Old Games I Still Love: SimCity 4 Deluxe

Now city builders for me I have to really be in the mood for but SimCity 4 was always a favourite after getting bitten by the SimCity bug with my first ever PC. It had a pile of games come with the mountain of useless software they always used to bundle in with store bought, prebuilt rigs. Although the only two I really remember were SimCity 2000 and Alpha Centauri and I played them pretty extensively but the PC had been bought 'for homework' this was when I was mainly a gamer on the venerable PSX (Playstation one) but anyway! What I was trying to say before I swerved down memory lane was that this wasn't my first SimCity game, just my favourite.

In SimCity 4 like most other games in the franchise you are plonked unceremoniously into an empty looking patch of verdant green countryside and tasked with turning it into a concrete urban paradise. Usually easier said than done as keeping the sims happy enough to want to move in was tricky. With SimCity 4 however you could actually develop interconnected cities via the region view which in my opinion added an extra layer of depth and consideration to the gameplay formula and could remove some of the space issues from single self contained cities. The region you see below was the default region, containing all the tutorials but there were other regions you could load up, download or even create your own if you wanted, though I think I enjoyed the default region because of variety of landscapes it offered.

The region view, the first thing most people will see!

Once you actually get into the game properly you'll find your omnipresent gaze looking down at a patch of usually green countryside. Normally you'd tend to jump right in but in my case I'd always play around with the terrain tools (which was expensive once you had actually started your city.) Depending what I wanted to do I'd either flatten it all out so I had more room or create some interesting hills and valleys if I wanted to play around with bridges, tunnels, ferries etc and just wanted it to look a bit more interesting than a big homogeneous square of concrete blocks. Throwing down a few thousand trees didn't hurt dealing with pollution either even if most of them got flattened from the initial rush of laying down roads. You could also throw in a variety of wildlife if you wanted though once the city was started I never used to see them, a shame, having your police needing to deal with bears rummaging through the bins could have been amusing.

In the beginning! (Do the tutorials!)

Once I had done with sculpting the terrain it was straight into mayor mode for me, which is the main meat of the game, though what I enjoyed most about SimCity 4 was the fact you didn't have to make a straight up city. Due in large part to the region system, you could make farming communities linked up by road and rail to a neighbouring commercial city which was then further linked to a residential one. Although the way I generally played was I'd make one fairly typical city in a central area and build it up as far as I could to give the region a decent size population and then build connecting cities for specific roles, like farming, heavy industry, commercial. I'll admit that could get a little disjointed due to loading times but it was still an interesting layer to the standard SimCity formula that added some longevity to it.

Most of the building work is done automatically by any Sims that decide they want to move to your city. You would simply set down the zones according to the three main types (residential, commercial and industrial) and selected from various densities of such. As Sims moved in they build houses, shops and factories according to all kinds of factors, like water, power and more. Their education level also played a part, highly educated sims wanted high tech jobs, whereas Sims with low education were quite happy in farms and heavily polluting factories. The only real way you could directly influence things was taxing the various levels of businesses, increasing it for things you didn't want and decreasing it for things you did. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to get the hang of it so that my Sims were living in a gleaming modern metropolis rather than a dystopian smog-choked slum.

So aside from laying down roads and designating 'zoning' areas you also had to provide various utilities and amenities for Sims. Everything from clinics and police stations to universities, parks and power stations. Keeping your Sims happy whilst trying to make enough money to keep growing was the key challenge in SimCity 4 and I'll admit I catastrophically failed many many times before I even started to see my Sims building anything close to a skyscraper. Water was always the one I had trouble with though, always struggling to get the balance of pumps and treatment plants right so that everyone had clean water without me killing the budget. Though as with most things you could make use of the region layer and dedicate one or two 'cities' to exporting water to other places, much as you could do with electricity as well as many other things.

The budget was always the trickiest thing to get a handle on initially though at various points and milestones you could get special buildings to help out in various ways. From simple things like a farmers market to special deals to help you balance the books at a downside. The most memorable of those for me is of course was the missile range, provided a fairly hefty amount of income at the cost of, well what goes up must come down so your Sims didn't often approve of being the target of a missile strike. Who knew.

That urban sprawl!

