At that point in my life, I studiously avoided purchasing video games – for several reasons. First, I wasn’t making a whole lot of money and my budget didn’t need a new category of expenditure. Second, I knew it had the potential to become a massive time suck and I didn’t want to go down that route. I already had some bad Minesweeper and Solitaire habits and the adding designer drugs to that mix didn’t seem helpful.

Alas, I had a “pusher” in my life. (Do people even use that word, “pusher,” anymore? It probably wasn’t still around even in the early 90s). I had a friend that was really into PC games and he just knew I would be too. He gave me a few “copies” of his games to try out. One of his first attempts at hooking me was Empire. Technically, this was Empire Deluxe as Empire actually dates back to the late 70s, but this was long before I would understand such distinctions. The game is played on a randomly-generated map with cities that produce units, and then those fight for control of of the cities. It played as both single player and multiplayer and my friend had one or two play-by-email games going on at any given time. I thought it was pretty cool, but it didn’t really grab me.

He then tried to push a new game, that he said was like Empire but more to it. Civilization had much more than just building units. It sounded more enticing than Empire, but I also gave it a pass.

Then he got really excited. Civilization was coming out with a sequel, Civilization II, and it was going to be a massive upgrade. He hyped it for weeks and, when it was released to the stores, he finally had it in hand. Shortly thereafter, he handed me a stack of floppy disks. “Just try it,” he said.

And just like that, I was an addict.

I played many many games of Civilization and have bought most of the sequels (although not yet Civilization VI), but it is that first game that is the most memorable. I played on an easy (if not the easiest) setting and had probably only one AI opponent. I spent the entire game expanding in my local area and slowly, slowly advancing my technology. By the time I was approaching the end-year for the game, I decided to circumnavigate the world (which was pretty cool – not sure if I had played a game with a “cylindrical” map before that). In doing so, I discovered the other civilization, and then time ran out and I got a poor score. But there was just something about moving through all those blacked-out squares, unveiling island after island, that gave me a real feeling of discovery.

Civilization didn’t invent the “Fog of War.” That credit may go to Empire. What Civilization brought for the first time to computer gaming was the “tech tree,” an innovation transferred over from the Civilization board game upon which Sid’s game was based. By the time I played Civilization II, both of these mechanics were “around”. But it was new to me. The combination of the two – first creating the necessary technology and then discovering what lay in that vast unknown – it really did approximate the “Age of Discovery” for this player.

It must have for many others as well, because this became the method for unveiling maps and pretty much the standard mechanic for any game set within this period. At least with every game that I recall playing up until I’ve encountered some recentinnovations on the theme.

Oh, but what about the title of this post? Years before the events described above, when I was in probably 4th grade or so, a teacher discussed a favorite mnemonic for the year of Columbus’ first voyage. A friend told me that he had an even better mnemonic (he didn’t use that word, I’m sure) with which he would never fail to get the correct answer on his history test. “In the year 1492, Columbus took a poo.” Foolproof.

I never really got it. Does someone sit there thinking, “I know Columbus’ first voyage was in the early 1490s, but what year exactly?” It’s not the “two” that’s the problem. Nevertheless, I remember his rhyme to this day.

In the Year of Our Lord, 1492…

My first attempt to relive that wonder of decades’ past involved getting out my Civilization V. I played the scenario, supplied with the game, called Conquest of the New World. Actually, I played Conquest of the New World Deluxe (both are supplied with the game, each a separate scenario), because if it says “Deluxe,” it must be better.

The scenario uses a handful of Civilization features to recreate the discovery (and, naturally, conquest) of the New World. These are easily identifiable from past gameplay, but the use gives it a unique period flavor. One examples is that ships at sea now get “scurvy,” taking damage during a long voyage, forcing the player to pause at the various found native colonies, instead of just clearing more “fog” every turn. Another example is that the sight radius of regular ships is reduced while it is increased for Admirals. The “admiral” units are then named for the famous explorers. Thus small expeditions of ships are represented separately from the “fleets” that, one presumes, the standard ship unit implies. Likewise, the “city state” mechanic introduced in Civilization V is used to good effect.

Another twist, and one that I’ve not seen before in games on this subject, is that the real purpose of these westward voyages is remembered. The European players, first, get points for finding the “China” territory on the map and making diplomatic contact. Second, after the suitable technology is researched, more points can be earned by sending merchants to China on trading missions.

An even further twist is that taking a Native American capital produces “treasure” units. Having not read any scenario description, I had to guess that the purpose. I shepherded them back to the Old World, where I received some kind of acknowledgement and, I would hope, some victory points. This particular feature I recall from Sid Meier’s Colonization and also from some of the Age of Empires II campaigns.

Arms Race

I recall my impression from the time of the games that dabbled in this area. At least the ones that I played; Civilization, Europa Universalis, and Age of Empires. Despite being very different in terms of mechanics and even genre, they seemed to me to feed off each other with each new version.

I recall noticing this particularly in the iteration of Civilization where they introduced cultural expansion. Before, territorial ownership was defined simply by where the residents of a Civilization happen to be working. Leave a square unworked, and a competing civilization might just plop a city down right there. The inclusion of cultural borders not only made for more sensible gameplay, but caused Civilization to look a little more EU like.

Meanwhile, the Age of Empires franchise leapt in some new directions with the Rise of Nations series. That game dispensed with the construction of cities building-by-building, as the tradition AoE games had one do. The building of cities (more like Civ) and their zones-of-control (a bit like EU’s provinces) all hinted at an exchange of technique between these “big three.” For the betterment of all of them.

Another example was in the trade and diplomacy mechanics, and how computer civilizations would hold or forgive grudges when dealing with the player. If I’m not mistaken, the “bad boy rating” was an EU innovation before permutations on the concept spread.

As for Europa Universalis, the next release after this bit of advancement was EU III, which just did not appeal to me. While I eventually tried both the Hearts of Iron and Victoria sequels based on that engine iteration, I could never bring myself to go EU III. All is redeemed, however, with Europa Universalis IV. The EU franchise was always the pushing their work towards the “realism” end of the spectrum, and EU IV is a huge stride forward in both gameplay and in creating real immersion into the historical period.

But before I get too far down that road, let me go back to Civilization and some scenarios.

Deluxe!

The design is that the “Old Country” for each of the European players is a single, fully-developed city. From these cities, the units; whether for exploration, settlements, or conquest; are dispatched to the New World. The New World is randomly generated, a combination of island and larger land mass features. It also randomly locates those features, so there is initially something of a race to locate good colonization spots. China, too, randomly located, rewarding the persistent explorer.

