Wargamer's Corner

For tactical Generaling, I'd go with the Scourge of War series, American Civil War games. You can limit yourself to first person and messengers for communications with your units. It's pretty hard core and presents some of the problems faced by commanders in an interesting way.

PeterS wrote:

I picked it up and decided to give it a run as France in the 1939 start. That... did not end well. I'll have to try another country next. China if I want a challenge, the US or UK/Commonwealth if I want something easier :D

China is actually pretty easy, and a little boring - you just feed in troops and create tougher and tougher defensive positions for the Japanese to crack.

I think Italy is the most interesting country to play - you have very limited resources that have to be used carefully, and your supply situation in Africa is so bad that when you switch to playing Germany or Russia the supply problems seem minimal by comparison.

Robear wrote:

For tactical Generaling, I'd go with the Scourge of War series, American Civil War games. You can limit yourself to first person and messengers for communications with your units. It's pretty hard core and presents some of the problems faced by commanders in an interesting way.

I've always been curious about these. Are they good/fun? Which one should one get, Gettysburg or Waterloo?

Gettysburg. Waterloo, I don't think they ever managed to get an effective AI together, and the scale defeated them... Last I heard, anyway.

The game gives you the essential commands that a leader (company and up, I think, although it might be brigade) would be able to give his units. It requires that the leader be in voice range, or use horse-bound messengers, thus putting in place a time delay for orders. There is a also a strong morale engine, so as your units take casualties and see others nearby faltering, they will falter too.

It's an interesting experience.

Thank you!

Hey friends, anyone have an opinion on Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa? The RPG/political elements look FASCINATING to me. Thanks!

Veloxi wrote:

Hey friends, anyone have an opinion on Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa? The RPG/political elements look FASCINATING to me. Thanks!

I loved DC: Blitzkrieg and thought Barbarossa would be even better. But for some reason, it just didn't grab me when I played it. Not sure if it was the game or just my head space at the time but I remember coming away a little disappointed. I think I'm in the minority with that opinion though.

Veloxi wrote:

Hey friends, anyone have an opinion on Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa? The RPG/political elements look FASCINATING to me. Thanks!

Hadn’t heard about that but it sounds intriguing.

Veloxi wrote:

Hey friends, anyone have an opinion on Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa? The RPG/political elements look FASCINATING to me. Thanks!

I really liked it. I think that it's probably the first wargame that I've played that makes you consider the pressure that a general gets from up the command chain. Adds interesting 'meta' choices too.

Lots of Matrix stuff on sale this week on Steam. Tempted by Flashpoint Campaigns ($14.49), Strategic Command WWII: World at War ($29.99), and/or the Operational Art of War IV ($26.39).

Ha! I was just coming here to post that. If you told me a few years ago that A) Slitherine would be on Steam and B) they would have a publisher's weekend sale, I would have said that you are crazy.

CMANO at $27, Distant Worlds $15, War in the East / West $25/each.

Michael wrote:

Ha! I was just coming here to post that. If you told me a few years ago that A) Slitherine would be on Steam and B) they would have a publisher's weekend sale, I would have said that you are crazy.

CMANO at $27, Distant Worlds $15, War in the East / West $25/each.

Yeah, for the longest time they were selling eight-year-old games at full price. Then in the span of a year or so they jumped full into Steam, with discounts and all that.

I'm guessing that it's worked out for them. I sure know I've given them a lot more money under this model than I did under their old model.

If you have the time and patience, CMANO is great.

Or you can stick with the smaller scenarios, and still have fun! (Well, assuming you played Harpoon back in the day and don't have to take dozens of hours to get used to the systems...).

Okay, maybe I'm over-optimistic. But it's a great game!

Anyone have input on Strategic Command WWII: World at War? I'm thinking about grabbing it in the sale.

Flashpoint Campaigns is very good and Operational Art of War IV is probably the best value in wargaming. It's fantastic too.

My old school wargaming friends love it. I have not tried it since the original version, the mechanics of which I did not really enjoy for some reason. Maybe I should give it a go...

I've tried Strategic Command WWII: War in Europe, it was OK but a little more fiddly that I liked. I keep meaning to get back to it and give it a another shot.

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm is one of my favorite wargames despite me being really bad at it. Highly recommended!

I slid very far down the learning curve on TOAoW4 when I last tried to get into it - I think I ended up knowing less about how to play the game when I stopped than I did when I went in! Another I would like to give another try, at some point.

Some thoughts on other stuff on sale:
Field of Glory 2 is really good and I am left wondering why I have not played in so long.

Aggressors: Ancient Rome is a game that has grown on me considerably. The dev is super-engaged and has made a ton of improvements over time.

The AGEOD games - if you like them, there's a lot of strategic value in the sale. Rise of Prussia is probably my fave of those on sale. I keep eyeballing Thirty Years' War and Wars of Succession, I may get one of them during the sale.

Gettysburg: The Tide Turns was super disappointing to me.
Ditto for Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Simulator.

Glowing reviews ... resolve failing.

