🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992May27....@spd.analog.com> gor...@spd.analog.com (gordon...@analog.com) writes:
)
)    Could somebody do a comparison between The Perfect General 
)and The Battle of Isle ? 

Battle Isle is better in single player mode, IMO.  I'm not convinced
that the computer is any smarter, but a lot of work went into interesting
and reasonably challenging battles single player battles.  Against the
computer player, the standard battles in perfect general were too easy - the
computer player was very poor.

Terrain graphics in the perfect general were better, IMO (it was somewhat
tough to tell what was woods in Battle Isle for example but it was quite
clear in P.G.)  Hexes were smaller in PG, meaning larger maps, which were
also printed & included in the game (though I didn't count hexes) and the
mouse interface was better in PG (I used a joystick for BI, that's what it
was designed for and it was less aggravating for me to use the joystick than
to use a '1 bit' mouse interface). As regards to hexes, though, BI was 'squad
scale' and PG was 'individual unit' scale which may account for some of the
differences.

All in all, I'd consider BI for one person (due to better balancing with
the oponent).  Not sure about which would be best with 2 players, not having
really tried it.

The PG system was better documented for predicting the results of actions,
BTW.  BI did not give numbers for predicting hit probabilities, etc. the
way PG did.  Also, all units are visible with BI - no 'line of sight'
rules.  BI also has a different flavor - one tends to build up
a few 'real good' experienced veteran units and using and repairing them a
lot.  Surrounding units is very important in BI and combat mostly occurs at a
1 hex range - a few units have longer ranges.  PG has combat occuring
at larger ranges - surrounding isn't an issue and I'm not even sure if there
is a 'flank attack' concept in the game.

BI has more unit types (includes planes and ships), though some of the
self-repair capability in the ships seemed a bit 'odd'.  Repairing units
in automated factories after they get experience (and getting the experienced
units back to be repaired before they are destroyed) are key concepts in the
game which aren't present in PG.  There's a bit of a puzzle/race to the
supply depot element in BI which makes it fun the first time a battle is
played (actually it may take several tries to find the right or at least an
acceptable strategy), but once one successfully plays through all 18 or so
scenarios the game looses a lot of its interest.

I'd also consider 'The Perfect Admiral'.  It's a naval game, but the computer
opponents were much better than in PG, so the scenarios were a lot tougher.