Once I did get the hang of balancing the books though it was oh so satisfying to see a sleepy little town turn into a bustling metropolis. If you focused on just building one self contained city you'd often start running into space issues especially when it came to the larger buildings like power-plants and hospitals. However, once again this was where I found the region system to give so much more freedom in how you approached city building and something I spent a good chunk of a college summer holiday making use of. I got seriously into it as well, with scrawled notes on bits of paper as I set myself the goal of entirely filling a region, figuring out the best uses and placements for everything from freight and passenger rails to the vast raised highways and airports. 

There were also more involved aspects along the way such as deploying firetrucks or police to help deal with various disasters that occasionally popped up. Also you could even drive various vehicles around your city in a little mini-game added with the Rush Hour expansion to break up the placid pace of mayoral life or even just get a little extra cash or mayor rating for the trouble. 

Traffic problems getting you down, the autosaurus will stomp them flat! (Along with everything else..)

Of course when the building was done and you grew tired or urban paradise or perhaps you just find your Sims still being obnoxiously demanding you could always do some 'creative remodelling' by unleashing various disasters. From the more typical offerings of earthquakes and tornadoes or the more unusual (and fun) ones such as unleashing a giant alien robot or deploying the autosaurus (seen above!) 

There genuinely haven't been many other city builders or economic management Sims that grabbed my attention quite so hard before or after (those are for other blog posts though.) Sometimes even these days if that city builder itch strikes SimCity 4 is usually the first stop to scratch it as I find it still one of the better ones out there and these days you could likely run it on anything slightly more advanced than a toaster so it doesn't tax even my ageing rig. 

So all in all even now when I want to satisfy that city building urge, SimCity 4 Deluxe is my go-to choice.

Old Games I Still Love: Startopia

This game for me even now still scratches that management game itch without being so completely super serious like a lot of management games tend toward being. Long ago during an extended lunch break at college I wandered into the local GAME store as I so often did seeing what new games were on the shelves, grumbling at not having enough pennies and wandering to the bargain section instead. It was at that point I stumbled across Startopia, now I love sci-fi as a setting so I picked it up and had a look at the back of the box, the idea of managing a space station was immediately appealing. The rest as they say is history, I counted up my meager pennies and picked it up the next day, even if it did massively slow down working on a college project (oops, always do your homework first kids!) 

The game got it's tentacles into me pretty fast, catchy music, colourful art style and enough buildings and research to keep me playing 'just five more minutes' until it was two in the morning. I didn't find out til a couple of years later reading an actual review in a gaming magazine that the studio responsible for it was comprised of three ex-Bullfrog developers. Though the influences from games such as Theme Park were obvious to see after finding that fact out. 

Everyone starts somewhere!

The game featured a campaign of sorts as well as a sandbox mode and multiplayer though I never really made much use of multiplayer I'm afraid to say. However, most games of Startopia start in largely the same way, you'd have some pre-packaged crates containing pre-built rooms and some basic Scuzzers (construction and maintenance robots) and a pool of energy which both acted as currency and powered your buildings. You also generally had access to all three decks of one section of the space-station, those being the sub-level where most industrial focused buildings are kept, the pleasure deck for entertainment and shops etc. The last deck was perhaps the most interesting one, the biodeck, where you could terraform and sculpt it's environment in order to grow plants for your residents and guests to relax in, or harvest them for crates of useful and valuable goods. 

From this point you generally had to build up facilities, expand into other sections and research or trade for new things to bring in more energy to build more things and so on. You also had to hire the various alien visitors who boarded the station to crew your facilities, with each species having it's own structure or job, for example the Salt Hog's worked your factories and recycler facilities. The greys would crew your medical facilities whilst the muscled red giants that are the Kasvagorian's would keep watch from your security facilities. You also had to keep them happy lest they decided you weren't a very good employer and left, though that aspect was fairly basic as if they were unhappy you simply gave them a payrise. 

The research system also I think was pretty neat at the time, whilst you could of course just buy and research so called technology crates, you could also place any item you could pick up with your teleporter equipped cursor onto the laboratory research pad and you'd usually get something new out of it. If you dropped a piece of litter onto it for example you'd unlock the litter bin. Not all research let to something new but it always at least improved something be it making those medical supplies last longer or your Scuzzer's able to run for longer before needing to head to a recharging station.

