New to tactical and strategic war games and need some advice

[Three4Flinching]

Hi all,
Not having played many war games before I am in need of your help to choose a good and beginner friendly game to properly introduce me into this genre of games. I have quite a lot of experience paying strategy games and 4X games, which despite not being good at them I really like.

Out of all Slitherines games I have played Armada 2025 and Panzer Corps. While I liked the small amount of time I put on the latter I am rather torn regarding its puzzle like design. I sometimes feel that I need to "know" the scenario and enemy placement beforehand to be able to play the game properly. Of course I could be totally wrong here, and I will continue to play the game. With that said, I would really like to play something a bit deeper than the "beer and pretzels" style game.

Having browsed the Slitherine store, and Steam, I am now a bit lost on where to start.

Era does not matter too much, I rather have a good and beginner friendly game than being restricting myself to a time period. The game needs to be able to run on a work laptop with a graphics card having 512 video ram. I have a fairly new and fast processor, and 16 gb of "normal" ram, but the computer is definitely not a gaming laptop by any stretch of the imagination.

Thanks in advance!

[edb1815]

Welcome. Since you are limited by the graphics capabilities of your laptop I might suggest an older Slitherine/Matrix title; Battle Academy. This series is fun and gives a nice WWII tactical battle feel. I would also recommend the Order of Battle series. The main download is free which essentially gives you a tutorial and a demo, then you can buy modules with different sides and theaters of WWII. It is more of an operational level game with resource points and such.

[Robotron]

Hi Three4Flinching and welcome to the forum.

Regarding the puzzle-style aspect you noticed when playing Panzer Corps: yes, I'd agree with that. Any tactical wargame with poorly designed scenarios on tight turn limits can be frustratingly difficult to beat and requires exact knowledge of enemy positions and nasty surprises like enemy reinforcements. At worst playing these may feel more like a chore than actually enjoying yourself which completely defies the whole idea behind playing games. For me the worst offenders in the latter category are probably Order of Battle and Heroes of Normandy.
However any kind of wargame is by nature also a puzzle game albeit with a complex subset of rules. It's the design that makes a game either absorbingly fun or dauntingly difficult.

That being said if you happen to be interested in grand-strategy style WW1 games and want a truly beginner-friendly experience I'd suggest you either try Commander: the Great War or it's spiritual successor Strategic Command WW1.

Cheers!

[Three4Flinching]

Welcome. Since you are limited by the graphics capabilities of your laptop I might suggest an older Slitherine/Matrix title; Battle Academy. This series is fun and gives a nice WWII tactical battle feel. I would also recommend the Order of Battle series. The main download is free which essentially gives you a tutorial and a demo, then you can buy modules with different sides and theaters of WWII. It is more of an operational level game with resource points and such.

Thank you edb1815!
I will definitely look in to those games. Battle Academy looks fun, and not to complicated. Seeing that Order of Of Battle has a "demo" I might as well try that also

[Three4Flinching]

Hi Three4Flinching and welcome to the forum.

Regarding the puzzle-style aspect you noticed when playing Panzer Corps: yes, I'd agree with that. Any tactical wargame with poorly designed scenarios on tight turn limits can be frustratingly difficult to beat and requires exact knowledge of enemy positions and nasty surprises like enemy reinforcements. At worst playing these may feel more like a chore than actually enjoying yourself which completely defies the whole idea behind playing games. For me the worst offenders in the latter category are probably Order of Battle and Heroes of Normandy.
However any kind of wargame is by nature also a puzzle game albeit with a complex subset of rules. It's the design that makes a game either absorbingly fun or dauntingly difficult.

That being said if you happen to be interested in grand-strategy style WW1 games and want a truly beginner-friendly experience I'd suggest you either try Commander: the Great War or it's spiritual successor Strategic Command WW1.

Cheers!

Thank you Robotron!
Both of those games looks really fun. I like that they have a persistent map and not individual battles. Are there any diplomacy etc. involved? I really like that, especially when done right (or as good as it can possibly get when playing against the cpu).

[Robotron]

Strategic Command WW1 has a diplomacy system built on national production capability invested into "chits" to be used to influence neutral nations into joining the war. It also has a number of events that can be chosen to pay with production to get neutrals to join your alliance. Furthermore actual successes on the battlefield may swing neutrals into joining either alliance.
SWW1 is the latest WW1 game by Slitherine/Matrix and is still actively supported, has a quite active community for multiplayer and just looks very good in general.
However it is less "elegant" in game design than Commander: the Great War. For instance nations have no limit to their manpower, because manpower is represented by national morale and artillery ammunition cannot be freely distributed to where it is needed most. Nonetheless this is the "must have" WW1 game at the moment.

Commander: the Great War has no diplomacy system in the basic game besides players being successful in crushing the enemy and taking his cities to sway the neutrals. CTGW is also quite old so finding opponents for a multiplayer challenge will be difficult. BUT it is very easy to get into and very efficiently designed - it even sometimes makes you wonder why stuff had to be made so complicated in SCWW1.
My mod for CTGW called "Potzblitz" has a VAST amount of diplomatic options made possible by the newly introduced "diplomatic points" resource and the "choose an event" system which is covering more than 600 historical events of WW1. It has so many variables that you will struggle to play the same match twice. There's also a 120 page manual for the mod which was a work of love, because I thought the basic game was just so good but lacked some modifications.
Quite a lot of players agreed. ^^

[Three4Flinching]

Strategic Command WW1 has a diplomacy system built on national production capability invested into "chits" to be used to influence neutral nations into joining the war. It also has a number of events that can be chosen to pay with production to get neutrals to join your alliance. Furthermore actual successes on the battlefield may swing neutrals into joining either alliance.
SWW1 is the latest WW1 game by Slitherine/Matrix and is still actively supported, has a quite active community for multiplayer and just looks very good in general.
However it is less "elegant" in game design than Commander: the Great War. For instance nations have no limit to their manpower, because manpower is represented by national morale and artillery ammunition cannot be freely distributed to where it is needed most. Nonetheless this is the "must have" WW1 game at the moment.

Commander: the Great War has no diplomacy system in the basic game besides players being successful in crushing the enemy and taking his cities to sway the neutrals. CTGW is also quite old so finding opponents for a multiplayer challenge will be difficult. BUT it is very easy to get into and very efficiently designed - it even sometimes makes you wonder why stuff had to be made so complicated in SCWW1.
My mod for CTGW called "Potzblitz" has a VAST amount of diplomatic options made possible by the newly introduced "diplomatic points" resource and the "choose an event" system which is covering more than 600 historical events of WW1. It has so many variables that you will struggle to play the same match twice. There's also a 120 page manual for the mod which was a work of love, because I thought the basic game was just so good but lacked some modifications.
Quite a lot of players agreed. ^^

This sounds really interesting, impressive work. You have convinced me giving CTGW a try. Would you suggest playing the game in its original form before venturing on and use your mod? Or should I just go for the "full experience" immediately?

[Robotron]

Definitely try the original version first to understand the basics. The mod's additional features might appear overwhelming otherwise and the difficulty was also raised substantially to meet the abilities of experienced players. I'd suggest you tackle to the mod once you feel comfortable beating the basic game's AI with both sides.

[Three4Flinching]

Great, than I'll start with the base game.
Thanks for the help! Looking forward trying your mod later on