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Riso posted:I think the Rome game might be the best one. Absolutely and I can still barely play it. Obstacle2 posted:Despite the awfulness, I'll probably try to power through it. I've got an itch for the Civil War that no other game seems to be able to scratch. But Ultimate General: Gettysburg is so good!
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Jul 4, 2014 02:38
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uPen posted:Ultimate General: Gettysburg is so good! Its simple, but its very good!
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Jul 4, 2014 02:41
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It breaks on me a lot, but when it works, it is a really streamlined and fun game.
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Jul 4, 2014 02:43
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Simple is not a negative, Unity of Command is one of the best wargames I've played in ages and it's nothing if not simple. More wargames shouls be like Ultimate General and less like Gary Grigsby/John Tiller.
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Jul 4, 2014 02:45
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uPen posted:Simple is not a negative, Unity of Command is one of the best wargames I've played in ages and it's nothing if not simple. More wargames shouls be like Ultimate General and less like Gary Grigsby/John Tiller. The systems of UoC are perfect. They could work on some of the brilliant conditions being a bit luck based or puzzley though.
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Jul 4, 2014 02:47
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I think they hit the balance pretty well with Red Turn but then they screwed it up again with Black Turn. I guess with the ridiculous superiority they give 1941/1942 Panzers over any kind of Russian units, and the lesser-but-still-large advantage German infantry have too, it makes it hard to balance time limits, because an extra turn or two in most scenarios would let you meet your objectives easily while wiping out every single Russian unit on the map. Black Turn was still fun though, I'd gladly keep paying for more DLCs if they'd keep making them.
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Jul 4, 2014 02:55
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Tiller games are incredibly simple.
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Jul 4, 2014 03:03
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The gameplay is, the interface is as complex as is humanly possible.
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Jul 4, 2014 03:06
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Actually, the interface is as easy as you could get it. It's one of the reasons I love his games so much. You could call it archaic, which would also work. It's that simple, you're not digging through menus, or lists, or anything. You want to deploy artillery, you press the deploy button when it's selected. You want to call in an air strike, you press the air strike button. You have a total of maybe 12 buttons that actually do anything and no menus. That's all you get for the entire game. The manual that comes with the demos have a walk through for a tiny scenario which is only a few pages long and quickly demystifies the entire game. I think a few others here have been intimidated by Tiller games in the past and after doing the quick walk through it's "duh, this is easy as hell to play". Philthy fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 03:43
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I'd say the interface on Ultimate General! just needs a little bit more, it needs the Gettysburg! thing where you can see all the modifiers boosting the unit. Other than that it's great.
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Jul 4, 2014 09:52
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I've started playing Dangerous Waters again with a friend of mine, played a multiplayer match where we were two Akula SSNs versus some civvie traffic. I fired a torp at a target, set the activation range of the torp incorrectly, the torp missed the target and... How do I shot torpedo?     Hurrah got a SSN kill! Myself! Guy I was playing MP with was patent enough to play another DW mission with me, this time with both of us in the same P-3 Orion. Bad idea.     Anyone want to play some multiplayer dangerous waters? We play the DWX mod that
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Jul 4, 2014 11:59
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Baloogan posted:Hurrah got a SSN kill! Myself! You arrogant rear end, you've killed us!
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Jul 4, 2014 12:28
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uPen posted:Simple is not a negative, Unity of Command is one of the best wargames I've played in ages and it's nothing if not simple. Please, I like UoC (and Panzer General and Memoir '44) but I wouldn't call it a kosher wargame comparable to WITE. To me true wargames attempt to simulate warfare. UoC goes a bit deeper than Panzer General by having supply lines, but it's still far from how WW2 was really fought.
