I'm sure all of us have dreamed of, or wished they were a part of the creation of the "ultimate wargame".

Let's hear what your pefect wargame would look like.

To kick start it:

I would like a wargame based on WWI. It would represent the war at the FPS, tactical, regiment, and division levels. Each person would have an "identity card" with a bio, picture and a unique name. Whatever occured to this person/unit in-game a script would be written in their bio. And when a person died, the player would move on to another character.

Portraying such a large war on this scale and from this many perspectives would be time consuming to create, but I think it would be really addicting to play.

As you can see, I need to explore my idea further; but this is the seed.

P.S.- The reason why I chose WWI is because it's an often overshadowed war. WW2 get's most of the attention.  

My perfect wargame:

Ancient, medieval or Ren/30years War timeline, doesnt even matter at tis stage

* Would have the size of say Crusader Kings 2  EXCEPT TURNED BASED!  Each turn at most being one month long.

  The scope of the game would be realistic from a players "role"  ie you are a ruler with 30-40 good years(barring unfortunate demise) to see where you can get your nation/holding to,  none of this you are some type of "avatar" leading your country for centuries on end.

* there would be an operational phase when invading an enemy province, and I do mean operational : supply lines, communications, foragers chevauchees ,  maneuver  etc etc , (cant just march by garrisoned enemy castles in real life) 

*and finally the culmination of the previous phases,  a detailed tactical battle.

Thats all I want , pretty simple really.

Not really a wargame I guess but Civilization with deep, meaninful diplomacy and detailed tactical battles when armies meet (kind of like in Forge of Freedom) . 

Mount and Blade Napoleon multiplayer with Scourge of War (Take Command) Command structure.

Bewbays. 

Bare bewbays.

If I drew a beautiful map of say 20k  x 20k  and gave it French place names, I would tell you it is in France and you would all go “Ooh AAh!”

If I changed the place names to Russian names and told you all that it was set in Russia, you would still go “Ooh AAh”.

If I produce a wargame counter, paint it red and give it a Russian name you would all go “that’s fine Joe”.

If I re-paint it grey and give it a German name you would still say “that’s fine Joe”.

My perfect wargame is not set in any place or time.

Some historic actions lasted only 4 hours and some lasted 4 weeks. Some covers 2 square k and some covered 2,000 square k

In every case my favourite wargame would have a PBEM ability. It would have a number of scenarios of 16-20 turns, a number of scenarios of 20-30 turns and a number of scenarios of 20 – 40 turns.

And the map and counters have to feel authentic – even if a Russian location is a actually a copy of a French map.

A Lord of the Rings game using the Crown of Glory game engine!

1) Have a detailed enough system to at least give the illusion of being a real conflict in a real world, but it needs to be manageable without needing a masters in military weaponry.

2) Any time WWII or earlier as I don't enjoy games with modern weapons. Engagement distance becomes too far.

3) I want the AI to play a challenging game while playing by the same rules. The AI can start with more troops to balance things out.

4) Not too many units. I get overwhelmed. I want the challenge to come from learning to master the system.

5) I tend to like tactical level games, but am open to others.

combat mission normandy with larger maps, cutting edge graphics and interface and a total war style real time strategy map... but 100 times more detailed. The game must have co-operative play vs the AI which would also be state of the art.

Decisive Campaigns: Anglo-Zulu War.

Or

Mount & Blade: Anglo-Zulu War.

Or

Mount & Blade: American Civil War

Or

Naval Warfare: The Falklands 1982

Or 

Age of Rifles II.

I would like to see a serious Fantasy game made with the depth and breath of the Warhammer world. I've been playing Dominion 3 for the last few weeks and it comes very close. But the graphics are on the low side and so is the diplomatic and building options. I don't want to see a game where the good side employs bad units or the other way around. It kills me to see a good nation deploying undead units or teaming up with Orcs. That is why I stopped playing HMM VI. Alos, hy is it most fantasy games limit the size of the armies?

What I wish someone would do is analysis all the fantasy games ever published and and make a game using all the things that made the other games classics.

I want a hard core, strategic fantasy game with huge tactical battles.

I have no idea what a perfect war game would be like.  My current idea of what

might be fun to work on (yes, I'm thinking about how to program the thing) would be

an interactive kind of game where the player logged into his avatar and tried to run a Russian Army

in WWII.  The time scale and space scales would be variable, but the things for the

player to decide would be:  where to sleep and how much sleep to get, be at HQ and

deal with the Commissar or go to a divisional HQ and stay out of trouble --and working out

how much time to spend supervising the signals or transport or planning or reconnaissance.

