So I've had both Wargame: European Escalation and Wargame: Airland Battle in my Steam library for some time now and over the holidays I wanted to give them a try. I started with Airland Battle since it was the newer of the titles and promised some really cool graphics. It looks great, but this is no game that any casual player can pick up and go with.
First the AAR - then the commentary on the game..
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This is one of the skirmish missions that pits the player against the AI computer. Unless you are playing a skirmish or multiplayer - it doesn't appear that you can replay (to grab screens) a mission in the training or campaign modes (bummer).
The scenario is Highway to Oslo which basically pits U.S. forces against Pact forces in a duel to 3,000 points. Lose a unit and you "feed" points to the enemy. Likewise, kill a unit and you gain points. Points can be used during the mission to spawn new units onto the battlefield (which then have to be driven to the location you wish to deploy them), but there is a limit to the numbers and types of units available based on the "deck" of units available to you. So you can't spawn say two dozen Abrams and nothing else. The game is very much about combined arms.
* Note - all images are in game and unaltered/edited at all. This is a damn fine looking game for sure..and it plays very smoothly..
My forces will start in zone Alpha and I'll then be tasked with moving my forces up the map, capturing zones and hopefully gaining points as I go...
During the mission, of course, you have no idea of the disposition or intent of the enemy troops. Use of platforms (there are 800+ different types of vehicles, ships, aircraft, etc..in the game) to recon the enemy is a huge part of the game. These screens are all taken by the after-action replay feature, so I'm able to see what all was happening throughout the map. Here, the Pact forces are rolling down the main highway heading for my sector.
At some point about a third of the way down the map, the AI split into a three prong attack, with most of the forces concentrating on the west side of the main highway and boring straight down the middle with a lighter force heading down the eastern side...
I'm horrible at this game and I was outclassed, outgunned, and out maneuvered from minute one. I basically have no idea what I'm doing despite having gone though the five horribly ineffective tutorial missions. My thought was to put forward a screen defense of fairly accurate tanks (M1A1) to basically play a game of attrition and pull back gradually giving ground for blood.
One of my tank platoons heading forward to find a good place to hole up..
I also learned in the tutorials that the infantry can be pretty good at holding up advancing forces when you deploy them into urban areas. So I sent infantry to occupy the towns to my east and west ahead to blunt the Pact forces that might be rolling down those secondary roads.
As the game kicked off I also sent forward a scout helo to give me an idea of what I was facing...
Rather quickly, the horror of just how awfully prepared the tutorials leave a newb player like myself against a Skirmish or Campaign became vividly evident. The forces I was up against were simply overwhelming. One of the popular user guides uses the slightly salty and offensive phrase "die like a bitc*" which is exactly what I was in the process of doing.
Pact forces poured south in such numbers and composition that I never even had a chance. I was a speedbump at best. The first shots fired were by a Pact Su-25 which quickly downed my scout helo...
Pact infantry started occupying all of the towns north of my area as they worked their way to the two I held, but I knew my forces were woefully inadequate when faced with the firepower rolling like a tidal wave south..
The bulk of my forces were set up in sectors Charlie and Bravo with infantry embedded in the towns backed by main battle tanks placed where they could cover the likely invasion routes. I tried to put my tanks in the edges of the forests to give them clear fields of fire without exposing them to as much direct fire. It all sounded very plausible in my head, but as more and more of the enemy forces were revealed as the fog of war lifted as my units started spotting them, I knew my whole plan was doomed to failure.
In an effort to shift the weight of my forces toward the center and western fronts I had to pull some tanks from the area around the town in Bravo toward the central highway where Pact forces were simply pouring south in a bold and arrogant statement...
And then all hell broke loose. It was all over with in about ten minutes...
My forces were quickly overwhelmed with effective combined arms. Mi-24 attack helos, Su-25s, missile carrying armor, main battle tanks, and supporting artillery just pounded the hell out of all of my sectors. I answered with woefully inadequate artillery of my own, just point and praying I'd kill something...
On a purely aesthetic level - this game is gorgeous! The explosions, sound effects, camera movements, and level of detail as you zoom in are awesome.
Some of my Abrams in the treeline. The game accounts for armor values so it is always good to keep your frontal slope toward the enemy. When surrounded on all sides by the enemy however, this is not so easy...
Our well camouflaged Abrams platoon did well initially as Pact armor broke out of the opposite treeline...
Put the steamroller of Pact forces really did not allow for any meaningful defense. It was so one sided that I was embarrassed for my lack of RTS skill..
Some of my artillery landing among some Pact troops...
After the initial few volleys the word was out on the street of where my tanks were. The guide indicates that the Abrams (with its stablized gun) is a better shooter on the move compared to much of the Pact equipment, but it didn't much seem to matter due to the overwhelming firepower arrayed against my forces..
