<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>The game still sucked like before. I guess it might have something to do with putting it on Elite mode, but there is really no semblance of strategy. Here's how they handle Elite mode to add 'challenge':
Units have elevated life, like twice of your guys.
Random number generator is completely rigged against your favor. Be very afraid when it says you'll lose 0 Tigers to 5 of their trucks, because it's most likely the other way around. As far as the computer is concerned, there is no difference in defense or firepower between a truck or a Tiger (that is, your truck and Tigers). Overrun is the only ability that does the damage it's supposed to.
Speaking of trucks, just what the hell are these things made of? It takes like 5 rounds of attack to kill just a truck, doesn't matter if it's bombs, artillery, tank, or infantry. Plus it runs away after every attack forcing you to expand a movement point to just attack it again.
Entrenchment is handled very poorly in this game. Level 3 entrenchment Russian cheapo infatries with 17 life are basically immortal. You'll be lucky if you can even inflict a single point of damage to these guys and they've 17 life and can probably reentrench whatever entrenchment you can strip on their turn. It seems like the trick is to promote your Artillery leader to level 10 as far as you can so you can get the way overpowered Bombardment attack (strips entrenchment completely), because there simply isn't any conventional way to take out the immortal Russian infantries. Well, Pioneres can fight them toe to toe, and can chew up a tank and spit it out, assuming you took care of the level 3 fortified artillery hiding behind the infantries, but you can't afford attrition with Pioneres, which is arguably your strongest unit (Get a leader with Tactics ability on these guys and their attack power actually count, as opposed to everything else). Having unstrippable entrenchment is just wrong. They were fine in the earlier games. A unit with level 9 Entrenchment (analogous to level 3 on PG3) is basically immortal, but you can strip it away very quickly. Engineers/Pioneres used to have build in strip entrenchment, if you're willing to risk them (they're not supposed to be the Gods).
Artilery is really overpowered on the defense. This is why not even the computer attacks you on their turn with their rigged numbers, because a single Artillery can suppress (that is, break up their attack) an entire army and not break a sweat (and sometimes kill them too). The same is true when you're attacking the computer. City sieges essentially turns into artillery duels, because you can't attack at all until all the artillery is gone, and then you at least have a chance to deal with the immortal infantry units.
The time constrain on the missions basically means you've to blitzkrieg through everything and never get bogged down. This is rather hard when fighting immortal infantries that can stall your entire army for multiple turns on their own. Here's a typical army versus Russian Conscript (17 life, weakest Russian infantry, but arguably the strongest since computer cheats on the attack/defense stats. Higher units have less life in exchange for supposedly better stats but this actually works against the computer's favor because they already cheat on the stats so badly anyway)
2 Artillery attacks 3-4 times. Suppress infantry completely (they can't counterattack anymore), Infantry at 15 strength.
Tanks and Anti-Tank attack the infantry for about 10 times, dealing somewhere around 3 damage.
Ju87D bombs infantry, doing about another 3 damage.
Now you bring the big guns, your Pionere units. Despite the numbers look something like 0 losses you to 8 losses them, expect the Conscripts to knock your Pioneres down to about 4 life (they've a total of 8) before running away with about 5 life remaining.
At this point, you probably ran out of units to attack the infantry, so next turn it just refits and is back to 17 strength again, and if it's at a city/forest square, it'd be back to level 3 entrenchment in about another turn.
People's General was kind of screwed up, but at least it was in your favor (omniscient artilleries. Stealth Tanks, and of course, Overrunning Helicopters). :( Maybe I'll go pick up one of those 'hardcore' strategy games where you can control each soldier or whatever, and see if those actually offer real strategy. Oddly enough, I think the best strategy games ever made was back in the days where AI was relatively nonexistent. Panzer General (the first one) and Super Daisenryaku (anyone know where I can find this ROM for genesis? The battery died about 5 years ago) are what I considered to be the best strategy games out there. Panzer General basically got everything right and SSI figured out how to screw up everything they ever got right in the subsequent games. Super Daisenryaku had a fairly deep battle system without being painful, and I think the lack of fog of war actually made it more interesting. While it's not realistic to see inside the other guy's capital and terroritory, this in effect simulated real life stuff like radars and whatnot so that it's not like your typical Fog of War based game where 3 entire armies can move past your guys undetected because they were 2 pixels away from your unit's visible range. You'd think this makes sneak attacks impossible, but you'll be surprised how often you can be playing at yourself and realize that you simply don't have the troops to ward off a sneak attack you saw 5 turns ago, and it's at least a conscious decision to focus the troops elsewhere rather than having an entire army suddenly appear out of the fog of war and stomp you. I've actually managed to launch amphibious attack assaults on myself even though I knew what was coming the moment the ships loaded the tanks up, because it was well supported and enough units were coming from another front, plus the attacker side had air superiority to interdict the bombers. If this was any other game, like say, Starcraft, an amphibious assault (I guess that'd be like a drop) simply can't succeed if they see it coming.</div>
Units have elevated life, like twice of your guys.
