T41/Ea42 Alt ZOC change.

[Volcano Man]

FLG and fastphil,

The definition of "intermixing nonsense" is relative. The fighting at the Cauldron and the British tactic of brigade boxes in other battles is NOT "intermixing nonsense" in the sense of what I am describing. The method of brigade boxes is still useful, especially since you often do not have enough recon to cover the entire desert. As Rick says, you can still surround a brigade box and cut off the supplies to it, but that would require that you have a lot of units assigned to that task and the surrounding force would be spread out and vulnerable to attack from the rear. Assuming that you have your brigade boxes arrayed properly so that they can mutually support each other then it becomes even more useful since you can attack from both boxes. That said, my definition of "intermixing nonsense" is what was possible previously, that high movement value ACs could slip in and through the line and isolate units causing the isolated unit to move back and be isolated again and again since they could not move far. A ZOC isolation dance ensued which is NOT a good representation of desert warfare but rather it was a bad representation of how the desert titles can be exploited. In the example of brigade boxes, soft ZOCs could not effectively keep such high MP value AC units out of their perimeter.

Regardless of all the confusion and fluidness that is inherent in the historical battles in the desert, it was still coherent and had enough definition that it could be directed and controlled by their respected commanders. But with it possible to have AC units in the game passing by each other and ZOCs exerted on the passed through units, the ZOC dancing began and the battles would degenerate into an a-historical mass of uncontrollable and undirected zig zagging dances until the surrounded force of ACs was eventually wiped out. Once this happened, one side is denied their recon asset and could be rather easily dealt with. This is not how the historical battles played out and, as I said, if you were not a very aggressive player or have never played against a very aggressive player then you probably never noticed this flaw (it took an aggressive player to use it on me before I noticed it myself... something I referred to as the "Mongol horde AC attack").

Anyway, I am not sure how much plainer I can say it: this change ONLY effects the high movement value AC units. With the lower ZOC modifier, other units still did not have enough MPs necessary to move and then pass by other units. If you think it will suddenly play like an East Front or West Front battle because of this change then you are mistaken. For one thing, in none of those titles can you actually move through an enemy ZOC like you still can do in the desert. Beyond that there are still a vast quantity of other differences in the PDT to model desert warfare as well.

The problem with mentioning something like this is that it causes everyone who has not played it to speculate on what it *might* do. Just load it up in E42_Alt and see for yourself that overall it does not drastically change anything. Of course be sure to look at it subjectively and not through a pessimistic lens. ;)