Give Wargame a Chance

I'm not normally one to request Quick Looks...

... but there are been two of these Wargames so far, European Escalation and AirLand Battle, with (I think?) zero representation on the site so far. There's a third one just around the corner, and it's adding naval content. They've all been pretty well reviewed so far, and Red Dragon's in early access/beta (whatever you want to call it) now; maybe someone else wants to see a bunch of tanks/planes/boats go nuts in the Far East?

It's sorta like Battlefield but you're controlling everything, and there's a lot more of it to go around. You can take it seriously or have a ton of dumb fun with hundreds of troops and a bunch of napalm planes.You can do ridiculous matchups like Sweden versus North Korea. And now you can do this all with boats. Boats. BOATS.

Anyway, if anyone wants to play some games in the current build I'm online a couple times a week, name's Bombardier. It's been pretty fun so far. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them also.

Sounds interesting enough, although I immediately started thinking about Hannibal Lecter.

The NBC show Hannibal is really really good... oh, wrong Red Dragon.

I've owned all three games and enjoyed seeing the evolution of the series; Eugen is a model company in my mind, with the developers staying in close contact with the community and taking feedback seriously (to the point of adding an entirely new feature -- land-based anti-ship-missiles -- based on feature requests).

I imagine Drew would be the one most interested in the Wargame series out of the whole GB crew, but not sure how full his plate is right now. Also, the UI can be a bit daunting at first (although they DID play Crusader Kings, so it's probably something that won't intimidate them too much).

I'll send you a friend request in game. My ID is DasaKamov (natch). :)

I don't understand why Drew hasn't done a quick look of this series. It's basically a RTS simulation of a cold war world war.

Would be interesting to see the GB crew's perspective on it. If Dave Snider was here i feel like it would have a better chance of showing up.

my opinion on the series, however, is that i want to like it more then i do. I played it in single player, though, it sounds like multiplayer is where you really want to play this game. The technical underlying detail in the battle mechanics makes every single battle an important one, which is where i appreciate it, but i can't get behind the poor UI and the fact that i cant have my units maintain any kind of formation which makes sending out multiple battle groups cumbersome.

Yeah, I'd like to see a quick look of this. I *love* this series and I've put hundreds of hours into all three combined, and tried to sell all my friends on it - it could definitely use some more publicity, though. Seriously underrated strategy games.

I doubt they'd do it, this is a MOBA site now.

We should get some games going. My ID is GeneralBison, I have the first two, would be interested in getting some co-op in, I'm new to the series.

Red Dragon is a prettty good movie.

A closer comparison than Battlefield is probably the Ground Control series, Eugen's own older R.U.S.E. and maybe that DCS strategy game that Drew has been talking about (I haven't seen nor played that, but sounded like it was trying to do a lot of what Eugen have been doing with the Wargame series).

I haven't bought Red Dragon yet, will probably pick it up when my next paycheck arrives in a couple of weeks.

Yeah, this game is great. I doubt it'll get any attention on this site though. It's not APM-heavy enough for Brad, and he's the only one that remotely cares for RTSes. Drew might like the Cold War setting, I guess.

It's a shame that the best RTSes of the past couple years haven't gotten any publicity, anywhere.

Drew's played Stronghold, Cannon Fodder, and some released-only-in-Eastern-Europe RTS that looked like it was based on Nival's "Blitzkrieg" on Unprofessional Fridays that I can remember, while (publically, at least) Brad's only RTS has been Starcraft II.

Of course, it be great if they both got into Wargame. :)

I played a lot of Europe Escalation. Kinda forgot about Airland Battles and now really looking forward to an opportunity to pick up Red Dragon. Before picking up Wargame EE I played the crap out of World in Conflict and before that the Ground Control games. I love the concept and building decks was fun, trying to balance out your needs for firepower and support.

Holy wow, they're releasing a new Wargame every year?

I've only played 10 minutes of the first game's single player. As an absolute RTS imbecile, I liked what I saw until I no longer understood what I was seeing, and shut the game down for good.

I'm happy for RTS players that this seemingly great 'RTS renaissance' franchise is booming, and I hope the GB guys fulfill your wishes, but they don't feel like they'd do that. They're just.. playing Dota and Dark Souls with a little indie action in between.

