Still painting still flying.

 So I got an airbrush for my birthday, so that meant lots and lots money spent on paints, and effects, tanks, etc. So back to WW2 painting I come.

I've also taken part in a beta test for VR for a flight sim, I think it will be epic once it's finshed. 


I know most of you who see the blog don't care about flight sims, but while I'm waiting for my WW2 stuff.

Here is some flying.

I jump between IL2 and DCS, and the game with the beta, sadly can't show anything from the beta yet.


But here are som IL2 and DCS vidoes.

Here's a video I'm quite happy with, a P47 giving close air support to American armor outside of Carentan.

Here I'm flying a Spitfire IX in Normandy, with my 3D printed Spitfire spade grip, throttle quadrant, and trim wheels, it's amazing flying a spitfire in VR, and holding on to the spade grip, firing off the cannons and machine guns, or using the bomb release button on the throttle.

IL2 Flying Circus has gotten WW1 bombers. 
So I did a small fight trying to shoot down some Gotha bombers.

And last but not least, less than a week ago the AH-64 Apache Longbow was released in early access. 
Still missing some features, but very well made. 

Here's a mission I flew today, my second mission in the Apache, and it went surprisingly well given I had less than an hour in the Apache before beginning the mission. 

All my videos now have commentary, so should be a bit more interesting to watch. 

5 Marines walk into a bar.

 And the bartender says; we don't serve your kind here, and I say, hey, if I want to drink watered-down whisky and play with my miniatures you have no right to stop me. 


So I started playing around with the Huey in DCS, it's an evil machine that wants to murder you any time it has the chance. But it's a fun ship that really requires that you fly it all times.

Here I fly a Huey as we take out a Russian base.

And here I do my first landing on a firgate. 

Ah, but don't worry I'm not here to bore you with just video games videos. 

Since I flew the Huey a lot, I got into the Nam mood, even if the game doesn't really have any Vietnam assets. (you have some Vietnam era aircraft like Huey and MiG21) but you don't have Vietnam-era infantry, ground vehicles. So you can't do a hot LZ landing under fire from NVA etc. 

But a Huey is a Huey, so I pulled out some Nam stuff.

I painted 5 marines

This means my Marine force is 20 strong.

I only have 5 grunts left to paint, and maybe an M60, as well as a 60mm mortar team.

If I manage to paint the last 5 marines, I'm out and I need to order more to finish the platoon. So hopefully I'll feel like doing the last 9 man NVA Squad and its two HQ figures. I also have the figures to do 3 support options, a separate RPG team, a.30cal MMG and a nice big 12.7mm HMG.

Computer game Review DCS

 

So I know its been quiet of late on the blog. Bur I am working on this, a couple of Napoleonic units, but it's slow going as I've been completely hooked on DCS.

When I wrote a review of IL2 flying circus, I said DCS was too complex for me, and it still kinda is. But I hunkered down and really studied the stuff, I also jumped through a million hoops to get the game to run ok, I fresh install of Windows, and various other tricks did the stuff, and I finally got it playable. 

I've been completely absorbed by the game, since I wrote the IL2 review I've played DCS for over 100 hours.


So what is DCS?

DCS(Digital Combat simulator) is a "free to play" game, not really free as I'll explane.

The base game is free, you get 2 maps, Caucasus, a big map of Georiga, and the black sea,  the oldest map, now almost a decade old, it had gotten plenty of updates since then, but graphically the simplest map. You also get the Marianas map, which just came out a few weeks ago, mostly water designed for carrier operations, it included the islands of Guam, Rota, Tinian, Saipan, It will get a WW2 version. 

Also with the free game comes to planes, but before we get to that, a short explanation of the planes in the game. 

The game comes with 2 types of planes, the "low-fidelity" or Flaming cliffs 3(FC3) planes, these are actually from an older game, that has been ported over to DCS and given a physics and graphical grade, they use the same flight model as the newer planes, but the cockpit is static and the graphics are a little lower in quality. You can still fly and shoot and bomb etc, but everything must be done with button presses on the keyboard to joystick, etc. 

The other is the "high-fidelity" planes, these are all the newer stuff made for DCS, the graphics are better, they are far more complex and every button, knob, and switch in the game is clickable, not everything works, but in most planes, 95% of the systems are there. Here you can dive deep into all systems and subsystems of the plane.


So the free game comes with two planes, one is the Su-25T one of the FC3 planes, so it's simpler in operation, but all weapons, etc work, I believe you also have a campaign and various missions to play, this is the best taste of the game you get for free, and you can use this playing online.

The other plane is a TF-51 Mustang a none combat P51, but this one is high-fidelity, and so will give you a taste of how the proper planes are, you can click and manipulate all the stuff in the cockpit, you can start it up from cold, turning on the engine like in the real mustang, etc. You need to control the power of the engine during flight to avoid breaking it. But it has no weapons or gun sight. 

You also have full access to the mission editor. 

That's what you get for free, everything else cost money, sometimes quite a lot of money. 

