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Do you all remember the close combat series? I used to love playing the WW2 ones when I was a kid. What happened to that series?
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Aug 6, 2022 02:42
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AnimeIsTrash posted:Do you all remember the close combat series? I used to love playing the WW2 ones when I was a kid. What happened to that series? A 3d version centered around the American campaign in north Africa came out recently, I found it mediocre. I loving love close combat and I would dearly love it if someone could make a mod for the old 2d games that made the ai not-garbage, a feat that seems would be really easy with modern technology. Successfully executing a pin and flank with infantry, or an advance under smoke cover, or flanking a kv1 and forcing the crew to bail for morale reasons alone is just incredible. Cross of iron is my favorite because it doesn't have the dubious strategic map layer, you just get that beautiful back and forth ebb and flow of retreating and advancing over the same piece of ground over and over, being able to just flee to positions in the rear is imo much more realistic than the bullshit morale bar of the later games that requires you too get completely hosed up before you auto bail. Slavvy has issued a correction as of 03:02 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 02:59
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AnimeIsTrash posted:Do you all remember the close combat series? I used to love playing the WW2 ones when I was a kid. What happened to that series? They were updated and rereleased https://store.steampowered.com/app/936530/Close_Combat_Last_Stand_Arnhem/ That's the update for Close Combat 2, A Bridge Too Far, which is the best in the series
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Aug 6, 2022 03:01
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gradenko_2000 posted:They were updated and rereleased  By far. I must have practically worn the CD out when I was a kid. The Russian Front never came out for Mac and when I tried it as an adult was a real letdown.
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Aug 6, 2022 03:11
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I think "Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem" tacked on a goofy strategic layer that wasn't in the original game. I don't really see it adding anything to the original CC2, the back-to-back battles were cool and kept the tempo up. You also felt at the mercy of the supposed historical timeline since you had limited influence over it. I'm not sure if you have to choose both the next battle location, and what time you want the battle to begin and end, but whatever is going on I don't particularly care for it. CC3 had the cool feature where you got to name your commander so you could roleplay as RAZPUTIN! hosing down nazis with a ppsh-41or whatever. The little killboard after-action report was fun, you could see that private Conrad had 2 panzer kills, a silver star, and was then permanently crippled and taken off the line. I wish some of these Gettysburg or hell WW2 games would have that level of detail down to tracking individual soldiers' names, battles, kills, and awards. Give me dwarf fortress legends mode, but for the american civil war. Procedural generation is just fine but go ahead and fill in the names from the historical rolls if those are handy. palindrome has issued a correction as of 06:49 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 06:40
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palindrome posted:I think "Close Combat: Last Stand Arnhem" tacked on a goofy strategic layer that wasn't in the original game. I don't really see it adding anything to the original CC2, the back-to-back battles were cool and kept the tempo up. You also felt at the mercy of the supposed historical timeline since you had limited influence over it. I'm not sure if you have to choose both the next battle location, and what time you want the battle to begin and end, but whatever is going on I don't particularly care for it. Imo last stand arnhem had the only worthwhile use of the strategic layer because it gave some kind of direction to the battles in that you'd constantly be trying to cut the neck of the allied thrust as the Germans, or frantically trying to charge through to the Paras as the allies. In eg Panthers in the mist it was totally worthless.
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Aug 6, 2022 07:00
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well maybe I'll give it another try, I really just wanted the OG game but with support for modern screen resolutions and operating systems. A "classic mode" checkbox would have been ideal. The other great thing I remember about close combat is the audio. I may have imagined it but I was under the impression that they went to some trouble to actually get realistic audio samples of live fired guns where possible. That sounds false now, but I could believe it in 1997.
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Aug 6, 2022 07:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:They were updated and rereleased The update is a lot worse than the original because of the strategic map though.
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Aug 6, 2022 08:53
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Frosted Flake posted:I don’t know how to explain this, but I think covid is destroying nice militaria, wargaming and model making. We’ve talked about John Tiller (JTS) and Christopher Dean (NWS), but I keep hitting dead URLs and obituaries for some of these old wargame designers, amateur historians and militaria writers. John Tiller died of brain cancer IIRC, but we need to put up a hermetic seal around Gary Grigsby until he can do the War in the West + East merged megagame
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Aug 6, 2022 08:59
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Close Combat Arnhem showed me the power of Gammon Bombs. It was also the first game I remembered showing me how vulnerable tanks were in urban combat. The tiger was a big spooky tank that ruled the battlefield until a funny coal miner threw plastic explosives on it's engine block.
