Non civil war US based rts/strategy games?

[BlueMemphis]

So lately i've been watching a ton of vids on usa and the various skirmishes and wars that happened after the europeans started colonising,

Examples of pre civil war battles/campaigns so we all on the same page: spanish campaign against the various tribes, commanche vs apache vs spanish, the mexico-texas war, the various usa campaigns against indians including the single biggest loss the usa has ever taken (i was actually shocked to learn it was vs indians, i thought up to now it was the time germans managed to capture an army group in ww2 which stuck with me because the officer was like "i'm the only dude in all of usa history to lose their whole army", but turns out no, it was vs indians at the battle of the Wabash since they ended up massacring every american they could find whereas the germans took prisoners) up to the battle of little big horn.

Find this whole period fascinating due to logistical and terrain issues, and having completely different military doctrines clash against each other (even amongst indians there was assymetry, see commanche vs apache). Factors such as types of guns used also seem to matter greatly (one of the reasons custer's last stand probably was quick and brutal is because the indians had repeater rifles letting them fire 3x more rounds then the cavalrymen using breech loading rifles AND having to have every 1 guy out of 4 hold the horses). And bayonet charges and such were still a big deal, like with the 17 min battle and texans just sweeping through the mexican lines.

Now i already knew there is a ton of good civil war games (which is why i specifically excluded them from this thread, i have no trouble finding good vidya about gettysburg or w/e) so i was hoping to find the same here.
But to my horror, my google searches gave me page after page of moralising how its bad to portray indians as antagonists or less then virtuous and how videogame represenation of them must always be done positively or some bs.

Ok that's all well and good, can I have my videogame putting commanche against spanish colonials or usa militamen vs confederacy?
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Apparently not, at best i could find warsims from 1980 about the battle of little bighorn, but otherwise it seemed like all I got is Age of Empires 3. Which of course in the remaster did a whole song and dance about how they had to portray indians respectively, ffs.

But maybe my googlefu failed me or i was too euro to find the hidden gems. So any good titles i'm missing/recommendations or is this just a crimally underexplored time period that devs will avoid because of modern sensibilities? I mean one of the things that amused me is how almost every battle i read ended with "and then the victors massacred all the women and children" so yeah good luck applying modern morality to these times.

Also maybe this belongs in the the Command Center but i wanted to keep this open ended in case someone tosses me an rpg or something in this setting i overlooked somehow.

[TKVNC]

The old thing I can think of is the 1860s mod for Warband, but that's about it.

[BlueMemphis]

The old thing I can think of is the 1860s mod for Warband, but that's about it.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/1860s-old-am ... s#imagebox

This is already more then i expected and right up my alley, good find.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

A game about the War of 1812 centered around the Great Lakes and the unique circumstances of the naval activity and construction going on there would be pretty interesting.

