Making history - Gold edition released

[06 Maestro]

Here is a link for the AAR page at Making History. http://www.making-history.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=18

Before you buy this game, you should take a few minutes to read these aar's. An un-modded HOI is easily a-historical; I call these AAR's something else. Again, some folks like it very much, but some prospective buyers will be expecting something else from what they get. It reminds me of Bill Clinton's statement of "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". There is still a misleading play on words.

I did enjoy the economic and military build up system in the game-and will try it again sometime. If anyone who is familiar with this game and has tried out these new scenarios mentioned by J P Falcon please make some comment on those here. If they were actually able to modify the ai's behavior, I would be interested in getting the new version.

[Widell]

ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro
Before you buy this game, you should take a few minutes to read these aar's.

Good proposal, plus I also think there's a demo. May be wrong on the the last point...

ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro
An un-modded HOI is easily a-historical

Even a modded HOI is easily a-historical, since the design of the game was made to allow the player to have very few constraints. If you put your efforts on playing historical, the game events will be more historical. The more a-historical you play, the more a-historical the ai and the events will become....

ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro
I call these AAR's something else.

Some quotes from one the linked AAR's (and a good AAR it is!). He's playing as the British. If this is not a-historical, I'm not sure what qualifies as that [;)]

Russia was easily conquered by the Germans as they were waging war against China and the Allies. They even conquered all of India but as I pushed them back the Germans had reached the Indian/Russian border and were already pouring in.

A large part of my navy was destroyed during the early part of the war...

...the Germans liberated India as a fascist nation

OK, I have a made a point about games that allow for research and production and political alignments etc by definition resulting in more a-historical results compared to games that are "only" focusing on the putting the, more or less, historical units in action in different ways. Not saying one if preferable to the other, I enjoy playing both, but if you play HOI, modded or not, chances are you are more into alternate history and role playing rather than historical deployment of units and equipment?

[06 Maestro]

Widell

I have managed to play HOI2/Arma/CORE through nearly half the war and was able to keep everything near exactly historical (playing as Germany). I would say that it takes some effort to keep things exactly on track, but not difficult to keep a somewhat historical flow for a good part of the war. It really does matter as to what mod is used. The AI varies quite a bit. One can also easily take a different approach and play a non historical game-but with some diplomatic restrictions.

If a game will be called "historical" it must have limitations to keep within some reasonable bounds. If a research system allowed for countries to have nukes by 1937 would that be considered a historical game?-not in my estimation. IMO, there are similar boundaries for the diplomatic areas also.

Germany and Russia, or UK joining in an alliance would be a-historical IMO. Those AAR quotes point to a system that allows total fantasy. Fantasy can be fun, but a buyer should know what he is getting.

Perhaps the new game (or scenarios) has some new constraints built in for better historical play-don't know yet.

[JudgeDredd]

I do agree that if a game touts itself as being historical, then there has to be a fairly high level of historical accuracy. However, someone suggested above that a game should not be called WWII because it's not historically accurate.
 
Whilst WWII is history, by not calling a game WWII simply because it doesn't follow the flow of that war is ludicrous. It has hardware of the era. The fact that you can get ahistorical results does not mean it's NOT a WWII game...it just means it's not a historical WWII game.
 
But yes, if it's going to be advertised as an historical teaching tool, or an historical game, then it needs to be pretty damn close

[Widell]

06 Maestro: I fully agree. That's why I like HOI (with the mods that make it even more fun) - It gives you a choice to go historical with some effort, or to try to change history within certain boundaries. Given, the more a-historical your play, the harder for the game to keep up leading to some interesting results now and then. Some of the HOI AAR's over at Paradox are simply hilarious to read!

[06 Maestro]

ORIGINAL: Widell

Some of the HOI AAR's over at Paradox are simply hilarious to read!

Very true, I've seen a few myself. There are cases of a guy making a mod so he can conquer a good part of the planet with a very small country-even vanilla HOI allows for some wacky stuff. But, the alternative is there if desired.

[IanF1966]

I’ll answer as many questions or validate as many points as I can about this game, as I have played it since its release and been involved in some of its modding.

Basically and simply: the game is like “Axis & Allies on steroids”, with a full economic system, more unit types, research and options. If you think along those lines, you won’t be disappointed, period. It’s a fun game which was primarily designed for multiplayer with students in mind.

