WW II Strategy

[Lehesu]

What are the best ones? I am not talking RTS "gamey" kinda stuff, with oversimlified rock-paper-scissors. I have tried Blitzkrieg, but found it neat, but a little too clunky with the interface+rts+supply micro-managing. Any other options out there?

[discovery1]

There is Combat Mission Afrika Korps. It seems to be fairly accurate(and hard, even on easy). There is also Hearts of Iron(more grand strategy, you seem into tactical engagements). And there is always Close Combat series, although I suspect the only place you can find it now is the used game bin

[Navaros]

good thing you don't want the RTS type of ones because most of the current ones like that are Starforce-infested ~:rolleyes:

[Mount Suribachi]

You can't go wrong with the old Panzer General series ~:) Turn based strategy on a Hex map. I used to love those games, very very good. Again, you might struggle to find them. Maybe on ebay?

[Divine Wind]

As Discovery has mentioned, take a look at the Combat Mission series. Absolutely fantastic for any WW2 strategy fans out there and if you like realism, then this is definately the game for you. So far they have covered Overlord and the allies invasion of France, Operation Barbarossa and the Eastern front, and the new Afrika Korps, which covers the Northern Africa Campaign. You can buy these in a bundle pack, which i highly recommend.

Find the website here Battlefront (http://www.battlefront.com)

And for everyones enjoyment i will now post a few screenshots.

Four Russian early model T34's advance across a wheatfield.

http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmbb/gallery/images/cmbb05.jpg

Three German Stugs overlook the russian steppe.

http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmbb/gallery/images/bone3.jpg

Two German Stugs and another light tank advance through a forest during winter

http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmbb/gallery/images/SS12.jpg

As general, you command your forces over huge maps, with limitless tactical capabilities.

http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmbb/gallery/images/9km_map.jpg

Defend or attack large cities, which become nothing but a pile of rubble (especially after i send my tanks in ~;) )

http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmbb/gallery/images/rubbled_walls2.jpg

A German SturmTiger overlooks a building exploding

http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmbb/gallery/images/SS1.jpg

German medium panzers advance down a North African road.

http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmak/gallery/images/4.jpg




Hope you liked the pics! I can put up more if you want them. Please note that most of the screenshots are taken from the Barbarossa to Berlin game, which is my favourite mainly due to the tank battles. My advice is go to the website check out the different games, ask a few questions on the forums and purchase which one your most interested in. Good hunting!

[Shahed]

Nice screenies !

here's what i would recommend:

-oops forgot the name but visit www.codemasters.com they have a great one coming out soon-ish
-Great I forgot the name of the second one as well ~:dizzy: it's by a German company and the name has somethign to do with Panzers..actually I think the name is "Panzer/s"...tried the demo few months ago...absolutely brilliant.

[71-hour Ahmed]

Panzer General can be downloaded for free and runs fine on Win XP without bugs... legality is unknown so I won't give a website address in keeping with Org policy...but I found it while searching on google for "Sid Meier Colonization war games" if you're curious.

It is a little scissor-paper-stone though (although I guess real war kinda is) and 10 years old, so... how you find it is up to you. Has some simple resource management and other stuff in addition.

[econ21]

Panzer General, the original, while candidate for my most favorite game of all time, has not aged that well. Primarily, it is a problem of balance - it gets too easy too soon.

However, Panzer General 2, avoids this pitfall and is still graphically pleasing. There is a very healthy mod community for the game - try the wargamer.com site and JPs Panzers message boards. It lacks the epic scale of PG, but on other hand won't have you gaming through the small hours as some of the awesome scenarios (eg Norway, Kiev, the Balkans) in PG can.

[Kraellin]

and for those thinking that combat mission is real time, it isnt. it's turned based. those screenshots somewhat give the impression that it might be real time. i played the basic free trial of combat mission a year or so ago and it was a bit of a struggle understanding how things worked at first, but not too difficult. they use a real 3d terrain with real line of sight, which is quite good, but a bit disconcerting at times because you know where the enemy is at times, but cant shoot at him with a given unit.

i lost horribly in my first few games till i got the hang of things and figured out the mechanics. after that it was ok, but not quite good enough to keep my attention all that long.

i played a good strat wwii bombing game that was pretty good too. i might even go back and play that one again. it was set in europe and turn based, with an overhead look at the map. frankly, i've forgotten the name of thing, and dont see it on my harddrives, but it was pretty good. the whole idea was to bomb the german war machine. planes mostly operated out of england, but i seem to recall you had a few other locations also as the game progressed. you could concentrate on things like oil refineries, ball bearing plants, germany's synthetic oil production or their main factories. it was intereting setting up your bombing runs and then watching the b-17's and b-24's and so on take off at various airfields and as the turns progressed, seeing them fly over their targets and then getting detailed bombing reports aftewards. it might have been by the same folks that make europa universalis.

