"Hannibals' Greatest Battles 'Puter Wargame" Topic

Also Alexander's and Caesar's Greatest Battles.

A AWESOME computer game, using hex grids, and bases of figures , with accurate OB for each battle, or you can customize army size.

Played like a table top game. Movement by multi based units with initiative for each unit's leader, and overall commander.

You start in the historical arraignment, then you can move your army as you wish.

You can play the computer, pick a side, or you can play against an opponent. (The computer is tough, takes great generalship to win, for instance, Cannae. Or any other battle when you are Hannibal)

Combat was typical, with base strength, flank and rear attacks modified. Units armed with missiles automatically fired when a enemy was near, or you could fire at your will. I once killed Nero when my Balearic slingers fired on him. :) Oh, and the bases "fight" during melee. Loud battle sounds, the figures swing and stab, and then when a base loses 3 of their 8, it routs. The Elephant roars are just plain awesome.

When the game ends, it plays music that relates to your situation. "You have won a tactical victory", "You have been defeated","You have won a strategic victory", "You have fought to a tactical draw but hold the field", etc.

Morale factored in, units rout and rally based on historical factors and battlefield situation. (The Gauls at Metaurus, for example, could randomly rout at any time before contact, so you need to put some reliable units behind them, etc)

Horses get scared near elephants or camels, elephants rampage when hit by enough missiles, phalanxes get crushed by flank attacks, cavalry can take off and chase routing enemy units, or loot the baggage train, randomly and without player control, etc .

Very neat. And, you learn a whole lot about the battles. The commanders, the units, the terrain, etc.

Anyhoo. I have the rules on my PC. It has all the tables for combat, initiative, etc resolution, but its written in some sort of code, bunch of numbers, mostly 0 and 1, like 10010000010111001 etc etc but ten times that long.. What the Hell is that?

I would LOVE to get my hands on a human version of the mechanics. It would be a great, I mean great, table top rules set, IMO.

Lots of bases. As I recall, a typical Carthaginian force had 10+ bases of Gauls, 20+ of Spanish medium infantry, 10+ bases of Ligerian heavy infantry, a few large bases of phalanx, 8 or so bases of Numidian light cavalry, 8+ bases of Gaul cavalry, 10+ bases of Balaeric slingers and skirmishers, and sometimes a dozen bases of elephants.

Anyone familiar with these games?

Well a string of ones and zeroes is in Binary. You convert it to decimal – the far left column being 1, then each one along is double the first – EG 8 bits is 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 so a string of all ones 11111111 is 255 (1 unit of each column). If it's got anything else other than ones and zeroes it's a different language – if it has the letters A-F also used, it's in HEX – where the far left column again is 1, and each subsequent one is 16 times the previous. So, the one column can have 0-9 then A-F (ie 0-15). Can't offer anymore than that as I've not seen the games before.

Back in the bad old days you could easily hack Apple II games using a hex editor, if you knew what you were doing. Typically you could compare record x post an in game event to look at which hex values had changed.

Is it this one?

Great Battles Collector's Edition

link

edit – far right on each – doh, apologies, rushed typing at work.

The "Great Battles" series of computer games were based on GMT's "Great Battles of History" series designed by Mark Herman and Richard Berg. Really good stuff. ( link )

I had all the computer games at one time. I have all the board game stuff. There is also a standardized set of rules called "Simple GBoH." I've heard that a few people play it with miniatures.

If it is the ones based on the GMT board games I have both the computer and board games. However the accuracy of their orders of battles is questionable in a number of instances. for example the battle of Paraitakene between Eumenes and Antigonas gives Eumenes 135 elephants when at the most he had 125. It also gives Eumenes horse archers, which he did not have. The Greek mercenaries on both sides are hoplites and peltasts, but Eumenes were armed as Macedonian phalangites. Eumenes had 18,000 light archers and slingers, but a lot less in the game, and Antigonas has been given a bunch of light infantry which are not mentioned in the historical sources.

Having said that the rules by themselves can be obtained from GMT games and used to game with miniatures. As mentioned there is also a set of simpler rules called simple great battles of history that are available from GMT. Boardgamegeek has a lot of pictures of the units and battlefield boards.

I love to play them on the computer as it takes over all the hard stuff for remembering the rules and such. Click a unit and you instantly can see where they can move to, make a facing change and you instantly see the changes in hexes of where you can move to. The dead pile up on the battlefield, those who don't rally toss their weapons and shields and run for the board edge, cavalry can chase units off the board and if there is a river on the map, the dead float downstream. Just a lot of fun to play..