Transcript
Speaker: Hello dear listeners and welcome to the Fog of Warcast. Today you have an episode with me, Andreas Eriksson, and my co-host, Johan Mossberg and Magnus Eak. Happy to be here.
Speaker: Great to be back. Yes, and today we're going to talk about a game which I know exactly nothing about, Steel Division. So, Magnus, I guess you're our Panzerkommandant.
Speaker: Panzerkommandant, sorry. Panzerkommandant. I have no idea if that's correct, Jarman. Weird start, but okay. We're just going to fly past that because today we're doing something that isn't grand strategy.
Speaker: We might actually have an episode where we don't mention the game series that starts with a T and ends up with a W. ah Because we're talking about Steel Division and specifically we're talking about Steel Division 2.
Speaker: two So we're talking about an RTS game and me who outed myself as the resident RTS player haven't played it yet. i have it on my computer. I just haven't played it yet.
Speaker: But there are reasons that we get into them because, as I said, this is an RTS game and it's specifically focused on World War Two. It was released by development published by Eugene Systems, a French studio.
Speaker: And we have a fantastic saying in Swedish, a mob, a military over-interested person. So you could kind of like translate it to a mob in English.
Speaker: at Eugene Systems, they make games for mops. And yeah they have a long history. But for me, my kind of relationship with the Eugene Systems started out with ah war the Wargame series.
Speaker: And in 2012, they dropped the first one, Wargame European Escalation. And they said, for all you Cold War warriors out there, this the game for you and the game series for you. ah They dropped three games in that series. ah Fantastic games, but...
Speaker: They are fantastic if you are in the least bit interested in the Cold War, in kind of like what divisions, what um what kind of weapons did the opposing sides drop. And all of three games are more or less focused on a confrontation between the Eastern Bok and the Western Bok. The first two ones in Europe and the last one between communist China and Korea and were Western powers. yeah ah So it's basically, if you want to...
Speaker: read If you want to play ah hot Cold War, the War Games series will screw you. But after having done three of those games, I think they sort started to feel okay. Things are going a bit stale. We might need to broaden out a bit.
Speaker: Where do we go? We go back in time to the Second World War. And so they dropped War Game Normandy 44, which I played less of. ah But I remember when they dropped that, it's like, this is really cool. So they're taking War Game back to the Second World War.
Speaker: And the mechanics differ a bit where Wargame is very much about kind of like controlling regions in each. You have more of a frontline mechanic and dealed a bit in the Steel Division games. where basically the concept is and you are playing a commander, either an Axis or an ally commander.
Speaker: ah You get either units generated or you put them in a battle deck where you can choose divisions. And you try to build up a composite division or a battle group, and you match that against ah either the AI in the campaign mode or against other players.
Speaker: So very much. And I would say the big thing, if most players play this for the multiplayer scene. ah So it's a good way if you're not ah very good RTS player like me, ah it's a good way of getting your ass handed to you ah with some very cool divisions.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And Steel Division 2 takes place on the Eastern Front. And for you history buffs, you realize straight away that that means more divisions, a larger plurality. There are just a lot more divisions that fought on the Eastern Front compared to Normandy in 1944.
Speaker: And so it takes place or around Operation Bagration in summer of 1944. And that's where it really barely started, which means that you don't have the early war operations, ah but you have kind of like...
Speaker: ah lateboard game work the a the Axis powers, at least tactically, can be at least comparable to the forces that they're meeting ah from the Soviets. and And that's, I think, where you can head it off. That was the fast pitch for you. This is a game if you're a bit overly interested in military things, if you want to play historical divisions.
Speaker: And that's a big difference between the war game series, ah which was kind of like, yeah, this is an alternate reality, a Whereas in the Steel Division games, they're trying to be very historically accurate. You are playing with the actual divisions, especially if you're playing in campaign mode. And even if you're building your own decks, you have and a historical division to choose from.
Speaker: And they're trying to generate the companies that made up that... The companies and the regiments that made up that division. So, for example, if you... Just straight off the top of my head.
Speaker: If you play... oh the SS division Viking, you will have the Schwedensug recon company, and they will try to generate the historical company. Of course, it's not 100%, mainly because the Germans never had the equipment they said they wanted to have, but they're trying to get as close as possible.
