Wargamer's Corner

Ohhh, good idea, thank you!

While I am not a wizard or pro at this stuff, remember the basics. First, use recon to find units that could affect your crossing. Then, hit them with artillery and airpower. Third, maneuver your units into position to finish off the remaining enemies. Fourth, move up and cross.

If you don't have big indirect resources, you can substitute armored vehicles firing at range to prep the battlefield instead. And remember, don't ride your infantry into kill zones. Disembark them into cover, then let them control the open ground from there.

I haven't tried the beta yet. I was looking for something to play today...maybe I'll give it a go too!

Anyone else playing Slytherian’s Fantasy General II at his point?

I’m really digging it.

I got crushed in the first few turns of the very first scenario. WTF am I expected to do with wolves coming from every angle? (This was on release day.) I have not dug back in yet. But I'm a bit dubious that the whole game is positioning plus rock-paper-scissors, because being attacked by four wolf units right after the first fight *seems* unsurvivable... Unless it's all "type A unit in Type 3 terrain yields +90% defense" stuff. Which requires memorizing tables, which is kind of a boring approach to a fantasy game.

The non-beta version of the Armored Brigade stacking patch is out today.

jrralls wrote:

Anyone else playing Slytherian’s Fantasy General II at his point?

I was enjoying it until I saw an enemy leader basically cheat in front of my eyes. Rested and attacked in the same turn. I shelved it after that.

Veloxi wrote:
jrralls wrote:

Anyone else playing Slytherian’s Fantasy General II at his point?

I was enjoying it until I saw an enemy leader basically cheat in front of my eyes. Rested and attacked in the same turn. I shelved it after that.

I think there is a magical artifact that allows you to do just that.

If so, it still felt sh*tty to use it in the fourth scenario. The difficulty went nuts.

Veloxi wrote:

If so, it still felt sh*tty to use it in the fourth scenario. The difficulty went nuts.

What level of difficulty did you choose?

I'm not sure there was a choice at the time.

I set up a defense scenario in Armored Brigade this evening and did it up properly. Selected a map area in the North German Plain, a town fronted by an open valley on the left and a wooded hill on the right. Gave the Sovs air superiority, and set up with 10% existing damage for a bit of variety. I used auto force selection for both, and the game presented me with mech forces on both sides, 3-1 in favor of the Soviets in quantity.

So I carefully check LOS and set up in depth. Scouts and an infantry unit (four teams and M2s) forward; ATGMs in the middle ranges with long sight lines; 5 MBTs in the rear, again with long sight lines; and 2 sets of 3 infantry teams covering the two objectives in town. Another pair of ATGM teams covering the SE approaches, and lots of AT traps and mines in the woods there. I used my wire to block an advance from a close woods into town, which paid off. Two air defense units, neither of which turned out to be effective, unfortunately, due to short LOS.

Basically, I banked on the Soviets running up the middle, with flanking attacks to distract. Turned out the focused mostly on my left and center, with only a few units trying the woods approach. I was able to hit at long distance until my M60's ran out of ammo; most of them were killed in two air strikes or by T-62s (which the AI used as follow-ons to BTR-70's). The enemy infantry made a strong attack across about a half kilometer of open fields, but were eventually driven back. I discovered that keeping the M2s close to their infantry to provide supporting chain gun fire outweighs the danger to them, since I lost a few infantry units to enemy fire from infantry I could probably have otherwise driven off.

I forgot to set SOP for one of my scouts so it opened fire on some BTRs. That went bad as they stopped and unloaded a platoon or so to deal with the scouts. The enemy also used smoke at two points to block my lines of sight and get infantry into assault positions. But I had plenty of small arms and MGs and they just could not break through.

Very, very fun. It takes a bit to get through the setup, and you need to really look at the ISO map and then do an LOS walk through the area, get the shape of the terrain into your head, before you deploy. But man, is it great when finally get set up and see what happens to your plan.

One thing I was able to do, since the terrain was a shallow bowl with intermittent stands of trees, was to group my tanks fairly close together, with the new stacking limits. This gave me concentrated firepower to take out their initial regiment or so of mech troops. But it also made them a bit more vulnerable over time. I ended up shifting them around and lost two due to air attacks, and two due to inadvertent exposure during maneuver to contact. I need to work on that.

But wow, this game is great.

That sounds like a blast, Robear. Thanks for the impressions - I'm looking forward to the Steam port.

My question is, how accessible is the game for more casual wargamers? For reference, my wargame tastes run much more towards the "beer and pretzels" than the "grognard" end of the spectrum. Looking at comparable titles, I loved Steel Panthers when I was growing up, and more recently I have hundreds of hours in Eugen's Wargame series, but I bounced off Flashpoint Campaigns. Visually this looks closest to a real-time Steel Panthers?

Visually, yes, that’s right. However, the game assumes a knowledge of 80’s US and European military technology and tactics. I would say it’s possible to get into without that, but you’d need to do some reading, so...

I found Steel Panthers to be completely accessible, but somewhat simplistic and limited by the Igo-Ugo turn structure. This game is more in the Combat Mission/Graviteam mode, with continuous play that you can break into shorter (minute-long?) “turns” if you like (can pause but not give orders until the end of the “turn”).

