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Panzer General III: Scorched Earth
by Steve MacGregorOrders
There are seven basic commands that can be given to any unit. Some (like movement and attack) can be given several times in each turn, some (like refit and rally) use up a units entire allowance for a complete turn. Movement is simple. Just select a unit by left clicking, and all the hexes to which that unit can move in the current phase are highlighted in green. Attacking an enemy unit is just as simple. Select your unit and any hexes containing an enemy unit which can be attacked in the current phase are highlighted in red. Tank, anti tank and infantry units can only attack unit in adjacent hexes, while artillery units can attack units up to several hexes away. Move the cursor over a red hex, and you are shown a forecast of the losses to your unit and the enemy unit if you decide to attack. If you decide to go ahead, just left click on an enemy unit to attack.
The roster bar shows the results of the combat on your unit and the enemy unit. Couldnt be simpler. There are a couple of drawbacks however. Only one ground unit at a time can occupy a hex (there is no stacking) and it is not possible to combine units for an attack. So, for example, its not possible to mount an attack using a combined force of tanks and infantry. Instead, you must move both units to hexes adjacent to the enemy and then attack with one unit before attacking with the other. This is unfortunate and makes it difficult to set up combined attacks.
The combat effects of various types of units seem reasonable (for example, tank suffer heavy losses if they attack entrenched infantry in a city, infantry suffer heavy losses if they attack tanks in open country). However, there were some strange anomalies. Russian KV-1 tanks for example, seemed remarkably easy to destroy, while GAZ trucks carrying 37mm AA guns were extremely difficult to destroy, even with PZKW IV tanks, but these may be foibles associated with this Beta copy.
A battle in progress. The red highlighted hexes show enemy units that can be attacked by the selected unit.
The other basic commands are Dismount (use for towed artillery and anti aircraft weapons), Rally (restores unit morale), Entrench (improved defensive qualities if attacked by enemy unit), Refit (repairs destroyed unit attributes) and Resupply (provides additional ammunition). Generally these are perfectly sensible, but I have doubts about Refit and Resupply. The Refit command is only available to a unit that is not in contact with the enemy, and that has not moved during the current turn. Refit repairs all damage to either the movement of fire capability of the unit. This is useful if your own units are taking a beating, and you want to pull them back out of the line, but it is wholly unrealistic. How can a unit deep in enemy territory, out of contact with friendly units refit itself? Worse still, the AI units seem to use this order constantly. The effect of this is to make it almost mandatory to totally destroy enemy units. If you allow an enemy unit to flee in disarray, it will reappear within a couple of turns totally repaired. Likewise, the Resupply command requires only that a unit is out of contact with the enemy. Aircraft must be adjacent to a friendly airbase to resupply, but ground units can do this anywhere. Again this is wholly unrealistic. If the question of logistics is to be treated in this grossly oversimplified way, why bother at all?
Other special orders are available to units dependant on their type and their leaders special abilities (for example, tank units can be given the Patrol order, which increases their sighting range, the Ground Taker order is available to some infantry leaders, and makes it more likely that attacked units will retreat). These additional orders should give more flexibility to battles, but I must confess that I rarely found myself using them to any great extent
Multiplayer
The game supports multiplayer games for up to four people over a LAN, using Mplayer or via IPX using dedicated multiplayer scenarios. Turns can be time limited to keep waiting time to a minimum. If less than four human players are available, the computer AI takes over the vacant slots. I wasnt able to try the multiplayer facilities of PG:SE for this review, but I imagine that it would be fairly entertaining given the immediacy of the battles, and the option to limit the time given for turns.
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