Eastern Allies

[Bannockburn]

Hello, everyone!

Been playing this mod for a few weeks now, and I have to say, I love it. So much in fact, I've decided to join this forum to help this mod stay alive. It's easily one of the finest mods out there, and I love how you captured the feel of both the Soviet and Ostheer armies very well. However, there is one thing that is missing.....

Here goes. Eastern Allies.

I know most of you already know the Germans had loads of "allied" troops fighting for them in the east, but I think these soldiers need to be represented. Yes, you can get the support tree as the Ostheer, but the only troops you get are Brandenburgers, who are elite infiltration infantry, not support troops at all.

Thing is, Romania for example sent nearly a million troops to fight in Russia, and they suffered near 50% casualties. The Hungarians, Italians and Croats all suffered similar casualty rates, and the Germans used these generally courageous soldiers as cannon fodder. The only exception were the Finns, who managed to retain independent command and were largely ambiguous towards the Nazis and their racial policies.

I think that in an ideal world, they'd have a faction all of their own, but it would be a lot of work. The basic infantry and weapons crews would be Romanian, the armour a mix of Italian and Hungarian, and the Elite infantry Finnish ski troops or Spanish volunteers.

Grouping them together in one faction would actually make some sense because, except for the Finns, the Germans very often lumped these allied troops together even if they didn't understand each other. They were often poorly equipped and poorly trained, or just plain badly led, either by their own officers or by the Germans. Many of them froze because they had no winter equipment, while many were overrun by the Russians because the Germans had refused to give them adequate anti-tank weapons.

I know its unlikely to ever happen, but it would be a marvel if it did. If not, then a unit of summonable light infantry could represent at least some of the contribution made by these brave and luckless soldiers.

[BurroDiablo]

We did add in a bunch of Romanian, Hungarian, Finnish and Italian units to the Ostheer but they were difficult to find any real roles for due to all the units (bar maybe the Zrinyi II) being outclassed by their German counterparts. We debated on how exactly we could implement the units without making stuff redundant and eventually it was agreed upon to add the units as part of some new 'reward doctrines' for the Ostheer at a later date instead, so the foreign units were removed.

They'll return as part the reward doctrines at some point, although they're still missing a few extra units. I can't say when the reward doctrines will arrive as we're focussing on polishing up the Steam release right now.

[Bannockburn]

I see it now. I can see what you mean about their units being made redundant by the Germans, especially when you can have the Panzer III with 50mm gun, instead of the poor little Fiat Ansaldo.

Have you ever considered making them their own faction? It could be a lot of fun trying to fight off the soviets with Romanian infantry and the Zyinri assault gun. It'd allow the player to replay those disastrous moments when soviet tanks came crashing through the Romanian sector north of Stalingrad. I imagine the main problem would be the voices and the doctrine.

I look forward to seeing these reward doctrines, if and when they appear. It sounds like those units are things of beauty, nonetheless. What types of units were they?

[Blackbishop]

I have plans for a reward tree featuring some of these units, and since I got no claims about it I might share it to the public soon .

[chaosval3]

But, we did have a lot of ''claims'' about them master bish . I still think we need to fine tune a lot of them, if we do. Like that one Budapest thingy I mentioned a while ago.

[Blackbishop]

Well, I don't really remember nothing in special, that prevents of show them as base. There is no more feedback so far by Devs and balancers, so we need to take the next step.