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Aug 6, 2022 12:15
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Slavvy posted:A 3d version centered around the American campaign in north Africa came out recently, I found it mediocre. I loving love close combat and I would dearly love it if someone could make a mod for the old 2d games that made the ai not-garbage, a feat that seems would be really easy with modern technology. Successfully executing a pin and flank with infantry, or an advance under smoke cover, or flanking a kv1 and forcing the crew to bail for morale reasons alone is just incredible. I believe the issue with the ai was them literally not adapting it to the bigger map sizes as the series went on. This is why by the time you get to battle of the bulge the ai clusters in one corner. That corner is the size of the entire map from the older games.
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Aug 6, 2022 12:18
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Tankbuster posted:Close Combat Arnhem showed me the power of Gammon Bombs. It was also the first game I remembered showing me how vulnerable tanks were in urban combat. The tiger was a big spooky tank that ruled the battlefield until a funny coal miner threw plastic explosives on it's engine block. Once XXX Corps arrived and you had 17 Pounders, Achilles and Firefly they were manageable, but trying to hide a para 6 Pounder well enough to get a flank shot was nerve wracking. e: Wrt tracking individual soldiers, it’s one of my all-time favourite features that made me really invested in a campaign, and I don’t know why later games haven’t done it. I’ve told the Combat Mission and Graviteam devs it would make a huge difference if soldiers had personalities so that I can follow a soldier through the campaign, seeing a cowardly soldier win the DSO and find his courage or something. I still remember the soldiers in a Bridge Too Far who went Heroic or Berserk, even though it must have happened only two or three times in countless childhood hours. ee: I feel like good campaigns have kind of faded generally. The new Combat Mission campaigns imo fall short of Barbarossa to Berlin, but maybe that’s because the simpler games let you have an extremely wide range of equipment and forces over the whole war. I still remember playing a Bulgarian Campaign in Barbarossa to Berlin and I haven’t seen the Minor Axis in any game since, or at least not where you pick a rifle battalion and take them through the war. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 15:57 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 15:50
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Frosted Flake posted:Once XXX Corps arrived and you had 17 Pounders, Achilles and Firefly they were manageable, but trying to hide a para 6 Pounder well enough to get a flank shot was nerve wracking. For the longest time I just read the manual which essentially had an engaging well written account of the entire operation. Playing the game as a kid was hard because you go from Red Alert 2 to a 2D game where you have to care about lines of fire, units can miss, break or run. I remember the town with the flak 88 on the main where you had to rush the bridges with the americans. Eric Young's Squad assault was far jankier. Eugen's WW2 game based on the eastern front did have a campaign but aspects were gamified.
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Aug 6, 2022 16:40
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Tankbuster posted:I remember the town with the flak 88 on the main where you had to rush the bridges with the americans. Son. What’s incredible is when you read accounts from soldiers in the 101st, one thing they nearly all remember is the flak emplacement. That a game was able to recreate it, not just the geography but the lasting impression, really speaks to their credit.
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Aug 6, 2022 16:50
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The Bridge at Son still gives me nightmares. You fight your way through town then you get to the bridge map and you only have 30 seconds before the Germans blow it and there's nothing to do but cry.
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Aug 6, 2022 16:51
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The embarrassing thing was, I remembered it because I was comparing it to Red alert, and the flak units there were goofy russians that did low damage to infantry. I just thought it would be fun and games until of course my shiny new 50 cal got instawiped while I was dragging it into a building. But yeah, kudos to the devs. that piece of historical trivia stayed firmly lodged in my mind.gradenko_2000 posted:The Bridge at Son still gives me nightmares. You fight your way through town then you get to the bridge map and you only have 30 seconds before the Germans blow it and there's nothing to do but cry. You are not supposed to capture the bridge right?
