Leaders and Command & Control

[deadtorius]

I think I have seen references to it posted on the forums never played either version. At present the command system is as close to the TT game as they can get. On the TT your generals can combine separate BG's into a battle line, and if they are all in his command radius they can move as one group and get a double move if the enemy is far enough away. After that each Bg works independently, although on the TT your lines tend to stay as lines you don't get the scattered battles you see in the PC game which may be due to the hexes and movement restrictions etc. It sounds like you want add complexity that I don't personally see will add much to game play but to each their own. Good luck on your game design.

[jamespcrowley]

Cothyso, what is GBCE? Is it an old DOS game?

Interested to know a little more about your game. FoG is excellent as a game but a bit lacking in some detail and realism. Something like the HPS ancients games (Punic, Gallic and Alexandrian wars) have huge detail, are realistic but have a huge learning curve, dreadful UI and turns on the larger battles can take forever. Something between the two could be interesting.

[kilroy1]

Cothyso, what is GBCE? Is it an old DOS game?

Great Battles Collector's Edition: It covered the battles of Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar. It was a windows game that was released in the late '90s, and it was a computer version of GMT's Great Battles of Hisory (GBoH) series of boardgames.


kilroy

[cothyso]

Well, on Personal Computers there were 4 big series of tactical ancient wargames:
- I-Magic's Great Battles (Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar and Collector's Edition which had all of them plus the Scenario Editor and Scenario Player).
- Koios Works' Tin Soldiers (Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar)
- HPS' Ancient Warfare (Punic Wars, Gallic Wars, Alexandrian Wars and Greek Wars)
- Slitherine's (Field of Glory)

There were also some RTS versions worth mentioning:
- Creative Assembly's Total War (Shogun, Medieval, Rome, Medieval 2, Empire, Shogun 2)
- Slitherine's (Legion and Legion Gold, Chariots of War, Spartan, Troy, Legion Arena, The History Channel Great Battles of Rome)
- Longbow Games' Hegemony: Philip of Macedon
(Ubisoft's Alexander, Ensemble Studios' Age of Empires and World Forge's Ancient Wars: Sparta and some others are not really worth mentioning in this context, as they were mostly just using an ancient setup)

I've played all of them, and of them all, GBCE is by far the better in recreating the ancient battlefield. HPS's Ancient Warfare are good, even if very complex, but are simply destroyed by a horrible interface. FoG has potential, but is still far away from GBCE.

Ian's GBCE site is still up, and as far as I know, the Scenario Editor and Scenario Player are still in ther to be downloaded, and will allow you to play any of the custon scenarios you'll get from his site. GBCE is very hard to find to be bought, as it was produced like more than 10 years ago, and unfortunately, it has its limits and bugs too.

[TheGrayMouser]

I dont agree that GBCe was better per say than FOG in creating Ancient battles, you still were able to move individual units around, the comparative value combat matrix had just as much variabilty in it as FOG ( and less variety!)... The true diffence in those games was the gimmick of the activation of leaders , which then allowed units to move.... Although it certainly added spice and fun to the game, it arguably made the command and control even less realistic than how FOG does it....

To balance scenarios in those games, one sides leaders were alway given super low initiave which meant they often failed to activate and the troops under their command wouldnt be able to move while the enemy ran rings around you (so in Cannae, the Roman legions were basically stationairy, only being able to inch worm small parts of their army fwrd at a time) In the end, the end result often looked historical, but the journy to get there was completely a-historical)

I believe you can still find unused bundles of this game off ebay or Amazon, I can get my copies to work on XP, I do believe Vista is problematic but possible.....


You also forgot one last turn based game set in medieval times (although there were some ancient and Ren mods as well) Medieval 2 by Jeff Lapkoff Games

[cothyso]

you were able to move individual units around indeed, and even units from other leader's battlegroups', but the cost was way too big. Usually a common leader would have 3 initiative points, which meant he could move 3 individual units under his command, while most of them would have around 6 or so to move.. therefore most of the time Move Group/Group Attack command would be used.

also you are wrong mouser regarding the lowest initiative leaders. I never saw any leader with a value less than 2, and they still could do Group commands. Also, they would never fail to activate, just usually (unless a very lucky dice), they would activate the lasts in a turn.

the games also had lots of special things and moments, like the MLE from Hannibal for example (MLE is Manipular Line Extension, a command which would take the second cohort of a maniple and move it forward to close the gaps into the battleline, the roman army advancing in a quincunx/columns formation set, like in Cannae for example) or the double phalanx formations (on two hexes).

the game is still taking dices into account in combat computations, but I never saw light missile troops besting heavy infantry in melee combat, or medium/heavy besting infantry phalanx head on and so on).

the games are working perfectly fine on all M$ operating systems, including the 64 edition ones (like Windows Seven 64 bits on which I am currently running them). There is a custom made patch on Iain's site (by me, doing some reverse engineering in assembler, oh, the days ) which solves some of game's crushes and problems, and optionally removes the momentum feature from the game).

[TheGrayMouser]

Well, it has been 4-5 years since I played those games, and I could be confusing the board game mechanics a little with the PC version. My point though, was that the leader activasion added, although a unique and interesting game experiance, also a very artifical experience in terms of reality.

Clearly you know the game much better seeing how you cracked the exe and created the unnofficial patch, many thanks for that , back in the day it was awsome having the editor actualy work! (always sad when fans have to make a game work as it should!)

Hmmm, now i want to search my basement again for those cd's!