Looking for strategy games without chores

[ravinhood]

we don't play games we play "historical simulations" that "recreate history".

Lol speak for yourself I don't play historical simulations I play wargames that allow me to create an alternate history.

Also I think the great UI's are the ones where you merely point and click or click-drag a large square around those units you want to move and attack with at the same time and then click on your objective. I mean how much more easier can it be than that? Why, do some of these games you have to click on each individual unit, then click to tell them where to move to then click to tell them what to attack?? I love the click-get-click attack type of UI's. Like your SC2 and even CEAW types. The reason I don't play monster games is there is just too much CLICKING. And that is why I call them CLICKFESTS. DOesn't have to be always real time to be a clickfest. If you have to move 200 units every turn man that's a clickfest. But, the click-drag and get-attack method is so much easier to use and play with.

Then we have the grouping and degrouping debacle (sp?) that AGEOD brings to the table. Why, the hell do we have to degroup the whole stack just to get one unit out of it for another stack? That just makes no farking sense to me. It has so much grouping and degrouping and clicking and dragging and reclicking and redragging I just gave up on it. One of the worst UI's I've ever encountered for "modern" day computer wargame. Well, maybe not the worst. Schwerpunkts UI is pretty horrible, but, he's a nice guy so I don't pick on his games hardly at all.

This is why games like Combat Mission (yeah I know another publishers game haha sue me) are enjoyable and I like the UI and the fast game play. I don't have to click very much and I can play a game in a couple of hours. SPWAW takes a bit longer because you basically fire every single piece of ordanance yourself. (if you choose to). But, still a very simple an easy to use UI.

I'd really like to see more beer n pretzel and wego games out of Matrixgames. Their Panzer Command series are along these lines. I just wished they would implement the quick battles feature into this series like CM. I like to fight random battles moreso than historical ones. Those Koios guys make some great stuff. I know I've enjoyed Tin Soldiers:Caesar. And I plan to buy any game they make with a random scenario or quick battles type engine if they ever do.

[leastonh1]

ORIGINAL: Veldor
Sad to me really when 2000 hours are spent researching biographies and backgrounds for leaders and units most players probably never even read and only 2 hours go into researching how to best layout all the interfaces and controls. Perhaps this partially lies in where a developers motivation for making the game comes from in the first place.

I think wargame devs must be a breed apart anyway. They are catering to a niche market for starters. As they will undoubtedly attract the attention, if not the money, of grognards by bringing out something they dare call a "wargame", then it's vital they get their facts right. Woe betide the dev who gets the wrong shade of green on a historical uniform! What I mean is that wargamers are sticklers for accuracy, or at least a good attempt at such. So, surely the devs have to be good amateur historians or good at research of that particular timeline they choose to set their game in?

I wouldn't touch Napoleonics if I were going to create a wargame. I have no knowledge or interest in the period and have no motivation to learn. Yet, WWI or II would be a different matter as the research wouldn't be a chore or bother. They say, write about what you know. If you don't know and aren't interested in military history, and a specific period, you'll either end up with a poor game, something generic that appeals to no-one or with so many inaccuracies and mistakes that you'll alienate most of your potential customers anyway. I think it takes a very dedicated person to be a wargame dev and I have much respect for them.

The gui is becoming more important as time goes on. I remember playing wargames where the gui was horrible in many of the offerings, but nobody seemed to complain much because the game itself was so good. Now, we have almost the same attention to detail from players about the way the gui is designed as we do with the historical accuracy.

Not to tout other companies games here...I do think the *** games are good, but their gui is bloody awful. It puts me off every time I load up a game. As Veldor said, one hundred buttons in a row. It's dated, is a real pain in the bum trying to remember what each one does and just looks awful. It's counter intuitive to have a control method like this, so why do it over and over? I can think of a number of complex games (in terms of play and controls) where there are few, if any buttons on screen. It's all done with a slick user interface that makes the most of the mouse and easy for the player.

