Steel Division - Normandy 44

I bought this today and after a 12gb download played 5 games against the ai. Did not win 1 but drew 1

The game is really good, similar to war game but much slower paced. You can actually watch and enjoy the battles. You can also increase speed or reduce if need be.

The battle is is split into 3 phases, a, b and c.

Phase A is like the scout phase, so you have access to light units and aircraft and the idea is to rush forward, there are no zones to capture as such but you can see the frontline moving in front of your lead units, the more you occupy, the more reinforcement points you get.

Most maps have two or 3 reinforcement points for ground troops and two for airforce.

Phase b and c is where you can bring more heavy troops and vehicles in, at the start of each phase you reinforcement points increase.

You cant see any health bars on the units, just a moral bar. Conscripts will pull back and be easily suppressed allowing you to force them to surrender if surrounded, elites fight to the death.

When you unload troops from non fighting vehicles the vehicles disappear, fighting transports hang around though.

When you bring on a At gun it gets towed by a jeep, when you deploy the jeep disappears but if you have a fighting transport transport nearby you can connect it up again and fast move it. The gun can also be slowly pushed around.

Tank combat is great, you knock out drivers, tracks, explode the ammo rack etc, very similar to old close combat series.

Air combat is good too, the fighters dog fight a lot, sometimes last about 2 mins before one gets shot down. Nothing like bringing a mustang into strafe conscript infantry and at guns.

Artillery is similar to wargame, however I believe you can call in off screen artillery but I have not seen this yet.

You get two maps with beta, one with a town and industrial area, another with load of hedgerows. Maps are fair bit smaller than wargame but still big enough to enjoy.

You have 4 decks to play with, allies are a us armoured division and a British infantry division. The Germans have a SS Divison and airborne division. Lots and lots of historic units there.

The only downside I can see so far is the graphics are not amazing but the game is good fun and challeging against the Ai, multiplayer will no doubt be good too.

If you liked wargame series, company of heroes or close combat series / combat mission games then you will most likely enjoy this game, it's certainly worth to try it.
 
Just to confirm there will be 15 maps on release and 18 divisions. However those maps will be massive and could probably be split into 40 or so 1v1 maps.

There will be 3 campaigns, UK, USA and German.

The divisions that will be in release are:

United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Free France
Poland
Heer
Waffen-SS
Luftwaffe

It's seem that 15th Scots is the best all round division to play and the easiest with 91st LL being the hardest.

Only played against medium Ai so far but have enjoyed paying and building different decks. Look forward to going online when I can beat the Ai on hard.

I also like how the conquest and destruction game modes play very different .
This game has potential to be best rts of the year, hopefully the modding tools will be quite powerful to keep it fresh while waiting for the sure to be expansions.
 
Hold down shift and you can queue commands. You can also issue commands from deployment so you don't have to click like mad once the battle starts.

So a common move is hold shift, press f at a location and then press y on a building, so your troop truck will drive to where you press f, then the troops will unload and move to where you pressed y.

Press u to unload troops instantly.

I played online earlier, had some great games, I really like the 2nd infantry 100mm mortars. The 91st are so hard to play with though, definitely a experts division.
 
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The Ai on medium is tough, if you can beat ai on medium then you will do ok in multiplayer at the moment.

A lot of people play defensive what I have noticed so far and the ai plays very aggressive, it can also see all your units so it will exploit your weak points especially on conquest.

Try playing some 2vs2 or 3vs3 with and against the Ai and choose the 15th Scots. As this should make your front a lot smaller and you can focus on one place and 15th Scots are a great all round division.

On 1vs1 you need to spread your forces out a lot and focus and attack one area. Always start off with 2 or 3 recon units so you can spot where the enemy is pushing.

Don't be afraid to use fighters to attack those pesky AT guns. Artillery is very powerful, especially mlrs or off map arty. It's can literally take out a entire chunk of the enemy forces in one barrage. Mortars are also very powerful when used correctly for killing dug in soft targets.

If you see a enemy unit pinned. Try running one of your units close to them and they will surrender. If one of your units is pinned press the r key and they will fall back.

Learn the keyboard shortcuts and play on slow speed while you learn. It's a hard but rewarding game.
 
The Ai does know where all your units are but it can only act on what it can see with its units line of sight. A medium Ai it's limited to the same income as the player. The Ai will move it's anti tank guns all over the place and it has been know to move its units when you start the timer on a 60 second artillery barrage.

The medium Ai does usually push in one area at a time due to its limited income but it will usually probe the entire front. It has the same income as the player on medium so it can't spam units at you or have unlimited units in its deck.

If you play on hard or expert Ai they the Ai cheats with more income. I have noticed on medium it won't use aircraft that much but on hard it uses them a lot.
 
In the wargame series the Ai always knew where your units were too, but it was still very beatable. Besides it makes for a good challenge at first and it will prepare you well for online combat. Maybe the mod scene will be able to change the Ai somewhat in how it behaves.
 
Just to update, the devs have said the ai does not cheat on medium. Which means no extra income or faster income, they mentioned nothing about LOS.

Some players who play on hard say that the Ai seems to know where all their units are all the time and it's very hard to ambush them due to the dynamic front. In wargame the Ai would Beeline to high point areas as fast as possible and you could predict where they would be.

You also may notice it's very hard to sometimes flank shot a tank, that's because a tank automatically turns its hull to face its biggest seen threat.

As long as the Ai in the campaign is challenging I will be happy, and I also hope it won't be scripted too. The campaign is going to be like European escalation style, basically sequential maps storydriven maps where your losses will carry over to next mission and you will get sub ojectetives for each mission too which can affect the enemy force and your force on the next map.

I am loving playing this online now, had an epic battle on sword 10vs10 taking one of the towns in the middle.

My direct opponent dug in with the 21st and I was attacking with 15th Scots. Those axis pak halftracks can hit tanks hard! lost my honies and a Churchill, the tide turned though when one of my allies sent some rocket planes in and I brought up two mortar carriers and also off map arty.

Managed to pin his infantry in the building and storm in with bren teams forcing lots of surrenders. Lots of casualties both sides but, he made me pay a high price for every house. it felt so good when I pushed him totally out of the town after about a 20 minute intense battle.

Just to think a 10 battle like this are happening all over the map in different areas... such a fun game.
 
Game releases today with single player campaign (15 missions) and the remaining 8 divisions and maps.

Can't wait to try out 101st and Windhund.
 
Only
Putty said:
Quite interested in this :) What is the campaign like - do the missions follow on from each other or are they scattered?
Click to expand...

There are 3 campaigns with 4 missions each. Units carry over if they survive the mission. Missions follow directly on from each other.
 
I never played COH online, i find this game similar to the old close combat games.

There are two types of cover for infantry which is similar to COH, yellow partial cover and green full cover.

This game very much rewards combined arms. Spot enemy with recon, Suppress with artillery or aircraft then storm in with your infantry to force surrenders of enemy units.

Conquest mode is quite tricky to get the hang of but I feel it's the better mode compared to the destruction mode campfest.

You will usually be focusing on one part of the map unless you play a 1v1, 2v2 in which case you will need to keep an eye on two or three places at once.

If a player drops, their forces are now controlled by the medium Ai which does an ok job.
 
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