What Military Strategy games have you played?

[Freebird]

What are some of the various strategy games that people have tried?

I must confess that I'm really "old school", I got into wargames back in the 80's when computers were not nearly advanced enough to run complex games. {Anybody else waste most of a week's allowance on Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaxian, Defender? )

So I'm mostly talking board games here, but I know there are cross-over video games now too....

 

[Hunter368]

Damn I have or had sooooooo many. Let me think and get a list.

 

[Freebird]

Damn I have or had sooooooo many. Let me think and get a list.

I know that I am probably missing a bunch...

Did anyone else try SPI "AirWar"? It was a little complex, as you had to track all the flight paths for missiles as well as the aircraft too.

I know the Trekkies used to play "Star Fleet Battles" but it seemed Waaaay too complex, the rulebook was like a novel and each turn took ages....

 

[Thorlifter]

Milton Bradley used to make other games like Axis and Allies. I cant remember the names of them, but I have them tucked away under my bed. One was Broadsides and Boarding Parties. I think one was Shogun. I don't remember the others.

But these and Risk were all I played.

 

[Njaco]

Freebird, you beat me to it! I was just going to ask if anyone has played "Dogfight" by MB. As a kid I loved the game, WWI with little Dr Is and Camels to move around the board. Still have the game. I've been playing "Risk" with my kids lately.

 

[magnocain]

The board game Attack!.
It is a 1940's era world domination game. In my opinion it is better than RISK.

 

[DBII]

Back in the late 60's it was Dogfight and Battel Cry. I picked up Tacts II at a garage sale and was hooked on wars games. I could not wait until the PC was able to play war games. Microprose had a series of war games that I still have today. I would still be playing them if I did not lose my Commodor 64 in a house fire. I loss the machine but still have the software. My last assignment in the military was conducting computer simulations on main frames for the Active Duty Army, National Guard and Air Force. D** I miss that job. War games against live hundreds of live people. I had up to 1200 units to command. It did not matter if I was a Soviet Front or a British squad, it was always exciting.

DBII

DAN

 

[cristian.hidalgo]

wow that is cool min is rise of nations and battel ship gunners 1and2 and other ww2 typ games

 

[plan_D]

Hearts of Iron II (command any nation from '36 - '47), Company of Heroes (excellent World War II RTS), Blitzkrieg 2 (World War II RTS), All the Total War games (Shogun, Medieval II, Medieval Kingdoms, Rome, Barbarian Invasion).

As for board games, I used to play Risk a helluva lot!

 

[comiso90]

allied general!

I still play it!

 

[MacArther]

CHESS!!! YEAH!!!

 

[Vassili Zaitzev]

CHESS!!! YEAH!!!

yeah, I'm a chess fan as well, although I do play battleship from time to time.

 

[Marcel]

A friend of mine has Axis and allies miniature collection game. it's really great, with miniature tanks and a/c.

 

[HoHun]

Hi Comiso,

>allied general!

A friend once asked me for my opinion of Panzer General when the game was freshly out. My answer was "Captivating but not fascinating" - it manages to grab and hold your attention very well, but it offers only very slow development with hundreds of micromanagement tasks and the time panic at the end of a scenario as the main difficulty.

I don't know if you're familiar with the original "Empire" - it was sort of a "Civilization" without the civilization bits! In fact, Sid Meier's brilliance in creating Civilization was to replace the quantitative (and exponential) growth of units that bogged you down in unit-pushing tasks by qualitative growth, giving you fewer, more expensive, more powerful and (most importantly from a gameplay point of view) more manageable units instead.

"Empire" - much like the more complex "Panzer General", but also much like the far simpler "Tetris" - was able to generate a so-called Flow Effect ... something I'm sure most computer gamers will recognize even if they haven't heard it called by that name:

Flow (psychology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The list of nine components in the Wikipedia article is the bit to read ... for some reason, "flow" has been considered something entirely positive, but if you have experienced it, perhaps even with otherwise second-rate games, you'll probably recognize that it's neither good or bad in itself, just a mode the human brain can get into.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[Freebird]

.

I don't know if you're familiar with the original "Empire" - it was sort of a "Civilization" without the civilization bits! In fact, Sid Meier's brilliance in creating Civilization was to replace the quantitative (and exponential) growth of units that bogged you down in unit-pushing tasks by qualitative growth, giving you fewer, more expensive, more powerful and (most importantly from a gameplay point of view) more manageable units instead.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Civilization, now that is a great game!

