When you'll play Histwar for a while, please let me know what do you think of "Scourge of War" by comparison, I'm also interested in ACW and looking for a good game ....I enjoyed Civil war general years ago , but I'm afraid it is outdated now . I don't think SoW is popular here and didn't saw much about it .
Well, now I have both
From the little I've gathered from the Demo and playing a bit the Talavera scenario - great work guys, I was surprised to see the attention paid to Spanish regimental flags - certainly I appreciate many similarities in the approach to solve some problems, and also some fundamental differences in the underlying design philosophy.
What I can say is that SoW User Interface is more "standard", I had to do little work to learn it. Histwar took a radically different approach, which is a bit shocking at first, but I can see it really works well. Perhaps I would say that some of the UI features in Histwar are too clever for its own good. In other places, Histwar is - from my point of view - certainly lacking, certainly in keeping you on track of major events developing on the battlefield.
The choice of names for certain game concepts in Histwar sound sometimes as a literal translation into English, when the word in English doesn't really capture as well the concept, as the French one does. This doesn't happen on SoW, for obvious reasons.
Also SoW scope is "smaller": you won't get to fight the whole Gettysburg engagement, being limited to one Corps at most. That makes sense from a playability perspective, but certainly removes from SoW the appealing John Tiller's Civil War titles had for some (I've for one, fought the full-battle scenarios for Shiloh, Gettysburg, Chickamauga and Antietam). The beautiful thing in SoW is that it can really put you in the place of an intermediate commander (Brigade or Division) who has to interact within the constraints posed by Civil War era battlefield C3I facilities (or better, lack of thereof).
I certainly don't like much the choice of removing Brigade and Division commands since I think it certainly lowers the flexibility for really advanced armies, such as the French. Which I think was a major advantage for them. I'm of the school of tought that what made the French Armies special was the revolution in command, since tactics and equipment weren't THAT different from its opponents.
I was at first appalled seeing a French Army organised in Columns as the Allies in Austerlitz. However, I can live with it and I understand it was a decision to simplify the problems of developing a working AI (which Histwar certainly has). This is certainly a major thing to consider for the scenario designer, who has to decide what "Groups" to introduce into the OOB to cater for the better (which might mean more historical or not) enjoyment of the experience conveyed by the scenario.
On graphics I won't comment, I find SoW billboards and Histwar simple 3D models to be in the same league. Maps in both games are very good, though I can't really compare. Also SoW is modeling a very concrete geographical area, while Histwar is much more flexible than that.
If anything, I see both SoW and Histwar to be worthy successors of one of the computer wargames I've played out the most:
HistWar (English zone) »
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