I saw that this game has a lot of cool Chinese/Soviet/North Korean military hardware but I checked the gameplay and it looks really complex and hard. I do enjoy RTS games like Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, and World in Conflict.
Any experiences with the game and how hard it is to really play?
It's way easier than traditional rtses, as it doesn't rely almost entirely on apm to do well. The units interact logically, and exploits being left in as game mechanics aren't a thing like in most rtses.
Basically, the game let's you worry less about babysitting each individual unit and clicking really fast and worry more about actually playing the game.
Also, if you buy it immediately turn on NATO counters. The weird cartoon symbols it uses by default are extremely unhelpful and difficult to read.
Doesn't sound too bad, to be honest.
Maybe I'll have to try it since it's only 30 bucks.
I love the heck out of it, even if the politics in it are incredibly bad. Imagine writing a scenario where Margaret Thatcher refuses to give Hong Kong back to China, and somehow portraying this as a good thing.
Gonna have to disagree with furryanarchy about the micromanagement it requires though. Once you start trying to "get good" at this game you'll be micromanaging the crap out of your units in a hundred little ways all at once. Compared to Starcraft there's a lot less fast precise clicking, but it is pretty stressful especially in 1v1s - it's more about being mentally present on the whole map, executing whatever your own plans are and reacting quickly to things you see your opponent doing.
Luckily, there's plenty of people in the online lobbies playing big team battles where you can approach things much more casually, but the first dozen hours or so with the game are going to be painful until you catch up to everyone else in terms of basic proficiency. The single player campaign teaches you how to abuse the AI but that doesn't really help you learn to play the game against people, so I would suggest spending some time watching YouTube tutorials from high level players and copying their decks so that you can get familiar with the most common units people use.
My tips: Don't buy planes unless you're already pushing past the halfway point of the map, always pair your infantry with mortars (and use those smoke rounds), always have one long range precision artillery hotkeyed so that you can quickly do counter-battery fire (remember to reposition it right after it shoots), a single super heavy tank with diverse support beats multiple super heavy tanks without it, and don't neglect a little base defense because there are a lot of players who like to do sneaky shit.
Thanks, this is a lot of useful info, I guess the gameplay doesn't sound too overwhelming unless you want to do high-level gameplay.
I just don't enjoy games like EVE Online where you are completely lost unless you read through the manual and a wiki.
I don't plan to play much multiplayer since I don't enjoy how stressful 1v1 games are when you play them with random people.
Is it possible to enjoy the game in single-player mode? Besides the campaign, there's probably some sort of skirmish mode too?
Yes on both counts, there's 5 campaigns of increasing scale and difficulty, and for me it took a couple attempts at each before I figured out what worked and what didn't. The AI has a peculiar way of playing that you'll learn to abuse, but it's not so bad that you'll feel like you're playing a different game. If nothing else it's fun watching dozens of vehicles crammed into a tiny area suddenly evaporate to cluster bombs.