Other maps avalable for purches is

Nevada test and training map, a map of parts of Nevada, Utah,  Arizona and California.
Persian Gulf, a map of well Persian gulf, centered on  Strait of Hormuz., with UAE, Iran and Oman, with cities like Dubai etc. 

Syria, one of the newer maps, I'll quite directly from the store page what this map has.

This 900x500 km map covers most of the eastern Mediterranean, and it includes the island of Cyprus, Lebanon, a large part of Syria up to the border with Iraq, parts of Israel, Turkey, and Jordan. The cities of Damascus, Nicosia, Tripoli, Latakia, Tartus, Homs, Aleppo, Hama, Palmyra, Haifa, Acre, Beirut and Adana are simulated, as well as unique constructions of world famous landmarks and historical monuments.

You also have two WW2 maps.

Normandy, as you'd except covers Normandy, Cherbourg peninsula, and the land behind the beaches. 
With airfields in England and France. 

The Channel, also deals with Southern England and Northern France but further east with Dover and Calais, this is a fantastic map with the town of Dover looking fantastic. 
Each map cost around $50


Then you have all the planes, too many to mention them all but Mig21, Viggen, F16, F18, F14, F5, Mirage 2000 to name but a few, you also have helicopters like the Huey, Hind, Ka-50 "Black Shark, and soon Apatche. 

WW2 is covered with P51 Mustang(the one that got weapons) P47 Thunderbolt, Spitfire IX LW, Messerschmitt 109K4 Kurfyrst, Fw190A-8 Anton and Fw190D-9 Dora, and in about half a month the Mosquito FB VI. 

The planes cost between 40 and 80 dollars, depending on how new they are, each plane is made with input from the makers of the plane, technicians, pilots, etc. There is a lot of work going into each plane. so don't think of it like spending $80 on parts of a game, if you spend $80 on the F16, you got a full-blown super-accurate F16 simulator, each plane is a simulator in on itself. 

Besides the planes and maps, you also have "asset packs" like the WW2 asset pack, which adds WW2, infantry, tanks, planes, guns, and ships. And these packs continue to be updated with new assets. 
You also have Supercarrier, a fully working American supercarrier with a working deck crew. And you also have combined arms pack that lets you control ground and sea units. 

And finally the campaigns, these are more in the $10-15 range and worth it if you like well-made missions. 

It's hard to explain just how fantastic this game is when you get the hang of it. A so-called "study sim" where you spend a lot of time just learning the systems. 

I keep jumping between modern and WW2. 



I spent quite a lot of time on the F18 but found its systems confusing, I then spent a lot of time on the F16, making my own super simple missions to learn one and one system, while watching videos on youtube showing how to do it. 

I play exclusively in VR but you don't need it to play, it just enhances it soo much.

I'll let videos do some of the talking, here I am on the deck of a supercarrier in my F18, sitting there in VR seeing those F18 taking off right in front of me is probably one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. 

After getting too confused by the F18, I went back to the F16, as a Norwegian it holds a special place for me. 

I made a series of "training missions" A trilogy, where I pretended to save my Friend Sven who lives on Cyprus from evil Russians. 

In the first missions, the evil Russians have stopped right outside of Limassol, they have plenty of trucks full of chemical agents. I need to take them all out, And this shows the effect of dropping 12 250lb bombs in ripple mode. 

In the second part of the "Save Sven" trilogy, the Russians have snuck in armor and infantry, since they are within his neighboorhood, I must use "smart bombs" 

And finally, the Russians have gone full out, a full platoon of infantry, and armor are about to attack his house, and this time they have a SAM site ready to try and stop me from saving Sven. 
Let's just say, this time I made absolutely sure they would not come back by going totally overkill with 6 CBU-97 bombs. 

I played with the F16 a lot and got decent at it. Starting to understand the systems, But playing in VR I have a hard time using the keyboard, I needed more buttons. So I've invested in the full Winwing system, It comes with a 1:1 F18 stick and throttle, as well as man buttons on the throttle part, I also got the Take off-panel and combat panel, giving me easy buttons and levers for landing gear, laser etc. Even though the panel is modeled on the F18 it works fine on the F16 or whatever else you want to use. 


I also spent 8 bucks on Voice attack, letting me control stuff with my voice, in theory, you can use your voice to activate any system in the planes, but I only use it for communicating with ground and wingmen, and for controlling menus and views and map. This means I can no completely forget about the keyboard when I play. 

I have now gone back to WW2, I wanted to wait until I got my spitfire flight controls, but I couldn't wait. So I jumped back. 

Making some fun missions.

Like attacking a German airfield, The editor is incredibly powerful letting you do so much. 

This video shows how I've managed to program 12 B17s to fly and carpetbomb. 

And of late I've been practicing dogfighting in WW2. 

After trying and trying to get the hang of the P51, I just can't fly it the way I want, its style of flight doesn't match what I want to do. 

