Wargame: AirLand Battle Official Thread

[danlisa]

Perhaps a rather dumb question - Is there any benefit of having EE installed while playing Airland? Unit/Map sharing etc?

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by danlisa

Perhaps a rather dumb question - Is there any benefit of having EE installed while playing Airland? Unit/Map sharing etc?

No.

[Oberon]

I think Eugen could make a killing on a paid DLC if they did a Central Europe map with the treatment that they've given Scandinavia. The map could go from Paris to Poznan and from Flensburg to Innsbruck.

Love Wargame, but I'm rther unhappy with some of Eugens descisions regarding ALB.

I hate to say, but I indeed have the feeling that 'PACT is OP'. This is because the excessive amounts of cheap units. If you lose units as a NATO player, it is a hard punishment, because mostly, they are gone. PACT loses them, laughs, shakes it off and simply orders the same crap again.

Then there is a horrible lack of some units in every Nations deck. I mean, for what do we have the feature of mono-decks (i.e. one nation only) like Sweden, if they have like no AA at all except one IR guided unit?
(CAP as AA is quite ineffective against PACT. As soon as PACT sees "oh, hes got his precious CAPs airborne" they just send 3-5 cheap planes and bang, be gone, NATO CAP...)

Germany for example is a very strong "minor" Nation in this game, yet, why don't we have the F-4 Phantom as a fighter/bomber/SEAD jet available? The F4 was THE plane during this time in the German Air Force.

Or the AA. Brits have the Rapier. Awesome in real life (AFAIK?) and ingame it sucks, same as the 3-shot I-HAWK that mostly misses 2 out of 3 shots, then starts eating up your supply trucks.

Lately, they cut the number of ATGMs down on both sides, still it is crap. Bradley's now have 4 ATGMs, ok - but 3 out of 4 miss the target, wth?

I could continue for a while but... nah...pointless. Would be interested in your opinions though. Is PACT OP? I play Wargame since EE and always had the feeling that Eugen favors PACT in some ways... Can't say I like it...

Gosh, sorry for the rant but I really needed to get this off my chest

[Oberon]

I had the same feeling when the original EE came out, but back then it was due to ATGM spam, it seemed like everything that had a track on it and a sickle and hammer had an ATGM launcher bolted on top for luck, but that is how it is, that is what the Soviet designers did, so I guess that I can't complain too much.

The problem with NATO is that it's hard to balance since in the real life war scenario, NATO would have taken an absolute pounding, and the Soviets would have used spam wave assaults, usually with cheap units, and then sending in the more expensive units to drive a wedge into the cracks formed by the cheap unit spam.
The SAMs do need looking at though, I had a Hind throwing rockets at me in a game earlier from outside my Tracked Rapier range, given that the Rapier in real life can go up to 6km, and the S-5 rocket only 4, then that Hind should have received a guided missile in its face.
Equally though, there was a problem in the beta that the SAMs were a little too powerful and there was little point in actually using helicopters, but I think the SAMs got nerfed just a little too much.

Stick with it, it's hard and NATO can be very tough but you'll get there.

EDIT: The best SAM unit for Anti-helo in NATO seems to be the Chapparal A1, it can out range any PACT missile, guided or otherwise, and isn't a slouch against aircraft either.

Agree, the nerf was... extreme.

I mostly play US Forces since I can't go without all those awesome flying toys. So my standard AA battery is 1x I-HAWK for Planes, 1x Chap for helicopters and at least one ammo truck. If money allows it, I support with ~2 Vulcans (PIVADS), they do a good job stunning a target. I usually put them in front so they A) stun a target before/while it enters SAM range or B) they catch SEAD missiles... better them than my I-HAWK.

Mostly I win by combining good reconnaissance on enemy sectors and snipe CVs with my F-117. They also do a nice job against artillery batteries or radar SAMs... Love them... and PACT players hate them. But someone who can field a couple of nearly unstoppable tanks who just roll through everything should be quiet...

[Arclight]

It's unbalanced still. For example, the USSR Konkurs jeep costs 25pts. The BMP-1P sports a bit of armor, a cannon and Konkurs, and costs 25pts... Meanwhile the US TOW jeep costs 20pts. while the identical Canadian one costs 35pts. And then the Canadian M113 with a TOW missile has a bit of armor and more missiles than the jeep, but also costs 35pts.

Just doesn't make any sense. Pact can send in lots of well-armed BMPs for cheap while the basic Canadian ATGM jeep is priced out of usefulness.

I wouldn't say Pact is OP, just that it is more difficult for NATO to score points. Anything NATO fields that is comparable to it's Pact counterpart is generally more expensive, though the Pact units often have a bit less accuracy.

I'm looking forward to seeing the territory control mode make its comeback, which they said they were reworking into the "ultimate game mode". Battles tend to be about territory, strategic goals, right? When the Germans invaded Russia their objective was taking Moscow, not destroying every last soldier and tank in the Russian army.

