a few thoughts on Sudden Strike 5

I've been playing a lot of Sudden Strike 5, a WW2 real-time strategy game from Kite Games. I bought it somewhat on a whim — I am not going to pretend I am not often perusing the "WW2" or "tank combat" tags on Steam and this looked higher quality than a lot of the slop that populates the platform these days. I'm happy to say that it certainly is much better than I expected. SS5 is mostly a game about mechanized warfare on relatively even footing, which means that a significant part of the game is about scouting and having more tactical knowledge of the battlefield than your opponent. It seems to have some sort of multiplayer modes, but I am not at all interested in those and I've been entirely playing its campaign mode. The campaign mode is not particularly "easy". I'm playing on a medium difficulty and it took me a while to get a grasp on the speed and pacing of the game. Being about mechanized warfare, a not-insignificant part of the game's skirmishes is about resource management.…