Dazed and Confused:
@tomchick That Whiskey & Lemons DLC for Grand Tactician looks like it could be interesting. I guess you start out as a regimental commander, and then can get promoted up to higher commands.
Has anyone played Grand Tactician: Civil War itself? It looks like you get a strategic game and can play out the tactical battles. IIRC Ultimate General: Civil War was just a set of battles, yes?
Ultimate General does have a full campaign. You select units before each battle, and your performance opens up new units and weapons, while experience is carried over battle to battle with specific units. Also does reinforcements and stuff like that.
It is a cool game
So more along the lines of Panzer General/Corps, but not a strategic layer that you are playing with tactical battles intermingled like a Total War game or this Grand Tactician.
There are some minor strategic choices… but it definitely isn’t a sandbox. They want to keep you on rails enough to get to play the famous battles.
I’ve read several works by Wood over the years. This one takes, I think, a different perspective than his earlier works.
Next time I’m in the mood for some 18th century history I’ll give this one a shot, thanks!
Maybe getting close to release, seems like might have gotten a glimpse into early access purchase options…they have taken the page down since.
I had no idea about the Ultimate Admiral game, so will need to check that out.
But this looks so amazing:
From the Ultimate Strategy Discord:
@everyone Hello Generals! We have good news and bad. I will start with the good part. We made huge progress with the game in October with the help of focus testers. Many of the game’s crashes were fixed, the balance improved, a huge amount of game-breaking bugs were fixed, usability of different game mechanics was improved. The game is ready for EA release. The game will include the US campaign from April 1775 till August 1776. The campaign will contain 3 stages - Boston, ft. Ticonderoga and Canada. The content is good for learning the game and providing feedback that will help us improve the game. We will continue to develop further content for the US campaign opening the whole map after EA release. Now a bad part - Unfortunately we have an issue with the release now because the Xsolla platform has problems. We work with the Xsolla team to fix them ASAP.*
Edit - further update:
Sterner
— Today at 2:40 AM
Good news, Xsolle solved most of their issues and we have started to re-test shop functionality.
Fighting the British? Easy! Fighting your online shop? Damn near impossible!
Or fighting off your customers?
Sterner
— 11/01/2023 2:19 AM
We have a meeting with the Xsolla dev team tomorrow. We had a working infrastructure at the beginning of summer. Some of you found a hidden page, bought the game, and downloaded the test version of the game. Something was changed on the Xsolla side, now the infrastructure doesn’t work correctly, and it must be fixed.
Emphasis added. Gamers will be gamers I guess!
Oh, yeah. One thing folks always gotta remember, if you are selling to gamers–we will find a way! It might not be the way you want though.
Kind of like my dogs. Left to their own devices, they tend to think of all sorts of amusements, many of which are not quite as amusing for me.
Looks like fun & games with Steam now:
Sterner
— Yesterday at 2:38 AM
We have an option - Epic Game Store as an alternative solution. We work to find a solution.
Sterner
— Yesterday at 2:36 AM
Steam was surprised by the success of Dreadnoughts outside of Steam three years ago. This upset them that they had to issue a large number of keys and earned nothing from that.
Sterner
— Yesterday at 2:31 AM
We had a personal manager before, but now the rules have changed in Steam and we communicate through support. Which made life very difficult. We don’t understand why the rules are changing, but we can’t do anything about it. (edited)
Sterner
— Yesterday at 2:20 AM
The problems with Xsolla have been fixed, but now we are waiting for a response from Steam. Can we provide keys to all early backers when the game releases on Steam? Steam has started to make life very difficult for game developers lately. We need to understand where the game will be released in the future to provide keys: Steam or Epic Game Store. We still hope that Steam will be the platform where the game will be released in EA.
That’s unfortunate, although I don’t know if I’d be onboard with EA for this game regardless of platform. Hoping they can come to a good solution, at least.
Hope they don’t move to EGS
EA release on 14 November:
### Sterner — Today at 1:00 AM
Hello Generals! The game will be released on next week (14.11).
I assume they are still going to release using Xsolla first before moving to Steam, or Epic if they couldn’t resolve their issues with Steam; no word as yet what’s happening with that.
What is xsolla? I went to the website and am still confused 🤔
Just a payment platform I believe.