Russian companies 1C-SoftClub and Snowball Studios report that the long-awaited military tactical simulator Combat Mission Afghanistan  has gone gold. The game has been developed by Battlefront.com and Apeiron funded by Snowberry Connection, and is published by Snowball Studios in Eastern Europe, and Battlefront.com (worldwide).

For the first time in the history of the genre-defining series of Combat Mission tactical wargames, a release is dedicated entirely to modern Russian warfare. Players will be able to look at the last war of the USSR through the eyes of a Russian officer and take part in more than 30 combat operations, based on real historical events. Players are able to take command of Soviet or DRA (Democratic Republic of Afghanistan) Army units as well as mujahedeen guerilla forces.

CM Afghanistan is a standalone game and does not require any of the other games to play. The game will be released in Russia on September 10th, 2010. Official Russian website: http://www.snowball.ru/afgan

The international release by Battlefront.com (in english language) is scheduled shortly after the Russian street date, in mid-September. Watch this space for updates!

Everyone wants to rule the world but actually doing so tends to be a tad difficult. The rest of the world has armies, navies, air forces and sometimes even nuclear weaponry. You, you have a potato gun and a tennis racket that needs to be restrung. Good luck.

If you can't conquer the world in real life you can at least conquer it on your PC. Shrapnel Games is thrilled to announce the upcoming game of global death and destruction, World Supremacy, developed by Malfador Machinations (developers of the universally acclaimed Space Empires series).

World Supremacy is a Windows beer-and-pretzels strategy game of contemporary conflict for one to eight players. In World Supremacy players have but one goal: total global control through utter annihilation of all who oppose. Control is derived from conquest and the tools of conquest are many; land, air, and sea. And when you care enough to send the very best you can even say hello to your foes with a well placed nuke or two.

In World Supremacy the game world is created fresh for each game with players choosing a variety of settings to tailor their experience. While this means that initially one cannot fight over already familiar territory mod makers will be pleased to learn that any type of map can be created. Want to fight over the real world? Middle Earth? The world of the Destroymen series? Create and conquer.

The weapons of war are instantly recognizable, from modern armor to jet fighters to hunter/killer submarines. Each type of unit can be upgraded up to three levels through a streamlined research process. Even nuclear and neutron weapons can be found in World Supremacy. Battles are fought on a fast playing tactical map, allowing players to flex more than just their strategic muscles. Combat is a do-or-die proposition. Once you attack only one side will be left standing so be sure to bring enough hardware to the fight.

Let's not pretend that AI, so far, can rival a (competent) human, but the silicon mind here certainly isn't bad. It's reassuring to see AI units laying down plenty of suppressive fire after a surprise attack, hitting likely firing points just as a human player does when ambushed. The AI certainly isn't shy, and you definitely know when you're being attacked. I think the scripting, especially for certain missions, does let the side down (quite literally, like when each attack wave is announced in a certain defensive scenario) and certainly limits the replayability of the single-player game. In addition to the three campaigns, there are two special operations. These are survival scenarios, where you set up an all-round defence and hold out for a limited number of turns. While this area of the game is obviously limited at the moment, it's safe to say the developer has plans for the future.

At the front a regiment of foot mounted samurai make an initial charge, testing the defender's lines. After some tough fighting the attackers are routed and flee back to the safety of their own lines. It's not just the lighting and weather effects that have been updated here. The short skirmish shows that the AI is better than ever before with more and more soldiers behaving uniquely making the hand-to-hand fighting even more realistic than in Medieval 2.

This is sort of a micro update. It does have an important fix for players attempting to frame other players for attacking Pandemonium so it’s worth updating for that.

Major changes: Full Changelog
[Fixed] Fixed numerous issues, both minor and major.
[Changed] Objects are visible much further away now, as small icons.
[Added] Players may choose from multiple planet governors per planet.
[Added] The selection count box now lists counts by object type, and can be used to change the selection.
[Added] Updated Networking Library.

