First, a quick recap of the DLC: the release date is July 14, and the price is $9.99. You take command of Allied forces as they attempt to stop first the Italians, and then the Germans in the form of Afrika Korps.
- 21 scenarios based on British Commonwealth campaigns in East Africa, North Africa, and the Mediterranean in 1940-41.
- Large map coverage expanded to include the Western Desert and the Middle East, plus a brand new map for East Africa.
- Many new units from the Commonwealth nations.
- Desert camouflage for existing Axis and Allied units.
- An alt-history track in which, after the victory at El Alamein, a powerful mobile force conducts a non-stop drive to Tripoli (with Monty, no less).
New Desert Terrain
In this update, we added support for certain terrain features commonly found in the North African theater: dunes, escarpments, and ridges. The desert we previously encountered in the game (in Tunisia) was rocky desert, easily traversable for both infantry and armor. It is ideal terrain for mobile operations.
For this DLC we needed a terrain type that is more rough, as we are running into sand dunes of the Western Desert and Tripolitania. The resulting "dunes" terrain is difficult to attack in, and near impossible to traverse ( "A" movement cost). Enjoy!
Escarpments and ridges are long terrain features (hexsides) that extend over tens of kilometers. In our model, escarpments are steep cliffs that prevent movement, but allow for suppressive fire. If traversed by a road though, they are free for movement, and units can even attack.
Ridges are modeled as long, slightly elevated crests in the terrain. They provide a combat bonus for the defender, and impose and additional 1MP movement cost. It is to our surprise that legendary features such as Alam el Halfa, Ruweisat or Miteirya ridges are not more prominent geographically, but we think the characterization is fair and those battles clicked together well.
As you can see in the screenshot, starting with this update we added a map legend. It is enabled in all map views: terrain, supply, movement, and weather. Hover over items for detailed information in tooltips.
Odds and Ends
We added a standalone "Seydlitz" scenario to the Stalingrad DLC in this update. This is about the battles at Rzhev in the summer of 1942. If you own the DLC it will simply appear under "Standalone Scenarios". Enjoy the meat grinder!
Windows 7 Discontinued
We had to do this, please don't be mad. Unity of Command II is built with python, which discontinued Windows 7 in its version 3.9 from October 2020 (Microsoft did the same in January of the same year). We stuck with python 3.8 for a while, but now we need to move on.
In case you can't run this on anything but a Windows 7 machine, you have two options:
- Switch to the legacy_windows_7 branch in the Steam Library (properties -> betas). This will continue to run anything you bought by this time just fine, but it won't support Desert Rats or future content.
- According to user TacError (thx!), it is possible to get the game to run using nalexandru's "api-ms-win-core-path-HACK" library from github. If you know what you're doing this might be the way to go but we haven't tested it and cannot recommend.
Game Won't Run After Update
This happens after every update - a number of people get hit with this, mostly because some AV software mistakenly labels the game as a virus (a "false positive"). Please make sure to at least "verify integrity of local files" and add an exception for "uoc2.exe" in your antivirus before submitting an angry complaint ːsteamhappyː
There are other known reasons why the game might be running into problems, all listed in this helpful forum thread. In particular, Razer Cortex in-game overlay can cause the game to crash so please turn it off (this is a new one, listed towards the bottom of the forum post).
Desert Rats DLC releases on July 14th at 10 am PST.
Take care, and campaign responsibly. Cheers! ːsteamhappyː
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1884780/Unity_of_Command_II__Desert_Rats/