Not quite four decades after the discovery of the New Word and the French and English already have Caribbean colonies.

While not exactly on topic, I felt I’d be a little remiss if I didn’t at least mention Sid Meier’s Colonization and the “total conversion” of Civilization IV to recreate that game. Obviously, it shares many features with the previous game, including the exploration phase “discovering” a randomly-generated “New World.” However, much like Columbus’ expedition itself, the real goal is transporting resources back to Europe and earning wealth.

While primarily being about the colonization (well, duh), Colonization has some of the same exploration feel as the Civilization V New World scenario.

In the above screenshot, I was discovering what appears to be the main “continent” of Western Hemisphere. As I began to uncover more of the coastline, I noticed a remarkable resemblance to the first ever map of “America” (the first one labeled as such, that is), which is the picture I use for this entry in the timeline.

Enough on Civilization, however. I’ll return to the colony building in a later article, but first…

Like Being There

Europa Universalis has, on occasion, done such a good job of tracking history that it comes to me as a rude shock when I realize how certain things are unrealistically simulated. Because no matter how immersive it gets, under the hood, it is a numbers game, not a reality simulator. I love getting carried away in the “role playing” aspect of these games and hate getting disappointed when I realize how much of it is only in my head and not supported by the game itself. Yes, I understand its not a simulator, but I’d rather I didn’t.

That aside, there are a couple of models that really, really bother me with the way they get it wrong. The biggest of them is the handling of ships of the period.

To digress a bit, movement (both land and sea) is done by assigning a travel time for any unit to move between regions. Those units are either in a region, which they can then interact with, or they are in transit between two regions. That transit time can vary per the speed of the unit and the terrain/distance to be traveled.

Compare and contrast to the grid or hex movement, where each space is uniformly sized, or to the RTS games, where movement is smooth over a very fine grid. In a number of ways, it simplifies the exploration part of the game. By limiting the options from a large number of possible paths to transit through a much smaller number of regions, it limits micromanagement. Micromanagement is also reduced in that putting a unit in “transit” eliminates the need to manage it in the interim.

In both Civilization and Age of Empires, revealing of the map through exploration could become a chore, particularly as the game progressed. While it is exciting to find your nearest neighbor, or the closest ocean, the tedium of clearing the entire map of “fog” in the later game was not pleasant. This was so much the case that games have added the “auto-explore” option, designating a unit to move around discovering terrain without any user input in perpetuity, or at least until they were eaten by lions.

Which brings up another problem with “exploration” and most games. The exploring unit simply wanders the wilderness exploring, unconnected to the player’s civilization. While in a more abstract game like Civilization, the issue is merely one of balance, this really doesn’t make sense as you try to approximate realism.

EU added some depth to exploration to address these additional problems. First, exploring a hidden region was more costly than transiting a clear region, providing a cost to exploration. Secondly, entering unexplored terrain required a special unit function; “Explorers” for the sea and “Conquistadors” for the land. This required the recruitment and maintenance of dedicated leaders, which in line with the historical theme, corresponded to the explorers of the time. Third, the units suffered “attrition” from traveling the open ocean. (Borrowed for the “scurvy” mechanic discussed above). Damage, pretty much the same as that received in combat, is done to ships on a random basis as they travel. This limits the amount of “exploring” they can do before returning to a home port to “heal.”

This last feature could be a bit sticky. While sailing off into the sunset in 1492 was a bit of a crap shoot (see title), it doesn’t make for fun gameplay when your Christopher Columbus and then your Christopher Columbus Jr. are both sunk by random storms, which then delays the whole “New World” discovery part of your game to the mid-1500s. Even if that were a real possibility facing the real Columbus. The mechanic evolved to make the “attrition” slow enough so that the player can manage it. It also eliminated the sea attrition in home waters and added an “auto return” function in sea units to prevent the loss of fleets merely because the player forgot where they were. It certainly made for a better game of exploration than, say, Civilization, but retained some flaws.

As I said, one of my great complaints about Europa Universalis is the ship modeling. The exploration/attrition interaction is one. Discovering new sea lanes becomes a process of gradually pushing units further out into the unexplored sea until the fleet damage starts to become high. Then you return to port, heal, and repeat. This becomes particularly ahistorical when it comes to circumnavigating the world. I usually end up doing this from both ends, gradually chipping away at the darkness to create a thin line of explored territory through the South Pacific. The circle is finished when explorer 2 meets explorer 1’s path. Silly as it is, apparently Bartholomew Diaz’s discovery of the Horn of Africa looked much like this.

Diaz was headed for India. He sailed south of Africa, actually not knowing he’d done it, and was headed for India when his crew objected and demanded to turn back. It was on the return trip that he mapped the southern limits of the African continent and earned his fame. I imagine this whole journey in the mechanics of EU.

The bigger complaint is with the knowledge that the player (as EU has described, some gray eminence having the ear of the Roi du Jour) regarding ships at sea. Every discovery is known to the player as it is made. Thus if I find a new native nation in the New World, I could instantly dispatch a fleet of warships and soldiers from Europe to visit them. Or if I spot an enemy fleet, I can instantaneously reroute my own fleets from anywhere in the world to catch them. In reality, the only way to convey information from ship to shore was to actually sail that ship back to the port and deliver the map/message.

Another major complaint is the poor modeling of weather and, more particularly, trade winds. I’ll probably write some more later, but let’s just say there was a physical reason why huge Muslim fleets weren’t terrorizing the shores of Ireland, as sometimes happens in these game.

For now, let us stick with the exploration issue, and the latest version of EU,

There go the Nina, the Pin… no wait. It’s the Castor, the San Cristobal (Diaz’s ship?), and the Santa Justa, departing Spain for the New World, right on schedule.

because the latest version has made some fascinating progress in fixing discovery and exploration. Europa Universalis continually expands with new features and content in the form of add-ons. The add-on El Dorado focused specifically on this period and the discovery of the New World.

The key feature in this release is that explorers, rather being controlled by the player as they cross the map region-by-region across, are now given exploration missions. The area for their exploration is broadly defined, and then the explorer is sent off. While exploring, the explorer cannot be controlled or re-routed. Once they return to the mainland, the map is updated with discoveries and they come once again under control.

A little more than a year late, Columbus finally locates land in South America.

This finally resolves one of my great EU issues. You feel much more like a 15th century ruler funding missions of discovery, and less like a modern commander in radio contact with his fleets. Note that the exploration mission substitutes for simply sailing into unknown territory. That is, you can’t micromanage even if you want to. On land, there are similar missions for Conquistadors, but the old method of simply moving them around still works as well.

