Should I buy this game?

[benpark]

The Napoleonic TW mod can be found here...

http://www.thelordz.co.uk/


Good for resolving "minitures battles" for those of us without any room, methinks.

[DoomedMantis]

Have you played it? I tried it a few months back and it was buggy, but they were working to improve it.

[benpark]

Yeah-I think it's a great mod. They had updated it fairly recently, so I would be sure to get the latest version.

Forming squares can be a bit of a pain, but overall the game engine seems to taken well to the Napoleonic era.

[Didz]

ORIGINAL: nico71

Interesting that you consider the TW series "wargames". I think that they are rather strategy games and closer to C&C than to anything Matrix has on the list! Don't get me wrong, I like the TW games, but I don't think that they are very realistic. They are nice fun games. The "strategy" part is the usual base building stuff, the tactical part is a nice huge, yet unrealistic 3D-battle!

I consider the TW series much closer to the Wargame concept than say UV which I consider to be a boardgame.

The difference is that TW seeks to accurately model the performance of the troops at an individual level and leave the player to decide how to use them. Thus for instance there was a huge debate about the true capability of mounted knights at which the designers went back to historical evidence and re-enactors to make sure they got it right. Whereas in UV the performance of Japanese battleships was deliberately enhanced beyond historical capability to encourage the AI to use them for bomabardment missions on the grounds that the Japanese did it during the actual campaign and therefore it had to happen in the game.

Both approaches produce a playable game but wargamers like myself would not approve of the latter approach. Our view would be that if the AI cannot complete a bombardment mission successfully with correctly modelled battleship then the issue is with the AI not the battleship.

ORIGINAL: nico71
Anyway, I think there was a mod for MTW somewhere that puts the game into the Napoleonic era IIRC. Futhermore I have read rumors on the TW boards that the successor of Rome will be Napoleonic era.

Yes. I've looked at the Mod but decided to wait for the official release. The Mod doesn't really model Napoleonic tactic's correctly ('squares' have already been mentioned.) Sometimes just for fun I set up skirmish battles on STW with nothing by musketmen and light cavalry and it does quite a good imitation of the horse and musket period. I personally just like seeing all the powder smoke generated.

Sometimes, the AI in MTW even manages to put together a reasonable simulation of column attack which is quite amusing.

[nico71]

Well, MTW was some fun at first, but when I got VI I have shelved the game immediately. Seeing Vikings marching in tight formation like Byzantine Infantry was a show stopper for me! But anyway, the game is aimed towards the casual gamer, not the hardcore wargamer. The battles are unrealistic because there's 1) no fog of war on the battlefield, 2) no order delay (units react instantly) 3) no messengers that deliver orders and no visual signs to issue orders at close range 4) no realistic attrition (battles are way too short and units are wiped out within seconds! Huge battles should last for many hours, if not days. But in MTW they are over within 10-15 mins. All in all a nice game, but by no means a realistic simulation. And I don't think that RTW will be any different. Nevertheless I'm looking forward to it, but only because I think that I have somewhat realistic expectations regarding the realism of the game!

The problems in UV are minor compared to this! The only potential showstopper IMO is the cheating AI! Never played it PBEM and hence I had a lot of frustration!

BTW, I have mentioned Battalia in my last post, but forgot to post the link:

http://peterturcan.smdisp.net/wargames.htm

Maybe this game is for you! Of course there's a catch: no strategic level and no MP! But OTOH realistic sized historical battles with no abstraction! Just fire up the Austerlitz scenario and move the cam across the battlefield! Oh, and you get your squares!

[NimitsTexan]

MTW is ceratainly not a "wargame," at least in the traditional since. It is fun, but, in terms of realism (the most important criteria for a wargame, IMO), it is only marginal.

[Le Tondu]

The simple and the long answer is:



YES!!


Buy it. The fog-of-war of this game is phenomenal. It is a we-go game as it really isn't a real-time or plain olde turn based game.

[Didz]

ORIGINAL: NimitsTexan

MTW is ceratainly not a "wargame," at least in the traditional since. It is fun, but, in terms of realism (the most important criteria for a wargame, IMO), it is only marginal.

I would have to agree with that MTW is way short of being a fully functional wargame. But it is still much closer than any other computer wargame has come and worked. N1813 looks like it might have stolen the prize but unfortuantely was badly implemented.

