What I Think Of ToW-Series

[Markojager]

Great review of the series, probably the best that I have seen. I agree in many things as the Close Combat (im)perfection in its limited gameplay, that Achtung Panzer is also a good tactical series (better strategic map than TOW and CC, but less options than TOW), I never try CM (which is pretty weird when you play a lot of this things) but seems good too. Thanks to explain some of the performance issues and the no-enter policy in TOW1. I hopes that as I discovered CC like 8 years after the second (and best) game and rediscovered TOW2 after almost 4 years of the release, some people will also find this great game and swim in this sea of possibilities.
Now I got this games for every level:
TOW from soldier to company-battalion size
Conquest of the Aegean (and other Matrix Games) from Company-Battalion to Division size.
Heart of Iron 3 from Division to Group of Armies size.

[Jinzor]

Wow, that's some really interesting information about the game(s) in the ToW series.

A question, do you know if there is going to be another ToW game coming out in the future? If they are making one, what kind of things do you think could (realistically) be fixed/added to it to make the experience better? Making infantry die less in ToW 3 was a step in the right direction.

[Sneaksie]

Unfortunately, no ToW sequels are being developed at the moment. I think the new game (ToW4 or a spiritual successor) will not use the same engine if its development will begin, so ToW3 is the last game based on it.

[hedley]

Thanks for the outline of the ToW differences etc Sneaksie. Interesting to get the inside view of the series.

I have all ToW games. Don't regret buying any of them. Play all of them a lot & find Korea to be the game I fire up if I just want a hour or so of action. Don't know why but the way it's been designed ironically made me less worried about completing a campaign.
It is still great to look at & I like the terrain which causes some real problems (like pathfinding ).
I didn't mind the absence of music, it's quite handy to add your own or drop it altogether. [I often wish war films would focus more on the sounds of battle & not 'mood setting / heroic' music.]
Intro vids might have been nice but I prefer to see the $$ required for good video ploughed into the game itself. The advertising videos showed some of the beauty of the game in action & reading the history in the briefings was better for learning about what was being modelled.

I think the choices made were generally right as they set ToW outside the realm of the "ADD type" players & into the area of more serious gamers, but obviously the problem becomes one of sales figures vs investment. I suspect a lot of 'serious' wargamers don't spend money on hardware in the same way if the posts at BFC are anything to go by...

I had CC, & I have CMSF & have tried CM Normandy, but prefer ToW.
I think Tow changed my game buying, up until then I still liked the C&C type things, now I don't even bother looking at the demos, Starcraft2 was enough of a disappointment for me
I got AP cheaply & recently APOS at very low price in a sale (Strategy 1st & Gamersgate). Found the interface & learning curve a bit tricky after so many hours on ToW & then it suddenly 'clicked'.
Also great games & worth buying if you are a wargamer.

APOS has apparently used the gfx card to run a lot of the calculations on so the modeling remains deep but it doesn't hammer the CPU as ToW did on earlier hardware. The game is a great achievement for a small group of programmers - 4 or so I think someone said.

My vote is for a Cold War ToW, epic scale across Europe with 'modern' weaponry.
I'm ready to sell my neighbors kidneys on ebay if I have to, to get it.

[Sneaksie]

Regarding the absence of music in ToW2 and later - music in original ToW was sub-par and repetitive, that's why it was removed. However there are Music\Game and Music\Menu subfolders in the game folder, you can drop your favorite mp3 (maybe wma and ogg as well, the game calls Windows dlls to play them) files there and they will be played in random order during the game itself or in game menus. I believe there are keyboard shortcuts to play next music file and so on, look in the game options.

[hedley]

I saw Jinzor requested Ambient Occlusion - just remembered that games after ToW #1 allow AO in the settings but the default nvidia driver profile doesn't 'allow' it - it's greyed out in the profile.

I found I could turn it on using NVIDIA Inspector (at least I assume the edit I made turns it on ).

Any advice on that aspect Sneaksie? There are a bunch of settings in the driver profile that could potentially improve the games appearance.