So I went back to the good old Spitfire. not as fast as the P51, but the Spit lets me do what I want it to do(most of the time)


Here I am in the most classic of all of history's aerial duels, the Spitfire vs the Bf109, the Bf109K-4 is very very late warplane and actually superior to the IX spitfire in most ways, only the ludicrous turning rate is better in the spit. You can also download missions, skins, and even planes for free made by modders. I've naturally used Norwegian skins on my F16 and on the Spitfire. 

Another dogfight this time 3 vs 3. I end up cutting the 109 in half, I still stuck at Aerial gunnery, it just takes a lot of practice. 

I recommend this game to anyone interested in WW2 or modern(or cold war) air combat. It's not an action game, this is as hardcore as a simulator you are gonna get outside of actual airforces. 

A few warings-

1: you need a HOTAS, (stick and throttle) playing this with a mouse and keyboard or a gamepad is technically possible but just no, even a $100 one will improve the experience enormously. 
2: Even without VR the game demands a lot of the computer, a 5-year-old family computer won't do it, And in VR we are talking $2500 level computer.
3. STEEP learning curve, if you are a bit more technical in the head than me, it will go easier for you, but I'm "easily confused" by complex systems. So while I can keep an aircraft in the air without much difficulty, actually controlling the systems is harder, if you keep to WW2, a lot of this goes away, the most complex part there is the start-up(which you can skip) and a little when it comes to managing the engines, but the warbirds are much harder to fly, I mean you can't do what you want with them, A spit will blow its engine if you fly straight up for 10 seconds, a Fw190 or P47 will stall its wings if you do even a half hard turn. But they are a joy to fly. And if you like systems upon systems, you have the F18 or F16s, Or maybe you want to jump into the 50s nostalgia with the Mig 15 or Mig 17. 
4. This is a hobby by itself, As of now, this is the only game I have installed on my computer. 

I haven't been this hooked on a game since my early teens(which is now over 20!!! years ago) this is really the flight sim one dreamed of when you played games like Microsoft combat flight simulator or F16 fighting falcon. 

If you are interested I recommend you get the free game from https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/ 
You have a lot of good deals there, like the ability to try any plane or helicopter for free for 2 weeks, after two weeks you can try any other plane for 2 weeks, that way you can try them all before buying. 
They also have a loyalty thing, where each purchase gives you credit, that you can use later, so if you buy 3 plans, the 4th one will be at a decent discount. 


Buy Buy!!! 

I'll try and get back to the scheduled programing soon.

Computer game Review IL-2 Sturmovik-Flying Circus

 I've been playing a lot of flight sims of late. Microsft flight simulator 2020 is a technical marvel, flying over your own house and seeing it. just flying everywhere. VR has rekindled my love of flight sims. Just sitting there in the cockpit, looking around. Far more immersive than any other setup you can get.

I flew Oslo Trondheim in an F15 in about 20 minutes, flying through the Norwegian valleys.
I then started up DCS again, this is the most complex flight sim you are gonna find outside of actual pilot training sims. Almost all buttons in the cockpit are working and do what it's supposed to do. 15-minute start-up of aircraft. Really too complex for me. I never got the hang of even using the weapons on my F16.  I did slightly better in the P47, but the major problem with DCS is ut runs like a 250-year-old rusty steam engine, especially in VR. This annoyed me and kinda ruined the fun, even though it's a fantastic sim. 

So that leads us to IL-2 Sturmovik-Flying Circus. Flying Circus is a WW1 DLC for the WW2 game IL-2 Sturmovik, not only does Sturmovik fantastic even in VR, I can crank all up to max(except shadows) and it runs silky-smooth even with my 4k VR headset. And I think I will try and crank up the shadows from medium to high next time as this game is very well made when it comes to optimisation. 

Flying Circus Vol. 1 deals mostly with 1918, you have a 10 000km2 map based on the Arras sector. 
You have the typical 1918 planes like Camel and Fokker Dr 1. It's fantastic flying 2km above the french countryside then seeing that big brown belt of no mans land. You see fighting going on down there, tracers and shells going off. The meat of the game besides multiplayer is the Kaiserschlacht campaign, originally started as a community campaign, it's now officially part of the game. The german campaign puts you as a flight leader in a Fokker DR 1. You do basic scouting or you hunt observation balloons to name a few of the missions. 

It's fantastic taking part in these big aerial combats, a dozen German and British planes duking it out 1500 meters above no mans land. Getting behind an enemy and firing your Spandau's into the plane. And seeing the long slow dive as the enemy plane breaks up. 

And in VR you are throwing your head all over the place, seeing if the enemy is behind you or above you, No more having to use buttons to move the view around. Fantastic imersion. 

I'll let the videos do most of the talking. 

The first mission is to take off from an airstrip and land on one closer to the front while doing a patrol. Not much happened here. So just enjoy the flight. 

Mission 2 has everything. My plane gets riddled with bullets, I get riddled with bullets. I shoot down 3 enemies. And an evil balloon. Before my engine dies from damage and I have to glide into a crash landing. 