Now I mentioned earlier that it was obvious to see the influences of Bullfrog games in Startopia once I knew the dev's had come from there. The most obvious one to me at least is the occasional medical emergencies you could opt to try and deal with much in the same vain as Theme Hospital. A good way to get energy if your facilities and staff could handle it or you would be fined for each one that didn't make it or worse, you'd end up with a horde of Skrasher's ripping your station and guests apart. 

The moment you realise you need more security guards. Skrashers are nasty.

Other smaller things could be seen as influences as well from other Bullfrog games such as being able to purchase additional furniture and equipment for your various rooms to improve them (again like theme hospital.) To making sure you had enough Scuzzer droids to repair, maintain and clean your station much like Theme Park. 

There is unlike the majority of management games a combat system in place though this was likely the biggest of the games flaws. Having minimal direct control over your employee's meant combat could boil down to you hammering the attack button to stack as many of your armed personnel on the target to take it down and most of the time only a few would show up. That said it wasn't completely terrible and it could be quite fun to watch when it worked. Aside from attacking other station administrators there was also the task of dealing with spies, finding bombs from rivals to the aforementioned Skrashers that were the.. Unpleasant result of a certain infection not being treated in time not helped by the fact that every single alien petted their carrier the Memau and as your station got larger it got increasingly more difficult to keep track of everything and try to find those tiny little problems. 

Cute but surprisingly deadly. -The Memau

However even these days, if the management game itch crops up for me, Startopia is often something that will be installed for a quick play as it's easy to get into but has enough depth to keep it interesting. The music I found to be at least fairly memorable and added to the atmosphere of the game no-end.  The graphics are cartoony and colourful enough to hold up today though far from perfect and sometimes it can just feel so satisfying watching your station ticking over from on high, just a shame Mucky Foot Productions didn't get to make much of anything else. It's not my favourite management game of all time but it certainly ranks highly as an old favourite for me!

When things get going it can be quite a sight to behold.

Old Games I Still Love: Dungeon Keeper 2

Still such an amazing game!

Now, this game is widely considered a classic and for good reason, it is among my most favourite games of all time so how could I not make a blog post on it. Made by one of my favourite dev studios the ever venerable Bullfrog (Theme Park is something I'll have to look at one of these days again.) I played it before the first Dungeon Keeper game as I'd picked it up as part of one of those big old game collection boxes (yes I know, games used to come in boxes, almost unheard of on PC these days!) The ones that used to have about a dozen or two dozen games in that I'd picked up because of a few of the other games inside it not really aiming for Dungeon Keeper 2 itself. I was hooked the moment I installed it because not only was it an original concept but pretty damned well executed too!

In most games, especially at the time you were always playing as the heroes, the knights in shining armour, the good guys for lack of a better description. In Dungeon Keeper 2 you play as the titular Dungeon Keeper with the task of building and maintaining your dungeon and it's monstrous inhabitants whilst keeping the heroes out, them minions do love their chicken. That alone was interesting enough to have me delving deeper like a gold hungry imp! The RPG elements also helped keep things interesting, every minion under your command for the most part had a level from 1 to 10 often gaining impressive abilities along the way.

The Dungeon Heart!

A typical game of Dungeon Keeper had you plopped into the map hovering above the ominous heartbeat of your dungeons core with a little bit of gold, a handful of loyal worker imps and usually access to a single creature portal. Then you'd be tasked with digging out the various corridors and spaces to place your rooms, which in turn would allow you do do more things like research or training your creatures. The types of rooms you had would also determine which evil beings would be drawn to your dungeon to work for you. Now, unlike most 'RTS' games save for a couple of exceptions you had no direct control over your creatures for the most part, they'd wander the twisted halls of your lair eating, drinking, training or if they were disgruntled, punching each other.

For the most part your influence over the world and your minions came down to giving orders and hoping they would be followed with your disembodied hand not only able to cast spells to help your minions and hinder your foes. In particular one amusing thing was a right click on a minion would give them a swift backhander usually making them slightly unhappy but compelling them to work faster (well you are playing as the evil overlord so it's to be expected!) The spells also allowed the one exception to the largely 'hands off' control, the possession spell.

