Afghanistan '11 Is Great Enough For Its Own Thread

Settle down, Kellyanne. Regardless of whether anyone is playing it, you’ve concluded the game is bad without playing it? I hope you remembered to bend your legs when you made that leap!

Anyway, while it’s my opinion the game is fantastic, we can all agree that a fact is that Afghanistan '11 is playable, despite justaguy2’s weird screeds.

If you ever decide to play the game, you’ll discover that completing a skirmish can take about three or four hours. So, yes, in the game’s first 48 fours, I doubt many people poopsocked their way through 15 to 20 hours of gameplay without quitting a losing mission and starting over. I’ve had a copy of the game for about a week. Not counting the campaign, I’ve played about five games of Afghanistan '11. I’ve completed (i.e. made it to turn 60) one of them. The others I either restarted or ended in political defeat.

Your game should have saved the turn it crashed. I’ve had a few crashes, but I’ve never lost more than one turn. Is your saved game corrupted? Can you not choose “continue” from the main screen.

Well, there are only two levels in Vietnam '65. “Baby level” and “actually playing the game as designed”. I’m surprised to hear that winning twice made you feel it had no replayability. To me, it’s one of those games – along with Afghanistan '11 – where the unit variety and especially the procedurally generated maps gives it a nearly unlimited replayability. If you didn’t feel that way, I doubt there’s anything in Afghanistan '11 that’s going to change your mind.

-Tom

No there were custom levels also. Beyond veteran leve,l you could Increase the VC experience level to elite and decreasing the starting Hearts & Mind value making the game more difficult. The problem was as you played the campaign and got promotions, the higher rank gave you more frequent access to airstrikes. So once you become a Colonel I didn’t find the game very challenging.

Although I do agree the procedurally generated maps were very well done. I like the game, I just didn’t love it like you did. I’m sure at some point I’ll pick up Afghanistan 11

Ah, right, the “baby mode” and “playing for real” in Vietnam '65 were setting presets, right? You could jigger them around for custom difficulties. Afghanistan '11 is different. It has all those custom settings, but it also has four difficulty levels. Right now, their effect is entirely under the hood – ugh – but the designer has said he’ll put in a tooltip that explains their specific effect.

Also, there are four brand new “systems” in Afghanistan '11 that all interact in ways that increase any given game’s variability: random events, elections, turnover, and nation-building.

Yeah, that was a weird carrot to throw into the game, wasn’t it? I guess the addition of weather was supposedly to partly offset it? In the podcast Bruce and I just did with him, the designer said he wasn’t repeating that mistake in Afghanistan '11. I’m not sure he called it a mistake, but he said he specifically avoided that mechanic for this game. Your rank and uniform is just your Steam achievements.

-Tom

Oh, look. Someone else Not playing/

I think I maybe picking this game up sooner rather than later. :D Probably an after I finish my taxes reward for myself.

I think it sounds hard, and serious, and fun. I’m getting it. Though I may start with Vietnam first.

ps --I mean if serious, terrible warfare is “fun.”

I bet he doesn’t have any achievements.

For what it’s worth, you don’t get the achievements until you finish a game. So people starting skirmishes, getting themselves into untenable situations, and restarting – I’d wager that’s about 90% of us – won’t have the achievements to show for it. You gotta ride that game all the way down into the ground!

Still, I’m happy with how my uniform is coming along.

-Tom

I was hoping for a screenshot of the in-game uniform clicking that link :(

I know, right? @tomchick that is not proper uniform display protocol and you know it. Shape up, or ship out soldier!

Better yet, a photo of Tom wearing the Afghanistan '11 cosplay uniform that you know is hanging in his closet right now.

The Royal Marines DLC is out. Before anyone rushes to buy it, however…

I was a beta tester for the base game, which I love. It was my GOTY last year, and testing it was a great experience. Johan was very responsive to both bug reports and tester suggestions.

A few months ago I was invited to test the expansion. The tester pool seemed to be a lot smaller (the ones outside Slitherine, anyway) and the process slower.

