Ancient Warfare: Punic Wars

Buyer Beware-- This is not a John Tiller Game, it is a paul breffell game and I wasted over thirty dollars buying it. Far too much time taken up with each turn having to set up, ect, instead of just moving the men and fighting. It is nothing like and I mean nothing like the Tiller games we all love to play. I wish I could get my money back.

Other reviewers have commented on graphics: to me these are fine for a real tactical / strategy game. In fact being able to move from 2-D overview to 3-D field view was very well done.What failed miserably in HPS's Punic Wars are command/execution/control of units. Clicking opens a window, clicking again to tell it to move, clicking where you want it to go. it is a very cluncky interface. Moreover, you have ZERO control over who your missile troops fire at. The game states they fire at the "most dangerous/threatening" opponent. This is tactics with one hand tied behind your back.HPS needs to take a clue from Slitherine who's PC version Field of Glory works in a similar manner but it is much easier and MUCH more fun to control the units. Punic Wars SHOULD be better than than Field of Glory: Punic wars offers some good features such as showing the visual range of units, but Punic wars is so poorly executed that I would tell some one looking for a tactical historical wargame to look for slitherine's Field of Glory.

This is a turn-based game with a Real Time Strategy feel that requires a good deal of thinking and planning. This is not a plug n play, beer n pretzels type game. The game reminds me of the old game Harpoon for the pc. Both take time to learn, time to plan but have big rewards in playability and enjoyment. A couple of hours reading and a couple of canceled games allow you to hold own in the training scenario. While not winning, I am not stumbling around the field being beaten quickly. I hold my own and make a fight of it. The next step is to answer a couple of questions, learn more about the variety of units, their capabilities and their formations. After mastering the Romans, you can stay with them or start working on the Carthaginians.Each type of unit has a number of actions points to spend during the turn. Small lightly armed units have the most action points. Heavy infantry has the fewest. Each turn is divided into phases with action points allocated to each phase. When giving orders, you have to think about what the other side might be doing to adjust your orders. Leaders are critical. Without them, units have a tendency to freeze, waiting for orders. This makes for a very dynamic battlefield where formations and plans are necessary. When you are ready, advance the turn.The computer takes over and this turn base game becomes an RTS. The phases alternate between the players. While who moves first and the sequence units move are fixed, the visual effect is units moving together. Combat is automatic and occurs as part of each phase. At the end of the turn, combat results are applied. Units lose men, become disrupted or route and your army's moral is calculated. As the army's moral drops, routing become a bigger problem. Fatigue is cumulative causing moral to drop, which leads to more units routing which lead to lower moral ......The AI is excellent! Very aggressive, intelligent and focused on winning. This is not one of those wimp games where you are soon winning with very little effort.Graphics and sound are excellent too. This is a noisy game with sounds for men, elephants, horses and the clash of metal. The graphics are way above the HPS Civil War Campaign series. The units are very well rendered, easy to distinguish and colorful. The landscape has a tabletop feel to it. The game has the look and feel of a good set of miniatures on a large sand table.There are 140 +/- scenarios that come with the game or with the free update from HPS. The Net has an active set of players looking for play by e-mail. A forum is available to answer questions, provide ideas, find an email opponent or just talk about the game. I have all of the HPS Civil War Campaign games and have looked at this for a long time. It is a different engine for a very different game. This game is not a clone with different pixels tossed together for a quick buck. Punic Wars does as good a job capturing the feel ancient warfare as possible. If you make the effort to learn the game, it will reward you with hours of fun.While writing this review, I found some errors made in the last game that brings me a step closer to victory. What I need is some ideas on how to kill a Carthage war elephant.While listed as a game for Windows XP Home Edition, I have a 64-bit Vista system. HPS has information on how to do this and the game works fine with the newer OS.

There may be a game in there somewhere, but I couldn't get past the 1980's era graphics. Much better alternatives out there for this period wargaming.