Grognard Games Megathread - doing hex's long before they were cool!

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Tolan: Sep 15, 2004; Rollin', rollin', rollin'...

It's got difficulty levels in that you can adjust the AI's competence as well as provide bonuses or penalties to each side in a number of areas. Air can be automated to a large degree, but other than that you're pretty much on your own. Ground combat/movement cannot be automated, as far as I know, without giving up control entirely.

# ? Dec 28, 2010 15:21

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# ? May 21, 2013 20:37

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; Some missions, you just can't get rid of a bomb

Thanks! I think that's good enough; I'll probably drop the cash on it next payday.

# ? Dec 28, 2010 16:45

Team Black Zion: Aug 26, 2006; Next time you play chess, be sure to replace your queens and knights with pawns!

Solium Infernum was so amazingly good that it would be disgusting if we didn't have a goon revival and do some blitz games over dropbox or whatnot.

# ? Dec 28, 2010 18:55

pesty13480: Nov 13, 2002; Ask me about peasant etymology!

Solium Infernum was possibly the most genius game of 2010 and I'm more than a little saddened that it didn't receive all that much traction in the end. I'm also looking forward to Vic's little Western thing he created as a diversion from his Roguelike project. On that note, I just finally picked up a copy of Operational Art of War III and am in the process of reading the manual. I am looking forward to sweet victory.

# ? Dec 31, 2010 03:54

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; Some missions, you just can't get rid of a bomb

I can't recommend War in the East enough! While I haven't yet scratched the leader promotion and support unit aspects of the game yet, the combat system is just so intuitive that you wonder where this game has been this whole time.

It hits the spot between Panzer General's ease of use and the layers of underlying detail for a true grognard.

It's especially satisfying playing the Soviets and doing your damnedest to hold off the hordes of Huns with tissue-paper divisions. Several times I've deliberately let some pockets develop just to buy myself enough time to form defensive lines farther back. Godspeed you brave bastards!

# ? Dec 31, 2010 11:14

Lord Windy: Mar 26, 2010; It's art!

I really want War in the East now, looks fantastic.

# ? Dec 31, 2010 11:56

uPen: Jan 25, 2010; Zu Rodina!

Lord Windy posted:

I really want War in the East now, looks fantastic.

Same here. I wish there was a demo, it's hard to justify spending so much on a game I might not like.

# ? Jan 1, 2011 10:19

Lord Windy: Mar 26, 2010; It's art!

$83 feels like way to much, but it's still less than new release games in Australia so it isn't too bad.

I'll put some money aside this week and next week and see how I feel, got a $40 tip yesterday so I'm halfway there.

# ? Jan 1, 2011 11:30

V for Vegas: Aug 31, 2004; ~Hecho en Mexico~

Flash of Steel has a podcast Three Moves Ahead, which is a pretty good weekly podcast covering strategy games in general, including wargames. This week was an interview with the developer of Bronze. There will be a show dedicated to War in the East in a couple of weeks. The podcast always goes into a lot of depth when it talks about a single game, so if there are some people on the fence about WitE, then that will have a pretty comprehensive coverage of the game.

edit: FoS currently links to this blog entry rant about wargame UI which is interesting to read.

V for Vegas fucked around with this message at Jan 1, 2011 around 13:13

# ? Jan 1, 2011 13:10

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; Some missions, you just can't get rid of a bomb

Can anyone give me a crash course (or recommend a tutorial) on how to play the Decisive Battles series? Someone gifted me the Korsun Pocket, Battles in Normandy and Battles in Italy games over the holidays but the interface just strikes me as an incomprehensible mess.

All I've been doing so far is hitting the MAX button over and over when it comes to combat.

# ? Jan 3, 2011 15:11

Fintilgin: Sep 29, 2004; Fintilgin sweeps!

I made an overly passionate ~effort post~ over at Matrix Games in this thread about their business model:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/t...6&key=&#2682719

I posted:

I'll cash in with my two cents.

I do sometimes feel that Matrix is shooting itself in the foot a bit, although pricing is just part of that, and probably not the biggest part.

I always feel that the insistence that these are ultra-niche products is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't have the statistics, obviously, but it seems like the number of gamers is growing ever larger and the ease of reaching them with niche or indie products is getting ever easier but the number of computer wargamers is fairly stagnant in comparisson.

A big issue is User Interface. I've bought a lot of wargames from a lot of different companies over a few decades, and the UIs are almost always awful. I don't want to pick on any games in particular, but I'm sure we all own a few where learning the UI was more of a challenge then learning the game itself. It's understandable, given how they're developed by tiny teams, but that doesn't make it acceptable. I don't want to hear the argument that an atrocious UI is to be expected because the games are complex. I think that's BS. The whole point of a good user interface is to make complex systems accessible and usable.

