Strategic Eastern front games

[FrankHunter]

sulla05,

There never was a Road to moscow that ever came out that I knew of. It was a Frank Hunter game I thought.

I forget who was doing that one but it definitely wasn't me. 

[Phatguy]

ORIGINAL: sulla05

There never was a Road to moscow that ever came out that I knew of. It was a Frank Hunter game I thought. Whoever was doing it never finished. It was a real shame because it was all over the magazines and online. It looked like it was close to being finished. I think IMagic was going to release it.

I remember all the games you mention. I even still have some of them. I liked Talonsoft's BTR but I really want a remake of Europe Ablaze.

The king of monster games was Campaign for North Africa. I remember reading that you needed to calculate water amounts to make sure the Italians had enough for pasta( I'm not joking). I don't think they ever found anyone who actually finished a game.

Oh,theres a few out there......

[stevel40831]

Here's a link to the grandfather of computer Eastern Front games:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Fr ... uter_game)

I bought my first computer in early 1982 after seeing a friend playing this... it ran on the Atari 800 with 8K of ram, massive floppy drive and a joystick to control movement plots. Ahhh, the good 'ole days!

Steve

[ravinhood]

I put 72 hours into Civilization one time. I think that's the longest I ever played a single game straight thru to the end. Now some would say that is a long time, but, when I do play a game I'm into the detail. Most every turn I'm checking each of my cities out to see if I need to make adjustments for the next turn. Saving every resource I can and getting every bit of use out of my food production. Civilization is one of the few and exception to my rules type of game where if it takes over 4-8 hours of play I usually am not going to play it for very long. Games that you can sit and go like the Total War series are completely different. You can pick up that game from 6 months ago, because there's not that much to remember. All you have to do is find your two stacks (one full melee and one full cavalry) and continue from where you left off destroying the weak ai especially in RTW.
 
But, games like say TOAW....try picking up on a game you played 6 months ago and saved it. It's just not that simple like a Civilization or a Total War game. Try it with your Forge of Freedoms and American Civil Wars. And most especially try it with WITP! lol Though the computer has brought the wonderful ease of saving a game, time is still the element that drives the gameplay. If you can't play a game from beginning to end within the same period of time you began you'll usually forget what you were doing, what was your focus etc etc and end up just starting another one you probably won't finish either. I've read several posts over at the Crusader Kings Paradox forums of players who've never seen the Mongol Invasion. lol Telling me they never complete a game, they just play for awhile, save it and when they come back they have forgotten what they were doing or just start over anyways.
 
Ask yourself sometimes of all the games you own and play...How many have you actually Completed?

[anarchyintheuk]

OCDs can make for a good gamer. [;)]

[Ketza]

I had actually spoke on the phone with the guy developing Road to Moscow in the early nineties. He mentioned something about the huge budget he was dealing with and the game would be out a year from when I spoke to him. I tried to convince him to send me a copy to playtest but he insisted it was way to buggy. The game had a unique waypoint and phase line system of combat that was essentially real time from what I recall him talking about.
 
Too bad it didnt work out.

[sullafelix]

Yes you were supposed to give the formations "real" military orders and then watch what unfolded. Much like COTA etc.. I even saw a preview of it in some mag. It would have been an excellent game way ahead of its time.

[ravinhood]

There was a game like that during the late 80's/early 90's that did exactly that. It's title is "Waterloo" you gave typed command orders to your commanders and even the times when they would begin carrying them out. Even if they did not get any new orders the AI would still react to the situation which was pretty good also. It was in real time as well and of course there was always the chance your messenger would get shot during the battle. You would use named placements on the map like Hougomount and Le Hey Saint farm and type things like Ney attack Hougomount or Le Hey Saint at 1130am or Ney attack <named leaders units> now. It was quite fun, although the graphics were even for me piss poor. They were colored blocks at best, no 3d or isometric animated colorful units you see today for sure. Definitely one of those command decision type games in the "pauseable continous time" sort of atmosphere. I played it on my Amiga 500. The British AI wasn't very bright and I could beat it handily from the very first game onward. Even with the Prussians coming onboard in late afternoon. I don't recall if one could play the British AI or not. It's been sooooooo long since I played that one. But, I must admit, being able to TYPE out the commands made it seem more realistic and being there than any other game I've played. It is a game that can cause much frustrations when you don't see your commands being carried out because your messenger got killed. It also came with preprogrammed orders for the entire battle and you could just sit there and watch it like a movie. Which is what most of these command decision type games turn into is movie watching and not much handson play.

[Phatguy]

ORIGINAL: Ketza

I had actually spoke on the phone with the guy developing Road to Moscow in the early nineties. He mentioned something about the huge budget he was dealing with and the game would be out a year from when I spoke to him. I tried to convince him to send me a copy to playtest but he insisted it was way to buggy. The game had a unique waypoint and phase line system of combat that was essentially real time from what I recall him talking about.