Did you play Harpoon very much? GDW's were my favorites, some very good releases

 

[HoHun]

Hi Freebird,

>Did you play Harpoon very much? GDW's were my favorites, some very good releases

I have to say that I played the boardgame version only two or three times as there seemed to be an enormous administrative overhead in preparing all the platform data sheets. I remember winning one Falkland War scenario as the British player by sinking the Argentine fleet by virtue of a couple of miles more anti-ship missile range. My missiles actually did not do much damage, but each hit spilled a bit of rocket fuel that lead to critical fires. The Argentine player was rather frustrated because he even lost the Admiral Belgrano to just a few hits, and I was frustrated because an entire afternoon of filling out data sheets had only yielded about three game turns of enjoyment.

The computer game version was easier to handle and had a great graphical interface (for the time). I seem to remember it had originally been developed on an Atari ST, which had a rather advanced user interface, which was copied for the DOS version of Harpoon. I played this more frequently!

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[A4K]

Is 'Harpoon' what we call 'battleships' ? IF so I've played that alot of times. Played 'Axis and Allies' a couple of times too - great game.
Chess, checkers, etc too of course, aswell as 'Medal of Honour' on PS2.

 

[HoHun]

Hi A4K,

>Played 'Axis and Allies' a couple of times too - great game.

Roger that, really a smooth design with excellent depth considering the easy gameplay mechanisms.

I still vividly remember my first "Axis Allies" experience! We had an Axis team and an Allies team, with every player commanding one nation - I was the Soviet player. I had a look at the game mechanisms and decided that the Soviets should have a mix of infantry for defense and tanks for counter-attacks.

When I bought these units, there was an outcry in the room - no-one had ever played it that way, and it was common wisdom that the only way the Soviets could survive the German onslaught was to raise masses of infantry, dig in and wait for the Western Allies to weaken Germany's capacity to wage war. I insisted and came close to being thrown out

The nice thing is that my initial thought proved to be right - the Soviet counterattacks forced the German player to add a share of defensive infantry units into his force mix, and his advance was delayed considerably and finally stopped, with Soviet tanks finally rolling west even before the second front was opened.

None of the veterans had seen that happen before I didn't play again with that particular group, but a friend who was a regular in that group later told me that Russia buying a share of tanks had become a standard move with those guys.

To be honest, I suspect that the subconscious reason for my lucky decision simply was the expectation that counter-attacking and losing would be more fun than digging in and watching the Western Allies win the game!

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

 

[Njaco]

A4K, if you have PS2 you have to get "Call Of Duty" or "Brothers in Arms" - much, much, MUCH better than "MoH".

 

[comiso90]

Hi Comiso,

>allied general!

A friend once asked me for my opinion of Panzer General when the game was freshly out. My answer was "Captivating but not fascinating" - it manages to grab and hold your attention very well, but it offers only very slow development with hundreds of micromanagement tasks and the time panic at the end of a scenario as the main difficulty.

I don't know if you're familiar with the original "Empire" - it was sort of a "Civilization" without the civilization bits! In fact, Sid Meier's brilliance in creating Civilization was to replace the quantitative (and exponential) growth of units that bogged you down in unit-pushing tasks by qualitative growth, giving you fewer, more expensive, more powerful and (most importantly from a gameplay point of view) more manageable units instead.

"Empire" - much like the more complex "Panzer General", but also much like the far simpler "Tetris" - was able to generate a so-called Flow Effect ... something I'm sure most computer gamers will recognize even if they haven't heard it called by that name:

Flow (psychology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The list of nine components in the Wikipedia article is the bit to read ... for some reason, "flow" has been considered something entirely positive, but if you have experienced it, perhaps even with otherwise second-rate games, you'll probably recognize that it's neither good or bad in itself, just a mode the human brain can get into.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Hola Ho-hun,

Games like Panzer General and Allied General suit my computer habits. Turn-based simulations are conducive to multi-tasking. I RARELY sit at the computer and dedicate time to a game. Most of the time, I'm watching TV, playing on-line poker, surfing the web and answering e-mails.

Is Civilization turn based?