It's probably not financially possible for Matrix to hire on a full time UI developer who could work hand in hand with development teams, however I think it would be a really good idea for them to hire a temp consultant or two who has worked on major titles with good UIs or who has a degree in human interface systems. Sit down and try to come up with a solid set of UI guidelines that developers need to shoot for if they want to publish with Matrix. Little things like consistent use of right and left click functionality throughout ALL menus in a game; or if you're going to access unit functions with icons, make sure all of them work that way - don't have some use icons, some use a bit of highlighted text in a sub-window, and others use keyboard shortcuts only documented in the back of a 700 page manual. I strongly feel like if you guys were able to sit down with some people who really knew their stuff in the UI field you could come up with a decent set of basic guidelines that could improve usability and lower the entry barrier of newly published titles across the board.

Similarly, I think as stronger focus on tutorials would help. Preferably interactive in-game ones. Following along with the manual or watching a blurry youtube video is only so much help. The real challenge should be in mastering the game, not figuring out how to move your units.

Part of it is pricing. I've spoken to a lot of people both in real life and online who are intrigued by some of Matrix Game's titles but scared away by the massive price tags. Combine that with the fact that a lot of people who might love wargames will probably never find places like Matrix or Battlefront unless they going looking for them, I think a big potential audience is being missed. If it were up to me, I'd say that Matrix should try to get a handful of their best, most attractive, most accessible top titles onto Steam and price them in a manner intended to appeal to people outside their niche audience. Imagine if Matrix had a few of their strong titles up in the recent Steam Christmas sale. Imagine they were able to work with Steam to get a couple featured as daily deals. War in the East - 19.95$, Commander: Europe at War - 2.50$, Forge of Freedom - 9.99$. While they might not have made much money per unit, they might very well have sold more copies in that sale then during the regular life time of the product sold solely through the Matrix games website. Steam sales are HUGE. Far more importantly, it could have introduced thousands and thousands of new people to the hobby. Remember, 90% of those sales would have been to people who never would have bought the game in the first place if they hadn't seen it on Steam, been intrigued, and then 'impulse purchased' because it was cheap.

Call me a dreamer if you will, but I don't think wargaming needs to remain an ultra-niche genre, confined to an ever graying cadre of those of use who cut our teeth playing Avalon Hill's Afrika Corps and Squad Leader with our buddies back in junior high. I think the hobby should be doing everything it can to bring in new blood. I think there are probably more people out there who would love these games but are scared away by high prices, actively hostile interfaces, or simply don't know the games even exist, then are in the hobby right now.

I dunno, maybe I'm way off base, but I can't help but fearing the computer wargame industry falling into a self-reinforcing death spiral of ever more expensive titles being sold to an ever shrinking fan base of fanatics. I don't want to see the games simplified, but I do feel a stronger focus on presentation, usability, product visibility, and more aggressive pricing could work wonders.

Well. There. I've said my piece. I'll mosey off into the sunset now.

Come give me some fire support if you agree with me.

# ? Jan 9, 2011 06:03

V for Vegas: Aug 31, 2004; ~Hecho en Mexico~

I'm not so sure about the Steam effect on wargames.I picked up Hegemony: Phillip of Macedon during the Christmas steam sale because it was $3. I don't know how many sales they got, but the steam forum for the game is dead. Maybe no one uses steam forums at all (I never do), but if there had been an uptick in sales because it was really cheap on steam, even though it's a wargame, I would have expected a few 'lolz how do u play dis game' type threads.

# ? Jan 9, 2011 21:35

Megadyptes: Oct 7, 2009; Yeah... If you hit them hard their heads bleed all over the ice and their legs convulse.

Just came across this blog post today about operational war games being essentially unplayable:

http://tleaves.com/2010/12/31/a-bat...ough-attrition/

Most of what he says is pretty true. I used to play a fair bit of the Operational Art of War games and half the time I didn't have a clue what the gently caress was going on.

# ? Jan 10, 2011 06:00

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006

Nobody in wargames can make a strategic level game without including 300+ units per side because in the grognard-logic that's what makes a game epic, having to take 30 minutes per turn. Honestly if someone made an Eastern front game similar to No Retreat!, it'd be playable in a much shorter time and could be play-balanced better than, say, War in the East, which, i'm not saying people shouldn't make monster games, but it'd be nice to see elegance in wargame design.

# ? Jan 10, 2011 16:11

Fonzarelli: Aug 15, 2004; Jumping the Shark

I'd love to be able to play games like this, it seems like you can get a lot of hours and fulfillment out of something that'd run on any computer. I'm fairly sure I'm just not smart enough though, as I can never grasp the concepts in the slightest, and I get bored extremely quickly.

