Neat, thank you. I will say that’s a fairly confusing description and seems to indicate almost the opposite of what the feature is supposed to be, per my understanding! Par for the course for wargames manuals, I suppose.
from an older version but basically the same…a discussion on it.
Are we actually thinking a Tiller game will provide the ability to do anything intelligently except attack a static defense? :)
I know, I know, I’ll just whistle and pretend…
You have a lot of opportunities to deploy that image! I’m not ruling out PBEM, but I’m not counting on it, either…
So I finally decided to dive in over this Christmas break and try out Command Ops 2. I’m definitely on the less hardcore end of wargamers but I’m loving this system. I just finally finished the tutorial scenario after restarting it about a dozen times.
I’ll dig through the other freebie scenarios but my question is which of the DLC is the next best bet? I’m looking for more scenarios around the same size as the tutorial one. Wondering if there’s a good mix of smaller and larger scenarios.
Do I just bite the bullet and get all the modules? Or is there a good one for someone dipping their toe in? I’m not too set on one theatre/time, but I think one of the Greece ones or the Market Garden are my frontrunners so far.
I bought the Commander Pack way back but have never played anything beyond Return to St. Vith except for this, which was just updated: https://forums.lnlpublishing.com/resources/pegasus-bridge.204/
It’s free and quite, quite good. You should download it.
Actually, I’m pretty sure I read about it in this thread.
Like most wargames, the best thing to do is to get them all! The second best thing is to get a scenario about a period you are interested in and know at least a little about. That goes a long way. The third best is to pick and choose based on arbitrary criteria provided by some random person on the internet. Going on a pack by pack breakdown (using the steam version titles):
Vol. 1: Highway to the Reich: This is a repack of maps from an older version of the game in the new engine. It has a good mix of large and small scenarios, is an interesting theatre but the mission design is not as good as later maps.
Vol. 2: Foothills of the Gods + Vol. 5: The Cauldron. These are a repack of maps from another older version “Conquest of the Aegean”. Same caveat as with HTTR above. These are mostly small scenarios which I find a bit boring tbh. But on the other hand, this is the only game that will let you play as New Zealanders fighting Germans for control of the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece.
Vol. 3: Ride of the Valkyries + Vol. 4: Bastogne. These are the maps from Command Ops 1. I think the mission design of these has improved - eg vp locations feel better placed to allow a push/pull struggle over the battlefield, but these are almost all large scenarios that re-use the same maps quite a lot.
Vol. 6: Knock on All Doors + Vol.7: Westwall. These are pure Command Ops 2 maps. KOAD is interesting in that it has a lot of ‘what if’ scenarios about different scenarios leading up to the Battle of the Bulge - but they are all pretty big scenarios. Westwall is probably my favourite module that has a good mix of small and large scenarios, are well designed and interesting to play.
Very odd. When I search the pdf I have for Campaign: Gettysburg I don’t see that. Is that a new thing? It looks like my pdf was last updated in 2017.
Edit: Found it in the help file, instead of the user manual. Does it work like Command Ops? It sounds more like you control the units of that leader and the AI controls other formations.
That is what it sounds like from the description posted, but my understanding from a forum post I dug up from god knows where now, doing some google searching, was that it was kind of like Command Ops, in that you give very general orders to commander units (Extreme Attack, Attack, Defense, Extreme Defense and maybe a Neutral option?) and they shuffle their subordinate chits around in an attempt to comply. It sounds like the AI isn’t great at it, but given the fuckups that Civil War generals routinely had to endure from their subordinates, it might be a more authentic experience.
EDIT: Actually, I think a better touchpoint than Command Ops would probably be Campaigns on the Danube.
don’t know, really never tried it. but that feature has been in tiller games all the way back when he first released them as the battleground series which matrix games still sales. when you start a game, you have the option to play it that way.
by the way if you haven’t seen, they are releasing newer versions of the civil war games and just did it fir gettysburg, graphics got upgraded and other things…don’t think it changed the ai much though
I did see! The price is somewhat high, especially if the AI is not going to cut the mustard (not that I’m any kind of tactical genius), but there is pretty much nothing else out there that’s this style of game for the Civil War. AGEOD’s game is a bit too high-level for my taste, and likewise War Between the States. Forge of Freedom has both strategic and tactical levels, which is cool, but there isn’t a lot of info out there about it. Scourge of War is very interesting, but the interface is tough to deal with, and anyway I’m looking for something turn-based. The less said about Gettysburg: The Tide Turns the better, I think. Tiller seems to be pretty much all there is, except for Brother Against Brother, from the FoF guys, but it’s seemingly abandoned, whereas Tiller is still patching his stuff, and its scenarios are some oddball battles. In a perfect world I’d try them all, but time and money are not endless…
Actually, in a perfect world, Frank Hunter would produce a Civil War version of Campaigns on the Danube, and it would have a nice, modern interface, too.
I’d like that world.
you could buy from here for $25…then you can upgrade for free to the latest tiller version
https://store.nws-online.net/hpssiclsabi.html
also have seen it on ebay for less than $15 at times
That feature was pretty much the same which was available on Talonsoft’s Battleground. Pretty much gives the player the ability to push the levers of the AI in the same way that the scenario designer does via a script. Of course, players can change the objectives as the game goes by, while scripts are static.
i meant to post this before…if you have $5 to spare, you may want to try the following. this is actually a gettysburg game just like command ops. i stumbled on this a few years ago and got some fun out of it. of course not same production level as big games. believe there is a demo too.
Ultimate General: Civil War is really beer & pretzels, but it’s a pretty cool game with some quite realistic dynamics (for how casual it is). The closest to Sid Meier’s Gettysburg I can think of.
That set contains some of the best scenarios ever made for CmdOps, but HTTR does too as Foothills of the Gods does too :). I quite like the fighting withdrawals in the latter, in a rarely covered campaign.
Hmm, not sure about this one. There doesn’t appear to be any way to zoom, and Devin’s brigade covered the mile from the Carlisle Road junction to the edge of town in about 6 minutes, which seems, uh, pretty fast for a brigade from word go.
Really basic, doesn’t have zoom and really at this level probably doesn’t need it…map fits one screen. As for the speed, not sure but it had different time settings for speed. It’s been years since I have played it. Certainly not as good as the other ones, just a little time waster and really interested me when I first saw it because it really was like Command Ops from a concept standpoint.
You could always still buy the original batteground series from Matrix, currently on sale for $9.99 and you get all the battles they made…Gettysburg, Shiloh, etc. Even though no longer maintained, still decent game, especially if your just looking for basic stuff.
I agree there are great scenarios throughout the series - that’s why you should get them all! But I did find generally the quality improved over time as Panther Games did more of them.