Hi,

I will describe what I want to be able to do, and hopefully someone can make a good suggestion for a game engine that will suit my purpose.

I want to create a wargame simulation for fun and to work out some things for table top wargames (with little toy soldiers on a table). Game AI isn't necessary, although I am able to implement this if it is interesting later.

In table top wargaming, you have a landscape composed of hills, trees, rivers. So I would need terrain in game. The playing pieces would be infantry battalions and cavalry regiments. These would be simple coloured blocks, with four block for a battalion so that formations could be shown e.g. a battalion in line would be four blocks in line.

A hex, or square, based system won't work because the blocks can't be connected as the unit moves around. That would be no problem if one unit was on one hex, but that won't do the job I am interested in.

In game I need to be able to calculate things like
a) which other units are in the front arc of a unit up until a given distance (for firing, and as 'threat zone'.
b) distance between two units

Does anyone have any suggestions? I would prefer to program in something like Pyhton. It would take me a long time for me to get back into C++!

i don't have the time yet to test some of the game engines - but you didn't mention of 2d or 3d.

if you want to go 2d, Game Maker (yoyo games) is a good bet. it's a, how should i put this, component based? but you create something like an enemy, decide their behaviour, and all that type of enemy will behave the same way.

for 3d, unity3d, 3dgamestudio, dxstudio also behave the same way.

i don't know why, but i prefer this kind of engine than having a global code where you control everything from there.