The last build I received was back in mid-June, when the beta of the campaign was made available (I had been testing skirmishes up to then). I reported a bug on the official forum, and…nothing. Crickets. Haven’t seen another build or gotten a response in 2 1/2 months, which is why I was surprised a release date was announced last week.

It’s entirely possible the problem I had was solved. I have no idea. The lack of response from Johan makes me wonder how involved he even was in development.

Like I said, Royal Marines may be working as perfectly as any 1.0 at release, but as a wise philosopher once said, my advice to any who would buy it is to tread lightly.

We’ve got a review up if anyone’s interested: https://www.wargamer.com/reviews/review-royal-marines-dlc/

I can’t speak to any bugs as Ian didn’t mention any and I’ve only dabbled (so haven’t encountered any), but essentially there’s a bunch of cool new tools to revitalise skirmish mode somewhat, but none of those new things seem to have made it into the campaign (that we’ve played to date). The campaign as well seems a bit stale in the missions we’ve tried, with less interesting (or out-right annoying) objectives, lazy scene-setting copy etc…

But the extra fun it adds to skirmish out-weighs how lack-lustre the new campaign is in our opinion.

Hope this helps!

That helps. I’m very much on the fence with game. I really like Vietnam 68, Afghanistan 11 was very much more of the same, so it seems like I’m going to be taking a 3rd shot at playing Vietnam 68. On the other hand, I like supporting small independent game developers.

I haven’t tried the new campaign, but I’ve tried a few skirmishes with the DLC. The road blocks do add an interesting wrinkle, though I’m still a little unsure how best to use them. I guess the idea is that you gradually move them outward to shield villages from car bomb attacks while you’re winning them over. The between turn transitions are a little more dramatic because that’s when you actually see what’s happening around the map, various explosions, etc. My one problem is there’s maybe just too much to do now, too many possibilities and choices and approaches. And too many ways in which everything can suddenly go wrong. In vanilla, I always hit a point where I feel overwhelmed by all the things I have to pay attention to and remember, and I start forgetting about units and making stupid mistakes. That moment (unfortunately) seems to hit even earlier with the DLC.

You and me both, along with everyone else who bought the DLC. There is zero documentation about how the roadblock system works.

-Tom

So, from my play of the game and things i’ve read, civilian vehicles get spawned every turn or so at random, and villages will send vehicles to other villages. Some of these vehicles have carbombs in them which will reduce the H&M score for the destination of the carbomb gets there.

The road blocks basically filter out car bombs and sometimes give intel when they do this.

ANP, i’m not sure exactly what spawns them. There’s something about “stationed ANP” but i have two and there don’t seem to be any ANP trucks considered to be stationed at bases. They’re fast, can visit villages on their own, and can set roadblocks with ANA soldiers.

Roadblocks add a little bit more for normal infantry to do, which was quite lacking before the DLC, i’ll give them that- previously, the only thing normal infantry was good for was visiting villages. Now they can man roadblocks and visit villages. Progress. (They’re not very efficient against any kind of enemy unit- the only purpose in engaging infantry against the enemy is to promote ANA to ANASF, and special forces units are much, much more useful than normal infantry for fighting and spotting.)

The only things I’ve been able to figure out thus far re: roadblocks is to study the traffic flow (which is often a pretty bizarre) before placing any. Also, I think moving them around occasionally is a good idea. I’m not 100% sure, but the AI does seem to adapt to existing roadblocks and find alternate routes to bypass them. I still can’t figure out if a roadblock infantry unit is contributing more or less or the same as a village-visiting infantry unit. It seems to depend a lot on luck. Sometimes what looks like a well-placed roadblock will just sit there, gobbling rations. Other times you’ll get a startling number of points from interceptions. They are a headache to resupply, especially when you’re expanding and stretching your lines. A lot of my recent casualties happen the same way, with me forgetting about some distant roadblock until it’s almost out, then (stupidly) racing a ration truck down a route I haven’t cleared in a few turns. I do wish I knew (at minimum) how necessary rb’s really are. I haven’t tried this yet, but is it still possible to win without using them?

Sigh.

J***s Ch***t

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Why now all of sudden? Wasn’t the title clear enough for them?