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Aug 6, 2022 17:02
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Tankbuster posted:You are not supposed to capture the bridge right? It was pre-wired for detonation and blown almost as soon as the 101st got there. It was also an iconic scene in the movie, and as I said the memoirs and Cornelius Ryan’s book, so I’d say no. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt4WdpOF4yg e: I can’t think of any hex and counter games where I’ve captured it intact, and iirc I’ve never got it intact in Highway to the Reich nor Market Garden 44 either. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 17:12 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 17:07
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The Battle of Cedar Mountain, turn 7 Our artillery does NOT have line-of-sight to the Confederate assault on our center, so we direct our fire to the next best thing. The rebels having outmaneuvered our artillery siting notwithstanding, the 15th Alabama at the southern end of our line loses 91 men under the combined fire of seven batteries.  The Purnell Maryland Legion and the 1st District Columbia regiment, with Brig. Gen. Greene leading the charge, fires their rifle muskets, then charges Jubal Early's Virginians, and throws them back. quote:Having a leader stacked with a regiment provides a bonus to rolls to remove Disruption, pass Rout checks, and recover from being Routed. Having a leader stacked with a melee assault also grants a bonus to one's chances.  I shuffle around some of our troops to make sure fresh ones at the forefront, and the Disrupted regiments can recover at the back.  On our left, we continue firing where we can.  On our right, the Ohioans of Geary's brigade pour fire on the advancing Alabamans. Those are still the smoothbore-wieldiing troops - the range has closed so there's no utility to shuffling around to the rifle-muskets, but the latter do form into line.  Finally, I pull our cavalry back up the road - it's too hot for them to really do anything, and they've done all the scouting I need for now.  After the inter-turn: Trimble's 15th Alabama routs after taking tremendous losses, and the two other regiments in the brigade retreat. Johnson's brigade (all the way on the western edge, in brown) has regrouped, and looks like is going to take another attack at The Gate. Early's troops and the Stonewall brigade are now mixed-in with each other, and they're right up against our center, but no assaults were launched this turn.  As a treat, here's a shot of what the game looks like if you use the "3D" view. Casualties Union Infantry: 351 total (+124 from last turn) Union Cavalry: 9 total (+4 from last turn) Confederate Infantry: 1,045 total (+407 from last turn)
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Aug 6, 2022 17:42
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Concentrated volley fire is so satisfying. Dartis' game does that rather well with the smoke plumes, firing sounds and shouting men.
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Aug 6, 2022 19:43
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I remember someone wrote a book or at least a paper going over this, but my impression is that after the Seven Years War linear warfare changed so that firing was no longer by rank or by platoon. How did it work during the ACW? I seem to vaguely remember that the differences in America had something to do with soldiers being less drilled, which is also why there wasn’t heavy cavalry or lancers the way the Europeans put them to use in 1866 and 1871.
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Aug 6, 2022 21:03
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when you don't fancy doing the battle of 3rd Bull Run:
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Aug 7, 2022 00:54
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gradenko_2000 posted:The Battle of Cedar Mountain, turn 7 Is there a pointless futile bayonet charge mechanic?
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Aug 7, 2022 01:12
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AnimeIsTrash posted:Do you all remember the close combat series? I used to love playing the WW2 ones when I was a kid. What happened to that series? Hell yeah! I played them when I was a kid too. The sound clips and weapon noises are seared into my memory. I still think "Move completed!" when I have to walk to something sometimes. This prompted me to try the new 3D game that actually finally wasn't vaporware. It really is Close Combat in a 3D setting, like they made it from the sprites and going top down looks like the older games. Same sound effects too, which sound like Call of Duty 1's sounds. It's not too bad, kinda fun to look at and is really just Close Combat in 3D with a few extra bugs, so if you liked the old ones it'll play alright.
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Aug 7, 2022 03:19
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The Battle of Cedar Mountain, turn 8 We begin this turn with an artillery bombardment, but again, we do not have LOS to the center of our line, so we're forced to take shots at regiments much further away.  On the left, on the 102d NY is in a position to open fire.  In the center, we unleash multiple volleys on the Confederates. Our troops here are undisrupted, so it is my hope that they will hold into the next turn.  On the right, our smoothbore-armed troops trade-off with the regiments with rifle-muskets, and they're able to catch the Stonewall brigade in an enfilade fire. After the inter-turn:  Johnson's brigade, which was menacing our left, pulls back once more. We see three new brigades advancing on us - Taliaferro (yellow), Thomas (green, different from the Stonewall brigade's bright green), and Hays (cyan). We even exchange fire with two of them as they advance on our lines. Early and the Stonewall brigade both launch an assault on our center, but the men hold. Unfortunately, we do lose an officer: Brig Gen A. S. Williams, commanding the 1st Division, is killed in the fighting; BG G. H. Gordon is elevated to command the Division, and a generic "Replacement Leader" takes over for Gordon's 3d Brigade. It costs us 16 VP for having lost Williams, and the Replacement Leader is a grade-D leader (where Williams and Gordon are at least grade-C). Casualties Union Infantry: 494 total (+143 from last turn) Union Cavalry: 9 total One Union leader Confederate Infantry: 1,447 total (+402 from last turn)
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Aug 8, 2022 11:50
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Frosted Flake posted:It was pre-wired for detonation and blown almost as soon as the 101st got there. It was also an iconic scene in the movie, and as I said the memoirs and Cornelius Ryan’s book, so I’d say no. CCA has a small chance for bridge detonations to fail, at least in multiplayer. So there is a chance, it’s just tiny iirc.
