Zama - Historical Simulation - Good Joke part 2

[Petiloup]

Now I don't say you shouldn't like the game, but I'm just insisting that this game is no simulation and certainly nothing close to being historical.

But to give it even a slight remote chance to change my mind I just played Zama with the Carthaginians... oh boy really felt like playing RISK slightly improved.

First of all I started doing the logical encirclement option to take down the Roman cavalry. That worked great on my right flank but not so great on the left flank as I was not quick enough to surround those light horses.

Nonetheless I killed Masinissa the general commanding those light horses and as expected they didn't care and kept fighting till the bitter end, they were the last units I destroyed.

Caius Laelius was the next one to be slain with all his cavalry doing the same surround, disrupt, fragment, break and dispersed tactic. Those cavalry units melted like butter.

I have added a screen shot so you can see that I'm using infantry to surround cavalry.

Then next I went against the center to kill Scipio which was done about a quarter into the battle, first he was running away as you can see as well.

There you go, I killed the 3 enemy generals and the troops didn't care at all. They stayed there happy to continue being slaughtered.

I ended up routing 100% of the Roman army as the AI is so inept at this game that it has no sense on managing an army.

AND THIS IS THE BIG ISSUE WITH THIS GAME, THE AI ISN'T BUILD FOR AN HISTORICAL SIMULATION... and nothing was done by the designers to even remotely doing so.

- Historically battles were decided by the fate of the C-C, would he run away and the army would loose spirit. Would he die, same. Here, who cares?
- Armies were reacting to what the enemy was doing, here missiles units are happy to stay in place if they can shoot, cavalry or infantry is the same. And those missiles have little effect as I left one infantry unit surrounded by Light Cavalry for most of the game and it was still there at the end when I finished crushing those cavalry with my infantry units.
- Romans were master at keeping formations but here each battle I played with or against them was ending with units fighting in all kind of positions away and in different direction from each other.

This game might be better at playing against a human player but then don't sell games with an AI pretending it's a great simulation.

At least have the decency to try to sell a product with an AI that works more or less adequately before calling it an "Accurate Historical Simulation". What a shame.

[JC_von_Preussen]

Alhtough I have to say I'm very frustrated with my recent rape in Tournament/PBEM to the point I considered ragequitting the wole thing, I think your own rage is quite not as righteous as mine !

If you want a fine simulation, maybe try Europa Barbarorum 2 for Medieval Total War 2 ? That might be the closest thing to what you're looking for ?

FoG2 is a board game adapted on computer. So yes, not so much of a simulation. I mainly bought it 1) to support the Byzantine studio 2) For I loved P&S campaigns.

[Cumandante]

How do you even rout 100% of their army? All this sounds very fishy to me.

[JaM2013]

precisely.. battle ends once you get to 60%

[stockwellpete]

You can carry on playing after routing 60% of the AI enemy if you want to in "Custom battles", so presumably you can in "Epic battles" as well.

[Cumandante]

You can carry on playing after routing 60% of the AI enemy if you want to in "Custom battles", so presumably you can in "Epic battles" as well.

Precisely. The OP appears to have twisted the facts to suit his narrative.

[JaM2013]

yeah, makes sense.. so he played more than those 23-24 turns just to show us that number lol..

[Alsagoz]

Doing non-historical things while expecting historical results sounds like a good joke to me.

Joke aside, OP sounds more like nitpicking at exploitable AI and going over the limitation of the ruleset just to make a sneer remark which is not a nice thing to do IMO. "Slingers vs Javelinmen" is doing a better job than this.

[JaM2013]

because "Slingers vs Javelinmen" was never intended to critize the game like this. I have started it when i noticed tendency of slingers doing more damage than javelinmen when game was not even released.. (youtube lets play videos)

this at the other side is just s rant. he tries to bash the game for not being historical, while he doesnt even fights the battle historically.. its complete nonsense.

[JorgenCAB]

Perhaps he should try it against a human opponent that knows how to play the game and see if it is so easy and unhistorical.

This is obviously still a game but it will do the simulation part fairly well. The Total War series are probably much worse in the simulation part in my opinion, not much realism in the mechanic in that game to be honest.

[olin0111]

Don't know if OP is trolling but I will take the bait.
Couple of points:

1) Is FOG2 a historical portrayal of ancient battles? No. But it's better than total war and it's turn based so..ok for me I guess. I consider it more of a chess with plenty of ancient warfare elements to the point that I can immerse myself and get a feel of history and like the game very much. But the game is no simulation if that is what OP is asking for. This would be quite impossible to achieve given the state of our knowledge of the period. AFAIK we don't know how ancients fought exactly, how the clash of armies really looked like. There are only educated guesses and hypotheses on this matter. Having said all of that the word "simulation" in the phrase "Accurate simulation of Ancient battle" on the product page should not be there as it's too much of a stretch. It's a common sales pitch to include "simulation" in product description for a strategy game. The fact that many companies do that doesn't make it right. I would probably go with "portrayal" or something like that.

