I have always wondered what would have happened in September 1939 had France and Great Britain not sat on their asses while Poland was being hammered. The top Gwerman generals admitted that they had virtually nothing along the West Wall, and that most of the Luftwaffe was engaged in Poland. Had the British and French mounted a sustained ground and air offensive, even with their limitations, I doubt the Germans could have held out. Indeed, the Poles lasted longer with less than did the French in May 1940 – and they were also attacked by the USSR!

And it’s not a boring part of the game: you have produce your industrial bases , organize your troops, influence nation, increase the threat of other nations, make a block of nations to realize your strategy, send troops into the different theatres (not easy when you play France or Britain)

One thing to mention about this game is the “combat” AI… It is really strong. If
you take the blitzkrieg scenario as Germany, find the Oberkommand of Whermacht and just assign it to “Blitzing” with Lublin and Warsaw. In 8 or 9 clicks you’ll see the AI making a nearly perfect blitzkrieg, trying to pocket units. You have ordered the invasion a complete country with tenth of units in few clicks.

The hierarchization of units is also great (long to put in place but very effective when well done), and the front width obliges you to think. The big stack of units is quite useless. When you can only deploy 12 units it’s not usefull to charge with 34units. In practice it allows the opponents air force to shatter your divisions and to resist with a limited amount of troops to a stupid invader.

Pocketing and taking production centres (ie cities) are vital in this game. With no supplies and fuel an army collapse in 30 days maximum, generally 1-2weeks. Fuel is also a great idea. you import oil but you must refine fuel with your industry to have your tanks moving. So attacking convoys is a good strategy to isolate an opponent, until the opponent fleet sinks your fleets

I won’t enter into details but it’s a very complete wargame. The tutorial is usefullas it presents the needed screens (in “here you have that” style…) but not the combat system ( an aberation!) so it’s a crappy tutorial.
But the game itself is very deep and good. There is a lot of factors to take in account but , amazingly, the game design allows you to keep most of them in mind easily.
There s only the production interface (and the diplomatic one) which needs a small improvement but your production screen will not be consulted every minutes if you’re able to plan your production. Just keep an eye on “the new units icon”

However the game is a bit buggy, some modders have found ways to debug it. Have a look on threads and your game will be nearly perfect.

I don’t play RTS and Wargame but that one:i love it

Again you’re right in mentioning that the AI is also subject to the same freedom as the player, but I still ended up playing a game where almost everything was identical to how WW2 actually happened. The possibilities are so vast in this game that perhaps the scenario I witnessed (that was so close to reality) rarely occurs, and that’s what makes this game so magical, it has the potential to be different every time.

Your review does a great credit to the free-form nature of the strategic possibilities. However, in describing the freedom the player can take, you neglect to mention that the AI has the same freedoms. In fact, no matter how hard the player tries, you will never fight a World War II with Britain, France, the US, and Russia versus Germany, Italy, and Japan. With the seemingly random nature of the strategic AI, the player will see Italy, Finland, or Japan join the Allies, Switzerland or Poland join the Axis, or Germany will never start the war because it’s so threatened by all of its neighbors ganged up on it.

Or, the war may never start and the game engine prevents democracies from starting wars except under extraordinary circumstances.

Unless you are Germany or one of her immediate neighbors, the player may not even be able to fight the war because all of her neighbors tend to align against her and beat her into submission before the player even gets to play.