A few Su-25s came in to add to the excitement. I called in one of my F-15 Eagles who did a good job of wiping one out while a Hawk battery took out the other...one ray of light in an otherwise dark engagement..
My tanks being flushed from their copse of woods, surrounded, wounded, and unable to effectively retreat.. The tutorial wasn't like this...
With what meager points I was gaining through the destruction of enemy units I was able to send a few reinforcements, but not enough to matter. It became a game of sending forward a couple tanks at a time to snipe at the leading edge of the enemy, but those reinforcements were quickly and brutally dealt with as the geography compressed on us..
Finally we were down to just a few units at our home sector plus the embedded infantry in the town at Bravo. Without any support though, they were just waiting to be mopped up by the swarm of Pact BRDMs and infantry..
As the enemy closed in on the outskirts my guys gave a heroic fight to end as anti-tank missiles streamed out of the town...
My lone reinforcement units were sent into the maw near the main highway to snipe at targets but they'd only last for half dozen rounds before they were targeted and silenced. It was pretty sad to watch..
The enemy moving into the town..
"Sir..uh..yeah..sir.. Can I put this thing into reverse now??"It only took a total of 16 minutes for me to get my ass handed to me...and that was that..
Game CommentaryI've really never played any RTS stuff before - and I took heart in the fact that the descriptions of the Wargame series basically stated that if you approached these games like you would with other RTS like Red Alert or something similar that you'd quickly find that those approaches wouldn't work (spamming a whole bunch of units and bum rushing them up the middle for instance). Indeed, it seems like Wargame requires a deep knowledge of the use of combined arms and a good sense for what forces are necessary to win the overall battle.
The tutorials are woefully inadequate for a newbie player and unfortunately it does a disservice to the awesome game that lies out of reach for someone like me. I played the tutorials (five of them) and they were quite fun and at some points challenging. On one of them (the Joint Air/Armor Exercise) I spent the better part of an hour and half slowly working against the enemy forces using a very limited amount of armor (limited by the scenario, not by my choice) and supplementing it with strikes by Harriers. At one point I thought I was going to lose because I was down to only two Abrams tanks, but little did I know I had attrited the enemy armor as well and they simply ran out before I did. It was really cool and I looked forward to the next steps into the game.
What I found though, is that there is no transition from the very tiny baby steps of the limited training scenarios to the Skirmishes and Campaign - it is like you are just dumped into this incredibly difficult and overwhelming game without any real chance to build up toward something bordering on competency. At the risk of being whiny..it just would have been nice to have been able to play some smaller scale scenarios (maybe in charge of a few platoons of tanks and some other units) to build up some skill and competence with the mission mechanics. There is none of that though..
I've read that the campaign for European Escalation is actually a bit more slow to ramp up and gives more pointers, so I might back up a bit and go play that first (although the graphics aren't as nice)..but I'll see how that goes.
I did start one of the included campaigns just for giggles and quickly saw how overwhelming that was. Coupled with a ridiculous 20 minute timer on all of the campaign battles, I ascertained that I didn't have either the skill or the speed to play that part of the game. I understand the logic/arguments for the 20 minute timer, but it doesn't allow for really deliberative planning and execution that I thought would be more appealing to those that were hoping these games would be more like chess than a RTS action game.
With all of that said - though the training missions were not nearly adequate (because they didn't really help you that much), the pace and scope of the training missions was actually much more approachable for someone like me that hasn't had much experience with military RTS games. Also, there were no time limits in those training scenarios and they seemed very balanced for the new player (and totally boring no doubt to the veteran player). Basically, what I'm saying is there is no middle speed on this game - it is either rather easy introductory play or overwhelmingly advanced and frenetic play on the other end of the spectrum.
I hope to keep learning because the style of play, graphics, and the game itself is really, really appealing, but I feel more has to be done to make the game approachable to more lower skill level users like myself. I'm going to go watch some YouTube videos of guys that make it look easy now.
Edit: I also think maybe I'd be better at smaller scale management..which would perhaps make it more reasonable that something like Steel Beasts Pro might be more down my alley since it has a much more compact user experience (in charge of fewer units with more specific tasking).. But, I really like the concept of the Wargame series (Red Storm Rising is one of my favorite books of course) (and anything by Harold Coyle)..
Edit 2: Just played a 90 minute Wargame: European Escalation game and it was awesome. Just what I described above - a much more limited in scope first mission that wasn't time limited. I was in charge of four German tanks, a recon vehicle, two squads of infantry, and a dozen resupply trucks. It was fantastic gameplay - nice and slow and methodical and it had a whole bunch of tips that flashed up during the play. I'll post up a report tomorrow..although it might be with the menu systems overlaying the graphics since I don't think it saves replays in the solo campaign.
BeachAV8R