TOAW vs. Supreme Ruler

[LOK]

Has anyone looked at Supreme Ruler 2010 http://www.supremeruler2010.com/
as a possible successor to TOAW?

I can't figure out if it's a real wargame or purely a strategy game with some battle planning thrown in .
It seems to have some nice features (although the lack of NATO standard unit symbols is a bad sign for me).
Any thoughts from more experienced wargamers?

H. (aka LOK)

[Don Maddox]

I've been following the development of this game for some time. I think the combat resolution will be fairly basic, although it may have a few bells and whistles. It seems like more of a political/strategic wargame with real world events thrown in as well. If it's done right it could be the PC version of Supremacy, one of my favorites from my boardgame days.

I think this is going to be a solid system. Far superior to the recently released SuperPower.

[Mantis]

Which was a massive letdown. I'd been keeping my eye on that one for ages, and was reminded of Chris Crawford's Balance of Power, which I really enjoyed back in the 16 bit days.

Alas, it was not to be.

Hopefully this title will get it right. On the origianl topic, I think this game will ahve about as much in common with TOAW as chess has in common with C&C. That's not to say that it can't be a good game in it's own right, just apples and oranges.

[Battlegoat]

While going through the forum I stumbled across your post. As one of the game designers of Supreme Ruler 2010, I thought I might be able to answer a few questions.

On the question of strategy game vs. wargame, the entire development team play both styles of games. Our long-standing goal has been to successfully marry the two genres together into one system that allows players to play the elements that most interest them. Our political/strategy model offers players the chance to customize their regions through dozens of options. At the same time, we offer a combat model that takes into account what troops really encounter on the battlefield such as fuel, supplies, suppression, entrenchment… truly a “meaty” military side. We have been using the term “easy to play, hard to master” to describe the experience we’ll be offering players.

There will be a number of elements of our game that do mirror TOAW’s way of doing things. We use unit command hierarchy, independent action depending on initiative and unit experience levels. On other items we go into more depth. We have separate attack values for soft attack, close attack, hard attack, surface naval attack, submerged naval attack and 3 different levels of air attack(low/mid/high air). We also work on a much larger scale. Our smallest unit size is a battalion and on our maps we can go from 5-50km per hex! As well, our timeline is 2010+ (hence the name…).

The key thing that we hope to add that TOAW never even touched on is that, in this day and age, war has consequences. No matter where you fight a war, you have people in your nation that are affected by the fact that you are at war. Sometimes, accepting peace and allowing your spies to do the work for you is a better idea. Whatever it takes to become Supreme Ruler.

We’d also love any input any of you would like to add either here or on our forum (www.bgforums.com) as to what you would like to see. We have added or changed a number of elements of the game thanks to feedback. We believe in finding out what people want before we publish the game.

One last comment; You asked for NATO symbols, but we hope to bring a large group of gamers who haven’t even tried wargames before into our target audience. To do this, we need unit images that people can relate to. On the up side, we are big believers in making a game that can be modified by the user to play the way they want. All the unit images are stored as simple .PNG files. It would be very easy for the end user to quickly replace these with NATO images.

[LOK]

Chris,
I really appreciate the detailed reply. I am not necessarily looking for a TOAW clone but a wargame of that genre with some features enhanced or added (e.g. realistic naval warfare, individual, more political/diplomacy features, etc). I have been disappointed in the past with games that are advertised as "wargames" but are no more complicated than Axis and Allies. TOAW is great but has some limitations and it doesn't look like the publisher will allow updates.

I will post more comment on your message board

[Battlegoat]

I look forward to seeing what you have to say on naval combat. It's one of the issues that we are still trying to be sure is playable but still has a good feel for accuracy.

[Don Maddox]

Thanks for that excellent update.

Please feel free to post any additional info or news on our forum. I think a lot of players here are going to be interested in Supreme Ruler.

[Battlegoat]

Will do. We will try and make mention here as new information is available.