Your Favorite Computer Wargame?

[Veldor]

It seems these days alot of the 'good' computer wargames and publishers are not readily known. As I'd like to add a few more games to my collection while I wait for more Matrix titles, I'd like to know which computer wargames out there you most enjoy.

I'm mostly looking for XP-compatible games not more than a couple years old. My list currently would go something like this:

1. Uncommon Valor: Campaign for the South Pacific - Matrix
2. Close Combat Series - Microsoft/SSI
3. Diplomacy - Avalon Hill/Microprose
4. Advanced Civilization - Avalon Hill
5. The Operational Art of War II - Talonsoft

That would be my top five, I'm a sucker for Avalon Hill games.
Anyone play Strategic Command from Battefront? I tried the demo, and aside from some oddity with troop replenishment, seemed like a pretty good "serious" wargame alternative to Axis & Allies...

How bout Tac Ops 4? Europa Universallis II? I need some new games...

[brent_2]

Go for Uncommon Valor - I just started getting into it and am enjoying it. Ton of things to learn in this one.

Close Combat is also worth purchasing. I keep coming back to this series time after time. Only Combat Leader and CLose Assault from Matrix here may come close to replacing it, if all comes to pass as I have been hoping.

I would also suggest any of the Total War series of games as worth some time

BCT and its successor ArmoredTaskForce are also both worth a look, although I have not been actively playing this for a while.

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

Favourite Computer Wargame.

That makes it veeeeeeery easy.

Steel Panthers any version

That was a given I suppose.

AI in the Mega Campaigns is adequate or at least Lost Victories is not a tea party hehe.

But the game shines because it comes in so many flavours.
You can play it basic (I actually have a buddy that finds original is all he needs), you can play it SPWaW, or you can play it SPWW2 version. You can play it modern as well. You can play it brigade level ala Panzerleader level amusement.

The number of scenarios out there is mind boggling. If you have played every scenario twice, for god's sake man you need help:) .

The game has Battle mode if you just want non historical fun, or Scenarios if you just want to play in 30 seconds or less. You can play a long campaign (but the AI doesn't seem up to the challenge). And of course there are the Mega Campaigns (what you should be playing instead of the Long Campaigns in my opinion).

Then there is the extensive online community if playing a person is absolutely paramount.

It looks good enough to make a ASL player smile (and that isn't easy).

Hey it's not my fault if the game is free and is therefore not capable of putting you out of pocket man.

After Steel Panthers there is of course Operational Art of War. It looks like all my board games. it is WW2 and it is Modern. Best yet, it's still on sale (that helps I guess).

Allied General/Panzer General/Panzer General 2/Peoples General. Hmm aside from the fact they are either free or next to it. They are pleasing graphically, they are incredibly easy to play, and they cover from WW2 to modern yet again (I like a game that is thorough).

I will include Strategic Command (it can be better, and I think it will be), it is an acceptable Grand Strategy design in a world which I think really has no recent games in this category other than it. Grand Strategy is an untapped field right now. All the GS games of the past are definitely long in the tooth (good look getting most to run on even your now getting older rapidly Win 98SE platorms).

I don't own it, but I can clearly saw that Battlefield 1942 is currently the front runner in FPS games. Just make sure you are running it on a "good" system, my 800 celeron with a modest 32 meg video card and 256 megs of Ram just barely gets in the door.

[SLAAKATTAK]

AH- RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN, FORTRESS EUROPA, WOODEN SHIPS IRON MEN,
BATTLE OF THE BULGE.

SPI-PRESTAGS, KURSK, INVASION AMERICA, WAR IN EUROPE, OPERATION TYPHOON.

COMPUTER GAMES;
OPERATIONAL ART OF WAR;COW- TRYING TO SETUP "EUROPE AFLAME" GRAND STRATEGIC SCENARIO

CLOSE COMBAT 3- REAL RED MOD, AFRIKA KORPS MOD, PACIFIC WAR, FINNISH MOD, FRANCE1940 MOD. 500+MAPS

AGE OF EMPIRES;AGE OF KINGS,

STARCRAFT; BROODWARS-ARMAGEDDON.

SSI VERSION OF SECOND FRONT FOR MAC (MATRIX VERSION IS WIR)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALIENS VS PREDATOR( FPS)

[MarkFroio]

Steel Panthers WAW - Countless hours playing this game, and it's free.

Uncommon Valor - This game has sucked me in, chewed me up and left me limp.

The above two games are my current favorites, but in the past and not too distant future I've enjoyed and will enjoy again:

Russo-German War
Close Combat
Panzer General I or II

Have fun.

[scimitar]

Steel Panthers WAW.

I like also some old goodies like Empire Deluxe, Flight Commander II, Warlords III, Civilization II and Alpha Centauri...

I'm waiting for Combat Leader (and the modern module(s))...

