is that if you leave even one city in enemy hands behind the front, the allies will start "buying" new units at that city. If you have a real front line, you can find the entire map being overrun from a single 2nd line city. This frustrates me to no end.

The other problem is that unless you completely destroy a unit outright, the computer always seems to have enough points to rebuilt it. As a resul if you do one-unit attacks on the computer, you can find youself repeatedly smashing the same unit over and over again for the entire mission. You need to have enough units close enough for every attack to hit the defenders repeatedly, or they'll just come back again, and again, and again. This doesn't work for you however, as the computer always seems to be able to pull off perfect attacks every time, and you never seem to have the points to replace as fast as they do.

Finally by the end of the game the tanks run over the rest of the units in the game. So much so that with the exception of a few artillery units for softening up defenses, and perhaps an AA or two to protect them, everything is tanks, tanks and more tanks. More tuning of the various attack and defense numbers was needed here, a problem they fixed almost perfectly in Pacific General.

The Bottom Line
The classic turn-based strategic wargame. Nice to look at, fun to look over, and a riot to play.