The wargaming thread of war. And games.

Have that since I am LPing the Dragoon scenario. The only thing that really stood out is the Hannibal game.

Did you ever play Command Ops? I know you reviewed and loved Conquest of the Agean.

I still have the review code on a disc somewhere and have played Highway to the Reich. I'd like to get Battles from the Bulge but at $50 for even a sale it's a bit steep for me right now. That said, at least the Command Ops games have good interface design.

What is the consensus on the FoG games?

Sigh. So many games that I would really like to love, but ultimately I just don't have the time (and/or stamina) to fight horrible GUIs just because there may be a great game to play somewhere underneath.

I absolutely adore Field of Glory. It's simple to use, but has fairly complex (yet understandable) tactics. The graphics are a bit low-rent, but they serve the game well.

I have only two caveats here:
(1) The matchmaking system is the same one they use in Battlefield Academy, which is to say it's completely stupid. If you want to play a game with me, for example, you'd have to send me a message out of band telling me "I started a game; look for my username and use the password 'foo'.". There's no way to just say "invite peterb to play a game with this map."

(2) The winning tactics can feel a bit gamey the first time they're used against you. (Basically, you rarely win by just going straight ahead. The most effective tactic is "post two weak units behind the one you're attacking, then try to make it retreat; if it does, it won't be able to, and then it gets destroyed."

PS: My username in FoG is "peterb". Feel free to create some games and let me know the password here.

I've only played a bit, but as a tabletop wargamer I really enjoyed it. This sale I'll be purchasing the Eternal Empire expac, so I can field Ottomans. Yum! Have not played multi yet.

Beware of Peterb. It was his silver tongue that convinced me last winter sale. ;)

Any consensus on Great Invasions? Looks neat and low complexity.

It did not get good reviews. 5/8 on Out of Eight, Armchair General said generally not to buy it, 6.5 GamersHell, 5.8 GameSpot and an overall Metacritic score of 53. So I'd dare say there's a consensus...save your money.

Battles from the Bulge is getting a Conquest of the Aegean scenario pack very soon. I'm excited for that—there are some awesome scenarios in CotA that I can't wait to try in the version I own. Repelling the invasion of Crete, or carrying out a fictional German invasion of Malta, or fighting in North Africa? Count me in.

I did my best to understand what the hell it was about or how it worked or what I was supposed to do, but it defeated me. I think the concept is actually quite fascinating, but the execution... demands patience, at best.

Thanks for saving me money, gents! ;)

Yesterday I snagged a user-made Command Ops scenario pack about the German invasion of the Netherlands. It's pretty great, including as it does some great 1940s maps and tables of equipment and organization. I played a scenario which involved attacking across the Meuse opposite Mill in North Brabant, and ended up scoring a marginal defeat despite massive superiority in forces.

It started with the rail crossing at Gennep, one of the only bridges the Dutch failed to blow before the Germans got there. An armored train carrying the III Battalion of Infanterie-Regiment 481 crossed the Meuse and drove on seven or eight kilometers west, ending up behind the Peel-Raam line (the main Dutch defensive position, a canal and a line of heavy machine guns, minefields, and barbed wire).

My forces east of the Meuse were two infantry divisions, minus the the 481st's III Bn, trickling in over the first day of fighting (the scenario begins on D1 0500 and ends at D2 1200). My first move was to cross the Meuse at Gennep with infantry, quickly overrunning the two Dutch companies defending the far side. By noon the bridgehead was secured, and bridging units were working to build a road crossing at Gennep (rail bridges work badly for armor units, and it was worth a few victory points). III Bn/481 Regt had encircled and eliminated a Dutch artillery battery and a company of motorcycle troops. By this point, Infanterie-Regiment 476 was already in transit toward St. Hubert, a town a kilometer or two short of Mill, where it would have assembled for an attack on Mill to relieve III Bn/481 Regt had it not run into enemies in St. Hubert. I had it pull back and launch an attack, but by that point, it was too late for the attack to land during daylight. Meanwhile, north of Gennep bridging units had finally finished a crossing at Cuijk, while elements of Infanterie-Regiment 454 cleared the west bank of the Meuse with an attack north of the Gennep bridgehead.

By morning of D2, the 476th had mostly secured Mill and linked up with III Bn/481 Regt. That was the best news I had, though: holding Mill and the crossing point objectives wouldn't score me a victory, and I needed to exit some units off the far west end of the map. Unfortunately, the bulk of my forces were still on the wrong side of the Meuse. The whole of Infanterie-Division 256 was engaged through most of the night in forming up and attacking at Cuijk, and it would have been a lot smarter to leave some units to block the Cuijk crossing while sending most of the 256th across at Gennep, to get to Mill overnight and then exit off the map while III/481 and the 476th held open the passage through Mill. Oh well. Can't win 'em all. As it happened, no units got off the map, and the 256th Division ran into opposition after crossing at Cuijk. As was to be expected, the losses were heavily slanted toward the Dutch, who lost 1500 men (including 700 who surrendered) to my 115, but I failed to maintain the momentum of the offensive. Oh well.

There's another mission that involves securing two bridges about ten kilometers apart on the road to Rotterdam. The goal is to hold them open with airborne and then infantry, while the tanks roll on past. It's basically Market Garden writ small, and I'm looking to try it next time I get a chance to play.

I was going to play the Moerdijk-Doerdrecht bridges-and-paras scenario and report on it, but I'm going to have to put Command Ops down until the next patch. This is just too hard to deal with:



Rather than shoot at each other, units will notice that there are enemy units nearby, and then stop to re-evaluate. Over and over and over again. Argh. Patch can't come soon enough.

