A Cautionary Tale

[Moltke71]

Innovation is great but there's two problems. Innovation just for itself but not within reasonable historic parameters is no good. Secondly, as DCB has shown, some people don't like or understand the changes and don't want to do the work required to get into the groove.

[Blond_Knight]

ORIGINAL: Bismarck



This mindset is what I was talking about. SL/ASL were good board games but had trouble with stacks, errata and rule arguments. Let's see how it plays before dumping on the graphics.

Just to be clear I wasn't solely focusing on the graphics. We all want Matrixgames/Slitherine to succeed. Nor am I looking to smear "Tigers", those of you who buy it I hope you enjoy the hell out of it. Having said that there's not only the spartan "Tiller" graphics, but the lack of multiplayer, hardcoded values for units, and the GUI is the clunkiest thing Ive seen since Windows95 games.

[Moltke71]

Tiller games have hot seat, PBEM and direct play. Is there another modality not requiring a server? I tend to agree with you about the UI. I've mentioned that in reviews.

[demyansk]

I have been playing war games for 30 years. I really love the ability to go back in time and recreate battles. I play them all, still play Panzer Corps with all the cheats, I like the ability to carry over units to a next battle.

Good article and I hope they continue with quality games from all and for all gamers.

[andrea23]

Good article and I hope they continue with quality games from all and for all gamers.

exactly[;)]

[gradenko2k]

Realism would ideally be a way to allow "gameplay balance" to fall into one's lap as-is, and make the learning curve easier for players by letting them use actual tactics instead of having to learn the idiosyncrasies of the particular ruleset you're using, but if you have a super-detailed game that still needs "developer fiat" for the desired results to come out in the wash anyway, that detail and realism isn't really getting you anything except numbers for their own sake.

[Hermann]

Tactics II was the first wargame I ever played Paul Koenigs dad got it for him on his 12th birthday. we couldn't understand the rules so we invented our own rules using the counters - great games there we captured each others units and put em in pow camps then tried to break em out... Now He runs PKG games and the legacy continues. He never made the switch to computer games though unless you count Atari.

[demyansk]

I have the Tactics II game in my house, is this game still fairly common out there?
Good comments

[Mundy]

Good article, Jim. Thanks for that.

[Moltke71]

Thanks, guys.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: gradenko_2000

Realism would ideally be a way to allow "gameplay balance" to fall into one's lap as-is, and make the learning curve easier for players by letting them use actual tactics instead of having to learn the idiosyncrasies of the particular ruleset you're using

Case in point: siege engines in Age of Empires series (AoE2 in particular) are bloody effective against everything. In reality heavy ballista and trebuchet didn't hit broadside of the barn, but in AoE series those make short work of archers and everything else. Love the games anyway.