Speaker: So that's in five minutes or four minutes, Steel Division 2. I think, first of all, I have to, hands down, and give you a small round of applause. You will not hear it, but Magnus, that was a terrific summary of Steel Division 2 in this. And, I mean, it it's built on a lot of other games. it's And you can always see the...
Speaker: the The impact that close combat games have had in this, but this is close combat scaled up. Scaled up to, instead of fighting in a small part of a town, you're scaled up to a map, essentially, where you have that town.
Speaker: three other villages, ah two bridgeheads, and so forth and so forth. And you have line of sight, which is important, which you can look at.
Speaker: You have the range of different vehicles or artillery. Mainly here, Magnus have played somewhat together and... We have different strategies in this. I mean, I'm an air force and artillery kind of guy.
Speaker: Counter artillery barrages are a thing. Artillery barrages are a thing. And supply is a thing. So this is kind of the, as Magnus said, if you want to be a military overestated or over-interested person who wants to deep dive into...
Speaker: What is the front armor of T-34 or a Panther? Dive into this. Why it' is a Stug really good against infantry? Why is it not a Panzer killing?
Speaker: unit Why is a Jagdpanzer great against T-34s but doesn't work as well against an MG-42? thirty two yeah for for two For example, this is really the game for you. And I love this game. I think it's a great game. but it has to read And I just want to put it in here before we kind of move on.
Speaker: The learning curve is steep. It is a steep learning curve. Yeah, as a person not playing the game, ah you had me there already like, what is the font armor of a T-34?
Speaker: Well, from Hearts of Iron, I know that it's pierced. And that's where my knowledge comes. So this is ah probably why I ah haven't gotten into it. But I guess so also so it's one of these games where...
Speaker: it can catch you You can dip into it a little bit because you like strategy gaming. You actually do the initial research, get over a steep learning curve. This is one of those games, it looks like one of those games where you can just get caught and never get out again.
Speaker: Well, yes and no. I'd say it very... The bad thing about it is it is what it is. and It's not like you scale up in that and then after year realize that, oh, there's a whole different account. It's not a ground strategy game. It's an RTS game.
Speaker: And the learning curve is the deepest you want, CES, and you kind of need to give it a few hours to get good. And I think it helps if you're an an RTS player. but But even if you're not an exp experienced RTS player, you can have a lot of fun with just the historical accuracy of it. And we talked about this when we talked about mapping, is that what I love about...
Speaker: I mean, the whole war game in Steel Evision series is that they really try to replicate a battlefield. ah You mentioned that about the line of sight you want. This game makes me question, why don't every game have a very well-thought-out line of sight mechanic?
Speaker: ah Because it is important. But when you place an AT gun, it's really important to check, okay, do I have line of sight? Will that bunch of trees 500 meters away, will that interfere with my... with my line of sight on the road that I want the anti-tank gun to control.
Speaker: And I mean, that scratches an itch within my nerdiness. As well as, I mean, the attempt at historical accuracy that, yeah, you can play a cool Panzer Division, but you won't have an infinite amount of super heavy German tanks. If you want to build, if you want to go down the line of playing super heavy German tanks, you just have to take the payoff that there just aren't as many.
Speaker: ah German tanks overall are better tanks than Soviets, ah but the Soviets have more of them. And you can you can swarm a German heavy tank player. ah Everything isn't just about tanks.
Speaker: If you try and go out there with just an armored fist, you might guess you get your ass handed to you by a guy that plays an infantry division as it is really good about Combined arms. ah Because if he has his. I mean his artillery barrages down.
Speaker: He has better recon. He has better AT. He can make a lot better use of the terrain. With an infantry division. Than you can with your four or five tanks. ah It really pitches.
Speaker: It pitches why. It's a good thing to have. a coherent division, not just, you know, do I have this unit, but a division is a larger thing. So it's almost like an organism that works together.
Speaker: yeah And I think that that's, is one of the few games or games here is that really try and do this. And I would say do this well. And then the historical accuracy goes out the window. When you go into the multiple community, you realize that, oh, there's meta about thing like French tanks.
Speaker: And let me tell you like French tanks did not have a huge impact on the war. Yeah. Especially not on the Eastern Front, just to say. But, I mean, there is something in this which makes it, yes, it's an RTS, but it makes it a strategy game because um I've played, hardly play the heavy yeah German tank divisions. I rarely do. I prefer to play the and the Soviets and I prefer to have a lot of artillery, which they did have.