Regards,
Jim

[ravinhood]

Me I want a right click pause feature in games. Or something that the mouse does the pausing while not having to use the keyboard. Hell, I wish more games would use keypads (the X-Box kind) and let me configure it to do what I want it to do for wargames. This button pauses, this button selects, etc. etc. I don't know why they can't make more games using keypads in mouselike ways. Veldor you're the smart one why can't they?

[Veldor]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Me I want a right click pause feature in games. Or something that the mouse does the pausing while not having to use the keyboard. Hell, I wish more games would use keypads (the X-Box kind) and let me configure it to do what I want it to do for wargames. This button pauses, this button selects, etc. etc. I don't know why they can't make more games using keypads in mouselike ways. Veldor you're the smart one why can't they?

So now I'm the smart one eh?

Here is my best answer.... for starters, like many things, its simple lack of knowledge.

Of course that works both ways with the consumer as well.

For instance who even knew that Microsoft made us Strategy Gamers our own special controller (Thats right no one I bet ):

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-E06-000 ... B00005U21V

So unpopular was it that they barely even sell used ones now. Really I don't even think Force Feedback controllers ever really took off on the computer. I paid $185.00 for mine day one of release before they cheapened in quality. They barely cost anything now and still no one uses them. I pretty much got to play one ultra-cool game with it and thats it (MechWarrior4 since the Force Feedback also does a swivel for the torso control).

Here Id say its lack of standards. With an XBOX you know everyone has vibration, with a Wii you know everyone has the Wii Controller. Why go through the dev effort to add force feedback to a game for an unknown audience?

Some controllers will actually work fine with any game though. They basically let you map keystrokes and functions to buttons (not unlike a good mouse).

So really anything with keyboard shortcuts (say Advanced Tactics) would probably work just fine with any good configurabe pc gamepad on the market today. The key is having shortcuts for the right things (Not sure for instance if AT has map scrolling shortcuts that could map to the scroll buttons).

My old mouse had a four way middle scroll button. It'd be nice if every wargame allowed you to move around with that where its not otherwise used for zooming or such in a 3D game.. Again since it was programmable it would mostly just take the devs having enough shortcuts in place and ultimately configurable ones.

[Hentzau]

Good wargame lites:
Strategic
sillysoft dot net - Lux all versions
klear dot com - Samurai demo only unfortunately
Tactical
windowsgames dot co dot uk - Firefight
apezone dot com - Battleship Chess

[ravinhood]

Yeah I remember that Veldor. I think it was the way it looked that turned me off to it. It just didn't look user friendly. I started out when all we had to use was the keyboard, then the joystick came along, then Intellivision brought in the circle pad method with number keys on top of the controller. I actually liked this the best for a long time. Then came the mouse and things got away from things that just seemed natural to use like the joystick. Mouse was faster to scroll with and click n get stuff and move it. But, it still always felt a bit lacking and also I could never use one the regular way always had to play with it backwards. lol Now, today I find myself wanting the be able to use the PC gamepads for everything. They have so many buttons on them nowadays I just don't see why more games can't be made to use them. You can scroll as fast as a mouse with them and well I hardly ever use every hotkey that the games allow except maybe for space sims and I have a Logitec Pro Joystick for those. Man I love the way it's designed and all those buttonessss.
 
Also about your smarts, even though I "think" you exaggerate occassionally I do find your information quite interesting an informative to read. I'm almost as interested in reading your posts as I am Trotters reviews. That's saying a lot coming from me. I find intelligent people who show they are intelligent worthy of my respect. I find some here just pretend to have intelligence...but, we won't get off into that OTicness.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

ORIGINAL: NotaGrog
Why does a grand strategy game have to take 50+ hours to complete? To use the ACW as an example, I think AGEOD could have gone up a level of unit scale (divisions?), scrapped the lowest level, quartered the number of provinces and map size and the game would have been just as good - only playable twice as fast.

An excellent point that deserves to be repeated. Thanks, NotaGrog!