In my game, in the screenshots above, despite efforts to follow the historical script, I quickly veered off the track (which, I might add is what the game is supposed to do). Columbus initially discovered land in Brazil rather than in the Caribbean and the mechanics of colonization meant that that’s where I had to make my initial Spanish colony. I probably failed to trigger some feature that would allow Spain a colony in the historic location. Then again, if Columbus would have landed in South America, he probably would have built a colony in South America. Also, in my 1508, Isabella I lives on. It means Juana is not queen, and Aragon remains separate. I also managed to accidentally marry her to a prince of Naples, killing off Charles V before he was ever born and preempting the Habsburg’s rule over most of Europe. You can see in the screenshot, development in the Americas (my colonies are yellowish) is picking up, but it isn’t netting me any coin. Castile remains deeply in debt. I’ve sent an explorer off in search of the Seven Cities of Gold, in hopes that it will turn my fortunes.

Spain and Portugal (green colonies in Hispaniola) are flipping their historical positions in the Americas. I should’ve married a Habsburg.

The 2015 film The Witch: A New-England Folktale is the directorial debut of production and costume designer Robert Eggers. He said it was inspired, at least in part, by his growing up in New England and being surrounded by the stories of witchcraft in colonial times.

The film was billed as horror, which probably does it a disservice. More aptly, it is an exploration of the early stories of witchcraft in the Plymouth Plantation, 62 years before the Salem Witch trials. The production boasts extensive research into the historicity, including costume and sets. As the film explains at the end, much of the dialog is taken from historical records including letters and legal proceedings.

I really don’t like the the substitution of shockingly-loud sound and music for actual frightening storytelling. Once it occurred to me that, perhaps, the film isn’t supposed to be scary, I became a little more generous in its evaluation. I have to say though – some of the music is really, really loud; especially when I’m straining to get the dialog from the accented English.

The game came out in 1999. Like Civil War Generals 2, it was a sequel. Unlike Civil War Generals 2, it came out only two years after the original, and had much the same look and feel. However, the huge difference was the focus on the exploration of the New World.

This game can be played either in a randomly-generate world, or in a “real world” where the countries of Europe correspond to their correct shape and location. In both cases, the “New World” is both randomly generated and hidden. Major and minor powers of Europe are represented (six apiece), with the play choosing one of the major powers. The player begins in 1502 with a fleet for discovery and exploration of the New World, and an Old Country which has yet to be fully developed and industrialized.

The players goal is to explore and exploit the New World for resources, and use that to build a strong economy and military. Initially the only fighting will be against the native cultures of the New World, who are technologically vastly inferior. Once the major powers become strong enough, they will begin to fight each other for dominance and the wars will move from the New World back to the Old.

Despite that theme, it would be quite a stretch to classify Imperialism 2 as a wargame. Yes, there are battles. Battles can be automatically resolved or fought on a tactical map, with up to twelve units engaged. This was a big part of the game’s appeal at the time.

Instead, the real game is an economic simulation. And by that I don’t mean a simulation of historical economies, but rather the game play is managing a simplified supply chain to build an increasing complex set of interdependencies. In this, the game probably lends as much of its lineage to the Caesar series of city builders or the early management sims like Capitalism as it would a Civilization. The idea is that the economy is created from a foundation of raw materials which can then be combined into manufactured materials. Combinations of materials, workers, and technology produce an ever more complex construction that must be carefully built up over time. It can also become a house of cards. One key resource being cut off will waterfall through the carefully balanced economy, causing a collapse that can be a great struggle to repair.

Getting out the game to play again after what has probably been 15 years, I had forgotten about the learning curve. The mechanics of the game are fairly simple, but a number of factors have to be managed in parallel – the guns versus butter element that is often a part of grand strategy games. As an example, if you don’t have enough military in the early game, you won’t be acquiring the territory to support what will eventually be a large empire. Too much military, and you won’t be investing in the industrial growth you need. Likewise the decision as to when to take your economy to the “next level” requires building up a sense how much of the basics are enough to sustain it.

Interactions with the AI powers involve both trading and a diplomacy systems. The game supported multiplayer when it came out, so playing against fellow humans probably added another unique dimension to the game. I’ve never tried it that way.

The style of game probably hit its peak in the early 2000s. It remains a great game in that there is a lot of challenge to “solving” the game’s puzzle. It takes a lot of time to learn the interactions, and that translates to many, many hours of gameplay. The game’s difficultly levels enforce ever more strict rules. For example, on the simplest setting, the food required to sustain your workers and military units is all equivalent. At higher difficulty level, the workers require a mix of meat and grain, meaning that plenty of one and a shortage of another will still impact you as a shortage. Mastering the simpler settings becomes training for trying to survive the more difficult settings. But all that “gameplay” can be a downside. It means a lot of time investment into learning (or relearning, in my case) how to juggle all the factors. Further, it means each game requires extensive building of the foundation, a foundation that may or may not be sufficient when you get towards the end. Assuming that you do get to the end. While it make take hours to get your economy functioning, it can fall apart in minutes if you hit just the right bump in the road at the right time.

I feel I’ve moved on from this level of micromanagement in games. The industry seems to, currently, support plenty of help for the player, as opposed to forcing to be constantly figuring out what the computer already knows. Game design-wise, it’s probably a subtle point. How different is a game where winning the battle involves getting everything just right versus this, a game where getting the economy is just right is necessary to have the units to win the battle?

A battle with the Incas demonstrates the tactical interface. I’ve bit off way more than I can chew here, not anticipating that somebody armed the Incas like some form of old-West light horse.

The mini-game for battles were part of the quest of that time to mix grand strategy with tactical battles. I note this was a year before the first Total War game came out which, ultimately, has become the standard. This system is just complicated enough to be somewhat interesting in its own right, but not complicated enough that you would actually play the battles on their own. I also remembered, the hard way as it turns out, that watching the strategic layer is critical. I had been rolling over the Incas in battle after battle, and figured I could do the same in the battle pictured above. Instead, they managed to best me in both numbers and technology.

Another angle I’ve remembered the hard way is that I can’t win “peacefully.” There are various options to dealing with the native nations of the New World. One can, of course, simply invade and conquer them. One can also trade with them. Any peaceful interaction builds up a relationship which might eventually be used to goad them into joining your empire. Another diplomatic route is that rights to land can be purchased, allowing the player may develop the resources as well as take a share in the proceeds from sales. The problem is, rather than being “multiple paths to victory,” the economy is going to need a certain amount of “free” resources gained through conquest to function in the later game.