# ? Jan 10, 2011 16:23

Pornographic Memory: Dec 17, 2008

Would the Combat Mission games count for the purposes of this thread? I tried to get into war games a few times (Flashpoint Germany, Guns of August) but they were just a bit too confusing and I never really got into them. Combat Mission Overlord though, I grabbed on the GoG Christmas sale and it's been pretty enjoyable, enough that I went to grab Barbarossa to Berlin after a week.

# ? Jan 10, 2011 17:19

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

At the risk of treating this thread like the TBS catch-all, has anyone here tried out Armada 2526?

Matrix: http://www.matrixgames.com/products...ils/Armada.2526
Review: http://www.spacesector.com/blog/201...da-2526-review/

It's an SF 4X TBS, made by a lead developer of the Total War series. It was released in Nov '09, with so little fanfare I only ever heard of it by seeing it in a used bookstore. Clearly not a bunker buster, but maybe an unappreciated gem?

doctorfrog fucked around with this message at Jan 10, 2011 around 19:05

# ? Jan 10, 2011 19:01

im_sorry: Jan 15, 2006; (9999)

I've always been really interested in these games, but always fail miserably when I try to figure out how to play them. I can generally do OK at learning the interface, but after that, I just lose track of everything and get totally overwhelmed. Aside from just diving in and getting killed a lot, are there any good sources of info on how to actually get good at these games?

# ? Jan 11, 2011 01:31

V for Vegas: Aug 31, 2004; ~Hecho en Mexico~

doctorfrog posted:

At the risk of treating this thread like the TBS catch-all, has anyone here tried out Armada 2526?

Matrix: http://www.matrixgames.com/products...ils/Armada.2526
Review: http://www.spacesector.com/blog/201...da-2526-review/

It's an SF 4X TBS, made by a lead developer of the Total War series. It was released in Nov '09, with so little fanfare I only ever heard of it by seeing it in a used bookstore. Clearly not a bunker buster, but maybe an unappreciated gem?

There's a really good reveiw at Out of Eight

quote:

Armada 2526 has two good things going for it: the user interface and varied alien races. Other than that, though, it�s a generic space 4X title, and in order to become a notable game in this competitive and oversaturated genre, you need more.

# ? Jan 11, 2011 01:40

andrew smash: Jun 26, 2006; smooth soul

did the @play column at gamesetwatch get discontinued? it hasn't updated since november but I really liked reading it

Edit: of course I realize a day later that I posted this in the wrong thread entirely

andrew smash fucked around with this message at Jan 11, 2011 around 19:35

# ? Jan 11, 2011 02:44

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

andrew smash posted:

did the @play column at gamesetwatch get discontinued? it hasn't updated since november but I really liked reading it

I hope not, I'm looking forward to his impressions of my two current faves in development: Caves of Qud and Goblin Camp. Zombie Survivor, I can hope that someone like Derek Yu takes and interest and pretties up the tileset.

# ? Jan 11, 2011 05:12

Ograbme: Jul 26, 2003; D--n it, how he nicks 'em

Megadyptes posted:

Just came across this blog post today about operational war games being essentially unplayable:

http://tleaves.com/2010/12/31/a-bat...ough-attrition/

quote:

I have never seen a manual-based tutorial that adequately helped focus the player�s attention on what was important, as opposed to what is simply present.

God, THIS. So many games tell you what a button does, but not what it does.

# ? Jan 11, 2011 22:52

ColonelPanic: Nov 5, 2010; Too sweet to be sour
Too nice to be mean

Does anybody know a good PC replication of the old Avalon Hill "Russian Campaign" game ? Out of all of my wargames, this is still my absolute favorite. I just wish I could play it again.

# ? Jan 12, 2011 00:34

V for Vegas: Aug 31, 2004; ~Hecho en Mexico~

The game everyone is sperging over at the moment is War in the East. It's probably the best Russian Campaign game out there.

# ? Jan 12, 2011 01:20

ColonelPanic: Nov 5, 2010; Too sweet to be sour
Too nice to be mean

Thanks V. This looks incredible, you've made me very happy today. I just wish I wasn't so broke atm. I'll have to wait a month or two to buy it. Or mabye I can sell one of the kids to the circus....hmm..

EDIT: This thread delivers !

# ? Jan 12, 2011 19:02

vyshka: Aug 10, 2010

GyverMac posted:

Anybody got a good suggestion for decent musketry warfare grognard game? (Aside from Ageod's Napoleons campaigns and Histwar)

Oh and i want to introduce a friend to the genre, whats considered the easiest grognard game to get into?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

I haven't played them but HPS has a series of games based on Napoleon's campaigns and another on battles from the Civil War.