Mission 3, has lots of action, it took over 50 minutes so I cut down most of the to and from flying. 3 more enemies shoot down, including a poor soul who caught fire. I also killed another one of those evil balloons, even though that wasn't an objective. And I saved one of our balloons. (the HD version of this mission isn't ready yet. Wil lbe a few more hours after posting this)

It's literally been decades since I've had this much fun in a flight sim, and VR is the best gaming technology there is for flight sims. 
I recommend you get flying Circus, and get some VR googles, the best for the buck today is Quest 2, some $299 and another few bucks for a good USB C cable. I use a Logitech X52 HOTAS flight stick, another $130 So much cheaper than buying 3 full computer screens that has been a standard for both car and sim racing for years. 

Preview/Review: Ultimate General: Civil War

What a fun game!

This is the second  game in what is now a series, called Ulitmate General.
The first game dealt  only with Gettysburg, it had a series of battles that got affected  by how you did,  like if the union held on the first day,  the battle would be different  from how  history recorded the second  day  of Gettysburg.  

The game  was fun, nice to look it, and the selling point was the ease  of control and the AI

Now this second game, will let you play the entire civil  war! (when it's done, as it's in early  access, and the game ends after  Antietam)

You start with creating  your general, through a sort of "light RPG" character creating screen,  You create a general, You choose  which studies you had at West Point  and so get various  points.

Here we meet the first problem, the nr 1 skill  you  have to put points  in is; Army Organisation. This skill is needed to get; more brigades, bigger brigades,  and more corps. You just have to dump  your skill points as much as possible into it. This kinda defeats the purpose of having a choice in  your character creation. The second skill you need  to dump stuff  into is reconnaissance, so you'll be able  to see at least some info on enemy strength. The other skills seem much less important  and you simply fill up some of them  after getting as high as possible in Army Organisation.

The first screen in General creation process.

You then do small battle, where  you have  to  take  a town with  a few thousand men at your disposal. Then hold the town against a counter attack. After this you'll start to build  your army!

After you win the battle  you  get a new skill point(which  goes straight into  army  organization.

And you get; money, manpower, and reputation. Money  is spent on creating  brigades and buying  weapons, manpower is how many recruits  you   have available. And reputation is a sort of political  currency. It  can buy used to "buy" more men, weapons or  generals. But it's also your life-line, if you loose to much reputation you will be fired! 

To start your army  you'll have whatever is left after the first battle. You'll need  to add brigades and divisions as soon as possible. It's relatively cheap to make a new brigade, as  long as  you have enough weapons  in your armory.  However adding veteran reinforcements to brigades you  already have is extremely expensive.  When I neared the battle of Antietam, it cost me some 50 000 to  add 500 veteran reinforcements to my best brigades.  Because  you do get best brigades. Not only can you  buy better weapons to them, But they level up, a  Level 3(the max) Brigade is  a monster compared to  a level 0 brigade. If you got a level 3 brigade with 2500 men(the biggest you can  get a brigade) You can count on them standing under extreme pressure. 

But as I said it's extremely expensive to reinforce them(you can reinforce them with rookies, but then the quality  of the brigade goes down) 

You  move your brigades by simply dragging the mouse from the unit to where  you  want to  go.

You have 4 types of "brigades" Brigades in  this game is a sort of generic term. First and most important is the infantry brigade  which is a proper brigade. They can  be up to 2500 men strong. 

You also have Cavalry brigade, which  can be up  to 750 strong. You have artillery brigade that can be from  a small battery in size(4 guns)  to 24  guns.  And finally you have skirmishers, that ca be up to  500 men.

Each brigade is added  to a division, in the start  you can  only have 3-4  brigades pr. division, but when you have upgraded your army organization   you can  have 6 brigades per. division and  4 divisions per corps.

For  my first proper game, I mostly had 4-5 infantry per division and a battery. Some of my divisions  had cavalry and some had Skirmishers. But at Antietam where I had 65 brigades, I  only had 3 cavalry units, 3 skirmish units, The rest was  regular infantry  and artillery.  

While  you only spend 20% of the game in the Army Organisation screen, I'll  make the claim it's actually  40% of the game,  A badly made army will make it impossible to win.  You'll spend a lot of time taking care of your army. You'll need  to  find officers for your units,  you'll see   both officers and  units level up(promoted for officers) You'll spend a lot of time  finding the right weapons for them. You have many weapons  to choose from,  but availability is a pain. Not only do  you need  the money  for the guns, But there might not be enough guns to supply your brigade. 

And the guns got stats of course, very broadly speaking, the short  range smoothbore have higher melè, while the rifled-muskets have  better range and accuracy.  Why exactly  a  musket is better in melè  then a rifled-musket I do not know, But it's a game. 

But it dosen't help having super fancy guns  if  you can't resupply them after a battle. So often you  end up  using weapons  you captured  after a battle.  

