Salute to a Terrific Game!

[Anthropoid]

Despite what my avatar may suggest, I am a mature successful professor . . . at least on the outside.

On the inside I'm still that 16 year old kid, staring in wide-eyed fascination at my High School history professor's moves in our weekend 'strategy and tactics club' meetings where I first played the classic hex-map strategy games. At some point I purchased Third Reich, and there were many months in my life that I had that map set up in my room, analyzing and calculating the master strategy. I absolutely loved that game, but never did find a player in my small Midwestern town who was interested in tackling the incredibly detailed rulebook.

Now those childhood days are here again, but better and even more fun with this fantastic game. I doubt there are any computer games that are truly 'flawless' but this one comes pretty close.

Congratulations to the designers, testers and all involved for an absolutely terrific strategy war game!

[Erik Rutins]

Thanks Anthropoid, we're glad you're enjoying it. [8D]

[Hard Sarge]

but never did find a player in my small Midwestern town who was interested in tackling the incredibly detailed rulebook.

when we played it, we set up two games at once, as the guy who played the "Master Race" always took so long to get his turn over with, we could get another game up and running, while he made his move (we normally would play a Axis Team and then switch to a Allied Team for these games, I can remember getting over to his house early and would be talking to his wife, and she would be saying, you look like a normal person, you really are not as silly as my husband and his other friends are you ?, then go downstairs and get as silly as them !)

I enjoy this game also

[Anthropoid]

The other game that I absolutely LOVED (probably even more than Third Reich) was "Vietnam: 1965-1975" By Victory Games Inc. 1984. The size and complexity of that ones' map and rulebook made Third Reich look like a pokemon game [:D]
 
Not aware of a _really_ good strategy war game that covers the entire Franco-Americo-Vietnam conflict in a truly satisfying way, i.e., by appropriately cover political, psychological, propaganda, social, cultural, public relations, media, espionage, etc., type factors as well as military grand strategy, production, operations, and tactics . . . (imagine something _sort of_ like Civ 4 [though not disneyfied] in which you as President/Commander-in-chief of one of the major players have to make a myriad of decisions about all the factors that actually went in to deciding the outcome of that conflict, and in which the 'uncontrollable' or only 'moderately controllable' factors (media, public opinion, activism, who is Governor of California, etc., etc.) are _ALL_ accurately portrayed with a game engine that combines lets say the best of Civ, FoF, CoG:EE, TOAWIII, Harpoon . . . oh man what a game that would be . . .). However, there are a couple of fairly decent Vietnam 'scenarios' for TOAWIII that I found remarkably good. Only problem is that political and social developments are hardcoded as events, so, while the player cannot have an influence on milestone changes in social events such as moments when public approval of the war plummeted, the player knows when these events will happen and exactly what effect they will have . . . so it is limited in only basically allowing the player to decide on operational military level stuff assuming production and political events are exactly as in history.
 
Now don't get me wrong: Civ 4 allows way TOO MUCH latitude, and a really good Vietnam game should allow the player only limited 'probabilistic' control over myriad things, but I think there are a lot of subtleties in how that war was fought, versus how it could have been fought that a really good game could bring out.

[Anthropoid]

Little Bump to this thread. I recently reinstalled CEAW on my home computer (the one with my 42" big screen TV as a "monitor" [:D]) and I'm not entirely sure what happened to my weekend!
 
I see it is now sold as "Gold" and I'm not sure what that means. I did not even patch after I installed it and I'm enjoying it just fine.
 
Still one of the best strategy games I've ever played.

[Wolfe1759]

I've also started playing it again over the last couple of months

You might want to look at the 1.12 (Gold) patch which amongst other things adds a new quick play version of the game

Also there is a rather brilliant mod called Grand Strategy which you could pretty much view as CEAW 2

or just keep enjoying it as it is

[Anthropoid]

ADDIT: never mind on the link. I think I found it!

http://www.slitherine.com/downloads

I clicked the "check for updates" thing and it seems I already have the 1.12 update.

Any links to that mod? Sounds good.

[Anthropoid]

Yep! That Grand Strategy expansion rocks! Thanks Wolfe [:D]

[Wolfe1759]

Yep it does

Although I like Time of Wrath and World at War AWD the addition of Grand Strategy has made CEAW by far my most played game. Not that the others don't do some things better but as an overall package CEAW:GS hits the mark for me with loads of playability and enough detail to allow it to feel "realistic" (at least to the level of the Third Reich boardgame for instance).

A fun and I think somewhat underrated game.

[firepowerjohan]

Thanks!
The GS mod was even made by a group of dedicated fans of the CEAW and without original lead developer (=me) involved.


p.s Since you seem to fancy CEAW that much I can hint you about the other 2 products where I was lead developer in, Commander Napoleon at War and World Empires Live. CNAW is a sequel to CEAW and WEL is an Empire Builder using a similar engine to that of CEAW and CNAW. WEL is also a free full game 1-8 players.

[Wolfe1759]

Got CNAW about 6 months ago and it is a fun game though doesn't quiet feel as right in terms of representing the subject matter as you managed with CEAW.

Had a look at WEL but had no interest whatsoever in something which is sold on a subscription basis. Now I've noticed that it is available for free I'll give it another look.

Now if you do something else with the CEAW engine, for instance WW1, ECW, ACW or ideally WW2:PTO that would be of interest and I'd pay for it.

[firepowerjohan]

Wolfe, let me know if you need a multiplayer opponent in WEL because we are playing daily sessions and always are on the lookout for more ppl. Single Player is good for practice though to learn the game.