Speaking of HPS, John Tiller has parted ways with them and now is doing his own thing. He has released 2 titles since the split and they are available as digital downloads. Apparently HPS is going to be converting his older titles to digital download over time. http://www.johntillersoftware.com/

# ? Jan 13, 2011 22:11

uncle wrinkles: May 27, 2006; WOW I AM A SHITTY POST COOL HUH

V for Vegas posted:

I'm not so sure about the Steam effect on wargames.I picked up Hegemony: Phillip of Macedon during the Christmas steam sale because it was $3. I don't know how many sales they got, but the steam forum for the game is dead. Maybe no one uses steam forums at all (I never do), but if there had been an uptick in sales because it was really cheap on steam, even though it's a wargame, I would have expected a few 'lolz how do u play dis game' type threads.

Nobody posts in Steam forums outside the FPS community. People have likely impulse-bought tons of poo poo and have yet to play any of it, which would also account for the lack of Steam forum threads.

The translator/publisher of Recettear was posting in the Steam thread a while back - as I recall, they made a tidy bundle on the Black Friday sale when the game was on sale as part of a 5-game bundle (hence all the proceeds were also split 5 ways). When the game was available standalone during the Winter Sale, even with nearly everyone in the "looks cool, but kinda pricey" camp having already bought the game, they pretty much doubled their dollar intake up to that point.

My memory's off, the exact details may be slightly different, Recettear is an RPG and not a wargame, but the gist is that 20 copies sold at $5 makes more money than 1 copy sold at $79.99, and I would argue that wargames would appeal just as much, if not slightly more, to the Counterstrike / Call of Duty crowd (not to mention the Civ 5 crowd) as cutesy Japan animu pinku sell-the-items ^___^ games.

# ? Jan 14, 2011 03:04

pesty13480: Nov 13, 2002; Ask me about peasant etymology!

Given some of the interest expressed concerning the War in the East, you might be interested by the latest podcast on http://flashofsteel.com/ about the title. It has some light discussion about the game itself, and a bit about Matrix's pricing scheme. Someone from Matrix is there, as well as a dude from 2by3 so you can get your information from the horse's pretty little mouth.

That being said, the podcasts are almost exclusively devoted to strategy gaming in general even if they're not always about grognard-level games. There's about a hundred of them now, and Troy Goodfellow's blog is pretty good in general. I'm sure you'll find something to enjoy.

I enjoy Dr. Bruce.

# ? Jan 14, 2011 06:41

Lum_: Jun 5, 2006; Ask me about nerfing your paladin!

I was in that one!

I especially enjoyed when my question "will sequels to WitE be any more streamlined/accessible" was essentially answered with "No, we're going to make them even MORE complex."

# ? Jan 14, 2011 07:31

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

Three Moves Ahead is one of the two game podcasts I listen to, even though I have no interest in playing 9/10 of the games they talk about. It's just kind of an interesting chilled out discussion about really nerdy stuff. Goodfellow's co-hosts need to stop flakin' though.

# ? Jan 14, 2011 08:13

Grey Hunter: Oct 17, 2007; Pacific Command

It looks like Matrix are finally giving in to public demand

quote:

Matrix Games and Panther Games (http://www.panthergames.com) are thrilled to announce the entire Panther Games lineup is getting a permanent price reduction.

* Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge is now available at a permanently reduced price of $59.99 (Download) / $69.99 (Physical) a reduction from $79.99/$89.99 for $20 in savings.
* Conquest of the Aegean is now available for $39.99 (Download) / $49.99 (Physical) a reduction from $59.99/$69.99 for $20 in savings.
* Highway to the Reich is now available for $19.99 (Download) / $29.99 (Physical) a reduction from $49.99/$59.99 for $30 in savings.

# ? Jan 14, 2011 14:20

V for Vegas: Aug 31, 2004; ~Hecho en Mexico~

pesty13480 posted:

I enjoy Dr. Bruce.

Bruce is some kind of savant wargamer who answers questions I didn't even know I had asked. I'm going to go ahead and quote one of the best grognard articles I have ever read because I think it's worth it.

Bruce Geryk posted:

No one disputes that wargames are, above all, games. They are only a representation of their subject matter, rather than the real thing. As such, they are subject to a certain amount of abstraction. I think that this has bothered many wargamers to some extent, so that many of them clamor for games which are a more "realistic" representation of whatever combat they are attempting to depict. Wargame discussions are filled with exchanges about how a certain game could be made more "realistic." No matter how complex a game is, there are always people coming up with one more rule for what is, on its face, an almost risible attempt to create an electronic depiction of war. What usually happens is that instead of more "realism," all the games get is more "detail." The two things are completely different.

