HPS Waterloo vs. Matrix Games Tiller's Battleground Napoleonic Wars

[rahamy]

Well, shoot. That makes absolutely no sense to me. How can they be different games if Tiller made them, and they use the exact same engine. What is different about the Matrix version? Who thought it would be a good idea to confuse everything?

I think the HPS versions are more widely played, correct? That is what I have for all my Napoleonics and Civil War games.

They aren't the same engine...there are a plethora of differences between the two. While John Tiller was the programmer for the Battleground games, his newer games are much different. As for details on that, the essence of the games (turn based, hex format, historical strategy games) are the same, but there's been a large number of changes which make game play significantly different over his older work:

- Game turns can be played in single turns, with movement, fire & melee all taking place in a single segment - with the defender taking "opportunity fire" as the offensive player is moving. This gives the game a bit more of a "real time" feel without requiring the players to both be on-line at the same time. It is still possible to play in phases too, if you select that option. The single turn mode radically reduces the amount of file transfers needed to play a PBEM game as well.

- Losses are now handled in single man increments rather than in 25 man segments.

- Fatigue is now handled in single points too, rather than huge blocks - though some things can really make the fatigue rack up, such as loosing a melee.

- Campaigns. There is now a feature which allows you to play through a series of battles, making a decision before each which will directly impact the positioning of your forces for that battle. Losses are also carried over from battle to battle in most cases, stragglers can return to units, and if a short amount of time passes in between actions fatigue will also carry over.

- Maps...the format of maps have changed from a single bitmap image to a "tiled" approach. This allows MUCH bigger maps to be used, and also allows many more maps to be included with each game.

- Content - tying into the map comment above, there is also a significantly larger amount of content included with each title now compared to the Battleground games. For example Campaign Waterloo includes more scenarios & maps then all three of the BG Nap games combined - really, not joking, its a huge title covering the opening actions at the Belgian frontier all the way through the historic battle of Waterloo. All actions associated with the 100 days are included where as the Battleground title only focuses on the one main battle. The map is also roughly the size of Rhode Island, so an abundance of "What if" actions are possible.

- There are many more engine enhancements as well, which you can read about by checking the "Changes.txt" file from one of the games on our site. Here's the one for Waterloo, which was originally released with HPS - http://www.hpssims.com/Pages/Updates/up_...o_104b.txt - these games are still supported as well, with new content being released for the entire series as new games are published, for free.