Norm Koger's The Operational Art of War

[Azathoth]

Have ANY of you ever played ANY of these games? :undecided:

[econ21]

Yes, back in the day. They were very ambitious, but I never got very into them. A little too much like the dry old board wargames I played as a youth - lacking the fire and thunder of modern computer games. They were also a little rough round the edges with rather rudimentary AI and funky stuff like my UK Armored Divisions evaporating when I tried to move away from Caen, my Pattons being impervious to Chinese attack etc. I know it was revised on a lot, but that typically broke lots of the earlier scenarios and left me at a loss.

I preferred Norm's Age of Rifles - I had lots of fun with that, especially the Napoleonic user-made mods. To be honest, I am not sure NTW will top them. I wonder what Norm Koger has been up to since TOAW?

[Azathoth]

Well, TOAW 3 is a huge improvement, and the newer scenarios are often better and more detailed than the old ones, some of which were updated in the Classic TOAW scenario section. New scenarios are being made every day - there's Late Roman Empire and LOTR scenarios, hypothetical Civil War and WW2 scenarios (including the massive Europa 1947), and so on. There's really hundreds of scenarios for TOAW III and ACOW (which is almost fully compatible with TOAW III), and many TOAW I scenarios have been converted, even if they don't work well. One of the biggest additions (in 2007) was the BioEditor, which allows for the creation of any new equipment you want. The AI was improved, though it does badly in "large" scenarios (but the best way to play is really PBEM with the TOAW community). The release of a 3.4 patch that will fix a number of bugs and add several new features is imminent.