Speaker: But and Just telling this, you can't just take four targets, try to ram them down the throat of the enemy, because what the enemy will do, well, we will set up inventory, and there's some anti-tank, light division,
Speaker: And then we know you're bugged down here. You're at point A. I have katushas. I have artillery. I have sturmowiks. I will concentrate all of that on your point.
Speaker: And I will just destroy your tanks. Because you're going to get blown up. Yes, your front armor is good. Yes, you have a really great cannon. Yes, you can destroy my T-34s. But my T-34s are now going around you.
Speaker: And we're bombing the area. you're in. So it's not a the heavier the Panzer you get, the better you will perform, the more victory you will have. Because if that were the instance, yes, well, then the Maus would have been the best tank ever built.
Speaker: And we all know it wasn't. and It's still a good feeling, though. I mean, just running some really heavy tanks down a country road, just blasting everything in front of you. it is It does teach you the lesson that never drive a tank anywhere near a wood.
Speaker: It's like, just don't do it. yeah and And it teaches you, do not have a single tank without support. You do not drive a tank the without infantry support or mechanized support or another tank in support.
Speaker: and Unless you fight on the continuation war in 1944 Finland, because then you could probably just drive T-34 down the throat on someone. But... down the throat and so It is kind of these games, and but I want get back to something I've said and you said, Magnus, and something I think Andreas also will get quite excited about.
Speaker: It is the line of sight mechanic, because that is great... i have I have yet to see such a good line of sight mechanic and also the range width.
Speaker: You're affected to 200 yards. Here you will penetrate them. Here you will probably bounce. Here you're not effective, but you can still be an annoyance. It it is a great mechanic.
Speaker: and that just one of them ah and There are so many just brilliant things about it that you actually have. i mean You have a mechanic for, okay, fire only when you think you have a decent chance of penetrating.
Speaker: Yeah, your cannon can reach out to 1500 or 2000 meters. But you can order units to fire when they're confident of getting a critical hit. So they'll let, for example, an enemy tank come within 400 meters or turn its flank.
Speaker: And I think that's the only game I've played or I've seen where you have that kind of that kind of mechanic or that kind of logic in it. Because, of course, you will. you you As soon as you're fired, you're a target.
Speaker: ah you would want you know You wouldn't want to be reasonably confident of making a hit. ah It's a bit unrealistic that... I mean, they they had a statistic on the Eastern Front that it took about 50 rounds to actually have a confirmed tank kill.
Speaker: ah Of course, that if you you can't be 100% realistic. no No, you can't. But, I mean, they they built um upon of something that Close Combat did.
Speaker: But they had fire... hold fire and go into Amber Stance. The problem with this was um if you went into an Amber Stance because the maps were so so tiny and you had like a pack 44 and you want to go into an Amber Stance The problem was the tank will spot you before you actually get into the firing range and would destroy it. So you usually just used your anti-tank gun or your idiots or whatever it was, a very expensive unit.
Speaker: You put them out and said, I want to know well where the enemy tank is so I can hit it with something else. And they got destroyed. Maybe they took up one tank. In Steel Vision, it's more of... We have the line of sight.
Speaker: We'll fire at 300, 400 yards, something like that. But it's not a lone anti-tanker. It's not a lone 88. You probably have three or four of them set up in Crescent or something like that.
Speaker: The first starts firing. The tank turns, and the next one fires. And the next one, and the next one. So... it is It is the best use of line of sight I've seen in this kind of games ever.
Speaker: i I need to ask you, Gett, because line of sight is one of those things. I almost want to wake an entire episode on it, and it's going to be creepily long. Perhaps not deserving it.
Speaker: Let's do It is one of these things which a lot of early strategy games tried to do and did wrong. And we all have, I think, had experiences of ah units just... but you're you're looking right at them, please shoot and you get sort of some error message like no we can't fire and we can't fire like a road or something like that um Cossacks unfortunately one of my favorite games has this problem a lot so does it work in Steel Division?
Speaker: does the line of sight work well? Yes, I would really say so. And it's basically how it works is that it will fire when it calculates that it has a line sight. You can see this as a player if you hover over the unit or if you press, I think it's hotkey yeah see okay Where can we see to shoot and where can't we?