Too bad it didnt work out.

Yeah, I did that too, but I think I begged to much to be a playtester.I think that game would have been amazing. Would give up my arm to play a buggy version even now.

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: sulla05
Yes you were supposed to give the formations "real" military orders and then watch what unfolded. Much like COTA etc.. I even saw a preview of it in some mag. It would have been an excellent game way ahead of its time.

I wrote a small review of the Road to Moscow beta some 3 years ago - here's a copy & paste

- -

Hi,

As some of you might know I was recently offered the beta 1.10 version of
this Loch Ness monster of wargaming. I promised a review so here goes :


Game Concept :


Detailed geographical map of Europe where units of Brigade/Div/Army level
move and fight - all in real-time. You, as supreme commander literally
"draw" up the battle plan(s) which get executed by your AI commanders
whom you can shuffle around. A very detailed OOB + TOE and a nice choice
of scenario's complete the package.


Concept execution and detail :


The most interesting concept is the drawing board - you literally select
a portion of the battle field - which gets copied to the drawing screen
where you "draw" up a battle plan. You can set primary and secondary
objectives and tell your units where to move to. You then approve the
"plan" which gets executed by the AI.


This all sounds pretty nifty - though we could do without the separate
drawing board - the problem is : it doesn't work.


The reason it doesn't is because you can draw up a plan that looks good
on paper only to have it botched up by the incompetent own unit AI -
sounds like real life (tm) you'd think - not really - especially playing
as the Germans you'd expect the battlefield commanders to be smarter than
the guy sitting in Berlin but they aren't and that's where frustration
sets in because you lack the means to control the action.


Example : let's suppose you spot a Russian infantry army with their left
flank secured by mountains/rough and a refused - but open - right flank.
Let's say you have a German inf div, a mountain div and a panzer div at
your disposal - what plan do you come up with ? I want the inf div to
move up, make contact, make probing attacks but nothing serious and act
as a screen for the panzer division to swing behind and move behind the
Ruskies right flank while the mountain div infiltrates their supposedly
secure left flank. A minimum amount of coordination should ensure succes
in rounding up the Russians. Let's say you draw up this fail-safe plan in
RtM, you sit back smugly and watch it all go terribly wrong as soon as
you turn things over to the AI. The inf div will slam hard into the
prepared Russian positions and take numerous casualties, the mountain
unit will get lost in the mountains and the panzer division will arive in
the Russians rear and decide to await further orders amidst the Russian
rear echelon units.


So where did it go wrong ?


Well, for one thing this game oozes ambition - the entire Russian front -
in realtime - in 1997-1999 on pentium 2/300 machines with 1 MB graphic
cards .. Technically it couldn't have worked on the machines available
back then - my 2.8 gig / GeForce 4 machine has barely enough horsepower
to run it. No wonder it was reported to run in sub-realtime with every 5
minutes of game time taking 15 minutes of computer time - this would mean
a 12 year continuous runtime for the entire campaign. Madness.


The concept of "drawing" up a masterplan sounds good on paper - but the
own unit AI is so incompetent in carrying out your plan that this game
really needs more player control over the battlefield - there isn't,
resulting in player frustration. You feel like the guy sitting in his
Berlin bunker in 1945 moving around armies and nothing happens the way he
plans it.


The reason it survived so long as a "game in progress" - and a financial
sink-hole - is that if you look at a screenshot and read the manual /
concept docs the shear ambition takes your breath away. On paper it's the
game I want to play. It's a game practically all grognards would want to
play so it got financed way too long because it's so beautiful in concept
people wanted it to work despite the technical and conceptual hurdles.


Could it have worked ?


Well, if they had limited the game to let's say a "Kanev Bridge", added
more own-unit controll and had put a lot more effort in the AI they could
have ended up with an "Airborne Assault". And this is really the point I
wanted to make : the RtM game concept is - apart from the over-ambitious
scope - virtually identical to the Airborne Assault series games. RtM is
dead and buried, but if you really want to see that inf div make a
probing attack to fix the Russians in place, the mountain div sneaking up
on them while the Panzer div swings into their rear you'll have to wait
till the guys at Panther Games turn east.


Greetz,


Eddy Sterckx

[Phatguy]

ORIGINAL: sterckxe

ORIGINAL: sulla05
Yes you were supposed to give the formations "real" military orders and then watch what unfolded. Much like COTA etc.. I even saw a preview of it in some mag. It would have been an excellent game way ahead of its time.