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Jul 4, 2014 12:36
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Tiller's Panzer Campaigns are pretty simple: Right-click an adjacent hex to move into it. Click-drag to a farther hex to have the AI decide movement to it CTRL-right-click an enemy unit to shoot it. CTRL-ALT-right-click to shoot until all movement points are expended Right-click an enemy unit to order an assault. You can add multiple units to an assault before choosing to Resolve it Press T to toggle in and out of Travel mode, which is necessary for covering ground quickly and moving through certain terrain features like bridges If your unit's movement point text is in white, then it hasn't moved yet and it can assault, move or shoot If it's green, then it has done something this turn, but it can still do all three If it's yellow, then it cannot assault, only move or shoot If it's orange, then it cannot shoot, only possibly move Shoot a unit until it becomes Disrupted, then assault it If your own units get Disrupted or have high Fatigue, pull them out so they don't get shot at. Units that get to rest this way will lose the Disrupted status and will lose Fatigue. If it's night-time, try to avoid doing anything at all because doing stuff at night incurs extra Fatigue Units that take a real beating (high fatigue, heavy losses, lost to multiple assaults) will eventually become Broken and can also be destroyed altogether. The important part though is shoving them out of the way so you can advance That should cover maybe 9 out 10 situations you'll face in the game The age of the engine only really shows its face when you want to get into the nitty-gritty and advanced controls like bridging operations and constantly checking command radius. It also lacks modern conveniences like mouse-over tooltips and contextual right-click menus. The base 2D graphics are also ugly as sin, but the hist-mod guy fixes that; although that still leaves the 3D view leaving much to be desired. The '90s look of the game (and very high counter count) makes it look like it's a complicated grog game, but it's really not when you get right down to it. My own pet peeve is that shooting takes too long - you right-click a unit and a 5 second sound clip of *bang*ping*boom* plays and you see the result, [2 men killed]. And then you get retaliatory fire for another 5 seconds. And you shoot again, and every shot plays that explosion sound and takes 5 seconds to execute. Multiply that over several divisions' worth of units and it feels like each turn takes way more time than it should. You can make the AI execute its turn instantly, but there's no way to speed it up for you the human player shooting the enemy units. The combat isn't as transparent as say, Unity of Command or the Korsun Pocket/Battles in Italy/Normandy series, but the factors are few enough and the scale small enough that you don't really feel like you need to know exactly what's going on underneath the hood. It's always going to boil down to terrain, Fatigue, Morale and the unit('s weapons) itself, and you can see all four right from the unit info sidebar. This in contrast to a game like War in the East or The Operational Art of War where you have to consider terrain, supplies, fatigue, leader quality, unit quality, unit composition, but all those dozen factors aren't concentrated into a single screen. I can understand the game not telling exactly what caused a combat to not go my way, but at least help me discern everything I need to think about before I commit, especially when the stakes are much higher with week-long turns. Panzer Campaigns mostly avoids that particular pitfall. Ultimately though, Panzer Campaigns hits all the right notes while not being that much more complicated than UOC
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Jul 4, 2014 12:38
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Baloogan posted:Hurrah got a SSN kill! Myself! I remember when I did that in Fast Attack! once. Then I started doing it intentionally all the time because it was a challenge to escape or survive. I wish GoG or someone would find all those old Sierra strategy and sim games.
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Jul 4, 2014 12:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:Tiller's Panzer Campaigns are pretty simple: A lot of his poo poo has free demos on the iPad and they are worth trying. I kind of like the Civil War game but, like you side, it can show it's jank when you have to constantly limber and unlimber cannons.
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Jul 4, 2014 15:03
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Alchenar posted:I'd say the interface on Ultimate General! just needs a little bit more, it needs the Gettysburg! thing where you can see all the modifiers boosting the unit. Other than that it's great. Yeah, I had some problems with the interface, morale and condition are a mystery to me. Also, I had this problem where artillery ordered to attack a target would move off their position to fire if the target moved out of sight. I'd also like to see victory point breakdowns in progress.
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Jul 4, 2014 15:45
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Might be a good suggestion to tell the devs.
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Jul 4, 2014 15:55
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StashAugustine posted:Yeah, I had some problems with the interface, morale and condition are a mystery to me. Also, I had this problem where artillery ordered to attack a target would move off their position to fire if the target moved out of sight. I'd also like to see victory point breakdowns in progress. The biggest improvement would be a way to see a unit's morale/condition at a glance without having to select them. Even a couple of ungainly bars next to the flag would do a lot.
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Jul 4, 2014 16:00
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Commander the Great War is coming out on ipad July 25th, and I'm assuming steam release will be nearby. http://www.matrixgames.com/news/1463/Commander:.The.Great.War.iPad.gets.release.date!