You also  have supply you need to look  after, Each corps have a supply wagon, that resupplies  your army  in a battle.  It will run out! You  can max have 25000 supply. If  you  got 30-40 guns going off and a 20  000 soldiers firing  of  their weapons, those  25000 will go in minutes! You  can capture the enemy supply wagons, these can be used  in the battle,  but if you don't use them up in that battle the remaining supplies  will be added to yours after the battle. 

From the first battle asUnion

I  will tell you, you  will be attached   to your units. For simplicity's sake, I made each of my divisions  "state divisions"  So my   first division was  a New York division. With 1st New york Brigade, 2nd New York  Brigade, 1st New York Artillery etc.  My Second was a Maine division. 

I also  had Rhoad Island, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio etc.

Two units I did get very attached  to was 1st New York Brigade and 1st Maine Brigade. 

1st New york, had been with me since  the first battle.  And my 1st Maine was my Killer Angles and  had been  with me since my second battle. After  Antietam, they had like 12000 kills after  over a year of campaigning, I   almost lost them  twice, at Shiloh  they were down   to 350  men and at Gains Mill they  were down  to 240 men, At Antietam, they lost  1300 men. 

The screen  you get  after winning the first battle.

When you've  finished  playing in the army organization screen it's time to do battle.  Before each major battle(1st Manassas, Shiloh etc.)  you have optional  battles, smaller actions  that will let  you get experience, money,  and manpower.

The battles play  out mostly like the first game, they  have  improved stuff, making it easier  to create cohesive  battle lines. They have also   made artillery  much easier to   handle, no need to micro them, simply put them  some place, and the rest is automatic,  the guns unlimber and they also choose  the ammo them self. So  they automatically go for canister at close range. 

But the battles are also  the biggest problem so far in the game. They are not dynamic. 

So  if I loose 20 000  men in a  battle, I'll need to reinforce my army with  whatever resources  I  have.  This does not  apply to the ai. You can almost wipe the ai   army of the face of the planet, and the next battle it's at full strength. It's a shame, it would be very cool if   you could win the game by simply destroy  the enemy army in a giant battle. But you can't and  I guess they won't add it,  As  the campaign  will be many hours long, but if   you win after 4 major battles the campaign will be 4 hours  long not 25 hours long. 

My Army  early in the game.

A little later,  with  a 2nd corps added.

And the second big problem with the battle is the scripting.

One of the more dramatic examples of this is at Shiloh, At the start of the  battle,  you need to  hold Shiloh Church and the  Hornet's nest. And I did, I held them both. Yet in day 2 my entire army gets magically  transported to Pitsburg landing. And I have to retake  both these places. I had by the 2nd day almost destroyed the  CSA army, I   had probebly a  5:1  advantage in  forces. So  I why would I pull back?

Other   then these  problems, there are just some bugs here and there(again not a finished game)

The rebs throw them self at my lines, you see all those brown/grey corpes in the stream? Yeah a dozen 12 pdr Napoleons will do  that over a few hours.

After doing two smaller actions, I  have only 1st Bull  Run left,  and I need to do it, to continue on.

There is also  the problem  with the difficulty, I played my first  proper campaign as Union  on easy, I won every single battle(  you aren't suppose to win  all battles)  While I was challenged  in the battles and needed   to keep on   my toes. I still won them all. I'm  going to try now on Normal, But I'm afraid Normal will be too  hard  and I'll never reach Antietam. Because I played on  easy I  had 25% more manpower and money. So I could have 5 brigades I always filled with veteran reinforcements. This gives me an edge. 

How it looked before Antietam. 

The game is extremely fun, I spent almost 15 hours on this first campaign, so a full one  with all the battles will  last at least 20 maybe close to 30 hours.  I have laid out the things I'm not a fan   of, I doubt most of them will be changed. As I said,  it's a bit frustrating destroying  an enemy army just to  see it complete and intact the  next battle but if  you don't do it, it's perfectly possible you'll never see  half the battles as  you  destroyed the enemy army early in  the game. I  mean I lost 18 000 men at Antietam, the south lost 24 000 out of 46 000. I still  would have over 60 000 against their 22 000, So I  would most  likely have won the war after the  next battle.

 Now again I played on easy, this would be much harder on  normal or hard, but then some people are much  better than   me at this, and so even on  hard some players would destroy  the enemy early on. The one thing I  hope they  do change is the scripting  of the battles. We might not get a dynamic  campaign, but dynamic  battles would have been nice.

I recommend the game as it is now, without hesitation , but if you want  to wait a few months, you can do  that,  the game is on early accsess, but the game is quite complete, so it won't be years and yeasrs in  early accsess hell.

The game is out on steam  now, and when  done will also come to Ipad.

The Death of the confederacy? Kemper with his back  to the river getting shot up by  30 canon and thousands of soldiers.

Total War Rome 2 Review

Well Hello there, So this game came out on Tuesday, me and my friend have been waiting for this game well for years, the last week I was actualy counting down the hours. I went to bed early on Monday just to get the time to go faster, got up 8 in the moringen eventho I had nothing to do that day. Wainted an hour, and the game was out. 

