Nope. It's cheaper on Steam: https://www.facebook.com/groups/turn.based.tactical.games/permalink/705569222887852/ And it probably plays better on PC too. Too bad there's no Mac version. My Windows partition is full.
Actually I just read on Pocket Tactics that it plays well on iPad and supposedly a Steam review says it is probably more suited to mobile. And because the pricing on Steam is almost the same this game may have been designed for mobile as a priority.
Bad reviews for this game on pc looks not so good in comparison to other slitherine published games, not worth for me
Not getting the hate on Steam and, at least on my iPad it looks pretty slick. I can't claim it's realistic, and having only played the initial tutorial I'm still pretty new to it, but the mechanics behind it at least are pretty clever in fitting in so well for this famous conflict which I hadn't seen done before. The game has you balancing at least 3 different layers of activity all at the same time. 1) First and foremost it is all about winning over the 10 villages to our side. The VC are going to be sending in troops from all over to coerce the villages off to their side unless you find a way to either intercept them or fight them off after the fact. Get on the villagers' good side and they might even tell you where the baddies were last seen. 2) Second you need to simply fight the war. Find the enemy bases and take them out as efficiently as possible while keeping effective supply line to your troops. 3) Lastly you need to maintain political favor back home in the states by taking out lots of baddies while maintaining minimal losses (both in casualties and expenses). These 3 layers, while they might sound a bit redundant, are all very separate. Like how you COULD manage to put up an effective fight against the VC but let villages fall into enemy hands and while calling on heavy reinforcements. Mastering only 1 of the 3 branches won't do it alone. Expect to play a lot of hide and seek in the jungle as both sides attempt to ambush one another all over the map. I think this game might have put itself in an odd niche. Too involved for a casual gamers with advanced board game like mechanics but then too abstract for a die hard war gamer/Slitherine fans. I love the concept, though, and hope they pull it off. I will try to post more detailed impressions once I've gotten a few battles under my belt.
I played this for quite awhile last night. It's really cool! It's alot of micro-managing supply lines and such. But plays well, runs well, looks good... and it's a lot of fun. It's definitely a different variation on turn-based gameplay... but it's a successful variation. I recommend it.
Thanks LordGek for the detailed impressions and every one else for contributing. I'd love to hear what ojitus thinks of the game as he was pretty excited about it. Also looking forward to thoughts from Baracus, since your enthusiasm and impressions of Ultimate General led me to the buy button. Thanks again everyone.
I am really enjoying this game, I like the fact that each time you start a new game the map is different and presents different challenges with village placements and logistical management in running your Huey's with your infantry and resupplying all your units. You are constantly trying to get your infantry to new villages to gather intel on the location of the Ho Chi Minh trail and number of enemy units in the area. Green Beret units can best be used for watching for enemy units as they have the largest view distance in the jungle. Engineering units can clear jungle, build roads, and new bases. I have been enjoying this game a lot but I know it's not for everyone. There is a good amount of micro managing with fueling and supplying your units.
I would like to see response from vietnam ppl,then after some time you will realize how stupid is this game,reminding us about terrors,and some proud dumbass's made it,what is next''nuclear strike on japan''?
This could be said about ANY war game then, right? Why is having a war game based on this conflict extra offensive?
