Tin Soldiers : ???

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.war-historical (More info?)

Hi,

It's official : the team behind Tin Soldiers : Alexander the Great and
Tin Soldiers : Julius Caesar are working on their third title. They
seem to be going all-out for this one and have added a lot of
developing power.

Read more about it here :

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/m.asp?m=901876

Anyone care to bet on a name/period ?

Tin Soldiers : Robert E. Lee ?
Tin Soldiers : Napoleon Bonaparte ?

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

 

[Werewolf]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.war-historical (More info?)

eddysterckx@hotmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It's official : the team behind Tin Soldiers : Alexander the Great and
> Tin Soldiers : Julius Caesar are working on their third title. They
> seem to be going all-out for this one and have added a lot of
> developing power.
>
> Read more about it here :
>
> http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/m.asp?m=901876
>
> Anyone care to bet on a name/period ?
>
> Tin Soldiers : Robert E. Lee ?
> Tin Soldiers : Napoleon Bonaparte ?
>
> Greetz,
>
> Eddy Sterckx
>

Recently got both TS titles (digital purchase from Matrix - I'm starting
to like that method more and more). They're pretty fun games - big
emphasis on games.

They don't feel like wargames to me - they do feel like chess. Still fun
for a quick beer and pretzels lark but not real wargames IMO - unless
chess is considered a wargame. Note - that doesn't mean they're
particularly easy to beat - they aren't and IMO the AI does a very, very
respectable job as an opponent.

As an aside the historocity may not be particularly accurate either. In
the one battle I actually researched - Pharsalus - IRL Caesar commanded
around 22,000 men. In the game the OOB gives him 40K+. Done for balance
purposes maybe? If so that's not good design as it doesn't adequately
model training, morale, fatigue, unique unit characteristics etc. With a
good design the historical OOB commanded correctly should be able to win
and not require beefing up. NOTE: I was playing on easy - does the level
impact number of troops received?

As I said TS is actually pretty fun to play but wargames they aren't.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.war-historical (More info?)

Werewolf schreef:

> Recently got both TS titles (digital purchase from Matrix - I'm starting
> to like that method more and more). They're pretty fun games - big
> emphasis on games.
>
> They don't feel like wargames to me - they do feel like chess. Still fun
> for a quick beer and pretzels lark but not real wargames IMO - unless
> chess is considered a wargame. Note - that doesn't mean they're
> particularly easy to beat - they aren't and IMO the AI does a very, very
> respectable job as an opponent.

well, within the manual of TS : Alexander there's a complete Ancient
tabletop warfare ruleset that is the core of the game. You can actually
take this ruleset and play a tabletop game with it - just add dice.

Now I'll grant you that it's a pretty simple ruleset, but it's not
simplistic and covers a lot of bases, but it's not perfect and doesn't
cover everything. Does historicity suffer because of this : yes, but
not a lot - correct tactics of the period and correct use of the units
available will grant you victory, the reverse will result in defeat.
Psycho-Banzai tactics (my default) won't work.

> NOTE: I was playing on easy - does the level
> impact number of troops received?

Think it impacts casualties taken, hence the number of troops to
"repair" increases.

> As I said TS is actually pretty fun to play but wargames they aren't.

The game was never intented as a hard-core wargame but it is the ideal
game to introduce kids to wargaming and given the resources Matrixgames
is committing to their next game I think it's a commercial success as
well.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

 

[Werewolf]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.war-historical (More info?)

eddysterckx@hotmail.com wrote:
>>NOTE: I was playing on easy - does the level
>>impact number of troops received?
>
>
> Think it impacts casualties taken, hence the number of troops to
> "repair" increases.
>
>

I checked on Matrix and looked at the TS forum to see how difficulty
level impacted things. According to the game designer the AI is very
much like a chess algorithm and all the difficulty level does is give
the AI more time to think - i.e. evaluate more moves the higher the
level. Quite an interesting read actually.

However it works it does pretty good.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.war-historical (More info?)

While taking a short break from the daily grind of enslavement and
world domination, eddysterckx@hotmail.com mentioned

>Hi,
>
>It's official : the team behind Tin Soldiers : Alexander the Great and
>Tin Soldiers : Julius Caesar are working on their third title. They
>seem to be going all-out for this one and have added a lot of
>developing power.
>
>Read more about it here :
>
>http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/m.asp?m=901876
>
>Anyone care to bet on a name/period ?
>
>Tin Soldiers : Robert E. Lee ?
>Tin Soldiers : Napoleon Bonaparte ?
>
>Greetz,
>
>Eddy Sterckx

Tin Soldiers : Douglas Haig (evil archbastard general of ALL TIME!)
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We are Microsoft of Borg.....Your technological distinctiveness will be
added to our own.....Resistance is fu...
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General Protection Fault in MSBORG32.DLL
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