This spell was honestly surprising to me, as you could literally cast it and jump into direct control of the chosen minions body. Turning the game into a first person action game after a fashion as as you could move around your dungeon, seeing it from ground level but also attack and form groups with your other minions. On some levels this was almost required but for the most part it was just a fun little addition.

The mission or level select screen.

The campaign I think deserves a special mention as I personally think it's pacing was spot on, each mission usually introduced a few new things at a time like a new room, creature or concept. As such it never felt overwhelming and I always found myself looking forward to what I would unlock next, an extra layer of motivation to beat that level. There were of course secrets to uncover, even a couple of hidden levels however there was one thing that kept me playing long after the campaign had been completed.

My Pet Dungeon, my favourite mode!

The 'My Pet Dungeon' mode was what I wiled away countless hours in building that perfect dungeon lair without the threat of attack unless you chose it to be so. There was still an objective to this mode earn points by building things and completing objectives to unlock more 'Pet Dungeon' maps. The sheer variety of rooms and minions on offer was quite impressive everything from Casino's and Fighting Pits to Temples and Workshops, all of which were put to use by your 'loyal' minions. Warlocks and vampires would pore over ancient texts in your library for researching new spells whilst trolls and bile demons crafted nefarious traps in your workshops.

Initially I was going to write a separate section for all of this but I realised it can all be tied up into one, atmosphere. This game has oodles of it and it just works so well with each aspect complimenting it. The biggest contributor is the 'advisor' character whom guides your evil deeds, voiced by the extremely talented Richard Ridings who just pulls it off so well. The graphics, whilst by today's standards are a bit primitive they still work due to the almost stylised look, everything is slightly crooked and off angle giving your evil abode a charmingly unsettling appearance when paired up with the lighting. The sound design in general is impressive at least in my opinion, from the steady thump of your dungeon heart to the slightly creepy ambient sounds it really rounds out the evil package gloriously.

For the longest time the only hint of us getting more Dungeon Keeper was the Dungeon Keeper 3 teaser that was in Dungeon Keeper 2 itself. As Bullfrog vanished though the IP was claimed by EA who turned it into, well let's just call it a disappointing mobile game and leave it at that. Evil Genius was pretty close to the Dungeon Keeper playstyle and is another game I still genuinely love but it still wasn't Dungeon Keeper which made me oh so happy when some plucky indie dev's took it on themselves to craft a spiritual successor in War for the Overworld (yet another game I will have to make a blog post about!)

All in all, I still love this game despite it looking it's age these days, it still has a place on my hard-drive even now. 

World of Tanks: My Personal Top 5 Tips!

Now, before I get into the meat of this particular post just a quick disclaimer. I don't claim to be an incredible player, my personal rating hovers between 5500 and 5600 or so but the amount of silly mistakes I see people making even at tier seven or higher is a bit worrying. So, rather than slump across my keyboard wondering how they even got that IS-3 I figured I'd share a few of my own personal tips, if it helps one or two people do a little better then I am happy!

Tip #1: Use Your Map

Always, always use your map, this cannot be stressed enough not just to get an idea of where enemies are but also so you know where your allies are as well. It doesn't really matter what kind of tank you are playing, the map is always your friend. 

There is often little point charging ahead as a scout if there are no friendly tanks there to shoot at what you spot. Nor is there much point sitting on an empty side of the map for five minutes when the entire enemy team has been spotted elsewhere. 

Tip #2: Never Give an Enemy Free Shots

Never advance around a corner if an enemy already knows you are there. Seriously I see this one so often it's a little frightening, I know it's tempting to roll around that corner and do a bit of damage, believe me, even I used to do it. However, they are more likely to hit your front drive wheel and track you, keeping you in place and barring a few tanks with forward mounted turrets, you can find yourself unable to fight back.

It's usually best to simply try and pull back and go elsewhere or simply find another angle to attack them from that doesn't expose you. Failing that you can if your tank is capable of doing so effectively, you can attempt to side-scrape.

It doesn't just apply to rounding a corner though, if you know that an enemy is waiting for you to pop out. Don't. 