They should rename this game to 'Logistics Simulator 65' to avoid offending anyone. So here's my early thoughts after playing the tutorial and 2 "beginner" games which I had to abort before the end. Second game went a lot better than first, I realise now that was mainly due to the first map it generated for me was such heavy jungle that it was hard to actually reach any villages before running out of supply. Second game I got to turn 32 (of 42) before my downward spiral got to the point of no recovery. I will try again later to see if I can get a better plan going from the start! To be honest I have had more problems and negatives overall about this game than positives at this point. That's not to say it's a bad game, but let me explain. Seeing as the game is 90% about logistics (re-supplying, rearming, repairing, returning to base with injured squads) it really makes this process over fiddly and inconsistent at times, it seems to me. I can think of a better way to do the interface and give feedback to make this clearer. I guess it's your typical semi-clunky Slitherine solution in that respect. Workable but not fun or slick. Which is a shame coz as I say most of your actions revolve around this part of the game. It's quite a lot of busy work, not focusing so much on the "higher strategy" that I prefer in my strategy games. For sure there is the bigger picture to think about and plan and I'm hoping that comes to the fore if I can get to understand the foibles I've encountered in my first 2 failures of games(!), but a lot of smaller steps are in the way stopping you from getting on with it. I guess that's the game so that's a little unfair of me but I was getting frustrated with some things. For example: If you tell Helicopters to re-supply a unit on a trip that will take them several turns, they auto-plot the course but if they are low on fuel, when they get to the base to pick up supplies they DON'T also take on more fuel?! WTF? If I take supplies to a squad nearby and still have movement left, I then can't also get they guys onboard on the same turn so waste a turn. Fair enough it's part of the rules but seems a bit silly that these trained guys can't get on the chopper and THEN reload their guns whilst travelling. It's sometimes not clear with the way icons work for picking supplies if you are COLLECTING or DROPPING them. Seems to be two ways of doing the same thing (obviously if you are not carrying anything already then you can only pick up, but if you are carrying you can easily put a crate down when you actually wanted to fly somewhere else with it first). I had the Devils own job trying to repair choppers with my engineer. It would say to select a landed helicopter, but as far as I can see there is no way to land them, not on open ground and not even on your base (forward base or HQ) where they still hover (or are not selectable to repair at least)... no idea. I spent about 13 turns trying to get my engineer to make a clearing in the jungle to make an LZ and they didn't do a thing. I had enough political points to do it, and no message came up to say it was not possible, so I could not reach some of the villages at all (going by foot your squad would run out of supplies before they got there). Engineer truck can only move a few hexes per turn, I think same or less than Green Berets... so either the Berets are sprinting everywhere or those trucks need a better gearbox! Not really sure what difference the flags at villages mean. Should I try to revisit ones with certain flags more than others or what does it mean? There were some other things that baffled me but I can't remember them right now. Now I'm sure some (or most) of this is due to me not fully understanding it yet, but that's also part of the problem in that it doesn't make much of this very clear, even in the Help pages. Just wish it was a bit more intuitive to do these tasks. Once you take a few losses, your political rating goes down and you can't afford to buy new units so it's a slippery spiral down that you can't recover from as far as I can tell. On the positive side, there is a lot of ways you can play, meaning you can build units in different orders (maybe more forward bases and arty is the trick?) and push forwards together in groups more cautiously (maybe always having a Green Beret unit alongside EVERY other unit is needed for visibility?) so it's fun trying out different approaches, and I see that as being the best part of the game. Worried that once you find the golden recipe, then even the random maps won't really change your game all that much. You'll know what you need to do to win, and do the same every time with just a small margin of change required depending on the actual shape of the map. As others have said it is heavy on the micro. It's not really my thing but I do appreciate the originality of the game... it is certainly unique in TBS war games because you hardly ever see the enemy (maybe coz I didn't have enough Green Berets on the case). So I've actually talked myself around to realising it IS pretty much a high-strategy affair, but just has these small tasks you need to chain together to achieve it. What I wrote may sound overly negative but I'm looking forward to trying again, so that's a good sign I think If I don't click with it, it just means I will free up my time and mind for Starships next week lol
Nicely put! Those village flags are just a cute shorthand for how things are going, ranging from American Flag to the North Vietnamese Flag. A Viet Cong flag means it is definitely leaning toward going full NVA whereas the South Vietnamese Flag means it is leaning toward America (this is all summed up better in one of the Advanced Training screens). You would know better than I but I think it is safe to assume the more villages fully supporting North Vietnam you see, the more NVA troops you'll need to contend with. Oh, question. The game says you can only have 1 Firebase. Can it be relocated later?
It's not an easy war to win, that's for sure. I share the same frustrations as everyone else... the same losses, too. But I keep going back in. MAybe I'm crazy, but I really like this game.
I like what I've played so far and think my biggest initial issue, even after running through tutorials, is getting a grip on what can supply what. It is VERY EASY to get troops critically low on supplies, or even more fun, find yourself just barely making it back to a base before your supplies ran out to then realize, sorry, YOU can't resupply that here! To the game's credit, the UI is pretty slick and it does a PAINFULLY good job of letting you know which units are low and then critically low on supplies.