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Aug 8, 2022 11:57
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I'm playing a funny europa universalis 4 campaign recently where I started as ming china to colonize western north america to keep the continent free of whites. stuck to the west coast, made tributaries of all the one province tribes and allied with the big federations that ended up forming. fought spain, portugal and england at once in a massive war with a million+ dead on both sides to kick the english out of canada and the portuguese out of mexico. the names and map colors of my confederated allies keep changing but at this point the Creek Federation controls the entire american south and a line of territory from mexico city to Manitoba, while whatever the guys in the northeast are called continually eat up british attempts to reestablish newfoundland. my force limit is approaching one thousand regiments and my navy is packed to the brim with capital ships looted from the europeans and their colonies. ive taken panama from spanish colombia and constructed the canal to facilitate troop and ship movement and half a million men are preparing to march on venezuela. this game does not feel remotely designed for what i am doing
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Aug 8, 2022 17:25
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I once did a Mali campaign that united all of Africa and it was fantastic to gain land from the euros in a peace deal and receive the pop up about the slavery resource being exchanged for something else  It seems they after more than a decade, the general States of Africa are actually treated with some respect and their units look dignified instead of looking like cavemen with muskets. I have to check EU4 one of these days.
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Aug 8, 2022 21:00
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How is EU nowadays? Can you just play it straight / by-ear and react to the game as it progresses or do you need a guide.
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Aug 8, 2022 22:54
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EU4 has about 500 dollars worth of dlc that's the larger obstacle to getting into it but I think they have some subscription model at this point that makes that less annoying. in terms of accessibility it's one of the easier paradox game to get into (more so than crusader kings and victoria, hearts of iron is probably simpler at this point) as long as you have someone to tell you about some of the dumb gotcha bullshit you have to deal with, like: -can't develop for institutions without a particular DLC and this is 100% necessary as every nation outside western europe and still extremely recommended for everyone in it -disasters will ruin you, check the conditions for these and avoid them at all costs except for the china one that you need to do once to centralize at all -turn off lucky nations in the new game options unless you want to deal with spain and the ottomans taking over the entire loving world on their own every game and also just being way stronger than you for no reason. if you are doing an ironman game you can't turn this off lmao good map painting game, depressing colonialism whitewashing game
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Aug 8, 2022 23:32
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fondly remembering playing as Oman, trying to form Persia or play as Ethiopia and having a really cool game until an tidal wave of islamic ottoman fury rained down upon me
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Aug 8, 2022 23:42
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Does anyone have experience with the AEGOD games? I was thinking of trying either Field of Glory Empires or To End All Wars but Steam reviews are all over the place.
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Aug 8, 2022 23:42
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the ui for FoG:E is pretty bad.
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Aug 8, 2022 23:45
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Grey Hunter did an LP for FoG:E and it looked pretty interesting to me.
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Aug 8, 2022 23:51
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Frosted Flake posted:Does anyone have experience with the AEGOD games? I was thinking of trying either Field of Glory Empires or To End All Wars but Steam reviews are all over the place. To End All Wars is too large for the engine Alea Jacta Est, Thirty Years War, Rise of Prussia are the sweet spots Revolution Under Siege and Civil War 2 also work, but is pushing it
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Aug 8, 2022 23:59
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I keep hearing FoG:E did interesting things, and it would be great to port battles to FoG II, so maybe I’ll check it out. If it gives me more to do on the strategic layer than Imperator or Rome II, I’ll be happy. Mostly, both Paradox and CA desperately need competition. The Warhammer licence was the best and worst thing that could have happened to CA, and ditto CK II becoming huge.
