Matrix Games Forums

Looking at Battelfields screenshots, and thinking about TAOW type games and many other board wargames of the past.

Has anyone ever designed a computer game where the top unit had the combined stats of all the units stacked with it?

IE: You have say an 8-4-4 armor, a 4-4-4 infantry, a 4-2-2 artillery as examples and the top unit would show 16-10-2(s)? The (s) would let the player know it is a stack total.

I think this would make it easier to see odds vs an attack or defence at a glance if something like this was done, instead of having to cycle through all the units and work them up in ones head.

I think I have seen games though where you click on a stack and then hover the mouse over an opponents unit and it shows combat odds, have I not?

I don't recall any that have done that. Not a bad idea though.

V for Victory had a system like that.

Hearken back to the boardgames of old, the ones from Avalon Hill we know and love! The shot below from Battles in Normandy (BiN) will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever played an old hex based wargame.





In this opening turn of the Breakout scenario, the US forces at the top are trying to overwhelm the Axis defenders at the bottom. In the OLD days we would have to go through ALL the stacks, lifting the counters, adding the factors up in our heads to see how our attack shaped up. THEN we'd have to lift all the DEFENDER stacks to see how many defense factors they have and then mentally do the math to figure out the combat odds...

In BiN you just ask the Combat Advisor (CA) what's available and he shows you this:





GREEN odds mean an overrun is possible and that's an excellent thing to have! An overrun is not entirely odds based as you can see a yellow 10-1 SE of three green 10-1s--this means either that you can't get enough basic odds for the overrun or the enemy defense has prevented the possibility of an overrun.

(NOTE! You can get the odds on any SINGLE one of these combats--moving units to take one attack may preclude you getting the odds for another attack. You have to refresh the CA to see if you've made things better or worse after your first attack. Worse because you may have moved a unit out of position, better when you open up a flanking attack on a unit that wasn't available before!)

Click on an enemy stack and the CA will highlight the units needed to make the attack:





and when you click on an individual unit, it will actually show you where it needs to move to gain the stated attack odds:





Now the CA is NOT perfect and a sharp human player will frequently be able to do more than the CA suggests or do it with a better use of material by factor counting. The patch to BiN added some hotkeys, one of which IS stack attack value:





which shows the total AF of that stack. The dots represent 'shock' factors usually associated with armor and you want to get more shock in an attack than the defender has anti-tank. So we see we have 3 shock units around and want to make sure one of them gets in the attack. (Which we are doing since it's a high-value AF unit.)

In case you're wondering, the yellow bar means that there is an ELITE unit in the stack; you want to add an Elite unit to your combats to gain a combat shift.

Another hotkey added shows your stack defense value:





where here the dots represent the maximum anti-tank value (derived from best unit plus native terrain value) in the hex, the light blue bar means no unit in the stack in entrenched and the dark blue bar means that someone in the hex is entrenched. Entrenching usually ups the defense factors which is why the DFs here are higher than the AFs.

Entrenching and having enough combat steps OR the right terrain means you can't be overrun:



where the grey dots are hexes which CANNOT be overrun, the green ones CAN potentially be overrun and the amber dots with a V in it have NO combat unit--just support units or arty and so are Very Vulnerable to being attacked and killed on a special CRT.

Since these new keys were added with the first patch I can play a LOT faster then before: Light up the CA and note where I want my attacks to target, find my good attacking Armor and lift the defending stacks I want to attack to determine their AT total, move in and make my attacks and after all attacks on the front are done, check the defense totals and vulnerability and move units to spread the defense around!

Now if it seems like this is an ad for BiN... [:D] I'm just answering the question!

Disclaimer: I AM an SSG beta-tester, but my only real incentive is to get people to buy BiN and visit Run5 http://www.ssg.com.au and sign-up to play in the tournies we hold! We're in an Ardennes tourny now, but a new one on one of the Normandy scenarios is due to start soon...

Whew! Impressive!

I had no idea! [&o]

Absolutely awesome. I can't believe I never picked that game up. With virtual PC running DOS, Win95, Win98 along with my normal XP...no game is out of my realm for playing. Thank you VERY much for the detailed post!

Thanks pterrok that's basically what i was looking for. Any other games with this feature you know of?

ORIGINAL: Bluestew0

Absolutely awesome. I can't believe I never picked that game up. With virtual PC running DOS, Win95, Win98 along with my normal XP...no game is out of my realm for playing. Thank you VERY much for the detailed post!

