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#3890274 - 01/06/14 07:36 AM Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo  
Joined: Jan 2001
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BeachAV8R Offline
Lifer
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Lifer

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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..

--------------------------------------------------

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 Commentary

soapbox

I'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.

50cal

BeachAV8R



Inline advert (2nd and 3rd post)

#3890737 - 01/07/14 12:14 AM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Jan 2003
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Magnum Offline
Lifer
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Lifer

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Naples, Florida
Great screens, I love the game, but also suck at it... Rarely win, especially against Tigerwulf.

#3890898 - 01/07/14 05:43 AM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Feb 2008
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toonces Offline
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Beach-
I've also had this game for a while and just this weekend spent some time with it.

From your description and screenshots a few thoughts come to mind.

1. Looking at the first couple of screens that show a score, you really weren't doing that bad. You were within a couple of hundred points of the WP player, so even though you thought you were out of the game, you really weren't.

2. You can capture a zone by putting a command vehicle in the city within the zone. If you look under the LOG tab and pick one that has a star icon, those allow you to capture zones. I only played from the PACT side this weekend, but escorting one of those with APC's seems to be a sound move. Once you capture a zone it feeds you reinforcement points.

3. Did you put the AI on "easy"? If not, you should start on easy.

4. Along with number 3, a 3,000 point battle is pretty large. I recommend starting with far fewer points, maybe 1,500. Then number of forces are much more manageable. You can specify the points for the decks used in Skirmish mode.

5. I've read the PACT side is easier to play. You may want to try a skirmish as a PACT player if you try again and see if that works better for you.

Don't give up on the game. It has a steep learning curve, but I think you sort of threw yourself into the deep end without giving yourself an opportunity to truly learn the game.


"A week or even a month for someone basically saying "shucks, this is pants" maybe. But their banhammer only has the forever setting. Gotta set phasers to stun for the localization of female undergarments, not kill yo." - Frederf
#3890910 - 01/07/14 06:15 AM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Dec 2002
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Flogger23m Online smile
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Flogger23m  Online Smile
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For those who own it, how long is the single player campaign roughly? And how many missions?

#3890948 - 01/07/14 08:21 AM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
Joined: Aug 2006
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Ryujin Offline
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@Beach- The 20 mins in the campaign battles actually kind of works out as they're smaller scope, you're more interested in doing some damage and taking some terrain than wiping out the other side. Usually battles over an area take place over several days and any areas captured will roll over to the next fight in that area. Also if you're going to go the small numbers of expensive units (like M1s), I highly advise getting veteran units if you can. The M1 is only as good as the crew and if they panic it's all over when you only have a platoon that the enemy can concentrate their fire on.

The campaigns are actually dynamic and at about 20 mins a battle, the biggest one is quite long. I think you could easily get 10-15 hours of campaign play from that campaign alone.

The campaigns are different scale/side scenarios of fighting over Norway/Sweden/Denmark. Decent amount of replay as you can try different overall strategies, like using airborne/naval landings or fighting it more straightforward. Since you don't get to make your own decks, but are limited to more realistic units and what they have, it does get you to try a range of strategies based on what units you have/choose as reinforcements.

You get to give orders at the start of each day, moving stuff around and using special things like airstrikes/recon/etc. When friendly/enemy units meet it creates battles you fight (with a couple of these per turn it can be a lot of fights). Losses carry over making it a bit more interesting, especially as there are no replacements, the campaigns take place over several days. There's also overall morale/initiative stuff effected by the results of the battles.





#3892297 - 01/09/14 05:40 AM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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KlarSnow Offline
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Also, some of the campaigns can be played in two player coop, which has been a lot of fun.

Also, multiplayer 1v1 or 2v2 with everybody on TS is a really good way to learn the game, within a few games I started picking things up and while I am still not awesome at it, it definitely improved on my abilities when I had another player to talk to about what was going on before and after the match.

another advantage of playing a 2v2 is it allows you to focus on one flank of the battlefield or one particular objective instead of the entire map.

I also recommend trying the soviets out, I found them quite a bit easier to learn how to play with, they are not by any means more effective and require a great deal of skill to use effectively, but their units especially armor and apcs work pretty much as you expect (the vast amount of ATGMs they field help a lot) whereas the NATO troops and US in particular, if you send Abrams in first, they will get stomped by all the ATGMs they go up against, have to keep em back and use em at the right time and place.

Also, artillery, napalm, and cheap infantry units are your friend, its not that they are disposable, its that you can get a ton of them really quick at the start, and set them up in every forest and town, where they require a huge amount of effort to dislodge.

Also recon, recon, recon, not something I internalized until the last few games I played, but if there is a forest or town, or hill, and you don't have recon in it or on it, you are doing it wrong lol.

If you ever think you have enough recon, that is your first mistake :P

#3892302 - 01/09/14 05:58 AM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Gibsonm Offline
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Originally Posted By: BeachAV8R
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)..

BeachAV8R


Sure you can stay small (nothing wrong with that) but Steel Beasts Pro PE isn't limited to that.

You can have lots of units per side (for example: 16 Companies of tanks, with 10 vehicles per Company = 160 vehicles on a side).

That tends to exceed a single person's ability to control ("span of command" for a technical term) but many players can handle a Company or more within a multi player environment.

However the ability to script unit behaviour means you can control many units pretty easily.

So its very scalable.

Last edited by Gibsonm; 01/10/14 06:17 PM.

Mark (}-:
LTCOL RAAC
IAW the Defence Communication Manual 2016, Chapter 3, paragraphs 3.28 - 3.30 - The views expressed are mine alone and do not reflect the views of the Department of Defence.
#3893089 - 01/10/14 03:05 PM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Wodin Offline
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Way to much of a click fest for me..spent 30mins or so with the first game and that was enough..

#3894055 - 01/12/14 05:26 PM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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ForSquirrels Offline
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Maybe some of us can try to get together for some co-op with either this or EE? I haven't played in a couple of months, and I am on a Mac currently so both of those facts probably count against me.


"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."
--Mark Twain

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left.

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#3905362 - 02/01/14 12:21 PM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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franx Offline
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Philadelphia
I don't feel so bad after reading this AAR. The game -- both EE and ALB -- is addictive, but in ALB skirmish mode, I just get my butt kicked all over the map nearly every time. Can't stop playing it though.

#3905807 - 02/02/14 09:57 AM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Charlie_SB Offline
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Man, I knew I should have picked this up on the steam sale. If someone could post some screens of a Swedish PBV302A in action I would be the happiest camper.

-C-

#3907081 - 02/04/14 06:49 PM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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Charlie_SB Offline
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70% off on steam today so I picked it up ... it's almost like they read my post

-C-

#3907086 - 02/04/14 06:53 PM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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- Ice Offline
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Wow, thanks for the heads up on this one! Might get a 2nd or even 3rd copy for friends!


- Ice
#3907412 - 02/05/14 08:40 AM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  

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Also picked this one up on current Steam sale. After couple of tutorials i can already say this will be one crazy fast game. Hate those clickfests but love the setting and time period. Hope i'll manage to finish the campaign and have some fun.

#3907431 - 02/05/14 10:05 AM Re: Wargame (AB) - Highway to Oslo [Re: BeachAV8R]  
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semmern Offline
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Oslo, Norway
Can't say I recognize the scenery around here wink But the game does look good, I have actually never heard of it. Will have to check it out smile


In all my years I've never seen the like. It has to be more than a hundred sea miles and he brings us up on his tail. That's seamanship, Mr. Pullings. My God, that's seamanship!

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