Grand Tactician, American Civil War

[W8taminute]

The real question, before I waste extremely valuable and limited time on re-installing this game, is now that the game has been patched is there anything to do now other than march troops around a pretty map and then watch them shoot each other?

[devoncop]

The real question, before I waste extremely valuable and limited time on re-installing this game, is now that the game has been patched is there anything to do now other than march troops around a pretty map and then watch them shoot each other?

Policy decisions and recruitment are huge parts of the game. Recruitment and organisation of armies and the officer Corps always were...... but National decisions are much more nuanced and less clear cut since the recent patch according to players who already have the game.

[Father Ted]

The real question, before I waste extremely valuable and limited time on re-installing this game, is now that the game has been patched is there anything to do now other than march troops around a pretty map and then watch them shoot each other?

I think you may just have argued computer wargaming out of existence...

[Toonces]

^ LOL!

[devoncop]

The real question, before I waste extremely valuable and limited time on re-installing this game, is now that the game has been patched is there anything to do now other than march troops around a pretty map and then watch them shoot each other?

I think you may just have argued computer wargaming out of existence...

I thought that too when I read it but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt !  ;)

[al_infierno]

The real question, before I waste extremely valuable and limited time on re-installing this game, is now that the game has been patched is there anything to do now other than march troops around a pretty map and then watch them shoot each other?

I think you may just have argued computer wargaming out of existence...

I thought that too when I read it but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt !  ;)

[Old TImer]

Here's a great take on this game.  Early in a Confederate campaign.  This guy knows his stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn7LlYpQin4

If anybody knows how to convert that into a link, please do so.  I'm old, not tech savvy and
frankly, not that bothered.

[al_infierno]

Here's a great take on this game.  Early in a Confederate campaign.  This guy knows his stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn7LlYpQin4

If anybody knows how to convert that into a link, please do so.  I'm old, not tech savvy and
frankly, not that bothered.

The quick way to do it is to hit the Share button on YouTube and copy the shortened link.

[W8taminute]

I'm going to check out that video.  I've watched some of that YouTubers content before and I agree he is good and he knows his stuff.

But before I watch that video it seems my question has been answered.  I won't be re-installing the game. 

Oh well, maybe the video will convince me otherwise.  Don't get me wrong I really want to like this game but so far for a grand strategy game there really isn't much to do other than push troops around that you have recruited and dressed up in pretty uniforms.  LOL!!

[fabius]

Was so super keen for this.
Then saw the early access plays.

Close to pulling the trigger now. Then saw that AI not producing Art for it's armies.

It's looking very close to the good enough line, but not quite there yet.

[devoncop]

Was so super keen for this.
Then saw the early access plays.

Close to pulling the trigger now. Then saw that AI not producing Art for it's armies.

It's looking very close to the good enough line, but not quite there yet.

I agree but with such an ambitious project and such a small development  team I can see absolutely  no reason to jump in until the full release and after some respected reviews are out.

I can put up with a slightly sub par UI if necessary for a game such as this and even in EA the game achieves many ground breaking things but a deficient AI or game breaking bugs are a total deal breaker.

In the case of Grand Tactician,  patience is your friend.

[fabius]

Yeah. The AI is a big one.
I bought his first 7 Years War game. And as impressive as that is for a first, and one man effort. The AI made campaign battles a null experience.

Plus, I think the EA price is the same as full release will be. Could be wrong on that

That said, this one is going in the right direction at an impressive pace. I'm not a million miles away from getting in.

[ArizonaTank]

To be fair, the devs problem for building an AI in a game like this is huge. I remember twenty years ago the common wisdom was that nobody could ever build a strategic/operational/tactical game because the complexity needed for the multiple level AI.

Then Shogun: Total War blew that common wisdom out of the water.

But even then, many games in the genre have tried and failed...usually just at one level.

For example, HOI III is decent enough at the operational level, but sometimes makes real bonehead mistakes at the grand strategy level. Then there were games like Histwar Les Grognards that tried mightily to provide a multi-level AI, but failed at all the levels.

For a WWII game for example. Its would be one thing for a robo-Monty to go trouncing the human German player in North Africa. But the strategic game would go to pieces (and therefore the entire game) if while it was pushing hard in Egypt, the AI forgot to garrison England's beaches, and patrol the channel. 

So I hope the dev is working hard on making the AI right at all of the levels. I would offer to them that at this stage, AI is more important than additional graphics and eye candy. Failure to get the AI right will be a sure path into a Humble Bundle at the $1 level.

[Toonces]

Alrighty then.  I spent about 2 hours with this tonight. 

First off, the game is beautiful.  I absolutely love the maps with the army icons on them.  I've personally never seen a game do it quite like this and I'm wondering why it took so long because it's bloody brilliant.

I played a couple of historical battles (well, tonight part of two battles) and I did boot up the campaign.

The historical battles felt pretty good to me.  Just like Scourge of War, it's quite a bit like herding cats.  You get this idea of what you want your troops to do, but it never quite looks exactly like what you had in your mind.  This is both fascinating and aggravating at the same time. 

The orders delays suck, just like they should.

The AI in the single battles put up a reasonable fight IMO, at least for someone as unskilled as me. 

I'm struggling a bit with the way orders are implemented.  I kept searching for ways to be more specific with my orders, like telling a group to go somewhere and "defend."  There are icons that can be selected for a number of things, but determining how to actually give the orders was not intuitive.  I did watch the tutorials, but didn't feel like that really explained things.  I'm definitely going to have to go on YouTube to watch some Let's Plays to see how to make the functions work.  Compared to SoW I really felt a lack of ability to explain what I wanted my troops to do.  Still, the battle was tense, a complete mess, and just when I thought I was going to win, reinforcements showed up that certainly would have defeated me before I could reorganize my troops into a cohesive defense.  Good stuff.

The campaign map was utterly bewildering.  I'm not sure how anyone can make a judgement about the strategic depth without investing some serious hours into this game.  Perhaps if you're an HOI veteran then the strategic map makes sense.  I was just completely lost.  I clicked around a bit to see what all the shiny buttons do, but I have always sucked at the strategic level anyway.

Overall, while I didn't see anything inherently wrong with the game, I can understand the consistent conclusion that this game has a lot of potential, but still feels unpolished.  Take this with some grain of salt as I'm not the best at Grand Strategy games.  But it felt rough to me, in a way that's hard to articulate.  Having said that, for $40 I think playing just the single battles from both sides will be a worthy investment.  If I can ever figure out the strategic layer then the game is a no-brainer.  Still, it won't be for everybody.  Some interest in the subject matter would help a lot.

I guess I'd say that if you're an ACW buff like me, this game is worth jumping into.  I think it will eventually set the standard in the same way Scourge of War did. 

If you're lukewarm on ACW, well, it still seems to be a very interesting wargame approach.  40 clams is not life-changing money to me, but it does buy a lot of tacos so...

[Toonces]

Put another way, Carrier Battles 4: Guadalcanal was (I think) $30, with no strategic layer and just a handful (maybe 10 or so?) single battles, playable from both sides.

Grand Tactician has the same number of single battles, playable from both sides, plus a strategic layer that looks very in-depth and complex, for only $10 more.  From a value perspective, this seems to be a better buy.

Obviously I have to have both, but I think it's worth pointing out that Grand Tactician is at a pretty fair price point compared to other games, for what you get out of the box, IMO.