Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

January 6 Survivor posted:

Do you guys have some suggestions on wargames that are a) playable on potato computers, b) not ridiculously complex and c) seriously, not ridiculously complex, I've never played a strategy game more complicated than Advance Wars before? Actually that reminds me, if it's turn based, all the better.

Unity of Command is a good starting point. Enough is abstracted that's its arguably more of a puzzle game than a wargame but it's still a good entry to the genre and thinking about concepts like supply and planning offensives.

Panzer Corps or its sequel are also good. Much more about mashing your mans into the other mans and maintaining your troops over the duration of a campaign. Panzer Corps 2 is more of the same but prettier and a little smoother.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2022 23:14

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 16:54

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

Rebel Inc is a neat little toy, but it is absolute loving horseshit that the insurgency will just auto-spawn even when you have 99% of the map stabilized and the peace process almost complete, basically forcing you to take a massive Reputation hit from disbanding all the jihadi super-soldiers.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2022 00:01

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

There is no greater pleasure than encircling a German army with a strong pocket.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2022 01:29

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

Introduce nuclear power to any obstinate holdouts directly.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2022 08:04

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

And on the sixth day, the LORD created the Market and saw that it was a rational and infalliable guide to economic activity.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2022 11:29

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

After some initial teething problems, I'm enjoying UBOAT more than I thought I would. Couple questions though:

1) Is there any point to plugging random military ships other than money/medals? To be specific, I encountered a convoy of some destroyers and corvettes and since I was bored I used two torpedoes on one of the destroyers. The explosion was pretty and evading the rest of the convoy was fun, but it didn't count towards my tonnage objective. Am I at least making things easier for me in the long run by destroying military ships or am I just better off saving my torps for freighters?

2) How am I supposed to handle the research aspect of the game? Do I just have to wait for having 6+ officers so I can leave one behind or do i want to get the projects started as soon as possible and just do some boring patrols while I'm an officer down?

# ¿ Dec 6, 2022 03:18

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

Unless it's a carrier or a particularly vulnerable battleship, do not engage military vessels. Your mission is to sink freighters.

Frosted Flake posted:

I like it, though it has a while to go before it matches SH III / IV with mods. I greatly prefer the Type IX and it's not in the game yet, nor are a lot of the ports, aircraft and escorts I think are needed. Still, the crew and interior are great, the model of the Type VII is good, boat dynamics and so on are addressed by workshop mods.

To answer your questions:

1) Historically, no. Engaging escorts was a waste of torpedos and Germany was fighting a tonnage war. It happened, of course, but it was generally discouraged except as a last resort, or as a spread of torpedoes on the flank of a convoy, taking out the near-side escort. Later in the war, acoustic torpedoes were developed in the hopes of targeting escorts but that reflected that by then the U-Boats were the hunted, not the hunters.

2) It's up to you I suppose. I try to aim research to unlock things at their historical dates. If you devote researchers to it from the beginning you'll have radar detectors in 1939 or something like that. It's really a matter of preference, but generally it doesn't hurt to wait until you have a spare officer.

Thanks! This is the first sub sim I've played so I'm still learning the ropes. Seems like a good one for beginners.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

Do you want upgraded toilets or not?

a true aryan ubermensch would hold it till we got back to port

# ¿ Dec 7, 2022 02:07

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

I think I have the stupidest reason for not liking Phantom Brigade. The gameplay loop is interesting, the presentation is super slick, its all very nice. But it does the barest amount of Strangereal-esque context building. Its the maximum distillation of the simplistic idea that war is solely about the shooty-bang-bangs and not the political and historical context that results in war. The mechs are very cool and all, but when the reason the mechs are here is solely because "they" are invading "us", it completely sucks me out of the whole experience.

Obviously, this doesn't apply to historical war games because I'm pretty familiar with the context of why Germany was invading Poland in 1939.

1stGear has issued a correction as of 11:23 on Mar 2, 2023

# ¿ Mar 2, 2023 11:20

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

At the risk of defending Nazi stuff, "how would you win the war that was historically lost" is usually a more interesting strategic problem than "how would you win the war that was historically won". From that perspective, it makes sense that there are more German campaigns that Allied ones. I've never gotten the vibe that the UoC devs are wehraboos.

# ¿ May 27, 2023 01:08

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

I really wish Unity of Command 2 had a difficulty between Classic and Normal. I'm way too much of an idiot to play on Classic and do well, but if you restart a scenario on Normal then it gives you a bunch of extra stuff to make it easier. I just want the slightly more generous objective timers, I don't need to be told that I'm a big stupid baby who needs more planes and trucks to do Operation Sealion.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2023 23:17

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

I do appreciate that the scenario doesn't mess around with "freedom" or "democracy". The Venezuelans aren't selling oil to us, go loving kill them.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2023 17:03

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

I tried playing Panzer Corps 2 but after sinking so many hours into UoC2 at this point, Panzer Corps feels like dog poo poo. I realize the scales are different, but PC feels so sluggish.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2023 03:45

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

KomradeX posted:

I think I remember that article, got posted here, or maybe one of the Ukraine threads, where the guy used actual Soviet doctrine and just always rolled the US/NATO player

If we're remembering the same article, I think my favorite part of it was that Soviet doctrine emphasized really simple plans. So the NATO side would be laying out really intricate clockwork of how they're going to advance, when air support will strike, when artillery barrages will start/end, phase lines, the works. And the Soviet team would just say "We're all gonna go forward at once, whichever axis has success will be reinforced" and be done with their planning in like thirty minutes. It was apparently extremely successful at unnerving the NATO players.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2023 21:36

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

BadOptics posted:

I love UoC2, but man sometimes is it frustrating you get going a bit in a scenario and realize the piece of the puzzle you have to solve. Fortunately the only thing you lose but just restarting is score (who cares) and time needed to set everything back up (specialist steps, supply, etc.).

gradenko_2000 posted:

UOC2 would definitely be helped if it had a traditional save/load system and you could savescum as much as you wanted, with just an option to make it Ironman

You can save in UoC2...sort of. At any point, even during battle prep, you can head back to the main menu and the game autosaves. You can then go into the Saved Games folder (which is literally linked on the main menu) and make a copy of the campaign save. Then just overwrite it whenever you want to "load" your previous state.

Its just enough effort that I don't think its worth doing for every bad attack roll, but if you have a huge scenario that you miss out on an objective by one loving turn because the city went to ruINS AFTER ONE loving ARTILLERY ATTACK WHERE YOU DO LIVE YOU POLISH MOTHERFUCKERS, its helpful.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2023 06:30

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

bedpan posted:

iirc in SMAC you could get yourself elected council president then pass the law legalizing chemical weapons. equip the units who storm enemy cities with the now entirely legal and legitimate defensive weaponry and presto, no problems with garrisoning captured cities

They're using them for illumination, so therefore its fine.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2023 08:07

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

quote:

An independent European republic, Ukraine, that precedes the founding of Russia by a few hundred years

loving what

# ¿ Dec 2, 2023 18:17

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

Zeppelin Insanity, all this planning is bullshit. Just charge forward with sufficient elan and everything will work itself out. If it doesn't work out, then obviously the enlisted lacked sufficient elan and you as an officer can't be held responsible for that.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2024 00:48

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

IMO, Paradox games should not be judged as simulations in the way other grog games are. They're gateway drugs, deliberately broad but relatively shallow sandboxes that you eventually climb out of to go play Aurora or Decisive Campaigns or whatever.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2024 20:49

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

Quote is not edit

# ¿ Feb 13, 2024 20:49

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I've been jumping across different titles, I know, but I spent all day today playing War in the West. I started with the 5-turn Kasserine Pass scenario and got a minor victory, just to confirm to myself that I knew how to work the game, and then I jumped into the 20-turn Battle for Tunis scenario.

This is a shot of the start of turn 13, right before I won.

the next move here is to attack and take Bizerte, the last objective hex, which triggers an instant major victory, seven turns ahead of the time limit.

Applying lessons learned from recent books read, I took a very Monty approach to the game:

- make sure your leaders all have high Initiative scores, to try and drive up Support Unit commitment as much as possible (firing Lloyd Fredendall from the II Corps and replacing him with Lucian Truscott was literally the first thing I did)

- make sure you bring down all the artillery SUs from the Army level HQs to the Corps level HQs

- don't try anything fancy: concentrate forces against identified low CV units and/or units sitting in clear terrain, and hit the defenders as hard as you can with division-sized attacks, relying on massed artillery to break open fortified hexes. The armor doesn't even do anything except march into just-retreated-from hexes, and only launches attacks against units that already have less than 1.0 CV

at the beginning it can feel awfully slow as you're only taking one hex at a time, but then over the course the first half-dozen turns the collapse starts accelerating as the Axis runs out of units with which to fill the line until it has to defend with mere battalion-sized formations. It's especially hilarious when they try to counter-attack, and a brigade-sized force fends off the entire 21st Panzer Division because four artillery regiments activate and the combat summary says the attack halts at over 1,500 yards. It's not uncommon to have over 300 guns participating with most combats, if you play your cards right.

as you can see, eventually I was able to take Tunis itself, which then cut off pretty much the entire rest of Rommel's army since they now lack any kind of supply link back to Italy.

learning how amphibious operations work is going to be more of a study, but it's been a nice way to spend an evening

Maybe its because I played through the same scenario in UoC 2 a bunch, but this is looking dangerously playable. Someone please help I'm considering buying a Gary Grigsby game.

1stGear has issued a correction as of 22:38 on Mar 20, 2024

# ¿ Mar 20, 2024 22:19

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 16:54

1stGear: Jan 16, 2010; Here's to the new us.

Zeppelin Insanity posted:

A while ago I posted about a Kriegsspiel game ran in Flashpoint Campaigns, in which I am in charge of divisional artillery and also just being a staffer, and got a lot of help from this thread (and especially FF) in forming the plan.

The game finally began a few days ago, so here's an update.

This is cool, btw. Wild that you're having to figure out what happened from a .PDF and map it yourselves.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2024 20:12

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