I wrote a small review of the Road to Moscow beta some 3 years ago - here's a copy & paste

- -

Hi,

As some of you might know I was recently offered the beta 1.10 version of
this Loch Ness monster of wargaming. I promised a review so here goes :


Game Concept :


Detailed geographical map of Europe where units of Brigade/Div/Army level
move and fight - all in real-time. You, as supreme commander literally
"draw" up the battle plan(s) which get executed by your AI commanders
whom you can shuffle around. A very detailed OOB + TOE and a nice choice
of scenario's complete the package.


Concept execution and detail :


The most interesting concept is the drawing board - you literally select
a portion of the battle field - which gets copied to the drawing screen
where you "draw" up a battle plan. You can set primary and secondary
objectives and tell your units where to move to. You then approve the
"plan" which gets executed by the AI.


This all sounds pretty nifty - though we could do without the separate
drawing board - the problem is : it doesn't work.


The reason it doesn't is because you can draw up a plan that looks good
on paper only to have it botched up by the incompetent own unit AI -
sounds like real life (tm) you'd think - not really - especially playing
as the Germans you'd expect the battlefield commanders to be smarter than
the guy sitting in Berlin but they aren't and that's where frustration
sets in because you lack the means to control the action.


Example : let's suppose you spot a Russian infantry army with their left
flank secured by mountains/rough and a refused - but open - right flank.
Let's say you have a German inf div, a mountain div and a panzer div at
your disposal - what plan do you come up with ? I want the inf div to
move up, make contact, make probing attacks but nothing serious and act
as a screen for the panzer division to swing behind and move behind the
Ruskies right flank while the mountain div infiltrates their supposedly
secure left flank. A minimum amount of coordination should ensure succes
in rounding up the Russians. Let's say you draw up this fail-safe plan in
RtM, you sit back smugly and watch it all go terribly wrong as soon as
you turn things over to the AI. The inf div will slam hard into the
prepared Russian positions and take numerous casualties, the mountain
unit will get lost in the mountains and the panzer division will arive in
the Russians rear and decide to await further orders amidst the Russian
rear echelon units.


So where did it go wrong ?


Well, for one thing this game oozes ambition - the entire Russian front -
in realtime - in 1997-1999 on pentium 2/300 machines with 1 MB graphic
cards .. Technically it couldn't have worked on the machines available
back then - my 2.8 gig / GeForce 4 machine has barely enough horsepower
to run it. No wonder it was reported to run in sub-realtime with every 5
minutes of game time taking 15 minutes of computer time - this would mean
a 12 year continuous runtime for the entire campaign. Madness.


The concept of "drawing" up a masterplan sounds good on paper - but the
own unit AI is so incompetent in carrying out your plan that this game
really needs more player control over the battlefield - there isn't,
resulting in player frustration. You feel like the guy sitting in his
Berlin bunker in 1945 moving around armies and nothing happens the way he
plans it.


The reason it survived so long as a "game in progress" - and a financial
sink-hole - is that if you look at a screenshot and read the manual /
concept docs the shear ambition takes your breath away. On paper it's the
game I want to play. It's a game practically all grognards would want to
play so it got financed way too long because it's so beautiful in concept
people wanted it to work despite the technical and conceptual hurdles.


Could it have worked ?


Well, if they had limited the game to let's say a "Kanev Bridge", added
more own-unit controll and had put a lot more effort in the AI they could
have ended up with an "Airborne Assault". And this is really the point I
wanted to make : the RtM game concept is - apart from the over-ambitious
scope - virtually identical to the Airborne Assault series games. RtM is
dead and buried, but if you really want to see that inf div make a
probing attack to fix the Russians in place, the mountain div sneaking up
on them while the Panzer div swings into their rear you'll have to wait
till the guys at Panther Games turn east.


Greetz,


Eddy Sterckx

Interesting.. I sort of figured that our machines back then were under-powered which was why it failed. Still, it was an interesting concept. It might be feasable these days though.

[SMK-at-work]

ORIGINAL: sulla05
I remember all the games you mention. I even still have some of them. I liked Talonsoft's BTR but I really want a remake of Europe Ablaze.

TOAW has a scenario "Europe Ablaze" modeled on the original I believe - I never played the original tho!!

TOAW doesn't have a proper strategic side tho - which may be good or bad depending on your p.o.v. - replacements & reinforcements are all programmed per "history" for each scenario, with possible variations done by scripting - eg if playing "Fire in the East" (East front 41-45) supply and production values can alter with capture of key cities - eg Axis supply goes up if oil centres are captured, soviet supply goes down if Archangel is captured, or up if you use the optional rule for bringing Turkey into the game and can capture Istanbul, etc.

But you never get to allocate specific resources such as manpower, or particulr weapon production - you might end up desperately short of riflemen, but with a huge surplus of bridging engineers that you can't retask......

