Order of Battle: World War II

Improves on the Panzer Corps formula by adding a supply line mechanic, unit special actions, detachable commanders, and an entrenchment system, This game also places more emphasis on naval operations than Panzer Corps. Build up a core force to suit your tactical fancy, gaining experience as you progress through the campaigns. Missions are varied and interesting, and the veterancy system rewards careful play. The DLC system can seem like a shakedown, but nobody pays full price for Slitherine/Matrix games, neither should you. On sale, you can buy the campaigns you actually want to play, which turned out to be a bargain for me.

Enemy AI is set cheating. It sees position of your troops (without having actual look out / recon there) and play accordingly. For example I just leaved town that I previously defended, bc enemy was making no advance and so I made bold move forward but left somewhat little room left on my flank behind - boom enemy will use it and drive straight to the town directly behind your lines - something that normally he would never do. When you move your troops its one way move and thats it - theres no redo. Apparently enemy dont have this restriction so in his turn it says its thinking - it probably doing all those combinations of moves, trying out and seeing theres noone in town it choose the most efficent / striking move. Im playing this game for long time and I've seen this behaviour so many times and its anoying and unrealistic. AI should be oblivious of my move bc it does not had troops around to see it. And yet he did it. Situation like this could be considered fair only if I as well could have this option of redo move just like in other such games (until enemy is spoted). But AI should have this restriction as well so that he could actually drop into traps. Now because of this cheating AI I'm looking how remove Fog of War and see all enemy troops on map. Pissed off really.

OoB is an operational-level wargame of intermediate complexity. Somewhere in between Advance Wars and one of AGEOD's games. The way the missions are designed, you get resource points each turn that you can spend on units, but there is a time limit. This deters turtling and keeps things tense - you have to pace yourself in offensive missions, which is most of them. There is a supply system that keeps you from overextending (though some units can get around this) and opens up opportunities to cut enemies off. The Efficiency, repair and entrenchment systems encourage keeping enemies engaged instead of just dogpiling one at a time. The campaign structure is linear but the secondary objectives, unit selection, tech tree and difficulty settings provide some level or replayability. On sale, it's absolutely worth the asking price as the missions are quite beefy and well-designed. The Pacific Campaign included with the base game on GOG is fun and varied - by the halfway point, I've managed a fighting retreat, a naval raid, a big fleet engagement and a major battle between aircraft carriers. Stability: Crashing isn't much of a concern - it's happened 2-3 times in dozens of hours of play. The game can autosave every turn, you can quicksave anytime and loading is quick. Much more serious is that the game often hangs when launching, and it hangs in a way that prevents me from using the task manager to terminate the application. When this happens, all I can do is ctrl+alt+del, sign out of my Windows account, sign back in and launch it again, whereupon it always launches properly. Achievements: You're going to need the base game + Rising Sun. Overall they're not difficult, mostly coming down to leveling up unit types and racking up kills with single units, but some unit types don't see much action - e.g. anti-air units rely on planes coming within range. For those, a continuous campaign, e.g. Morning Sun -> Rising Sun, makes it much easier.

For starters, if you're curious about this game, Steam has what is essentially a demo for you to try. It contains the Boot Camp tutorial and an intro scenario for each campaign. This game gets compared a lot to Panzer Corps, as they look a bit similar and have similar playstyles. Order of Battle does have a greater emphasis on naval combat, and the pace of the game is considerably slower than Panzer Corps. Personally, this doesn't really appeal to me. I get that some people prefer a more tactical, detailed, and meticulous game, but both games are quite casual, and I believe that a slow, casual game is a bit contradictory. Again, this game has a demo on Steam to try so that you can get a sense of what it's like. I would play Panzer Corps first before trying Order of Battle though.