Speaker: So for example, if there're so if there's a hill between us and the road that we're trying to control, yeah You won't be able to see that road. you won't be If you're in a you ah unit that uses direct line of fire, you won't be able to fire on it.
Speaker: Artillery will, of course, but artillery won't be able to spot it themselves. They need some kind of recon units to relay, okay, where is the enemy unit how it to be more precise and to actually make ah a controlled hit if you don't want to just do a blocking barrage.
Speaker: and The other thing is that So you need to be in range. You need to actually see the unit and then you can fire on it. And this means as well, for example, for as an example, of how well it works.
Speaker: Say yeah have a line of trees on the side of the road. The unit will actually, okay, I can see you. Now I can't, now I can't, now I can't. Which means that you need often a couple of seconds to let them get on target as well. So it works down to that level.
Speaker: And I don't think I've ever been, had that kind of frustration that you had with old games. Like you can see them, just shoot them. Close combat. Then again, close combat. When you see your bazooka team seeing the ass of the panther going, loading, loading, loading, aiming, aiming, firing, and then you see the rocket go wild.
Speaker: And it's like, you had it, you stupid, stupid Jesus. You had it. that's That's kind of what you can get here. But I also think it it it's kind of a good representation of you have to lie still.
Speaker: You have to let the tank pass. And now i have to get up and try to shoot this one. It's a stressful situation. and So the Land of Set works, and the but also the morale system.
Speaker: I find it really, really good. I've only seen that kind of morale system in close combat, and I don't know if they've taken inspiration from close combat, but there are some similarities in this because...
Speaker: You can have some divisions fighting to the death when they're surrounded. And you can have some divisions just breaking and running. And the morale system is also an integral and an important part of steel division, in my opinion.
Speaker: Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the few things where you can do a very sharp exploit, like shock a tank crew and then you drive a light tank up to make them capitulate. Yeah, that's pure exploit. But those are rare in this game.
Speaker: And that, I think, says something about how well rounded it is, that there are very few like clean exploits. And it also reflects that, yeah, most divisions won't fight to the death.
Speaker: if If you're in a machine gun crew of three and two of your buddies have died, Probably going to either just keep your head down or run away. It's not perfect, but it's the best rendering ah I've seen of how i think that morale would work.
Speaker: Yeah, if if you're a rifle platoon running over a field and a Maxim or an MG opens up at you and you see your buddies dropping in your four left, you won't try to fight them.
Speaker: you You will surrender, which which is a good... It's a good mechanic, but also something and we talked about it ah bit with line of sight and artillery and recon all that.
Speaker: But something I think this game does really, really well, which kind of tends to get forgotten or overlooked in other games, logistics and supply.
Speaker: I think that's so they really hit the mark when it comes to that. Explain how it works. Well, basically, say say, okay, so I have a tank, and I want to drive up to the front line, because most of these are like map encounters, they're real-time strata. You see the tank actually driving down the road ah at the enemy, trying to take a position, trying to defend a position, and you have a loadout.
Speaker: And these are standard loadouts. It would really cool if you could change the loadouts, but that's maybe i'd step too far. So, for example, my my tiger has... and remember, but say it has 56 high explosive rounds, anti-personnel rounds, and then it has maybe 32 armor piercing rounds.
Speaker: and up And then it has a number of thousand of machine gun rounds as well for the coax machine gun. and When it has spent its AP rounds, it cannot fire armor-piercing rounds. It can still find its machine guns, it can still fight, it can still observe, but it just won't the rounds are spent.
Speaker: ah And what you have to do is you know either get another tank, super position or you can get ah a logistics vehicle, like a supply truck. to come up and load out the tiger.
Speaker: Stupid thing to do in the front lane, because it is vulnerable. If you get shelled, at the whole tiger and the supply truck might explode. and So what you want to do is pull back your tank, get the supply truck up to it, ah resupply, and then send the tank back into into the fight.
Speaker: it's not i mean It's not perfect. It's not 100% realistic, but it's more realistic than ah most games I've seen. The weird thing is when when your tank breaks down because it's a German tank, so you know the final drive or the gearbox will inevitably ah will inevitably break.
Speaker: yeah The supply truck fixes that as well, which is weird. yeah It means that your your tank can get damaged and repaired. Your tank can run out of shells and get resupplied.
Speaker: And that's an integral part of that. If you if you don't have enough supply duck trucks in your deck, you will lose, especially if you're artillery heavy, because artillery also needs a fresh supply of ammunition if you're going to use them.