There is a well-worn clich� (that I'll trot out anyway) which illustrates what happens when a game tries to cater as much as possible to the "detail is realism" crowd. A number of years ago (1979), Simulations Publications Inc., that now-defunct bastion of board wargaming, responded to what it thought was the will of the wargaming hobby by publishing a game called Campaign for North Africa, which tried to model the North African campaign at such a small scale that it could physically incorporate as many aspects of the situation as humanly possible. I believe (although after all of these years I don't recall) that there was a record kept of the number of "Fuel Points" consumed by each vehicle. It gave gamers exactly what they had asked for when they returned their "feedback" cards to SPI: an incredibly detailed monster wargame where nothing was left to abstraction. Of course, representing fuel available to a truck with "Fuel Points" is an abstraction in itself, but this didn't matter. While the game was a sophisticated design, it was completely unplayable. Some people blame this design attitude for dragging the company into bankruptcy.

It was inevitable that wargame designers would see computer games as the answer to the bookkeeping dilemma. A sophisticated design could hide all of the "messy" aspects of a game from the gamer, leaving him to (I hate this clich� with a passion) "concentrate on command." I made it pretty clear in a previous piece that I think trying to accurately model the "command experience" of an actual battlefield commander is futile because no matter how much control is taken out of the player's hands, the player has orders of magnitude more control over the battlefield than any real life counterpart could have. However, the computer can relieve the player of having to make some game calculations that would otherwise be quite cumbersome. In this way, some bookkeeping can be left in the game without having it burden the player.

However, this luxury with bookkeeping has been taken to such an extreme that I think that the "game" is being removed from wargaming just as surely as it was removed from boardgaming by products like Campaign for North Africa. The problem is that there is a growing gap between what designers are building into their game engines, and what the gamer can comfortably assimilate when actually playing the game. In short, too much that directly affects the play of the game is being hidden from the player and thereby robs him of the chance to make decisions, which is the heart of playing a game.

I have been following, with some interest, the discussion board maintained by Big Time Software regarding its computer games. For the past several months, this board has been dominated by people clamoring for the release of Computer Squad Leader. What I have found fascinating is the seeming dichotomy between those who want a simple port of the boardgame and those who yearn for a game which incorporates every possible detail regarding World War II combat. Few people come out and say it, but no matter how many details have been mentioned previously, someone always ends up adding just a couple more. Big Time Software seem to be very sympathetic to the latter view, but temper this with a promise to make most of it "invisible" to the gamer. Unfortunately, as I point out below, this is impossible to do if one wants to actually keep the final product a "game."
The same bizarre attitude has been displayed by those anxious to see Star-Games' creation, Pacific Tide. The discussion board for that game has included questions and suggestions for the designer regarding what should be included in the game. For those unfamiliar with the premise, Pacific Tide is an operational/strategic-level game of the Second World War, Pacific theatre. Some are calling it the next generation Pacific War (referring to Gary Grigsby's classic). All sorts of wonderful "feature tidbits" have been proposed, many of which have been mercifully lost to the God of Stale Messages. One recent one suggested that the game allow ships to combine their fire-fighting capabilities in some way and be able to send damage-control parties to other vessels. Keep in mind that the game will depict the entire Pacific theatre of operations. In boardgaming, this kind of unnecessary detail was called "chrome," and excessive amounts of it led to systemic collapse as the players became unable to manage its implementation. The effects of superfluous chrome in a computer game are manifested in more insidious but equally catastrophic ways.

Imagine the following scenario: I am playing some hypothetical game at the regimental level about the 1943 spring battles in Russia. However, the game is handling fuel for my component battalions down to the individual tank and truck. Super-realistic! I plan to counterattack my opponent's overextended units this turn. However, it is possible that if it goes poorly, I will not have the fuel to extricate myself. Or will I? To find out, I will need to calculate all of the appropriate fuel expenditures. Having the computer handle this for me does no good: I need to know what my fuel situation will be after my proposed move, but I need this information before I actually perform it. In other words, I need to re-create all of the calculations the computer is doing in order to make an intelligent game decision. All in the name of "realism." Worthwhile? Watch me as I select "Exit" from the game menu.

Of course, one could argue that I'm not meant to have to calculate these things for myself -- I just need to command (remember, I'm "concentrating" on that!) and all that other stuff is for the computer to decide. Hey, if I run out of fuel, that's part of the game! Never mind that it is quite likely that it would have been possible not to run out of fuel in the above situation, given the proper maneuvering. Had I been able to evaluate the options for myself, I might have successfully kept my panzers mobile. However, by including too much detail for me to track, the game has effectively robbed me of the ability to truly "play" the game. Instead, I simply play with the game, moving units around without being able to use them to my full advantage. The game becomes, essentially, a toy.