• Congress commissioned 6 74 gun ships of the line, but only one of them was laid down because Congress didn't want to shell out the money.
• $688,888 was to construct, outfit, and crew the original 6 frigates of the US Navy. Halfway through the construction of the vessels, construction stopped due to the exhaustion of funds (also because the construction had been spread across multiple states to provide economic stimulus, also congress requested that Southern Live Oak be used). HMS Leopard, a 50 gun 4th rate was built a couple years earlier in 1790 for just under 24,500 pounds. And then had to be further fitted for just under 3,500 pounds, so about 29,000 pounds to construct and outfit the Leopard, which was broadly similar to what the US Navy was trying to achieve with its frigates. That does NOT include the cost to crew and provision the ship for operation. In 1794, 4.75 dollars translated into 1 pound, so $688,888 divided by 6 frigates, divided by a 4.75 conversion rate, gives you roughly 24,171 pounds per ship (and six shillings and a couple of pence). Obviously this is a few thousand pounds less to complete the ship, and no way this is going to pay for the crew and supplies. For crewing the ship, you'd need to allocate at least 30,000 pounds for each ship, or $835,000 to crew all six ships.
• Bribing congressman/representatives to vote for the construction of your ships by promising that they'd get some money by having the ships constructed at yards in their state was very common and plagued several navies at the time. It plagues the UK today, as there are shipyards up and down the UK and in Scotland, and saying "well if Scotland leaves, then we won't be able to spend this money and provide jobs!". Since you need more than one vote to pass your request for more ships, that basically means you need to promise having a separate supply line, separate project management, etc, for each different shipyard, which creates massive inefficiency, as opposed to just picking the best shipyard and having them do all the ships.
• The Americans focused on high firepower cannonade ships that were devastating at close range, but wouldn't have won a line-of-battle engagement.
  Sudden storms were common on the inland seas (in America, the wind usually blows either from the west or the east. To the east of the Great Lakes are plains, so the wind can build up without running into mountains, so stormy weather can happen). Such storms sank ships and many, many men drowned. The thunder also risked igniting gunpowder magazines and exploding the ship. The HMS St. Lawrence (the biggest British warship at the time, 102 guns, bigger than the HMS Victory) almost sank as well.
• The lakes were important for fur trading and fishing industries.
• Because of how sparsely populated the frontier was and the absence of developed roads, travel by land was laborious, expensive (no places to resupply or rest at), and took far too long. It was simply better (faster, more economical, and safer) to transport military forces by sea. That made control of the lakes essential to winning the war.
• When the war broke out, Britain and America entered into an arms race to build as many ships as possible, as fast as possible, and bigger and better ships. Due to the vast forests, there was no shortage of lumber.
• On a clear day, both sides could see each other's ships on the lakes, even see what ships were in harbor.
• The naval commanders were hesitant to commit to major fleet actions because a loss could mean total strategic defeat on the lakes (they can see all of the ships on the lakes and then just dominate just like that). That is exactly what eventually happened.
• The Americans managed to build a ship in a record time of just 33 days.
  A "not infrequent" operation was to try to cut out/hijack enemy vessels out of harbor, usually by night. During one such mission, the British hijackers were detected by American sentries as they approached, by they replied "provision boats" and were allowed through without resistance.

Apparently not, at best i could find warsims from 1980 about the battle of little bighorn at best, but otherwise it seemed like all I got is Age of Empires 3. Which of course in the remaster did a whole song and dance about how they had to portray indians respectively, ffs.

Koei (the company behind the long running Romance of the Three Kingdoms strategy series) once made a similar game about the American Revolution. Notably you could hire and assign officers and generals and had to choose how many wages to dole out (notable since the revolutionaries were broke throughout the period and resorted to stealing civilian's stuff, and didn't have the money to pay veterans for years after the war), whereas AFAIK most other strategy games seem to gloss over that.

[Oyster Sauce]

Age of Empires III

[herkzter]

pretty much all of these, although these are all turn-based wargames that are incredibly granular so they're an acquired taste

https://wargameds.com/collections/early-american-wars

[BlueMemphis]

I was a segalad but i would have loved that game as a kid if i knew it existed, that seems legit solid.

The wargames herkzter linked was what i found online and pretty much what inspired this thread because surely there has to be some fancier, more modern alternatives.

Otherwise randomly remembered randomly playing some flash base defence game based on the alamo back in the day. Couldn't find it but stumbled onto this instead:
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Defend_the_Alamo_1994

Which falls back into what i said of almost everything i find being rather archaic, did interest for these kind of games just fizzle out after the late 1990s and we collectively agreed it would be ww2 forever?

[TheEmptyRoad]

In looking up Age of Empires III I noticed that the original version has been pulled from all online storefronts and the Definitive Edition has a DEI-compliant ColonialismBad disclaimer and removal of terms like Colonial and Plantation from the game. Just FYI.

[rusty_shackleford]

Strategic Command: American Civil War has an American Wars DLC

Strategic Command: Wars in the Americas gives you the opportunity to fight five new campaigns covering some of the greatest conflicts of the mid/late 19th century. Including battlefields ranging from the deserts of Peru to the jungles of Cuba, these campaigns will provide countless hours of entertainment while challenging your strategic skills to the utmost!

[rusty_shackleford]

In looking up Age of Empires III I noticed that the original version has been pulled from all online storefronts and the Definitive Edition has a DEI-compliant ColonialismBad disclaimer and removal of terms like Colonial and Plantation of the game. Just FYI.

Is it in the HD edition? There's two versions: HD and definitive.

[TheEmptyRoad]

In looking up Age of Empires III I noticed that the original version has been pulled from all online storefronts and the Definitive Edition has a DEI-compliant ColonialismBad disclaimer and removal of terms like Colonial and Plantation of the game. Just FYI.

Is it in the HD edition? There's two versions: HD and definitive.

Not seeing an HD edition anywhere, just the censored 'Definitive' Edition.