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Aug 9, 2022 00:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:How is EU nowadays? Can you just play it straight / by-ear and react to the game as it progresses or do you need a guide. EU has always suffered from not actually having any real unique gameplay element or coherent thoughts about the historical period portrayed. Crusader King posits a medieval age defined by personalities and their relationships, Victoria attempts to model a period of drastic socio-economic development, HoI4 decided to go all in on Kaiserreich style alt-history roleplaying. But Europa Universalis suffers from being the first of Paradox's map games, so it's always been simply the "default map game" where you do "map game things" like Provinces > Gold > Troops > Provinces etc. and across the 4 games they haven't hit any new ideas to finally give a real identity to the blobbing gameplay core. I always thought the obvious way to set the game apart from other the other series and draw actual inspiration from the time period would be to focus the gameplay not on individuals or socio-economics, but on institutions. So the default game play arc would be that you start out as a feudal state where most of your territories are effectively independent, but at the end of the game your are running a unitary territorial state, French Revolution style. You would sit at the top of a pyramid of different fiefs, provinces, city states, and slowly work to bring them all to heel. Meanwhile you would probably be part of a larger pyramid like the Holy Roman Empire, and obviously there would be plenty of equals to contend with. It would also hopefully give a pleasant arc to the whole game; as the time you would need to spend managing your internal politics would decrease over time, allowing you to focus more both in-game resources and real life time on increasingly larger global stages. That sort of development over time, where you start out in a very complex micro-level hierarchical web of political entities that gradually simplifies into a broader system of 18th-century continental power game politics, including to global colonial competition, would make for a unique gameplay experience in the mapgame space, in my opinion. EU has made plenty of haphazard strides towards systems like this, but it has never been recognized as the core of the game, so it remains so much patch and DLC fluff, and the game wholly lacks the fractal detail required to make my idea work. A one-province start is not a unique long-term experience, it's just a more challenging world conquest. Edit: a useful inspiration for the long-form gameplay loop would be the factory/assembly line style games that are pretty popular currently: you are essentially trying to pave over a multifaceted local society to create the most effective state machine for extracting resources and using them. PoontifexMacksimus has issued a correction as of 01:01 on Aug 9, 2022 |
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Aug 9, 2022 00:50
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Edit: a useful inspiration for the long-form gameplay loop would be the factory/assembly line style games that are pretty popular currently: you are essentially trying to pave over a multifaceted local society to create the most effective state machine for extracting resources and using them. tangentially related, it would be cool and funny to just pave over the entire english channel and then invade england that way
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Aug 9, 2022 01:04
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I thought EU IV’s historical theory was based on National Ideas and Institutions, though the Missions system seems like they are trying to transfer that part of HoI 4. I have to say I don’t really have experience with the game, I’ve just dabbled with it. I’d love to hear you elaborate though, I could read Paradox Inside Baseball all day. If I remember, the major factors are the mechanics have to take into account any DLC, any combination or none being used so that no mechanics really matter or really interact. There was also a change of direction, or maybe two of them? If I remember one DLC bombed and was hated, and also possibly Johan has so thoroughly hosed things up that a new team had to try to salvage the title like happened with HoI 4, Stellaris and Imperator (RIP)? Any insight you have into Johan, his animosity towards the community and Mana, I have only seen those referred to on reddit but I’m not sure I understand all of the background. Just give the initial planning of titles to Wiz guys, come on. Finally, who has the dirt on Vicky leaking, the Paradox devs freaking out, and their proclamation they’re disregarding feedback on the mechanics?
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Aug 9, 2022 01:08
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I keep thinking that Paradox games would be way more fun if they leaned into alt history or fictional fantasy/sci fi stuff more and more, just let games go completely off the rails with random events and good writing. See the TNO or Fallout mods in HOI4 for how fun this can be. In EU4 I want to play as the Aztecs who get a bunch of advanced alien ufo tech and then have to fight undead zombie hordes or something, idk just get weird with it.
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Aug 9, 2022 01:14
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Honestly the high fantasy total conversion mod Anbennar is a lot more interesting than base game europa 4 at this point since they actually went really crazy with mission trees and wizard goblin bullshit. It makes a decent platform for that sort of thing and for whatever reason mission trees in vanilla are completely loving boring that never really got expanded on at all
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Aug 9, 2022 01:23
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