For me the key criteria for a wargame is that it seeks to model actual unit potential rather than recreate actual historical events. Boardgames have always sought to abstractly recreate actual history which is what most computers games try to do. Wargames however should merely seek to lay down the ground rules and let the plays decide what happens next.

[donkuchi19]

Prisoners just seem to be handled by the game. I haven't had to do anything with them. I didn't actually play the game by using miniatures but I did click on the option to see what it gives you. It tells you what units are there with their strengths, morale, and rest I status I think. It also tells you what sort of terrain but not a terrain set up. It doesn't tell you where to start troops either. It then saves the game and quits to desktop. When you reload, it asks you the results and you need to input how each unit ended up.

As a note, the next battle, it automatically went to the miniatures resolution without asking. This was also a battle where I was attacking as the French. The battle after that was with the French defending and it asked for my input again. After that, I could resolve the battle with the given tactics.

(I do have Frank Hunters ACW and it is similar but shorter and not so much attention to what needs to be produced or how units are equipped.)

[Rasputitsa]

I have 'Campaigns of the Grande Armee 1805-1809' direct form ADANAC, patched to version 1.14 with map upgrades. Is this Matrix version any different, or give significant improvements over the original issue. [&:]

[Didz]

ORIGINAL: donkuchi

As a note, the next battle, it automatically went to the miniatures resolution without asking. This was also a battle where I was attacking as the French. The battle after that was with the French defending and it asked for my input again. After that, I could resolve the battle with the given tactics.

Hmm! Thats sounds like a bug. The fact that you chose to play one battle with miniatures should not mean you want to play them all that way. In fact ideally it should be possible to go back and change your mind, after all you might have hoped to play the battle on the tabletop and then been unable to arrange the event.

Fog Of War

I was interested to see several people suggesting that wargames without a FOW option are unrealistic. This is true in historical terms of course but traditionally wargames have rarely bothered with the issue mainly because of the difficulties of organisation. I have only played one miniatures game with full fog of war which required three rooms and a team of umpires to acheive.

When the computer came along the assumption was that our problems would be solved because the computer could keep three different versions of the situation in memory and act as an impartial umpire to boot. Unfortunately, that has proved to be a sad dissappointment. Instead of providing a more realistic wargame solution what has actually happened is that boardgames which traditional gave no thought to FOW at all moved in and monopolised the market. At first the only benefit sought by computerising a boardgame was to save the time required to lay out all the little cardboard counters and to provide a means of saving a game without the risk of the cat or a strong breeze redeploying your forces. But a more recent development is the mistaken belief that hiding counters from the players somehow constitutes a representation of the FOW. In fact hiding counters from the player merely hides counters from the player it doesn't model the FOW at all, except in a very abstract sense of making the game difficult to play and preventing the player from spotting the flaws in the AI.

FOW is not just a lack of information but a lack of proper action necessary to acquire the information, thus to deny a player information whilst not providing him with the means to determine how much information he would like to have is not modelling the FOW its just arbitarily keeping the player in the dark.

A good example is actually CAW which required the player to establish his own search patterns and search priorities thus giving the player the ability to influence the FOW and the need to assess the search reports and decide which were accurate and which false.

Likewise in a moderated refight of the 1812 campaign generals were allowed to use their ADC's historically to scout terrain and lead reconnaisance patrols with the specific objective of acquiring information. In one instance ADC's were sent to borrow a boat, row across a river, and question villagers on the far bank about French troop movements as well as seize any local mail or newsheets for gossip or intelligence.

FOW should also include not just lack of information but misinformation deliberately provided by the enemy to lead their opposition astray.

To merely hide the unit counters and claim to have enhanced the accuracy of the game is a gross overstatement of the acheivement and probably no more accurate than leaving all the counters visible and claiming that both sides have good intelligence services.

[NimitsTexan]

UV handles fog of war very realistically. The amount and accuracy of information on enemy units (or the fact that there are enemy units at all) is dependent on air searches and ground and sea contact.

Fog of war is something that cannot be precisely simulated, at least at a operational level or above, since it depends entirely too much on random factors. I know professional wargames (i.e. those used by the military) tend to simply ignore most of the intangible factors of warfare (morale, etc) while fog of war is implmented simply by not allowing any information on units wherabouts or composition not gained through active or passive intelligence gathering and reconnaissance; but on the other hand even in these "games" there are large staffs devoted entirely to the gathering, sifting, and dissimination of intelligence, something a player playing as a general/admiral in computer game cannot and generally does not want to be bothered with. For mass-market computer games, alot of what goes into fog of war, and its counterpart, intelligence, cannot be simulated without over-burdenning the player or attempting to simulate to many levels of warefare simultaneously. Active deception, for example, is an infrequent occurance that, when it does happen, is generally at the small scale tactical level (flying a flag of a neutral ship) or a grand strategic level (creating Patton's dummy army) and therefore beyond the realm of the operational and theater strategic level of most computer wargames.

