Some Challenges or History missions aim to recreate the Crimean War Challenge series' level of frustration that stemmed from extremely slim odds and high difficulty.
However, I feel that those "Use x or 0 number of Generals" missions instead create frustration from intentionally crippling players and forcing us to burn through Medpacks.
Some 0 general missions are actually pretty well done.
I think I actually prefer 1804 since there’s a few things I dislike in 1914. Even though it introduces a lot of interesting skills and units and that WW1 is a much more interesting and fresh setting imo. So let’s go over some notable differences for me.
- Unit Balance. This one I think I prefer in 1804. Infantry is still subpar in 1804, but grenadiers could always serve as a backup artillery with more mobility in a pinch. I think that’s much better than having them only serve the purpose of city meatwalls and lousy chip damagers since that way there’s some purpose to fielding a infantry general sometimes.
12 move on artillery is maybe too fast if you want them to be slow by design in 1914. Only one bad artillery unit has 12 move in 1804.
Cavalry is slightly better balanced in 1914 though (except the armored car) since lancers in 1804 stomps every other unit for any purpose. 110 gold for heavy armor, cold weapon, solid stats and 15 move is an insane deal. There’s no such unit like that in 1914, armored cars are a tad bit expensive though I do think they shouldn’t have received the HMG buff.
Navy is much better in 1914 since they can hit medium armor hard and there’s a lot more slots to spare for admirals.
- Skillswitching. I don’t really like this mechanic too much since it basically turns everyone into more or less the same general. I liked it back when everyone had somewhat undesireable skillsets. I kinda like that Sakurako for is the only one who has escorting and alert, and that she lacks line of battle.
- medal economy. The medal economy is massively lenient in 1914 because gold is used for most things while medals are only really used for buying generals. It’s only tight very early.
- Gold economy. Gold is a lot tighter in 1914.
- General slot economy. 1914 slot economy is a triviality. 1804 is extremely tight and you need to plan accordingly.
- Aura skill. This is the big one skillwise. 1804 aura was something like 3x stronger since it added base attack to the unit and could stack. 1914 aura works like a terrain skill and couldn’t stack. If you do the math you can see that the former is far stronger. It created a meta (which I don’t agree with) where you wanted to stack as many auras to get an insane attack bonus (like + 90-100 atk on your generals). No such thing in 1914 though. Whether that’s better or worse is not easy to say. 1804 aura would break the game if we could skillswitch, but I don’t like the skillswitching mechanic.