yes, i liked the panzer general series also. i played those online. quite entertaining. just enough sophistication to be interesting, but not enough to be stodgy about it and bog everyone down in over-detail.

and speaking of europa universalis, i liked number 1, but not the sequel so much. too much slogging through detail for my tastes.

and if you really want to know my all time favorite strat war game, it would have to be 'Empire'. this game was just plain fun. simple. and could be played hot seat with a few friends. and then, after that, the sequel to the same game. i spent hours and hours on the amiga and then on the pc with this game. it's quite dated now, and dont even know if it would run on an xp machine, but i liked that game. there was even an old ascii graphics versions that was around on telnet for a while. havent seen it in years.

K.

[discovery1]

Wow. Thos are some excellent screens. You really caught the game at it's finest.

[Lehesu]

Got the demo for Combat Mission, will try it later this week. Looks promising though!

[Beirut]

Don't forget the air action!

Get a flightstick and buy IL-2 Forgotten Battles. I know some people have no use for flight sims, but if you have a decent machine, or you just turn the settings down, you can fill the air with planes and get a taste of the massive furball fights that characterized the war.

[Crandaeolon]

Steel Panthers: World at War is a great hex-based, top-down, igougo squad-level WW2 strategy game. And, it's a free (but large - 425 megs) download to boot!

Yuck, that sounded almost like an ad or something...

[Kraellin]

got a link for that, crand?

K.

[Kraellin]

and is it just me, or is that tank commander on the road just a bit cross-eyed? ;)

K.

[Lehesu]

The tutorial mission provided was fun, and easy to understand. However, the other scenarios are rather overwhelming. So many units on the field at one time! I can hardly keep track of them all, which is compounded by the fact that I can't understand half of the symbols on the info panel.

[Crandaeolon]

got a link for that, crand?

Ah yes. Oops. :embarassed:

http://www.steelpanthersonline.com/main.asp

Click on the "Download" section. Perhaps also take a glance at the features list first; the download is rather large. ~;)

The 8.2 core game is a free download. The "Megacampaigns" are not free content, but don't worry: the game is absolutely full of scenarios, fan-made campaigns and random generators. You won't run out of things to play!

[Shahed]

I do have the names now:

Panzers ! (http://www.panzers.com)

There is a demo available. I donwloaded it and spent many fun hours playing it. Excellent game, brilliant graphics, awesome sound, plenty of real good tactical applications.

Wartime Command (http://www.codemasters.co.uk/wartimecommand/)

This will most likely be a winner. Possibly a WW2: Total War, with a good level of realism (note the decal on the following image). It's been in development for a while, and they have shown great care to reastically recreating a WW2 battlefield.

http://www.codemasters.co.uk/games/uploadedimages/t3405.jpg

http://www.codemasters.co.uk/games/uploadedimages/pak43_6.jpg

http://www.codemasters.co.uk/games/uploadedimages/inf4.jpg

:idea2:

[Divine Wind]

Wartime Command does look really promising, but the only thing im worried about is the modding. Codemasters havent really released much about the modding capabilities of the game and i hope this isnt one of those games u complete in a day and then leave on the shelf for eternity.

Thats why i enjoy Combat Mission so much as there is a huge modding community and thousands of different tank, infantry, operations, and scenario mods that just keep it interesting.

But still those graphics do look impressive! I'll probably put some money codemasters way :yes:

[Shahed]

For me that game will be multiplayer based. If its any good in MP, which I think it will be, I'll buy it. There has been some positive little details about modding for MP e.g Clans will be able to have their own flags, which will automatically be downloaded (if you choose) to your machine from the server. As such your tanks will be flying your own colors. Theres also been positive feedback on skinnning the models, though that's still not clear how easy it will be to change skins.

Actually I hardly every play Single Player, so I'm only looking for games from a Multiplayer perspective. The only exception is Victoria.