[Jonathan Palfrey]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Allright, let's knock off the side discussions, this is too good a thread...

I'm glad to have started something good for once...

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
We do try to get a few "beer and pretzels" releases in each year however as we also enjoy games that don't make us work hard from time to time.

Oh, do let's hear more about them. Any time I work hard, I want to be paid for it. The purpose of a game is to provide a SHORT period of pleasant diversion in between longer periods of working for a living.

[Adam Parker]

Here's a point to check the state of what some of us gamers want - and I'm amazed there's been no market research to date on this that I've seen.
 
But I was looking through an old Avaon Hill catalogue this morning and it occurred to me.
 
I just wonder that if Tactics 2, Bulge 65, D-Day, Stalingrad, Africa Korps and Waterloo were all available once again - what AH called its "classics" - who wouldn't go out there right now and buy them up? 150 counters, 4 pages of rules and a mounted map... I'd be driving to my local store now.
 
Why in goodness' name can't someone make a series of PC wargames as simple as those? Caesar (Alesia), Alexander (Guagamela), Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, The Russian Campaign, Fortress Europa, Blitzkreig, even a new PC Third Reich (I mean AH managed to put that on a 3.5" floppy) - the classics are all there. Just build 'em and keep them elegantly simple.  

[leastonh1]

ORIGINAL: Adam Parker
I just wonder that if Tactics 2, Bulge 65, D-Day, Stalingrad, Africa Korps and Waterloo were all available once again - what AH called its "classics" - who wouldn't go out there right now and buy them up? 150 counters, 4 pages of rules and a mounted map... I'd be driving to my local store now.

And I'd be right behind you...albeit on a different continent, but it's the thought that counts. You're right though Adam.

[hazxan]

ORIGINAL: Veldor
I think part of the confusion lies in a misrepresentation by forum posters. People who are put off by poor UIs and such just go away and move on to other things.

That's exactly what I've been doing for years - until now!

Historical detail doesn't have to be at the expense of playability. For those like Matrix who are in business to sell these games - and I fully support the smaller developers involved - a good UI isn't going to *lose* a single hardcore grog. But it is going to gain potentially thousands more looking for something deeper than AOE or Total War.

It concerns me that on the Empire in Arms forums, someone has carefully detailed many UI faults. The developer has openly admitted that UI development was of low priority and that fixes for these problems will take low priority. Not a respectful attitude to those who are paying to play.

Perhaps Matrix could be imposing a stricter QA control over these elements?

It's not the complexity that's the problem - it's the bloatedness! And I think the increasing hardware power of PC's has contributed to the problem. Most of the videogame business is using the power to shift ever more pixels on the screen (igonoring gameplay), while the strategy gamers are using the power to store ever more detailed information on the generals breakfast[:)]. And to have ever more 'phases' to bog the processor down (ignoring gameplay)

Steel Panthers is a good example of loads of hidden complexity (available if you want it), enough detail on turret rotations to keep the hardcore happy, yet is still easily playable by a non-grog.

[Jonathan Palfrey]

ORIGINAL: Adam Parker
I just wonder that if Tactics 2, Bulge 65, D-Day, Stalingrad, Africa Korps and Waterloo were all available once again - what AH called its "classics" - who wouldn't go out there right now and buy them up? 150 counters, 4 pages of rules and a mounted map... I'd be driving to my local store now.

I don't have to buy them -- I still have some of them sitting in the attic, and I'd certainly play D-Day or Bulge (or GDW's A House Divided) if a willing opponent showed up at my door. Unfortunately, the willing opponent remains hypothetical.

For that reason, computer versions of these old games would be welcome, so that those of us without opponents could play them. But let's not go overboard. These games had virtues and were fun to play, but they were far from perfect; I'm sure that a modern designer could improve on them if he kept the important objectives in mind: a low workload for the player in both learning and playing; a fairly short playing time; and a reasonable broad-brush simulation of the historical situation. As NotaGrog pointed out, if some detail can be omitted without changing the strategy of the game in a big way, then omit it.

