From: Robert Olesen Subject: Third Reich first impressions These are my first impressions of playing Third Reich. Perhaps somebody will find them useful. I have sent similar comments to AH in the hope that they may find them useful too. I played the board game several years ago, so I was familiar with the game when I bought it. I tried the demo, but didn't like it. Even so, I decided to give the game a chance, as it is unique in its category and implementation. Installation was no problem. I run it in a DOS window from a shortcut within Win95, without problems so far. Unlike Steel Panthers (1) I can iconise it (Alt-Tab) and it doesn't seem to mind my screen saver. The installation guids recommends running it in a DOS session (closing Win95 down while it runs). I have only played the 1939 scenario with the AI set to easy, and I haven't read the rule book through, so I can't comment on the strength of the AI (a major topic of discussion in previous posts here). I have not experienced any hangups, and am using the latest patch (1.22). I find the 1939 scenario as Axis a much better beginning scenario than the recommended 1944 scenario - the latter has way too many units. It captures the feel of the board game very well. Once I started relearning the tricks of the trade (as you have to in this game system), interest picked up, and I found the "just another turn" factor quite high. The intro is horrible, as are the sound effects. The sound does not seem to have any functionality, so I configured it to not use sound at all (it didn't seem to remember my no-sound preference from game to game). I tried commenting out the intro in the startup batch file, but then the program couldn't find the CD. The program takes an undocumented command line argument - there are two startup batch files, where this argument is either 0 or 1. The documentation is good and clear. A rule book, a "how to" book, an installation guide and a poster with the map and a lot of tables. The poster is a little hard to read (dark on dark), but it is useful even so. Considering the complexity of the game, the "how to" book is essential. It takes a long time to read the rules (I know, it takes even longer to read the board game rules). The zoomed in map and units are very nice to look at, but the area shown is too small. Zooming out perhaps 25% or 50% would have been much better. An extra, optional, zoom level would have been best. Fortunately, you can scroll it by moving the mouse to the edge or by clicking on the small map in the lower left corner. As the game is so complex, it is easy to forget something (e.g. allocating air units to ground support or moving a unit in Africa). I did get help once, when I had allocated ground support on Belgrade but forgotten to attack - I was prompted if I wanted to attack. There probably isn't much the program can do here(?). You are lead by the hand through a game turn, prompted whenever you need to decide on something. This is very useful, and even necessary in a game of this complexity. In some cases, it seems to prompt me for actions that I cannot do (e.g. allocate air support when I have none available) - this is not really important. The user interface is tedious, but functional. For instance, to look at a the BRP (i.e. economical) status you have to click on the status button (lower left), then select from the menu (in the middle of the screen), then when you are done click the info away, then hit the "done" button in the status menu. There is a keyboard shortcut to a few tables and reports, but you still have to dismiss the table, status or action menu after clicking the info away, even though it was activated from the keyboard. A pulldown menu system had been much better in my opinion. There are way too many mouse movements and clicks. This could wear out my arm if played for several hours. For example, to move a unit I have to find it first (rightclicking on a stack), select it, click on each hex, then click on it again to deselect it if it hasn't moved all its movement. It would help to be able to click once on the destination and let the computer pick the shortest path (or one of the shortest paths) - it would then be up to me to click hex by hex when necessary. Another problem is when you forget to deselect a unit after moving it and then click on another unit to move that one. The program pops a message dialog, and you have to find a tiny button with the mouse to remove it (or use the keyboard, but the mouse is in my right hand). The message prompts you to deselect the previous unit first, but it doesn't center the map on the unit, or offer to do it for you. Any of these, especially the latter, would have been very useful. If I am lucky, then this dialog is substituted with a simple message on higher difficulty levels, though I doubt it. Overall, I have been positively surprised (probably because my expectations were geared down after reading the comments here). However, the game system is so complex, and allows so many different paths, that a very experienced player probably will be able to beat the computer consistently. Fortunately, I am not very experienced, and expect to enjoy the game for some time. In any case, if you play face to face, saving a computer 3R game to disk and loading it again a week later certainly beats taking down and setting up the board game. Robert Olesen oles@dnv.no