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ravinhood -> RE: FOF vs AACW (9/30/2007 3:49:13 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Gil R.
Ravinhood, regarding the ancients game, I'm curious about your opinion about whether such a game would appeal if it lacked detailed combat. Ancient wars -- and here I'm thinking Greeks and Romans, about which I know more than Hittites, Babylonians, etc. -- tended not to have numerous large battles. For example, the Peloponnesian War had only a few real battles, and I even remember Victor Davis Hanson in "A War Like No Other" saying that if one added up the time it took to fight that war's land battles it would come to 3-4 hours. The Civil War lasted four years, but had far, far more significant engagements than the Peloponnesian War did over thirty years, than the Persian Wars half a century earlier, than the Punic Wars, etc. Thus it might make sense to do an ancients game that is only the strategic game and uses the quick-combat system for battles, not the detailed combat system, since we'd be putting in an awful lot of programming and graphics effort for battles that shouldn't be happening that often. Do you think that you and others who want an ancients game would lose interest if it doesn't have detailed combat?
I can only speak from my younger days and those that enjoyed minature battles using ancients pieces and for me and those it was pretty popular. I'm a "tactical" type player by and by now. I hardly play any game that is pure strategic or operational anymore. I've been tactical since I first got my hands on the origional "Squad Leader" game. So, a pure grand strategic ancients game wouldn't impress me much. Though the "Battle of Alesia" would.
It is the color and the mass amounts of unique weapons of that period that I would like to see in a strategical/tactical game of the Ancients, it's why we played minatures to begin with I think because of all the colors and weapons vs the period history and how long a battle lasted.
Remember I'm drawn to your game engine and design BECAUSE you do not follow the leader and you make your games open ended whereas they don't have to follow historical rule. You create the "whatifs" that us whatif gamers like. If you left out the tactical battles in the Ancients game you would be doing a dis-service to those that buy your games for this reason. The historical time frames of battles just do not matter as much as being able to play them out by "choice".
Of course I know coding all those wonderful colorful units of the period would add a lot more programming to the game as well as the tactical portion to the game. It's what I would buy though and it's what I would recommend others to buy as well.
I also feel as though a time for the Ancients is forthcoming. I have to believe the consumers are getting sick of WW2 material and from where I sit modern day wargames can't be that popular. We've had an influx of Civil wargames and the only other call would be Medieval times.
But, whatever you do please don't eliminate the best things about your games...the tactical portion as well as strategic nor the ability to play whatifs in them. ;)
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