When playing computer games I often feel homesick for one particular feature of board games: we knew exactly how combat resolution was done, because we had to do it ourselves. In a computer game, when you send your men into battle, something happens; but you generally don't know why or how, because the program resolves things mysteriously and the programmer isn't telling.

In a computer game, if you attack with superior numbers and get wiped out, you don't know what's going on. Is there a bug in the program? Is it biased against me? Is there some hidden factor that I don't know about? Is it fatal to attack on Saturday mornings when the wind is in the south?

If the same thing happens in a board game, you know exactly what happened: with 2:1 odds there was one chance in six of getting A-Elim, and you got it. You can curse, but you don't need to spend any time worrying about it.

For this reason, I wish that computer wargames would document their combat resolution systems precisely in an appendix.

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: Adam Parker

Here's a point to check the state of what some of us gamers want - and I'm amazed there's been no market research to date on this that I've seen.

But I was looking through an old Avaon Hill catalogue this morning and it occurred to me.

I just wonder that if Tactics 2, Bulge 65, D-Day, Stalingrad, Africa Korps and Waterloo were all available once again - what AH called its "classics" - who wouldn't go out there right now and buy them up? 150 counters, 4 pages of rules and a mounted map... I'd be driving to my local store now.

Why in goodness' name can't someone make a series of PC wargames as simple as those? Caesar (Alesia), Alexander (Guagamela), Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, The Russian Campaign, Fortress Europa, Blitzkreig, even a new PC Third Reich (I mean AH managed to put that on a 3.5" floppy) - the classics are all there. Just build 'em and keep them elegantly simple.  

It’s often a question of IP rights.

Here I am looking at that 30-year old AH classic Victory in the Pacific. It’s a boardgame where there’s constant interaction, perfect for a multi-player computer wargame. But the IP property is probably at Hasbro or maybe Decision Games – who knows ? A prospective developer looking at it knows he can’t afford to buy the IP rights so instead of having just to program the computer version of a design which has proven itself to work, he’s left with having to wear two hats : that of game developer – so he can create a new game - and that of programmer – so he can program it. Very few people combine the talent of being a great game developer *and* having the programming skill to make it happen on the computer.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[leastonh1]

You could always try Vassal or Cyberboard for PC versions of your old board games. They are free to play, and providing you have the original game (for the rules etc.), are great fun.

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: Jim_H
You could always try Vassal or Cyberboard for PC versions of your old board games. They are free to play, and providing you have the original game (for the rules etc.), are great fun.

Sure, but they don't enforce the game rules, nor do they have a "training version" i.e. an AI

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[leastonh1]

ORIGINAL: sterckxe
Sure, but they don't enforce the game rules, nor do they have a "training version" i.e. an AI

True. The trouble is, until someone gets past all the murky mess of the copyright and licensing issues, most of these old board games will probably just disappear eventually or become even more collectors items. Vassal and Cyberboard are about the only option for people like Jonathan (and me come to that) who still want to play them, but have no human opponents.

I played Memoir '44 on Vassal a while ago and it was great fun. I'm told things are even better with a few people playing a game with voice comms too.

[hazxan]

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey
When playing computer games I often feel homesick for one particular feature of board games: we knew exactly how combat resolution was done, because we had to do it ourselves. In a computer game, when you send your men into battle, something happens; but you generally don't know why or how, because the program resolves things mysteriously and the programmer isn't telling.

In a computer game, if you attack with superior numbers and get wiped out, you don't know what's going on. Is there a bug in the program? Is it biased against me? Is there some hidden factor that I don't know about? Is it fatal to attack on Saturday mornings when the wind is in the south?

I totally agree! I don't even think it's realistic to force is to make decisions without any clue as to the outcome. I'm sure when commanders are poring over the maps, they'd at least have some idea that "we can attack here but I reckon we'd have 25% casualties". A real life commander has staff to assist his decision making, in a game the computer should take the place of these assistants (as well as being your opponent).