The historical aspects of the game are that nations and political situations are condensed and streamlined for ease of play by students. This is what the game was designed for.

There is a demo available for the gold version:
http://www.making-history.com/downloads/
So try before you buy.

There is an editor which is user-friendly that comes with the game which copies an existing scenario as a template, upon which a player can then modify it or create an entirely new scenario from scratch.

New nations, units, research can be created and all existing ones altered.

The game uses xml which can be edited by anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of xml scripting, and to answer a question, anyone with a good knowledge of xml can script historic events in their entirety should they wish to.

The coding framework is open and easy enough for anyone to try modding and with anyone who is a fairly reasonable coder, anything should be possible.
I’ve done quite a bit of modding for this game and I’m not even a coder. If someone who has coded mods for Hearts Of Iron with good skill got their hands on this game, results could be awesome.
To check out unit types, research and parameters, you can find files here:

Modern Europe\system\ScenarioDefaults\sharedDataUnitTemplates.xml
Modern Europe\system\ScenarioDefaults\sharedDataResearch.xml


The support forums for modding already have extensive input from the developers, and often, the developers personally respond to posts. Many of the scripting frameworks for events and AI are covered.
The input and support directly from the game’s developers has to be some of the best I’ve seen anywhere on the net, present company accepted.

Sudetenland/Munich Crisis, Anschluss, Spanish civil war events are all covered in various scenarios, and as I mentioned, any half-decent scripter can add more.

Edit:
there are variants so that each game does not play the same, twice e.g.:

USSR

1 ‘Historic’

2 ‘Historic’ Variant

3 ‘Turkey-Persia-Manchuria’ Variant

Stalin desires Soviet expansion in the south and the east and will risk war to gain territory in the far and middle east.

4 ‘Scandinavian-Balkan’ Variant

Stalin desires northern and western expansion and orders the conquest of most of Scandinavia and the Balkans.

5 ‘Polish-Scandinavia-Balkan’ Variant

Stalin wants to settle old accounts with the Poles and also to expand the Soviet Empire westward into the Balkans, and north into Scandinavia.

GERMANY

1 ‘Historic’

2 ‘No Barbarossa’ Variant

Hitler is content with his ‘living space in the east’ to simply remain Poland and has no desire for a total war against the USSR.

3 ‘Small Steps’ Variant

Hitler will desire Poland and also expand Germany with smaller ‘buffer states’.

4 ‘France First’ Variant
Hitler goes for an early conquest of the Low Countries.

5 ‘Balkan Lebensraum’ Variant

Hitler gambles that an early conquest of the Balkans will gain him precious resources before taking on west and provide him with more ‘living space’. He also has no desire for a war with the USSR.

6 ‘Danzig-Denmark’ Variant

[SkyElf]

A quick post on my first two experience with the game!  Well I have to say I was suprised that the game is not ahistorical to a very large degree!  I could not as the UK get USA to join an alliance no idea in how to make it even possible with diplomacy?  When Germany started to declare war on some minor counties and Italy joined them.  It went after France when it supported a minor and got bogged down.  I did the play and manage to take out Germany and Italy with an attack on coast of Germany from England after I destroyed Germany Fleet!  Italy was simulair situation with taking out North Africa, than on to Sicily, mainland etc.  In the game you are making history per say to some extent, but when you ready the game box info on the game I believe it does not quite live up too IT!
 
Was building up too attack USSR but motherboard took a crap and could not get a replacement so lost game so far still discussing problem with manufacture about recovering a SATA ARRAY of mirror HD!  Getting a run around that I need an exact copy of RAID controller that was on motherboard! Did purchase one on E-Bay but was sold a duded.    After paying so much to try to get replacement motherboard to work.  Bought a new one and it will not recognize the drives are ready to go.  So formatted one and waiting to hear from Gigabyte on a resolution of my recovery of my data!  I would recommend not buying a Gigabyte motherboard to anyone at all!  I bought a SATA ARRAY motherboard so I would not have to bother backing up my precious files because both HD are an exact copy if one went down my data would be there which happened once to me before this problem!

[killroyishere]

I found the ahistorical whatif type play of Making History quite enjoyable. I'm glad someone finally made a game in the time of WWII but everything doesn't have to happen like WWII. It's a great game just using the elements of WWII and it has a lot of replayability where those others like SC2 and GGWAW and that other one by Slitherine do not. At least it is something different from the all too many of the same ones we've already seen and have.