|
Steam is having a big slate of demos again so I tried that Great War: Western Front game and my impressions from the tutorial were... mixed. I like a lot of what it's doing mechanically in the battles although the campaign layer does seem fiddly. Some of that is how restrictive it is in the tutorial where it lets you do one action at a time but some of it is just UI design. for instance: when you examine an enemy army before a battle it shows you the unit cards if you have intel in the province, but doesn't let you hover over to see what the name of the unit is. but they have distinct art on the cards so you could identify them once you're more familiar with the game, so it's not a deliberate 'fog of war' thing, just an oversight on the tooltip. It's also very easy to misclick and send units on moves that you didn't want. it's got an admirable commitment to representing different aspects of WW1 combat like... MGs, mortars, different uses for aircraft, the observation balloons, light and heavy artillery, siege artillery, undermining before battle. And I like the way each subsequent battle in an area has an increasingly more hosed-up landscape and more extensive trench network going on. It's quite good at some aspects of the battles, visually, but it's kind of strange for it to be so bloodless, honestly. I don't want gore fountains or Realistic Dismemberment but you do just see the little figures flop over and then their corpses disappear after some time, and when it's trench fighting you can't make out anything basically. You just watch a number go down on the unit strength bar, and it comes across kind of euphemistic. I do appreciate that they include Belgian, Indian, ANZAC, and Canadian troops as well as the French, British and Americans, but it's kind of goofy that they went with a 'national bonus' for each. French infantry is cheaper to deploy to represent home field advantage. fair enough. Brits... I think they fire faster or something, mad minute myth poo poo. Americans have an 'affinity for tanks' so they get a morale bonus if tanks are nearby lol. My impression is that these bonuses probably don't mean much at the scale you're fighting at but maybe I'm wrong. Anyway. The tutorial campaign lets you keep playing after you complete the actual tutorial so I was going to do that, but then the game got stuck in an infinite loading loop on the very next battle and I had to end the task. So that was the end of that. It does seem like they've put a lot of thought into the mechanics of how to make a WW1 RTS but... I'm not sure what they've ended up with is actually good.
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 19:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 13, 2024 01:43 |
|
|
Raskolnikov38 posted:vicky2 stays winning lmao no.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 20:05
|
|
|
John Charity Spring posted:Steam is having a big slate of demos again so I tried that Great War: Western Front game and my impressions from the tutorial were... mixed. I like a lot of what it's doing mechanically in the battles although the campaign layer does seem fiddly. Some of that is how restrictive it is in the tutorial where it lets you do one action at a time but some of it is just UI design. for instance: when you examine an enemy army before a battle it shows you the unit cards if you have intel in the province, but doesn't let you hover over to see what the name of the unit is. but they have distinct art on the cards so you could identify them once you're more familiar with the game, so it's not a deliberate 'fog of war' thing, just an oversight on the tooltip. It's also very easy to misclick and send units on moves that you didn't want. I'd argue any 'fun' rts based on WW1 would be inherently inaccurate but basic UI issues are hard to forgive from a non-grognard developer
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 20:15
|
|
|
I've been playing On The Western Front, which is not much to look at but is a pretty good Brigade Commander Simulator x Sim Ants imo. I've been thinking about modding the KuK Armee in it because they have some great stuff but the details are (understandably) lacking compared to the BEF. The dev is really responsive in the forums though, so maybe I'll just keep providing feedback. Really interesting in how it differentiates the Italians, Americans and French too, who usually don't appear in these games. Still, wonderful game that can practically run on a calculator. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 20:21 on Feb 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 20:16
|
|
|
Slavvy posted:Thanks for this post, been interested in this game. yeah one of the main mechanical decisions they've made is incentivising attacking the same area over and over even if some of those attacks are likely stalemates or losses because you still want to keep the pressure up. which is a clever way to get the player to make 'bad choices' in attacks like a WW1 general might. but also it sounds really repetitive and boring and miserable to actually play, even if you're autoresolving a lot of them
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 20:18
|
|
|
Vicky 2 is a funny game, while Vicky 3 is a bit too serious but only a bit more polished. otoh Vicky 2 didn't have proper colonization until one expansion in.John Charity Spring posted:Steam is having a big slate of demos again so I tried that Great War: Western Front game and my impressions from the tutorial were... mixed. I like a lot of what it's doing mechanically in the battles although the campaign layer does seem fiddly. Some of that is how restrictive it is in the tutorial where it lets you do one action at a time but some of it is just UI design. for instance: when you examine an enemy army before a battle it shows you the unit cards if you have intel in the province, but doesn't let you hover over to see what the name of the unit is. but they have distinct art on the cards so you could identify them once you're more familiar with the game, so it's not a deliberate 'fog of war' thing, just an oversight on the tooltip. It's also very easy to misclick and send units on moves that you didn't want. What do the Belgians get
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 20:19
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:What do the Belgians get I didn't get a chance to see if they get a specific bonus but it did say that Belgian troops can fight alongside both French and British troops without getting a 'disunity' morale penalty which otherwise represents how the allies are a bunch of different armies (even though you play as some supreme allied commander controlling all involved nations)