Speaker: Yeah, which which I think is a great part because it also shows this. Yes, you can resupply a tank in the front line. Nobody does that unless you're on the defensive and heavily pressed.
Speaker: You pull them back and you push in new troops. You push new tanks. So that is also a quite key strategic element with it.
Speaker: Will I keep going and hope that I don't meet another panzer? I don't need to meet another tank. Maybe I just keep going with high explosives. The crucial part usually with a tank, it if it's allies or Axis,
Speaker: It's not when you run out of anti-tank or high explosives. It's when your machine gun comes out. Because then you can get swarmed. And infantry, they have bond charges. They have TNT. They have the things to disable tanks if they get close enough.
Speaker: And if you just have high explosives... Yeah, okay, you can kill some of them, but you're going to get s sworn. So logistics is an integral part of Steel Division 2.
Speaker: And I think they then don't to do it correctly, but they do it well enough. I just love that there is another game who has a supply system similar to War Kings battles, finally.
Speaker: I'm going to have to play it just for that. right. Yeah. let Let's just drop Warrior King's Battles. It has very little to with Steel Division. But the beauty of this is that, okay, say we're playing this and and we want to take a hill and the battle map is usually about, say it's five or eight kilometers long. They're trying to simulate that kind of distance. Something like that, yeah.
Speaker: And I want to take ah hill that's three kilometers behind the enemy's front line because how you win, it we should say that the game is basically a long series of tactical battles and you win the battle by controlling ground.
Speaker: Usually yeah in multiplayer, you can win on destroying enemy in units, but the usual thing is that you want to control ground. And the more ground you control, you get kind of like a victory point system. It's not the same as in war game, but you want to move the front line. You want to surround and destroy in units and you want to take key positions.
Speaker: If I'm going to take a hill that's two kilometers behind the enemy front line, What I realistically need to do is actually assemble kind of like a strike force, a combined order strike force.
Speaker: I'll probably want some mortars. I want some air, preferably artillery on the back of my, like behind my own frontline that can fire into it. I will need recon vehicles. I will need infantry that can ah take...
Speaker: Trees take defensive positions that can shore up my gains. ah That can recce, that can clear buildings. So you need recce, you need infantry, you need armored units, you need artillery or fire support.
Speaker: And preferably also air support. And some anti-air because if you're not, you've got to get wrecked by the enemy air coming in. I love that. I think that we're getting on the drawbacks in a minute, and I'd like to come back to air support then, but that's, I think, the most fantastic thing about this. When you want to take round, you need Combined Arms Warfare.
Speaker: ah And I think that it's one of the very few games that can simulate Combined Arms Warfare and the need for Combined Arms Warfare. Yeah, and I just want to put in a little cheeky thing here.
Speaker: Falk, if you're listening, infantry, important things to win a game. Yeah, for those of you listen to our Hearts of Poland episodes, ah yeah that's a bit um but of shade from those episodes.
Speaker: It's a bit of shade, but we won. He didn't have infantry. so But okay, so... As you've probably heard, I think this is a very, very cool game. It is.
Speaker: i I did not have it on my list of best games ever. And we might come into some of the drawbacks for this. So we've talked about what is really cool about this. i meaning mean, the historicity, the realism in Combined World Warfare, that they actually have i mean integral logistic units that are really important.
Speaker: A good morale system. Yuan, what's the most stupid thing about Steeler Vision? ah I have two but and one of them is, yeah i'll or I had three, but I always said steep learning curve.
Speaker: But the main thing that ticks me is the AI is underwhelming. It is. I mean, the AI often fails to provide a challenge, so especially in late game. It struggles with proper unit assessment. It struggles with positioning.
Speaker: ah And they sometimes when you play against the AI, you can get you see all their tanks come just rolling down the single... Autobahn of... Yeah, this is the main road. Let's put them there. oh Okay, but I have Catoosers or I have Artillery or I have Junkers.
Speaker: I will bomb them. And they don't spread out. the The AI... is underwhelming. that That's my first thing to say. Even hard difficulties, the only thing they get are some bonuses to morale. and And we have somewhat... And yeah and you touched on this, Magnus.