Then the shitstorm happend, people had super problems but from a desgin point of the game, but also lots and lots of bugs. I have been fortunate, except a few anoying bugs(one that led to the demise of Pyrrhus and Epirus) I have not have had huge bugs. I have low fps but it's playable on max graphics, alot of people can bearly play on the lowest settings. So my problems are mostly gameplay wise. I still enjoy the game imensly. 

First the bad.

Some of my "problems" these are slighty personal and not all will have problems with them.

1. way to fast battles, 2000 dead in 3 minutes, you have the ablity to have 60 minutes count down on battles, but any battle that last more then 15 minutes, usualy have bugged them self(like enemies not attacking cities)

This has sevral problems, like not beeing able to enjoy the spectical, it's over so fast you don't have time to zoom inn and watch the fight. Second no time do to any tactical stuff, the battles are so short, so doing grand flanking with part of your army or just your cav is imposible. The only flanking you have time for is just to bend your battle lines in on the enemy. 

2 Victory points, anoying as hell and leads to ai bugs, you are in the middel of a desert, you are attacked, you would think the only mission is to defend your self and/or kill all the enemies, but now, a magical capture points is in the middel of your battle line, if you loose it, you loose, even tho you might have 2000 menn left.

It also leads to ai bugging out in seige battles.(that killed Pyrrhus)

3. Ai dosn't make high end units, so far into my Macadonia campaign, I realised I have not seen any enemy units that are well worth anything, all enemy armies seems to be the lowest or next lowest infantry unit(milita, freedmen, ect) and light infantry(archers, slingers, javlinmen) Thats it, here I come with heavly armord Phalangites in Chainmail, with full 9 levles of experience and high level armor and shield upgrades, and the enemy throws Libyan Spearmen, Numidian spearmen, hoplitie millita at me. In my 20 battles I played personaly in the macedonia campaign, only in one battle did I see high level units(thoracrites, called thorax swordmen) And yes they did put up much more of a fight. 

3. no love for the manipeler system, as rome you start with just hastati, then you can get principes and triarii with upgrade to a better barracks, but the also have techonology tree, and locking up the Marian reforms takes a very short time, so you will end up with getting rid of your propper republican romans, and getting the proffesonall legionare, some 100-160 years ahead of when it really happend, leaving very little time to play around with my wonderfull triarii and hastatii! And it's not optional, you kinda have to do the upgrade to get other technology. if you don't do it, you willl be left behind in the quality of the troops(if the enemy did upgrade that is) The technology upgrade should have been higher up on the tech tree. 

4. Later in the game, it gets desolate, I'm moving into asia minor, and it's empty, no armies, the towns are not upgraded so no real defences. I have not seen a single army with more then 800 menn in it in a long time now. they are all small scale forces. 

So thats my big gripes.

So I guess I should have started with the basics of the game first, but here they are.

The game lets you play as a leader of a faction/nation/tribe You have a germanic tribe, gallic tribe, Britton tribe, as well as Parthia, Pontus, Rome, Carthage, Macedonia, Epirus, Sparta, Athens, Egypt, soon you will be able to play as Selucids to. To win, you have to "take over the world" so to speak, there are diffrent goals, you have economic, culutural and military victory. You build your empire, take over other nations. You build armies and buldings. research tech. There are sevral balls to jugle, food, money and happyness is the big ones. Make sure your populace is happy, this is done by making ceartain building, like ampitheatere or aquaducts. Other buildings actualy make people less happy, so you have to balance it, you need military, economic and agaculture buldings, but higher teers of those make people less happy, so you have to also build buildings that make them happy. Food is important or they stave, again some buildings make food, while others use them up, and some make money. So those 3 resoarses have to be balanced. It did take me a few rounds to get the hang of it, my carthage campaign went to hell because of massive food shortage, so I was super carefull with it as Macedonia, and had like 60 surplus food.

The game is centerd around provinces, a province is 2-4 "towns" There are bonuses to having an enitre province, for one you can give an edict, that gives bonuses. Second the more towns you have in a province, the easier/harder depending on how you look at it, it is to balanse the 3 resorces. Also it gives you the ablity to make very good armies, as the towns are conected. I'll give you an example. you generaly have 3 diffrent options in military buldings, heavy units(heavy cav, infantry ect) another options is higher teer light infantry, archers ect. and then you have armorer, so if you have a four town province, you can have 3 of the towns have one of each(or one town can have sevral) So you can then build a good army in that one provice, with heavy infanry, archers and good armor bonuses. 

Ofcourse not all provinces have to have military buildings, infact that would make it hard to make enough money and food. so some provinces are food or money makers, while others are military, generaly your  first province is gonna be a military province, as you need military early on to expand. As Macedonia, I had 2 main centers of military, Macedoina with pella as center, and rome, I later did a few smaller military suply stations in cities like Antioch. Also you have just a limited number of armies/fleets. At the start you can only have 3 armies, then later 6, then 9 ect.

