Wargamer's Corner

Once you get through the tutorial, and open the manual so you can read up on the units and combat subtleties and such, you'll be fine. Most of it is pretty obvious, but a few things - like better defensive terrain on the hilltop square that lies *behind* the slope square, rather than *on* the slope square - you'll get to know as you go along.

Robear wrote:

Once you get through the tutorial, and open the manual so you can read up on the units and combat subtleties and such, you'll be fine. Most of it is pretty obvious, but a few things - like better defensive terrain on the hilltop square that lies *behind* the slope square, rather than *on* the slope square - you'll get to know as you go along.

You are sure you do not work for Slitherine? You would make for a good sales person for them

I bought the game. Downloading right now and then I am off to the tutorial.

Thanks!

So I've a question. I got Mius-Front a while back and bounced off the UI pretty hard. It LOOKS great, like the kind of thing I'd love to play, but wow that UI.

So now it's follow-up, Tank Warfare: Tunisia 1943, is on sale, and the temptation calls to me.

So my question is, for folks who have both, is Tank Warfare: Tunisia 1943 easier to grok than Mius-Front at all, or is it pretty much the same?

Thanks!

I think they are pretty similar, to be honest. It takes a bit of time to go through the videos and docs that introduce it, but it's worth it.

Robear wrote:

I think they are pretty similar, to be honest. It takes a bit of time to go through the videos and docs that introduce it, but it's worth it.

Are the videos accessible in game or are they created by some Youtuber?

Veloxi wrote:

So I've a question. I got Mius-Front a while back and bounced off the UI pretty hard. It LOOKS great, like the kind of thing I'd love to play, but wow that UI.

So now it's follow-up, Tank Warfare: Tunisia 1943, is on sale, and the temptation calls to me.

So my question is, for folks who have both, is Tank Warfare: Tunisia 1943 easier to grok than Mius-Front at all, or is it pretty much the same?

Thanks!

Stick with it. Once you get over the AI, you'll really enjoy it. It's sooooo good.

Hopefully FoG 2 will get ported to the Mac. Not that I'm short of war-games having just upgraded my Mac.

Accessible in game, as I recall, via the tutorials. I think the first ones are videos? It's been a bit.

The major difference between Mius and Tunisia is in the campaign game. I played a number of campaigns in Operation Star and Mius and still didn't really understand what I was doing or supposed to be doing. With the Longstop Hill DLC the campaign game is moved up from platoon level to Battalion level, which drives down the complexity and takes a lot of clutter off the map and just makes everything a bit easier.

Once you have a handle on that you can move back to the old style with the other games without it being such a difficulty cliff.

I don't know if you saw them before or not, Veloxi, but I do have some, (overlong), videos to get people going with the UI in Mius front. One on setup and one on understanding what's happening in battle and how orders propagate and so on.

I think if Graviteam took the method for interacting with units wholesale from something like Close Combat and stuck it in here the sales would ramp up significantly. The UI isn't especially hard to learn, it's just obtuse and different to where a lot of the other games in the genre have gone, which means there's not a lot of immediate comfort when you look at the map.

Yeah, I'll try to get a handle on Mius-Front first then. Thanks guys!

Bismarky Mark, I'd love to see those videos.

Deployment is here and fighting is here.

These were meant to be 10 minute light touches on some concepts and went way, way long because there's no scripting and boy can I ramble.

The most useful pieces are probably understanding the coloured squares and chevrons of the deployment screen and understanding the way orders are shared in the combat screens.

Ultimately though, as with all good games I like that have an unintuitive UI in front, (Graviteam... CKII.... DF), I'd say to just start playing and eventually everything will work out.

Thanks!

Favourite moment thus far in Longstop... A pair of British soldiers in a small trench firing a Bren at distant infantry targets have to stop to reload and right then a solid round from a German tank goes clean through one of the guys out the other side and bangs off the dirt, to ricochet into the distance.

This happens at the exact moment the second guy's idle trigger goes off, so as his mate is being turned into a fine mist he shouts out "at least I'm getting a tan!"

SparrowOne, how is FoG treating you?

Robear wrote:

SparrowOne, how is FoG treating you?

The tutorial is trying to kill me with information lol. I kept the Romans from invading Britain twice now - reading as much as I could handle. Also learning by simply trying.

The first time around I kept the hill, which helped me eventually breaking the Romans. But I lost my right flank, with the left flank only barely surviving. Lost a lot of men.

The second time around I tried to use the "outflanking" tip for my chariots. Hard to do though, they keep moving but not being able to attack. I kept my left flank, but they broke through my right flank and captured the hill. I used my light troops to throw stuff at them and kept my troops away till they were disrupted. With my troops all rallied to steady I drove them of the hill and won :). In the final information it showed that I lost a lot less men.

I love reading the manual for the historical information and the pictures

Definately enjoying this buy Thanks again.