Speaker: There's some unbalanced multiplayer because you you can have... quite hard also ah as we have in Harch of Iron meta shifts that can make it harder for casual players such as myself to keep up suddenly and French light tanks are the meta or Romanian yeah and Romanian machine guns are the meta, and this usually coincides with the release of a new DLC.
Speaker: They can't don't they the country balance it in multiplayer. ah But yeah my my two or what three biggest things are the AI, the meta play, and...
Speaker: ah Yeah, the the steep learning curve. That's probably my three main drawbacks from this game. Yeah, well, I mean, the meta, it is...
Speaker: When you peel away all the kind of like cool historicity and nerdiness of it, if you're a to if you're a World War II nerd, it is a classic RTS, which means that when you head into the multiplayer servers, you're going to get up against a guy who's been spending years honing his French line tank division. You're like, well, I've built a really good combined arts division here. I feel confident in this. And he's like, ah but I will build 500 French light tanks and I will run over you in the first phase.
Speaker: there's free system in multiplayer gaming, which means that, OK, depending on how much points you get, and it's and it it bugs me because I'm not ah you know, a heavy RTS player, which means that that will be, that will be a drawback for people like me.
Speaker: ah yeah You will head in hand-tohead and into those kinds of divisions. The air is, i mean, it's, it's so, it's so hard to render air good because there is a lot of myth making about what air power can and cannot do.
Speaker: And if you have kind of like a regiment sized unit meeting another regiment sized unit, how much air covers everything. kind of reasonable to expect overhead and it's also very hard to i think render the effect of anti-air on airplanes and i think they do it kind of well like just because a bomb hits a tank it doesn't mean the tank is necessarily going to explode uh and a rocket or an anti-tank gun in a plane is going to be more effective if it's armor-piercing than than just a bomb uh
Speaker: you can just scare away an airplane by putting up a lot of lead in the air with an AA gun. And I think the, I love as sweet how OP the Bofors gun is in this game. Just if you get a correct four or five Bofors guns in, you're basically, you've locked down the air.
Speaker: And I love that. now But it, it, it, it irks me that sometimes you just, you get a lot out of air and in specific situations. I mean, Armor-piercing bomb Stukas or canister bomb Stukas are just... They're a grid racer against tanks.
Speaker: I did to my brother-in-law once. He was just about to cap me. They had rolled a pass group all the way over the map. And I get in two Stukas and wipe them off the face of the earth. very pleasing in the moment.
Speaker: I'm not sure that anyone would have managed to pull that off in real game. and You have this kind of very perfect coordination between recon groups and airplanes, for example. And airplane spotting is... It's it's maybe a bit too good to be true, but just I think it's just something you had to accept within a game. and You have to have these trade-offs if you want it to be a playable game.
Speaker: app But my big thing you want What really drags this damn game down is campaign mode might be the most stupid thing I've ever seen.
Speaker: Because they put all this time into making a very quite realistic real-time strategy game. And then they added campaign mode. That's just so stupid. Where logistics really matter in the RTS, in the tactical map, all of a sudden logistics just aren't there in the strategic map mode.
Speaker: ah The only thing is, that okay, if you get surrounded, you get three days. After that, unless you will have supply. Unless you have airplanes that can drop in supplies, then it's okay.
Speaker: Interesting that. Göring could supply everything.
Speaker: As we all know from history, Göring could supply anything on the Eastern Front. Yes. darling car But it is, and it it just bothers me. And it means that the whole campaign mode, it's very hard not to just, okay, well, I'll just surround everything.
Speaker: then I ought to win. and Which means you basically, you could fight two or three battles, surround everything, and then you win. wow I've talked about how rivers work in this game before. It's stupid.
Speaker: ah And you one you mentioned a thing that had... I'd i'd forgotten about this, but it's one of the biggest drawbacks. It's maps. Couldn't you just... Yeah. That's what you told me for the podcast. like Yeah, it's maps and it's something I should have brought up when we did the episode.
Speaker: Maps! and But they have some maps pre-generated. and We're talking about the tactical maps here. We're we're talking about the tactical maps. so When you look at the strategic map and you see we are standing at a river or we're standing at a heavy forested tile or we're standing at a city tile, you might get a generated map when you stand at the river, when you stand at the Volga, there's no river.
Speaker: There's no water at all in this map. And that kind of vexes me because it's we have these divisions standing here.