One more reminder that this is not meant to be a historical simulation, it is meant to be a game.

All this criticism aside obscures how addictive this game was 18 years ago, and still is today. It can take many turns to set up a sequence of events to try to get just the right resources put together, and then many more turns to see if your plan comes to fruition. All the while, you can’t be neglecting other parts of the game. The perfect recipe to keep a fella up playing well through the night.

So I’m glad I got the game out. And I’m pleased to see it still runs on my current system, after so many years. Many older games don’t. I’ll probably even try another fresh start, incorporating what I’ve learned so far, to see if I can at least win on the easiest setting. But the exercise has also been a reminded that, sometimes, the memory of it is better than the experience ever was.

The circumstances of the mid-winter water landing on the Hudson river with all 155 passengers and crew surviving is something that I, and probably anyone from their late 20s onward, remembers very well. While watching the movie, a friend remarked that it seemed much more recent than the 8+ years that have now passed.

The drama of the movie (and it is a drama, not a documentary) is to show the struggle that the pilot went through to convince investigators (and himself) what he knows in his gut to be true; that he made the only possible decision.

The lead investigator has said that the movie mischaracterizes the tone and actions of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation to unfairly suggest “government incompetence.”

Where I am now in the book, the author has delved into the details of the first day of the battle. The level of detail is fantastic – far more than previous Civil War books that I’ve read. The author describes where each brigade is deployed and, perhaps even better, is not at all stingy with the maps showing the changing positions. Furthermore, where there is a difference of opinion about what exactly happened, he compares and contrasts the written orders and reports from the officers in question to get at the truth.

These details paint a different picture of this phase of the battle than what I’ve previously held in my mind. The classic portrayal of Day 1 is that the two armies blunder into each other and it merely becomes a race to see which side brings their forces forward first. Ultimately, in this telling, the Confederates achieve the weight of numbers and capture the day’s battleground and the town of Gettysburg, but timely arrival of Union forces halts the Confederate advance before achieving the high ground of Culp’s and Cemetery Hills, to set the stage for Day 2. While this description isn’t inaccurate, it is obviously simplified.

The author is explicit in saying that both armies were moving somewhat blindly, and did not know when or where they would encounter the enemy. Further, he goes into detail about the cavalry mismatch, which he credits as much to Buford’s superior command skills as to simply the number of horse. Having held McPherson’s Ridge long enough for Reynolds to deploy, Buford then moves his troopers to the flanks. Importantly, he provides information about the arrival of Ewell’s corp from the North and North East, preventing the Union army from being surprised and flanked. He points out that, absent Stuart, Lee still had cavalry; he simply lacked the superior cavalry commanders that were riding with Stuart, who might have provided a counter to Buford’s skill.

Lee’s orders anticipated the battle extremely well. In the film Gettysburg, Lee attributes it to divine providence. The fact that multiple orders positioned the corps just so before the battle suggest that, in fact, it was Lee’s own planning that nearly won the first day. Meade, per the book, is credited with two major achievements. First, despite having only just taken over command of the Army of the Potomac, he very successfully moves the entire force north to be ready for the Gettysburg battle. This was far from a given, logistics being what they were. Secondly, his decision to delegate the command of the entire “left wing,” consisting of the Union corps arriving at Gettysburg on July 1st, to Reynolds may well have saved the day. Meade was too remote to command the army himself, but meeting the Army of Northern Virginia piecemeal, possibly with multiple Corp commanders operating independently, might well have been disastrous. Meade anticipated the potential and Reynolds’ presence on the battlefield, short-lived though it may have been, was likely decisive.

Reynolds’ credit was earned by getting the initial infantry into the battle and forcing the Confederates to stop and fight, rather than just move into defensive positions around Gettysburg. His brigade commanders were also admired for their tactical prowess, being able to orient their regiments to handle multiple attacks from different directions, sometimes changing facing to intercept sequential attacks. By contrast, the Confederates seem to have squandered their positional advantage. The initial meeting put some very strong rebel units in a great position to displace the Union infantry through the afternoon of July 1st, but the brilliant brigade-level leadership seemed to be lacking on their side. While the Confederates did gain ground throughout the day, it was done at a high cost in casualties. Perhaps the reason was overconfidence. The lack of respect the South had for their opponents, and the fact that they had the cream of their own army available, meant that they forwent strategy and simply assaulted the Union positions directly.

Once Reynolds was killed, the higher end of the Union chain of command receives much criticism for their handling of the afternoon and evening of the 1st. General Howard did manage to position both his headquarters and reserves on Cemetery Hill, meaning when the Union line fell back that evening, they retreated into a strong position that ultimately won them the battle. However, the author wonders whether that retreat itself could have been avoided. He criticizes the Union commanders for slavishly defending Reynolds’ initial defensive line on McPherson’s Ridge when retreating back towards Gettysburg, to Seminary Ridge positions and to Stephen’s Run (just north of the town), would have resulted in a defense that would have held Gettysburg itself through that first night. By defending too far forward, and upon ground that was easily flanked (much like I’m doing in the screenshot below), the Union army was forced to rapidly retreat through the town to the south, rather than contest that better defensive terrain.

At the end of the day (I suppose literally and figuratively), the author discusses a few of the “what ifs” that are often applied to the Confederates on Gettysburg’s first day. He points out that these are mostly directed at Gen. Ewell. The reason, he explains, is that Gen. Hill was in contact with Lee during much of the day, so to criticize Hill is to criticize Lee, and that just isn’t done. Ewell, on the other hand, takes much fire for not having seized Culp’s Hill and, perhaps, Cemetery Hill in the last few moments of July 1st. His analysis is that, for the most part, the decisions of those Southern commanders were reasonable given the situation before them at the time. He finds it unlikely that there was really that much of a missed opportunity, as for example, is alleged in the Gettysburg movie.

They don’t write ’em like that anymore

In my previous Gettysburg post, I speculated about comparisons between the old Civil War Generals 2 game from Sierra and the in-progress versions of Ultimate General: Civil War. Based on some on-line chatter, I indicated that the old game might well be worth playing yet, but that it didn’t run on modern systems. I hadn’t tried it myself, but that was what I read.

It occurred to me that I wanted to see what would happen if I installed that old CD, and so I tried. It didn’t run (on Windows 7), and complained about a Windows dll that is no longer part of the operating system. It turns out that downloading that dll and getting it in the right place in the system’s folder was all that it took to get it to run. While some of the online instructions for running on modern systems were quite extensive, a lot of it seemed to be to get the “NO CD” hack to run, not the game itself. At least that was my experience. Since I’m OK with running from my original CD, changing that one file was all I needed to do.