[Didz]

ORIGINAL: NimitsTexan

UV handles fog of war very realistically. The amount and accuracy of information on enemy units (or the fact that there are enemy units at all) is dependent on air searches and ground and sea contact.

Thats a matter of opinion. UV hides units (only the enemies, incidently) but allows the player no ability to direct search efforts or intercept incoming threats. Thus it denies the player the ability to influence the effectiveness of his battlefield intelligence. About the only units which can be assigned to specific patrol area's are the submarines but the effectiveness of these is negated by the lack of TF intercepts. There is no input from radio monitoring, coastwatchers or spies and no option to increase or decrease search patterns in specific area's.

Compared to other games its a pretty poor implementation of FOW. CAW for instance did a much better job albiet at a much lower level of detail.

[NimitsTexan]

You're blurring the fine but very present distinction between FOW and intelligence gathering and denyal, two related but different aspects of warfare. The first is the ever present friction and chaos of combat naturally resulting from the natural lack of information on one's own forces, those of the terrain, and the environment and terrain in which one is fighting. I game can simulate one aspect (or part of it) very well without necessarily simulating the others. To my knowledge, very few wargames of any kind (possibly outside of some proffessional simulations) have attempted to simulate friendly fog of war, assuming that the average wargamer would be unduly frustrated by his resulting inability to influence events in any coherent manner.

Besides, commanders at the operational and theater strategic level (the level of command UV) rarely were involved in setting exact patrol routs. Personally, I am glad that UV automates much of this, and sometimes wish it automated more.

[Didz]

ORIGINAL: NimitsTexan

You're blurring the fine but very present distinction between FOW and intelligence gathering and denyal, two related but different aspects of warfare.

FOW is the product of all these factors combined and to model merely one aspect without also allowing for the others is no more accurate than simulating neither. The one appraoch provides too much information, the other too little. The only difference arising being quality of gameplay.

Just for the record I am downloading this game now.

[Halsey]

[&o]

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Halsey

I think you are missing Matrix's approach to UV. Playing against the AI is meant as a training ground. UV is supposed to be played PBEM

This is absolutely wrong. UV was designed as a game that could be played either head-to-head or against the AI. Its primary defect is the AI, which acts (incompetently) not only as opponent, but as your subordinate commanders, as well.

We players have evolved the idea that PBEM is the way to play UV, not because that was its original intention, but because that is the only way this game can survive as anything describable as anything other than "silly."

[Didz]

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

We players have evolved the idea that PBEM is the way to play UV, not because that was its original intention, but because that is the only way this game can survive as anything describable as anything other than "silly."

Amen to that.

Though I think the problems with UV go beyond the AI per see. Although a better AI would help.

My own view is that the ratio between the ground and time scales chosen is fundementally flawed. This results in units moving far too far in a single game turn creating a problem for interception and player intervention. If the game had been bigger this might have worked but UV barely covers the area of one engagement and having TF's jumping 20+ hexes per turn causes major problems.

Secondly, and coupled with the above is the failure of the program to track and act on interceptions along a units route. In other words not only does a TF or Air unit intercept check at the end of a20+ hex jump and fails to note anything the units passes or flies over in between. This results in absurd situations where TF's sail right through the enemy without spotting them and Air attacks fly right past enemy TF's bombarding your base to attack something insignificant 400 miles away.

The designers attempt to justify this with the catch all excuse of FOW but in reality its a game flaw. I only hope they correct it for War in the Pacific.

Incidently, the reason these flaws are not a problem in PBEM is that both players are affected to the same degree. In single player the AI has a distinct advantage because it knows what it plans to do with your units.

On a more positive note, I'm pleased to see that CotD breaks its turns down into 1 hour pulses and so presumably interceptions are being done at various points during game turn. I certainly don't get the impression of CotD units leap froggng over each other during movement. But then the ground and time scale ratio is more balanced anyway so the issue would probably not be serious even if they didn't