your opinion: turn-based hex-grid games

[emcdunna]

Hey all,

Trying to do some research... what is your guys' opinions of turn based hex grid games?

I played a civil war game as a kid probably 10+ years ago that had inf/cav/artillery on hex tiles and you moved around in turns, trying to beat certain levels. In a way it's like UG but rigid and discrete (like you can only fire muskets at a range of 3 hexes or something).

Does that inherently turn you off? This almost sort of board-game like game design...

Just trying to gauge if hex-grids and turn based games could make a comeback

[Sir Daubbles]

Civil War General 2 is one of my all time favorite Civil War games.

Civil War Generals 2 Download (1997 Strategy Game)

I still play it. Its cheap, download is easy. Game is fun.

[Cockpuncher]

Honestly, turn-based hex-grid games were good as boardgames. Early computers couldn't move forward due too lack of computing power. But with increasing power there was no point in keeping to that style.

Games such as Close Combat series, Paradox grand strategies starting with Europa Universalis, Total War series and many more proved that strategy or tactical game could be done better than with turns and hexes. I've played so many turn-based games that currently I hate turn-based games of any sort. Turns are a no-go for me, even turn-based campaign in TW series is IMO biggest flaw of this series. It also goes to other genrees, such as RPG - last turn-based RPG that I've enjoyed was Betrayal at Krondor, later games such as Daggerfall or Baldurs Gate (and similar) proved that it can be done better.

Scalable time flow with active pause is so much better in terms of ergonomics, perception and logic that I simply cannot play turn-based games anymore. It just looks natural and "one moves / other watches" model is just stupid simplification necessary in archaic, pre-computer and early-computer eras. Also too time-consuming compared to active pause.

But don't worry about hex-based games, they are still being developed. They are making monsters like this:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/644710/Gary_Grigsbys_War_in_the_West/

Personally I had enough of this type after a while with The Operational Art of War...

[emcdunna]

in UG:CW I actually find myself with way too much to manage, like I either play in slow mo or I hit play for literally 2 seconds. then spend 30 seconds surveying the battlefield again and giving orders

I understand it being sort of "tired and old" and requiring way more patience

[Flharfh]

I prefer real time combat. But civil war generals 2 had a fantastic branching campaign with alternate history outcomes that is really much better than UGCW's.

[Julius Geezer]

Having just bought the classic Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord, I'm really starting to enjoy its 'WEGO' system, where both players assign orders to their units, which are then resolved in 60 seconds of real time where the player has no control over what happens, until the end of that 60 seconds where they can give new orders etc. Only played a couple of missions but its led to some very tense encounters and I'd love to see it implemented in more strategy games, maybe even UG.

However, I can totally dig hex turn-based games, just depends on the setting and mechanics in question. Ditto for real time games.

[emcdunna]

so does the campaign make up for it?

[emcdunna]

Originally posted by Saint Jaime:

Having just bought the classic Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord, I'm really starting to enjoy its 'WEGO' system, where both players assign orders to their units, which are then resolved in 60 seconds of real time where the player has no control over what happens, until the end of that 60 seconds where they can give new orders etc. Only played a couple of missions but its led to some very tense encounters and I'd love to see it implemented in more strategy games, maybe even UG.

However, I can totally dig hex turn-based games, just depends on the setting and mechanics in question. Ditto for real time games.

Yeah... I am actually sort of meant something like that, where you give orders and hit "go" and then it gets carried out in real time. I considered that still to be turn based.

[Champin Playr]

TBSs are great and i just love some of them, but it is not for all kind of players.

[Apexas]

One of the reasons I was excited about this game in the first place was because it instantly reminded me of RELCWG (Robert E. Lee: Civil War General), which I had played nostalgically as recently as the past few years. The turn-based hex nature of that game just never seemed to take away from the fun of it, and a lot of the mechanics of this game like the semi-persistent friendly and enemy armies through the campaign are reminiscent of the best qualities of that old title.

The only big hangup I still remember with that was that I had to intentionally avoid destroying Burnside's unit at Antietam or the game would crash permanently after he was given command of the AoP a few battles down the road. If you destroyed a unit, that unit and its leader legitimately never showed up again in the campaign!

[emcdunna]

hahaha thats a funny bug.

Yeah one advantage of going with a more discrete (not continuous) game design is that the bugs should be way easier to sort out and eliminate. If a problem happens, it would happen when a specifically identifiable set of events occurred, which could actually be fixed.

UG has a hard time fixing problems like the melee combat and shot blocking (buggy at best) precisely because of the open map concept

[Didz]

Used to play a lot of AH boardgames and Talonsoft online boardgames. My general opinion is that they are open to expliots and abuse by players. Lots of careful number crunching to get the optimum combat odds and expliots like leaving supply wagons in critical positions to break up enemy attacks.

Having said that I much prefer turn base campaign movement, and hate games like Universalis and Age of Empires that have real time strategic movement.

[emcdunna]

Originally posted by Didz:

Used to play a lot of AH boardgames and Talonsoft online boardgames. My general opinion is that they are open to expliots and abuse by players. Lots of careful number crunching to get the optimum combat odds and expliots like leaving supply wagons in critical positions to break up enemy attacks.

Having said that I much prefer turn base campaign movement, and hate games like Universalis and Age of Empires that have real time strategic movement.

Interesting. Careful number crunching is kind of annoying, but if the game dev is doing the number crunching himself, you can actually eliminate that as a threat. As opposed to continous open map style games where perhaps the game devs often cant calculate exactly whats happening. Does 35 accuracy make sense? lets try it. Looks OK. Ship it.

[Didz]

Originally posted by emcdunna:

Originally posted by Didz:

Used to play a lot of AH boardgames and Talonsoft online boardgames. My general opinion is that they are open to expliots and abuse by players. Lots of careful number crunching to get the optimum combat odds and expliots like leaving supply wagons in critical positions to break up enemy attacks.

Having said that I much prefer turn base campaign movement, and hate games like Universalis and Age of Empires that have real time strategic movement.

Interesting. Careful number crunching is kind of annoying, but if the game dev is doing the number crunching himself, you can actually eliminate that as a threat. As opposed to continous open map style games where perhaps the game devs often cant calculate exactly whats happening. Does 35 accuracy make sense? lets try it. Looks OK. Ship it.

That's not been my experience of hex-based games, my enduring memory is of careful counter/token placement to optimise combat odds and the deliberate sacrifice of weak counters elsewhere to force the AI to waste its attacks.

Thats why I found the early Totalwar games so refreshing as they combined turn based strategic play with realtime battle resolution which in my opinion is the perfect combination.

[older than dirt]

I played Avalon Hill's Gettysbug board game when I was young. I even played a game by Milton Bradley about british sailing ships invading a US Revolutionay war harbor which was really fun.

[john.rhonda.charlie]

"older than dirt" - those were two of my favorite games when I first was playing board-games. I had my copy of Getttysburg! until a flood ruined it about 20 years ago. The game "Broadside" (if I recall correctly was great. Yoou had to remove sails when they took certain hits. Avalon Hill was the best! I still play Third Rreich (on computer).