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 20:21
|
|
|
John Charity Spring posted:yeah one of the main mechanical decisions they've made is incentivising attacking the same area over and over even if some of those attacks are likely stalemates or losses because you still want to keep the pressure up. which is a clever way to get the player to make 'bad choices' in attacks like a WW1 general might. but also it sounds really repetitive and boring and miserable to actually play, even if you're autoresolving a lot of them (Pretend I posted 1000 words from Paddy Griffith here) but I don't think most of the famous ones were bad choices - each offensive had several significant tactical and operational changes and improvements from previous ones. It's something I think is a major issue with the popular understanding of the First World War. People are quick to criticize, but once the Battle of the Frontiers ended, something had to be done, and the Western Front was clearly the theatre in which the war would be decided, eventually it was in the Hundred Days. Trying to open up or shift the main effort to other theatres, Italy, Romania, Palestine, Serbia, the Dardanelles had mixed results (charitably) and did not bring the Entente any closer to winning the war. They could not exit the war at any point after French territory was occupied, in September 1914, because of 1871. That pretty much dictated how things would go from there, and as hundreds of thousands of soldiers had died in the first weeks of fighting in 1914 - when the fighting was fluid and there were no trenches, mind you - new approaches had to be developed and tested. That took time, and lives, but even by 1915 the Germans, French and British had all shown major innovations at all levels, were achieving significant tactical successes, but could not translate that into strategic victory, essentially because these were million man armies that were able to move reserves into any critically threatened sector before success could be exploited.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 20:31
|
|
|
I was using 'bad choices' as a paraphrase for the idea because I know all that already lol the game is also not really able to represent constant low-level activity at the front and instead makes it into a bunch of offensives every month, to give an idea of what the devs are aiming for. The game also doesn't do the manouevre warfare at the beginning of 1914 and there's not even a possibility of breaking the line and exploiting with the cavalry as both sides wanted to do the entire war. it's not an accurate representation but it might be the closest you can get with an RTS, it's just that maybe an RTS can't actually represent this properly
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 20:41
|
|
|
Someone make the 1 hour per turn turn-based strategy game where you need to place orders down to the individual soldier for the entire western front.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 21:01
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:Someone make the 1 hour per turn turn-based strategy game where you need to place orders down to the individual soldier for the entire western front. Sounds like some Avalon Hill game from the 80s
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 21:04
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:Vicky 2 is a funny game, while Vicky 3 is a bit too serious but only a bit more polished. otoh Vicky 2 didn't have proper colonization until one expansion in. Yeah, Vicky 3 doesn't really have the big westernization moment when I play as japan and brutally kill a ton of chinese and korean soldiers with my fancy mixed divisions.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 21:19
|
|
|
Tankbuster posted:Yeah, Vicky 3 doesn't really have the big westernization moment when I play as japan and brutally kill a ton of chinese and korean soldiers with my fancy mixed divisions. You also can't conquer the Southern USA and assimilate all the Dixies and African-Americans into Austrians Orange Devil posted:Someone make the 1 hour per turn turn-based strategy game where you need to place orders down to the individual soldier for the entire western front. I bounced off of War in the East/Pacific but I feel like that sort of game would be more manageable in WWI
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 21:27
|
|
|
For whatever reason, The Miracle of the Marne, which was something everyone of that generation remembered, has been forgotten now .The battles of manoeuvre were more costly, which is of course why trenches were dug in the first place. I agree that it's pretty important to include that.Slim Jim Pickens posted:You also can't conquer the Southern USA and assimilate all the Dixies and African-Americans into Austrians Well, count me out then. With how many Catholics were in the American South, Austria should have cores.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 21:28
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:You also can't conquer the Southern USA and assimilate all the Dixies and African-Americans into Austrians yes you can
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 21:38
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:Someone make the 1 hour per turn turn-based strategy game where you need to place orders down to the individual soldier for the entire western front. AGEOD's "To End All Wars" is basically this. Turns honestly take me up to an hour at times, usually when planning and offensive or counter-attack. Obviously it isn't as granular as orders down to the man, but it affords you an unparalleled level of control. That level of control has its ups and downs, plus the game is very rough around the edges at times. I still love it mostly because the faithful reproduction of WW1 really gets you into the WW1 mindset and you catch yourself falling into the same traps that commanders historically did.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 21:43
|
|
|
Vicky 3 is worth it just for remastering the Vicky 2 soundtrack
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 22:01
|
|
|
Re: City of Gangsters I got a rival outfit that popped near me and I bashed their heads in with a bat. It turns out you can loot them when they die and when you beat them you can do loot their hideout too, so I was pretty flush with cash early on.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 22:10
|
|
|
I tried City of Gangsters, but the tutorial is too long, and I was falling asleep, and you can't save during the tutorial for some reason.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 22:13