Tip #3: Never Be Afraid to Retreat

Tempting as it is to try and be the hero and fight off five enemy tanks by yourself whilst the rest of your team goes full lemming train on the other side of the map, sometimes it's best to pull back. Put yourself in a more defensible position, behind solid cover and preferably behind something that will shield you from artillery as well.

Make sure to ping the map to inform your team but only do it once every so often, if you spam it people will likely just ignore you. If they don't come to help you then it's on them, not you!

Whilst there are some tanks which can at least stall a flank by themselves such as certain hull down heavies or heavily armoured tank destroyers. It is usually best to just pull back rather than get overrun and destroyed as typically it'll be you against many and at best in my experience you will never kill more than one or two if they are even half-way competent.

Also if anyone starts pinging on you or trying to tell you to go cover that flank without themselves moving to help you? Ignore them. 

Tip #4: Know Your Tanks

I mean this in a very general way, not just for tanks you play but those of your allies and enemies as well. Whilst tanks are generally divided between the five classes that doesn't mean every heavy tank plays exactly the same as every other heavy tank, a Tiger I plays differently to an IS for example.

Play your tanks to their strengths and try to exploit the weaknesses of enemy tanks as best you can. I know that's easier said than done for the most part but it's a good thing to always keep in the back of your mind as you play.

Telling a thinly armoured heavy tank to push or expecting a tank destroyer to scout for you is not likely the best of ideas.

Tip #5: Don't Get Frustrated or Angry

Believe me I know this one is harder to do than it is to say, there are times even I get so frustrated I could bite my keyboard in half but in the end it doesn't help anyone. You are in the end only responsible for how well you play, if you get six kills, do 4000 damage and still lose that is not your fault in the end.

Getting angry or frustrated over it will make you just play a whole lot worse and more importantly, you'll stop having fun, defeating the point of playing the game in the first place!

A rule I started to follow about a year into my playing of World of Tanks was to always try and do more damage than the hit-points of my own tank. Following that one simple goal in every battle slowly saw my average XP and credit earning increasing and my overall frustration diminishing.

Raging, ranting and cursing at other players no matter how badly they may be playing from your perspective is never really justified. Also if you find yourself the target of someones frustrations, simply mute them or add them to your blacklist. Remember, don't feed the trolls.

If you see someone doing something wrong, then perhaps try to explain to them why it may be they just didn't know! (It is not as if the WoT tutorial is that comprehensive let's face it.)

Old Games I Still Love: Stronghold

Still in it's box on a shelf for me!

Ah, Stronghold where to even begin with this little gem? As a consummate 'turtle' in most strategy games the idea of building a heavily fortified castle is inherently appealing to me. It hadn't really been done before either, sure other medieval games and such had their castles but they were usually just big defensive towers. Stronghold on the other hand focuses purely on those medieval bastions, letting you practically build them brick by brick, placing down towers, walls and more to craft your ideal fortress. Everything from a wooden palisade to a multi-layered citadel and everything in between could be built given enough time and resources on hand.

There's also a fairly in-depth economic aspect to the game as well more in line with games like Settlers than Age of Empires. It starts off fairly simple with woodcutters huts and hunters huts to feed your peasants and provide material for building more structures you soon find yourself actually having to produce the bows, spears and armour of various troops whilst trying to balance increasing your peasant population to work and fight for you whilst also taxing them to train soldiers. Honestly, the economic side of the game reminds me of the Settler's series (though this has shorter production chains thankfully.) You could also use the marketplace to your advantage, have an abundance of iron but no stone? Then sell the excess iron to buy in stone. 

A wooden fort, everyone starts somewhere..

The campaign has a fairly cliche story but it was compelling enough to move the action along (there was even a short non-combat economic campaign). You started off building castles from wooden palisades and fending off wolves as you tried to gather food and resources and each mission saw new units or new economic structures or challenges to take on. Some missions did away with the castle building and instead gave you an army, tasking you with attacking an enemy stronghold, I wasn't personally a fan of them but they could be fun and more than a little satisfying when you figured out how to pull them off.

The sieges themselves are fairly spectacular to watch with hundreds of arrows sailing through the sky, trebuchet shots tearing chunks out of walls and pitch ditches bursting into flames. In my case I much preferred defending to attacking, simply because I love building castles, fortifying my bases and generally watch all those archers and crossbowmen I paid for putting the hurt on my opponents. It was made all the more impressive to watch due to the sheer amount of units that could be on screen at once, often hundreds of units from the cannon fodder spear-men to heavily armoured knights, archers, mace men etc.