Random number generator is completely rigged against your favor. Be very afraid when it says you'll lose 0 Tigers to 5 of their trucks, because it's most likely the other way around. As far as the computer is concerned, there is no difference in defense or firepower between a truck or a Tiger (that is, your truck and Tigers). Overrun is the only ability that does the damage it's supposed to.
Speaking of trucks, just what the hell are these things made of? It takes like 5 rounds of attack to kill just a truck, doesn't matter if it's bombs, artillery, tank, or infantry. Plus it runs away after every attack forcing you to expand a movement point to just attack it again.
Entrenchment is handled very poorly in this game. Level 3 entrenchment Russian cheapo infatries with 17 life are basically immortal. You'll be lucky if you can even inflict a single point of damage to these guys and they've 17 life and can probably reentrench whatever entrenchment you can strip on their turn. It seems like the trick is to promote your Artillery leader to level 10 as far as you can so you can get the way overpowered Bombardment attack (strips entrenchment completely), because there simply isn't any conventional way to take out the immortal Russian infantries. Well, Pioneres can fight them toe to toe, and can chew up a tank and spit it out, assuming you took care of the level 3 fortified artillery hiding behind the infantries, but you can't afford attrition with Pioneres, which is arguably your strongest unit (Get a leader with Tactics ability on these guys and their attack power actually count, as opposed to everything else). Having unstrippable entrenchment is just wrong. They were fine in the earlier games. A unit with level 9 Entrenchment (analogous to level 3 on PG3) is basically immortal, but you can strip it away very quickly. Engineers/Pioneres used to have build in strip entrenchment, if you're willing to risk them (they're not supposed to be the Gods).
Artilery is really overpowered on the defense. This is why not even the computer attacks you on their turn with their rigged numbers, because a single Artillery can suppress (that is, break up their attack) an entire army and not break a sweat (and sometimes kill them too). The same is true when you're attacking the computer. City sieges essentially turns into artillery duels, because you can't attack at all until all the artillery is gone, and then you at least have a chance to deal with the immortal infantry units.
The time constrain on the missions basically means you've to blitzkrieg through everything and never get bogged down. This is rather hard when fighting immortal infantries that can stall your entire army for multiple turns on their own. Here's a typical army versus Russian Conscript (17 life, weakest Russian infantry, but arguably the strongest since computer cheats on the attack/defense stats. Higher units have less life in exchange for supposedly better stats but this actually works against the computer's favor because they already cheat on the stats so badly anyway)
2 Artillery attacks 3-4 times. Suppress infantry completely (they can't counterattack anymore), Infantry at 15 strength.
Tanks and Anti-Tank attack the infantry for about 10 times, dealing somewhere around 3 damage.
Ju87D bombs infantry, doing about another 3 damage.
Now you bring the big guns, your Pionere units. Despite the numbers look something like 0 losses you to 8 losses them, expect the Conscripts to knock your Pioneres down to about 4 life (they've a total of 8) before running away with about 5 life remaining.
At this point, you probably ran out of units to attack the infantry, so next turn it just refits and is back to 17 strength again, and if it's at a city/forest square, it'd be back to level 3 entrenchment in about another turn.
People's General was kind of screwed up, but at least it was in your favor (omniscient artilleries. Stealth Tanks, and of course, Overrunning Helicopters). :( Maybe I'll go pick up one of those 'hardcore' strategy games where you can control each soldier or whatever, and see if those actually offer real strategy. Oddly enough, I think the best strategy games ever made was back in the days where AI was relatively nonexistent. Panzer General (the first one) and Super Daisenryaku (anyone know where I can find this ROM for genesis? The battery died about 5 years ago) are what I considered to be the best strategy games out there. Panzer General basically got everything right and SSI figured out how to screw up everything they ever got right in the subsequent games. Super Daisenryaku had a fairly deep battle system without being painful, and I think the lack of fog of war actually made it more interesting. While it's not realistic to see inside the other guy's capital and terroritory, this in effect simulated real life stuff like radars and whatnot so that it's not like your typical Fog of War based game where 3 entire armies can move past your guys undetected because they were 2 pixels away from your unit's visible range. You'd think this makes sneak attacks impossible, but you'll be surprised how often you can be playing at yourself and realize that you simply don't have the troops to ward off a sneak attack you saw 5 turns ago, and it's at least a conscious decision to focus the troops elsewhere rather than having an entire army suddenly appear out of the fog of war and stomp you. I've actually managed to launch amphibious attack assaults on myself even though I knew what was coming the moment the ships loaded the tanks up, because it was well supported and enough units were coming from another front, plus the attacker side had air superiority to interdict the bombers. If this was any other game, like say, Starcraft, an amphibious assault (I guess that'd be like a drop) simply can't succeed if they see it coming.</div>