Matrix Games and Panther Games (www.panthergames.com) are pleased to release the comprehensive 4.1.235 first update for their award winning WWII operational-level wargame, Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge. This major update includes fixes for a number of crashes and freezes that affected some players in addition to resolving some AI issues. Also coming in this update are a few tweaks to the scenarios and assorted other bug fixes.

Matrix Games and Strategy 3 Tactics are proud to release the comprehensive 3.50.01 for their acclaimed Close Combat remake, Close Combat – Cross of Iron. The update comes with a handful of bug fixes, over a dozen recoded maps that handle walls and obstructions with improved coding conventions, improved and updated support for multiplayer features, and more.

The latest patch for Furysoftware's Strategic Command WW2 Global Conflict, v1.03  is here! More than a hundred improvements, fixes and tweaks to both the game engine as well as the editor - many based on feedback from the fan community forums and email - make this one of the biggest patches for one of the biggest grand strategy games out there.

Slitherine has just release a new patch for it’s recently released hit Battlefield Academy. The patch is available through the in-game auto updater and contains a host of new maps and units, which take the game to the next level. Iain McNeil, development director of Slitherine, said: ‘We are committed to supporting Battlefield Academy over the long term as we definitely feel the game deserves a lot of attention. We are willing to make this game an evolving project, with the contribution of the community. That is why we already started including suggestions from the players in this patch and we will keep doing this in the future”.

Civilian wargaming in the US began, in 1953, when a young gentleman from Baltimore named Charles S. Roberts, developed a game called "Tactics." It posited two hypothetical countries, with typical post-World War II armies, going to war with each other. The game was professionally produced and distributed through the Stackpole Company (which already had a reputation as a publisher of books on military affairs). This was the first of the modern commercial wargames (as we know them).

Charles Roberts was then working in the advertising business and was indulging in the commercialization of his hobby as a sideline. But by 1958, he realized that there were a lot of people who were interested in his type of game, and he founded the Avalon Hill Company. For the next five years, Avalon Hill experienced tremendous growth. But up until 1961, only six games were published. However, during 1961, an additional six games were published, and from 1962 to 1963 six more games were published. Of these 18, only nine were wargames. They included Gettysburg, Tactics II, U-Boat, Chancellorsville, D-Day, Civil War, Waterloo, Bismarck and Stalingrad. It was the wargames, however, that accounted for most of the sales, and by 1962, Avalon Hill was selling more than 200,000 games a year.

A few sites have already weighed in on Elemental: War of Magic.

Fidgit:

Right now, Elemental is disappointingly primitive. It needs clarity and purpose from the people who are making it. It needs feedback from people who are playing it. It needs the work it should have gotten when it was in beta, if not earlier. It needs time and direction, which isn't something a game should need once you've given it your money. If I was some Random Joe Reviewer like I normally am, I would just write an angry negative review of Elemental. Which is partly what this is. But it's also tangled up with my recollection of six years ago, poring over the latest inchoate build of what would turn out to be a classic sci-fi game about different races building enormous space stations, marshalling massive fleets, wrangling vast economies, putting together their own cool spaceships, and climbing through imaginative tech trees. And just as I did back then, I wonder what Brad Wardell was thinking.

And that, really, is the crux of the issue: this is a game by strategy experts for strategy experts; at least that's what it purports to be. But I, my friends, am a strategy expert and I'll tell you: this game just isn't fun. Even if the major issues above had been ameliorated by the day-0 patch that the game shipped with, it still crashes, hangs, and bugs up without warning at virtually every conceivable juncture. During a particularly surreal moment, my game decided to blanket everything in the world except my main hero in a permanent fog of war, making the guesswork of a poorly designed GUI and lack of tutorial seem like child's play. And that happened twice more...after the patch.