"My lord.. The farms are on fire.. Again.."

The free build mode is where I sunk many an hour once the campaign had been exhausted where you could build in peace on a number of maps and only be attacked when you chose to be. As I said at the start, I am quite a turtle when it comes to strategy games so getting to construct the perfect castle and then spawn in enemies to test it was innately appealing to me. Sometimes I built sprawling citadels encasing all my peasants and production buildings behind triple thick walls and multiple gates, others I'd simply take the Helm's Deep approach and build a massive wall bisecting the map. The fact I could make the titular strongholds however I felt best was a lot of fun when paired up with the compelling economic issues. Did you want to keep all your production buildings inside but run into space or travel time issues? Or did you keep some of them outside of the protection of your walls at the risk of invaders poking your farmers and woodcutters with pointy sticks?

I could genuinely spend hours tinkering with the layout of my castles either for the sake of min-maxing them or just making them look cool, even copying the layouts of fantasy and real medieval castles as best I could. I recall me and a couple of friends using both free build and the map editor to try to recreate the battle of Helm's Deep, fun times!

Such a cozy little fort, I think I'll take it!

All in all this is the game that started it all, it isn't my absolute favourite in the Stronghold series but I like it enough that even now I sometimes reinstall it and play it to this day. If you are into building castles then I can heartily recommend Stronghold Crusader HD as it has far more content than the original. Stronghold Crusader however is an entire other blog post waiting to happen!

World of Tanks: My Thoughts On Gold/Premium Ammo

Now, gold or premium ammo, whatever you wish to call it garners a lot of mixed feelings from players of World of Tanks and for good reason I think. Now, for clarification I have played the game for a long time, since the beta, back when gold ammo could only be purchased for gold. Though by that token it was also rare to run into and often just ignored as who would want to spend what amounts to real money for ammo in an online game?

I forget which version or patch it was but they decided to make it so you could buy the 'gold' or premium consumables and ammunition for (a lot of) credits technically giving everyone access to it. Now with the more recent addition of a shot tracker as the screenshot above shows, you see gold ammo flying around all over the place which brings it's own issues. 

It genuinely feels like my more heavily armoured tanks can't really use their armour the moment the gold ammo gets loaded up. People see my O-Ni and despite it having weak side armour and being pretty easy to flank, they just punch holes in the front with gold anyway. Okay, fair enough heavily armoured tank but then I see people spamming gold at my tier 7 Swedish TD, a tank with 15mm of armour, a tank that could be penetrated frontally by low tier HE rounds.

Personally if it were up to me I'd entirely rework it or just remove it as it is not much fun to be on the receiving end of. There is no in battle trade off to using premium ammo most of the time, sure it costs more credits but that should not be a balancing factor. To that end here are a few possible ideas I personally have had over the last few weeks.

• Make it do less damage: This to me makes the most sense as it gives a direct trade off for the increased penetration. This will at least mean players will have to make the choice of whether they want to risk more damage at the potential of bouncing or do less damage but have a better chance of penetrating
• Give it special effects: I know there are a lot of types of premium ammo from HEAT to HESH and APCR or even just standard AP. Just a couple of examples though, APCR might do less damage but guarantee module damage (not destruction.) So, you slam a shot into an enemies engine as they cross the open and boom, slowed to a crawl. HESH/HEAT may be more likely to injure crew and such but this would need additional balancing bringing me onto the next idea.
• Limit the amount of premium ammo a tank can have in battle: This would be the easiest one to add in. Simply make it so you can't carry a full load of premium ammo, limit it to 5-10% of the tanks ammo capacity. Will stop it from being spammed at the very least.

What about tanks that almost have to use premium ammo?

No tank in my opinion should ever have to fire premium ammo though there are a lot of tanks that do feel as if they need it due to their standard ammo not being very competitive. The Comet, the Churchill VII to name the two I have played that felt like they needed it but they should be buffed to be competitive. Also I am not asking for it to be removed as that's highly unlikely just changed and balanced like.. Well a lot of aspects of the game need right now! Yes, I'm looking at you, matchmaker. 