[pasternakski]

Advanced Civilization by AH does not play on XP.

[Raverdave]

1- Uncomon Valour

2- Harpoon 2 AE


These two games have spent the longest time on my hard drive than any other game that I have ever used. Sadly H2 AE is no longer in use. But UV still takes up all of my wargaming time, and has done so since it was released some 8 months ago IIRC.

[wulfir]

Steel Panthers

[Mad Cow]

Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin
Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord
TOAW: ACOW
Civil War Generals II

[KG Erwin]

I recently bought Silent Hunter II, so that's occupying most of my gaming time now. My HD has limited space, so I took Age of Mythology off, but that's a game with potential, and I've been a big fan of the series since the original Age of Empires. SPWaW is a permanent fixture--no wargamer should be without this all-time classic. I also have Russo-German War 1941-44, and this one will also be an all-time classic once all the fine-tuning is done. I recommend this one only to true hardcore Eastern Front fans with lots of time on their hands. Frank Hunter's ACW is still there, as is TAO 2--more freebies, and both are elegantly designed & enjoyable to play. I have several others occupying shelf space, and I envy those with the 40GB and above HDs--I only have an 8.4, otherwise they would ALL be current residents of my PC. In any case, the last 6 years have been a golden age for PC wargamers, so we don't have much to complain about, other than so many quality games and so little time to play them all!

[Reiryc]

1. Closecombat 1
2. Decision in the Desert
3. Pirates
4. PacWar
5. Uncommon Valor
6. Europa Universalis 1 & 2
7. Rest of Closecombat series
8. Velikye Luki
9. Steel Panthers 1
10. Stalingrad World at War series

Reiryc

[The Shadow]

Originally posted by Reiryc
1. Closecombat 1
2. Decision in the Desert
3. Pirates
4. PacWar
5. Uncommon Valor
6. Europa Universalis 1 & 2
7. Rest of Closecombat series
8. Velikye Luki
9. Steel Panthers 1
10. Stalingrad World at War series

Reiryc

Reiryc, could you give me your opinion why Close Combat 1 is better than the others? Mostly everyone says 2,3, or 5 are the best. Also will CC1 run on WinXP?

Also to save another post, my favorites are the 2 Combat Mission games and Airborne Assault:Red Devils or Arnhem.

The Comabt Mission games are the first wargames I've played where terrain and LOS actually mean something. If a wargamer who likes squad level combat says he doesnt like the CM games, he just hasn't given them a chance.

AA:RDoA is so revolutionary, I haven't quite figured it out yet. A real time, top down, operational level wargame with no hexes?? Yep. By the way all 3 games come with outstanding manuals and I am a documentation freak. That's the reason I haven't got UV yet, I swore I'd never buy another wargame without printed, complete documentation. I learned my lesson from tiller's Squad Battles:Viet Nam.

[CCB]

SPWAW

[Veldor]

Originally posted by pasternakski
Advanced Civilization by AH does not play on XP.

It most certainly does. It is up and running on my XP system. There are some problems with sound depending on your exact hardware/drivers, but the game itself works just fine on XP.

[Reiryc]

Reiryc, could you give me your opinion why Close Combat 1 is better than the others? Mostly everyone says 2,3, or 5 are the best. Also will CC1 run on WinXP?

First I don't know if cc1 will run on xp, but I would doubt it.

I think cc1 is the best due to the game play. I think the game play of the battles is the best out of all 5. They tend towards infantry combat more than armored combat.

Additionally, when playing the campaign, I felt 'attached' to my men much more so than when we could buy squads in the later itinerations. Your squads would suffer casualties and not be brought up to full strength until after a set of battles that were pre-determined. I'll address the predetermined battles in a minute. The squads would often get widdled down to 3 or 4 men through combat. I would often get attached to certain squads when this would happen. I wanted to make sure so and so would survive. So it increased the fun factor for me.

The soldier monitors and information monitors were the best of the series. You knew who was having psych problems in the squad and what the problem was. You had a threat indicator so that you could tell which general direction fire was coming from for a particular squad. You had a battle replay option so that you could watch the same battle again and save them when they were something in which you were proud of.

The campaign system seemed the most sensible to me out of the 5. In close combat 1, the history of the fight was not going to be changed by the actions of your one company sized or smaller force. The campaign would drive forward as your force was but a small cog in the wheel of a much greater force. Your division was going to progress regardless, as happened in the real war. The difference was whether or not you could keep up or advance faster than what happened in the real war. So your victories and defeats and how great they were would determine whether or not you would be ahead of the timeline of what really happened.

Thus the battles were in a sense predetermined in that you know you'll start just after the beaches and finally end up in st lo. There was some branching as when you would win on certain maps they would take you to a map that you might bypass if you lost or vice versa. So you had some control over where you went through victories or losses, but not so much that you went out of tune with what was going on in the much larger picture ie: your victories didn't change the inexorable drive of your division through the norman hedgerows to st lo.