[rusty_shackleford]

In looking up Age of Empires III I noticed that the original version has been pulled from all online storefronts and the Definitive Edition has a DEI-compliant ColonialismBad disclaimer and removal of terms like Colonial and Plantation of the game. Just FYI.

Is it in the HD edition? There's two versions: HD and definitive.

Not seeing an HD edition anywhere, just the censored 'Definitive' Edition.

Says 'retired' but you can still buy it if for whatever reason you felt the need to give money to microsoft

[TheEmptyRoad]

Is it in the HD edition? There's two versions: HD and definitive.

Not seeing an HD edition anywhere, just the censored 'Definitive' Edition.

Says 'retired' but you can still buy it if for whatever reason you felt the need to give money to microsoft

Yeah, III doesn't have anything like that. That I could find.

[rusty_shackleford]

Not seeing an HD edition anywhere, just the censored 'Definitive' Edition.

Says 'retired' but you can still buy it if for whatever reason you felt the need to give money to microsoft

Yeah, III doesn't have anything like that. That I could find.

Oh ****, didn't notice you posted III not II.

[TheEmptyRoad]

Anyway, I'm going to go play Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms Americas Campaign and maybe even Empire: Total War or EU4 to get a good colonialism fix now that I found out AoE3 is ruined.

[Irenaeus]

**** I loved AoE3 so much when it was released back in 2005. Sad what happened to that game (and I include the terrible expansions in the tragedy).

[Val the Moofia Boss]

did interest for these kind of games just fizzle out after the late 1990s

American history prior to the 20th century is only relevant to white people and some Texans aka historical Americans, who are becoming a minority in their own country as a lot of foreigners come in who have no ties or investment in what was going on in this continent over the past 500 or even 200 years. Few Arabs or (Asian) Indians or Chinese will be interested in a game about the French and Indian War. Also, DEI dev teams, so again the people who are interested in this stuff are outnumbered and don't have enough voting power.

[rusty_shackleford]

Public school glosses over basically everything that isn't civil war or ww2 to begin with, you might get a couple months total for the other wars combined.

[sheet]

Sid Meier's Colonization is kind of fun if you liked original Civilization on DOS. It takes a bit of re-orientation as to what your victory goals are compared to Civilization (no, you can't just murderball to wipe out all the natives then decimate the British army right after), but once you figure that out, it's good for a couple playthroughs.
They also made one of the expansions for Civ 4 a recreation of it, but I haven't tried that yet.

[asf]

play the original colonization

[Irenaeus]

play the original colonization

I do it every few years. Great game.

[DemoGraph]

play the original colonization

Came here to say that.

There weren't any wars of note in North America other than ACW. No wonder there are no games.
Mexican-American war had what, 50-70k troops on each side in the middle of XIX? Brothers war or Crimean war literally had 10-20 times more troops on each side. Even Paraguayan war was larger and somewhat more interesting than anything that happened in NAm.
And ACW itself is boring as ****. North had x3 population and x3-5 the economy, no wonder it managed to meatwave the confeds.

[gerey]

And ACW itself is boring as ****. North had x3 population and x3-5 the economy, no wonder it managed to meatwave the confeds.

It's fun playing as the Confederacy with all their handicaps.

I do wish someone would make more games about pre-human America, I'd like to play as the Aztecs.

[asf]

playing savages is boring

[asf]

another fun colonization game is conquest of the new world

[gerey]

This is a game I've been keeping my eye on. It's in the vein of Impressions Games, with a few unique additions on top.

[BlueMemphis]

That pharaoh except Aztecs game could be decent.

Colonization stuff also noted, never got into that series and last time i checked it the more recent game was some mobile looking thing so kept a wide berth.

Strategic Command: American Civil War has an American Wars DLC

That DLC was pretty much made for this thread it seems, perfect. Didn't hear of strategic command before but it looks decent and more importantly, modernish (by wargame standards). Shame theres no modding like for panzer general 2 but guess this series is too niche for player made campaigns.
The base campaign even emphasizes river and lake travel like what Val touched on.

play the original colonization

Came here to say that.

There weren't any wars of note in North America other than ACW. No wonder there are no games.
Mexican-American war had what, 50-70k troops on each side in the middle of XIX? Brothers war or Crimean war literally had 10-20 times more troops on each side. Even Paraguayan war was larger and somewhat more interesting than anything that happened in NAm.
And ACW itself is boring as ****. North had x3 population and x3-5 the economy, no wonder it managed to meatwave the confeds.

