Nice to be here, I have been playing computer wargames since Theatre of War on a Sinclair Spectrum in the 1980's but have never really found 'the one' that hooks me in and keeps me playing for months at a time.
My problem is that I find computer wargames either too simplistic or too much like hard work and theres no middle ground. At the simplistic level i mean something like Panzer General 3D Assault or even Unity of Command where there are few units and they are more like abstractions than representations of real armed forces. At the 'hard work' level I mean the massive micro management of War In The East or even Operational Art Of War..I don't want to spend hours on each turn clicking through units. It seems to me that in reality all wargames are tactical rather than strategic because the gamer is forced to worry about whats happening at ludicrously low levels of command, thats why I stressed the word operational in the thread title. I don't believe that an actual operational level wargame has ever been produced.
I have played Panzer Corps and its ok, but still feels more like an arcade game than a 'real' wargame. i was looking at the Decisive Campaigns games but my heart sank when I read that in the full campaign for Case Blue you have 450 units to command.
What i am after is some High Level kind of game where you act as an Army Group or Army Commander but you only have to give orders two levels down at most (which is the way it works in real life). Therefore an Army Group commander would only need to give orders at Corps level or an Army commander down to Divisional level. It frustrates the hell out of me to supposedly be in command of an entire theatre of war and expected to move reconnaisance battalions and flak batteries around!
i have played the Command Ops Battle of The Bulge game and that is nice in the sense that you can give a Brigade or even Division HQ a timed set of orders and the AI commanders of the sub units within each will follow those orders to the best of their ability until you countermand them. The problem for me is that there is no actual campaign in the game and there's really no way to change history playing as the Germans.
Any ideas will be gratefully received...
If ACW interests you, perhaps Scourge of War, Gettysburg?
Its still all tactics, and I really wanted a campaign game rather than a single battle. The closest i ever saw to what i wanted was Napoleon:1813 where you had to basically rebuild the entire French army after the disaster in Russia and then fight the campaign that ended with the battle of Leipzig. You could choose which corps commanders to hire or fire and give each of them specific orders at a grand strategy level. Hell you could even auto-calc the battles, which was unique at the time.
Pity it was so buggy that it was unplayable..and never patched :-\
Welcome Steve!
Command Ops was going to be my suggestion but you have clearly tried it.
How about SSG's offerings? Kharkov: Disaster on the Donets might fill the bill. http://www.matrixgames.com/products/358/details/Kharkov:.Disaster.on.the.Donets
Welcome, Steve! Unfortunately, I have no suggestions for you. However, if you ever find a game like that, please don't hesitate to post it here. i would like to play it.
Quote from: LongBlade on January 12, 2013, 10:03:21 AM
Welcome Steve!
Command Ops was going to be my suggestion but you have clearly tried it.
How about SSG's offerings? Kharkov: Disaster on the Donets might fill the bill. http://www.matrixgames.com/products/358/details/Kharkov:.Disaster.on.the.Donets
That looked interesting until i saw the unit scale was Battalion/Regiment level - hundreds of units again! I mean honestly, did Von Bock actually issue orders to every damn battalion under his command? Plus, it isn't really a campaign, just a collection of engagements linked to a single battle. There has to be SOMETHING thats more like grand strategy than this...
I agree with your desires to find something like this, but really not sure anything exists that meets your requirements....if it did exist, we all would be playing it:)
Like you, I am not a fan of controlling a ton of units/counters and as you mentioned likely more realistic that you just participate in a level of the chain of command.
I'll be watching this thread to see if I had missed one from the past, otherwise lets hope a developer in the future does it.
Quote from: SteveV on January 12, 2013, 09:38:31 AM
What i am after is some High Level kind of game where you act as an Army Group or Army Commander but you only have to give orders two levels down at most (which is the way it works in real life). Therefore an Army Group commander would only need to give orders at Corps level or an Army commander down to Divisional level. It frustrates the hell out of me to supposedly be in command of an entire theatre of war and expected to move reconnaisance battalions and flak batteries around!