Each army has a general, he gets better as he wins battles, also as your army get better it gets "traditions" that makes it better. My main Macedonian army had 4 traditions and had been with me sins the start, so the army had lasted 150 years. generals come and go, but the army traditions and units stay.

So in the end , the game is fun, 30+ hours in 4 days, even tho I was super sick most of the time, with headaches.

 City defence, the javlins are very cool, they make a good sound when they hit, they get stuck in soldiers

Give them boiling oil.

 I love my Phalangites

 A battle I had close to the nile, Selucids threw them self at my phalanx.

 Hastai, I love them, to bad you don't have them long in the game.

My mini legion, 3 units of hastati, 3 of principes, and 3 of triarii, and 4 units of skrimishes.

Why I should never become a Cavalry General

So we had another game today, The very historic battle, were the french and prussians teamed up against russians and british.

It was a rather big battle, really to big for the table which was 8x6, actualy the table was fine, we just put to much stuff on it.

This time we did try and class some units not just as line, my highlanders got to be vetran, prussian death dead hussars got to be elite, the french dragoons were vetran, and my poor poor russians were second line, so was the landwehr and reserve.

We were four players, one took mostly prussians, the other took the french, on the other side we had one player with russians and a british battery, While I took the british inf and cav, The russians also got suport of a single british light dragoon regiment.
So I controled 5 British infantry and a light and heavy dragoon regiment.

The french/prussians were kinda attacking we were kinda defending. But in the end we both kinda attacked each other in the middle.

My cav was holding the right flank, infornt of my two cav regimetns were 3 regiments of french cav, and 5 battalions of french line.
Basicly my cav was a plug holding up this horde, I was expecting to be over run any minture, either they would advance in square and shoot me down, or they would charge my cav with their cav, My heavies were infornt, but I could not charge their cav with out hitting the square, so I tried a fancy thing, I changed formation of my heavies, to colum of sqaudron, and then sent my light through the heavies. my idea was that my lights would chage sacreficing them self, leaving the enemy cav weakened, I would then use my heavies to punch through the enemy cav, if I beat the first regiment, it would retreat through the other cav, disordering them, leaving my heavies to mop up 3 regiments.

Well that didn't work, when you interprenitrate you have to get 8+ on the dice for not getting faultering. ofcourse I got like 3 or 4, not even close. So my light cav was faulting and my heavies were faulting, easy target for the enemy cav, and wola, my flank was gone, luckely my british infantry did not get faced by this and stood their ground.

On the russian side, we lost control as those 24 prussian jeger skirmishes got sevral hits on a russian battery, sending it retreating, it was basicly what was holding that flank, but the russians stood, tried a charge, the light dragoons on russian flank got beaten by the elite death head hussars, But the hussars ran behind their lines after the fight, theyby avoding getting hit with 12pdr canister. We ended it there, I had been very lathardic with my british infanty, they never got to fire a shot, and only lost soldiers to artillery. The only fireing I did was with my 7 Rifles, they did not get that many hit, but did togeather with the british artillery some damage to the french line, the artillery twice got double six, giving the french faulter statues, basicly cloging up the attack in the center against my brits.

So it was kinda a stalemate, My british were about to be over run, with my 5 battalions against 10 french and 3 regiments of horse. ofcourse beeing brtish, and in line, and a couple of vetran units, the french would have been very bloodied by the attack. But I do think number would with the day, On the russian side, no unis were lost, the artillery was back in place, while the light dragoons had lost sevral tropers and were retreating, they were not routing, and probebly would be back. The russians had started to take casualties. but that 12 pdr battery would do alot of damge if some one got with in canister range.

So A victory for the french/prussians, but not in any way decisive atleast not when we ended it, had we spent another hour, the victory might have been complete, but probebly bloody.

Ofcourse my camera/cell died out because of the battery. So only a few pictures of the first couple of rounds-

At the Start

French

British

The french only got a few skirmishes, while the prussians got a whole a battalion in skirmish order.



The sole british solder to get into it, the rifles.

Horde of prussians

French with skirmishes infornt.

Choosen Men. They lost 3 rifles fast, but then the last 4 hung on the rest of the game, scoring a few hits.

First Game

So after years of playing with my self, I got to game a propper game, well wasn't totaly propper, non of us knew the rules that well, only one of us had the Deluxe Rules of General De brigade, I had ofcourse some knowlage since I had the original game, and played it a few times, but there are a quite a few new things to the rules. It was a slow start, but the turnes went faster and faster. We were 5 guys Three on the Allied side and two on the french, most of the figures were mine, but a good portion was suplied by briefspite. The french devided their forces into two "brigades" it was mixed cav infantry brigades, The allies, were devided into 4 brigades, I controled British cav and two protugese battalions on the left flank, the british inf was commanded by another in the center, he also controled the C&C and artillery, and on the right a third player controled the prussians, in a mixed brigade.

The Allies were on attack, but didn't take long for the french to start and advance, mostly becasue the table was only 4 feet deep and if they had to retreat, they would end up off table. So saftey in the middle of the table.