It's not an IWIN button though, you still need to know how aim.

Whilst you do have to be aware of the quirks of premium ammo such as HEAT (spaced armour such as tracks nullifies it completely) the point is more that it can make heavily armoured tanks feel pretty pointless. If they can't use their armour effectively due to getting pummeled with premium ammo and penetrated frontally anyway, then their biggest advantage is already gone. 

I also think it doesn't promote good gameplay, rather than outflanking that Ferdinand or trying to get around that KV-4. People just load the premium ammo and knock holes in the front anyway.

Final Thoughts

All in all I highly doubt they'd ever remove premium ammo but I do personally think they should change or re-balance it in someway. Every advantage needs a trade-off, that's a key component of balance, tanks with heavy armour move more slowly, smaller caliber guns fire faster but do less damage etc. Simply saying it costs more credits is a non-issue, economic balancing should not affect battle balancing. Anyone with a half-decent premium tank can likely afford the credits to run tanks with premium ammo. 

Is it the biggest issue in World of Tanks right now? Probably not but I do feel it's something that perhaps needs looking at. Along with the matchmaker but that'd be a whole other post to make.

World of Tanks: My Thoughts on Swedish Tank Destroyers So Far

Yeah, I know I took the screenshot a while ago now!

Tank destroyers have long been my favourite class of tank in World of Tanks so I'll likely be putting up a lot of blog posts on them. 

So, my thoughts on the Swedish tank destroyer line on the whole so far as I have played up to the Ikv 90 Typ B. So do consider I haven't gotten to play around with the whole siege and travel mode of the tier 8 or higher yet (soon!) I have another 40-50k or so XP and a metric ton of credits to go before I get there.

All in all they have some interesting low tier options, the tier 5 was a particular favourite of mine due to it's standard ammunition for it's howitzer being HEAT rounds. This meant it could really really ruin anyone's day if you could hit them. However like most of the Swedish line they have cardboard armour and HE rounds even at low tiers will usually just go right through them. It's incredible gun depression at least helped with poking ridge-lines that other tank destroyers can only dream of.

Tier 6 with the Ikv 65 Alt II sees the line moving away from howitzers and more toward long range sniping, which it did fairly okay at. It was helped by it's agility and ability to relocate as needed, but as with most of them it's armour was over-matched by everything. That said it felt very much like a Hellcat without the turret to me so it didn't take long to get to tier 7 which is where the brakes feel like they got slammed on progression wise.

I am currently sat at tier 7 as you can see above, this one feels like much more of a grind so far. It's not a bad tank in the strictest sense of things, the gun can pose a threat to even tier 9 heavies and if it gets spotted it's usually fast enough to escape all but the speediest of tanks. However the low damage per shot and the oddly slow reload for that damage can make it feel more like a chore to play. 

It's pretty sneaky given it's low profile but that compared with it's speed is literally your only defence. The complete lack of armour (15mm frontal) means anyone with half a clue will be slamming high explosive shells into you for devastating effect, artillery is especially deadly to this especially as it can see tier 9 artillery. I've had near misses from GW Tigers shave off half of my hitpoints. It really does the 'glass' part of a 'glass cannon' well that's all I will say on that part. All in all you should really do your best to avoid being shot at in the first place as even tier 1's would have no trouble punching holes into it's paper thin hull.

The top gun also doesn't feel as accurate as a thinly armoured tank destroyers gun should, I've lost count of the times a fully aimed shot has just whiffed completely or fired off to one side or the other and simply tracked a target rather than damaged it. Whilst on paper the 0.36 accuracy is pretty average given that you have to play this thing in the back line you feel it a lot more, especially with the fairly low fire rate for a 90mm gun. Despite the gun being mounted in the rear, the range of movement it has to the left and right as well as decent gun depression makes it fairly easy to keep your gun on all but the fastest targets without the battle with terrain the TD's like the SU-100M1 and SU-101 have.

All that said however I am definitely looking forward to getting into the tier 8 and higher Swedish tank destroyers and playing around with the siege and travel mode. I even have a female crew from the Christmas event waiting to crew the tier 8, so once I get to the biggest TD's I'll have a more in-depth look at them.