1st side vs 2nd side pros and cons

[Dog Soldier]

Well, I should've added "also: the smaller the time scale, the smaller the first player advantage and the smaller the disadvantage of being the first to deal with the weather during a turn."

Actually, I think size has no measurable relationship to this first player advantage. The FPA only exists in games where there has not been sufficient play testing and a will by the designers to make tweaks to remove it.
There should be some small advantage to beginning with the imitative as there was historically. It should not be so overwhelming as to make a perfect set of moves on the first turn result in an impossible situation for the second player. That is what playing the AI is for.

FWIW, I think the shorter the number of turns in a IGOUGO game environment present more of a puzzle to be solved than a game. Mistakes tend to be irrecoverable in these shorter games.

I'm not sure how many wargames you have played/are playing where the time scale is a couple of days per turn, but you'll notice a substantial difference between those and PzC. Of course, the weather is poor in half of Moscow '42, but even in the clear scenarios judging by the AAR's here, the frontline rips apart in front of your eyes only slowly, so this is a series where the defender has advantages he would not normally enjoy in a wargame with a 1 day per turn or greater time scale/compression.

Perhaps that's what takes the most getting used to for me, the tricks the defender can pull because everything moves along slowly in winter 1941-1942.

I think the difference in other games and PzC is not the time scale represented by a single turn per se, but what can be done in a single turn. There are many PzC titles with scenarios that take place in summer where the action is much faster in a single turn. These require more thinking ahead and anticipation of your opponents options, a judgement of which they will choose and experience to know what your best counter is considering the resources you have at the time.

Strela makes an excellent counter argument for this on another thread that the slower mobility in the M42 winter scenarios requires more forward anticipation as a move in the wrong direction takes longer to correct.

Or as others have said many times on these boards...
"Your mileage may vary...."

If it did not then these games could become deadly dull.

Still, I do feel with my very limited experience the weather and visibility conditions can favour the second player even at this scale (for example by moving units away, possibly in T-mode to prepare for the night moves, pre-dusk because you know the attacker can only see units 1 hex away without using recon).

I agree it is more a function of the IGOIGO game mechanic that inherantly gives the defender the option to break off combat. Before the night disruption pdt values were created, this was not the case. It becomes more a combination of that change and the inherent second move that allows defenders a better chance to break contact at dusk than remain in place during the night.
It depends on the situation. It is not always to your advantage as defender to break contact.

Good thoughts.

The strength of the PzC series (and what has kept me engaged by it for 12+ years) is that the designers and testers try to create a product that is less a static puzzle to solve as many games in the industry are, than a set of options to choose from for both sides with positive and negative consequences. The action / reaction nature of play is not always the same, resolving the set piece play many other war games have going all the way back to the 1960s and pushing cardboard.

Not all the aforementioned choices are obvious at first study or play, nor are they spelled out in the manual. Experience reveals them.

That same dynamic can be quite frustrating to perceive and master for some who decide these games are not their 'cup of tea'.

Besides, as the second side, if you are really worried about what lurks two hexes away at night, fearing a surprise attack, the put some of your low fatigue companies on the line into Patrolling status.

Excellent insight and suggestion as always VM.

Or you can play as General Grant of the Union Arny of the Potomac in the American Civil War commanded in his time.

"He doesn't give a damn about what the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares me like hell."
--- William Tecumseh Sherman

Dog Soldier