You guys ever consider a ACW/Napoleanic Game

[scout1]

Just wondering whether the developer has ever considering porting this engine over to an American Civil War or Napoleanonic Game

[MarkShot]

The current plans are to cover other WWII theaters and gradually bring the engine into the period of modern warfare.

You should check out www.birth-of-america.com. I recently got this game and it is quite impressive. It uses regions similar to the Paradox games and a WEGO system similar to Battlefront. I think it is going to set a new standard for its particular niche.

[Arjuna]

ORIGINAL: scout1

Just wondering whether the developer has ever considering porting this engine over to an American Civil War or Napoleanonic Game

scout1,

Yes we've considered lots of different ideas covering a range of time periods and theatres. In the end it boils down to money and time and these days there's a shortage of both. As Mark has advised, for now we're going to focus on WW2 and modern. If things go well, though and we can afford to expand our resources then who knows we may yet put to good effect those occassional tours of ACW battlefields that I have had the great good fortune to partake of.

[RedMike]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

The current plans are to cover other WWII theaters and gradually bring the engine into the period of modern warfare.

You should check out www.birth-of-america.com. I recently got this game and it is quite impressive. It uses regions similar to the Paradox games and a WEGO system similar to Battlefront. I think it is going to set a new standard for its particular niche.

Mark, thanks for that. BoA looks interesting, trying the demo now. Just might have to plunk down some Euros on this one.

Regards,
RedMike...out

[MarkShot]

Word also has it that Battlefront is working on an offering in this time period.

[RedMike]

Yes...Les Grognards or something like that. It's gonna be good!

RedMike...out

[MarkShot]

Nope, not that.

They are going to unveil an American Revolution game soon.

[JeF]

Rumors from Wargamer.com tells that it could be For Independance by Hussar Games.

[RedMike]

Mmm, very interesting. Haven't heard about that one.

[CriticalMass]

careful on the Birth of America gallery page. The thumbnail nail images are in fact full size images reduced to thumbs most are well over 1Mb (one is 1.3Mb!).

Looks interesting though a little too grand strategic and abstact for my liking.

TANX
Andrew

[Agema]

I'd broadly welcome something like an American war of independence game simple because it covers largely uncovered territory. I find there are only so many times I can refight Napoleonic and American Civil War battles no matter what the game engine is. (Having said that, there's still lots of room in the those eras for less famous battles to be refought: I can't think of a battlefield reconstruction of Wagram, Friesland, Marengo, Salamanca and so on.) Other whole periods are largely unrepresented in wargames, such as the 1700s with Marlborough, de Saxe and Frederick the Great of Prussia; or the era of Bismarck and the Napoleon III. The problem is that for whatever reason people generally don't seem to want to look at new conflicts, just replay Gettysburg, the Battle of the Bulge or Waterloo under 90,000 different game engines. As it is, WW2 has zillions of battles across all the fronts so there's less to get tired of, and all credit to Panther for looking at an interesting theatre that has (to my knowledge) been hitherto totally neglected.

I suspect it would be tricky to adapt the Panther Games engine to older conflicts, as the whole way battles of that era were so much more dependent on strict unit formations, melee, and so on. Good AI is important too. The last time I played a fairly modern engine wargame in Napoleonic era, the AI's idea was to chuck it's whole army, en masse, at the highest value objective it didn't yet control. That ended up in a dense 80,000 man, horse and cannon monster wandering round the Austerlitz battlefield from one point to another, at which point I just let it wander around and snapped up all the objectives it steadily abandoned as it moved to the next one.

[ETF]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

The current plans are to cover other WWII theaters and gradually bring the engine into the period of modern warfare.

You should check out www.birth-of-america.com. I recently got this game and it is quite impressive. It uses regions similar to the Paradox games and a WEGO system similar to Battlefront. I think it is going to set a new standard for its particular niche.

I thought BOA only had PBEM option for MP play..........

[MarkShot]

I don't recall anyone saying anything about MP in this thread. However, you are correct that it only supports PBEM and Hot Seat (also from what I can see).

I would think MP would not be hard for them due to the turn oriented nature. They would need to basically code file transfer between peers plus chat and then run the game just like it does now. Files look to be like a 1Mb for a save (that is text which could easily be compressed).

One other thing which I have noticed about their architecture for non-SP play ... important for some and may be not important for others, it looks to me like architecture is very open for modding local files and transferred files. This could possibly open up the spectre of cheating. I have yet to see anyone raise that issue.