Remember the Maine! this Friday

[Boggit]

1898 Edison motion picture footage of the Maine wreckage in Havana harbor

Wow! Great find Mirth. Looks like there may be a lot of great clips at the LoC.

+1 Who'd have thought it. Thanks Mirth :)

[mirth]

Probably some Harpoon 3 (finally getting around to getting back into it) and more Musket & Pike: The Renaissance.  I also have a craving to play something with 18th century naval ships/fleets, but beyond the Total War games I'm not sure what that would be.

I love the Total War naval fights, but you might also try
Talonsoft's Age of Sail - Win95 - so some tweaking for compatibility will be needed - try NWS or Ebay
Sid Meier's Pirates!
East India Company published by Paradox and available both retail (box) and DL like Gamersgate
Salvo! Published and sold by Shrapnel Games
Wooden Ships Iron Men Win 95 published by Eidos and written by Akella (personally I didn't like it) try Ebay

I think there are a few others, but I can't remember any more off the top of my head. Hope it helps.

+1 to Musket and Pike - which scenario do you like best. I finished the Dutch Campaign late last year - was a lot of fun. :)

Matrix bundles Age of Sail with the updated package of John Tiller's Napoleonic games. That's supposed to be good on Windows up to Windows 7.

[panzerde]

I love the Total War naval fights, but you might also try
Talonsoft's Age of Sail - Win95 - so some tweaking for compatibility will be needed - try NWS or Ebay
Sid Meier's Pirates!
East India Company published by Paradox and available both retail (box) and DL like Gamersgate
Salvo! Published and sold by Shrapnel Games
Wooden Ships Iron Men Win 95 published by Eidos and written by Akella (personally I didn't like it) try Ebay

Thanks Boggit!  I'll definitely check those out.  I remember Age of Sail - I played all the Talonsoft stuff like mad, years ago.  I also like the Total War naval fights, and was thinking about loading either Empire or Napoleon back up

+1 to Musket and Pike - which scenario do you like best. I finished the Dutch Campaign late last year - was a lot of fun. :)

I'm doing the French Religious Wars campaign right now, just finishing up Dreux.  I find I like the later period battles more than the earlier ones, well, because Reiters!  Nothing like pistol-wielding heavy cavalry to ruin your day.  Damn Swiss will put a kink in your plans, though!

[panzerde]

Matrix bundles Age of Sail with the updated package of John Tiller's Napoleonic games. That's supposed to be good on Windows up to Windows 7.

Didn't even think of that - I actually have that installed right now.  Thanks!

[Toonces]

Man alive do I have too many games.  I'm literally overwhelmed with choices.  The best/worst is that I think I am chore and work free today, so I can game on like a madman!  Now to figure out what to play...

I think I'm going to try Evochron Mercenary.  I've never played it.  I'll probably play some more XIII Century as well, and maybe some Chivalry/War of the Roses.

I also have a hankering to start CK2 again.

Geez, who even knows...

[Gusington]

Post what you think of XIII Century. I have Northern Crusades installed here and have never even fired it up once.

[Nefaro]

Matrix bundles Age of Sail with the updated package of John Tiller's Napoleonic games. That's supposed to be good on Windows up to Windows 7.

Yeah, works fine on my Win7-64.  It's real-time, which kinda sucks IMO, because I end up jockeying the time too much.  That goes for most real-time wargames, however.

It may be difficult to find, but Age of Sail 2: Privateer's Bounty also works on Win7, as I installed it last year.  IIRC, all I had to do was turn on WinXP compatibility mode along with the regular "Run as Admin" which I set for all games.   AoS2:PB is probably the best of the bunch, regarding naval warfare of the period, and the old 3D graphics in it isn't too terribly bad.

Note that AoS2:PB's campaign is pretty much a couple of branching scripted ones, although you do have some purchasing/repairing expenditure between each battle.  Not amazing, but it's something.  A fair amount of historical battle scenarios included, too.  The original AOS (that comes with the Matrix Nappy package) is probably easier to manage for the big naval battles, since it's 2D with little sprites, and you don't have to manage the camera/view as much.

[Arctic Blast]

Maybe some more Borderlands 2. I briefly started up Men of War Assault Squad and liked it, so I think I'll spend some more time with that. And maybe some Warlock...

@Arctic Blast :)
Check out this guy's scenarios for MoW AS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYwWi-vKHGY

You can download the lot here
http://www.moddb.com/groups/men-of-war-missions-from-xgunishmentx

And a quick thank you for adding me to your "Friends" at Steam.

Those look impressive but also gigantic. I'll need some more time to get a handle on playing the game before I even think about tackling those.  ;D

[Toonces]

Well, I spoke too soon.  I got drafted into going to a fitness expo with my wife (followed by dinner out...ugh, no gaming at all!).   >:(

@Gus- I really like XIII Century.  It's like M2TW but I think it's a bit deeper, more wargamey.  I'm surprised it's not more popular around here.

I haven't tried Northern Crusades yet, but I plan to dig in once I read up on the Teutonic Knights a bit.  I have a book called, ironically enough Northern Crusades, on the way from Amazon.