The maps were also square tiles. This allowed the game to handle LOS with very very few issues. As the series continued, LOS issues increased with each new release as elevation started to take shape along with not perfect lines on the map itself. So you'll find at times you can shoot at something while that something can not trace an los back to you and shoot on you.

Anyways, that's my take on why it's the best of the series to me. The others were all good, don't get me wrong, but for some reason, they never did quite match up to cc1 for me in gameplay even with all the new added features.

Reiryc

[Marc von Martial]

First I don't know if cc1 will run on xp, but I would doubt it.

It works perfectly on XP, you just need a little trick to install it. Peter Fisla posted that workaround on the GI Combat forums

http://www.gicombat.com/forums/showthre ... ose+combat

And here´s a complete thing:

http://www.gicombat.co.uk/cc1_&_xp.htm

[SLAAKATTAK]

THATS ALL VERY ROMANTIC REIRYC BUT THE QUESTION I HAVE CHUMP IS WHEN WILL YOU ENTER MY BARBQ MAP AT ZONE.COM OR MGO'S HOST SITE? I WANT TO SEE WHAT THE REMAINS OF "CHARRED-REIRYC SOUFFLE'" SMELLS LIKE!!!!:p I SHIVER WITH ANTICIPATION.......
SLAAKATTAK

PS- YOU CAN ASK REAP ABOUT THE PLEASANT "MACHINEGUN-FRY" HE EXPERIENCED LAST WEEK IN BERLIN......YEEEEEEEEHAAAAA!!!!!

[The Shadow]

Originally posted by Reiryc
First I don't know if cc1 will run on xp, but I would doubt it.

I think cc1 is the best due to the game play. I think the game play of the battles is the best out of all 5. They tend towards infantry combat more than armored combat.

Additionally, when playing the campaign, I felt 'attached' to my men much more so than when we could buy squads in the later itinerations. Your squads would suffer casualties and not be brought up to full strength until after a set of battles that were pre-determined. I'll address the predetermined battles in a minute. The squads would often get widdled down to 3 or 4 men through combat. I would often get attached to certain squads when this would happen. I wanted to make sure so and so would survive. So it increased the fun factor for me.

The soldier monitors and information monitors were the best of the series. You knew who was having psych problems in the squad and what the problem was. You had a threat indicator so that you could tell which general direction fire was coming from for a particular squad. You had a battle replay option so that you could watch the same battle again and save them when they were something in which you were proud of.

The campaign system seemed the most sensible to me out of the 5. In close combat 1, the history of the fight was not going to be changed by the actions of your one company sized or smaller force. The campaign would drive forward as your force was but a small cog in the wheel of a much greater force. Your division was going to progress regardless, as happened in the real war. The difference was whether or not you could keep up or advance faster than what happened in the real war. So your victories and defeats and how great they were would determine whether or not you would be ahead of the timeline of what really happened.

Thus the battles were in a sense predetermined in that you know you'll start just after the beaches and finally end up in st lo. There was some branching as when you would win on certain maps they would take you to a map that you might bypass if you lost or vice versa. So you had some control over where you went through victories or losses, but not so much that you went out of tune with what was going on in the much larger picture ie: your victories didn't change the inexorable drive of your division through the norman hedgerows to st lo.

The maps were also square tiles. This allowed the game to handle LOS with very very few issues. As the series continued, LOS issues increased with each new release as elevation started to take shape along with not perfect lines on the map itself. So you'll find at times you can shoot at something while that something can not trace an los back to you and shoot on you.

Anyways, that's my take on why it's the best of the series to me. The others were all good, don't get me wrong, but for some reason, they never did quite match up to cc1 for me in gameplay even with all the new added features.

Reiryc

Wow, dude, thanks for the in-depth post, I’m convinced, and will start an eBay search ASAP.

You hit on an often overlooked aspect of war gaming, which is the immersive factor, that is, the attachment to your troops. This is a holdover form my role-playing days that if you name your char yourself, for some reason you just play better.

I always wanted to see the Close Combat games with the feature of being able to name your soldiers any name you choose, and being able to “peel off” a squad member or two for a light recon or ambush. I’d like to see this feature in the Combat Mission games also.

Thanks again.

[The Shadow]

Originally posted by Marc Schwanebeck
It works perfectly on XP, you just need a little trick to install it. Peter Fisla posted that workaround on the GI Combat forums

http://www.gicombat.com/forums/showthre ... ose+combat

And here´s a complete thing:

http://www.gicombat.co.uk/cc1_&_xp.htm

Thanks Marc, very helpful as a computer upgrade is near. I'm so paranoid about XP playing my older games, i'm thinking of bringing 98se along with me. Thanks

Also are you a moderator?