Heavily disagree, the entire colonisation process is marked full of conflicts and battles , it was a goddamned free for all at times (especially in the southern usa area, so much back and forth and allegiance flipping), the US wasn't just magically united and several times suffered setbacks that put them in precarious situations that could have led to annihilation if not for circumstances like the indians being very ******** when it came to sticking together and capitalising on the victories they did win. Saying there is no "conflict of note" is perspective, i'd argue battles that determined the existence of your nation ultimately were more important in the grand scheme of things even if it involved comparatively fewer numbers.

Actually let's talke about numbers because it doesn't usually matter for vidya:
-in rts your army typically won't be more then a few hundred and age of empires 3 showed that's enough to have some good indian vs colonial battles.
-in wargames and most strategy games you never visually see all your troops, they are often abstracted heavily or in the case of wargames, just a counter which can represent anything from 10 dudes to 10000000000000.
The games that actually do show the scale of the conflits they depict are super rare, i can only really think of a handful like Scourge of War or....Conquest of America!
https://www.gog.com/en/game/american_conquest
Well thanks for reminding me of that one, this definitely belongs in the thread and might be the best title for mass native slaughtering.

Early American wars might not have big numbers involved but small skirmishes of just a few hundred or thousands still ended up determining the fates of nations and everyone else who now lives in the usa, to denigrate their importance is to insult your own history imo.

Which ties back to what some were saying about how history is taught in american schools which just baffles me, especially when americans tend to have the worst takes on ww2 because they developped a heroic mythology around it, yet you spend litteral years studying it and only a few months on the texan-mexico war IF you are from the area? Jfc explains a lot indeed.


Otherwise ranted long enough but will finish by saying i've been trying that warband 1860 mod and it's fun af.
Did you guys know guns hurt and can kill you in 1 shot? Well most of you are kwa so probably, but i was kinda shocked to get 1 shotted and consistently slaughtered when i tried to solo the nearest group of 5-7 bandits like i always do at the start of warband games.
Once past that initial shock and figuring out i have to play the game more cautiously then i'm used to, having a great time. Some fun things like flags being the best lances so if you want to fight with the stars and stripes and impale natives on the lance of freedom, this is a mod that allows you to do that.
Fighting indians is also very fun because the warband ai seems to be decent for their running around on horsies throwing **** at you whilst screaming and then charging you with tomahawks fighting style. 10/10 immersion.

[DemoGraph]

Saying there is no "conflict of note" is perspective, i'd argue battles that determined the existence of your nation ultimately were more important in the grand scheme of things even if it involved comparatively fewer numbers.

There was no American nation before war for independence (and maybe even before ACW).
And Britain wasn't threatened by colonial failure. They didn't really try to develop NAm colonies, because they were much shittier than Caribbean, LatAm or Indian ones.

[BlueMemphis]

There was no American nation before war for independence (and maybe even before ACW).

A very pedantic pov.

To use a non US example, this would be like me arguing that charlemagne doesn't matter for french history because france didn't exist yet. The past informs the future and lays the groundwork for drama to come. Artificially making cutting off dates like this "well this doesn't count as the genesis of america because the US technically didn't exist yet" feels disengenious to me.

I don't know what prompted the England comment, but again within my pov, its history with its various colonies very much informed its future and continues to have an impact today. I dont know, maybe we just see history differently? To me its a lot of event a leads to b which in turn impacts c and that's what i find fascinating. I doubt the early colonists had any notion that their descendants would eventually form the USA but i still count them as part of american history none the less.

[DemoGraph]

There was no American nation before war for independence (and maybe even before ACW).

A very pedantic pov.
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I doubt the early colonists had any notion that their descendants would eventually form the USA but i still count them as part of american history none the less.

It's a pity then that there's no wargame about mudhut conquerors from Ghana, because their descendants would eventually form the USA.

upd.

I do wish someone would make more games about pre-human America, I'd like to play as the Aztecs.

Dominions 6 at your service! Aztecs are werejaguars and werebirds there. They're fun. Also you can run as Quetzalcoatl.

updupd.

It's fun playing as the Confederacy with all their handicaps.

Yeah, I always wanted to support the poor guys in Vicky 2 as Brits/French/Russians. There're some events and overhauls for them that make them pretty interesting lategame. But the game is structured in a way that makes even allying them almost impossible without spamming custom events (or cheesing if you play them).