misesfan

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  1. Missing - the top selling wargame of the year, Close Combat 3 - Russian Front; Warlords 3; Darklords Rising - an awesome SSG game - see Adam Smith's recent description in RPS to read a good description of the game - Anno 1602, Populous, etc... But yeah, it was the year of StarCraft. I remember getting the Protoss box (you could buy a different box for each faction) but had to look around a bit. I had to get my future wife to go hunt it down though! However, I always thought Warlords 3 was a much better game, and it kind of cemented in my brain that I was a turn based gamer and not an RTS gamer.
  2. Episode 308: Order of Battle: Pacific

    So Battle of the Bulge is not a game that forces you to 'put your pieces together in a certain way to solve the game?" There may not be an optimal solution but one definitely needs to prioritize certain units early in a turn in order to be effective in the game. It has opportunity costs, but so does Order of Battle and War in the Pacific. I think applying the puzzle moniker on Order of Battle is shallow criticism, especially since, as someone stated above, none of the mechanics of the game are really discussed.
  3. Episode 360: Hearts of Iron IV

    I assume the online wiki does not count as proper documentation (online wiki available via the ? icon in the upper left hand corner of the screen.). An option exists to view the wiki offline as well (via game settings). Nothing was discussed in the podcast regarding this option which is curious. Another curious thing is the critique regarding the aggregation of production, since lend lease is a diplomatic option with every nation. That is, you can select lend lease with a nation, go into your logistics screen and send 500 T-26 tanks to China, which may help delay the conquest of China by Japan. That is a very cool system, and much better implemented than a system like Triumph and Tragedy (which is limited by its board game mechanics of diplomacy).
  4. I love Bruce and have been agreeing with most of his opinions for about 30 years now. But.... He is completely off the mark with his analysis of the game except the UI issues that should be rightfully thrashed. For example, he makes the statement that a portion of the rules can be 'shut down' as a design flaw (in DC:B - you can bypass all the moral decisions...). I am sure that Bruce remembers back in the day in which Squad Leader presented rules with Programmed Instruction - you learned the rules in chunks and large portions of the latter rules were 'turned off..' I think its an excellent design decision and is applicable to a wide variety of game models and still appropriate today. Tom Chick would say that this is bad design? You know him much better than I, but I am not sure about that statement. Another example, Bruce states that he doesnt understand how the decision process models how Hitler may change his mind and swing south to take out the Ukraine as what actually happened. However, the game does model this - its a random event and may or may not occur. I dont think that playing as Halder you should be able to predict the whims of the fuhrer... He wants some Ukranian grain - whatcha gonna do? Also, the discussion meandered from an initial description of the the artillery rules - the point being made that artillery can be denied in a random fashion (or something like that, I couldnt follow the Hogans Heroes reference. However, thats not true - Artillery is applied to an army or division as a force multiplier - and.... as I love hearing the peeps on the show say... its very historically accurate) Great show and I dont want to nitpick the entire thing, as I really enjoyed it! Probably because I disagreed with Dr Geryk so vehemently - and that doesnt happen very often. Thanks guys
  5. 3MA has a Patreon

    lol - me too. I enjoy the podcast, but I was hoping that a stretch goal would be to have Tom Chick on the podcast more. Please? Pretty please??? Love you guys, and keep up the good work.
  6. Does HOI factor casualties into their national morale? This is one major reason why the Allies dreaded war. To have millions of casualties as they did in World War 1 would cause massive societal and governmental dislocation for Britain and France. The US, being a bit more isolationist, wold have major issues as well if the suffered massive casualties. The US could not have fought on the Russian Front with those kind of casualties - the national will would have collapsed.
  7. Episode 292: Advanced Squad Leader

    I love ASL and have been playing on and off since 85 (of course being an SL/COI/COD/GI player before that). But oh my, those 1/2" are horrifically hard to read and manage. Its way too fiddly on the physical layer, so thank goodness for VASL. BUT... I want to teach my kids wargaming, but it wont be ASL. And I have dreamt about teaching my kids the history of WW2 through the lens of ASL.
  8. The Warlords:Battlecry RTS games are outstanding games in and of themselves. The whole Warlords franchise has many things to say to developers nowadays: 1) the player needed to make high level strategic decisions as well as tactical decisions on the map. 2) The AI is superb, and frankly, I dont know of an AI in any game that can touch it - and it never cheated. 3) it had a great sense of humor. I remember playing the RTS where one of the stats of your hero units was the ability to fear enemy units, and the fear animation enemy minions was hilarious....4) bug-free. I frankly dont remember any bugs in any SSG game I played. Their QA was rock solid. The games are unplayable given our modern aesthetics, however. So one gripe with the games I have is presentation. It was functional back in the day, but it doesnt work now. I did like the podcast, but I do agree with a comment above about shuttling troops to the front. One of the fundamentals strategic choices you make in HOMM is which hero (and how many) to use as a mule. You are able to project force over distance, but you have to plan for it. Also, HOMM V to me was superior to all previous versions of the game. Yes, the campaigns were bad. But the gameplay was fabulous - especially when I discovered that skills could be levelled up in a way that gives you a super-defining skill for your class - see the Skill Wheel at http://www.celestialheavens.com/viewpage.php?id=520 And HOMM VI could have been good/great, but apparently Ubisoft laid off some QA and they presented their customers with a buggy turd of a game. And wtf is up with Ubi's front end client. oy....