2) AI is competent. The fact that it does not care about loosing generals is because they are not extremely important in this game, which is rather historically inaccurate (especially when it comes to C-in-C). The game genarelly does not factor the C4 that much although you do get the feeling of formations being unwieldy and you cannot just move them around how you want. You also loose control over the units once they clash.

TL,DR: the game is no simulation and it does not care about leaders and C4 that much which is historically inaccurate but it has enough ancient feel to it that I'm generally ok.

[JaM2013]

Perhaps he should try it against a human opponent that knows how to play the game and see if it is so easy and unhistorical.

This is obviously still a game but it will do the simulation part fairly well. The Total War series are probably much worse in the simulation part in my opinion, not much realism in the mechanic in that game to be honest.

Total war has problem to understand base principle of time and space.. it allows player to move heavy units around while sprinting like crazy, while it allows you to squeeze multiple units into space occupied by single unit.. which means entire game has nothing to do with tactical simulation.. its nonsensical fight of blobs. (which eventually kill your CPU or GPU)

Anyway, judging the game based on some scenarios is crazy.. if anything, i would criticize scenario design that it doesnt resemble the battle (Zama especially would be better as 2-3 episode mini-campaign)

[edb1815]

Alhtough I have to say I'm very frustrated with my recent rape in Tournament/PBEM to the point I considered ragequitting the wole thing, I think your own rage is quite not as righteous as mine !

If you want a fine simulation, maybe try Europa Barbarorum 2 for Medieval Total War 2 ? That might be the closest thing to what you're looking for ?

FoG2 is a board game adapted on computer. So yes, not so much of a simulation. I mainly bought it 1) to support the Byzantine studio 2) For I loved P&S campaigns.

Actually it is adapted from a table top miniatures game and a fairly complex one at that. I noted another poster make the same board game assumption. The maneuver system in table top FOG is far more than one could represent with a hex or grid based board game. Just go over and peruse the table top forum and you'll see. One of the things that FOG does very well is to portray the limitations on maneuvering and command control in this period.

[Strategiusz]

I agree that the historical battles (epic battles) are not good as a historical simulation, because we know many specific things about those battles that can not be reproduced with an engine that is made mainly for generic multiplayer battles.

[GiveWarAchance]

petiloup is trolling the forum with these kinds of threads.
It would be best if we never reply to his troll threads again.
It's very doubtful he even bothers to look at these threads after posting the first bait comment cause he just wants to "trigger all the fanboys" and have a giggle.
The game is good with a very well-made AI so we don't need to be ruffled by negative opinions especially fake ones from trolls.

[Jace11]

petiloup is trolling the forum with these kinds of threads.
It would be best if we never reply to his troll threads again.
It's very doubtful he even bothers to look at these threads after posting the first bait comment cause he just wants to "trigger all the fanboys" and have a giggle.
The game is good with a very well-made AI so we don't need to be ruffled by negative opinions especially fake ones from trolls.

I get a giggle reading his posts actually. I treasure the fact that there is someone out there who complains about ahistorical outcomes in games and gets worked up about it enough to make sh!tposts about it, it tickles me abit...

I'd love to see what games actually meet his expectations in this regard.

Maybe anyone who has won Gary Grigby's War in the East as the Germans should ask for a refund?

[GiveWarAchance]

petiloup is trolling the forum with these kinds of threads.
It would be best if we never reply to his troll threads again.
It's very doubtful he even bothers to look at these threads after posting the first bait comment cause he just wants to "trigger all the fanboys" and have a giggle.
The game is good with a very well-made AI so we don't need to be ruffled by negative opinions especially fake ones from trolls.

I get a giggle reading his posts actually. I treasure the fact that there is someone out there who complains about ahistorical outcomes in games and gets worked up about it enough to make sh!tposts about it tickles me abit...

I'd love to see what games actually meet his expectations in this regard.

Maybe anyone who has won Gary Grigby's War in the East as the Germans should ask for a refund?

hehe good comment
I have been tempted to get that War in the East game and the West one as well cause Gary Grisby is well-known for making quality WW2 games, but I'm terrified of the complexity (and the price too but it probably is well worth the money).

[stockwellpete]

Poor old letty-poop. Nobody loves him any more.

[fuzzayd]

Guys, he's taking screenshots with a camera. He's a good troll, but a troll nonetheless.

[Cumandante]

Guys, he's taking screenshots with a camera. He's a good troll, but a troll nonetheless.

LOL I just noticed that!