Episode 232: Sid Meier's Gettysburg!

[Rob Zacny]

Nick Breckon joins Rob and Troy to talk about one of the greatest wargames ever made.

 

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[hexgrid]

This podcast keeps making me want to fill holes in my collection.  Well, except for last week's show; I think I'm giving the new Rome a wide berth.  : )

 

I missed Gettysburg when it came out.  It looks like at this point if I don't get lucky in a garage sale I'm looking at $150, or trying my luck with offers that sound suspiciously like the publisher will be "Maxell" or "Verbatim".

 

Is this a windows game, or is it something that dosbox would handle?

[sclpls]

Nice to hear Nick on the podcast, I loved his enthusiasm for the game, and hopefully he can join in on some future episodes. If you're ever going to get Jake on the podcast though I think you're going to have to do a Pikmin 2 episode...

 

That game Troy mentioned about organizing the political cabinet of Lincoln sounds strikingly similar to a game I played back in the 90s, but was about the American Revolution, right down to everything being interesting except for the terrible battle system. Sadly I don't recall the name at all.

 

I never played Gettysburg, and this episode certainly makes me sad that I missed out on it. We can all hope (and luckily have some confidence) that Shenandoah Studios will bring a similar quality to their iPad effort.

[TheYoungCato]

This episode really brought back some memories for me, I'm really fortunate that my dad just happened to borrow this absolute gem from a co-worker one day and brought it home, else, I would have never played it.

I was never much good at it, but as a simulation of combat in a very specific time and place, I found it endlessly fascinating. It helped me realize that there were far more to battles in that era than two neatly organized lines of men shooting volley after volley into each other.

 

I'm a bit astonished at how specific my memories of this game are, such as the way unit morale was displayed with blocks, and how those blocks filled up with red as the unit suffered more and more battle stress, the way that crack units of like 400 guys were often worth divisions three times their number, the way that your battle results were tallied with shouts of "YEEEEE-HAW".

I even heard the "Five more minutes" soundbite echo inside my head when Rob quoted it.

 

Troy's description of Antietam helped me realize why I don't like many strategy games over a certain scale. if I have to micro-manage things like you do in Gettysburg, and if I have to spend like 10 seconds scrolling across the battlefield just to get the whole picture, I become discouraged pretty quickly.

 

It's a little weird, but the original Ground Control and Gettysburg occupy a similar space in my mind. Both were games based around commanding units, in the sense of a squad or division, as opposed to a rabble, like in traditional RTS games,  both games put importance on positioning, facing, and terrain, both games went at a more relaxed pace than Starcraft without becoming ponderous, and both games helped me gain a basic understanding of battlefield tactics.

 

It's really, really unfortunate that there's nothing like Gettysburg, today. I find RTS games to be too fast for me, and I can never quite emotionally invest myself in the goings on of a grand-strategy game, they're just too big, too abstract.

[Bletchley_Geek]

It's really, really unfortunate that there's nothing like Gettysburg, today. I find RTS games to be too fast for me, and I can never quite emotionally invest myself in the goings on of a grand-strategy game, they're just too big, too abstract.

Well, I've always thought that the Take Command / Scourge of War games are indeed the closest thing to Sid Meier's masterpiece. I'd suggest you to try one of their demos, although be advised that the production values on the user interface might put you off.

Edited September 20, 2013 by Bletchley_Geek

[Tim James]

I'm not so sure this game is worth playing in 2013. I've been trying to force myself into Antietam for a few weeks now. It's just too old, and I'm someone who usually loves playing important retro games I missed at the time. The graphics are too jumbled to make anything out. Most of the interface is a dead end historically. The animations are poor. And of course the camera scrolls too fast. (Protip: on the menu bar at the top of the screen, click Game, then Preferences, then disable edge scroll, and use shift-C repeatedly to center your view on your mouse cursor.)

 

It was worth playing an hour to learn how some of the systems work. You could also watch some gameplay on YouTube, most likely created by someone who is better at the controls. I just don't think it's smart to spend a lot of time and money unless you're certain you'll commit to it no matter what.

[murdocj]

Damn you guys, I just bought a copy on Amazon, no idea if it will even play on my system.  You make these games sound so luscious I can't hold back, and I'm fascinated by Gettysburg, enjoyed walking the battlefield a few years back (on a hot July day, no less).

[Ebenezer]

I don't know whether anyone has brought this up, but it sounds like the wrong episode is embedded on the various pages for this show. What should be a discussion about Sid Meier's Gettysburg is instead an interview with the designer of A Force More Powerful and XCOM: Enemy Within. It's a pretty good episode, but not the one that's supposed to be there. What's up?

[Michael]

When we switched from Libsyn to Soundcloud for hosting our podcasts there was a bit of a hiccup during the migration. Basically the numbering on a slew of episodes ended up off by one. This issue comes up from time to time though I thought I had fixed most of them at this point. 

 

I can fix it tonight and examine the other shows in that number range and see what needs fixing. 

[Paul Smith]

Hi, this episode (and also ep. 233) is still messed up. I did manage to find the correct files here:

 

http://threemovesahead.libsyn.com/webpage/2013/09

[Paul Smith]

Since I already bumped this:

 

Am I correct that there's no way to (legally) download this right now?

 

There is a GOG request: https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/sid_meiers_gettysburg

 

Secondhand copies are reasonably expensive and I'm not sure it will run anyway. It unfortunately falls into the early Windows dark ages where DOSbox doesn't apply and compatibility with W7/10 is likely long broken.