Anthropoid -> RE: What a Fantastic Game (8/31/2008 4:07:51 PM)
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Much like MO Reb says above, for the first phase of learning the game, I dove straight into Advanced, and tackled Detailed Combat. Got that pretty well figured out last winter and had 4 or 5 exceedingly fun games against Elmer winning as both sides, and ratcheting up to about Sarge Major. If you want a game that is a fun stategic wargame against the AI, I can think of no better game than this. Learning and then mastering the Detailed Battle engine will give you many scores of hours of fun. Having got to a plateau with the Detailed Battle Engine, but frustrated by not being unable to beat the computer on higher and higher difficulties (another dimension to replay in months and years to come :) ) I had the "spring hiatus" from FoF. Since I've now delved into PBEMs with FoF, I have now got into the Quick Combat part, which is of course what you are limited to for multi-player. Initially I had not realized this and thought MP games would be unwieldy with Detailed Combat. Also I was not interested in the Quick Combat engine because it seemed to me to limit my ability to harness my tactical abilities. Once I learned that Quick Combat was the way it worked for PBEMs, and heard some guys at Blitz talking about the nuances of setting up your forces to prepare for Quick Combat, I was intrigued. What I'm now learning is that, there is yet ANOTHER level to this amazing game in learning how to build, move, augment, allocate, supply, and otherwise manage your brigades and containers in order to optimally influence your Quick Combat outcomes. What I had discounted as being "not interesting because it would not allow me to make tactical decisions" is in fact perhaps MORE fascinating because of how you have to set things up at the strategic/theatre level, and then allow / wait for them to get set in motion at the level of the battlefield. In short, what this game offers most types of wargamers what they might be looking for. Single-player fun against a challenging AI. SP games that involve integrating strategic and tactical thinking, as well as fascinating highly detailed tactical battles. The capacity to build historical scenario sims with the Detailed Engine that have non-random (or perhaps semi-random) OOBs as in the old CW Generals II (meaning: replay Gettysburgh, or Shiloh, or The Wilderness in either SP or MP mode). And last: an excellent PBEM game. My only disappointment with this game? The ACW only lasted 5 years and I IMPLORE you guys to apply this engine to additional conflicts so that we can explore them with a similarly beautiful and subtle game engine (Hundred Years War; Vietnam; The Korean Conflict; etc.)
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