I loaded up the Gettysburg scenario and played through the first day as the Union. The graphics are way, way out of date and a tad glitchy, but in some ways the design still shines through. The brigade-level depiction of the battle, along with the simplicity of the model, makes the management of even a large battle fairly painless. There are only two formations, column and line, and units (except artillery) can only attack the adjacent hex. Morale and casualties are managed on a per-person level by the computer, but the player interacts only with a single “rest” function. Corp commanders have their “headquarters” represented on the field (although I’d have to dig out a manual to remember how they affect the other units). Division and lower commanders are included as part of one of their brigades (see the units with the yellow stars, below). There is no facing, or phasing, or similar details for the player to get bogged down with.

Finding my soldiers outnumbering the attacking Confederates, I decided to hit them in their right flank. Turns out, it was premature. Oddly enough, my Generals seem to know right where the enemy is going to come from even before they appear.

While everything is obviously simplified, it nonetheless produces plausible results. It does so in battles that are played in a reasonable amount of time. Remember, also, this is the tactical component of a game that allows the player to go through the entire war. So the simplicity allows that interaction. For example, player’s higher level decisions may change battle locations or participants, or may change the weaponry available to units, all of which need to be easily accommodated at the this level.

One of my fondest memories of this game is the night turns. Everyone pitches tents and sets campfires as soothing music plays in the background. Doles’ boys need the rest.

As for my own experience, my retreat through Gettysburg took a little longer than the real one did, and longer than I expected. As night falls upon me, I still have a number of units north of the town, who seem (by these graphics at least) to be inclined to camp out where they stand. As you might see by the mini-map, fresh corps are streaming into the battle, but I plan to take a little bit of an ahistorical risk here. Figuring Lee will do the same, I’m going to have my boys settle in for the night where they are, and then rush in to take up defensive positions in the morning. I’m thinking the more realistic strategy would be to shore up my defenses with night-movement, if necessary.

We’ll see what happens.

Replaying this game after so many years is still a positive experience. I doubt I’d pay good money for it, though. Maybe a couple bucks on GOG, but no more. What if the graphic glitches were fixed up? What if the graphics could be modernized? Is there still a place for a very simple hex/turn based Civil War game? Or, if you are going to take it that far, would you want to go whole hog and wind up with something more like Ultimate General?

I continue to toy with the Tropico 3 scenarios, and I’ve yet to crack open Tropico 4.

The latest scenario is based, very loosely, on Jamaica and its independence moves in the late 1950s and final decolonization in 1962. The key, says the scenario description, is to move away from the agricultural and raw materials markets that were controlled by Great Britain and develop a self-sufficient industrial economy. All the while, as is the key to the game, I try to stay in the right place in the middle of the Cold War politics going on around me.

Of course, as the victory conditions point out, my real goal is to stay in office through the duration of the game until 1980.

Trade has picked up and I have plenty of money. Now, if I can just get those construction workers to actually build something.

As the years advance into the 1960s, more of the game’s “color” becomes evident. Through radio broadcasts, I witness the Cuban missile crisis taking place nearby, as well as the crisis in the Dominican Republic. Perhaps because I’m getting a little better with the game, the Superpower interplay was also more evident this time around. Having secured an independence of sorts from the United Kingdom, I began courting the Soviets through my local Communist party. Although at one point I became a little too closely aligned with the Russians, I managed to shift the balance by allowing development by some U.S. -connected corporations.

I didn’t manage to anger either superpower sufficiently that they sent warships to my seas, nor did I need to align with either one for protection. I triggered (for the first time) a military conflict with a neighbor, but quickly dispatched them with some U.S. military support.

One might speculate about how many smaller countries have attempted to play such a political game, feigning alignment with communism or capitalism with absolutely know fundamental belief in the system, other than the aid and support that it will bring. Is it a reflection of the real world, or just a clever gameplay element.

Moving on to that Dominican Republic crisis, and a scenario that imagines the assassination of Trujillo took place some years earlier, triggering the installation of a communist-aligned government. As Soviet military aid begins building up on the island, the U.S. government decides it must rely on military force. The result far more detail of what it might look like when that U.S. fleet shows up in the harbor.

Time to send that Soviet equipment to the bottom of the Caribbean, where it belongs. Orange is Dominican ships and air, with the orange square in the lower left being the target of my operation.

This scenario has the player in the drivers seat. We are working with a carrier (plus escorts), a destroyer and a sub. Our task is to use a carrier strike to eliminate the Soviet equipment from our backyard. The primary goal is the airfield where Russian Migs and bombers are stationed. In addition to whatever advantages we have in force, we also have the element of surprise. We can initiate our attack at our leisure with little-to-no expectation that our presence will provoke a first response from the enemy. In the screen shot above, I’ve located what appears to be all of the enemy forces and am positioning my initial strike. I’ve also noticed that the Dominicans are out buzzing my ships and aircraft in waves, so I’d like to hit them when they’re at the end of their fuel.

This scenario has a lot going for it, and satisfies many of my earlier complaints. First of all, the what to do is pretty obvious. No need to spend days hunting for enemies that may or may not be there. Second is the operation from the position of strength. I have the numbers and decent assets, so I don’t feel that I need to solve a complex puzzle to avoid slaughter. Of course, even with all my advantages, I got creamed in the first play-through.

The scenario, at this point, also solved another complaint I’d had about CMANO scenarios. When I lost and lost big, it was glaringly obvious what I’d done wrong. And at the risk of ruining the scenario for my readers, I’ll tell you what I did. I ignored the third dimension, altitude. I left the altitude settings for all my aircraft at the default assuming, I guess, that the game could deal with it. Thus, all my bombing attacks were from high-altitude while the enemy delivered their bombs rocketing in a sea level, both evading radar and being impossible to intercept by that 36,000 ft patrol. Being so obvious what I did wrong, it became pretty easy to tweak my gameplay and vastly improve my performance in a restart.

I’ve written several posts on the Gettysburg Campaign. The first is a combined book/movie/game review around The Killer Angels. I followed that up with some more thoughts on the Scourge of War command/AI system. This is the third I’ve written on the subject, discussing to tangentially-related topics. First the larger campaign in the context of a book and gaming. Second, a discussion of the level of necessary modeling for a proper Civil War battle game.

Having begun contemplating the Battle of Gettysburg, I got my dander up (as Harry Heth may or may not have said). I started in on the book The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. This is a sizeable book that addresses not only the battle itself, but the bigger picture leading up to the battle.

