What Game Are You Currently Playing?

[.matthew.]

GOG has a sale on Fields of Glory II (not the medieval one) and now you’ve got me thinking maybe I should buy this to incorporate into the Empires battles.

Sorry?

 

[Foxbat]

Dammitall @.matthew. Look what you made me do! I've only gone and bought FOG2
Whether I actually incorporate the battles into Empires remains to be seen but at only £12 it was too cheap to ignore.

An observation: the FOG engine is the same (or at least updated) as in Pike&Shot and Battle Academy before that. I already have these games so learning FOG should be fairly straightforward. I bought Pike & Shot specifically so I could play the battle of Dunbar 1650 (my hometown).

 

[.matthew.]

Whether I actually incorporate the battles into Empires remains to be seen but at only £12 it was too cheap to ignore.

From what I've seen it's a really good game but the integration is terrible. It's not like how Total War Warhammer 1+2 installations work seamlessly together and is the reason I didn't buy either one of them... not just that I have so many damn empire games

 

[Venusian Broon]

I'm a massive fan of the old Total War games (I gave up after buying Total War Napoleanic and look at the Warhammer titles with mild disgust )

I still play Rome Total War (882 hours on steam...gawd knows how many hours on the CD version I had for 10 years before that. Maybe multiply by 3-4? as a conservative amount.)

So to my delight, I've just seen they've remastered Rome Total War. Apparently fixed some ancient bugs, tidied up the interface, added some new bits and pieces (which you can turn off if you wish and just play the original game), rebalanced and altered the AI a bit and obviously cleaned up the graphics - it's no longer attack of the clones. Not only that, they've added the night attack ability from Barbarian invasion to the original.

You also get the Barbarian invasion and Alexander DLC with the whole package.

Oh, and the original music and voice acting is, I believe, still there.

AND

if you own Rome Total War on Steam, they give you 50% off the price.

So al that for £12.50.

It's not out now, should be out in four weeks time. Never has a purchase button been hitten so quick.

 

[Foxbat]

I must admit, I did ask myself: do I really need FOG: Empires when I have Rome: Total War? It will take some time before I really know the answer to that. I was intrigued by the victory conditions (not that I’m good enough to win) in FOG:Empires.

And don’t get me started on music in games. I hate all music in all games. The first thing I do when I install and fire up for the first time is turn the music off. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how long some poor sod has spent composing, it’s off. There’s nothing more irritating for me than music in the background. It’s probably a legacy from my younger days when all I had to play was chess (and this was done in silence, except for the sound of the clock being pressed and the odd snide comment to try and psyche out my opponent)

 

[.matthew.]

So to my delight, I've just seen they've remastered Rome Total War.

 

[Foxbat]

Oddly enough, buying Field Of Glory 2 has resulted in my returning to an older game with an older incarnation of the same game engine.

So here I am fiddling around with Pike And Shot. I’m currently playing a few scenarios from the Thirty Years War and learning all about early and later tercios. I fired up a random scenario and found myself fighting as German Protestants against Spanish Catholics. It’s an interesting game because I kept losing, so I found myself having to research the tactics used against these units of the time period.

Now with some knowledge of the pros and cons, I won my first battle. I get the distinct impression from this game that conflict on the field at this time was initially quite attritional. Once some disruption in the enemy ranks was achieved, it was safe to send in the cavalry and not, as I had first assumed, to use my cavalry in a kind of blitzkreig to cause the disruption in the first place. My casualties dropped significantly once I’d got the hang of how to fight the battle.

I like this game because it kind of forces you to use the tactics of the time. I have often found other games of this type beatable simply by applying more modern tactics but not this one.

And for anybody interested, a history of tercios

Tercio - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[.matthew.]

I've always secretly wanted to play a wargame based on the two general problem, with communication to troops being important and somewhat time delayed

 

[Venusian Broon]

I've always secretly wanted to play a wargame based on the two general problem, with communication to troops being important and somewhat time delayed

You could always play total war with the proviso that you are fixed on the commander at his eye level. So no birds eye view of the battle. Then use his unit as 'messenger' so that you can only change an order of another unit if you are close to it.

I've heard of people playing it this way.

 

[.matthew.]

You could always play total war with the proviso that you are fixed on the commander at his eye level. So no birds eye view of the battle. Then use his unit as 'messenger' so that you can only change an order of another unit if you are close to it.

Now that's not a bad idea. I do think it'd drive me mad though.

That said, it is how Mount & Blade II plays and I enjoy that. Though that is more direct character control, where Total War games have always had the slightly dodgy unit mechanics.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Now that's not a bad idea. I do think it'd drive me mad though.