This may be an unpopular suggestion, but possibly: Hearts of Iron 3
You can, if you want, use the AI control feature to 'take command' at any level in the OOB, down to division level. For example, by setting an Army to AI control, you can give it objectives to take, and it's then up to the subordinate Corps commanders to carry that out. You can also set parameters for how aggressively or not you want the AI to act, whether to use attached air assets, etc. You can also issue objectives to hold, rather than capture.
It's very flexible and gives you a lot of options. That said, the AI is no Von Manstein when it comes to implementing strategies. So in theory it's great, in practice there are definitely some headaches.
Of course, HoI3 doesn't have a lot of the 'granular' detail that you might want -- for ex., brigade / regiments grade strength by the notorious 'health bars' for manpower & organization -- nothing close to the ToE modeling you get in say WitE. So that's a weakness in my view.
Still, HoI3 does allow you to play on a grand strategic level if you want. I've always really liked the AI control feature -- it's the most innovative thing about the game, and may give you something approaching the 'just issue orders / less micromanagement' type of play you get in Battles from the Bulge or similar games, but at a higher operational level.
I thought of HOI as well initially. I haven't invested any time in it at all, so I can't speak to the function you described. It would be nice to watch all that play out though.
Doesn't Hearts of Iron involve you in all sorts of global diplomacy and economic decision making as well? i think I played HOI Doomsday, is that the same as HOI 3? It may well be possible to have Operational level control of armed forces but theres dozens of other non-miltary screens to attend to on each turn that sap all of the enjoyment out of playing as i recall.
Operational level in modern campaigns usually means command at the army and corps level
and thus your maneuver units would be battalions or sometimes regiments/brigades of which
there are a large number. Unless it is a small operation. Decisive Campaigns is operational,
Commander: Europe at War is Strategic but you command operations. That might be worth looking at.
STAVKA-OKH
...and its free.
http://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/STAVKA-OKH.html (http://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/STAVKA-OKH.html)
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rodvik.com%2Frodgames%2FOKH.png&hash=40095497f77776607e4a242614c1366435b9ea7d)
Thanks again JH. First Imperialism 2. Now this. What else is in your bag of tricks?
Quote from: SteveV on January 12, 2013, 11:20:03 AM
Doesn't Hearts of Iron involve you in all sorts of global diplomacy and economic decision making as well? i think I played HOI Doomsday, is that the same as HOI 3? It may well be possible to have Operational level control of armed forces but theres dozens of other non-miltary screens to attend to on each turn that sap all of the enjoyment out of playing as i recall.
You have the right of it, Steve. However, those screens make the gamemore enjoyable for me, not less.
@Jarhead:
Going to check that link now. Thanks!
Ha, that Stavka-OKH game is a nice little coffee break thing! Haven't worked out the mechanics of it after a couple of goes ...I have ended up as a historical advisor to the US Military both times, not sure if that counts as a win or not, presumably as i didn't get executed thats a good thing? :)
Just checked out the Decisive Campaigns forums, they both look like nice games but in the AAR's the players are taking 90 minutes to set up their turns...If there was something similar that only took around twenty minutes per turn that would be ideal!
Jarhead, I LOL'd at your sig.
Quote from: MetalDog on January 12, 2013, 11:00:47 AM
I thought of HOI as well initially. I haven't invested any time in it at all, so I can't speak to the function you described. It would be nice to watch all that play out though.
I'm told that HOI3's military command still requires healthy doses of micro-management, else your AI generals will not carry out your orders very well at all.
I've been wanting to fire that up, and dig deep into it, but such a heavy need of micro'ing the military side hasn't encouraged me enough yet.
Well, I'm going to guess we're looking for a land wargame as opposed to sea, but doesn't want of NWS's games have mechanics similar to what we're describing, where you can set what level of the OOB you want to control and the computer AI does the rest? Supremecy at Sea? I haven't played it yet.
I would recommend Strategic Command WW2 or WW1 from Battlefront. They both have some economic/resource items that you have to control but I found them easier and simpler to manage than say HOI. Matrix also has Commander The Great War that has a tough AI and has received good reviews. These games haev you moving corps sized units around.