Some things I notice I missed so far:
- is there a way of telling which unit is not being given orders yet. Not as if all should have been given orders, but would be stupid to leave one out that is necessary.
- there is no way you can move away when being engaged? I had one unit down the hill with a Roman unit on the hill. My troops were being slaughtered till they fled. I wanted to retreat them sooner, but was not allowed the option
- have not seen a rally the troups command for the commander. Will that be instantly when in the vicinity?

Just curious: I start by attacking their light troops with my light troops. Seems historical correct. But it reads as if I should attack the legionaries first.

Ok. 2 things:
a) I hate you people
b) I now own FoG2 and Tank Warfare: Tunisia and the DLC

My wallet hates you all, but I'll be busy waging war for the rest of the weekend.

SparrowOne wrote:

Some things I notice I missed so far:
- is there a way of telling which unit is not being given orders yet. Not as if all should have been given orders, but would be stupid to leave one out that is necessary.

In the lower right there's an arrow that pops up a menu that has this (top button). It also has "Not Fired", "Show Command Radius" and a couple other things. Also the 'N' key will cycle through unmoved units. 'B' will cycle through "not fired" units.

SparrowOne wrote:

- there is no way you can move away when being engaged? I had one unit down the hill with a Roman unit on the hill. My troops were being slaughtered till they fled. I wanted to retreat them sooner, but was not allowed the option

Generally when committed to melee combat, both sides will stay engaged until one side breaks. There are occasions where one side might get pushed back, causing them to disengage but you cannot order a phalanx to turn around while they are engaged on the front. The units in the time depicted were not maneuverable.

SparrowOne wrote:

- have not seen a rally the troups command for the commander. Will that be instantly when in the vicinity?

Rally checkhappens automatically. Attaching a general to a unit increases the chances of a unit rallying.

SparrowOne wrote:

Just curious: I start by attacking their light troops with my light troops. Seems historical correct. But it reads as if I should attack the legionaries first.

Well, all things being equal, you want to attack the legions, period. If you can reduce their effectiveness in any way, you want to do that. However, usually the Roman light units are faster and get to you sooner, so those are the first things you can attack. But I think you really want to wear down the legions (or whatever the heavy infantry are on the other side) as much as possible before they make contact with your heavy infantry.

PWAlessi wrote:

Ok. 2 things:
a) I hate you people
b) I now own FoG2 and Tank Warfare: Tunisia and the DLC

My wallet hates you all, but I'll be busy waging war for the rest of the weekend.

Sowwy

tboon wrote:
SparrowOne wrote:

- is there a way of telling which unit is not being given orders yet. Not as if all should have been given orders, but would be stupid to leave one out that is necessary.

In the lower right there's an arrow that pops up a menu that has this (top button). It also has "Not Fired", "Show Command Radius" and a couple other things. Also the 'N' key will cycle through unmoved units. 'B' will cycle through "not fired" units.

Will look into it

Third try I again had a victory - I think it is fate, cannot be skill

This time I tested a more defensive style: staying on the hill just throwing rocks. I moved my chariots and cavalry to the left and right edges to try to get a flanking position. This kind of worked, still was not very impressive. The legionaries broke through my light troops, but then were halted by my main troops till they started to run. Very interesting gameplay.

After three trials I am ready to start learning more in the next tutorial

I also saved Britain in the tutorial and my favourite bit was the post-game screen that showed I lost exactly one cavalryman. That must suck for his family to see 399 horsemen come home.

The Chariots can be very effective, but they have a turning circle, so it's possible you can get them next to an enemy, but they can't turn to attack them. They almost have to move like Knights on a chessboard, swinging in wide circles to hit the enemy. Once I did finally manage to manoeuvre them to take a Roman light javelin group in the flank they were really very effective and they kept up a punishing pursuit too.

I then pressed the random battle button and ended up with some absolutely massive battle with the Thracians and that went tremendously badly because I'm not ready to manage that many forces yet. Early success saw my line split in over-eager pursuit and then when the enemy rallied they could fight two smaller forces in piecemeal instead of my whole army.

This is really good though.

Fought the 2nd tutorial as Pyrrhus on Sicily using phalanxes. I was expecting to lose a lot of troops, based on me being Pyrrhus and all... But I won with only 12% loss of troops versus 57% by my opponent. Interesting :).

I found the extra tools for next unit and such. Quite the help!

Mr Bismarck: your encounter on the random map sounds scary, you are brave :). I am taking this alot slower.

As I recall, Pyrrhus got himself into that situation, and analysts since then have been arguing that it could have been handled better.

One thing to consider is that because melee locks units down, you can sacrifice a light unit to pin a heavy unit in place. That will let you maneuver heavier forces to it, or be part of a tactic to wear it down, or even just prevent it from attacking a critical unit that's already engaged in melee. It creates momentum in the fighting and forces you to actually think about when to really *commit* your best units into the fight. A great mechanic and I suspect it's accurate, too.

You enjoying the variety of units, Sparrow?

