If you play battle academy 2 add me on gamecenter luciano1084 ###.. Hopefully I'll have this by tonight
What is the appeal of these slitherine titles to demand such a high price point. I took the plunge with BA and I felt like I was playing through an early-90s, PC war game, this looks like the same engine. What am I missing? Is it because the mechanics adhere so closely to tabletop miniature style war games?
The unique value of strategy tactical gameplay as classic games like Panzer Corps where demands lot of strategy time, complexity and also historical representation
I don't think I can recommend this one, sorry Slitherdudes. I've been there day one for Battle Academy 1+2, Panzer Corps (plus all expansions), Commander the Great War and a bunch of your smaller games too. Initially I was enamoured with Pike and Shot, but the shine went off very quickly. The short version is that this very much feels like a quick mod of Battle Academy and not a full new game. It's much smaller and less limited in scope, and offers far less variety. It's just not offering anything in terms of gameplay or presentation to make me feel it justifies a full price purchase. I can get into specifics: Games take way too long, and everything is so slow. Remember how in Battle Academy you might need to advance across a large battlefield? Well there you had tanks and trucks. Now imagine doing it with foot troops that move two squares a turn. It's fine at first , but after a while it just becomes interminable. There are something like 6 sound effects used in the entire game. There's one for musket fire, one for cannon fire, one for moving foot troops, one for moving mounted troops, one for melee combat, one for rallying. And that's it. Maybe there was one for moving limbered cannon but come on not even different sound clips for muskets? 100 musketeers sound the same as 250 pistol-armed horseman who sound the same as 1000+ guns firing en masse. There's one unceasing piece of music that I eventually had to turn off, but then I was left with just those very occasional identical sound effects being used again. And again. And again. Graphically the same problems arise. You don't get any indicators of unit strength apart from a letter to show Disrupted or Fragmented. You need to tap around on each unit to see what the current/starting strength was. Again, this is what you'd expect in a mod, but for a standalone game release you'd maybe expect the units themselves to change depending on strength. There's no naming of the units. Have four blocks of hussars? All four of them are called "hussars". With each unit representing from 100 - 2000 troops, you'd think they'd be afforded regimental/commander names. Read any report of battles from the era and the knights and nobles and personalities leading each regiment were important. Maybe I've just not reached it yet, but no commander personalities attached to units at all? It's fun to watch two armies smoosh into each other, and then routs and pursuits completely mess up the battle lines and then you need to react to the chaos and press home the attack. Yeah, that was golden the first few times. Sadly every single battle is pretty much a variation of that, once you've seen a couple it's a case of you've seen everything as there just isn't enough unit variety to make it feel different. This game fits into the awkward place of not offering enough eye candy or presentation to enjoy the limited gameplay, and not enough variety to feel more than must a mod project. Even the text is fairly rough and clunky. I could play Battle Academy pretty much forever. I'm feeling burnt out on Pike and Shot after a day. When you go from combined weapons tactics, troop transports, offboard air/artillery support, veteran upgrades, destroyed vehicles/buildings, dead soldiers and all the BA goodness to just slowly smashing some slightly different rectangles at each other... Sorry Slitherdudes, but this one feels phoned in.
It is a completely different kind of game to BA so comparing it is a bit difficult and misleading. It simulates battles with tens of thousands of men, not skirmishes with 50-100 men a side. The manoeuvrability of a single tank versus a battalion of hundreds of men is obviously very different so don't expect things to be running around at speed. Scenarios are much larger in scope and time to play. Some people don't like that and I understand. Pike & Shot has a very developed skirmish mode with an excellent AI opponent. It allows you to design your armies in more detail and variety than Battle Academy. This offers an immense amount of replay value. The game model itself is completely different to anything we've done before and nothing like Battle Academy so other than using the same underlying tile engine it really doesn't share anything of note with BA. There is less variety in sounds and the models are very stylised by design but I think it captures the feel of a large battle and the chaos that ensues really well. I understand if you don't like it but I don't agree its a lower quality of less value for money. I really love the way battle unfold but I've always been in to larger battles more than skirmishes so maybe its just personal preference. The unit strength is shown by the state of the flag. The more tattered it is the more damage it has sustained. This is definitely nothing like BA so liking BA is no indication on whether you'll like this. Check out some gameplay videos to find out more before you buy. I think this is just not a game you're going to like Parking Tigers and no hard feelings!
I think this most be one of the most complicated games I ever played. But I am learning and just won the first non tutorial battle at Colonel level. Because of the complicated nature of the game, it is very challenging and rewarding but above all this game is much fun if you do like a deep strategic game with a very steep learning curve.
If you haven't seen it Touch Arcade have just reviewed Pike & Shot and given it 90%! http://toucharcade.com/2015/02/09/pike-and-shot-review/
Hey everyone. I'm torn between getting this or battle academy 2. Can anyone tell me some of the pros and cons of both of the games? I also wanna know if people still play battle academy 2. I love multiplayer in RTS.
i think your question have been well answered in previous posts in this thread. i decided to go with pike & shot and i'm having a blast with it. magnificient game once you fully grasp the mechanics (took me about a week)
They need to take pike and shot and turn it into blood and glory and make one for the American civil war. And as an afterthought, maybe bump up the graphics.
