What Are You Playing These Days?

[JC]

Myself:
1) Having a hard time unglueing myself from Strike Fighters 2 North
Atlantic
2) Getting a hang of Crusader Kings II, liking it more and more as my
virtual dinasty grows poorer
3) Mesmerized at the gaming goodness of Gary Grigsby's War in the East
- Don to the Danube expansion
4) Having a strange retro-gaming phase that makes me to play SSG's
Battles in Normandy
5) Feeling very scared about about Combat Mission BfN Commonwealth
Forces new area of operations (open terrain is not that cool when you
are a bad tactician!)
6) Nerve wracked after flying and fighting with my Ka-50 near Kutaisi
(debrief coming soon to the blog)
7) Ending plans to attack the Takistani Army outpost (ArmA 2)

Cheers,

[Johan S]

I'm playing Arma 2, as always. There are such a huge amount of things to do and hardware to play around with that it seems impossible to get bored with this sim. I am also playing the Total War - Fall of the Samurai Multiplayer Beta, in anticipation of its release next Friday.

I have read some reviews complaing about SF2 - North Atlantic being extremely buggy. What's your experience JC? You seem to like it very much anyway?

[Doug Miller]

Thanks to you and your blog JC, I'm lighter in the wallet and heavier on new games than I've been in awhile!

Lately I've been playing:

• AGEOD's Napoleon's Campaign's, though I grew somewhat frustrated by this and kind of wished I'd picked up Rise of Prussia instead,
• Spent most of last weekend playing Victoria II A House Divided as the Prussians.  Very interesting game I know I'll go back to once I'm past my current WWII phase again,
• Combat Ops: Battles from the Bulge which is beyond a doubt on my the best games I've ever played.  I just completed reading the section in Cole's Ardennes: The Official History of the Battle of the Bulge covering the initial attack at Hofen, which is the scenario I've played through a few times recently.  I was surprised to find that even my worst showing was better than what actually happened for the Germans.
• Combat Mission Battle for Normandy, which I'm just getting into thanks to JC's blog posts.  This game is a lot better than I initially thought it was going to be - to me it looked like a Company of Heroes rip-off.  It isn't that at all, and is really an excellent game.
• Demos of several games including Histwar and one of John Tiller's Panzer Campaign games.  Haven't had much time with these, but looking forward to them.  From what I've read about recent updates to Histwar, this is probably my next purchase.

Love the blog JC!

[Dimitris]

Whenever possible, I dwelve in WinSPMBT, Armored Brigade and GCB2. The last two have just released two big updates so worth checking out again.

-D 

[JC]

Hi Johan,

Sorry for the lack of response. I had a very bad week/cold. :(

Total War, I need to get back into that franchise. Looks like Shogun 2
is the one for me.

SF2 has some serious issues in the campaign, so I am keeping myself
within single missions. I'm liking the moderate realism and the
totally flat learning curve. SimHQ had a very good review recently.

Cheers,

[JC]

Thanks for the post, Doug.

You have a great palate and a very fine selection of fun going on
there!

Note to myself: HistWar's icon needs to be clicked!

Cheers,

On Mar 22, 11:11 pm, Doug Miller <demil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks to you and your blog JC, I'm lighter in the wallet and heavier on
> new games than I've been in awhile!
>
> Lately I've been playing:
>

>    - AGEOD's Napoleon's Campaign's, though I grew somewhat frustrated by

>    this and kind of wished I'd picked up Rise of Prussia instead,

>    - Spent most of last weekend playing Victoria II A House Divided as the

>    Prussians.  Very interesting game I know I'll go back to once I'm past my
>    current WWII phase again,

>    - Combat Ops: Battles from the Bulge which is beyond a doubt on my the

>    best games I've ever played.  I just completed reading the section in

>    Cole's *Ardennes: The Official History of the Battle of the Bulge* covering

>    the initial attack at Hofen, which is the scenario I've played through a
>    few times recently.  I was surprised to find that even my worst showing was
>    better than what actually happened for the Germans.

>    - Combat Mission Battle for Normandy, which I'm just getting into thanks

>    to JC's blog posts.  This game is a lot better than I initially thought it
>    was going to be - to me it looked like a Company of Heroes rip-off.  It
>    isn't that at all, and is really an excellent game.

>    - Demos of several games including Histwar and one of John Tiller's

[JC]

Dimitris!

WinSPMBT? You surprised me there! :)

[Dimitris]

Why so? We even used it on the E-88 mini-battles way back (http://warfaresims.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=38).

-D

[JC]

That's hardcore, sir. Kudos. :)

> > WinSPMBT? You surprised me there! :)- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Johan S]

No problem JC, though all replies are of course appreciated, you shouldn't feel like you're obliged to answer everything, and especially not immediately. What you said about SF2 I can repeat about Total War. Moderate realism and a pretty flat (though not at all non existing, every new game seems to be adding features and getting deeper) learning curve. Still tons of fun, and realistic enough to give some insights into historical warfare in the eras covered. They can be quite time consuming though, you can easily sink hundreds of hours into them.

[Anthony Mercando]

The latest Total War added railroads in (Fall of the Samurai) as well
as indirect fire artillery and gatling guns.  A big deal for a game
series like TW.  In a few multiplayer campaigns I've played I've
longed for a way to get my Russians at Paris faster than eight turns
of travel.  While I understand that it takes a long time to get an
army across Europe, I'd like to see a WWI game that isn't all
operational boxes and turn based combat.  Total War might not be
completely realistic, but I've seen a lot of people actually delve
into history through the games, which is a good thing.




Arma 2's still the priority game, whenever I can find eight other guys
we play a game (Which is often) and lately we've been focusing on fire
drills and leadership trainings--Though we're thinking of going air
assault soon and doing some close-up chopper infils.
Wargame: European Escalation's been amazingly fun to play.  It's
streamlined so that you can simply click move/attack but has weapon
enabling/disabling (To tell your recon units to hold fire while an
enemy convoy drives by), fast movement options (Prioritize roads to
get your tanks in faster to counter an enemy attack or at least not
watch them get stuck in the mud or get detracked in woods), attack
move commands (to react to contact on the way to their destination),
attack ground commands (Mainly for artillery, but excellent to roast
enemy infantry out of cities with flamethrowers) as well as a few
other commands (Changing chopper altitudes).  It's been interesting.
 One of our guys has specialized his army to raid enemy logistics and
indirect fire bases, another's focused on air assaults to raid the
enemy second line, and I've made my armies from old TOEs I dug up.
 Pretty cool when you can use a FC from '86 to craft a regimental
cavalry troop in a game--and have it work well.

[Doug Miller]

I've spent this weekend jumping between Longbow's Hegemony Gold for some ancient Greek RTS play, the new Wargame: European Escalation, and the Matrix re-issues of the Talonsoft Napoleon and ACW games.  

Wargame: EE is a ton of fun, and a lot deeper than the "mainstream game" marketing would suggest.  The AI is decent, and unlike a lot of more modern RTS style games will punish you if you don't use decent tactics.  Engagement ranges are realistic and the unit database is crammed full of detail.  I miss the ability to pause the game to issue orders, but the pace is such that it isn't a crippling flaw.

Amazing the value in these Tiller games!  Between the included scenarios and the mass of stuff available online, there's got to be thousands of hours of playing here.  While I enjoy playing the huge, well-known battles, I find the smaller engagements of the campaigns the most interesting.