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Jul 4, 2014 16:48
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Ultimate General is great and all, but I empathize with the desire for a strategic-level ACW game that's perhaps as playable as A House Divided (or perhaps For the People) because it taps into that same alt-history vein as War in the Pacific. As the Union, you know you're going to be able to mobilize an overwhelming amount of men and materiel eventually, and it's nice to watch that steamroller grow and you try to parry the CSA's incursions without shooting yourself in the foot politically. As the Confederates, you perhaps have better commanders and a Union army that still needs time to train and expand, but if you can strike hard and fast you can either score an "auto-victory" or at least dig in to make the march to Richmond as slow and grindy and bloody as possible. Which then goes back to it being really too bad that AGEOD's system is so blah. I have a grip on the leader and supply rules, but the command points and Army and Corps command structure is way too annoying to deal with for how unfriendly the interface is.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:33
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gradenko_2000 posted:Which then goes back to it being really too bad that AGEOD's system is so blah. I have a grip on the leader and supply rules, but the command points and Army and Corps command structure is way too annoying to deal with for how unfriendly the interface is. It's why I liked BoA2 a lot better: you just stacked stuff together and they did things. There was no need to worry about divisions and corps and armies. If they mixed the production system from AACW with BoA2's maneuver, you might get a good game.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:47
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A game just came out on Steam called Battleplan: American Civil War. It bills itself as casual, but from appearances it almost feels like it's trying to pull a UoC on the Civil War - and it's only ten bucks. Has anyone given it a shot yet?
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Jul 4, 2014 20:00
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Tomn posted:A game just came out on Steam called Battleplan: American Civil War. It bills itself as casual, but from appearances it almost feels like it's trying to pull a UoC on the Civil War - and it's only ten bucks. Has anyone given it a shot yet? I just picked it up, I'll let you know how it is once I've spent a little more time with it. Not being turn-based, its not much like UoC. It's real time with lots of pausing and issues are carried by horses from your General down to the subordinate units.
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Jul 5, 2014 01:53
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Tomn posted:A game just came out on Steam called Battleplan: American Civil War. It bills itself as casual, but from appearances it almost feels like it's trying to pull a UoC on the Civil War - and it's only ten bucks. Has anyone given it a shot yet? Tim Stone wrote a little bit about it yesterday, but he's reserving final judgement: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/04/the-flare-path-inspired-by-true-emergencies/
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Jul 5, 2014 22:49
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Does anyone know how morale and condition work in Ultimate General? I have vauge notions (morale reduces with casualties and makes you flee, condition degrades in combat/running in general and makes you less effective, put near a general to recover faster) but it's unclear exactly what they do or how they're gained/lost.
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Jul 6, 2014 08:07
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I haven't noticed this before but http://unityofcommand.net/blog/2013/12/13/my-finnish-addon-for-black-turn/
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Jul 6, 2014 17:44
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StashAugustine posted:Does anyone know how morale and condition work in Ultimate General? I have vauge notions (morale reduces with casualties and makes you flee, condition degrades in combat/running in general and makes you less effective, put near a general to recover faster) but it's unclear exactly what they do or how they're gained/lost. Well, I've recently learned that morale doesn't actually denote the percentage of morale you have - it's an absolute value. Veteran units can have up to 100% morale, but green units are capped somewhere below that. So if you have a green unit whose morale refuses to rise, well, that's the answer. Also apparently you need to pull units fairly far out of the line and stick them with a general to really start recovering morale and condition. Something about units forming a coherent battle line with protected flanks helping morale a lot, too.
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Jul 7, 2014 00:09
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Tomn posted:Well, I've recently learned that morale doesn't actually denote the percentage of morale you have - it's an absolute value. Veteran units can have up to 100% morale, but green units are capped somewhere below that. So if you have a green unit whose morale refuses to rise, well, that's the answer. Also apparently you need to pull units fairly far out of the line and stick them with a general to really start recovering morale and condition. Something about units forming a coherent battle line with protected flanks helping morale a lot, too. Yeah, Morale is 'willingness to fight', Condition is 'ability to fight'. A Brigade with high morale but low condition will stand its ground all day but is too exhausted to reload and shoot properly. The game is also really good at differentiating the Union and Confederate armies in terms of gameplay: Union corps have large numbers of small brigades that need to be rotated constantly to and from the front in order to stay in fighting condition, whereas the Confederates have fewer but larger and higher quality brigades they can use as giant battering rams but can't really be replaced when spent. I'm loving this game. I really went wild on the Summer Steam sale and I bought a lot of stuff I'm happy with, but the best value-for-money I dropped was on Ultimate General! When we have a new thread it should be right there at the top of the OP. PS. Decisive Campaigns is progressing about as you'd expect for a worst case scenario for the Germans.