One of the most important attributes of any game I can think of is its ability to provide me with the need to make decisions. I see that my attitude is shared by some, as a fellow named James Taylor posted exactly these sentiments to the CSL discussion board. In essence, a game should provide the players with a multitude of decisions to make. He calls these "Decision Points." The more Decision Points a game has, the better, as long as the player can effectively evaluate his options when they come up. A tactical or operational wargame limits these to the maximization of the units under one's command (although the choices involved can be extremely rich). A strategic game such as Computer War in Europe adds the decisions involved in building one's forces, so that the type of force one has available for use will be determined largely by production decisions. The tactical and strategic aspects thus complement each other by rewarding the player who makes smart choices. These are all excellent examples of game decisions that are necessary for each player to make. The sign of a good game is when the person who makes the best decisions wins the game. The sign of a toy is when the players don't have the information they need to make informed decisions, or when so many variables are involved that proper evaluation is impossible for a human player in a reasonable amount of time.

Some may counter that the value of the computer is that it can make these evaluations for the player based on extremely detailed calculations, but then present the gamer with a straightforward result for his consideration. For example, a game might have very detailed supply rules which govern movement, and the movement calculations themselves might be quite involved (incorporating not only terrain but the capacity of the road net and the number of vehicles in each hex -- imagine a systematic attempt to simulate German traffic jams in the Ardennes in December, 1944). However, the computer handles all of these calculations, and all the player needs to do is click on a unit and then move the cursor around the map to see how far the unit can move. Sounds perfect, right? Most wargames these days allow players to see the limits of movement for that turn for a given unit. However, a great deal of wargaming (or any gaming) has to do with the ability to plan ahead. For example, I may be facing an opponent in difficult terrain from which I cannot dislodge his units. However, I see that there is a hex behind his lines which is crucial to his retreat routes. Should this hex be captured, the mechanics of the game dictate that most of his units will be trapped and destroyed. Thus, capturing this hex would clearly be a sound "strategy," if it is in fact possible. But is it possible? That is the key question, and in the above example of movement modeling, it is possible that I would be unable to make this determination. What if the hex is two turns away? I need to be able to decide whether to drive for that hex now, or pursue some other move. If my cursor method of movement determination tells me how far I can move this turn, what about next turn? Simply adding a feature that could tell me how far a certain unit could move in two, three, or more turns would be unhelpful, as a sophisticated movement model like the one above would have to take into account supply status and road usage at the end of the turn to calculate the next turn's movement factors. While this might be the most "realistic" way to design a game (or at least the most "detailed"), it ultimately detracts from the decision-making part of the game. To my way of thinking, this is decidedly bad.

In no way am I suggesting that game designers stop using sophisticated tools to model the abilities of units in wargames. What I do advocate is that these tools be used in such a way that the data they yield are presented to the gamer in a way that can be used to make intelligent decisions. What this approach requires, however, is a basic comfort level regarding abstraction on the part of the game designers. At some point, things have to be reduced to a relatively simple set of numbers, no matter how complex the process that produced them. An excellent example of this is TalonSoft's tactical-level Battleground series (now thankfully extended). Set at the battalion level, the game does a nice job of providing a reasonably detailed Napoleonic combat model while keeping the game mechanics simple enough that players can predict the range of possible outcomes of their actions so as to best utilize their troops. The combat table is relatively simple, and not only it but the factors that go into determining a unit's fire strength at a given time are spelled out exactly, so that a player does not have to wonder, "If I fire this battalion at that artillery battery, do I have any chance of doing some damage? And how much?" He may ask these questions (and he should), and the answers are easily obtainable. Someone who doesn't take the time to incorporate them into his strategy is bound to lose. Combat losses are tracked in increments of 25 men, which makes it easier to calculate combat strengths while avoiding the "all-or-none" results of early boardgames. Had this series gotten its start today, it might very well have tracked casualties by individual troops, and recorded how many shots each grenadier had fired, how wounded each soldier was, and even whether his performance was impaired because he hadn't recently had a drink of water. The way I see things going now, it seems that game designers think that making the best game possible means making the game as detailed as possible. In my opinion, this simply makes it the most "detailed representation possible." It is not necessarily the most realistic, and it is certainly not the best "game."
The question then becomes, "are people even looking for the best game?" In some cases, it seems not. Once again, it appears that many people simply want to see as much detail in a game as possible. One poster to Big Time Software's discussion board announced that he felt that "everything should be modeled as closely as possible to the real thing right down to the type of bayonet each soldier carries and how he is likely to use it." For this gamer, apparently, the important thing is that the engine simply contain as much data as it can hold. How the player uses it is unimportant. In fact, the player shouldn't have to use it at all, since he later states that "while you should have a model of a squad that has say ten men -- one armed with a revolver with six rounds and twelve rounds of spare ammo, and nine men armed with Lee-Enfield Rifles with the proper loadout of ammo -- you shouldn't have to worry about what each man is going to do at a particular moment." This is a sentiment I have seen expressed over and over by various people (although certainly no one that I actually play games with). The problem with this attitude from a game standpoint is that the player becomes less of a player and more of a spectator, watching things happen to his units rather than using them to their best competitive advantage.