Those are screenshots from a new game. Battles in Normandy. There is a forum on this site as the game is published my MAtrix.

So it runs fine in XP>

ORIGINAL: wodin

Those are screenshots from a new game. Battles in Normandy. There is a forum on this site as the game is published my MAtrix.

Well damn, color me stupid. I didn't realize that....I will investigate immediately. Thanks!

Do players really want all that assistance? might as well let the computer play itself and go and have a few beers!

ORIGINAL: Dave Ferguson

Do players really want all that assistance? might as well let the computer play itself and go and have a few beers!

I'm not a "gamer" in the truest sense of the word. I've never hassled over rules, fretted over a bad dice roll, or even cared about whether I win or lose. I guess I'm a "simulationer"... I want the experience of the event.

Accordingly, I generally prefer to do without precise calculations of odds. I'll make my tactical decisions and then back off if the odds are obviously suicidal, but I don't want to make those decisions purely on the basis of a computer flashing a hex and telling me "overrun HERE... overrun HERE!". If I don't see it myself, then I miss the opportunity - just like in real life.

The joy of computers is getting away from playing tedious number games like we used to do with the Avalon Hill "classics"... remember the "soak off" attacks? And the rules lawyers who would count and count - plotting out every turn to perfection (while I yawned and resolved never to play a wargame with a guy again).

Maybe that's why I love the old Talonsoft Battleground series. You just learned what worked and what didn't by trying it on the battlefield. Oh, the manual had the combat results tables somewhere, but very little popping up in the game to evaluate your statistical chance of success with every attack. Lee at Gettysburg didn't have a little results table popping up before he made his disastrous attack on the Union center. He made a judgement call based on limited intelligence about the Union strength (and a misapprehension of the effectiveness of artillery and rifled musket fire over an open field).

Sorry to ramble, but I prefer realistic feedback, not precise statistical tables.

Hi, That is exactly the way I play. I don't spend anytime at all figuring odds. I move what I think will be enough and then attack. (Often I find out I have grossely under estimated the enemy strength) This happens to me over and over. My response is then to look for more troops. If I find them I send them in to turn the tide. If I don't have them I withdraw and regroup. Very sheldom do I succeed the first try because I keep on always under estimating the enemy. But I can't force myself into using a calculator before I go.
I guess I even enjoy getting into a mess and then out of it.
I'm sure a great many of my opponents spend a lot of time scratching their heads after 25,000 of my troops assault 100,000 of theirs. (my recon reported 10k) (Guess I should have conducted more recon)
I would not even bother with a game that told me in advance an attack would fail or over whelm the enemy.

while I yawned and resolved never to play a wargame with a guy again).

Never? Awwwww, and I wanted to play you in a game of "FEUDAL" by AH.

excellent stuff. This needs to be stickyed? to the BIN forum. Please?

ORIGINAL: Dave Ferguson

Do players really want all that assistance? might as well let the computer play itself and go and have a few beers!

You CAN set the game to be AI vs AI and sit back and watch what it does! [:D]

The Combat Advisor came about as they were developing the AI and wanted to see what it was doing, so they let the players see it, too. Now there is a big argument about the AI in BiN (as in most war games), some people DO lose to it whereas most hard-core gamers will beat it even on the hardest setting.

ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn

Accordingly, I generally prefer to do without precise calculations of odds. I'll make my tactical decisions and then back off if the odds are obviously suicidal, but I don't want to make those decisions purely on the basis of a computer flashing a hex and telling me "overrun HERE... overrun HERE!". If I don't see it myself, then I miss the opportunity - just like in real life.

The joy of computers is getting away from playing tedious number games like we used to do with the Avalon Hill "classics"... remember the "soak off" attacks? And the rules lawyers who would count and count - plotting out every turn to perfection (while I yawned and resolved never to play a wargame with a guy again).

Um, not to be too rules lawyerly here, but the first paragraph says you don't want the precise calculation of odds whereas the second paragraph says you want the computer to get you away from the tedious number calculations! [:D]

These are TOOLS, you don't have to use them if you don't want to--but they make it a lot easier to execute your STRATEGY. The tactics used by the best players DO devolve into factor counting and soak-offs. (But if you never played the old games you wouldn't realize WHY I was launching a deliberate 1-2 attack!)

FWIW, I'll get my PBEM turns done one a night for all the games I have going so you need never see what's going on behind the curtain, as it were. When I DID play AH games face-to-face I played faster out of courtesy to the other player. (Unless we realized we could both be getting deep into minutita and had lots of time! Which was the usual case since my major opponent was my brother...)