The book starts out, while not explicitly, with a debunking of some of the foundation of the Killer Angels. With the printing of this particular version being 20 years ago, I looked at it as a sort of counter-revisionist history. At some point, however, I actually looked at the front matter and the original date of this work is 1968, meaning it preceded that novel by almost a decade. Clearly the influence of Longstreet’s writing had a hold on the popular conscientious before the Killer Angels.

In particular, Professor Edwin Coddington (the author) questions the idea that Longstreet had agreed with Lee on an invasion of the North on the condition that the campaign be structured around the defensive and that the Battle of Gettysburg was entered into against Longstreet’s long-standing advice. The evidence, in Coddington’s view, suggests that this view of the campaign was conceived by Longstreet after the battle was lost and, perhaps, after the war. Correspondence from before Gettysburg shows Longstreet as an enthusiastic supporter of Lee’s plans for taking the army north. There is no evidence that such support came with conditions, such as the agreement to seek a defensive strategy once in enemy territory.

Another stark contrast between the book/film and Coddington’s research is the scene where Lee realizes that they need to turn to fight the approaching Union army. In the movie, unable to read the map, he asks “What town in this?” The answer is Gettysburg. By contrast, Lee in fact expected the battle in the North to take place near Chambersburg, York, or Gettysburg. Gettysburg may have been his preference. While moving North, he deliberately telegraphed his positions with the intent of drawing the Union army towards him. When he realized he had succeeded, he deliberately and leisurely positioned his forces around Gettysburg with the intent of fighting a battle much like the first day at Gettysburg turned out.

Furthermore, the days and weeks leading to Gettysburg were far from a peaceful march from Virginia to Pennsylvania. Various actions occurred all along the route, ranging from the cavalry battles at Brandy Station and near the passes to the overwhelming victory of Ewell and Early’s assault and capture of Winchester. The book also highlights the importance (and impotence) of Darius Couch’s Pennsylvania militia, as the defending force in Pennsylvania up until the arrival of the Army of the Potomac.

Looking at what I’ve previously thought of as simply a march north in in new light, I decided to break out my old copy of AgeOD’s American Civil War. This was a follow-on to the extremely well-regarded Birth of America, a game which covered the operational level of the French and Indian Wars and the American Revolutionary War. AACW, as it is often abbreviated, expanded on the engine and further added the management of the wartime economy, making it a game of vastly greater scope and scale. Many thought this resulted in making the game too complicated, losing the charm that made its predecessor so successful.

“We did not want the fight but the fight is here!” Longstreet moves his Corp into Gettysburg in the opening turn.

The game has, as part of the original package, a Gettysburg scenario. Given the operational scale of the game, I hoped that this would be a useful depiction of the campaign as described in the book. Disappointingly, given my goals, I found that the AACW scenario starts at the end of June with both armies situated just outside of the vicinity of Gettysburg. For the battle itself it seems that, while there might be a few choices for the player, the outcome is going to be largely depended on the roll of the virtual dice.

Devil’s Details and the Brigade

I also continued to work my way through the Ultimate General campaign, and have warmed to it the more I play. My original impressions were that it was a little on the simple side. Perhaps it is better thought of as more of a complex RTS than a simplified wargame. Specifically, I did comment on the unit size; the basic maneuver unit being brigades rather than the more commonplace regiments. My other first impression was that the game was very difficult. In several plays, I lost every time.

Since that first writing, I’ve played all the way through the campaign from both sides. My result was that, as Confederates, I suffered the historical loss. As the Union, my first two days were victories (again historical), but on July 3rd I was taken by surprise by a Confederate envelopment. Pickett’s command actually hit me from the rear and the enemy used my resulting distraction to push me off Cemetery Ridge.

The play got me thinking about the level of abstraction and what is appropriate. Appropriateness, of course, is relative. Does that mean ever more realism and accuracy of the simulation? Does it mean more fun to play? How important is accessibility? For the target of this particular game, the ability to pick up the mechanics quickly and to be able to complete a game within a 20-30 minutes is probably at a premium. When going in this direction, how much and what kind of abstraction will retain a good simulation of command, even if the details don’t appear to be simulated?

The original Avalon Hill Gettysburg game came out in 1958, and was one of the first of the modern wargames. To the eyes of today’s game player, it was fairly primitive and the package does not come together well, but its fair to say that all games that followed owe a debt to the design. The game was played on a square grid, over a fairly attractive map using counters representing Divisions. The rules were rewritten and the components re-released several times by Avalon Hill, culminating in much more modern-looking 1977 version using hexes and traditional counters. Still, the maneuver unit is at the Division level. Avalon Hill had a 1993 release, Roads to Gettysburg, again with primarily Division level unit markers, however this was meant to capture (as I started off with at the beginning of the article) the larger campaign.

The most modern, and probably most well-regarded board game treatment of this battle is The Guns of Gettysburg. It is a hex-less (and square-less), card-less, and dice-less treatment of the Gettysburg battle. It is part of a series of games taking place in this era (Napoleonic and American Civil War) that uses wooden blocks and nodal maps to represent the combat style of the time. I don’t mean to get into a discussion of the game itself except to note that, again, the maneuver unit is somewhere between the division and the brigade (multiple units per division but not necessarily one per brigade).

The point of all this is that, when it comes to boardgame representations a huge battle like Gettysburg, breaking the units down into brigades would be considered a “serious” treatment. Within that context, the Ultimate General design make not seem quite so simple. I’m further influenced by looking ahead at the next in the series, Ultimate General: Civil War. I don’t have this game; it’s a Steam Early Access game, which seems like paying for the privilege of being a beta tester. However, I can see from discussion, screenshots, and design notes some of the direction that game is headed. It also has me considering Ultimate General: Gettysburg to be more of a testing-the-waters for the fuller vision of the new game.

From what I can tell, Ultimate General: Civil War will, in fact, take the simulation down to the regiment level. The comparison I would make, rather that to the Sid Meier game, is to Sierra’s Civil War Generals 2. That game, which I still might be playing today if it worked easily on current operating systems, provided the battles of the Civil War linked together in campaigns. At the campaign level, management decisions were made about supplies, weapons, and manpower as well as high level strategic options. Those decisions then influenced the order and details of the tactical battles. It was a very engaging game that consumed a lot of my time back when it was new. This may be the direction that this series is trying to go.

Reading Steam comments about the early access for Ultimate General: Civil War highlight some existing problems, that hopefully will be ironed out in due time. Most of the comments seem to be about the campaign system, and how well previous results are factored into the next battle. Based on my playing of Ultimate General: Gettysburg, if I had one request it would be better modelling of supply. It isn’t so obvious with infantry; when infantry units engage, they gradually become depleted through a combination of morale, physical losses, and (perhaps) ammunition. However, a battery of cannon can, if within range of enemy units, fire on the enemy positions indefinitely.

