Strategy and Wargaming

New Trailer Reveals First-ever In-engine Footage to the General Public

Paradox Interactive today invited strategists and warmongers everywhere to enlist in the “Rush to the Front” reward campaign for Hearts of Iron IV, the upcoming World War II strategy game from Paradox Development Studio. Armies are massing as the world prepares to rewrite the greatest conflict in history, and Hearts of Iron fans can unlock exclusive rewards by winning over recruits to their side.

Simply by visiting the Hearts of Iron website at heartsofiron4.com, ambitious generals can join one of three factions: The Axis, the Allies, or the Comintern. The more members each faction recruits, the more rewards will ultimately be unlocked for all fans, and fans who recruit 20 or more soldiers will have the chance gain access to the Hearts of Iron IV beta. For more details, please visit heartsofiron4.com.

A new trailer today for Hearts of Iron IV has been revealed, displaying in-engine footage of the game’s new strategic planning system for the first time ever.

Witness history in the re-making HERE.

Hearts of Iron IV challenges players to face the brutal conflict of World War II in a multifaceted grand strategy game, where history can be fully relived or rewritten from the perspective of a global superpower attempting to change the world – or a small nation simply trying to survive.

Strategy fans will discover the most authentic real-time simulation of World War II to date, with authentic historical figures battling on land, sea, and air with period-accurate armies, vehicles, and newly discovered weapons of mass destruction – along with plenty of diplomatic and trade tactics.

Gentlemen, upgrade your war! The 3.0 Upgrades for Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy and Combat Mission: Fortress Italy are finally here! The Upgrades convert and upgrade your existing games (and any installed modules) automagically to include most of the advanced new CMx2 v3.00 game features! (This includes features you may already know and enjoy in Combat Mission: Red Thunder and makes them available for Normandy and Italy!)

Visit the Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy news page at Battlefront.com for more upgrade information!

For the last two months the On Target Simulations team has been hard at work to polish the PC Game of the Year 2013 (awarded by The Wargamer) – Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm. The developers have been focused on the community feedback, and the 2.04 patch introduces a lot of improvements that the players have been requesting since the original release of the game.

New features, tons of fixes, UI improvements and enhanced game functions come together to make the game play even better. As of now you will get more feedback on events, more flexibility with custom maps and markers, and even get open access to the game’s awesome scenarios so you can adapt them to your own taste!

The list of improvements is so long that On Target Simulations wrote a comprehensive “What’s new” document that you can read here. They do not forget the newcomers either, so the new armchair generals can get access to the revised version of the “Quick Start & Tutorial Guide” by clicking here.

Here you can see some of the major changes brought by 2.04:

• Movement Orders End State Setting: Once you finish issuing a movement order you can select the end state order of the move among four choices: Hold, Screen, On Call and Resupply
• Dismount Dialog: If the unit is carrying infantry or scouts you will have the option to have them dismount and move to the final objective on foot with the transports supporting the move. The unit will adopt the order state given in the new Orders on Arrival dialog
• Waypoints/Waypoint Editor: there is an option to inspect group waypoints and also set delays to coordinate arrivals better.

Click here to download the 2.04 patch.

Get more information on Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm from its official product page.

Matrix Games announce that Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon, one of the most anticipated turn-based strategy games of the year, is getting ready for release! This detailed multiplatform wargame is now ready to enter the PC beta phase and we invite players to help us test it! By signing up for the beta, players will have a chance to be selected to be one of the lucky few, who will be able experience Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon before release and help us with the final touches, ensuring a smooth release later this year.

Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon is set during the Second War for Armageddon. In this hex-based, turn-based game developed by Flashback Games and The Lordz Games Studio, players will lead the Imperial forces of the Armageddon Steel Legion and Space Marines from a variety of Chapters against the Ork invasion through over 30 scenarios, on the hostile terrain of the planet and its gigantic Hive Cities.

The game features a complex plot, involving known characters from the Warhammer 40,000 universe and while advancing through the campaign, the player will have the ability to carryover his core force from scenario to scenario.

Players can sign up for the beta by clicking here.

Get more information on Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon from its official product page.

Source: Blue’s News

Steam News announces the release of six new commanders for Company of Heroes 2, the World War II RTS sequel. There are three new US commanders and three new German commanders, and for the next week they are all being offered for 25% off.

The new commanders are:

• US Forces Commander: Recon Support Company
• US Forces Commander: Mechanized Company
• US Forces Commander: Rifle Company
• OKW Commander: Elite Armor Doctrine
• OKW Commander: Scavenge Doctrine
• OKW Commander: Fortifications Doctrine

Wargame managed to attract a large player base, by offering radically different gameplay from other RTS games, featuring original mechanics, spectacular visuals, and a gaming experience of extreme realism and unprecedented tactical depth, with the series becoming richer and more ambitious with every new game. Today, the Wargame franchise reaches a major milestone with its millionth copy sold!

Faithful to their principles of consistent post-launch game support – notably with free additional content – Eugen Systems celebrates this event by offering to all Wargame: Red Dragon players its first free DLC, fittingly named The Millionth Mile!

Focusing on the Eastern Bloc coalition, The Millionth Mile features more than 60 new units for Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East-Germany, bringing them into the 90′s and on an equal footing with Red Dragon’s main nations. The entire range of units are represented in the DLC: Infantry, tanks, planes, troop transports, and of course helicopters.

