by Peter Robbins, 4 December 2024
Slitherine has released ICBM Escalation, for all of your nuke-lobbing fun. But is there more than just shooting missiles at each other?
What’s In The “Box”?
Tutorials Galore
Eleven tutorials, of great detail are included with ICBM Escalation. As you can see below, they cover the gambit of basic controls all the way through combined strike plans. Each tutorial is rather thorough in its coverage. With a lack of an initial full-fledged user manual, I’m glad they included such detailed tutorials upon release. I otherwise would have been lost as a player. Now, with that said the user interface throughout is quite intuitive. Mouse-overs offer good insights throughout, but some shift+key based commands I’d likely not be able to decipher from interface alone. Thankfully the tutorials cover just about every command and click involved in the game.
click images to enlarge
New Game
Four modes of play exist in the single player experience for ICBM Escalation.
Standoff (1-2 Hours Length): The standard game. This is a good combination of conventional and nuclear escalation. This offers the unique approach of ICBM Escalation versus its predecessor in the series. There is a good amount of build up before the conflict goes to nuclear weapon release green light. There is some development of research, but not nearly as much as in the Conquest game, which spans “eras” of nuclear proliferation and conventional build up of war pressures.
Conquest (3-6 Hours Length): This is the fuller experience of ICBM Escalation. It has a similar feel to Standoff, but includes much longer conventional build-up time, research, and breathing room for diplomatic efforts ahead of any declaration of unbridled nuclear warfare.
Blitz (15-45 min Length): This mode cuts right to the chase of nuclear warhead use. It’s quick, and it’s dirty. This mode is much more similar to the original ICBM than the improved build-up and discovery phases that set ICBM apart.
Campaign (Linear Set Of Scenarios). As the name suggests, more of a story driven set of linear scenarios. This may be worth playing apart from the other three modes, to experience a story-line perspective using the game engine as the judgment mechanics.
Once I get through describing the mechanics of the gameplay, I’ll do a sample Standoff play through to provide you with a good look over all of the elements of play involved in the game.
Map Scope
The world is your oyster, literally, the whole globe is simulated as seen in the below two pics.The map is very fluid in rendering, and no stuttering is noticed even when many elements are moving about fulfilling their missions.
You can choose to play in a flat earth format, Flat Earthers proven…. well still very wrong, but flat earth ICBM players unite!
Basic Mechanics
I do not plan on giving you a full breakdown of all of the available features (that is what the tutorials in-game will help you out with) but I’ll quickly cover the basics here to give you an idea of how the game plays out.
WASD moves the view around. Clicking on a unit brings up its available weaponry, and other element specific options for modes, radars being on/off, etc. The UI is very intuitive, just mouse-over a button or image or icon to see what it does or what mode it turns on or off for a given unit, element, base, division, etc. Usually holding SHIFT when clicking something will select all of those elements, in particular during deployment phase of the match or scenario.
Grouping element ships into a task force / fleet is easy peasy. You click on the element you want to follow a centralized high value target (usually a carrier as a carrier strike group in the making) and then just click the [Follow] button and then click on the leader you want to stay in formation with. The wargame will take into account your current position and just keep it in locked formation with the main platform you are designated to follow. Simple enough. Works well.
An example carrier strike group is below.
Most elements will automatically defend your owned space (air, land and sea) without having to be directly micro-managed to do so.
Another cool feature is that Air Transport is an actual thing in this wargame. You can transfer certain numbers of land units between air bases quite easily. Just load em up, and set the destination airport, voila, air transport.
Research
Research is handled via a simple interface as a tech tree, but split out into many different available categories of improvements. You are only actively working on one at a time, but what is interesting is that the wargame remembers the order in which you’d chosen in each category, so in effect you build out a pretty substantial queue of which items to research sooner than later. There are many permutations of pathways within the research trees to pick and choose from. I could see many different strategies emerging amongst players as a result. Palpable choices, and visible differing effects on results of productions or capabilities throughout the wargame execution. Nicely done. Looks nice, and easy to understand, a good combo.
