Need recommendation on Bruffell's Ancient Warfare series

[PAK]

I've never played any of Bruffell's/HPS titles, which one would You recommend for the start? There are: PUNIC WARS, GALLIC WARS, ALEXANDRIAN WARS, GREEK WARS, ROMAN CIVIL WARS and the newest: Diadochoi Wars. I'm not favoring particularly any timeline or type of warfare.

[panzerde]

I have Roman Civil Wars, Gallic Wars, and Punic Wars and have enjoyed them all. Of the three I probably have enjoyed Punic Wars the most, but that has more to do with an interest in the subject matter than anything else. I'll probably pick up Greek Wars next.

It's an fast-to-play system, particularly if you have any familiarity with any of Tiller's games. It isn't 100% the same but there are enough similarities to help you get into it. It's WEGO rather than IGOUGO though, which is great for Ancients.

I find the 3D graphics a bit muddy on a high resolution display. 2D is fine, but I enjoy the tabletop feel. Playing at a lower resolution if you want to do 3D is worth checking out.

Nefaro plays these too; he may have some good observations.

[Anguille]

I love them too but have a preference for Greek Warfare (therefore Greek Wars). They have all been uptdated on a regular basis so it's really up to your historical preference.

The review i read for Diadochoi Wars which i don't have yet is very good...

[Boggit]

I love them too but have a preference for Greek Warfare (therefore Greek Wars). They have all been uptdated on a regular basis so it's really up to your historical preference.

The review i read for Diadochoi Wars which i don't have yet is very good...

I have them all save the Diadochi Wars. I haven't bothered with Diadochi, not for any fault of the game, but because I haven't played enough of the others to justify it. I go along with all the positive stuff that everyone's been saying here. I'd add that my favourite so far is the Alexandrian Wars closely followed by the Greek Wars.

[Nefaro]

Just get the one in which you'd be most interested.

I've probably enjoyed Punic Wars the most out of the ones I own, too.  It seems to have a lot of variety.  Not only in the troops but in the extra scenarios covering the early Roman period such as the battles against Pyrus of Epirus & Magna Graecia along with the Punic Wars.  Alexandrian Wars is also one of my favorites.

Greek Wars is interesting, mainly because I've never really played out those old battles.  There's not as much troop variety in them but you don't get to play these battles out very often.  I also have Gallic Wars and the variety also isn't as broad as the others since there isn't much with the Gallic units.  The scenarios in GW are also set in more forested terrain, which can be a real pain in the ass in the Ancient Warfare series since the tree gfx on the '3D' setting will block your sight of units behind them (which is the most frustrating thing about the series, for me).

I also wish they would've scaled the scenarios down a bit more.  Many scenarios have quite a few units to command, so you will need to learn not only how the group order system works, to be efficient with your time, but you'll also have to become familiar with it's oddities & drawbacks.  Sometimes you give a line an order to move 2 hexes up & 1 over and since they each move one at a time, during multiple AP phases in a turn, one of them may end up running into his neighbor and screwing the line consistency during the turn.  So you'll probably want to issue orders individually unless they're so far away from the enemy that you'd have a couple turns to dress the line back up after a group move, if needed.

Get familiar with the specifics of which units can move/retreat through others without disordering them.  This will mostly be skirmishers withdrawing through your heavy troops or maybe Light Cavalry skirmishers doing the same back through your Heavy Cav.  You also have to consider the hex stacking limits in this - they're listed in the unit info window as a percentage - which is nice because different troop types take up different amounts of space.  I wish more games would list such varied stacking limit situations as a percentage across all of them.  Making your skirmishers effective at screening the front of your lines until ready to engage in melee is easy in this game, but you don't want your main infantry line getting pelted for awhile before the engage.  Even if they don't take a lot of casualties, it increases their Fatigue rating.  Which always becomes a problem of ability and morale degradation if someone's in melee for long.

Since many of the battles have so many units and the replay will show them moving one-by-one, you will want to enable the fast AI processing and animation speed options on the large- and medium-sized ones or else you'll be watching the WEGO turn resolution for a LONG time every turn.  I was kinda sad to miss the replay action after turning them on.. it seems like it's pretty much an all-or-nothing turn resolution speed.  But they can take a very long time if you choose to watch it at normal speed.  I have also had some stability issues with at least a couple of these titles, during turn playback, if I move my mouse around or especially if I click something.  So be careful when it's doing the WEGO playback as the game engine is near having a coronary. 

I don't have Roman Civil War or Diadochi War although I'd like to pick up the latter eventually.  I still have a lot of scenarios left to play in the ones I have, however.  I enjoy the Ancient Warfare series but it obviously has some Cons that are due to the limitations of the old Tiller game engine, despite being very heavily modified for this series.  So be patient as it takes some familiarization with how the game works, in getting around some of the issues I mentioned.

EDIT:  My title preference is obviously based primarily on unit and scenario variety, so keep that in mind.  Although I do also happen to enjoy the conflicts listed as my favorites here.  Some people don't care as much, such as those who prefer the Roman Civil Wars period where you're often fighting with the same style armies against each other.   They all run the same game engine, and have been regularly updated over time, so if you're still confuzzled as to which you wanna get.. go with the period of wars you'd like to check out.