The Operational Art of War IV

The Generals and High Officers have gathered in the War Room for hours. On the large tables and all over the walls maps and military charts are displayed, with thousands of counters of different size and colors covering every theater.

The air is dense, and you can feel the pressure. Suddenly, a voice from a speaker captures everyone’s attention. A few words in code are heard from the speaker. The mother of all Operations has begun.

The wait is over. The Operational Art of War IV, the most anticipated wargame of the year, has been released!

Fight on land, sea and air, but beware! Understanding how the new Supply System works is vital to keep your troops fighting and marching!

Finally, the new Battlefield Time Stamp feature takes on TOAW’s unique way of handling game turn resolution and makes it easier for players to plan ahead!

Watch the The Operational Art of War IV – Introduction Trailer HERE.

The Operational Art of War IV is the top-notch military simulation that every wargamer needs! Grab it now!

The Operational Art of War saga will be back soon, and we can finally tell you when! Are you ready to get back on the battlefield? The 16th of November TOAW IV will bring you in the middle of the the most important conflicts of the last hundred years.

From The Great War to the Cold War, through World War II, The Operational Art of War IV will let you experience the profound changes that warfare had seen during the 20th century, giving you the chance to re-write history or create your own scenarios with the game editor! Your army needs you!

The Operational Art of War IV is the new generation of operational wargames. With more flexibility than before and with a new array of exciting features, it will make you relive the most iconic battles from the dawn of the 20th Century to modern day, including the ones that never occurred!

More than 200 scenarios like the Battle of Marne, Dien Bien Phu, the Batte of Arnhem, the Falkland Invasion – and lots more! – will forge your strategy skills and ability to master all kind of troops and terrains!

The entire naval warfare system has been completely revised and implemented, bringing its realism to a new, higher, level!

Few wargames of the past have reached a legendary aura like The Operational Art of War. The incredible flexibility of the editor, the massive number of playable scenarios, the quality of the AI, made Norm Koger’s latest effort an operational wargame with unsurpassed standard.

No surprise that the recent announcement of a new chapter in the series captured the interest of many wargamers out there.

But as the saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”, a Live Stream is definitely better than 1000 pictures, and applying this rule, we are happy to announce that next week on Tuesday 27th we will be taking a look at The Operational Art of War IV LIVE!

Agrippa Maxentius will play some of the scenarios available in the game, including Iwo-Jima and Korea 1951 and show-off the different strategies, the features, the key innovations and more.

We will stream Tuesday 27th at 11 am CEST / 3 pm GMT / 5 pm CEST and for the first time ever, we will be live simultaneously on our official Twitch Channel, Youtube Channel and Mixer Channel at the same time.

Get more information about The Operational Art of War IV on the official Product Page.

The Operational Art of War IV includes a suite of new naval features that should prove to be a good first step towards a full naval warfare model.

Naval Combat: To recap, naval combat in TOAW had been very crudely modeled. Ships were literally treated as if they were a single piece of equipment – like a single squad. Any AP hit killed them. Their defense strengths weren’t used in that determination, by the way. This surprising discovery meant that it was as easy to sink a Battleship as it was to sink a Destroyer. AP strengths were combined for hit determination – making a bunch of DDs as powerful as BBs. Whether hit ships were permanently destroyed or just sent to the “On Hand” pool bizarrely depended upon a check against their proficiency. Fleet units could “evaporate” like a land unit that had lost cohesion. Embarked units employed their various strengths when attacked. The whole thing had to be overhauled if there was to be any hope of realistic naval warfare. It has been. The new naval combat model has the following features:

• Ships now have damage levels, and take damage in combat, if hit by the attacking ordinance. Those levels are displayed in the unit report.
• Attacking equipment Anti-ship factors are evaluated as individual shots/planes so that each warhead can be evaluated for armor penetration.
• Hit chances depend on a number of checks made involving various factors such as the visibility, attacker proficiency, target agility, aircraft anti-naval strength, gunnery range, and shock levels.
• The amount of damage a hit inflicts on a target ship depends upon shell weights of the ordinance hitting them, their armor thickness, and their durability.
• Ship armor and durability are derived from the ship’s defense strength, unless the designer has explicitly specified them using the new naval equipment add-on to the scenario’s equipment file. That file also allows ship agility, accuracy, and speed to be explicitly specified.
• Embarked units’ armor, durability, agility, and AAA are fixed at 0, 25, 18, and 0, respectively. This means that the strengths of the embarked equipment are no longer used to resolve attacks on embarked units.
• Ships that accumulate 100 or more damage points are eliminated – sent to the dead pile.
• Ship damage levels less than 100 are saved in the unit on each TO&E line. Those levels debilitate the ship’s AP, AAA, Speed, Nuclear Strength, and Agility accordingly. They do not affect Defense Strength, Armor, or Durability levels. Damage levels of 50 or more turn the ship’s TO&E button silver (for a bit of chrome).
• If a TO&E line contains more than one ship all damage on that line is applied to only a single ship until the damage totals 100 – at which point one ship is sunk and the damage level of the TO&E line drops back to zero. Call it the “lead” ship in that line. Other ships in that TO&E line remain undamaged (and invulnerable) – until they become the “lead” ship due to the sinking of the previous one. Note that there is a technique available to designers to split such multiple-ship lines up into single ship lines, if desired.
• Naval units cannot be disbanded by players or evaporated by combat short of all ships in the unit being sunk. Combat never sends ships to the “On Hand” pool.
• Aircraft Carriers with more than 66 damage points cease to function as aircraft carriers. If that means that there are then fewer aircraft carrier bases than air units in the hex, one air unit will be eliminated.
• Carrier-based air units are exempt from combat reorganization.
• Damage points incurred by embarked units destroy a weight of equipment equal to those damage points.
• There is limited ability to repair some damage while at sea and significantly more while at port.

This new combat procedure only affects combat where the target is a ship or embarked. Bombardment of land units by naval forces is still resolved just as it has always been resolved.

Read the full entry here.

Check out the official The Operational Art of War IV product page for more game information!

The Operational Art of War IV development is proceeding straight forward and today developers are very proud to announce that the game is ready to enter the Beta Phase!

If you think to have what it takes enlist here and help us in giving the final touches to the game!

The Operational Art of War IV is the new generation of operational wargames. With more flexibility than before and with a new array of exciting features, it will make you relive the most iconic battles from the dawn of the 20th Century to modern day, including the ones that never occurred!

More than 200 scenarios like the Battle of Marne, Dien Bien Phu, the Battle of Arnhem, the Falkland Invasion – and lots more! – will forge your strategy skills and ability to master all kind of troops and terrains!

First, a big thank to all the community for the patience regarding the long development time for The Operational Art of War IV. Despite some bumps along the way, the TOAW Development Team is working very hard to deliver the great wargame everyone is awaiting.

Today, we are very proud to announce that this project is in its final stages!

The Operational Art of War IV is the new generation of operational wargames. With more flexibility than before and with a new array of exciting features, it will make you relive the most iconic battles from the dawn of the 20th Century to modern day, including the ones that never occurred!

More than 200 scenarios like the Battle of Marne, Dien Bien Phu, the Batte of Arnhem, the Falkland Invasion – and lots more! – will forge your strategy skills and ability to master all kind of troops and terrains!

Check out its official product page for more information!