TalonSoft's new The Operational Art of War has taken this to a ridiculous extreme. Units in the game have combat strengths displayed on them. However, these are not the actual values used by the game to resolve combat. To quote from the manual: "[quick reference numbers] are simply the sum of the total strengths in each category for all equipment assigned to the unit, multiplied by the unit's Morale, scaled to fit the game displays. The unit's actual internal strengths, used for all game calculations but not displayed, are much larger numbers. At the low end (displayed strength less than 3) there can be quite a bit of real difference between units that show similar displayed strengths."

In other words, we have the following situation: the game provides the player with a great many numbers for each unit, but these only approximate the actual values that the game engine is using to resolve combat. In addition, since the combat algorithms are a secret, the numbers the game does provide are almost useless. It is like asking, "What are my chances for success in this attack?" and getting the answer, "Five." Five what? Five out of ten? Five out of a hundred? Five out of five? Then add the fact that the "five" might actually be four or six and you don't even know it.

The answer, though, is not to simply publish in the manual all the formulas the game is using. Big Time Software has promised to make public all the formulas used by their Computer Squad Leader, while at the same time bragging about how realistic (read: "detailed") the game model will be because of all the factors it takes into account. The problem with making combat models use differential equations (I exaggerate) is that I am certainly not going to solve a differential equation every time I want to attack. I may be aware of how my attack is going to be resolved, but in this case I am not going to try to evaluate this in order to play the game. I simply have a different idea of what is "fun!"
Other gamers have different ideas. As long as the detail is in the game somehow, some players feel that it is sufficient. In fact, player "control" can even be seen as a bad thing. One GDR reader recently wrote to me that he wished that Great Battles of Caesar didn't reveal the battle damage that units had received. In other words, when attacking with a unit, it would be impossible to tell whether that unit would soon reach its TQ limit and be subject to rout, or whether it was fresh. While this may be closer to the information available to an actual commander, the player is not an "actual commander," but rather is a person playing a game. As I said in a previous feature, if games represented only that information which was available to actual commanders, and limited their actions to those things they could actually have done in real life, computer wargames would be unbelievably boring. Nevertheless, players justify many of the limitations described above because they are more "realistic."

What is the reason for this attitude? I can only hazard a guess, but if pressed my response would be that players are looking for more of a "role-playing" experience out of their computer wargames than they are getting. For such players, the actual competitive game aspect is much less important than the feeling of being "immersed" in the time period being simulated. Players of this sort might want to be panzer commanders or platoon leaders or Adolf Hitler, but they definitely do not want to be just game players. For such a person, any perceived abstraction is undesirable because it causes the game to be less "immersive." Ideally, such a player should never run into a number, because life isn't about numbers! It's about life! The real thing! Even if it exists solely in your mind and on a computer screen. The thing that really puzzles me is the fact that game companies think they are satisfying gamers' desires for more "strategy" when, in fact, despite the huge amount of data in these new games, we are actually getting less and less "strategy" as more of a game's function moves beyond the player's control.

By advocating more "player control," it may appear to some that I am coming down on the side of "player omnipotence," which is something that the "more like life" crowd tends to object to. After all, a battlefield commander doesn't have complete control over his units, so why should a player have this? The answer is that the game player is playing a competitive game which is, ideally, a test of his skill against that of his opponent. Taking control away from the player decreases his opportunity to make informed decisions, which is what skill is all about. The only reason to try and exactly mimic the problems of a battlefield commander is if you are somehow maladjusted enough to think you actually are a battlefield commander, in which case I cannot help you.

As part of my second opinion of Sid Meier's Gettysburg several months ago, I briefly addressed what I felt were the links between an interest in history, an active imagination, and wargames. I made it clear that I wasn't the type that was interested in an "immersive experience" along the lines of a first-person shooter. In fact, in an editorial about graphics and gameplay in wargames, I joked that at the rate things were going, it wouldn't be long before one could buy a game which combined Quake 2 with tactical Napoleonics: play an Old Guard grenadier in 3D! After reading the piece, our Strategy Editor Tim Chown remarked to me that such a game would probably draw a lot of interest! Sure enough, included with the voluminous mail response to these articles were one gentleman's comments which said that he had high hopes that eventually it would be possible to participate in large multiplayer "virtual Napoleonics" games where -- through the use of some sort of VR helmet attached to the computer -- players could each take the part of a single soldier, so that someone could play the role of Marshal Davout and issue orders to division commanders scattered across the world, as the smoke of the battlefield obscured one's vision and communication was restricted to dispatches carried by couriers, as well as actual speech between players in "virtual proximity." If this is the way wargames are going to eventually go, you can go ahead and give away my seat: I won't be getting on that bus.

