Thanks for the comprehensive reply, Tom. It's going to be a great game. In reply: you could split the stack, move one unit backwards (but not towards the fully-stacked hex) and put another unit in its place from the adjacent hex. I know it's a lot of shuffling, but congested narrow frontline should have similar effect. I don't know .. let's see how it goes with the full game. Understood. Let's hear what others say. Given that 2-unit stacks are so important to combat power, perhaps it should be possible to withdraw 1 unit from a stack and bring another forward without lateral displacement? Perhaps the reinforcing unit could have to remain disorganised for a couple of hours as a penalty? As an infantry commander in the British Army the reserve platoon can move forward to replace a depleted forward platoon without the former having to move out of the way beforehand, and I imagine that this is similarly possible further up the command chain (companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, divisions, etc.). It's not so much of a problem in open terrain, but in close quarters it felt artificially restrictive and indeed punitive. artillery in the game represents higher-level units (artillery regiments usually), which are around 3 times the size of other, battalion-sized units. So they need to have more anti-air resistance. Playtesting has shown that if we don't implement this factor, the player would use the airforce to destroy artillery too easily. Makes sense on both counts. that's it for now regarding the Intel. My design practice is (as the great Jim Dunnigan suggests) to "keep it simple", at least at the first version of the game. Keep concepts clean, easy to understand and quick to learn. FoW in other similar real-time games is modelled on the same principles, so I use those mechanics for this game as well. But we'll probably change it in DLC, when we introduce Intelligence section of the General Staff and its effects. OK, so it's a design feature rather than a function of difficulty setting. No problem, although a bit gamey perhaps to know the exact type, state and capabilities of any unit once spotted. Makes it much easier for the human player. you change the formation direction based on your drawing direction - draw from left-to-right and you'll see different orientation than when you draw right-to-left. That's why you have reverse ordering of artillery and frontline troops. Yes, those formations are something that will be further improved. It's one of the more complex parts of the game, as AI must behave rationally, while also responding to the enemies and obstacles in the way. Thanks. I have experimented further and see what you mean. Still some issues with formation movement orders, even when along roads with no enemy units present, but good to hear that it's still a WIP. Important and very useful feature. FYI, in terms of scenario design the Australian Division's spawn points were amongst and even behind the defensive lines I set up around El Hamman with the 15th and 21st Pz Divs.! These 2 divs, were aligned NW-SE with El H. as the fulcrum, and the Aussie units appeared amongst/behind my lines regardless.

*SPOILERS - First Alamein* Well, finally I managed to win First Alamein as the Axis on Easiest setting, although it took several attempts and different approaches, and the final victory was tight. Very tight. In essence, for those interested: Sent the 90th Light Div south to capture the Bab el Qattara ridge to the south and free up the road running north/south to allow supplies traffic to the south. Sent the 15th and 21st Panzer Divs and the Ariete Div. south across country to the Barrel Track. Once the Bab el Qattara ridge was cleared, 90th Lt. Div. took up defensive positions along the road to deal with the counter attack by the 7th Armoured Div. from the east. Meanwhile the 15th & 21st Pz. Divs. and the Ariete cleared the Allied positions along the Barrel Track, with one of the Pz. Divs. heading north thereafter to flank the 7th Armoured's counter attack coming from west of the Alam el Halfa ridge. Once the 7th Armoured was rendered combat ineffective, the 15th Pz. Div. and the Ariete headed north-east towards El Hamman along the road, while the 21st Pz. Div.headed north-east between the Ruweisat and Alam el Halfa ridges towards the coastal road east of the El Alamein positions, clearing up the remnants of the NZ Div and the 7th Armoured along the way but avoiding engaging the forces on the ridges. 