About Combat Warrior:
It’s a fun war game for small to medium scale battles with a lot of hidden simulated mechanics, regarding spotting, armor penetration, inter unit communication, morale, etc. It’s a modern realistic RTS, thus you will not be building up bases and pumping out units. Instead you will be carefully moving your units on the battlefield, trying to spot the enemy before they see you. Spotting someone first often guarantees a kill. I’ve understood that some version of the game engine might be used in actual training in some real world militaries. In contrast to some higher level war games, you are able to command individual units. While that gives you more granular control to lay out your tactics, commanding a huge number of units can become a little tedious. Therefore I prefer to play Combat Mission on smaller scenarios. How the units act and respond to enemy fire on spot is determined by their own AI. The units will however not move (except retreat) without player orders. The overall feel and pacing of the game is good. The fights are quick, brutal and enjoyable to watch. The game features 1v1 multiplayer (no coop, unless using steam remote play and sharing mouse and keyboard) and a scenario editor, which I like. I’ve read quite many criticizing the UI and while not as slick as in titles like Wargame and Warno, I think it gets the job done. On presentation and performance side, things need improvement. Running the game on 5950x and rtx 3080 suffers from sudden hickups and freezes, depending on the scenario. It’s 90% good but you can really tell there is room for much improvement. This goes on top of the fact that the game does not look very good.