[Martok]

@Gus- I really like XIII Century.  It's like M2TW but I think it's a bit deeper, more wargamey.  I'm surprised it's not more popular around here.

I suspect it's not more popular because it lacks a proper campaign. 

A lot of us desire/need some larger context in which these battles take place.  If they'd made XIII Century with a TW/Civ-style campaign, I think it would've done much better. 

[Toonces]

I agree, Martok.

However, let me post a different perspective.

Understand that I actually think you're right, and I'd prefer a M2TW-type game than what XIII is.  However, what XIII seems to have (to my limited knowledge) is a much closer attention to detail and a more in-depth look at historical battles.

What the game lacks in any sort of dynamic campaign it makes up for in a closer study of one-off historical battles.  For example, I've been reading about the battle of Falkirk and then XIII has a nice battle of Falkirk in the English campaign with a very thorough briefing (with 3D overviews of the battlefield) and discussion of tactics before the battle starts, as well as beautiful unit graphics.  I guess it is sort of like an interactive History Channel game.

I had read about how there was a swamp in the middle of the battlefield, and how Wallace had formed his Pikemen into shiltrons to defend against the English cavalry.  But when you actually see it in 3D and then have the opportunity to gameplay it out on your terms, it makes a big difference in your understanding of the battle.  XIII is a huge treasure of that type of stuff.

Again, for what it cost during the Xmas Steam sale bundled with all the other games, it was a no-brainer to me.  It's a great game.  It's not M2TW, but what it does, it does well.  It's very much like a DCS vs. Falcon 4 comparison, if that makes sense.

[Martok]

Oh yes, I'm very much aware that the game's battles have received widespread praise.  (It's the reason I almost picked up the game as it is, despite the lack of a campaign!)  Nor do I criticize the dev's decision to focus on the battles instead -- when you're cramped for money, personnel, and/or time, you have to make sacrifices & hard choices, and throwing out a campaign is obviously one of the ways in which the developers made use of their limited resources. 


I guess I just wish they'd been given the time/personnel to do it all.  :) 

[Gusington]

Interesting. Toonces is this the book you have on the way:

http://www.amazon.com/Northern-Crusades-Second-Eric-Christiansen/dp/0140266534/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361119333&sr=1-1&keywords=the+northern+crusades

If so it's one of my favorite books. Makes me think I should fire up Northern Crusades (the game) perhaps sooner than later.

[Longdan]

Y'all have inspired me to take a run at Northern Crusade.  I haven't played it for months.
there was a guy calling himself Mitra who had made some mods or improvements for it.  I am sure some
guys around here have played them.  He had linked them up on WG'er awhile ago.
I have so many games I spend hours choosing what to play and then I have to go out
and get drunk or chase girls so I have to start deciding all over again.
Life is so hard.  Pity me.

[Nefaro]

@Gus- I really like XIII Century.  It's like M2TW but I think it's a bit deeper, more wargamey.  I'm surprised it's not more popular around here.

I suspect it's not more popular because it lacks a proper campaign. 

A lot of us desire/need some larger context in which these battles take place.  If they'd made XIII Century with a TW/Civ-style campaign, I think it would've done much better.

Northern Crusades has a campaign, however.  It's not a TW style campaign, and it leads you along by the nose for awhile during the initial tutorial-like stages.  But it opens up later, if you can power through the difficult parts.  It's more like the Mount & Blade campaign, except you spend your wealth and xp points on military units and goods if you want to trade (there are no personal RPG-style weapons & armor for your leader as in M&B, obviously).   I suggest you play on the Easy difficulty level when you start your first campaign because money can be extremely tight and a lot of the opposing armies running around can squish you like a bug until you get built up - and that takes awhile.  You'll probably end up restarting a fresh campaign once you start getting the hang of it, because it's very easy to become disadvantaged and suffer losses you can't really recover from with the low amount of wealth.  The difficulty of the initial build-up and a couple of the custom made & scripted opponent armies is probably what scared some people away.  It can be brutal if you don't find a way to work up to it with money & troops, along with creating an excellent battlefield plan against large odds.  The tactical battles are far more interesting (and a bit more difficult) than the M2TW ones, IMO.

I suggest using Mitra's latest Mod for RW2:NC, after you see how the normal game works.  It doesn't outwardly change much other than expanding the army size limits but it definitely fixes some issues I with the game such as catching occasional glimpses of enemy units through hills (who are not in LOS and should still be hidden), and reducing the normally constant Morale-murdering archer effects against units in covered terrain, to name a couple examples of the tweaks he did.  I consider Mitra's mod to be an unofficial patch.

Mitra Mod thread with info:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=30848

Looks like the rapidshare download link is dead, so I uploaded one here:
http://www76.zippyshare.com/v/39139539/file.html

I don't know if this was the latest version but that's the only one I have.  It has a couple extra optional folders, one containing the aforementioned archer penalties for firing against units in forest, and another that has lowered cavalry movement in same, and there are ReadMe files in them with details IIRC.