That said, it is how Mount & Blade II plays and I enjoy that. Though that is more direct character control, where Total War games have always had the slightly dodgy unit mechanics.

True, but they at most distances TW actually look like battles, rather than the small scale skirmishes that M&B produces which personally doesn't really satisfy.

I've done some epic battles with 8-9,000 'men' in TW which have been awesome.

 

[.matthew.]

True, but they at most distances TW actually look like battles, rather than the small scale skirmishes that M&B produces which personally doesn't really satisfy.

I've done some epic battles with 8-9,000 'men' in TW which have been awesome.

I actually managed to have some really large battles in the M&B2 beta but they are definitely smaller than in TW. I prefer the smaller battles in TW though, since you mostly run out of ammunition in large ones and end up having to micro all the units that rout in random directions before rallying, leaving them miles away

 

[Venusian Broon]

I actually managed to have some really large battles in the M&B2 beta but they are definitely smaller than in TW. I prefer the smaller battles in TW though, since you mostly run out of ammunition in large ones and end up having to micro all the units that rout in random directions before rallying, leaving them miles away

You're not setting up your army properly then

I alway use the grouping functions to make flanks, main bodies/line, reserves, skirmisher line etc (will depend on how many and what type of troops I have of course) to make maneouvers easier and simplify your battle plan. Generally have the "Cav - Inf...Inf - Cav" line up so as to do the old Alexander 'hammer and anvil' tactics, but if you have a horse archer faction, deep multiple lines of HA are very effective! Put the commander in the middle to 'steady the troops' and provide support. But I'm sure you know all that.

Also I think its cheating to use the pause function - if your left flank collapses when you are micro-managing your right or trying to be efficient with your Cav trying to run down fleeing enemy, so be it.

The old Medieval Total War 1 had a pretty ridiculous routing mechanic, so that units would sort of 'bounce' near the boundary and in a really long battle you'd end up with a stream of returning units continually feeding themselves back into the battle, breaking, then bouncing at the boundary, repeating ad infinitum. It still happens a little bit in later TW games, but is nowhere near as standout - usually I find a unit may stop routing, pause and hold ground, but if it breaks again it tries to get off the map.

 

[Foxbat]

I've always secretly wanted to play a wargame based on the two general problem, with communication to troops being important and somewhat time delayed

Back in the days when I had a trusty old Atari ST, a guy called Peter Turcan created a game where you were limited by an order system that simulated the delays that can be caused in a battlefield. It was a bit clunky but it worked quite well.

Waterloo (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Vladd67]

You could always play total war with the proviso that you are fixed on the commander at his eye level. So no birds eye view of the battle. Then use his unit as 'messenger' so that you can only change an order of another unit if you are close to it.

I've heard of people playing it this way.

Reminds me of a set of Wargaming rules called Shako. In that, you had your General figure surrounded by runners or light cavalry and to issue an order you had to write it down and the unit couldn't react to the order until the figure representing the runner reached them, and orders couldn't be issued unless you had an available messenger. I remember watching a video of two guys fighting the battle of Waterloo in three rooms, In one was the man playing as Wellington in another the man playing as Napoleon and in the third the battlefield. Each general had to rely on information from the battlefield to arrange the troops on their personal table and had to issue orders by writing them down and having them past to the battlefield room.

 

[reiver33]

Red Alert II, with the Yuri's Revenge add-on.

I've played a double-blind boardgame of Normandy (company level), both teams and the umpires with copies of the map, but only placing enemy counters on the team maps when they were in contact or spotted, and leaving them there until a new position was confirmed. Really ramps up the paranoia on the German side as Allied air recon becomes the ultimate pain in the ass. As commander of 21st Panzer (and with a train to catch that evening) I abandoned Caen and stormed Omaha, crushing the beachhead at the expense of virtually the entire division. Then left...

 

[.matthew.]

Each general had to rely on information from the battlefield to arrange the troops on their personal table and had to issue orders by writing them down and having them past to the battlefield room.

 

[Rodders]

After 23 hours i finished Jedi: Fallen Order and found it to be really great fun. It's been a while since i have been up until 05:00 to play a game. Dathomir was a blast.

I'll explore next to see if i can complete the maps and get more chests then i think i'll give it a go on a harder level. After this, perhaps Alien: Isolation or Horizon Zero Dawn.

 

[Vince W]

If you start A:I, Rodders, let me know and I'll give it a try. You'll probably go faster than I will as I always play games on the hardest level so it takes me longer to finish.

 

[Rodders]

Okay. I’ve downloaded it. Let me play J:FO over Easter and I’ll message you before I start.