@singingmenstrual: They've done one for the past 3 years, yeah. Red Dragon is the last one for a while though.

I really like this series. I was a huge fan of Red Alert, Empire Earth, Age of Empires, and older RTS games but I feel like other than Starcraft 2 RTS games have been weaning in recent years. But when I played Wargame I was back on board. Shooting down planes with AA missiles and watching helicopters unleash a furry of missiles at tanks is a blast. The game also has an insane amount of units, it's awesome if you're a Cold War nerd.

The game seems very multiplayer focused, but I have yet to get the courage to play online.

Yeah, the beta they're currently running is multiplayer only, they did the same with R.U.S.E and the two previous Wargame titles, not enabling the single player portion until the game officially launches. Kinda sad since I'm not someone who like to play RTS games online either.

@fisk0: I believe they have a skirmish AI you can use in the current beta, it's not great but certainly... aggressive, good for some rough deck testing

I'll get some screenshots up in a bit to show off the game for those who haven't seen it

10v10s are not bad for first getting into the MP. Since it's 10v10, it's unlikely you'd be able to screw over your team, which leads to far less pressure to play well.

Ha, I'd go the opposite route and say 1v1s are the best, (with small starting points, low income rate and no time limit) since you actually understand what effect your units have on the battlefield, and their strengths and weaknesses). :)

If there's interest, I'll start setting up some small 1v1 and/or 2v2 games for Giantbomber-duders to help them get their feet wet -- I have some real-life friends who are World-in-Conflict aficionados whom I'm trying to get into Wargame as well, so I'll try to make this a regular thing.

That what I keep thinking of, the book really. Manhunter wasn't bad, either.

Alright so there were some technical difficulties initially but I combed through some replays and grabbed some screenshots to fill out the wiki. It's a gorgeous game when you turn the graphics up and it released today, I encourage people to dive in and give it a go. These are all beta screenshots but the game essentially looks the same.

This game is fantastic. The series has been evolving in smart ways since European Escalation. Although, I'd like to see a larger variety of ships, that will likely be addressed with some free and paid DLC. Unfortunately, I think only Drew would be interested in this game out of the GB crew and I don't know how into RTS games he is. Would love to see a Red Dragon QL though.

Eugen have been really good at releasing free DLC packs for their previous games at least, I'd wager we'll get the same treatment with this. I think there were about 4 free DLC packs each for the previous Wargame titles, adding several new maps and units.

The DLC for the first game included 2 new full campaigns, along with a whole tonne of maps. Unfortunately they got rid of the campaign stuff for Airland Battle, and probably for this too?

@alexw00d:

The head developer, MadMatt, stated that Land-based Anti-Ship Missle Systems (AShMs) are on the way eventually, although there's no real ETA. He also said that they had originally planned on many more campaigns, but budget, time, and common sense caused them to release the four they have now, so I wouldn;t be surprised if additional campaigns were included in future free-DLCs.

@giantstalker:

Nice screens! I was going to contribute as well, but my screenshots always end up as blank, empty files for some reason. I'll have to tweak around with my setup.

I just started playing Wargame: European Escalation a couple weeks ago, a game that's long been overdue in my library, and I wish I'd played it sooner. It's really rad, and I'm going to skip right to Wargame: Red Dragon now and come back to EE if I can't get enough of the Dragon.

I remember Drew getting into Total War, so maybe he would be interested in this too? In some ways I like it than TW. It'd be fun to see some GB coverage of it.

Hmm.. I just noticed this game on Steam and see now that it is an RTS of some form based in the real world.

Their trailer made it look amazing but it didn't show any gameplay so I'm on the fence. Now I'd be very interested if GB did a Quick Look but I guess I'll have to settle on some random youtube videos to see if it plays like I hope it plays.

I'm slightly concerned about graphics though because I don't think I've played any heavy high end PC stuff since maybe Far Cry 3 and I had some issues with that. My poor little GTX570 needs an upgrade :( And even though I have two that I can run in SLI, that always just seems to create more problems than a performance increase.

Eh so I've watched about an hour of gameplay footage and some other stuff annnnd I'm left unconvinced.

