
They make a well-planned strategy, careful base design, and a well-balanced army take the back seat to luck. The battle cards, however, allow a player who is about to be wiped out to turn the tide of the game and balance the playing field. The power-ups are enjoyable they give a bonus for controlling large amounts of area and do not change the balance of power all that much. Total Annihilation's or Dark Reign's waypoint systems are now what should be considered a standard model for movement - unfortunately, these came out too late for 7th Legion to benefit from their example.ħth Legion adds a bit of randomness to the game with the addition of power-ups and battle cards. When the group stops moving, you are lucky to get half of the units where you told them to go - more often, they are scattered about the area between point A and point B. The group will then take the scenic route, weaving around many hidden or even invisible terrain obstacles. When you tell a large group of units to move from point A to point B, some (or if you are really lucky, all) of the units selected will start to move to point B. Dark Reign's AI control panel is an example of this idea being done correctly. If you are in a hurry and don't give a group movement orders they will totally ignore all enemy units. Early on in the game this is deadly, as foot soldiers die when hit by just about anything. If a group is set for aggressive movement and a unit fires on them, only the unit fired on will shoot back, the others in the group will continue to move. The movement types are a nice idea that was poorly implemented.This selection has to be done once every time the group moves, which slows down what you end up doing the most - making small movements so you don't get ambushed or lose half your units to the bad path-finding AI. When you tell your troops to move, you then have to select how they will move normal, aggressive, or defensive. The game interface is not conducive to the fast action of the game.You don't know where you can build a base until you click on it and see if it does something, which turns into a not-so-fun game of move-click-move-click until you find the magical spot that the game has decided is clear enough for a base. Your MBU has the deploy option on at all times.
