Was just wondering if anyone on the escapist would know of any decent historical strategy games that seek to be historically accurate simulations.
My father and I used to play wargames all the time (the kind with a board and hexes, with little cardboard bits and bobs that get pushed around before consulting a table to compare combat strength ratios). He's recently expressed interest in computerized versions of these wargames-- he used to play Robert E Lee Civil War General, and all the Talonsoft games. He was active in the old board wargaming community, and even got to run some simulations at the Navy War College.
But then I happened, and having a little child, two cats and a dog around were not conducive to a board game with hundreds of pieces-- particularly considering a single game could last longer than a year.
I tried setting him up with Rome Total War, but the tactical battles confused him with the interface (controlling a camera is entirely alien to him), and the campaign map was too historically inaccurate and abstract. He complained about the lack of supply lines, the fact that armies didn't dwindle due to desertion, and that it took half a year for an army to march from Rome to the Alps-- and the look on his face was priceless when I explained to him that soldiers never age, so a single army could fight a war in 200 BC and those very same soldiers could then end up fighting a war in 20 AD.
He doesn't mind abstraction when a game is obviously abstract (the one modern game I've managed to get him to try that he's enjoyed was Advance Wars) but when a game "masquerades as historical when it's clearly not", he loses interest.
So I figured I'd see what the opinionated masses here at the Escapist have to suggest-- I've looked at Europa Universalis 3, and that's all I've really seen... From what I can tell, Talonsoft is out of business, too. So I assume there must be somewhere on the net a group of wargamers who conspire together to create in-depth historically accurate wargames.
Thanks ahead of time.
My father and I used to play wargames all the time (the kind with a board and hexes, with little cardboard bits and bobs that get pushed around before consulting a table to compare combat strength ratios). He's recently expressed interest in computerized versions of these wargames-- he used to play Robert E Lee Civil War General, and all the Talonsoft games. He was active in the old board wargaming community, and even got to run some simulations at the Navy War College.
But then I happened, and having a little child, two cats and a dog around were not conducive to a board game with hundreds of pieces-- particularly considering a single game could last longer than a year.
I tried setting him up with Rome Total War, but the tactical battles confused him with the interface (controlling a camera is entirely alien to him), and the campaign map was too historically inaccurate and abstract. He complained about the lack of supply lines, the fact that armies didn't dwindle due to desertion, and that it took half a year for an army to march from Rome to the Alps-- and the look on his face was priceless when I explained to him that soldiers never age, so a single army could fight a war in 200 BC and those very same soldiers could then end up fighting a war in 20 AD.
He doesn't mind abstraction when a game is obviously abstract (the one modern game I've managed to get him to try that he's enjoyed was Advance Wars) but when a game "masquerades as historical when it's clearly not", he loses interest.
So I figured I'd see what the opinionated masses here at the Escapist have to suggest-- I've looked at Europa Universalis 3, and that's all I've really seen... From what I can tell, Talonsoft is out of business, too. So I assume there must be somewhere on the net a group of wargamers who conspire together to create in-depth historically accurate wargames.
Thanks ahead of time.
