whats your favorite PC historical wargame?

lord of the mark · January 21, 2004, 16:39

Any time period (ancient to Iraq war) , any vintage (DOS to 2004) any level of operations (tactical to grand strategic) , TB or RT.

JUst make sure its about a historic conflict, and has some reasonable attempt to model the conflict with accuracy (ok to not have morale or supply, not OK to have meaningless scale like Age of Empires, Civ, etc)

Stuie · January 21, 2004, 16:57

Age of Rifles was fun (I even designed two of the scenarios on the expansion disk). I've also had fun with the Battleground series. The Operational Art of War is also good for modern warfare.

But I'd have to go with The Great Battles of Hannibal as the best wargame I have played. The graphics weren't great, the combat system was pretty simple, but it had a great feel to it.

Jamski · January 21, 2004, 17:13

Steel Panthers World at War is a great game. Its one of the few WW2 games to accurately depict the effects of supressing fire and surpise attacks, while still allowing the player full freedom and huge order of battle lists. I really like the calculations for shell diameter and velocity vs armour thickness and angle. Sweet.

-Jam

lord of the mark · January 21, 2004, 17:37

Quote:

Originally posted by Jamski
Steel Panthers World at War is a great game. Its one of the few WW2 games to accurately depict the effects of supressing fire and surpise attacks, while still allowing the player full freedom and huge order of battle lists. I really like the calculations for shell diameter and velocity vs armour thickness and angle. Sweet.

-Jam

tactical level, I take it? And is this the model the grognards were thinking of as a preferred alternative when they attacked the TOAW model some time back?

lord of the mark · January 21, 2004, 17:38

Quote:

Originally posted by Stuie
Age of Rifles was fun (I even designed two of the scenarios on the expansion disk). I've also had fun with the Battleground series. The Operational Art of War is also good for modern warfare.

But I'd have to go with The Great Battles of Hannibal as the best wargame I have played. The graphics weren't great, the combat system was pretty simple, but it had a great feel to it.

i played the 2 scens in the AOR demo sometime back. Pretty good, IIRC.

Jon Miller · January 21, 2004, 17:55

steal panthers world at war was good (as was the earlier ones)

I only played a bit of it, but combat mission seems cool

and there is always VASL

jonM iller

Jamski · January 21, 2004, 20:57

Quote:

And is this the model the grognards were thinking of as a preferred alternative when they attacked the TOAW model some time back?

Yeah, its pretty well respected. You can download it for free, try a Google, they keep moving the free server (because the bandwidth gets expensive with a 800meg download

)

-Jam

centrifuge · January 22, 2004, 00:24

I like HOI, but something just seems to be missing, I love the idea of a WW2 TBS (yes I know its technically RTS, but come on

) but, it seems to be missing something that I can't put my fingure on

I keep coming and going from it, because I know that it has potential, but someting about playing the game makes me lose interest.

Along the same lines I used to love to play Axis and Allies, 1st as a board game and then over the internet.

Med:TW, is also good but failed to keep my attention for long.

Jamski · January 22, 2004, 03:50

HOI is to "clean", that's the problem. It feels sterile. Med:Total War feels a bit too clean as well, at least untill the dead horses pile up.
But I wouldn't consider either "historical wargames", rather as strategy games in historical settings.

-Jam

Spiffor · January 22, 2004, 05:14

Shogun and Medieval Total Wars are great strategy games, and they have a satisfying level of realism for the layman only discovering the setting.
However, they leave much to be desired if you want to go for real accuracy.

DrSpike · January 22, 2004, 05:24

Shogun and Medieval Total War here also.

Urban Ranger · January 22, 2004, 05:53

I heard Pacific War (also by Gisby) is also an excellent wargame. Never played it though.

Grumbold · January 22, 2004, 12:04

The games that converted me to computer wargaming from waiting for a prearranged weekend to tabletop were the R.T.Smith games Arnhem and Desert Rats for the ZX Spectrum. They were low complexity but lots of fun. I even tried to rerun them through an emulator recently but without the sound it was impractical (the length of the machinegun bursts indicated relative damage in a nice intuitive way.)