Another series that doesn't get much attention is HPS Total War in Europe. You'd be moving divisions around but there is no resource allocation to control. The number of units to move around is not that bad and there are scenarios of different sizes included. I found the AI to be the best of all the HPS games Right now there are only two in the series - one covers the early western front and the other the Med theater including N Africa, Sicily and the Balkans.
Just my opinion.
DC Warsaw to Paris will be 30 minutes a turn once you know the game. Case Blue maybe will take 45 minutes. both games are great and feel operational.
Quote from: SteveV on January 12, 2013, 12:41:26 PM
Just checked out the Decisive Campaigns forums, they both look like nice games but in the AAR's the players are taking 90 minutes to set up their turns...If there was something similar that only took around twenty minutes per turn that would be ideal!
There are smaller scenarios in Decisive Campaigns, or you could go for Advanced Tactics Gold and the custom database of scenarios there. If you have an android device there are a few games available that might suffice, or at least be on the same scale and unit count that you're looking for (Small General, Joni Nuutinen's conflict series, DK simulations wargame series). If you have an iOS device try Shenandoah Studio's Battle of the Bulge maybe?
I was also going to suggest Schwerpunkt's titles, because the unit counts are not too excessive.
What you're looking for is a custom built game that would suit all of your tastes, I'd say most wargamers have these sort of ideals, but in such a niche as we are, you're often left with compromises and you go with the best one that ticks most of your boxes.
Personally Decisive Campaigns is as good as it gets for me, with Schwerpunkt's stuff and Command Ops coming up close behind. These are the operational titles I keep going back to.
I was thinking about this some more and an old game from Simulations Canada called Red Sky at Morning is very much like what you're describing.
Thanks for all replies, I must admit I was a little tempted by the HPS Panzer campaign games, even though the graphics are dated and they focus on individual battles (or mini campaigns I suppose)..do they run ok on Windows 7?
I think I will go with the decisive campaign games, the interface looks user friendly and from reading some excellent AAR's (thanks Keunert!) they don't seem too overwhelming.
If you are open to conflicts outside of WW2, I'd recommend you look at Ageod titles. Excellent operational games with limited strategic management.
I have the AGEOD Miltary Strategies pack but never installed it...It looks like the ACW game may be just what I am looking for , thanks for the tip!
What about Airborne Assault: red devils over Arnhem?
I don't think you can fine 'Red Devils' anymore. 'AA: Highway to the Reich' is the followup game and is still for sale. FWIW SteveV did mention that he had tried the even later 'Battles from the Bulge' in the same series.
Quote from: Staggerwing on January 13, 2013, 09:20:28 AM
I don't think you can fine 'Red Devils' anymore. 'AA: Highway to the Reich' is the followup game and is still for sale. FWIW SteveV did mention that he had tried the even later 'Battles from the Bulge' in the same series.
Oh...it's the only game i have from them and keep on playing.
Maybe
HistWar: Les Grognards? It's more high level than Scourge of war.
Quote from: Anguille on January 13, 2013, 09:24:25 AM
Quote from: Staggerwing on January 13, 2013, 09:20:28 AM
I don't think you can fine 'Red Devils' anymore. 'AA: Highway to the Reich' is the followup game and is still for sale. FWIW SteveV did mention that he had tried the even later 'Battles from the Bulge' in the same series.
Oh...it's the only game i have from them and keep on playing.
Maybe HistWar: Les Grognards? It's more high level than Scourge of war.
I had a look at HistWar but its really just a single battle game and something like the Napoleon Total War experience...
Quote from: SteveV on January 12, 2013, 08:58:45 PM
Thanks for all replies, I must admit I was a little tempted by the HPS Panzer campaign games, even though the graphics are dated and they focus on individual battles (or mini campaigns I suppose)..do they run ok on Windows 7?
I think I will go with the decisive campaign games, the interface looks user friendly and from reading some excellent AAR's (thanks Keunert!) they don't seem too overwhelming.
Wise choice, grasshopper.