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:Someone make the 1 hour per turn turn-based strategy game where you need to place orders down to the individual soldier for the entire western front. Dominions 6: Western Front
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 22:18
|
|
|
anyone who's played Heroes of Might and Magic will understand that there's a second sub-game underneath the primary one: where you might have a main hero that gets all the troops and kills the wandering monsters and gets into the big fights with the heroes and armies of opposing players, you also have all your secondary heroes whose job it is to ferry troops* from the castle to the main hero, visit all of the on-map sites that give out troops, resources and bonuses every week, and basically just run logistics for the army. I just realized playing this afternoon that that's what City of Gangsters is - that's the core loop of the game; picking up raw materials from sellers, ferrying them to your back-room operation, picking up the finished goods, and then running them out to buyers. The similarity is made latent by the fact that everything is coursed through your "hero unit" as an explicit member of your gang, as represented as a unit on the map that you drive around. I don't say this as a criticism, mind you; where it is the key to HOMM (perhaps even more important than running the tactical battles well), it can make for enticing Number Go Up gameplay in City of Gangsters. I just bring it up because the mental connection hit me like a brick. ___ * HOMM 4, by giving all troops an on-map movement rate, actually ended this practice of setting-up hero conga-lines where a goblin can cross the map in one turn as they get passed-around from being attached to one hero to the next
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 22:40
|
|
|
When I want to play something that has a glacial pace I put on Surviving Mars. When I feel spicy I let it keep playing on X1 speed and go and get groceries.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 22:52
|
|
|
On the Western Front remains the best WW1 strategy game I have ever played, although it is also a borderline incomprehensible nightmare in which your main enemy is not the Bosch but the interface still, we're all grogs here, and it's only 10 bucks, really worth checking out if you have any interest at all in the period
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 22:53
|
|
|
Mister Bates posted:On the Western Front remains the best WW1 strategy game I have ever played, although it is also a borderline incomprehensible nightmare in which your main enemy is not the Bosch but the interface You may not like it, but that's just what peak simulation looked like
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 23:04
|
|
|
Tankbuster posted:lmao no. look at this scrub with their underdeveloped wrist and finger muscles from not clicking 6 trillion times to subsidize a single province of railway
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2023 23:29
|
|
|
https://mobile.twitter.com/UBERSOY1/status/1622855020357029888
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 02:28
|
|
|
"Second ranked in the world"
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 02:32
|
|
|
Are you telling me there are hearts of iron rankings or did they make that up? Either way, if you needed any more evidence it's a poo poo game for losers...
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 02:35
|
|
|
Slavvy posted:Are you telling me there are hearts of iron rankings or did they make that up? Probably some group of like 10 people ran a tournament; there's no actual ranking in the game. From what I've already read it's just some drama between this kid with like 20k subs at best on twitch and some "community ambassador". Edit: basically if you're not in a parasocial relationship with this streaming community or follow it religiously on Twitter it's not a major deal. Not like there aren't a bajillion "REAL German Flag!!!" Mods floating around that paradox does nothing about to know how lovely large parts of the paradox community are. BadOptics has issued a correction as of 02:43 on Feb 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 02:38
|
|
|
Counter point, Germany has lovely war flags and someone should fix that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 02:54
|
|
|
my personal favorite is when paradox youtubers get into actual history.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 02:56
|
|
|
I hate how they made it almost impossible to go communist Germany, especially now that every nation as insane alt-history paths. GDR flag is the best looking.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 02:56
|
|
|
Lostconfused posted:Counter point, Germany has lovely war flags and someone should fix that. Im pretty sure tbe Soviets did in fact fix that
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 02:57
|
|
|
wow. i think that guy might be getting a lot of people to google hitler. very dangerous
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 03:00
|
|
|
BadOptics posted:I hate how they made it almost impossible to go communist Germany, especially now that every nation as insane alt-history paths. GDR flag is the best looking. When I was screwing around as communist Italy, because for some reason they get insane number of operative slots, I got the communist party to like 51% support or something but you still need to drop stability bellow 30% during war time to do a coup.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 03:00
|
|
|
Hearts of Iron IV is a lovely ahistorical fantasy adventure game that's coded like garbage, but Paradox completely nails the aesthetic part of it. When the Italian civil war breaks out and whatever you are doing is interrupted by the moody intro of Bella Ciao is probably the best, and maybe only good part of the new expansion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-qTuXDEnFo
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 03:07
|
|
|
BadOptics posted:Probably some group of like 10 people ran a tournament; there's no actual ranking in the game. From what I've already read it's just some drama between this kid with like 20k subs at best on twitch and some "community ambassador".
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 03:15
|
|
|
by aesthetic you mean music.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 03:18
|
|
|
Girkin is going to pivot to being an HoI4 streamer
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 03:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 13, 2024 01:43 |
|
|
Tankbuster posted:by aesthetic you mean music. The buttons and forms are pretty neato
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2023 03:39
|
|