Anyone have issues with TOAoW4 running poorly on their machine? Steam has reviews complaining about problems.

I really enjoyed TOAoW3, so the new version is super tempting.

And the idea of a global scale WWII with functioning AI is also super tempting.

Flashpoint Campaigns is a lesser area of interest for me, but it's cheap and gets great reviews.

Tough decisions!

Flashpoint Campaigns is good, but you really have to learn the system, and practice it, to be competent. It's not a casual game you just drop in on periodically. You have to be quite methodical with your combined arms, and consider interlocking fields of fires, ranges, EW and artillery cover, all sorts of stuff.

As far as ToAW4 goes, no, it's not going to have bad performance unless you've got an older system, in which case it might take a while to load up, or to process turns. The code is old, yes, but updated, with a streamlined UI for this version, and you have to remember that Matrix carries a lot of Grognard baggage from older wargamers who always need to grind their axes. I saw some of that in the Steam reviews; one of the worst complained vaguely of poor performance, and a slow UI, "...in my opinion...", which tells you you're looking at a real forum warrior.

It is quite snappy on my machine, of course, but if the code was bad, I'd expect it to be slower even on fast systems like mine. As long as you remember it's the fourth upgrade of the engine, and it *is* an older game, you'll be happy, I think. There are more than enough scenarios to keep you going for a long time. The game sequence of play is unusual, being designed to simulate the fact that in WWII command staff were limited in the time they could spend planning, but unlike Flashpoint, once you get the system you can rock and roll. And it does very well at creating interesting, nail-biting problems for you to solve each turn. It's challenging.

I'm going to go out on a limb and ask you if you've tried Northern Inferno, GB. I forget whether I've proselytized you on that lately. And while I'm checking, what about Qvadriga?

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Glowing reviews ... resolve failing.

Anyone have issues with TOAoW4 running poorly on their machine? Steam has reviews complaining about problems.

I really enjoyed TOAoW3, so the new version is super tempting.

And the idea of a global scale WWII with functioning AI is also super tempting.

Flashpoint Campaigns is a lesser area of interest for me, but it's cheap and gets great reviews.

Tough decisions!

I can run it acceptably on a surface pro tablet if that tells you anything. On my desktop, not even a hiccup with it.

So ... Strategic Command WWII: World at War.

First, it's good. Really good, if you like hex-based large-scale wargames. I've played the single-player through twice as the Axis and once as the Allies, with the difficulty turned up (everything but spotting cranked to maximum - more on that in a minute).

The core strategy is appropriately economic. It boils down to the Axis trying to destroy Allied units faster than the Allies can build them. Taking objectives is important for tilting the balance long-term, but not as important as destroying enemy units. This is because units are extremely expensive - a single unit can easily cost an entire turn's worth of MPPs (production points) - and the objectives, individually, are only worth a handful of MPPs per turn.

The AI is pretty good at defense. It makes it extremely difficult to achieve a decisive breakthrough, and is good at stubbornly holding defensible chokepoints like the approaches to Alexandria in Egypt and the mountain passes around Chungking. The AI is also good at the air battle, whittling down your fighter units with escorts and targeting vulnerable units for bombing runs.

Units fit their roles pretty well. Infantry is useful for slow rolling offensives and defense, while armor is good at killing vulnerable units and executing encirclements to cut off groups of units. Air units are good at softening up land targets and destroying ships. The various ship classes interact more-or-less the way you would expect - destroyers hunt subs, cruisers hunt destroyers, battleships hunt cruisers and destroyers, and carriers provide scouting and strike capability against anything.

You find yourself thinking the way I think a high-level commander would. Is it worth the losses you would take to capture that position this turn instead of next turn? What are the most valuable objectives to take and how can I provide enough supply to get units there to do the job? How do I assign units to make the most of my available commanders? What is the supply situation and how many units can I even support in this theater?

Now the negatives. The AI is not good at naval combat. It won't seem so at first until you get the hang of it, but once you understand it you can really whale on the AI with virtually no consequences. Naval units are both crazy expensive and very difficult to replace (it can take two years to build a battleship), so it's absolutely vital to destroy damaged ships while keeping your own from being spotted at all. This is why the extra spotting range in the difficulty settings is the most difficult setting you can use - it exposes your ships and makes them extremely vulnerable. The AI does prioritize killing damaged naval units, but it takes too many risks doing so, doesn't screen properly, and trickles its units in a few at a time instead of as a blob of death. Convoy raiding is economically marginal at best, so subs are best used to screen other naval units, scout, and kill heavy ships (when you run into a hidden unit, you lose action points and potentially waste your attack - but subs have a chance to dive and escape counterattacks).

The AI is average on the offense. Unlike naval combat, it doesn't seem to prioritize killing units, and that makes it very difficult to make headway. It takes more losses than it should, and it tends to overreach with damaged units and lose them. It's also VERY bad at amphibious attacks, primarily because it leaves transports exposed to attack and doesn't focus on capturing sufficient supply locations to enable the landed units to continue fighting.