While the standard for computer wargames tends to be at the Regiment, rather than Brigade level, I took a peek at Battleground 2: Gettysburg to remind myself of that design. Although the second of the John Tiller/Talonsoft series, it was the first of the “Age of Rifles” games. It also used the Brigade as the unit for the “stands” (it mimicked the look of the table top wargame, although played on hexes).

In the HPS iteration of the the Tiller Civil War engine, he reimplemented Gettysburg battle at a much finer level of detail as well as capping it with an operational level “decision” interface that guides the tactical level battles. While there are a dozen Civil War titles for the PC, only eleven are available on the tablet (and that includes one demo game, not related to one of the battles). Perhaps because Gettysburg was one of the first, if not the first, conversion to the new engine, it is not on the tablet.

This is most certainly not Gettysburg. It is a tutorial scenario, but one that vaguely corresponds to Buford’s July 1st Gettysburg defense.

For some further compare and contrast, I did take a look at the demo app on the tablet. For continuity sake, one of the tutorial scenarios involves a cavalry unit (under Buford) defending a ridge against attacking Confederate infantry. It certainly sounds pretty Gettysburg-like.

The Tiller offerings are thought of as at the serious end of the military simulation spectrum, which is why I think it makes an interesting compare and contrast. As I said, the unit size (regiment) matches where the Ultimate General: Civil War appears to be headed. But just look at that row of buttons across the top. Surely, with all those options and all that you do every turn, it must be a much deeper game? What “serious” options are left out of the more accessible version of the Battle?

The turn-based versus continuous time is one obvious difference. It certainly changes the way one tends to manage their game. In a turn based game, a player often feels the need to consider each move carefully, whereas in a real time game you’re forced to move your focus away from some parts of the battle as you focus on others. In theory though, when a RTS is pausable, there is opportunity for equal amounts of deliberation. Further, continuous time (or at least a simultaneous execution of turns) eliminates some gaminess surrounding the order in which you make your moves. Point being, I don’t automatically consider one style or the other as superior.

Several of those interface buttons along the top have to do with facing, which is also modeled in Ultimate General, and with their cooler interface. What isn’t in the Ultimate General interface is the change from column to line, or the limbering/unlimbering of artillery. Ultimate General does this “automatically” when you make a move. For short moves, cannons are pushed forward into their new position. For long moves, cannons are hitched to their horse teams and infantry forms into a column. When playing the various Tiller games, I often find that the formation is more something to belatedly realize you’ve forgotten to manage (especially in more modern settings where there is column/deployed and mounted/foot) rather than a fun addition to gameplay. The question with letting the computer do it is, is everything modeled correctly?

Similarly, the choices for targeting units in the turn based game do not necessarily add to the experience. In Ultimate General, the player can direct fire, but the default is that units choose their own targets. This actually makes more sense in terms of realism. From the battlefield commanders standpoint, units are apt to fire on the units that they feel are most threatening to them, not the most important targets from command point of view. Granted, the automatic resolution of “opportunity fire” makes the two systems, again in theory, pretty similar, the real time version (to me) feels more natural. Finally, they both have options to enter melee combat, and are thus pretty equivalent on that level.

There are other details that the Tiller version probably models better, and certainly models more explicitly. I do think that the Ultimate General system is not targeting the same level of fidelity, and so a one-to-one comparison isn’t necessarily fair. My point, however, is that something like Ultimate General could easily challenge the something like the Tiller games, if taken in that direction.

Lesley Stahl: Did you meet a lot of people who perpetrated war crimes who would otherwise in your opinion have been just a normal, upstanding citizen?Benjamin Ferencz: Of course, is my answer. These men would never have been murderers had it not been for the war. These were people who could quote Goethe, who loved Wagner, who were polite–Lesley Stahl: What turns a man into a savage beast like that?Benjamin Ferencz: He’s not a savage. He’s an intelligent, patriotic human being.Lesley Stahl: He’s a savage when he does the murder though.Benjamin Ferencz: No. He’s a patriotic human being acting in the interest of his country, in his mind.Lesley Stahl: You don’t think they turn into savages even for the act?Benjamin Ferencz: Do you think the man who dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was a savage? Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.

My final exercise in the exploration of the Suez Crisis was to be a scenario in CMANO imagining an escalation of the Egypt situation into a global conflict between the superpowers, not an entirely implausible scenario given the events.

The actual scenario, titled Caribbean Clinch, is a user-made scenario that is one of the archetypes of CMANO situations. The player is given a mixed bag of assets with which he is expected to locate and dispatch a mix of enemy surface and subsurface vessels. I’m pretty sure I’ve played a similar setup before. Moving the same basic scenario to different frames allows exploration of the technology available at that time.

No wheat evident amongst the chaff.

My complaint here is a variation of one I’ve made before. I lost the scenario, having failed to find any of the enemy units. The situation is that the Carribean Basin has a number of commercial vessels which I ended up chasing (often having to re-identify the same ones), and I never located any hostile vessels. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps I was supposed to use more active radar searches than I did? Perhaps my search patterns were poorly conceived?

The point is – I don’t know. For the advanced CMANO gamer, the answer is probably obvious.

In working on my previous article, I was reading about why the disparity between the historical results and the playing experience in the Steel Panthers scenario. Someone suggested that the last thing a scenario builder wants to hear, having put a lot of time into creating a masterpiece of a scenario, is that it is too easy and not worth playing.

By contrast, I play for insight into the historical conditions of the situation represented. If, historically, my side had an overwhelming win, I want to see that happen (or at least have that potential, assuming I do the historically right thing). It is frustrating for me, a casual gamer, to completely fail in the mission and, in doing so, also completely fail to have learned anything about the situation, equipment, or tactics.

Fail_Safe

To compare and contrast; this scenario also, for me at least, is fiendishly difficult. In that earlier article, I discussed the problems of trying to operate B-47s against the evolved Soviet threat, and those problems are evident here as well. It was a failure of doctrine to keep pace with technology. Unlike that other scenario, at the scale here I don’t think it is appropriate to “pilot” planes using the CMANO interface, so I have to assume there is another, more operational, solution.

