Best WWII RTS for dummies

[Beirut]

Howdy,

For someone who finds the rules and subtleties of Risk to be a mental challenge, what is a good WWI or WWII RTS or turn based game?

I read, years ago, that one of the Panzer General games was great for people with no brains, yet a desire to fart around in the genre.

Any suggestions happily received.

Thanks. :)

[Veho Nex]

Company of Heroes doesnt require a tactical genius. Pretty much like starcraft and dawn of war mixed together. Thats about all I can think of for dummies.

There are also games like Hearts of Iron, Men of War, or Theater of War, but those require a bit of know how and tactical want.

[econ21]

I find it hard to stomach any traditional RTS games like Company of Heroes.

For turn-based, Panzer General could be my favorite computer game of all time (was also my first, so maybe there's a first love kind of bias there). The original has not aged that well (scenarios take a while to play out and get too easy three or four victories down the campaign tree), but it looks like the Lordz have created a modern version - Panzer Corps, advertised here - that might be worth checking out.

I still play Panzer General 2 every year or so. It's faster paced and has better graphics than the original (although much less epic in scale). Make sure to check out some of the mods - especially low prestige equipment files (which make elite gear more expensive) and some of the user made campaigns (especially Miller blitz, which extends the original German campaign to last the entire war). It's great beer and pretzel's fare - quite respectable AI, exceptionally well balanced campaigns, nice combined arms tactics, the hook of gaining experience and upgrades for your core plus the addition of random leaders and prototypes during the campaigns.

[PanzerJaeger]

Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy.

[Centurion1]

^ he plays it all the damn time.

Panzer literally thinks he is living in WW2.

[CBR]

Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy.

I would not call that game for dummies though...

[Drunk Clown]

Company of Heroes doesnt require a tactical genius.

You should go to gamereplays and then strat forums, you'll be astonished by the tactics given there. I can know, my brother is a strat specialist and you wouldn't believe how much he has written about tactics or helping other players.

If you go in with that mentality you'll never win for example against my brother or other better players, who know what they are doing.

[gaelic cowboy]

here is a list of games from wikipedia list of ww2 RTS games

Hearts of Iron is very steep learning curve avoid it for now.

Company of heroes is like the Dawn of War games in my view not a bad one to try first.

[Beirut]

Thank you all.

[Montmorency]

Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy.

Combat Mission is hard. Also, Barbarossa to Berlin is the best.

Easy WW2 RTS.

[Komutan]

Battlefield Academy is probably the easiest turn-based WW2 game to learn:

http://www.slitherine.com/games/bbc_ba_pc