"Steel Division: Normandy 1944" Topic

A new game coming out may 23rd, I pre-ordered it, so I have access to the Beta.

The concept of the game is you choose a division, like 15th Scotish, 2nd Armored, SS, Fallsjermjeger, 101st etc.

Depending on which division you choose, you'll make a deck of cards.

This is the 15 Scotish division, before the deck

You then have a set number of slots for cards, in this case, 40. The deck is divided into, Recon, infantry, Tank, support, Anti-tank, anti-air, artillery, and air.
And the number of slots for each category varies from division to division.

On top of this, the game is divided into phases, A, B, and C. Some divisions are better in phase A or B while others in C. Some cards can only be used in B or C, while others in A. Generally a card of infantry in C can be activated more times and have often better moral than an infantry car from the A phase. This means you can choose how you build your division, not only in which unit to choose, but how you want your deck to be loaded, early or mid game or late game.

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This is the Finished deck. As you see, I have left quite a few slots empty in support and anti-air.

The actual gameplay is that you start with a set number of points(say 500) You then use those 500 points to buy cards(cards have different values, like just 30 for aWilly's jeep with a 30 .cal to 200 for a P47 with rockets. After using up the 500 points the game starts.
The objective is to push your "zone" forward and take over as much as the map as possible.
Here you see the borders of the map, red is enemy blue is you and your allies.

Points will tick in at regular intervals that you use to buy more units. A division that is better early on, will get proportionally more points per tick than a late heavy division but all division will get absolute more points in Phase B and C. This can be like 75 in A, 100 in B and 125 in C or 75/100/125.

The gameplay is quite realistic, but it's still a game, not a simulator. It's on the realistic side. With quite complex calculations for armor, penetration. The units can be pinned or and retreat. Vehicles can lose specific parts, like a tank, can get transmission destroyed or sights. Even when they get destroyed you usually get info on why(fuel explosion, ammo explosion etc.

Infantry units will easily be wiped out if moving in the open and get within range of machinegun.

The graphics are quite nice!

The jeep is a cheap fast unit, that is a glass cannon, it can take out MANY infantry units if in the right place, but is taken out in seconds when under fire.

The front line moves here and there, You get a gets points towards victory for each part over 50% of the map you control. You win either by getting the points needed to win(can be set from 1500 to 2500 points, or by controlling almost all the map.

The game does seem to have a bit of a problem when playing on easy I won quite easily even my first two games without knowing what the hell I'm doing.

But on medium, the air is quite nasty! This seem to be a running problem with lots of RTS games, for those of us that are quite bad, you'll never find a difficulty level that works for you, easy is too easy and medium is too hard.

The game is quite safesfing when you have got a perfect possion and your AT guns and machineguns just wipe out a massive attack. On the other hand, you will quite helpless when you only got a coulpe of infantry units left. that are under mortar fire and 3 panzers are roling over them. Even if you have points to buy more units, they still have to get all the way from you end of the map to were the action is. And units don't move very fast.

Sounds interesting. Does the tactical portion play out like Combat Mission or maybe Close Combat, or more gamie like Squad Assault? Is it turn based or real time?

What do the phases have to do with the tactical part? Is there like a time limit for the scenario and that is divided into phases, or are phases part of the strategic campaign?

It's real time, but when playing singleplayer you can turn the speed down a lot, I play on slow most of the time, but the slowest is "bullet time" and that almost pause.

There is no strategic campaign at least not yet.

The phases are simply a set number of minutes, so for the first 10 minutes you only have A phase cards to use, then A and B and finally all 3 card types are available.
You can set the maximum time for each game, from 10 minutes to I think 60. Default is 40 minutes, 500 resource points to start with, medium resource acquisition, and 2000 victory points.

I just played a game with the deck I made and posted on the top here.
I'm bad at the game, so I played 2 vs 1. My ally managed to hold on to his part. But I got attacked by most of the heavy armor. Suddenly I saw my Sherman get one shotted by a tank yet that tank didn't get affected by my guns at all. So I zoom in an see I got two Tiger I's rolling down towards me, not only that but a King Tiger too. I had nothing to oppose them.
I had some 25pdr artillery I had hidden far from the front, they didn't help, and then got hit by stukkas!
My 17pdr got taken out, my infantry had nothing to stop them, I had 4 planes, but they only manage to halt them and the reload time was extremely long. So they just kept coming.

I finally manage to take out 1 of the Tiger 1's with air support, but nothing could stop the other one and the King tiger. Luckily the game ended and we had slightly more points than the germans. So we got a minor victory

Nifty, thanks. Sounds sort of like a cross between Air Land Battle and Close Combat. Might have to check it out, the approach to unit purchase is one I am familiar with.

Saw a friend play this on Thursday. The graphics and sounds are great. But the game itself did not convince me… squads of a platoon seemed to be often 500 meters from each other, sprinkled over a huge battlefield compared to the small number of men, but still advancing bravely with little in the way of actual WWII tactics being obvious. Armored vehicles drove along roads with again 500 meters between each other with no attempt at mutual support and were unsurprisingly all shot up in the same intersection, one by one… Also you direct all your men so there seemed to be lots of micromanagement.

Micromanaging yes, but how much you give support is up to you. The good players naturally give a lot of support to their units. They don't send tanks into the hedgerows with out infantry support. And the. Map gets more crowded the longer the match (unless you're a bad player like ne who looses so many units you never have enough.

More than a platoon in a RTS game is more than I want to deal with – otherwise the graphics don't need to be good at all since I will be playing it at the maxed zoom out level anyway (to keep track of the overall situation). This is why I really like the Combat Mission games, the graphics are not as nice as the title here but I can watch them over and over again from any desired angle.