Urban Ranger · January 22, 2004, 12:20

Sid wrote a trilogy of computer wargames during the early days of MicroProse: Crusade in Europe, Decision in Desert, and Conflict in Vietnam. They were all quite simple but quite accurate AFAIR.

da_hal · January 22, 2004, 16:18

command hq. hands down.

Paddy · January 23, 2004, 05:14

Carriers at War - SSG

Traianvs · January 23, 2004, 08:57

soon it will be Rome: Total War (can't wait till I get my hands on that baby)

General Ludd · January 23, 2004, 09:16

Quote:

Originally posted by centrifuge
I like HOI, but something just seems to be missing, I love the idea of a WW2 TBS (yes I know its technically RTS, but come on

) but, it seems to be missing something that I can't put my fingure on

I keep coming and going from it, because I know that it has potential, but someting about playing the game makes me lose interest.

personally, it's how the countries are set up that does it for me. They're either too big. too easy, or completely insignifigant.

MrBaggins · January 23, 2004, 09:57

Harpoon (2 Admirals Edition)

Kc7mxo · January 23, 2004, 15:56

Total War series, Medievial Total war especially.

No game I've ever played let me rack up such an obvious and blatant kill count.

nothing better than massacreing 6000 of the pope's forces with 2000 of your own. . . . .

real carpet of corpses game

General Ludd · January 23, 2004, 17:02

Quote:

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
Total War series, Medievial Total war especially.

No game I've ever played let me rack up such an obvious and blatant kill count.

nothing better than massacreing 6000 of the pope's forces with 2000 of your own. . . . .

real carpet of corpses game

I love those meat-grinder bridge battles.

Urban Ranger · January 24, 2004, 07:13

Quote:

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
nothing better than massacreing 6000 of the pope's forces with 2000 of your own. . . . .

It's very easy to kill hundreds of enemy soldiers with 50 of your own in Lords of the Realm II, but it's not a wargame.

Neither is the Total War series.

General Ludd · January 24, 2004, 08:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

It's very easy to kill hundreds of enemy soldiers with 50 of your own in Lords of the Realm II, but it's not a wargame.

And it's no coincedance that it has the absolute worst combat system ever.

Jamski · January 24, 2004, 10:20

For some reason my M:TW has stopped working. I just tried a game after reading "carpet of corpses" and it works fine on the campaign map, but the battles go into super-slow motion. It used to be fine.

-Jam

DrSpike · January 24, 2004, 11:39

Ah yes the carpet of corpses motif. A fine decoration as long as it is the enemies' corpses.

Urban Ranger · January 25, 2004, 05:13

Quote:

Originally posted by Osweld
And it's no coincedance that it has the absolute worst combat system ever.

Yeah it's pretty bad, but I wouldn't say it's the worst.

General Ludd · January 25, 2004, 08:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

Yeah it's pretty bad, but I wouldn't say it's the worst.

It's the only game I can think of that 'stacks' units into single groups, at random and unproportionate quantities. The advantage goes to whoever is lucky enough to get the small, spread-out groups, as opposed to a few huge groups that can only attack one thing at a time and waste a ton of damage potential.

Urban Ranger · January 25, 2004, 12:59

Are we talking about the same game?

General Ludd · January 25, 2004, 13:16

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Are we talking about the same game?

Yes, Lords of the Realm 2. For instance, if you had an armyw ith 60 archers; In one battle they could be divided into 2 groups of of 30 archers, and the next battle it could 6 group of 10 archers.

The two groups of 30 will have to put all their damage potential into one or two units at a time. Whereas the 6 groups of 10 would be able to divide their potential damage towards anywhere form 1 to 6 targets, making it less likely to overkill and waste damage. On top of that, because they are more spread out, they make the enemy super-stacks more cumbersome and wasteful because they can only target and kill one of the small groups at a time.

Jamski · January 25, 2004, 19:26

But that was a deliberate attempt to stop the "stack of doom" tactics most war games suffer from.

-Jam