Wargamer's Corner

Johan Andersson of Paradox wrote:

Its a completely new game that uses some code from hoi though, like ck2 uses some code from eu3.

About all we know now.

tboon wrote:
Johan Andersson of Paradox wrote:

Its a completely new game that uses some code from hoi though, like ck2 uses some code from eu3.

About all we know now.

Based on how Sengoku and CKII have launched I have high hopes. Paradox has the money to get their 1st party titles pretty polished now, which is, well, fantastic.

Truly this is some sort of renaissance in PC strategy gaming an/or war/grand strategy gaming. It's amazing.

I agree, Garion. The last year or so has been just amazing, I haven't seen this focus on strategy/wargames since the 80's, when gamer geeks were computer geeks and Arpanet was unsullied by the general public. I've got more good games than I can play through.

CKII. Civ 5. World of Tanks. Tropico 4. Men of War. Warlock. FTL. Jagged Alliance - BIA. Conflict of Heroes. DW - Legends. BftB. CM: Normandy. Mount and Blade. Panzer Corps. Operation Star. War in the East. Pride of Nations. Victoria 2. Scourge of War.

I mean, it's astounding.

Decisive Campaigns: Case Blue

I've just started a preview AAR of one of the small scenario's included with the game.

(Preview) - Case Blue - 2nd Kharkov AAR - Turn 1
http://sugarfreegamer.com/?p=38802

The game is due out on the 16th July 2012.

Robear wrote:

Oh, good. I've been waiting for them to push past WWII. The whole proxy war dynamic should be interesting.

And that's a dynamic that would be neat to see feed back into their Vicky games.

I've finished Turn 2 of my Preview AAR of Case Blue: 2nd Battle of Kharkov!
http://sugarfreegamer.com/?p=43287

spelk wrote:

I've finished Turn 2 of my Preview AAR of Case Blue: 2nd Battle of Kharkov!
http://sugarfreegamer.com/?p=43287

I NEED TURN 3 RIGHT NOW!

It really is quite suspenseful. Great job so far.

Got a newsletter from 2x2 games with two exciting things about Unity of Command:

1. It's 40% this weekend for a total of $18 at http://unityofcommand.net/, Gamersgate, and Desura. Not that more needs to be said about how great the game is, but this deal is highly recommended if you haven't gotten a chance to check it out yet.

2. Work is in progress on a "Road to Berlin" expansion. The newsletter goes into a bit more detail, but this post gives official confirmation. Very exciting news for those of us that have already wrung all of the awesomeness that they can out of the base game.

Images from the expansion:
IMAGE(http://img2.ymlp233.net/jmjx_dnieper462.jpg)
IMAGE(http://img2.ymlp233.net/jmjx_danube633.jpg)

Urk! I've been mulling over picking up Unity of Command this week. Was just about to download the demo. Might have to just spring for it at that price!

Great. I've been trying my darndest to stay out of the Steam Sale fracas and it's Unity of Command that gets me. Downloaded and played the tutorial and first couple scenarios, I'm really digging it so far.

Filthy enablers.

It really kills me that Unity of Command isn't on Steam. Especially since it is available on Gamersgate, Desura, and the corporate front formerly known as Impulse.

Yeah, I don't know why Steam rejected it because it's extremely polished. I have hope that the Greenlight thing will get it in.

In the meantime, buy it from the devs as the game is awesome.

I hadn't noticed, did anyone post that UoC sale in the video game deals thread? Might be some folks in there interested who are scared of venturing down here into the mildewy basement that is the Wargamer's thread.

Turn 3 of my AAR on Case Blue on it's day of release..

http://sugarfreegamer.com/?p=46495

it takes me a while to get these together, I should have known I couldn't knock out all the turns necessary before the game was released... still, it does lay it out, moment by moment, turn by turn. So could be used as a primer for newbies. Maybe.

fleabagmatt wrote:

scared of venturing down here into the mildewy basement that is the Wargamer's thread.

Hey Fleabag, I love that basement smell. It smells like victory.

And unrelated: Coming back from a vacation to see that Paradox has a Cold War game in the wings is almost as good as being on vacation itself.

The_Vinnlander wrote:

Hey Fleabag, I love that basement smell. It smells like victory.