"We" (ie the people on the TOAW forum) often mention these little problems to the designers, who are still active and working on the next iteration....[&o]

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

ORIGINAL: sulla05
I remember all the games you mention. I even still have some of them. I liked Talonsoft's BTR but I really want a remake of Europe Ablaze.

TOAW has a scenario "Europe Ablaze" modeled on the original I believe - I never played the original tho!!

TOAW doesn't have a proper strategic side tho - which may be good or bad depending on your p.o.v. - replacements & reinforcements are all programmed per "history" for each scenario, with possible variations done by scripting - eg if playing "Fire in the East" (East front 41-45) supply and production values can alter with capture of key cities - eg Axis supply goes up if oil centres are captured, soviet supply goes down if Archangel is captured, or up if you use the optional rule for bringing Turkey into the game and can capture Istanbul, etc.

But you never get to allocate specific resources such as manpower, or particulr weapon production - you might end up desperately short of riflemen, but with a huge surplus of bridging engineers that you can't retask......

"We" (ie the people on the TOAW forum) often mention these little problems to the designers, who are still active and working on the next iteration....[&o]

That's why I'm looking forward to Matrix World in Flames. I like to decide what to produce and where to apply it. I also like the interaction of naval, air and land operations. With the whole Earth as the map, there are no pesky edge-of-map effects either. I've enjoyed each version of TOAW since it came out though.

Cheers, Neilster

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: apathetic lurker
Interesting.. I sort of figured that our machines back then were under-powered which was why it failed. Still, it was an interesting concept. It might be feasable these days though.

It's more than an interesting concept : it's a working and winning concept when done right : Conquest of the Aegean is Wargame of the Year 2006 as voted by the punters at The Wargamer, at GameSquad and on UseNet's War-Historical.

Also note that there are other engines out there too which use the same concepts, most notably the Air Assault Task Force engine of ProsimCo, but also tactical 3D games like Combat Mission and Panzer Command. It's just that nobody has made a strategic level game based on these principles ... yet.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: sterckxe

ORIGINAL: apathetic lurker
Interesting.. I sort of figured that our machines back then were under-powered which was why it failed. Still, it was an interesting concept. It might be feasable these days though.

It's more than an interesting concept : it's a working and winning concept when done right : Conquest of the Aegean is Wargame of the Year 2006 as voted by the punters at The Wargamer, at GameSquad and on UseNet's War-Historical.

Also note that there are other engines out there too which use the same concepts, most notably the Air Assault Task Force engine of ProsimCo, but also tactical 3D games like Combat Mission and Panzer Command. It's just that nobody has made a strategic level game based on these principles ... yet.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

I wish they'd hurry up! And at the grand operational level too.

Cheers, Neilster

[SMK-at-work]

Issuing orders and letting het AI carry them out has been a hallmark of SSG games for decades - the old "Battlefront" series was way ahead of the competition, and remains pretty damned good today....if a little simplistic

[Phatguy]

Well they better damn hurry!!! I ain't getting younger. I will be sorely peeved if I gotta play something on the size of RTM using COTA or similar in my nursing home(hopefully I make it that long)

[lillebror2]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Welp now you've heard of it and I've listed it and the designer and his team and even the copyright date. I still have the manual and the game on 5-1/4 floppy for C=64.
I even did a google for you http://home.comcast.net/~evanbrooks/20t ... 20(Ba'rac)
(...)
I probably have the largest library of computer wargames of anyone from 1982 to present day. And that's not even having all of Matrixgames of today. lol I'll eventually get them when the timing is right. When I die someone can do some documentary on me and all the wargames and computers I still have.

Hi,
I read that post when looking for any stuff related to my ALL-TIME-FAVORITE-80s-C64-GAME ==> RAOD TO MOSCOW!. I loved that game so much. A friend of mine and I played it for several days and night (we were sharing the units and had kind of a 2-player-mode [:)]). I recently played the game on PC by using an emulator.

The reason of my posting is that I would really, really be happy to get a copy/scan (pdf) of the original games manual. [&o] Unfortunately I may not contact Ravinhood by PM. So probably someone in this forum might be able to help me or could get in contact with ravinhood?!

Thanks in advance,
best wishes,
lillebror

PS: Of course I would also like to get the original game incl. disc, manual, box and so on, but eBay had non for the last years.. [:(]

[bairdlander2]

ORIGINAL: sulla05

There never was a Road to moscow that ever came out that I knew of.

I played it in the 80's.It use to bug me because on the map east was the top of the screen,so kind of weird.It had events as well,such as "Hitler assasinated" all waffen ss units would disolve,or another event was "Rommel wins North Africa" and the DAK would arrive on the Eastern front.

[sullafelix]

Are you talking about the SSG Russian front game? That I played a lot and loved on the C-64. The " Road to Moscow" that I was talking about was the one that the prereview from above was written for.