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Jul 7, 2014 00:28
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It's going a lot better than it should be. Deployment bugs! 
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Jul 7, 2014 01:30
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And for all the emails back and forth, we noticed a river gap and figured "hey, poo poo is going to get bad HERE." Welp.
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Jul 7, 2014 01:38
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One thing I recently learned in WITE is that sometimes the CVs don't matter and you have to pay attention to the actual numbers inside the units when evaluating. Consider the following situation:  The 3-stack southeast of Vitebsk has a displayed defensive CV of 50. The 5 divisions I have adjacent to it have a displayed offensive CV of 4+12+5 = 21. Since this is turn 6, or Jul-24-1941, the Soviet rule where 1:1 or higher odds automatically gets converted to 2:1 and thus resulting in a victory is still in effect, but 21 isn't even half of 50. This is the composition of the German 3-stack:  And this is the composition of the 3 adjacent Soviet stacks:    I have a 3.69 : 1 advantage in Infantry Squads 2.21 : 1 advantage in Infantry Weapons (mortars, MGs, etc.) 3.19 : 1 advantage in Infantry Guns 2.70 : 1 advantage in Engineers And so on, noting that I do have a disadvantage in armor, although in most cases I just look at the Infantry Squad numbers. I'm not entirely sure where the "you need a 3:1 numbers advantage when assaulting a defender" comes from (Inverse Square Law? the works of Trevor N Dupuy?) but that's what I look for. We do seem to have it, so let's see what happens:  The first attack fails, just barely - a difference of 52 final CV. I decide to try again:  And the second attack succeeds at precisely 1:1 odds.  Unfortunately having to Deliberate Attack twice means those divisions are not able to advance, and I'm only able to seal the pocket with a weak Tank Division, but having them at least be isolated during the logistics should harm their fuel and supply reserves, plus I have a fresh army in Smolensk that should be in a good position to counterattack next turn. EDIT: I should note that this is against the AI. A human Axis player will be less likely to march single exposed divisions into contact with multiple Soviet divisions like that, but the Soviet player can and should still look for similar numbers during the winter counter-attacks, the 1943+ offensives, and if the German player does make a mistake. EDIT EDIT: The weekly deal is AGEOD's Civil War 2. Does it still have that janky Division -> Corps -> Army structure? And yes, I know AGEOD is poo poo gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 08:45
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Battleplan: American Civil War is fairly fun but I think ultimately its a little uninspired. I could forgive the overly simple models for the units if the game play was a bit better. The lack of a speed slider is probably the worst sin the game commits. There are only two speeds, pause and stupid fast. Ultimate General does everything better but I suppose there is an appeal to Battleplan due to the fact that it includes a number of battle fields from the ACW rather than just Gettysburg.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:58
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The best dwarf simulation just got a new release: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
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Jul 8, 2014 03:16
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This is I think the only thread where you can say the DF interface is usable.
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Jul 8, 2014 03:18
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I've made a scenario in command that is encroaching 500 units, a mass air assault on Great Britain by the EU. With the commonwealth and US supporting Britain. Eurofighters vs Mirages with F-22s showing up against MiGs 
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Jul 8, 2014 05:30
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Is the F-35 represented in CMANO? Is it as bad there as we think it is? Sealion 2014 sounds awesome BTW
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Jul 8, 2014 08:21
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Baloogan posted:The best dwarf simulation just got a new release: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ A new modpack actually has [limited] mouse control!
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Jul 8, 2014 09:31
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Do the Combat Mission series of games ever get a discount or go on sale? I've never seen it but I haven't been looking closely for it either.
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Jul 8, 2014 22:16
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DarthJeebus posted:Do the Combat Mission series of games ever get a discount or go on sale? I've never seen it but I haven't been looking closely for it either. Yes. I remember when I bought the Normandy one a year or so ago, it was on sale. Now it's not going to be $10 or anything like that, but it was on sale.
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Jul 8, 2014 22:59
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