AETO Force Pools
Perhaps the most interesting and fun component of Advanced ETO is its comprehensive force pools, which is more detailed and complete than any similar World War 2 game. Featuring a relatively accurate tabulation of all the belligerents (and even neutrals) of the Second World War, the AETO force pools present players with an extremely well organized spreadsheet that manages the arrival schedules of all the game’s units and pieces, including units that are purchasable by the players, and units that are automatic historical arrivals (such as the powerful Soviet ‘Siberian’ units, which may arrive just in time to help the Soviet player defend Moscow, as happened historically.) The force pools present a very organized apportionment of each belligerent’s forces according to historical timeframes, and this has the effect of simulating the war more historically than most other strategic-level wargames (e.g., the initial German panzer units...though effective during the war’s early stages...are gradually replaced by better-equipped and more powerful panzer units, as occurred historically.)
Because of Advanced ETO’s extensive scope of units, ships and aircraft, the AETO force pools are quite extensive (7 pages), but they are very detailed for the game’s scale (some players have contended that they are too detailed), and even include the precise comings and goings of naval units that historically transferred back and forth from other Theaters (i.e., the Pacific), as well as obscure details such as the former names of certain ships (e.g., the Soviet cruiser “Petropavlovsk”, which was formally the old German warship “Lutzow”.) Such is the extent of the force pools’ detail, the length of the “notes” actually exceed the length of the force pools unit tabulation themselves, in most cases. Though very detailed, the AETO force pools are well organized, intuitive and easy to comprehend.
Read more about this topic: Advanced European Theater Of Operations
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