ORIGINAL: Mogami

I would not even bother with a game that told me in advance an attack would fail or over whelm the enemy.

To each his own, then--you don't play chess I take it? Though in point of fact, in BiN you DON'T know if your attack will fail or overwhelm the enemy--usually just that you have a CHANCE. BiN keeps a 6-sided die roll combat resolution system and there are probabilities associated with that--it's NOT a pure information/resolution situation. DON'T read the articles in my sig line because the statistics would put you into a coma! [:'(]

But again, statistics are just a tool which can be used to help predict the future--like knowing basic blackjack strategy helps you in Las Vegas!


Ravinhood, I have Fuedal by 3M before it was bought by AH. I was a kid and I actually painted all the figures. I wonder if that makes it more or less valuable on ebay?

Anyway, since I spend all my time on BiN (and it's predessor, Korsun Pocket) I don't get out much anymore! i.e. play other games. So I'm not sure if anyone else has such a feature. If the game features hexes and stacks of units, though, it SHOULD have it.

I AM probably going to get Gary Grigsby's World at War, though. But my system is so old I might not meet the minimum requirements! And if I am able to play it, I'll only be able to play PBEM as Joel indicated the turn times for the AI on systems WAY faster than my 700 MHz machine![:)]

In a simplistic way those old soak off attacks simulated a real military purpose. flank guards! At least the player had to take some note of enemy units which might intervene in the attack, and allocate troops to deal with that threat. I am not sure if this happens much in turn based computer games but I remember TOAW having local/tactical reserves which IIRC was usually switched off by players wishing to make their own mistakes.

makes it more or less valuable on ebay?

less

always best to have the counters unpunched, the map never unfolded, the rules never read

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

while I yawned and resolved never to play a wargame with a guy again).

Never? Awwwww, and I wanted to play you in a game of "FEUDAL" by AH.

Actually, I HAVE a copy of that!

For you... an exception... come on over! (I choose dark blue for my army). [:D]

Actually, I HAVE a copy of that!

For you... an exception... come on over! (I choose dark blue for my army).

Hehe, I thought you might have a copy of that. Most women I've known that I could get to play a wargame with me, always seemed to like playing FEUDAL.

I wish it were an email computer game. I always enjoyed playing it also, with it's lil minatures.

ORIGINAL: Dave Ferguson

In a simplistic way those old soak off attacks simulated a real military purpose. flank guards! At least the player had to take some note of enemy units which might intervene in the attack, and allocate troops to deal with that threat. I am not sure if this happens much in turn based computer games but I remember TOAW having local/tactical reserves which IIRC was usually switched off by players wishing to make their own mistakes.

Sure, I don't deny that in terms of that game system, "soak offs" played a realistic function in simulating diversion attacks and so forth. However, with some people the games deteriorated into an unrealistic series of my "1-4 battalion" soaks off against your "15-4 Division" while my "8-6 Division" attacks your "2-4 battalion" - I lose the "1-4", ELIM or D Back 2 your "2-4" and thus force you to attack my doubled "8-6" (it's on an imaginary rough terrain hex) with your "15-4" or else you must withdraw from your wonderful defensive position by default... that is, unless your opponent still has a small unit sitting in the stack (or adjacent) that I can attack at high odds while using my own "1-6" (if I have one) to attack the enemy main force and thus putting the opponent in the situation of having to attack or fall back...

Unless there are more disposable small units sitting around, in which case this numbers game continues.

It may make for a good "game" and it may be a test of mental skill and acuity, but it's a real stretch to justify any of this as a realistic simulation.

Ah, but the AH Classics were based on this sort of thing, not sweeping strategies, just perfect setups and defenses that became very ritualized for the "pros". I never played any of those games that way. One of my few games against a live opponent involved AH Waterloo. I defied standard strategies and sent all of my French reserve cavalry through the woods west of Quatre Bras and then launched a massed 2-1 odds assault against a stack of Allied unis and destroyed them on a roll of "1" D-ELIM. They guy quit the game in a huff because I wasn't playing "fair". Well, to each their own... I never played that game face to face again [:D]

As for TOAW (and COW), it does have that "Plan a Battle" aid that shows your odds as you select more units to support the attack, but you don't have to use it to set up an attack. It does come in handy though, just to see what units are attacking and defending and to coordinate your artillery and air support. So, yea, I violate my own philosophy at times (BAD Girl!). [:'(]