But The Millionth Mile also introduces a brand new kind of unit, in the form of an AShM (anti-ship missile!) truck carrier. These units, whose main function is to engage ships over long distances from the land, increase the tactical depth of the game while redefining Wargame’s naval warfare!

Wargame: Red Dragon players will find their game has been automatically updated with the DLC The Millionth Mile next time they launch the game. Reinforcements have arrived, the battle continues!

Get more game information at the official Wargame: Red Dragon Website.

Acclaimed by the press and rewarded by the community with the Digital Strategic Game of the Year 2012 title attributed by the Grogheads readers, Commander: the Great War is reduced in price, and is finally reaching new platforms with its releases on both the iPad App Store and Steam today.

In the iPad version of the game you will find all the elements that contributed to the success of the PC version, giving you a unique wargaming experience on your tablet. Creating such a complex wargame on a tablet device was a huge challenge and The Lordz Games Studio has been optimizing this gem for months so as not to sacrifice any feature from the game on PC. The huge campaign map, 5 grand campaigns, unit customization, research and technology panels, realistic combat model, cross platform multiplayer and gameplay adapted to the touchscreen platform turns Commander: The Great War into the deepest World War I simulation on iPad.

And we should not forget our PC community! We are glad to announce that the game is releasing on Steam as well (later today). Faithful to our habits, we are also going to offer a free Steam key to anyone who has a copy of the PC game, wherever they bought it from, once the game is available on this digital platform!All they have to do is register their serial here and they will be able to redeem a free key to add the game to their Steam library!

Developed by The Lordz Games Studio, Commander The Great War is a turn-based strategy game that captures this time of war with unprecedented realism and accuracy. A huge-hex based campaign map that stretches from the USA in the west, Africa and Arabia to the south, Scandinavia to the north and the Urals to the east, is the setting for 5 grand campaigns, each starting in a different year of the war.

Click here for the official Steam product page.

Click here to get Commander: The Great War on iPad.

Muzzy Lane Software announced today that their WWI grand strategy title Making History: The Great War will remain in development through August. The game will continue to be available to players at a discounted price as part of Steam’s Early Access program as well as here at GHQ and at Gamer’s Gate. A new release date has been scheduled for September 9th.

“We’ve been pushing very hard to meet the July 28th date for release,” says Muzzy Lane CEO Dave McCool, “But we also have committed ourselves from the start to not release the game unless we feel it’s ready to go. We feel TGW will benefit greatly from these additional weeks of polish and balancing, which are critical to getting the best player experience from a strategy title such as this.”

Muzzy Lane will continue to release regular updates throughout the extension, just as it has during the entire time the game has been in early access. The company feels confident players will support their decision. “Our community wants the same thing we do,” says McCool, “The best possible WWI strategy game. We believe this is the best choice we can make to be certain that happens.”

The current discounted price of $29.99 will remain until the time of the official release, after which the game will sell for $39.99. More information as well as community discussion of TGW is ongoing at the Steam community hub and at the game’s website.

Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio today released Res Publica, the newest expansion for Europa Universalis IV, the award-winning grand strategy game of empire-building and global domination. Res Publica provides eager emperors and dedicated dictators with new options for trading and governing their empires, and is available now for Windows, Mac, and Linux for $4.99. Players can purchase and download the expansion now at www.europauniversalis4.com.

System Requirements Revealed

Firefly Studios has just released the minimum system requirements for their long awaited ‘castle sim’ sequel Stronghold Crusader 2. Having entered closed Beta last week, most of the remaining developing time on Crusader 2 will be spent optimising the game’s performance on PC and tweaking gameplay.

“When we first announced Stronghold Crusader 2 one of the first pieces of information released was that the game will use a newly enhanced 3D engine. By this point the team was so experienced with the Havok Vision Engine that learning something completely new and moving away from 3D would be a waste of that knowledge. Our stated goal with Crusader 2 was to create the best 3D Stronghold game yet and that’s exactly what we intent to deliver.

Everyone here at Firefly wants the playability of the 2D Stronghold titles within a 3D space and our enhanced version of the Vision Engine has thankfully provided us with the tools needed to achieve this. Naturally a concern for players at the time was ‘Will the game run on my machine?’. This is a fair question and of course we are aiming to get the game running on a wide range of systems, performance being just as high on our list of priorities as bug fixing. With the game currently in beta and as such feature-complete, we have already had time to focus on optimisation and performance testing. As a result, we have been able to determine the minimum system requirements for Stronghold Crusader 2.”

The minimum PC system requirements for Stronghold Crusader 2 are as follows:

• Operating System: Windows® XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8 (latest service packs) with DirectX 9.0c
• Processor: Intel Core2 Duo 2Ghz or equivalent
• Memory: 2GB RAM
• Video: NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800GT 512MB or AMD Radeon™ HD 2900XT 512MB or better
• Storage: 6 GB available HD space
• Internet: Broadband Internet connection

The latest entry in Firefly’s best selling series of medieval real-time strategy games, Stronghold Crusader 2 is set to appear online and in store shelves on September 2nd 2014.

For more information please visit the official Stronghold Crusader 2 website.