Speaker: It's going to be a river map game. We don't give get a river map. Or we're standing in a city and what you get is maybe ah kind of a village in the middle, and then you get some forested tiles on the sides of it, so it's not an urban map.
Speaker: and Or when you have a heavy forested tile, you have heavy forest, which is actually light forest, and then some fields. generation of The generating of maps is not spot on, especially when it comes to rivers.
Speaker: Yeah, and the problem is basically we think ah that kind of like the the map had the base of maps, the bank of maps is too small. And I think that it kind of it's weird to me because they they must, the studio must put a lot of time into generating ah the divisions, the units, kind of like, okay, so this Panther was painted in precisely this way.
Speaker: put some of those resources into making twice as many maps and the game might have, you bit of a larger it might be know a better game or in the larger game and a game with more content in it uh so i think that's a weird thing about it because it is this point uh it's six years old Yeah, and there's especially a part in the strategic map when you play a campaign against each other and you position your troops with, I have the river, I hold the river, they have to attack me, and then the bell comes, there's no river here, but there's no British, there's nothing.
Speaker: And that kind of throws your whole defensive game yeah but and and But also for for the other person, it throws their offensive vein because they've probably stacked up to do these huge parsh push. They know that I have to go through bridges. I have to do this.
Speaker: And then they realize this is fields in the generated map. And as you say, I mean, they've gone so into detail of getting French resistant fighters citrae-ing via fives.
Speaker: With the right little icon and the spraying of the free French forces and how does an MG40 look at an infantryman.
Speaker: Down to the detail. They've done it really well.
Speaker: You should be able to get a river in here if I stand re a river tied. that That should probably be easier. oh I think we could put this on the... They make a lot of weird decisions. Eugene They do.
Speaker: They do. Or Eugene's systems. um And i think that I think they started a long way a long time before Steel Evision 2, but it seems to be a bit persistent. A bit French, perhaps.
Speaker: ah Very cool games. Some weird decisions when they built the games or when they developed the games. Well, they had very cool tanks in the beginning of World War two So, I mean...
Speaker: Cool tanks, cool decisions, doesn't really plan out.
Speaker: i Speaking of i mean the studio and the developers, because they think that this is and maybe it not a bad thing, but a think ah thing that's worth me or worth mentioning about Eugene Systems. but I've spent quite a lot of money on this game.
Speaker: It isn't a very expensive base game, ah but... They dropped a lot of DLCs for it, and usually you can get a bit pissed. My brother-in-law, who also loves this game, actually, yeah he convinced me almost about, yeah, there are a lot of DLCs.
Speaker: They do cost quite a bit, but maybe it's worth it if you want this kind of game to exist. ah Because i would say that is quite unique, at least right now. it is in this I don't think anything that you can buy really compares to this.
Speaker: Uh, so I happily spent my money on most of the DLCs. Uh, but I think it, it's a problem that if you really want this to flesh out, you would need to buy a couple of DLCs. And a lot of DLCs are not like, yeah, this gives me a lot, a whole new, this really expands the game.
Speaker: it might be couple of divisions. Uh, it might be maybe a map. I think that dropped a couple of new, uh, four or five at this point. Um, uh,
Speaker: There campaign maps, there are campaigns that you can play, but it's not a lot for the amount of money in the DLCs. And I get why Eugene had to do it because, you know, they had to run the studio off of something.
Speaker: And as a said I said, I'm glad they paid, but I think that's something that might scare away a lot of players. And there is something problematic to say about this if you want a relevant game that keeps developing.
Speaker: what should you expect to pay or what what do you feel decent what feels decent paying? um
Speaker: Yeah, but i I mean, I agree with you there, but I have to give something to GDN Systems for what they do. and that Yes, the they have a lot of DLCs. The DLCs are the expensive, but they also, Paradox they also as perx do They let their modern community run rampant and run loose with this. i um I want to get into that in a minute.
Speaker: I just want to give a shout out to the Union System because they've done a game that I loved. It was a great game, and which they did in 2010.
Speaker: and The only downside with that game was so that it was published by Ubisoft. Oosh! ah it was It was a game called Ruse, where you play essentially Steel Division, but you have bluff mechanics to conceal troops or get the enemy to... It's basically what Andreas did in the Hearts of Poland game. It's a spy game, but with real troops.
Speaker: They got some funding from that. ah It didn't fly as well as it should have done, and but they probably got a lot of money from it, and it's a good game except for Ubisoft because Ubisoft, ush.