# ? Jan 14, 2011 14:31

Skillness622: Apr 9, 2009

Fray posted:

I really enjoyed the first two Combat Mission games (Barbarossa and Overlord). Do the following titles add anything interesting to the series, or is it the same game with different units?

Combat Mission: Strike Force and Combat Mission: Afghanistan both use the newer CMx2 engine, so they have a few interface changes and look prettier. The change to a modern setting dramatically changes the game due to the comparative lethality of weapons, notably AT of modern weapons over WW2. The fan reaction seems to be that Combat Mission: Normandy will be less ball-crushingly hard and more of a strategy game.

Edit - How good is the AI is BftB compared to say Conquest of the Aegean?

Skillness622 fucked around with this message at Jan 14, 2011 around 22:37

# ? Jan 14, 2011 16:31

Mecharasputin: May 30, 2009

Team Black Zion posted:

Solium Infernum was so amazingly good that it would be disgusting if we didn't have a goon revival and do some blitz games over dropbox or whatnot.

Unless someone does it before me I'm starting a Solium Infernum revival topic as soon as my exam session ends. This game deserves So Much More recognition.

# ? Jan 15, 2011 14:41

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHnMDGIbFkc

Okay, I've gotten the Paradox mega pack during Christmas, and am trying to start with Hearts of Iron II... And I'm not doing so well!

Can anyone provide me with some tips to get started? I'm trying to get started with the Spanish Civil war scenario, but I really don't know what I'm doing.

# ? Jan 15, 2011 20:32

dtkozl: Dec 17, 2001; ultima ratio regum

You are going the wrong way about hoi2 really. Start off as germany and make pretty much whatever you want; its mass of industrial capacity, research teams, and manpower mean you can go air ground or sea heavy and still be a contender. Starting in '36 the game will hold you hand up until the point of the war starting so you really don't have to worry much about diplomacy other than eventually getting the usual allies in of romania, bulgaria, italy, yugoslavia, and hungary on the axis.

Smaller countries take a bit more skill since you aren't given all the best poo poo up front, and are therefore less than ideal to learn the game.

# ? Jan 16, 2011 00:19

Kolodny: Jul 10, 2010

The Panther games got an across the board price drop the other day, putting them at a much more palatable $59.99/$39.99/$19.99 for BftB/CotA/HttR, respectively. Highway to the Reich is definitely worth the $20 for anyone halfway interested in the system, though personally I'd recommend bypassing that, trying the BftB demo to see if it's your thing, and grabbing BftB since all of the previous scenarios are going to get ported to it anyway.

Edit: hah, missed Grey Hunter's post up above. Definitely worth picking up, anyway.

Kolodny fucked around with this message at Jan 16, 2011 around 02:14

# ? Jan 16, 2011 02:11

Cassa: Jan 29, 2009

V for Vegas posted:

Bruce is some kind of savant wargamer who answers questions I didn't even know I had asked. I'm going to go ahead and quote one of the best grognard articles I have ever read because I think it's worth it.

Sounds like he wants a new SSI Panzer General. Speaking of which, is there anyone still making games of that nature?

# ? Jan 16, 2011 05:38

vyshka: Aug 10, 2010

Cassa posted:

Sounds like he wants a new SSI Panzer General. Speaking of which, is there anyone still making games of that nature?

Matrix/Slitherine are going to be publishing something that is supposed to be like it:

http://matrixgames.com/products/399...s/Panzer.Corps.

Beta sign ups: http://www.slitherine.com/beta_test/panzer_corps_pc

# ? Jan 16, 2011 06:35

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# ? May 21, 2013 20:37

Lord Windy: Mar 26, 2010; It's art!

Right, I bought War in the East and I'm currently playing the Axis side in the 1941 campaign.

I feel like hot poo poo after the first week (1 turn) I managed to kill and capture 390 000 soviet troops, destroy 2000+ vehicles and destroy 3500+ planes while they were still on the ground. But I still feel like the game is completely going over my head. Is it normal to have turns take hours to resolve, and what the gently caress do I do with my planes? They seem fairly useless ground attacking soldiers when they only kill around 35 people but can destroy a few hundred planes.

# ? Jan 18, 2011 12:18

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