Robear wrote:

You enjoying the variety of units, Sparrow? :-)

Yes I do. Those Greek unit names made my head spin like it used to do at univ lol. I prefer the Latin names ;). The units remind me of the armies I bought for DBA a long time ago (15 mil tin soldiers) - I never played, just painted them. (For reference: DBA Online)

I put the action on as zoomed in as possible when it is "his" turn - its great to see what happens and see all those different units. That the computer follows the action is a hidden gem when zoomed in.

In CK2 I noticed I do like numbers / stats so I like checking which unit does what against who. And I guess my game pace has slowed down because of it :P.

It helps knowing alot about the subject though, the Civil War was only known to me because I played the very early wargames by Sid Meier (Gettysburg and Antietam iirc). Didn't have to think twice when I saw horses in charge range for my Elephants, where I keep wondering about my American units and how to use them properly

Tbh... I wonder why I was wondering if I should buy or not now

We knew what you'd want to do.

I finished the last tutorial with 17 to 60 % losses. I didnt change the difficulty though.

What would you recommend: play them again at higher difficulty level or follow the instructions ingame to go for quick battles for a while?

Last battle was very nice: I encircled the Roman army as Hannibal... now that sounds familiar

SparrowOne wrote:

I finished the last tutorial with 17 to 60 % losses. I didnt change the difficulty though.

What would you recommend: play them again at higher difficulty level or follow the instructions ingame to go for quick battles for a while?

Last battle was very nice: I encircled the Roman army as Hannibal... now that sounds familiar :P

Sounds like you don't need more tutorials - go get'em tiger!

Played the second tutorial as Pyrrhus and won despite half my line collapsing. I didn't get far enough forward quickly enough to get the high ground advantage, because the enemy could get one step onto the hill meaning the fights were pretty much level ground.

We weakened the left side of their line with slingers, archers and javelins, so much so that by the time the two lines met one unit on that side was already disrupted. I threw in some cavalry and my elephants and immediately began to roll up that side.

However, the enemy massed their cavalry on our left and hit my light infantry there really hard. We survived the first attack, but then one of my infantry units chased an evading light cavalry unit and got out of position, making a gap in my line.

That was all it took for Carthage and they totally ate that side of my line, getting on three sides of each unit in turn and then forcing them to rout before moving on to the next one.

One phalanx of Pike got totally isolated on a small hill and turned into the MVP for us, as they formed square and held off attack after attack, before we could finally decisively finish the battle on our right and turn our line.

This let us take some of the enemy on our left in the rear and this finally tipped the scales and gave us the victory.

Pyrrhus didn't have many men left to celebrate with however and probably can't take too many more victories like this. If only there was a word for that.

See, 35 or 40 years ago you'd play this on the tabletop and it would play out pretty much the same each time, modulo the dice results. There were serious limits to number and type of stats that could be used before the game system bogged down, and the 2 dice tables just barely gave enough variation in results to be less than predictable much of the time. The complexity that the designers today can put behind the scenes by putting this on a computer (and really, even just building the paper/tabletop version with computerized databases and equations) has given these games a depth that just did not exist even 10 years ago. It's truly amazing.

I know it's a game, but the holy grail of this type of game is to overcome the obvious shortcomings of the igo-ugo turn system and create a game that is fun AND has tons of variability with plausible results. And clearly we're seeing state of the art stuff from Matrix in this series.

I'm willing to bet that within 10 years, we'll see this series redone with pause-able realtime. That's the next logical step. Maybe Graviteam will help us out with that... (And yes, before you say it, "Total War: Rome" does already exist, but it's not skewed towards realism and plausible results....)

Robear wrote:

See, 35 or 40 years ago you'd play this on the tabletop and it would play out pretty much the same each time, modulo the dice results. There were serious limits to number and type of stats that could be used before the game system bogged down, and the 2 dice tables just barely gave enough variation in results to be less than predictable much of the time. The complexity that the designers today can put behind the scenes by putting this on a computer (and really, even just building the paper/tabletop version with computerized databases and equations) has given these games a depth that just did not exist even 10 years ago. It's truly amazing.

I know it's a game, but the holy grail of this type of game is to overcome the obvious shortcomings of the igo-ugo turn system and create a game that is fun AND has tons of variability with plausible results. And clearly we're seeing state of the art stuff from Matrix in this series.

I'm willing to bet that within 10 years, we'll see this series redone with pause-able realtime. That's the next logical step. Maybe Graviteam will help us out with that... (And yes, before you say it, "Total War: Rome" does already exist, but it's not skewed towards realism and plausible results....)

I don't know about pausable realtime but I do like the WeGo system of Battlestar Galactica, Frozen Synapse, and various other games. I also like the opportunity fire that some other systems have. I feel like there is more dynamic gameplay than IGoUGo.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

Pyrrhus didn't have many men left to celebrate with however and probably can't take too many more victories like this. If only there was a word for that.

If only

Great job on winning. Interesting how some units can really turn into your personal heroes :). No wonder IRL they award medals!