>>1873609
Assuming you just want it to take some screenshots to show off how much of a grog you are, then Aurora 4x is what you're after. Game isn't very good and the dev throws a shitfit anytime someone tries to mod it, but it looks like pure 'tism.
Gary Grigsby isn't really that complicated, it just lets you go on a deep dive of your units and it has some scale. War in the Pacific is more user unfriendly than War in the West or War in the East. The games are actually enjoyable though, so you may not want that.
WDS looks complicated but it's one of the most retard-friendly wargames I've ever played. If you actually want to play one of these games, start there or Decisive Campaigns / Shadow Empire.

Here's my blog.
Began baby's first GSGs with TW, Soon turned out to be too easy. Rome TW: Total world conquest with Brit chariot armies, lol. Shogun TW: Corner camping to win every battle. Medieval TW. Cav goes around the sides and charges the rear. In the end the only challenge was improving speed run times.
Moved up to Paradox games. EU, HOI.
More challenging yes, but only becasue the mechanics were more obscure. Once learned then it became retard tier easy.. Soon Total World Conquest by every major power by some ridiculously early date. Like turning entire world map French blue in EU3 by 1570 AD. What a joke.
Fuck me, I want some super autism game to challenge me.
THEN! ALL OF A SUDDEN! I hear about Gary Grigsby games. Holy fuck, the Holy grail of wargaming! But without all that shuffling of miniatures or cardboard counters. FUCK YES! Look up reviews and AARs.... OMG! NERD ORGASM! Jizz my pants repeatedly.
I sink just over $100 into GG WAR IN THE EAST 1.
Which was a fuck load of money for broke ass bag of useless shit me at the time. But its got to be worth it, right? RIGHT?
By the second campaign game I had beaten Russia without breaking a sweat by October 1942. WTF?
In the third game I had Russian armies in Berlin and Vienna by...wait for it...May FUCKING 1942. I crossed the Oder river wanking myself off to the idea of facing a prolonged and bitter German defense only to find it undefended. Jesus Fucking Christ. All those months of reorganizing the Russian armies just to win like that?
Upping the difficulty just prolonged the inevitable, and by which time I had discovered "Panzer balls" and the HQ supply build up exploit which enabled you to do the most insanely deep armored thrusts. Fucking fairy tale bullshit.
Fuck me. This absolute crap was held up as the ultimate Eastern front game? Were ALL the raving reviews and AARs made by shills or complete morons? Must be.
Into the trash it goes.
Then I heard about WitE2. Haha, no. You dont fool me again.

>>1873656
Blog Chapter 2.
The years roll by.
Eu3 and Hoi3 are superseded by new versions. But Holy Christ on a hotdog stick. THEY HAVE BEEN DUMBED DOWN! I am not one to care much for graphics but Jesus they look designed to appeal to children who are still enamored by pretty bright colors. I guess that was the intention. I thought things would only.get better on the GSG scene but they got fucking worse!
I see threads up with people enthusiatically discussingabout Sid Meier's Alpha Centuari becasue literally nothing better has come along for 20+ fucking years.
I thought advances in AI would have made single player almost comparable, perhaps even better than playing against other humans. Nope.
I thought long and hard about this while jacking off to some anime.
The fact is there are NO good meticulous, tedious, complex GSG or Operational level wargames. The market is too small. Companies cater to the masses of dummies. AI isn't as good as the hype.
Thank you for listening to my blog and fuck you if you are one of those ignorant troglodytes who spazz out if you encounter a big difficult word you cant pronounce let alone know the meaning of, despite having the ability to copy paste it into google faster than you can sniff your mother's panties. Also fuck you if you are one of those fucking subhumans who cant understand any sentence longer than three words. You inbred hillbilly cunts contributed to the decline as much as anyone else.
In fact, fuck this entire gay world. I just wanted to Rommel my way through France like a total champ, deliver some Manstein back hand blows after Stalingrad, Model my way out of the Korsun pocket, and grit my teeth as I held out to the last man in Berlin, with some semblance of realism and lots of nail biting challenge, and I cant have that. Fuck. Fuck.Fuck.

>>1873672
>>1873656
didn't read your blog and I would advise you to fuck off back to plebdit, midwit.

>>1873609
Gary Grisby's Eagle Day to Bombing the Reuch

>>1873678
Didn't take long for one of you dumb arsefucks to have a meltdown lol.

>>1873609
man who got the time to manage all these little nato flags individually

Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations?

>>1873656
>>1873672
>when you learn the mechanics of a simulation and how to exploit them, it actually becomes le easy, wtf?!
Do grognards think that machines must always be able to beat the player (i.e. be programmed to play perfectly every time) or that $50 games should come with adaptable AI (to make it capable of learning and self-changing)?

>>1874829
Yes. Perfect machines are superior to our weak and diseased flesh.

>>1875124
make your own game

>>1873609
Forge of Freedom

>>1874829
now that ai is cheapear and more widespread one can hope that one developer could adapt it to a game, they tried it with starcraft but it was an experiment

>>1873835
It's just called Command: Modern Operations now

>>1877138
You're not getting any adaptive self learning ai for your single player game because it requires a super computer to run. You might get a save state where the ai plays the same everytime but its still good enough to beat most players

>>1882364
somebody has been asleep the past 5 years.

I’ve been playing this shit for a long time. We had Under Fire for the Apple IIgs when I was a kid. Played the fuck out of Panzer General. My dad brother and I would have axis and allies and sid meiers Gettysburg tournaments. I was an army officer and went to a military college known for over the top hazing… we played a lot of age of empires II back then. I’ve done the Gary Grigsby games, back to Steel Panthers thru Wite2.

The best, most enjoyable experience I’ve had wargaming… ever… has been the… wait for it… Unit of Command series. Fucking criminally underrated.

Operational wargame that requires operational planning? Yep

Logistics underpinning everything? Yep

Asshole AI that will ruin your shit if you make the slightest mistake? Yep

Simple yet robust mechanics that are easy to grasp but challenging to master? Yep

Evocative graphics/sound? Yep

Unity of Command does it all and does it all very well. The only criticism laid against it is that each battle generally only has one or two approaches. This is largely true - offensive directions are largely going to be dictated by the terrain and logistics. Does it model differences between KV1 and KV2? No, but nor should it. You’re commanding divisions of mixed armor formations. Your infantry divisions can have armor assets attached.

Seriously check it out. It’s not the “dur hur most autistic game” out there, but it’s one of the best and you can tickle that part of your brain trying to capture every objective on time on every map. Good luck.

>>1882370
wheres your ai then fuckwit