Speaker: and I'm sorry, podcast and listeners. EA and Ubisoft are two of my pet peeves. I can't handle them. them But what Eugene Games did later on is they allowed ah really good and strong modding community which kind of you can buy the DLCs but you can also just go for the mods which I think is great I love a studio that just lets their fans do mods do new armies do new maps
Speaker: Or what do you think about that? Yeah, well, mean it's it's not on Paradox level, but there are more than 700 mods to download, and I'm sure a lot of them are crap, but that it adds a lot of flavor. And I think we said before, this is something we wish that a lot more developers would do, just yeah let the modding community basically not build the game for you, but keep it relevant for you.
Speaker: yeah It costs next to nothing. I actually love that. Sorry to drag us into Paradox there, but they've actually released their own YouTube tutorials on how to mod their games.
Speaker: I was like, yeah, I love this. which more studious would've add than that We're going to sit down and try to dumb it down for you explain exactly how you mod our games. yeah And um I think that kind of statement.
Speaker: Love that. and But i have this game also, i mean, it has advice this game really needs it. So are we aware if there is any mod that lets you replace your tanks with My Little Ponies?
Speaker: Nope. I don't know where there is. So this is a deep callback to Heart of Iron 4, which has a War of Equestria, I think it's called, mold which is essentially entire skin of Heart of Iron in the My Little Pony universe.
Speaker: No, what you're doing is a callback to Crusader Kings 2, which had the first War of Equestria. And i I do not want to... I won't have it anything to do with this.
Speaker: I hate it. I don't know why we did it. And now we're talking about Steel Vision. So I'm just going to leave that over in the Paradox universe and go back to... we just say that we can neither confirm nor deny that the bronies are in this modding community as well.
Speaker: I have no idea and I hope they're not. So if there are any bronies out there listening, please give us a shout out. Why don't you want to catch that? I mean, that that's a valid group for us. Well, if they're out there, give us a shout out, send us a link to your mod, and we will happily try it in Steel Division 2 and see what happens, and we will review it.
Speaker: You pushed it too far, you want Nope. I want to make this review as well. Yep, and ah I will do that. I will see what is the better, ah winged horse or something that's not winged.
Speaker: I don't know, my little partner. I have no idea. Please, no no wing divisions in any game. That's that's a no for me. Air divisions, absolutely. when they have wing When you put wings on things that shouldn't wings, yeah not so sure about it.
Speaker: Magnus, are we the bad guys?
Speaker: but That skulls you, are not wings. ah Well, they some of them had wings. besides well But this game is Steel Division 2. If you haven't played it,
Speaker: Give it a try. I think you will like it. It's a steep learning curve. We will, and I promise this, me and Magnus will have a follow-up discussion with this after we've made Andreas play this game together with us just to see what it's about and how fun it is.
Speaker: But this is a gem. It's one of the best, probably the best, World War II RTS games out there, in my opinion. Yeah, and we're rounding off, and I completely agree. And was just going to say this, because I don't want it to be the last thing I said. but But speaking of Are We The Baddies and ss Way less Nazis in the multiplayer community than you would think. Because that, as I'm sure you guys listening know, that this is sometimes a problem with games.
Speaker: now I think we, me and you, one both played Civil War game where it's like, yeah, it's a really good game, but there are a lot of racists. yeah Shocker, playing as the South in the Civil War.
Speaker: ah Less than you would think in this game. I'm sure there are some, because there are always Nazis on the internet. ah But that's a seal of approval. The less Nazis, the better.
Speaker: Official podcast policy. What did want to round off with is that we i hope we play this game together. I'm way up for reviewing it with on the DS. But we should also mention that, of course, the Eugene Systems released another game kind of like related to Wargame series, War No, last year.
Speaker: And we will be doing episode on that in the fullness of time. Yeah, I think we all have to play this. And before I hand it back to Andreas to kind of round us off, I want to say we have we have two very high, very solid standpoints. One is and no Nazis and Slavo-Ukraine.
Speaker: Those are two standpoints we have. Andreas, over to you. No, I can only agree. So thank you all for listening. I hope you have had a great, well, morning, evening, commute, when whenever you're listening to this podcast.
Speaker: Please drop a like and review us or just spread the word around and we'll get back to you with our next episode in the fullness of time.