21st Pz. and the Ariete captured El Hamman from the NZ force positioned there and dug in. 90th Lt. Div. then proceeded north to assist in the assault on El Alamein by the Littorio, Brescia and Trieste Divs that had arrived as reinforcements in previous turns and had been moved up along the costal road. The Italians cleared a 2-hex path through the west-south-west section of the minefield perimeter and attacked through that, whilst the 90th Lt. Div. attacked directly south-north along the road into the El Alamein position leaving a flanking force of AT/recce to the east to stave off counter attacks. El Alamein was a grind and required lots of micromanagement of units and hexes to avoid congestion caused by the 2-unit per hex rule, but it was achieved. Around El Hamman the crux comes on Day 5 when the Australians arrive in numbers from the north-eastern corner of the map. This was bloody with both sides taking heavy casualties and was further hindered by the Axis force's supply issues given the now-lengthy supply lines. However they held, having to retake El Hamman from the the Aussies with only minutes to spare and with no ammo left. Takeaways: It was a great challenge and a lot of fun. It is a superficially easy game to learn/play but not an easy one in which to win (at least not in my experience of First Alamein). I think the full game will be excellent, esp. with a free-form strategic campaign (as oposed to linked historical scenarios). Repositioning: I couldn't work out how to reposition any of the Axis units before pressing "Start" on Day 1. I followed what the manual stated, but nothing seemed to work. Are the units locked in historical deployments? Unit/hex stacking mgt.: I have seen discussions about this on the Steam page, but this was an area of frustration for me. Especially in the congested areas, e.g. getting through gaps in minefields, I found that the only way to queue units for the attack and then feed fresh units in to replace frontline units that were suffering was to wait until the foremost units had routed and thus retreated without breaching stacking limitations. In reality I would pull back depleted units long before they routed, and in a battalion attack in real life for example with 2 companies up and 1 back, one of the forward companies would be able to exchange postions with the reserve company under fire and without manouevring laterally. Might it be useful to have a withdraw/retreat command that enabled this sort of manouevre without breaking stacking rules option? Perhaps in a 2-unit stack, only 1 unit could exchange positions with another unit in an adjacent hex at one time, thus reflecting the realities of section/platoon/company/battalion/regiment manvouevring and feeding reinforcements into combat while withdrawing tired units? Otherwise fighting in congested areas is like doing one of those puzzles where you slide the tiles around to form a picture! Either that or let each unit fight its way to exhaustion/routing, which doesn't seem sensible or realistic and hampers that unit for the next day at least. Air vs arty DIFF: I saw on Steam that you lowered the Air vs Tanks DIFF to +1 but it's -3 for Air vs Arty. Why is this, since I would have imagined that WW2 air strikes by tactical bombers would have been very effective vs static arty (anecdotal only; no evidence of this). Is this perhaps to reflect the arty unit's organic AAA assets? Enemy unit intel/FoW: Albeit on Easiest level, once recon has identified an enemy unit you can see the unit's name, strength, morale, exact number of troops/guns/tanks, experience level, and attack/defence/movement factors! The only things you can't see are fuel and ammo levels. The manual doesn't say much about the different difficulty levels. Does this information get hidden by FoW on higher difficulty settings? Formation Orders: I notice that formation orders (which I like a lot as a concept) seem to place HQ/arty at the front and armour to the rear. I would reverse that default formation, if I could. I also noticed that formation movement orders can break down, if a unit in the formation is engaged in combat. For example, trying to move the Ariete and the 21st Pz. along the Barrel Track to El Hamman, some of the depleted or even routed Allied units kept getting in the way, and combat seemed to affect the formation movement order, which then had to be re-issued after each combat. I wouldn't want or expect armoured units racing towards an objective to be distracted by depleted or routed enemy units fleeing to safety, unless I specifically want to detail units to deal with such stragglers. Same happened even without combat: I gave the Italian reinforcing divisions formation movement orders along the costal road, but when I looked a few hours later, some of the units hadn't moved and those that had were now out of command range. Just a minor irritation, but can be a big deal, when time is of the essence! Anyway, long post. Sorry! Hope some of this is helpful to other players and perhaps even to Tom with his development hat on. Overall though, very excited about the full release. Sean

Excellent response, Tom, thank you. Does that mean then that, for example, with First Alamein the Axis objectives are set so that they can 'win' the scenario with historical OOBs by managing the force objectives, or are objectives also historically based, i.e. inferring that the Allies will 'win' the scenario in most instances? I very much look forward to the Grand Campaign, in which both sides start with historical OOBs, strategic objectives and reinforcements/upgrades, etc. (plus some additions/substractions based on progress or lack thereof [i.e. a 'poliitical' element]) thus allowing the player to craft the offensive/defence as he/she/it wishes. That's gaming Uptopia! Btw compliments on your English, which is excellent. I did notice some minor errata in the briefings/manual, and I'm more than happy to do some proof reading, if that eases your team's burden.