[Kraellin]

thanks crand :) i downloaded it and installed it and played the tutorial mission. not much of a tutorial, though. it didnt explain anything in the way of text helps. yes, it did give the tool tips and that's, i guess, really about all it needed. it's pretty straight-forward.

but i'm a bit puzzled with their logic in the game. why can i shoot several times in one turn with one tank, and not just shoot different weapons, but the main weapon? this seems a bit odd to me. ok, i get that if i shoot a lot in one turn my movement points go down, but why so much shooting allowed in a single turn?

it was fairly fun, but had a couple minor problems with the interface displaying critical data here and there, like did i hit him or not? sometimes it would tell me and sometimes not. if i shoot again, will i be shooting my main gun or the 50 cal? why can i shoot over trees with this gun, i have no line of sight on that tank that i can tell, so why is this one allowing me to shoot through trees?

and figuring out how to shoot the arty was a bit weird also. and i'm not really sure it did shoot, though i did make one successful air strike.

all in all, i'd say the game needs some work, but then, this was all done without reading the manual ;)

at any rate, thanks :)

K.

[Crandaeolon]

You're welcome, Krae. ~:)


but i'm a bit puzzled with their logic in the game. why can i shoot several times in one turn with one tank, and not just shoot different weapons, but the main weapon? this seems a bit odd to me. ok, i get that if i shoot a lot in one turn my movement points go down, but why so much shooting allowed in a single turn?

One turn is a couple of minutes long, so naturally a tank can shoot quite a few times in a couple of mins. When you give a fire order, a unit will usually shoot with all of its weapons, if the enemy is in range. A hex is about 50 meters, so some tanks can shoot 20+ hexes away with their main weapon, but may not be able to use their secondary weapons (machineguns have typically a range of 6-10 hexes.)

You can "toggle" the weapons to use in a firing cycle, for example if you want a tank to use only its main weapon against another tank. I can't remember exactly how it was done, maybe you had to go to the unit information screen or something. But, it's often a good idea to open up with all guns as ineffective hits and even missed gunfire will suppress the target unit. And you just might get lucky and hit a tank's optics or knock out a radio antenna.


did i hit him or not?

You may not have enough spotting ability to determine if the enemy unit has actually been hit (depends on realism settings, IIRC), or it may be an ineffective hit (sound helps to gauge this too.) Just check the information on the enemy unit to see if it has been damaged.


why can i shoot over trees with this gun, i have no line of sight on that tank that i can tell, so why is this one allowing me to shoot through trees?

Since hexes are rather large, tree icons can be a bit misleading. A hex can have several different kinds of terrain, you may be shooting from an elevated position etc. Units _can_ attempt to shoot targets that they can't see, though this is very difficult.


and figuring out how to shoot the arty was a bit weird also. and i'm not really sure it did shoot

Yeah, this one is a bit tricky. You have to designate target hexes for the arty, and an arty strike can take a turn or two to be executed. Better check the manual.


all in all, i'd say the game needs some work, but then, this was all done without reading the manual ;)

Yup, better check the manual if you have the time. Unlike many other game manuals, that one is well written and comprehensive. Just like in CMAK, there's a lot going on under the hood of this game, and it can be a bit overwhelming at times.

[Kraellin]

thanks crand :)

yes, there is a button on the side panel that allows for setting which guns fire or which you shoot with. and yes, i usually just fire away regardless :)

well, i turned the message length on for longer and sometimes i get a message that i hit but with no effect. ok, i got that part. and sometimes i get a report of hitting and damaging or destroying, and that's also fine. it was the shots where i got no message at all that had me curious. were they just misses, which is the likely explanation or did i hit and not get a message? it wasnt real clear. and i couldnt really tell from the sounds, or at least i wasnt sure if they were using sound data to tell you or not. so yeah, maybe read the manual ;) i did like the sounds they used, though.

as for the multiple shots in a turn, i dont really like this. just seems weird to me in a igougo system. and even when i cursored over the target and got a tooltip it wasnt very clear to me which gun(s) were going to be shooting at that percentage chance of hitting. could have been done a bit better.

yeah, could have been a height thing to let me shoot over the trees. i forgot about that part of the game.

i did like that the game was pretty inutitive, even if i didnt like some of the aspects. it was very easy to play, yet fairly sophisticated 'under the hood'. i also thought they could have done the graphics a tiny bit better. the contrast between units and terrain was a bit too similar in places, but i did like that they did smoke and dust effects and that those affected the actual line of sight and game play. i also liked that you could load and unload the halftracks and other units and that crews would abandon destroyed vehicles. it took me a while to figure out that i had to use the shift key to move a halftrack into a troop hex before i could load it, but even that was fairly easy. i questioned their line of sight routines here and there also, but mostly it seemed pretty good. oh, and the tanks ploughing into buildings and wrecking them was a nice touch ;) i may take another look and actually read a bit of the manual next time ;)

K.