Panzer General and Allied General-

Now here is a beer and pretzels game for you. Or maybe we should say rootbeer and grahm crackers? Nowhere near as realistic as other wargames, Panzer and Allied Generals are still fun from a purely gaming standpoint. In them you play a much more strategic role, marching divisions around instead of the squads found in Steel Panthers. You can change history in these games, depending on the outcome of your battles. For instance, if you are wildly succesful in Panzer General you can launch Operation Sealion or even invade Washington D.C.

The lack of reality is found in combat. You click on the unit you want to fight with, pass the cursor over the enemy unit to be attacked, and a predicted kill ratio is flashed on the bottom of the screen. Depending on the entrenchment and terrain type, tanks or infantry may be better in the assault. If the enemy is seriously hurt, and is at 20 or 30% strength, chase him! Why? Because if he gets away from your units and has a turn to "heal", a seriously crippled unit can instantly regenerate to full strength. This is supposed to represent the reinforcement of a division by fresh troops, but it is simply too unrealistic.

Try to practice blitzkreig by blowing through defenses and only taking objectives without completely destroying enemy units, and find those units soon reclaiming the cities you just took and defending them at full strength.

Both Panzer General and Allied General have a hot seat and PBEM multiplayer capability, but it is extremely weak. The victory almost always goes to the defender, since the defender could simply hide a few units from site until after the main wave of the enemy assault passes by, then reclaim just one victory hex/city and win. Similarly, the defender could allow the enemy to take all cities on the entire map, defending just the furthest few cities from the enemy. With such a concentration of defending, entrenched units with artillery and AAA support, almost nothing could take it out. Should the enemy send all their units to that defended city in crushing numbers, you could simply build new units at some other undefeated city half a map away, defending that city.

In conclusion, don't expect to feel like you are masterminding real army groups in a real war, and don't even think about playing two player.