The unit detail/specs etc is perfect and it seems like the game can look very cool...

...but so far actual gameplay seems to be staring at a giant Google Earth-like flat satellite image of terrain while clicking on unit name boxes and moving them around. Only one time did I see a person zoom in to see any actual action/detail/terrain and that was for about 3 seconds.

Not my kind of RTS. I would want the variety and realism of units this has combined with maybe Command & Conquer style action and base building, but sprinkle in a sort of ARMA pacing or something. I'm not into the crazy fast build and attack standard of RTS games. I'd much rather have something where I can take my time building a base in a realistic, organized fashion even though that never seems to have any real bearing on gameplay (wish it did I suppose) and slowly moving and placing units around. I'd want combat interactions to be slow enough that I could zoom in and watch the battle unfold.

Seems like a good game if large scale non-base building RTS stuff is your thing. Unless the Single Player stuff is completely different pace than Multiplayer so I could be completely wrong.

Quick Look confirmed!

Quick Look: Wargame: Red Dragon

VIDEO ON APR 30, 2014 09:00 AM

Very happy to see Wargame: Red Dragon in the Quick Look queue for tomorrow. Looking forward to hearing the guys' impressions of the game.

@voodoopc:

I just saw, that, too! I certainly hope the Quick Look crew's taken some time to figure out a fair amount of the game's depth, since it's not the most newbie-friendly. I also would imagine that they'd mention the multiplayer but not actually show it, since revealing Wargame's "General Chat" to the light of day would make all good men weep. ;)

Very excited for the Red Dragon QL, lets hope Drew did his homework (he usually does). This game is right up his alley.

Ahh now the quick look comes..

I ended up buying the game even with my hesitation. First battle I did went horribly as predicted. Even with 2v1 the AI still won. Was just so overwhelming with so many units and not knowing how to rearm units and such. So that kind of put me off and I didnt touch it for a couple days but I just fired it up earlier and tried again, this time lowering the AI to Easy and a AI teammate set to Medium so 2v1 again. Also a big thing was turning the battle speed down to Very Slow. This way I was able to keep up a little better but I still am way too slow.

I find myself just wanting to focus on a specific spot, zooming in and checking stuff out, watching how my units fair in the fight and trying to position them in seemingly strategic ways. Figured out how to rearm units and just how the game works in general. Problem is I forget there is a whole map and points to spend and such. I had like 5000 pts at the end of this fight because I just wasn't spending them fast enough. I kind of don't like how there are limited quantities on units as I'd be able to make one or two and it would die instantly and that was that. I also don't really like how the resupply thing works. I think I'm alright with units running out of ammo and maybe having to use a supply truck but damn the things don't have any capacity and also die from a strong gust. So I have all these units all over and tons of units out of ammo, empty resupply vehicles scattered all over the map, and an empty FOB. Feel like the FOBs or supply trucks should have unlimited supplies. At least with the FOB I would be able to send trucks back to it to fill back up then head back out but as is I just have tons of units everywhere with no ammo and no way to resupply. And this match was only like 34 mins.

I don't know. The game looks great when you can get in there close with the camera but there are some things I wish I could tweak to make it more fun. Maybe someone has some tips here for these issues.

Had kinda given up on seeing this covered on the site, happy to see it's actually happening.

Perhaps we should look into setting up a few community game nights via the PC Gaming Hub. If enough people (4-20) showed interest I'd be happy to schedule an event and get all that set up. I've got enough chops to teach people how to play, and I think there are a couple others here who do too.

Played another game or two. Getting a little more comfortable and enjoying it more but still wish I could tweak some things.

Random question though: Is there a way you can kind of lock the camera on a unit or have fixed camera angles while watching a Replay? Would love it if I could lock the camera on a jet while it flew around or third person ride a missle down to its target.

Edit: Nevermind. Just figured out if you zoom in while hovering the cursor on a unit, the camera will attach to it.

@mageknight: I am definitely down for a GBPCGH WGRD night! (How many more random letters can we add to that? ;) ) I've just added myself to the Steam group, so it'll be great if we can get a few sessions going.

I've scheduled one for this Sunday. Hopefully we'll get a couple of people to show up!