You also have the option to build your force for a battle, which definitely requires knowledge of equipment and doctrine. If you recall from Flashpoint, the mix of forces is important for survivability. You can tell it to assemble forces automatically, but that limits creativity and flexibility. A lot of what the game enables is sandboxing encounters between different types of forces with degraded units, difficult terrain and other tactical problem-solving.

Your experience with the Wargame series sweeps the needle back towards your enjoying it, though you’ll find that Eugen games play quite differently (more like games than sims, the latter being what AB aspires to). Moment by moment they are similar, but the “wait 15 minutes and more troops show up for the next push” aspect that Eugen uses is not present in this game. It’s more “do what you can with what you have”, and campaigns are linked scenarios.

All in all, this game sits near Combat Mission, Graviteam’s offerings, and Command: Modern Air and Naval Operations in its approach to the topic. Definitely Grognard stuff. However, if you feel you understand the period, then once you learn the UI you’ll be comfortable. But someone who has never heard the term “Air-Land Battle”, at least, will probably find themselves mystified and frustrated. The tactics are quite different from those of WW2, anyway.

Veloxi wrote:

I'm not sure there was a choice at the time.

You set it up at the start of the game. There are five different levels.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/4O8vvFG.jpg)

But that does bring up a discusion point:

When everyone is given an option of difficulty; what do you choose?

I pretty much always start on easy mode unless it's a game I've played before.

I usually notch up a bit from the recommended first game difficulty, if it's a game type I've played before. Sometimes that works, sometimes not, but I found that starting really low when I have played similar games leads to boredom.

Thanks Robear! That helps. I think I'll give Armoured Brigade a try. I'm reasonably familiar with period hardware from other games and it'll be interesting to see a more sim-ish take on the stuff I know and love from Wargame

jrralls wrote:

When everyone is given an option of difficulty; what do you choose?

Hmm. Off the top of my head, it varies pretty widely depending on my skill / experience with the genre, and what I want out of the title. So for example:

- I tend to play Total War games on hard because I have lots of experience with the series.
- OTOH I played Shadow Tactics on easy because I'm very bad at stealth games and have limited tolerance for frustration.
- I tend to play Paradox games on normal because I'm more interested in the narrative alt-history experience than in min-maxing.
- I refine based on my experience with a game - usually this means turning it down to normal if I was too gung-ho at first (XCOM 2).

Then there are exceptions - I generally find Fire Emblem games challenging enough as it is, but I'm playing the latest one on hard because the folks in the thread warned that normal was much too easy.

Okay. Try setting up some practice scenarios in the Ft Irwin maps for practice. There's some pretty good terrain there for playing with. That way you won't spoil the real world stuff. Sounds odd, but you can see how the game works by pitting small units against each other in the desert, that sort of thing.

Also, I forgot I had the Italy/Yugoslavia pack and bought it again. Anyone want it? I'll send the serial number and you can p/m me your email, so I can send the 2.1MB install file. Then just register it to your account.

Robear, can you share the scenario that you made above? I'd like to give it a go.

I saved it, but I'm not sure how to do it. Just put it in a Dropbox, maybe? Or are there other files needed?

Edit - If it's just the scenario.xml file, I can post the contents of that. It's not long, maybe 50 lines. But I'm not sure if the .bin file is needed as well, or auto-generated.

I dont know if anyone has posted this yet or not. Just thought I'd share:

https://www.reddit.com/r/computerwar...

Looks like Armored Brigade is headed to Steam!

Yep. That's been the plan for a while, if it sold well.

Mind Elemental, how did Armored Brigade go for you?

Looks like the France-Belgium expansion will come on Halloween, yay! I'm really loving this game now.

Oh, I’m waiting on the Steam release (one week away). I’ll let you know how I go.

I love Armored Birgade.

I'm terrible at it, but I love it.

I know, Veloxi. I keep making rookie mistakes. "Oh, I put my air defense a bit behind a small rise... Let me move them up to the edge of that field, it's got a loooong LOS... Oh, wait, those T64s can see me now? AAAAAAA!!!!"

But the game really flows, finally being able to spread out and compress units as needed by the terrain and situation.

Wish listed this one. Looks very cool.

Robear wrote:

I know, Veloxi. I keep making rookie mistakes. "Oh, I put my air defense a bit behind a small rise... Let me move them up to the edge of that field, it's got a loooong LOS... Oh, wait, those T64s can see me now? AAAAAAA!!!!"

But the game really flows, finally being able to spread out and compress units as needed by the terrain and situation.

Exactly this!

"I'll just take a littttlleeee peeksiepoo and oh look I'm dead."

I’ve also learned to love infantry scouts. Put them in dense concealment, set their SOP to not let them fire on units, then keep them quiet and the sightings roll in.

Oh, and for mech infantry, don’t forget to use the carriers as support fire platforms. Huge force multiplier while their ammo lasts.

Overall, I’d say pay a lot of attention to SOP settings. Maybe don’t allow units to open fire at max range (to conserve ammo and make the hits that occur more likely to do damage). Limit tanks to hard targets. That sort of thing will get you a lot of advantage.

Robear wrote:

Maybe don’t allow units to open fire at max range (to conserve ammo and make the hits that occur more likely to do damage).

THIS! 100%. At max range, you're just wasting ammo and giving up your position.