Pike and Shot Review

[Old_Warrior]

I have now played through several games of Pike and Shot Campaigns in the MP format and really love the game. The rout-pursuit by units really makes the battlefield really unpredictable. I am getting the hang of how to place units to stop it from getting out of hand but in my game of Cheriton I saw one Royalist cavalry unit run rampant over my units! ROFL

A special thanks to the folks that put the game together and also those that continue to pump out the new materials for us to download!

Right now I am having to reduce my game load due to game design work but hope to get back up to playing more games as work winds down. Thanks to my opponents who have picked up games with me. Looking forward to many more.

[rbodleyscott]

Glad you are enjoying it.

[OliversArmy]

I just wanted to say how I completely agree with Old-Warriors review. I am still new to this simulation. I have found it to be challenging and engaging. My interest is the English Civil War and find the scenarios to be accurate, well researched and fantastic to play.
Having said the ECW is my main interest the other conflicts offered have whetted my appetite and I am now researching the Thirty Years War and Italian Wars. The War of the Roses is my other interest. (I must have a thing about civil wars)!

I have also designed and with Richards help uploaded two scenarios for the ECW. Powick Bridge and Alton. I have never before been tempted to try and offer any material to any simulation web site. However the encouragement and help form this community has been fantastic.

Never have I seen a developer and designer reply so swiftly to calls for help via PM and e-mail as Richard.

Have I criticisms and suggestions? Yes, a couple, I would like some sort of leadership element, I would like it a bit easier to enable a scenario to be played from either side.
Most importantly I want to see an option for me to Court Marshall the lunatic Cavalier Commander who let his regiment pursue a routing enemy across the countryside like a Saturday morning Foxhunt , only returning after most of the shouting ,screaming and unpleasantness was over,. And the flank he left exposed had been turned so costing me the battle. That is not a suggestion but a definite demand

[Old_Warrior]

I didn't think you Brits looked at the War of the Roses as a Civil War, more of a war of succession ... but ok ... if you say so

[OliversArmy]

I didn't think you Brits looked at the War of the Roses as a Civil War, more of a war of succession ... but ok ... if you say so

I think you are technically correct good sir!
If we consider the amount of wars of succession and rebellions that took place from 1066 up to and including the Tudors, England would have been in a constant state of civil war! Plus changing sides in WoR was a national sport. You supported whoever could promote your own cause!
The War of the Roses left a long scar on the memory of the English. Especially among the Nobles who bore the brunt of the viciousness. A common cry from a victorious army on the field of battle was "Spare the commons, kill the nobles!" It is suggested that this was one reason that in 1642 so much was done in an attempt to avoid conflict. Although one has to be careful about making comparisons between the WoR and ECW because as you say one was a power struggle and the other a conflict of ideals.

[glenghiscan]

I'm playing battle academy at the moment but fancy a new challenge does this game play like BA which I like or panzer corps which I don't also is the forum alive with opponents .? Unlike commander the Great War which is as dead as. Dodo

[Philippeatbay]

I think what you're asking is will you like it.

In Pike & Shot you play a lot of set piece battles, with armies lined up facing each other. That gives a very different feel from anything that goes on in a WW II game, and it's a bit more like chess. You either like pre-modern warfare, or you don't.

P&S Campaigns is built on the Battle Academy engine so a lot of the UI mechanics will seem familiar.

For all their faults I rather like the Battle Academy games, in spite of the fact that I love Combat Mission. Beer and Pretzels comes at a cost, and the cost is a drop in realism. But simplicity can be fun.

I haven't played Panzer General, but have played Order of Battle: Pacific which is probably in the same genre. But I'm still trying to wrap my head around why you should spend time on something like that instead of a game with more convincing mechanics. Game mechanics should give lip-service to mimicking reality, rather than focusing on reduplicating a game convention. That's a fundamental design flaw issue that board wargames figured out how to solve forty years ago.

Commander: The Great War had a lot of promise. It's been a while since I moved on to other games about WWI like Strategic Command WWI Breakthrough and To End All Wars, but I think the main problem was one of scale.

There's no way for me to guess whether this kind of thing will be to your taste or not. Your best bet is to buy the Steam version, only play it for a couple of hours, and get a refund from Steam if you don't like it. Steam's refund policy is designed to act as a kind of demo substitute.

If you do go the Steam refund/demo route, don't install the game right away after you buy it. Two or three hours can go by very quickly, and you'll need time to read the manual. So when you've bought the game but haven't installed it, go into your game library and download the manual. You'll probably want to spend some time reading the manual first, and you don't want to be doing that while the clock is ticking.

[Pixel]

More like BA then Panzercorps. It is the same engine as BA after all. However, even though the basic UI is familiar if you've played BA the rule set (an adaptation of Field of Glory: Renaissance) means that battles in Pike and Shot play out quite a bit differently from the WW2 setting of the BA games. In Pike and Shot causing cohesion drops and routing a sizable portion of the the opposing army is usually the primary objective where as in BA you are often rushing tank columns to seize the objective flags.

The pursuit and priority charge target mechanics in P&S along with the the fact that melee engagements lock units in combat are two features common to many Early Modern and Medieval/Ancients tabletop games that folks either really enjoy or dislike. These game-play mechanics along with the fact that melee combat in P&S and Sengoku Jidai: Shadow of the Shogun use a Points of Advantage model (taking into account modifiers for troop quality, terrain, unit capabilities, Cohesion, etc.) give these two games a distinctly different feel then BA. See this: http://steamcommunity.com/games/397190/ ... 6032825080

The single player historical scenarios in P&S tend to be more challenging (usually you play on the side which lost historically) then what I've played in BA. But, even in skirmish battles the AI in P&S puts up a good fight.

As for Multiplayer finding a match doesn't seem to be much of a problem although you may have to post a challenge or two or grab some of the community made scenarios as a lot of the challenges these days are using some of the great user made content. The period covered by P&S is pretty wide ranging and armies at the end of the period late 1600s have very different unit rosters then the armies of the late 1400s. It is not as well known a period of history for most folks so the community isn't as large as the BA titles.

Artillery and firepower (Arquebus/Pistol/Musket) are both valuable tools on the P&S battlefield but may take a bit of getting used to if coming from war-gaming in WW2 or more modern settings.

[KiwiWarlord]

also is the forum alive with opponents .? Unlike commander the Great War which is as dead as. Dodo

Plenty of us around to give you a game. Best way is to post Open Challenges.
There are many sub periods and countless scenarios to choose from.

[glenghiscan]

Ive seen cave hobbits name on the forum so if it's hood enough for him it's good enough for me i shall buy this name and play the AI for a while to get to grips then I'll be posting games thanks for the Input

[Old_Warrior]

The comments I made here still stand ... I find the game fun to play for the most part but the pursuit issues I found later on and the 30YW cavalry ratings make a lot of the favorite scenarios I like to be difficult to enjoy. I can correct the cavalry on my own provided I get time. Just need less distance in the pursuit portion to be changed .. also the "pursuer strays from his prey to attack flank of other unit" to be corrected.