I could go on and on about the scattered game design in Elemental, but now I want to hear your experiences with the game. I come away from the game sad. There was so much potential and I hope Stardock gets there someday. There's enough here, in theory, to interest me; but I keep running into numbers that just don't add up nicely. Honestly, I hope Stardock is willing to simplify or cut some features of the game. Balancing the current set of mechanics in a reasonable time-frame is probably impossible.

After many months of anticipation, VSTEP and Paradox Interactive today announced the release of Ship Simulator Extremes, the latest installment in the Ship Simulator series. The most realistic simulator to ever set sail on the high seas features stunning visuals, accurate vessel behavior, famous locations and ports all over the world and missions based on actual events.

Created by the developer VSTEP, Ship Simulator Extremes offers exciting missions as you pilot an impressive array of vessels, and live the story of real ship captains. Do you have the calm nerves of a real ship captain, even in the most demanding conditions?

Star Ruler’s most notable features (large galaxies, randomized research, automation, ship design) are completely offset by a handicapped interface that makes running your expansive empire tedious. There are several problems here: no minimap, an odd (or absent) organization of information, hidden orders for ships, and camera control oddities. Exploring other planets is tedious since you have to issue an auto-explore order for every new system and the game doesn’t indicate scouted territory. The distances between star systems are secretive, leading to less efficient expansion. Automation is inconsistent: colony ships will auto-colonize without your consent but scouts will remain stationary once a new system is reached. Ship design is comprehensive but offers nothing innovative and cannot be automated. The research tree layout is highly confusing, unlocking new techs is not explained well, and the benefits of higher levels of knowledge are not concrete. Diplomatic options are basic but the AI seems to be a competent foe. As advertised, you can have massive galaxies but it’s hard to manage all of your assets yourself due to the inefficient interface that doesn’t let you see all of your systems easily. The AI can direct planet-level production, but Star Ruler really lacks strategic depth: simply colonize everywhere because you can, and quickly build up your forces. Multiplayer is an interesting feature, as is the support for user modifications. The graphics and sound are budget-level, though. The bottom line is that Star Ruler offers nothing we’ve never seen before in more complete titles, and the current shortcomings with the interface and strategy are too much to overcome.

Matrix Games and VR Designs (www.vrdesigns.nl) are thrilled to announce that their WWII operational-level wargame, Decisive Campaigns: The Blitzkrieg from Warsaw to Paris  is now available for purchase! In this debut release of a major new wargame series, players can experience the same tough strategic decisions and intense operational-level fighting as the leaders of historical operations like Case White, Case Yellow, and the hypothetical Operation Sealion!
 
To celebrate the new release, we’ve released another pack of screenshots to go alongside the new After Action Report and Developer’s Notes available on The Wargamer.  We recommend reading through all of these for more info about The Blitzkrieg from Warsaw to Paris.

IGN AU: If units are garrisoned behind that wall though, can you take them all out by collapsing a wall onto them?

Simon Bradbury: Yeah, we're going to implement a system that allows you to do that. We need to be a little careful about how we do that because the game could be over before you know it! One thing we've always wanted to do – and now we can do – is get guys to fall off walls. Now, the can fall off the wall and ragdoll. These other guys can very foolishly stand by the edge of a cliff – and they can also be knocked over. It's hilarious to watch. Because of this, I'd expect to see a lot of castles designed on the edges of cliffs for this particular benefit – such is the level of our sophistication! [laughs]

Also, traps – like rolling logs - can now be affected by physics. If you build them on an incline, they'll roll even further- and you can kill a whole lot of guys at once. The game has a whole lot of new tricks and traps – and we're not gonna reveal those today – but we can mention the return of that old classic, the boiling pot of oil. Ultimately, how you lay out your castle and how you channel your 'killing zones' is the mark of whether or not you're a good castle designer. There are no other games really out there like that.

