Total War - Any one playing it / opinions

[Philippe]

My first reaction when I came across the series was that it looked pretty interesting.

I had always regretted never playing SPI's France 1940 and Sealion games, and here was my chance to make up for it, complete with a pre-packaged opponent.

Then I tried playing one of the games, and found that it was so ugly I couldn't bring myself to look at it. The games sat in my unused game shoe box until I had modded a dozen Panzer Campaign games, after which I asked myself how hard could it be to mod TWIE.

Boy was I wrong.

But now that my moment of pain is behind me, I'm starting to look at the series with different eyes; the potential is really very interesting.

Without straying too far from what's there already, a couple of things come to mind.

Spanish Civil War.

There was a great SCW scenario for Strategic Command with really colorful units and factions. The TWIE system is light years beyond any of the Strategic Command iterations, so a TWIE rendition of the SCW would be awe-inspiring.

Chaco War.

A new map would have to be constructed to cover the relevant part of South America (Bolivia and Paraguay). If HPS came out with a Spanish language version of the game rules (which needs to be done anyway), every military academy in South America would buy this. Outside of Latin America I'm probably the only one who would want to play this, but it could open a major new revenue stream, especially if HPS came out with a Spanish version of an Early American Wars game that focused on Bolivar and San Martin (Chavez would probably want to buy a couple of hundred copies -- too bad the government of Venezuela has always been notoriously bad about paying for things).

1930's hypotheticals.

What if the Anschluss had never happened because Austria resisted? What if France had put up a fight over the occupation of Saarland? What if Czechoslovakia had refused to be dismembered? What if there had been a general European war over the Sudetenland?

The Winter War.

I'm assuming (hoping) it's going to come out in a later release, but it really belonged in the First Blitzkrieg (along with seasonally varied arctic terrain -- they really do have seasons up there).

The other thing I find myself wondering is what happened to the naval war, especially when I look at Norway or Mediterranean scenarios.