"Napoleonic Kriegspiel multiplayer online" Topic

About Kriegspiel using the "Scourge of War" PC game with Napoleonic modifications.

A group of us have been using the excellent Gettysburg: Scourge of War game to run MP k/spiel-type scenarios for a couple of years. The original game was designed for ACW but translates quite well to the Napoleonic period.

I know that a number of you have the game, but from soundings I have taken, a barrier to joining our MP games is the perception that you would be playing with ‘experts', or that the atmosphere will be too competitive. This is very far from the truth, as the realistic fog-of-war, and communication lags, are great levellers, and continue to cause confusion to everyone. Additionally, our MP games are played in an excellent spirit – the atmosphere is very much like a typical face-to-face kriegsspiel in fact.

It is however, a quite understandable concern. To overcome this, my fiendish plan is to organise a trial game, open only to yourselves. To further lower the pressure, we could all play as one team against the AI. Everything would be done to make things as unintimidating as possible Smile.

I also want to make it as much like a face-to-face k/spiel as possible in both look and feel. So the scenario would feature Red and Blue ‘German' armies in a mid 19th C setting, as per the traditional k/s game, along with pre-game briefings in the usual format.

I'm thinking that a good time to play would be between Xmas and New Year. We would use one of the stock maps so folks don't need to have purchased any of the add-ons.

If this sounds like fun, can you please email me. When I get a better idea of numbers, I'll provide an update.

More here. Go to the forum to find out when games are on.

link

I can't say enough good things about Scourge of War. Like any good game it is completely modable and there have been outstanding releases for Napoleonic, Crimea, WSS and otters as well as the base ACW product. The battles look like massive miniatures wargames, and do not require micromanagement. the game is set up to support excellent multiplayer action with up to dozens of players each command brigades or higher (really there is no upward limit except what the servers and hardware can support.)

When playing the game in "Headquarters in the Saddle" mode, (essentially first person mode as the commander), you have the look and feel of managing a horse and musket battle at that level. Messages are dispatched by courier, Which you have to compose), they AI does a good job of executing orders, developing strategy etc without having to do everything for them.

I have played in some of the ACW multiplayer games, with up to 20 players each commanding a brigade and they have been excellent experiences.

One thing I have done at my place: I have the game installed on several machines. I'll have a battle map (say Gettysburg) up on a wall with a magnetic board and use wargame counters from another game in Magnetic holders. I'll have one of my sons by the army commander and he will rolepay the situation based on what he sees for map updates. (Typically the armies start far apart which requires movement and scouting) Behind the scene the whole battle is being fought in SOW. If he wants to see a certain something then he can point over to the map where he is going to ride over to and I'll go onto the pc and move him there. When he gets there (this is all in real time) I'll call him into eh living room and he can look in first person view at the ground or situation on our 50" TV. We have the game running throughout the day in real time while he is doing something else so it's not a big time drain on his part.

All good stuff…

Los

Do I understand that when they say "on your PC", they really mean it with a very strict defintion of "PC"?

That is, this will *not* work on Mac OS or *nix machines, nor on Mac iOS or Android mobile devices, nor on devices with intgrated video functions on the main board (essentially all modern laptops), nor on xBoxes or PlayStations – and possibly also not on Windows Mobile and/or Windows 8 machines (Win machines with touch-screen support)?

Or am I missing something?

- Sasha

Alexandre,
I do not know if it works on teh Mac, I am at work and cannot access that site. The website is norbsoftdev.net
if you want to check it out.
Cheers…

Los

Sasha, try here: scourgeofwar.com/index.shtml . You can download and run a free 'demo' version of the game, before you decide to 'buy'. I'm sure there is something about recommended specifications, compatibility, etc., on the site.

I had found the requirements norbsoftdev.net website, but was hoping they or someone else had ported their software to some more platforms than were listed on the website. Hence my question.

The demo is an .exe file – a Windows (only) executable.
By the way, it would be nice if they published an MDC hash for the file, so that one had more confidence that what is downloaded is exactly (no more, no less) what was supposed to be downloaded.
See : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDC-2

- Sasha