I don't mean to harp on this, but it's not an isolated instance of some weird under-the-hood bug. In its current state, Elemental is packed with these kinds of headscratchers. And my suspicion is that for every one of them I can see, there are even more lurking under the hood. There's no small amount of trust involved in playing a strategy game and letting the computer handle so many of the numbers. And when that trust is violated, it's incredibly discouraging. If I can't trust the game to do what it's saying it will do, I might as well go play Victoria 2.

I’m certain Stardock will fix Elemental. They may even keep working on it until it’s as good as their last game, Galactic Civilizations 2. But putting junk like this in a box and charging money for it is not okay, however rapidly you try and patch it afterwards. It punishes you for being a fan, it punishes you for buying on day one, it punishes you for pre-ordering, and it punishes you for having faith that a great company like Stardock wouldn’t ask you to pay for a game until it’s fit to be played.

Also, to anyone, like you Ben, saying the game is like an "early beta" then well, please stay away from our games in the future. I consider it ready for release and if others disagree, don't buy our games.

I anticipate us putting out regular updates for Elemental for months or years to come based on player feedback, suggestions, and yes, bug reports.

I hope this offers some explanation as to the events that have come up. I sincerely apologize and feel terrible for the effect my forum posting on Qt3 may have had not just on our fans but also my team that has worked incredibly hard over the past 3 years to produce what we hope, is a game that you will enjoy for years to come.

WG: It is no secret that you have been very active in updating AI War  with monthly patches at first and major content updates every few months. Can you talk about your design philosophy and what keeps you committed to improving the game?

AG: The main reason I keep improving the game?  I still play it, and I want to keep playing it for a long time.  When it comes to my personal tastes, AI War is like a greatest hits album of everything that I love most about the strategy genre, and it has a lot of new stuff that I’ve not seen anywhere else, either.  It would be very hard for me to play another RTS game in my weekly co-op sessions after this, unfortunately, so if I want to keep playing co-op strategy games I have to keep improving this one!

Kidding aside, I really think that the evolution of the experience is appealing to other grognards as much as it is to me.  A year after release, AI War is more popular now than it’s ever been, and I think that’s because of how the game evolves.  People always talk about how they wish that RTS games would have a “learning AI,” and that’s something that no strategy game has at present for a lot of technical reasons.  But AI War has the next-best thing, with both an AI and a game world that is constantly growing, constantly surprising players and giving them something new to do.  I think that’s pretty core to the AI War experience.

January 1944. The Allied offensive in Italy aimed at stopping the Germans from withdrawing by attacking them from behind. However, the Germans - aided by the remaining loyal Italian units - were much stronger than Allies had been led to believe until then... Play through a full mission designed exclusively for the R.U.S.E. demo.

Plymouth, MI - August 24, 2010 -Independent developer and publisher Stardock released the much-awaited PC fantasy strategy title Elemental: War of Magic today. Elemental: War of Magic  opens a world of magic and ancient lore as players begin the game as one of the few beings in the world still able to channel power from shards of magic - a series of mystical artifacts left over from a great cataclysm. You must decide how much of your power to imbue into your heroes as you build cities, explore dungeons, learn spells of ever=increasing power and negotiate with friends and foes.

Elemental: War of Magic is available at retail stores throughout North America starting today. The Limited Edition ($69.95) and the standard edition ($49.95) are also available via Stardock's digital distribution platform, Impulse (www.impulsedriven.com) or via the game's web site (www.elementalgame.com.)

• The UI is updated to be somewhat more intuitive.
• The campaign is significantly updated (though only for those starting fresh).
• Resources are treated more like units. This is hard to explain but essentially the game will let you know of what resources you’re not using and how to make use of them.
• There’s a lot of performance improvements the day 0 build, particularly for those with lower end CPUs.
• The “day 0” AI is in it.
• There’s been a polish pass to the spell books and tactical battles.
• There’s been a general polish pass to the main game UI overall.
• There’s been a lot of balancing to monsters, units, etc.