Production
As seen in the above screenshot, similar to other UI throughout ICBM Escalation, there are many categories of “stuff” to produce. And what is available to produce is heavily influenced by both the scenario type and configuration at hand, but also what Research you have done so far in the game session.
Each element, facility, or base involved are explained in full detail, including what I really like, the time to build. They were smart as devs and gave you exact game-time instead of game-hours or game-days. So, something may have 5:00 overlaid as text on the element, telling you, it will take 5 minutes in game for this item to be produced. Everything you need as a player to decide what to produce is immediately in front of you. It’s a very intuitive interface.
Once you click to proceed with production, it falls right next to Research on the bottom of the map interface, with the time counting down right on it; very clearly denoting how much longer before that production will be done.
Diplomacy
Diplomacy takes the form of Offer and potentially Counter-Offering as proposed treaties or varying levels of cooperation, as shown in the above screen shot, we’ve offered the Sub-Saharan Africa AI player a Partnership.
Then the Sub-Saharan Africa player counters by requesting a Cruiser for their navy, you know, just a pittance of our might and power. I guess we’ll agree to it. You can see that even though the interface is simple, the combinations of offer and counter-offer could become very interesting, especially in a fully human player multiplayer match. That could get rather cut-throat. You know, just like we like our Uno-esque Gotcha sucker! Wargames to play out.
Espionage
Espionage is handled similarly, in a very simple checkmark to apply the extra oomph in a particular area of spy work. Here is a shot of all of the espionage choices, and their tutorial descriptions.
As the tutorial notes state, you set none, one, or some of them as Actively being pursued by your espionage teams. The less you set active, the more resources go into those particular activities. The more you set active, the less results you will get. Of course, setting anything to inactive, will keep it from being pursued. Choices, choice, choices, really nice throughout this and Diplomacy interfaces of the game.
How Is ICBM Escalation Different Than The Original ICBM?
So how does all of what’s in the box differ from the previous wargame in the series ICBM? Well, in addition to re-installing the previous title to retake a direct look, I asked our friendly neighborhood robot, ChatGPT, what the differences are, and it gave a pretty good summary; the comparison is here. The one thing I’ll call out from memory alone is that the interface feels much more fluid and easy to navigate. Everything about the interface has had a face and functional-lift. The terrain in particular is very much more HD in quality. You absolutely feel like you are playing a new game. ICBM Escalation is not just a face-lift of the original. The gist of the difference is that playing the conventional portions, and interacting with your neighbors in multiplayer in particular can take on more meaning and effect. That is the long and short of; and from everything I’ve seen in my quick look over the product, it has advanced well on all fronts.
Summary First Impressions
After about ten hours in-game, between tutorials and one full Standoff single player offline play thru, I would recommend this wargame highly. Its cost is very nice, and what you get for the money is very solid. This is a very complete wargame. Unlike other early releases of late (well, all EA honestly in the last few years), this is a very solid, bug free product, at least in just a quick 10 hours of direct game-time interaction with the title. I still feel pretty satisfied that if you liked ICBM, you will really like what they’ve added and improved in ICBM Escalation. Better graphics, more conventional warfare options, boom, great wargame. Fits nicely into the casual grognards virtual shelf next to DEFCON and Nuclear Warfare Simulator easy peasy.
ICBM Escalation is a very well refined follow-up to ICBM, and definitely should be considered for your gaming repertoire, especially if you never owned the first title in the series. This is a no-brainer purchase if you don’t have ICBM. It’s a solid strategic level, thermonuclear AND conventional war real-time strategy wargame.
There is a lot more for me to explore, quite honestly. This was just a quick go at the game to give you a basic overview of what’s in the box. I’m excited to dive back in. That is a good sign unto itself. Many games I give first impressions to I want to immediately put on the shelf for a while as I quickly get a little sick of looking at them; this one I want to get back in and play repeatedly.
We’ll have a gallery of gameplay images later today
Adding them to this article would’ve made it prohibitively large to load on your screen
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