Birth of America

[Standup]

Anyone else played/playing this before I start a post where i talk to myself a lot?

official site

[Stuie]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=149458

I bought it, but I never found the time to play it. One of these days...

[John-SJ]

Huh! Looks kind of interesting, can you say a little about the game? Maybe I can d/l the demo this evening and try it this weekend.

Does the demo have any sort of tutorial?

[DrSpike]

How can you even think about this game when Nightfall was released today!

[John-SJ]

Originally posted by DrSpike
How can you even think about this game when Nightfall was released today!

Because Guild Wars was boring to me 2 weeks after I got it? I'm sure that must have something to do with it.

[DrSpike]

Blasphemy!

[Standup]

err...what's nightfall? Obviously not a Sims expansion but beyond that.....?


Birth of America is a turn based game covering the American War of Indenpendence. Well not quite turn based as Turn are simulataneous (sp?).

The map is vaguely EU style and the main developer worked on that game. It has individual leaders and units are mainly Regiment sized. The emphasis is on the leaders as without them the individual units are not very effective. It seems to be quite a good way of capturing the American's mobility vs the British superior firepower (well in conventional terms). Each leader has a rating which affects whether or not he moves that turn as well as affecting combat. The US leaders are generally better than the british. Also the rank of the leader affects how many units you can command so again while the british have some very good lower ranking leaders they're limited to commanding 2 or so units.

There's also supply rules and a very high level loyalty factor for individual areas. Combat is very simple (well sort of) - just drag and drop and then the AI works out the results. What is a bit strange is that the battle report is very detailed - rate of fire, range of fire, morale, supply, ammo used etc but you can't influence any of this. Very broadly you know the Black Watch are very good regiment so will perform better than militia but that's about it.

I can't decide if i like this or not - part of me wants to manage the battles on a tactical level. Do i care that 3 sub units of the 2nd regiment didn't return fire if i won or lost?

More generally i'm struggling to work out what to do. Not in the sense of moving units or understanding the rules but in terms of gameplay. The manual isn't very helpful and so far I've managed to lose every scenario. I know as the US i can't go head to head with the brits but i haven't really worked out what I am suppose to do.

It's definately one that requires a lot of time but being generally lazy I'm not sure if it would be more rewarding to carry on playing something else.

On the plus the game is very well supported with the developers being very active on their forums and loads of patchs which are generally aimed at AI, balance etc.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Standup
err...what's nightfall?

The expansion for one of the best games ever.

[Standup]

Apologies for the bump for game that no one else plays but just in case...

Latest patch is out - 1.10a.

This is how games should be supported. There's the usual bug fixes but also an extra scenario, AI changes, rule changes and play balance. Really impressed with the support on the forums. Now if only I knew what I was doing.

Still if nothing else my knowledge of Eastern USA geography is improving.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Standup

Still if nothing else my knowledge of Eastern USA geography is improving.

well thats one thing that wouldnt be any benefit to me

Seriously, does the game model recruitment of colonial and tory militias? From what I know of the history, the big strategic question of the war was the patriot tendency to dominate anywhere the Brit Army wasnt in force,as there usually were more patriot militias than tory militia, but Brit Army couldnt disperse to protect local tories, cause the Cont Army would then be strong enough to take Brit Army on piecemeal, even though it couldnt beat the Brit Army concentrated. IIRC this was modeled pretty well in the board game "1776".

[Standup]

Sort of.

At the beginning of each season each player has a chance to raise militia. This is random and limits depend on your total force pool. And then at the end of the year there's a chance that they might go home. This is modified by individual leaders i.e daniel morgan is charismatic so his militia are more likely to stay.

1.10 brought in a rule change that means there is now a chance of a minuteman appearing in an ungarrisoned town depending on the loyalty of the province. Apparently this is to force the British player to leave a few troops on garrison duty. Haven't played enough to know how significant this is.

I miss the direct control and the ability to build units (renforcements are fairly random as well) but it does probably reflect the unpredicatable nature of the conflict.

[Sarxis]

I just saw there's a new patch out for this. Version 1.10b?