By Tim Stone on April 19th, 2009 at 3:41 pm.
I’d love to have commemorated the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Raszyn by announcing that Jean-Michel Mathe had finally finished his Napoleonic opus HistWar: Les Grognards. Sadly I can’t (he’s still drilling his TacAI and personally sharpening and polishing every single sabre and bayonet in the game) so instead I’ll mark the day by drawing your attention to a darling chunk of much lighter Nap strategy.
PeG – Napoleonic is based on the People’s General engine and has the kind of Battle For Wesnothian charm that wargame devs don’t seem to be all that good at anymore. Free, self-contained, and dead easy to learn especially if you’ve Panzer Generalled in the past, just about the only aspects that aren’t instantly graspable are fog-of-war dispersion (use the cavalry options under the ‘air missions’ tab to quickly scout the battlefield) and unit capabilities (right click a unit to display stats and access replenishment/resupply). For extra campaigns (though none as yet that include Fifth Coalition scraps like Raszyn) force-march your way to creator Robert Mary’s personal depot.
Awesome – thanks!
And yeah, I’ve been watching HistWar with hungry anticipation since he first announced a release date. Which, if memory serves, was last September. Or was it two Septembers ago? Still, the videos of the game in action are amazing.
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WWII, WWI and Napoleonic strategy based on the People’s General engine?
I think my manhood just exploded.
Onwards to download!
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Blast, if I didn’t have work to do this sounds like it would be the perfect way to spend the rest of Sunday afternoon before heading to the pub.
Must.. resist..
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Lovely graphics, would like see more 2d strategies like this. Going to try the WWI.
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Damn, I forgot you have a turn limit… I was half way of conquering Corsica!! :(
The WWI campaign is my next stop. There are surprisingly few games about that conflict and like a googol games about WWII.
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You said it had Wesnothian charm. I didn’t see it. :(
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Reminds me more of Fantasy General rather than Battle for Wesnoth, but that’s a pretty good game as well.
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Must have a look at this. I was recently getting all nostalgic in the E:TW forums about Peter Turcan’s Waterloo game of 1989. A turn based game but with a 3d landscape. It depicted units as blocks so it looked a bit like TW would if you zoomed right out. Unlike TW the ‘blocks’ behaved intelligently and would change formation on their own – forming square and so on. Also unlike TW the AI was more than capable of kicking your Napoleonic ass clear off the map with fog of war and order delay making it a far more challenging experience.
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Was the AI in Peter Turcan’s stuff really that good? The man was a wargaming visionary no question of that, but I seem to remember games like Waterloo were fairly heavily scripted and the TacAI could be frustrating (friendly generals vanguarding with artillery, enemy ones failing to punish this)
Great games though. To this day I still find myself writing D’Erlon as D-Erlon and La Belle Alliance as La-Belle-Alliance.
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@Tim Stone: Was the AI in Peter Turcan’s stuff really that good?
It wasn’t half bad. Such is my vanity that I almost always played as Napoleon and reversing history was by no means impossible but wouldn’t be a slam dunk. Obviously it was an easier context than in TW as all the important battlefield features are known in advance and two great commanders have left scripts to follow. Also unlike TW the timescale was more realistic so you couldn’t arrange for half your army to run right round the enemy line and attack from behind – order delay alone would make such a tactic unviable.
I’m sure there were AI glitches though I don’t remember anything significant, mainly I remember that, win or lose, the outcome always felt like a fair result. I think the order delay was the key thing, in E:TW the AI will do often do something stupid and as soon as it does you can punish it badly. In Waterloo you might see an opening but it takes a couple of turns before you can units to start moving by which point that weak point in the line may now be bristling with artillery.
Must dig out the floppy disk one day and have another play at it…
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Robert just released a 37 scenario campaign “The Fall of the Eagle” depicting the rise and fall of Naploean’s battles if anyone would be playing then on the People’s General engine.
http://www.panzercentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43567
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I am the “project manager” of PeG-Napoleonic, I feel happy someone has discovered our game and enjoys it. The “Fall of the Eagle” is the lastes campaign and depicts the battles between 1812 and 1815. The “Rise of the Eagle”, a campaign in preparation depicts the battles between 1796 and 1809. The game is a result of hard work from an international team with a mix of different skills.
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