I ofcrouse did splendely I was perfect, Infact I only had 3 castualties the whole game, it might also have something to do with that my flank was dead space, except for one of my portugese battalions that got to fire a couple of volleys I didn't do anything exept march my cav and figures forward. The center ended in a slugfest, with french and british shooting eachother to pieces. It all came down to the right flank, first the badly painted french hussars crushed the nicely painted prussian hussars. Leaving the prussian flank in the air. The landwehr surived a massed charge by 2 battalions and the hussars, but only one battalion actualy made contact, the gave the landwehr a licking. The hussars charged the fleeing landwehr, destroying them, this mean a brigade break test needed to be taken, they failed and so the right flank was no more.

We ended the game there. I was about to charge my heavy dragoons into a french square, hoping for double six, and then rolling up the whole line of french. But that wasn't really a realistic option. So in the end my three cav regiments did NOTHING, ABSOLUTLY NOTHING.
Neither did the French cuirassiers or french dragoons.

We did fiddle around, my two brigades got suport order, so I just moved them to suport the two other brigades, we then failed order change meaning we lost a turn when we did nothing.
We also did a few bad order, like the order was to move oblicly right, but we ended up going straight ahead.

This is the table at the start. A ok, table, not as lush as I like but keeping it simple was a good idea, only forest were rough terrain, and mostly we just moved our units around them, the hills and fields had no effect on movments, but the field were used to block line of sight.

Also to keep things simple, everything were middle class, all unis were line, all generals were avrage. It did mean a little boring fights, but it did helt ALOT to keep track on stuff. So the two hussars fighting were down to dice, since they were carbon copies of eachother. British did get thier +1 in line when fireing.

We also learned that it sucks to move lines around, they don't move that far and they are hard to wheel and stuff. On the other hand, having a firefight in column also sucks, so Basically, The allies hard problems moving, while the french had problems shooing, because it took A LONG Time for them to get room to deploy into line.

As I said the center became a bloody firefight, the British did ok, untill the French got their artillery with canister zeroned on the Highlanders, then the casualties went up fast.

Most of our firefigt was long range and with skirmsih screens, once the screens went away and we got into close range firefights with canister, bases started to have to be removed.

The table was about 8x4, so we had a decent length, but it was very shallow, so we had no reserves.




Lost of mesuaring, and we ofcourse had to check the QRS all the time.

It was a gentelmently game, no body were cheating or trying any shortcuts, we talked we laughed. And we scrached our heads. We should really have had a small table for the rules book and dice, it's not propper game with rules on the table and dice flying all over the place pooking out eyes and such.

Also since I'm a lazy fuck, and havn't botherd to paint any skrimishers, we had a shortage of them, we did have like 25 jegers, that protected the british and prussians, but we only had 6 french, so we deployed a full legere battalion as skirmishes, but simply moved the bases apart.

The French feel a good defence is a strong offence.



Here we see the prussians try and get their unwhealdy lines to move right, with a mix of obliqe and wheeling moves.

Here they british try the same, our master plan was for me to hold the left, while the center and right moved more right, mashing the flank of the french and winning. This didn't go well as I said the British just ended up in a firefight.

And the prussian advance stalled and actualy went backward becasue of EVIL BAD DICE, that crushed my nicely painted prussians. Briefspite suplied the dice to it's totayl possible that he loaded them, after all he looks shifty, I woudln't put it past him. But no I think we were just very unlucky.

So now two prussian battalions faced 2 french battalions and a badly painted french hussar unit.

The brish made good targets for the artillery, bunching up like that. the back battalion got sevral casutalites with out even firing a shot, simply by bounce through.

Here the french are closing on the prussians

Still in colum, they simply planed to charge and bash thier way to victory, and it worked, so who am I to say anything.

Firefight all along the center, here is the only thing my brigades did all day, on the far left of the picture my portugese unit did get to fire their muskets.

The french on our left had been in squre most of the game, a good idea concidering I had 36 cav just on the other side of nomans land.

The french almost won right, here, two battalions ready to charge and a cav on the flank, luckely only one battalion passed the charge test. But it only posponed the end by a couple of rounds.

I'm still stuck, my order was to suport and not move further then that lump of trees.

And finnaly the order is changed, the protugese are still stuck, becasue we simply forgot to change thier orders, but my cav is moving. But it's not all fine and dandy, there is a square infront of me, and if I chage it, the cuirassiers will do the same to me, chances of beating a square with cuirassier suport is close to nill.

For some reason I didn't take pictures of the collaps of the prussians.

This is why you should never trust the germans, if you take your eye of them for a second, they loose the battle or start a world war or something.

Well that was it. At the start we problebly spent like half an hour pr. turn. At the end we were probebly down to 10 minutes even tho alot more happned in the later turns.

So it only took 4 years from starting with 15mm to get a 28mm half game done. we are planing on having a game every 7 years like Vulcans do. We don't want to overdo it.