That's a pretty good simulation of some commanders. Are you sure your forces aren't led by Gamelin?

I'm pretty sure commanders have a bravery/cowardice bar. While I'm happy to be screwed over by a battalion commander deciding the situation is hopeless and scarpering, it's more frustrating when every single company of my side and every single company of the other one is led by a computerized McClellan. :P

We'd be better off as a species if all wars were McClellan vs. McClellan. But worse off as wargamers, I will grant you that.

Does it get any better if you give them more aggressive stances?

Not really. Halting is (I understand) independent of aggression. It's a reaction to having enemy forces in proximity, but there were some bugs in when it was triggered:

I've given Unity of Command many, many chances. I love the idea and much of the normal gameplay, but the way it plays just drives me up a wall. It's some small things and some bigger ones.

- I HATE not being able to save and test things out. The game is so gimmicky sometimes where you absolutely need your air force to actually make an impact, yet it will go absolutely stone cold at the worst possible times with no way to try again. Horrible, horrible design for a war game, especially one whose victory conditions are sometimes so difficult that it's more luck than skill trying to achieve them.

- Even after 15 hours, I don't understand the supply system. I just can't figure out how it's calculated sometimes. I've had supply ranges of 6 that won't seem to go 4 tiles down a road. Other times, they'll stretch halfway across the map. It just pisses me off because that's really the entire fucking game. Yet to me it's maddeningly inconsistent. I'm sure there are some rules for it somewhere, but I just don't get 'em and I play Grigsby's War in the East, so I'm used to convoluted supply chains.

- The damage system/retreat system seems to me to be severely fucked up. Why do their units stay in one place until absolutely destroyed, whereas my units will retreat when taking two damage to a previously healthy unit?

- Many of the play/walkthroughs don't even seem to be the same game as I'm playing. I was looking at one for the Case Blue scenario and I didn't even have the same units that the walkthrough had at the very start of the game. Kind of tough to try to follow that when it's not even possible to duplicate the opening moves.

There's a lot to like in UoC, but this kind of shit makes me regret spending even the $10-spot I dropped on it. It's more frustrating than fun.

UoC seems to come from the Panzer General school of wargame design, where the scenarios are really puzzles rather than simulations. Not really my cup of tea either, but I was still happy to support a wargame on Steam.

I bought it before it was ever on Steam from GamersGate. It does try to be like Panzer General, but PG's execution is far superior IMO.

Actually nice to hear some criticism. I haven't dived in yet, but at least I know there are issues.

So what you're saying is that it like's one of the best games ever?

I'm saying they share a similar philosophy of scenario design.

If you REALLY want a Panzer General for a new generation, go check out Panzer Corps.

Big Strategy First sale, btw. http://www.strategyfirst.com/games/2681-strategy-first-thanksgiving-bundle.html

So, Battle of the Bulge is out:

http://itun.es/us/70OgF.i

Echoing my comments from another forum: It is extremely polished, finely balanced, and very, very interesting. If you have an iPad, this is a game you must buy. If you don't have an iPad but love wargames, this might be the game that makes you buy an iPad.

It has some superficial similarities to Unity of Command and/or Panzer General, but the scale is much smaller and there is a 'race against the clock' element that makes it differ substantially from either of those. Each turn, an unpredictable amount of time comes off the game clock; you are extremely unlikely to be able to move all of your forces in a given day, and this means that every. Move. Counts.

Go buy it. Go buy it now.

On an earlier topic, I think it's somewhat unfair to brush UoC as being from "the Panzer General school of design". There are a few very significant differences. For one, supply in UoC is much more important and much less abstract than in PG. In PG, you can still win scenarios while only really thinking about supply intermittently; as long as you don't really go crazy and throw a unit deep in the enemy's backfield, you're not likely to find yourself out of supply. In UoC, supply is probably the most important consideration, and it's very easy to find yourself cut off. This makes the game feel much more "operational level" than PG; I think they really did a good job of distinguishing the game and bringing something new to the table.

Panzer Corps, on the other hand, really feels to me like they sat down and said "How can we clone Panzer General 2 down to the smallest details." I'm not saying the game isn't fun, but it does mean that, in some sort of I-don't-mean-to-be-a-dick-but-maybe-i-am way, I don't respect them as much for their game design, because it isn't theirs.

All games, and especially all wargames, borrow ideas and mechanics from earlier games. But Panzer Corps takes that to an extreme that I think is probably beyond homage and into the realm of "If SSI still existed, they'd probably send Matrix a cease-and-desist letter." For me personally, I think that it's when you start using the exact same UI elements that you cross the line.

I agree, but my problem with UoC is that I don't understand their supply rules and the manual doesn't do a good job of explaining it. I don't understand how a unit can be one space out of supply, I add +1 to the supply chain and they're still out of supply. As such, I get pissed off and don't want to play because I can't figure out from one turn to the next if my troops are going to be supplied.

Even when I can figure out the supply mechanic, I think it's also a limiting factor. Because of the supply rules, you're really forced into playing many of the scenarios one way. And the since there's no fog of war, the scenarios become more of a puzzle to be solved rather than a battle to be fought. The scenarios in the game are very gimmicky and to get the descive victory is often a matter of luck and not skill. On turn one if your air force doesn't surpress enough of the enemy, you can't break through and the descive victory needed to continue is already lost. That's just a lousy game mechanic, especially since you can't save whenever you want to try things out.

So for me UoC is a great effort, but not necessarily a great game. I don't regret my purchase, but I'm glad I got it at a discount and wouldn't opt to buy it again if I had to do it over.

How are the Hunted Cow/Hexwar Tank Battle games on iOS? North Africa just came out, which is a theater very relevant to my interests, but I am hesitant to buy the game.