Any chance of a "Strategic Art of War"?

[SMK-at-work]

I am thoroughly enjoying this game, but I confess to preferring a higher level of game - something like Europe Ablaze, but done with a proper strategic level builder rather than bodging ToaW.

Does anyone know of such a game??

Ideally it'd allow some form of industrial production, not include specific equipment but in terms of regiment sized elements which would then be allocated to corps or armies for actual units.

Eg an infantry corps might comprise 3 divisions plus some support troops, so would be made up of 9 (or whatever) infantry elements (3 regiments per division), 3 medium artilery units (divisional arty), 1 heavy arty unit (corps artillery), 3 medium HQ/support elements (all the other division troops incl engineers, recce, etc) and a heavy support unit (other corps level stuff - perhaps better construction capabilities or somesuch).

Some units might be very small - eg Tiger companies attached at corps or army level would have to be seperate units rather than subsumed within a HQ unit - as might tank units in WW1.

Anyway - enough musings......better go do some work.....

[SMK-at-work]

Come to think of it (I'm home now - no pressure...) a few changes to ToaW would cover an awful lot of it - add longer turns (1 week, 2 week, 1 month, 3 months, 1/2 yr...full year??) and larger hex scales (25, 50, 100 km hexes?) and much of it is done - the equipment editor can be used to make the units I mentioned already.

Production is still a bit of a bother, but I think there's been some clever things done in DNO and a few other scenarios that I might look up.

[Silvanski]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work
Production is still a bit of a bother, but I think there's been some clever things done in DNO and a few other scenarios that I might look up.

Automatic disbanding of reinforcements -with the specific type of equipment you want- by event on certain turns, if certain conditions (trigger) are met might be one option.

[Scout_Pilot]

Hey SMK, did you ever hear of a game called "Hearts of Iron"?  I played it (through 3 versions) up until about a year ago.  Not as much "detail" as in TOAW.  I think there's a WIKI on the game.

[Scout_Pilot]

Here's a link to the WIKI for "Hearts of Iron II".
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Iron_II:_Doomsday
 
 

[JMass]

ORIGINAL: Scout_Pilot

Hey SMK, did you ever hear of a game called "Hearts of Iron"?

Another strategic title just released is "Making History" http://www.making-history.com/

[MarcA]

What about World at War from Matrix. i have never played it but there is a demo if you want to give it a go

[SMK-at-work]

I've played the Making History demo - it's quite good for what it is, but it's got many glaring shortcomings, and bsides it is not a design system.

Haven't played HoI - but again AFAIK it's not a design system.

The strength of ToaW is that you can make any kind of game with it - you could make a game for Caesar conquering Gaul, or Starship troopers, at a push in either direction!!

[Graymane]

All of the strategy games mentioned so far are too high level for SMK is asking. I can't recall any games off the top of my head that allow you to design the TO&E.

[FaneFlugt]

The world in flames game, made by Matrix games might be interesting.

Have waited 10 years for a pc version. Hopefully it will be ready in the next 10 years[&o]

[Veers]

Have you played the 'strategic' scenario(s)? Europe Aflame comes to mind.

[SMK-at-work]

Yes I played EA a couple of times, and that's what whetted my appetite for something of that scale - ToaW is a fine game - love it, but it doesn't do strategic considerations at all well - I find the sort of fudges that have to be made for strat bombing and the like irritating.

[Veers]

You played it a couple of times? Wow. How many turns did you go?
But, I suppose. I find the problem is that it is easy to find a game that handles the 'strategic' scope of almost everything very well. Unfortunately, the most inportant part of a wargame, I find, is the combat engine, and none of those 'strategic' sclae games get it. I find then that I'd rather play EA and have a good combat model and a crappy ecomnomic model. Hopefully with time and effort, and perhaps a re-write that may be in progress over at GS, EA can be improved so that it handles the economic better.

[SMK-at-work]

I'm not happy with any crappy model!! [8D]
 
Unfortunately what I find is that games usually compromise on both - even ToaW's combat model falls down a bit at higher levels IMO - the regimental scale of FitE seems about the upper limit - after that counting individual guns becomes a bit cumbersome.
 
I played EA once to get the hang of it until about the end of 1940, then as each side until moscow or Berlin fell - mid-42 for the former, mid-43 for the later.  Each took a few weeks, but no great problem on the nights when I'm home alone - better than watching TV! [:)]

[Curtis Lemay]

We've had some discussion about Strategic Warfare over at the TDG site:

http://www.tdg.nu/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl ... 126740/0#0

[SMK-at-work]

Coll ideas in that thread thanks Curtis - that's possibly even a bit more than I was envisioning, but integrating it with ToaW would be just fantastic!