HistWar (First Person Commander) PC-strategy/wargame: 500,000-men Napoleonic battles!

[Llyranor]

Let's get it out of the way first. The game features pretty primitive 3D, blah blah blah. For those interested in an in-depth grand tactical wargame featuring high-level gameplay at the helm of a Napoleonic army, that may not matter. HistWar: Les Grognards is an indie game being made by French designer Jean-Michel Math

Edited August 18, 2009 by Llyranor

[alanschu]

Sounds intense Mr. Mathe. Thanks for coming onto this site to promote the game!

[Tigranes]

We will have to ban him for being an adbot, but yes, that does look amazing.

 

I do wish the strategic interface was better and prettier, though - just because it looks like it'll tire me out quite quick, and it'll be hard for me to feel like something is actually happening. It just looks quite flat, opaque and messy at the moment. It *is* indie, and I can imagine it'd be a monstrous task to think of a cheap, clean interface for something like this, though.

 

So do I have it aright in that you don't really have a 'campaign' of sorts, just a series of campaigns or battles?

[Llyranor]

Shut up, you're Mr Mathe

 

Unfortunately, no campaign. Only battles. Apparently "allows you to simulate almost all the battles of the Empire between 1805-1814."

 

There we go: "Comes with 10 historical battles including Haslach, Austerlitz, Eylau, Friedland, Campaign of Eckmul, Wagram, Moscowa (Borodino), Berezina, Hanau and La Rothi

Edited August 18, 2009 by Llyranor

[Deadly_Nightshade]

I like what I see...

[213374U]

The thing about aides-de-camp caught my attention. Sounds great - not for the impatient.

 

 

The bulk of the gameplay lies in the actual decision-making and high-level command, rather than constantly interacting with the interface in order to carry out your plan.

Hehe, so you make a few decisions here and there, and get to see the consequences of those... later. Sounds good, on paper at least.

 

 

Unfortunately, no campaign. Only battles.

Yeah, that's a shame. Maybe in an expansion or a sequel.

 

Looks like this game will be either WIN or FAIL and the determining factor for that will be the intermediate and lower-level AIs. If you spend an hour customising and deploying your forces only to see that the individual regiments can't find their way out of a wet paper bag without you ordering them around, it's going to be tough to like this game, "Doctrine Editor" or not. I am still very skeptical about indie games. Nice find.

Edited August 18, 2009 by 213374U

[Wrath of Dagon]

Game sounds too complicated to understand without playing the demo, also it may be good to start at the lower level and build up to the overall commander once you get the hang of it. Also I read you can build a 600 mile map and keep the forces from the previous battle, so some sort of a campaign may be possible that way. Of course the battles are so huge and high level enough they may feel like campaigns anyway. If anyone hasn't tried it, I'd also recommend Take Command 2 Manassas from MadMinute games, it's also realistic but quite a bit simpler than what I've seen of HistWar.

Edited August 18, 2009 by Wrath of Dagon

[Llyranor]

Wow, Wrath likes TC2M. Maybe we're not sworn enemies after all!

[Aristes]

There are no permanent enemies in global politics. Just wait until you need his help to defeat the Duke of Wellington.

 

Anyhow, since it has multiplayer, you must be able to play different nations, but I noticed that it only cited the French. I hope we can play the various battles from various perspectives.

 

It says you can take your existing OOB from battle to battle, as Wrath says. I read through a lot of the info, both in your post and the links, but I didn't catch sight of anything talking about army experience. In a campaign, it's not reasonable to expect the soldiers will not become more adept at what they do. This has been true throughout history where the soldiers who manage to survive a battle or two improve on their skills.

 

This looks pretty awesome. Since it's multiplayer, we could have a huge ass battle amongst the forum members here. It would be a great way to settle disputes. Dueling? HA! I'll route your army instead, jackass!

Edited August 18, 2009 by Aristes

[Llyranor]

Don't know about experience.

 

Histwar

[Wrath of Dagon]

Demo now out! http://www.histwar.com/news/histwar-les-gr...-available.html

[jaguars4ever]

Don't you guys have anything better to do than sniffing around campaign-less indie games?

 

Go play Dragon Age instead!

[Musopticon?]

No no no, join the European pc rpg crowd and prepare to **** bricks over completely ass multiplatform game engines(looking at you Sacred 2)!

[TheHarlequin]

Seems A for effort at the very least. The FX makes my eyes bleed but if you can put that aside it seems to really try to be a good tactical game. The time period not my cup of tea but to each their own. Really seems a lot of indepth effort went into this title.