Advanced Tactics-(Lite-Wargame)

[Calis]

This gets a bit long-winded, if you're not a fan of Panzer General, Civilization, and/or Steel Panthers I'd say skip it. If you are then it might interest you. It's about a year old so probably old news but I'm surprised how little talk I see about it around various forums.

I bit the bullet last week as I got the itch for some turn-based goodness. (Probably a horrible idea to buy a game right before this fall onslaught of releases, but what the hell) I was having a tough time choosing between this and Strategic Command 2, and ended up deciding to give this one a shot.

I’m very impressed. I’ll start off by saying I’m definitely not a grognard. I love strategy games, and have always wanted to get into wargames but I seldom do. The sheer scope of it usually turns me off. I was afraid this one might be a similar experience because looking at it appears to be a hardcore wargame. It is not.

Here’s the site for the game itself

Here is a link to an AAR that sold me on buying the game. I’ll warn you that it dies, but I think it gives a great overview of the game.

If I were to compare it to other games it is something like Panzer General meets Steel Panthers and they meet Civilization after work for some drinks.
The game it titled Advanced Tactics: World War 2 but that’s a little misleading. The majority of the canned scenarios that ship with the game are based on WW2, but I have yet to touch one of those. The big deal with this game is the customization to represent any conflict throughout history. There are custom scenarios out there dealing with the Romans, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, World War I, and all the way to things like a Star Trek Mod, a Lord of the Rings one, and hypothetical future wars. I haven’t tried any of these yet apart from the Napoleonic one which seemed good but a bit over my head still.

There is a lot to custom scenarios as well. You can modify the basic things like the units, graphics, but you can go further and people have put in action cards and such that can be doled out and represent events and such to add some flavor to scenarios. Seems like they are still finding out what they can do with it.

Now I haven’t touched the canned scenarios and I only tried out a user created one to see what it was like. 99% of my time has been spent playing random scenarios. This is where the game really shines in my opinion. You can set a number of parameters at the beginning, the size of the map, the number of sides, the percentage that is water, forest, and mountains. This is the part where it gets very Civilization-like. You can set all this up, and then a map will be randomly generated for you.

When the map is created and you begin, you will have control of a HQ unit and a city for your base of operations. Your opponents will have the same. You can then set production in your city, which can be anything from creating more rifleman, tanks, etc.. to doing something like making more supplies or trucks to use in transporting. You also can produce Political Points which are used in researching new techs. You can upgrade to better tanks, fighters, etc… You then start expanding your territory. There’s plenty of neutral towns out there and you’re fighting to capture these towns and use them to produce even more troops and supplies.

You can customize your divisions how you see fit. Say I create a unit that is composed of 50 infantry. I can later produce 4 machine guns, 2 artillery, a couple light tanks, and attach those to the division. It’s all very easily done.
I think it reaches a perfect compromise between beer & pretzels games and harder core games. It’s simple to start up, and if you play a basic 1v1 random scenario with a 20x20 hex or smaller map you can easily finish in one sitting. There’s also canned scenarios with no worries about production if that isn’t your cup of tea. There’s still plenty of room for real strategy and the supply system is still a bit hard for me to come to grips with, but I have a feeling like with the AGEOD games, when it does click it’ll seem very obvious.

Anyone else tried this one out? I know it won some wargaming awards last year, but I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it.

[DaddyTorgo]

sounds interesting. Might check it out during my vacation this week.