As do I. It complements the orange shag rug and wood paneling down here nicely.

Hey you kids! Get outta my basement!

I finally sat down and played through the next UoC scenario on the list, Race for Rostov.

I had gone back and relistened to the 3MA episode on the game and took notice of their mention on the importance of supply lines. I hadn't really put much thought into supply for the scenarios played so far. Maybe I just got lucky in how I played them. Rostov was a splash of cold water in the face, though. My first turn was a bit wishy washy, poking and prodding at a couple spots along the front. The Germans immediately charged up and took the middle bridges, cutting off supply to everything in the center of the map. I wasted a couple turns trying to root them out. My Russian comrades were no match for them, so I finally just cut them off and let them fester, out of supply themselves. By then I had extended the north supply enough to cover the middle map anyhow.

For some reason I had it in my head that if I captured the enemy's supply point it would magically become my own. So I fiddled around for a while before I took their northernmost point. Of course that didn't help me out much until the end game when I was able to completely cut off all supply to Rostov before sacking it.

I don't know that I'm ready to give the campaigns a try yet, but I'm having a good time with the scenarios so far. I really need to read through the manual, I have no idea how stuff like disbanding, reinforcements and the prestige points work.

edit: Is there a Unity of Command catch-all that I missed, or has any discussion been confined to this thread?

The supply lines of UoC are really important. It's to the point where when you first load up a map you really need to look where each supply point is, what rail lines it does or could use and what terrain features will cut off supply (rivers mainly, woods and swamps also). You do this for both yourself and your opponent. Then you plan out how you can extend your supply out to your objective, and how you can cut off your opponent's supply. Ensuring that your line will hold so the enemy can't punch through and mess up your supply is often much more important than making quick gains.

For the campaign I'd start with the Russians over the Germans as the basic dynamics of the game are more exaggerated. Soviet infantry are weak, so they never attack, and only serve to form a line and block enemy movement. You use tanks to punch holes in the enemy defense, then either run a fast unit (like the cavalry) through to the back lines to cut them off, or make a wedge to cut part of the line off and slowly muscle your way forward. The game definitely rewards patience.

So far I am enjoying UoC quite a bit. I look forward to where they can take that game. Unfortunately the developers have admitted that their scenario builder is only "40%" of a builder itself, so it will probably be a while before we see any tools for the community. Some more varied scenarios would be nice to see.

If my maths are correct, UoC is now on sale for half off ($15) this weekend using Code VIP-3375-2918

Battlefront has now released Combat Mission: Fortress Italy.

Robear wrote:

Battlefront has now released Combat Mission: Fortress Italy. :-)

It looks like there are a couple different flavors of Combat Mission. Are they all similar, just different locations? For someone new to them, would Normandy be the place to jump in? My iMac is hovering somewhere between minimum and suggested specs, so I think I should give the demo a try to see how it runs.

There were several original Combat Mission games that are available pretty cheaply now. The second generation games start with Combat Mission: Battle For Normandy, which also offers a British module as an add-on, and now Fortress Italy, which will have a total of four add-ons. I believe that the Russian Front game will follow in 2013.

So yeah, Battle for Normandy is a good start. But Fortress Italy is stand-alone. So, you could pick either.

For you iOS people, Combat Mission: Touch is free today.

It's universal.

Thank you sooo much Matt!

fleabagmatt wrote:

For you iOS people, Combat Mission: Touch is free today.

It's universal.

Woo, I don't anticipate it supplanting Battle Academy, but you can't beat free. Thanks for the tip!

Here's a cool tidbit I found in the Unity of Command forums:

Hi Steve,

the game is entirely written in Python (http://python.org/). We use a few external libraries to put our platform together: cairo (http://cairographics.org/), pygame (pygame.org), etc.

Doing it in python means we were able to make it sweet and bug free (it's only 50k lines of code, including the editors) but at the same time there is some pain when we move it to a new OS as we need to compile our platform ourselves first - Mac was a bit of a headache for example.

Cheers,

Tomislav

That's really neat - you typically don't see commercial projects made entirely in Python. It's usually part of the game scripting as a layer on top of C++ or another language closer to the metal.

Thought you guys might need a Christmas gift for that special crochet expert in your life... Tiger 1 Panzer Slippers!