One feature I really like about Panzer General is that you can get a rough idea of the outcome, without actually attacking. Civ 4 has the same feature and even breaks it down into the factors that affect the outcome. So it's easy to see that, say, attacking from a hill with a small unit may be a better option than attacking across a river with a large unit.

By now I'm going way OT, but I find the whole area of game design fascinating. Recently I read that humans can hold at most 10 - 20 pieces of info in the heads at one time. Any more than that and it gets forgotten and you have to go back and relearn it every time. This is exactly how I feel with the larger games. With, say, 100 independant units, I have to relearn the whole board each turn. Contrast with the Total War designers, who have handled it really smart. Despite the fact you may have 5,000 individual soldiers in 15 units, they have provided clear grouping functions, so in reality you're aware of just 4 or 5 entities: My general here, that block of 6 spear units there, a line of archers here, a group of flanking cavalry here and thats it.

Another important thing with computer games is 'flow'. There's a feedback loop from the game presenting you with information, you analysing and planning you're strategy, executing that strategy, then going back to the start of the loop and seeing the results of you're moves and so on.... The tighter this loop, the better. In Civ 4 or Panzer General it's very tight. "Wooah he's attacking over there. I'll move these units to get him. Arrghh he's beaten them I'll move this lot over" etc etc etc till before you know it the sun is rising!

Contrast with those games that should remain nameless, where to start with, executing your strategy takes 20 minutes of clicks and searches over the map and scrolling up and ledgers of each company just in case you miss something. Then finally you click next turn....and wait 5 minutes for the AI. Now you have to roam all over the (inevitably huge) map to find the results of actions you took maybe 30 minutes earlier!!!!!! That is an example of seriously broken 'flow'.

Veldor mentions the 2,000 hours put into getting the details correct at the expense of the UI- it's not just the interface that loses out, some of that time would be better spent on AI development, too. But apparently no *serious* gamer plays against the AI, they all play online and have PBEM games that take a year to complete[;)] Though, this is the kind of high level of time commitment that I think Jonathon (and thousands of others) are trying to avoid.

I suspect there's a lot of 'smoke and mirrors' going on under the hood with a lot of modern strategy games. Information is being hidden and we're being subjected to lots of overwhelming micromanagement mainly to benefit the AI. Don't forget, the AI knows EVERY stat and the location of EVERY unit at all times!!! It also knows the exact combat resolution rules and has absolutely no problem with micromanagement.

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: Jim_H
I played Memoir '44 on Vassal a while ago and it was great fun. I'm told things are even better with a few people playing a game with voice comms too.

There's an unconfirmed rumour that Memoir '44 is going to be turned into a pc wargame. It's all hush-hush right now but my source is an industry insider so it could be true.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[marcusm]

I always thought that Cyberboard with an AI engine (scriptable with Python or something) would
be a dream wargame. A pity that noone could do that.

If someone says "it's not possible". Check out XConq. It comes close but has a crappy graphic system.
I even asked both creators once if they could cooperate on something but noting came out of it.

Marcus

[leastonh1]

Eddy - Wow, that would be fantastic if it came true! Judging by the popularity of Memoir '44, I'd say it's a safe bet that any PC game that follows the boardgame properly in design, mechanics and quality will probably do well. Very nice beer and pretzels game. The Days of Wonder (game publisher, for those out of this loop) system is fantastic to play and really easy to get into. I intend to buy more games by this company, but have nobody to play against other than people using Vassal. I love board games, against real people though. Commands and Colors: Ancients is another I'd love to play. Oh, I could go on all day here. I spend half my life on this forum and the other on BoardGameGeek drooling! How sad and lonely am I? My wife would probably agree [;)]

Marcus - I tried XConq ages ago, but the documentation was a nightmare to try and follow. Has it improved recently? The gui isn't the most intuitive, so I was relying on the docs to help. It's supposed to be a pretty good game system if you can figure the damn thing out. I was too stupid. No comments please! [:'(]