@ Nipplespanner,

Just like Oberon said, PACTs doctrine was waves and waves of enemies, which makes sense. Yes NATO does feel underpowered at times, but I hate that discussion, they feel underpowered in AREAS not as a whole, the game is meant to feel like that. Saying that one side is OP or UP is moot because what they wanted was uniqueness, hence some countries have close to 0 AA and so on and so forth.

On top of that, National decks aren't the only thing you can use, it pays sometimes to go for an ERA as well with minor nations or on the flip side, a specialization and an ERA.
Air Assault and Para, whichever one gives infantry +1 Vet and makes them cost -1 Activation per slot, plus a 1975 ERA makes someone playing against you with ANY infantry horrible in that sense, because you have loads of usually cheaper much more veteran infantry.
And that can make a huge difference, which also helps if you have crappy normal AA, with the ERA and specialization, you can get 3 slots of manpads or so depending on the nation and they will have quite a few that are Hardened or better, which, en masse, can be good.

I play NATO alot, and have no problem using them to win, we completely demolished PACT on a 4v4 today (me and some pubs) in total destruction none the less. When I play PACT (My only PACT deck is a USSR deck) seems to be that their higher end units are a deal more costly than NATO, I ALWAYS seem to never have enough deployment points with my PACT deck.

Another example, I forget what map I was playing on but I was playing with my New French Deck, in a 2v2 with Arc, me and the other player on my side rushed for the same spot (This was in a low point game mind you). He got there first and demolished my forces, which were brittle because I used chopper based inf. So I let him have the zone, called in what reinforcements I could (A roland 2, and some infantry like 4 squads and a few other things and I held the line, constantly making tweaks) well he decided he would roll up on me with a T80U and 2 BMPTs. Started demolishing what I had, he kept peeking the 80 up over this hill we were on to get a shot off, and then reversing back down. His BMPTs were providing suppresive fire on my infantry in the woods. So what did I do? I called in a cluster airstike on his BMPTs to stun them (killed one too), and thankfully, I had 2x2 sets of AMX10s with the Harpoons coming, blew the other up as well. Now I had to deal with his T 80. Simple, I called in a AMX 40, brought it down on the level his T 80 was at and just out of sight. Pincered him with my Harpoons and kept him busy and as he was dominating my AMX10s and probably feeling like king of the world, moved my 40 up to visual range and blam one shot in the side took him out end of story.

Sorry for that wall of text, I am not the best playr by any means I lose quite a bit. But overall I dont feel PACT or NATO at all is OP, just slight tweaks need to be made such as prices and other things to find a nice warm spot. This game is all about adapting, its dynamic, you have a problem that you cant normally counter, fine, you must get creative. Thats the fun in it.

EDIT: And building off of what Arclight said, tweaks obviously still need to be made, however, I wouldn't say its difficult to score points for NATO, they just have to do it in a different way.

[Oberon]

Out of interest, how are people doing in the SP campaign? I must confess I am finding it Nintendo hard, particularly with NATO.

[Arclight]

I'm finding it fairly brutal as well, though the main issue I run into is trying to hold on to all the territory I gained in previous battles. It's not doable, especially since your organization and thus deployment points go down with each battle.

Idea now is to gain some ground in the 1st battle towards booting them out of a reinforcement zone, then make the assault 2nd battle. If more battles are needed, just hold on to reinforcement zones initially since they give more points. In the first battle I tend to remain defensive as much as possible and nail as much as I can with arty and air. Done right you can easily hit the 500/1k points needed to rout a low-organization brigade.

In particular, pay attention to what they have and what you kill. It's fairly easy to deplete an enemy brigade of long range SAM; think the ones I've seen in the 2nd campaign only have like 2 KUBs/BUKs. Most of the time they only have like 4 ATGM vehicles (dedicated ones, that is). Brigade-wide weaknesses tend to develop after 2-3 battles that can be exploited. (like losing your only Raven on its 1st flight and, again, not having any SEAD )

[Arclight]

Wargame’s New DLC Seems Generous

“CONQUEST” mode makes a great comeback in Multiplayer mode and against the AI, offering a range of new objectives to commanders all over the world. Unlike DESTRUCTION mode, victory in CONQUEST doesn’t depend on the destruction of the enemy forces, but on your ability to capture and hold more territory than your opponent. All the existing maps in Multiplayer are of course playable in this mode.

In addition to this new game mode, CAMPAIGN, already playable in Versus mode, is now available in CO-OPERATIVE mode and allows you to join forces with a friend to play any campaign against the AI.

In Skirmish mode you can now select the type and nationality of the equipment of any AI opponent. Last but not least, we have introduced 24 new units and 5 new maps (playable in Destruction and Conquest modes) for even more frenzied multiplayer contests!

You know, that is pretty generous.

[Krauter]

Anybody down for some W:ALB tonight? Haven't played in a while and interested in how its going.