This brings us to the the supply system. It's ... interesting. It's built around a framework of supply locations (cities and ports), and supply is high at those locations and then slowly drops down with distance. Roads and railroads extend the range and link supply locations. HQ units "buff" the supply levels around them based on their own supply level. This can lead to some non-intuitive situations, like HQ units giving more supply to a particular hex from further away. When you capture a supply location, the supply it can provide is lowered. The more combat that occurs in the location, the lower it goes. And supply is HUGELY important for combat - zero supply means the unit is going to be dead soon, and low supply makes your units vulnerable and unable to attack effectively.

Overall, this leads to a situation where a slow, grinding offensive is usually better economically than fast, slashing attacks and encirclements. Fast-moving units can easily find themselves on low supply and vulnerable to counter-attacks, while slow attacks can leverage artillery, air attacks, the prepared attack bonus, and unit swapping to destroy enemy units and win the economic war. Instead of breakthroughs, fast units are rotated through the front-line positions to make repeated attacks on the same unit.

Finally, playing as the Allies is kind of boring at the moment. It's demoralizing to watch your units get repeatedly stepped on as you slowly build up your forces for years before going on the attack. As a starter recommendation, I suggest the Italians - they have several interesting options but limited resources, and supply is awful in Africa which will get you used to supply system and how to maximize it for success.

I highly recommend the game, and the devs know about the naval combat and AI issues and are working hard on making it better.

That's a heck of a review, Aetius. Thanks!

And thanks everyone for the ideas and thoughts on TOAoW4 and Flashpoint Campaigns.

I'm leaning toward picking up TOAoW and Strategic Command. The TOAoW system I'm used to from #3. I played that quite a bit, and think I'll get equal mileage out of #4. My computer is new enough that I should be able to run things fine. And none of the weaknesses mentioned in Strategic Command should stop me from having a lot of fun with it.

Flashpoint Campaigns, despite the cheap price, sounds like I should hold off on. It's not an area of particular great interest, to be honest, and I'm drawn to the other two games a bit more.

I haven't played Northern Inferno, Robear. Would that be a better choice than Flashpoint?

EDIT: And ... done. I got TOAoW4, Strategic Command II World at War, and tossed in Drive on Moscow.

I know we have a few Flashpoint fans here, and I enjoyed it myself without becoming expert. But Northern Inferno is the intro version of the new Harpoon. There's no competition to it; it's sweeping in scope and comprehensive in detail. If you like the topic, it's your game.

Edit - It's on deep discount, so I just sent you a copy. A taster, you might say.

Thanks for the review Aetius, I had an eye on this game for awhile.

My problem with stepping up to World At War is trying to keep everything in my brain. It is something I struggle with just in the European theater. I've watched a two eps of a playthrough of World at War and juggling the Chinese theater with the European while also keeping track of what my naval units are doing just seems like more than I can handle mentally. In my attempts at War in Europe I had trouble remembering what planes I have used, where all my naval units even are much less what they are doing, and why did I move this unit here last turn?

It would be nice if the game helped a little with that sort of thing but I could not find much in it to help with my deteriorating ability to remember what I did 15 minutes ago (and the stuff I did yesterday probably made sense at the time but damn if I know why I did that today).

Robear wrote:

I know we have a few Flashpoint fans here, and I enjoyed it myself without becoming expert. But Northern Inferno is the intro version of the new Harpoon. There's no competition to it; it's sweeping in scope and comprehensive in detail. If you like the topic, it's your game.

Edit - It's on deep discount, so I just sent you a copy. A taster, you might say. :-)

Thanks so much, Robear! I've got some travel coming up, but I look forward to giving it a shot when I get back. It sounds like a winner and a good intro to the topic.

I tried a version of Harpoon many years ago, got to the point where I had no idea what was happening, and then never got past that point. It seemed to have a pretty significant learning curve to it. That might be the reason why I've never tried to delve back into the area. It was a Catch 22 that you had to know the platforms and the subject matter before the game made sense, and the game had to make sense before you could learn the platforms and the subject matter. I'm sure the fault was largely mine as well, and had I kept going things would have made more sense eventually.

But if Northern Inferno provides a gentler introduction, I think I might really like the topic.

Not sure about gentler, but given the price, it’s a low risk. This probably has a similar learning curve, but the game does start you off with some smaller scenarios, so you don’t have too many things to worry about. Just try to be, well, analytical about it... “That coastline is Soviet, so... I need to check for threats coming from that direction. I seem to have a few long-range aircraft; don’t want want to send them all at once, and it’s 2 hours out and 2 back, so maybe if I send one every 2 hours I can keep the area covered with radar. Now, do I have fighters to protect them? What do I do if I detect a threat? Maybe I should move a ship or two into the area...” That kind of thinking will get you going.

Hope you enjoy it!

Perfect, thanks! That does help.

It was a long time ago, but I do think that a good part of my troubles with Harpoon was due to the interface too. That will likely be different with NI.

No worries. I think you’ll find it interesting. It was on sale, as I said, so I won’t be upset if it’s not to your taste. Not that that would be any of my business lol.