For an easy start (since running a stripped down 5-rifle division, one Tank Bde, one medium artillery

battalion army about to be run over by Guderian in late 1941 would be pretty hard) you would

take an army on the southern edge of the German's AG North.  You'd get some trucks and a few Tank Bdes

and some Guards infantry and blow away a Luftwaffe Jager Division.  Imagine the player's confusion at that

point:  big hole in German line -- what to do?  Not a bad situation, but a pretty wild situation.

Originally Posted By destraex (7 MAY 2012 10:53pm)

combat mission normandy with larger maps, cutting edge graphics and interface and a total war style real time strategy map... but 100 times more detailed. The game must have co-operative play vs the AI which would also be state of the art.

This pretty much nails it for me,  though I'd want to retain the We-Go mechanic, so I don't know about the multiplayer aspect.  I was gutted when the Combat Missions Campaigns project got shelved.

I'm also intrigued by the possiblity that you could have a two-player (or more) commander battle in M&B: Napoleon.  It'd be like a realtime wargame, except that you'd have a firstperson view of the battlefield.  High ground and reconnaisance would be a vital consideration

+1 - i keep trying to write down the essentials here and do story boards for the project but get sidetracked and bogged down but the basic premise is there

oh and im not a programmer, designer or sod all else, i just agree with your idea!

I would also like to see a turn based, multi-player game where everyone does their turn on a server and at midnight the game master executes the turn. This way everyone has all day to do their turn and if someone does not do theirs the game still progress.

The eastern front 41 - 45, at squad level.

The perfect wargame would be Norbsoft doing an Ancients game with a world strategy and it's tactical combat engine. To play that game I would feel I had died and gone to heaven. It is the best tactical engine in real time ever made. Just kind of tired of the civil war and WWII and Napoleonics.

It would be Steel Panthers the Uber edition (WinSPWW2 with a few nice features from SPWAW (op fire system, better info layout,etc.))  It would have a 24/32bit color graphics engine with Isometric icons/map a'la the old rts Blitzkrieg.  Is that to much to ask for?

ASL with a good AI, SPWaW is a good alternative,and Conflict of Heros is another great alternative, Im still waiting for LnL Heroes of Stalingrad, But I would love to see more 2D topdown hex and chit tactical games like those mentioned here.

I really like Advanced Tactics Gold Bombur Mod.

I think a lot of people would like it too. Not complex. Cheap and easily obtained (plug)

If it were jazzed up a bit to include some more industrial/economic aspects

if it could be combined with the Resource mod i could play it for a long, long time.

Both solitaire and multiplayer (1-14).....

Then maybe an ASL RPG FPS CMBN where YOU are one of the NCO's giving orders

to your platoon and being eminently killable the whole time. ie killed dead.   Survive and win

after a while see how willing you are to risk your built up character in combat.

cheers

Originally Posted By DBeves (8 MAY 2012 3:31pm)

The eastern front 41 - 45, at squad level.

Talk about micro-managing...

Although, I love that sort of depth if there was a system that made it less time consuming and feasible.

Originally Posted By Johnners (8 MAY 2012 8:14am)

Originally Posted By destraex (7 MAY 2012 10:53pm)

combat mission normandy with larger maps, cutting edge graphics and interface and a total war style real time strategy map... but 100 times more detailed. The game must have co-operative play vs the AI which would also be state of the art.

 

This pretty much nails it for me,  though I'd want to retain the We-Go mechanic, so I don't know about the multiplayer aspect.  I was gutted when the Combat Missions Campaigns project got shelved.

 

I'm also intrigued by the possiblity that you could have a two-player (or more) commander battle in M&B: Napoleon.  It'd be like a realtime wargame, except that you'd have a firstperson view of the battlefield.  High ground and reconnaisance would be a vital consideration

 

 

I love the multi-scale aspect of the Total War series. i like to fight my way out of situations I get myself into on a srtategic level using an operational and tatical level simulation like Norbs. Run your nation. move your armies and command your best corps.

Originally Posted By oldewarrior (12 MAY 2012 8:13pm)
I want a good in-depth counter-insurgency simulation. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. If I am in the COIN role I want to be challenged to develop intell to find out where and when to strike. If I am the insurgent I want to be faced with similar intell development challenges, and have lots of options to what I can do. I want to be able to manage the campaign on a strategic level, but be able to jump into operstional and tactical roles at any time.

Very challenging and unwinnable games for the COIN side 

Originally Posted By jomni (13 MAY 2012 9:47pm)

Originally Posted By oldewarrior (12 MAY 2012 8:13pm)
I want a good in-depth counter-insurgency simulation. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. If I am in the COIN role I want to be challenged to develop intell to find out where and when to strike. If I am the insurgent I want to be faced with similar intell development challenges, and have lots of options to what I can do. I want to be able to manage the campaign on a strategic level, but be able to jump into operstional and tactical roles at any time.

Very challenging and unwinnable games for the COIN side