Scourge of War Boards

"Great book. Pulitzer prize winner. She also wrote wrote another fascinating book, A Distant Mirror, which is a snapshot of the 14th century and it's many similarities to modern times."





I much preferred The Proud Tower: http://www.amazon.com/PROUD-TOWER-Barba ... 0026203006

Tuchman studies "la belle epoch" and concludes things weren't as peachy as they seemed: the rise of communism as well as the rise of anarchism (the first modern terrorist movement, which included McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz), and the best account of the Dreyfus Affair anywhere.

But I'm a sucker for Tuchman's brilliant writing style.

rclark14 wrote:

Does anyone like Total War- I really don't like it too much except for history tutors.

Here's one of my experiences with MTW2

One of their historical scenarios is the Battle of Agincourt. I had read about this in John Keegan's excellent book, The Face of Battle. They didn't get the date right and the terrain was all wrong. Without re-fighting the battle, historically the battlefield was bounded by trees and the ground was muddy which stalled the French attack. Neither one of these was simulated in the game. But it looked good...

B

I like the Civil War and if we could get more real battles that would be the best.

Your wish shall come true my friend.

I played ETW for a while. It's an alright game.. It's strength is it's graphics. Beautiful graphics, but historical accuracy is basically non-existent. Plus the combat and AI is bad. Too "arcadey" for me.

My favorite was Rome Total war. It still suffered from everything I listed above, but there was just something special about that game. I spent many hours marching my roman legions all over the map, conquering everything in my path.

You know, I picked up a copy of The Guns of August recently at Borders since they are marking their stuff down, and for some reason I decided against buying it and put it back. Not entirely sure why.

ETW and NTW must be seasoned to taste, I think (ie modded). I was playing ETW when it first came out and some of the problems with the combat were so severe that even I took to going into the files and modifying values. Now that the mods for it are more complete, I find it a much better game. I actually never played NTW stock, Kester got me into the Napoleonic Total War Mod (cool to see some of TheLordz modders showing up here) straight away, so I've only really dealt with that. Still, I don't really have any complaints. But I played MTWI until I was blue in the face so...

The style can be a bit more "arcade" than hardcore gamers might want, but with the individual sprite rendering, it does offer a lot in the battles.

I meant that a month doesn't offer much for an all-encompassing game, with a strategic map, resources, etc to be monitored. 3 Days is easily enough for a game when you're dealing with just a battle. For a proper WWI game, I'd want a full-on strategic aspect/map as well as more detailed combat.

[quote]

Yeah. . . I figured, but, you know, I shoot one across your bow at every opportunity. :woohoo:

Hi, that Rome-TW looks bad ass- I was looking at Men of War- anyone try that- is it any good- I was also looking at Company of Heroes- I think Men of War is much better- I have been looking at cool war games- this is the best one so far. Does anyone like the Blue and Gray mod for ETW- is it any good?

The way I see it WW1 wouldnt work. The thing is to make a game succesful broader than a niche market you have to draw in the masses and when they think WW1 they think trenches, the same way they think Gettysburg is to American Civil War and Waterloo is to Napoleonic regardless of the other umpteen battles and years of the conflicts.

kind of off topic - but a game I would love to see is a good 'Age of Sail' game. I had Age of Sail 1,2 and Privateers bounty. Neither were great. Empire Total War has some good naval battle graphics etc, but isnt dedicated to it.

Best game I ever came across was men of war 2 - chains of command. You could signal your fleet etc - something i really enjoyed. Plus all games only ever have three sail settings - none, battle or full.

Feel free to ignore this post entirely, but if anyone know's of a game Im missing let me know!!

Hi, I was looking at strategy/war games- I looked at Silent Hunter and Sturmovik- the latter looks awesome but both look really cool. I got some really bad ones on ebay for $1- they sucked are were too old. I learned my lesson but they were cheap !!!

Silent Hunter and IL2 Sturmovik are both amazing games - IL2 in particular. It is an old game but patches and addons were still being turned out for free up until last year. A sequel has just been launched, IL2 Cliffs of Dover.

If you want to see just how far flight sims have come - look at this.

http://www.flightsimmachinima.com/battl ... -by-barfly

Silent Hunter 3, 4 and 5 were all pretty crud, but a very active modding community made 3 and 4 into classics, and are busy fixing all the problems with 5.