But by contrast, the situation portrayed in the user-made scenario Peeling the Onion is both fascinating and unique. So much that even a complete failure is a learning experience. As the player, you are the commander of the “Reflex” operations in Morocco, as well as the supporting air wings in the States. With mid-air refueling, the bases in Morocco allow the bombing of Soviet targets with the B-47s. Furthermore, these jet bombers were expected to fly higher and faster than the Soviet defenses were capable of achieving, and thus can strike their targets without the necessity of escort fighters or other support. Thus, the game even in complete loss is instructional allowing the player to imagine how a commander at that time might have been taken completely by surprise by the latest in Russian technology.

In this scenario, you are commanding American nuclear bomber bases in Morocco, for striking the Soviet Union from the South. The red area is someone else’s business. For now, there is still peace, but I send a few planes on forward alert just to be cautious.

What makes the difference is that the impossible situation here is one, potentially, faced by a commander in this place and time. The doctrine and forces assumed that the U.S. nuclear strike was invulnerable to defense. By the late 50s, this was no longer the case. So if the commander got the go to launch, what was he to do? He had no counter to the Soviet air defenses, which (perhaps unbeknownst to him) had become effective.

War! With the outbreak of hostilities, I launch my first strike with everything I’ve got. It will prove to be insufficient.

As with the previous scenarios in the era, I have to wonder if the capabilities of the Soviet forces aren’t a bit on the optimistic side. <Spoiler Alert – from here I talk scenario details> In my initial strike, using all the bombers that I had stationed in Morocco, the Russians had no problem shooting down every one. The Yak 25 fighter moves faster and flies higher than my B-47s, so all I can hope for is a lucky tail gunner shot. Since I’m also outnumbered, I probably need half-a-dozen lucky tail gunner shots in a row to get the bomb through.

I also ran into some frustrating interface issues. At the point I realized none of my guys were getting out alive, it seemed pointless to worry about refueling issues. Yes I had insufficient refueling planes in the theater but, after all my bombers were shot down, I had unused refueling planes. Point being, once a bombing run began, I wanted it completed, whether or not the pilot thinks he could get his plane home again. At one point, I even had a bomber get pretty close to the target, at which point he turned around and began heading for a refueling station. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to override that behavior (although I know I’ve crashed planes in previous scenarios by accidentally running them out of fuel). It was really upsetting to, several times, finally get the bomber headed in the right direction to then, once again, have it turn around and head for a tanker rendezvous. Finally, I had to give up at let him egress, at which point he was promptly shot down by the planes he had just avoided on the inbound leg. My sole consolation was that I didn’t really believe he was going to make to the target anyway.

One more learning experience. The frustration of being unable to get through the Soviet defenses does provoke emotional reactions. Eventually, I did manage to light off 10 megatons near a Ukrainian city, and boy did that feel good. All of this without context; the scenario deliberately gives no background for the war or the green light to bomb. The Russians goal is only to prevent me from wiping out all their cities, whereas mine is to maximize innocent body count – and yet I feel personally offended when they prevent me from doing so. It makes you think about what happens, psychologically, in a real war.

While Bir Gifgafa seems to be the most modeled battle of the Suez Conflict, it isn’t necessarily the best from a player’s perspective. Several other battles present more interesting fodder for wargaming.

New Battle, New Game

Taking a look at a new gaming system, I tried John Tiller‘s Modern Campaigns, the Middle East ’67 product. This is one of the products that carried over the HPS Sims days, but with a twist; it has also been released for tablets and that is the version that I got.

The mobile versions of these games are not a straight port. In this example, ME ’67 for the PC offers 37 scenarios whereas the mobile version offers 17. Also, the PC version comes with editing tools, whereas the tablet would seem to be a what-you-see-is-what-you-get situation. However, the mobile versions are considerably lower priced to make up for it – $39.95 versus $2.99.

Armor to the rescue at Abu Agheila.

The engine is somewhere between the grand tactical games of the previous article and the full war. In fact, it is within the smaller end-of-the-scale of what is done with The Operational Art of War. By comparison with the TOAW scenario on the same subject, it is about twice the granularity. Here hexes represent one mile (as compared to 2.5 km) and the time scale is 3 hour turns (as compared to 6); although such a comparison is less clear when you factor in TOAW‘s split turns. Unit sizes are generally the same (infantry in battalions), although ME ’67 appears more likely to have the occasional smaller scale units. I also noticed, in the options, the ability to split units (also an option in TOAW). I’ve never used it in playing either game, but in just a quick try, the TOAW units can be split (arbitrarily, not by company) whereas that doesn’t seem to be an option for the identical units in ME ’67.

Comparing and contrasting, ME ’67 is a more focused product, and it has some details to show for it. For example, the day/night cycle that I complained about in the TOAW version is now included. Two turns per 24 hours (at least in the scenarios I’ve tried so far) are night turns, which are distinguished by reduced visibility and no air support. The details of combat are more obvious in the reporting (the number of men/vehicle kills are highlighted with every attack), whereas TOAW is tracking squads, but I’d be surprised if the under-the-hood accounting is all that different. Also in both, all units except artillery have an attack range of 1 hex. Finally, more in line with the grand-tactical games, ME ’67 makes the distinction between ranged fire and assault by deliberately conducting Divided Ground-style assaults.

One of the complaints I have about the Tiller games is that they tend to be fairly confined scenarios. Movement rates are small enough relative to the duration of the scenarios that your path to victory from the initial setup is rather focused. It is likely an AI thing: if a player could collect up all his troops and swing them around to the rear of the enemy position for an a-historical attack, the AI would probably react very wrongly to it. It also seems that often the “challenge” of the scenario is imposed by the turn limit. In the scenario shown above, this latter wasn’t the case. I had enough time to do what I needed to do. The first observation applies though; there aren’t a lot of options outside of the historical battle – as Israeli, I split my forces and attack using both of the roads headed into the pass.

As a product, it does handle the 1956 war just a tad better than the TOAW version. I’m not sure that is does it $39.95 better. In fact, one of the attractions of this game is that it is on the tablet, and it is a break from the mouse-heavy play of everything else I have. That said, the touch-screen interface is a little quirky. Movement is a press-down until a unit is selected, at which point you can (by continuing to press) create a movement path. It is easy to do it wrong, and that can be annoying. Otherwise, it makes a pretty decent “casual” mobile game.

Last comment is that this is Middle East ’67. Although there are three scenarios for the 1956 conflict, the bulk of the scenarios are for later wars, and so I do plan to be coming back to this one.

Testing 1-2-3

Given the lopsided loss for the Command Ops scenario based on this war, I decided to run a test. Rather than mix the results of terrain, attack/defense, and unit capabilities all at once, I wanted to see a straight-up comparison of the unit capabilities, Israel versus Egypt.

I created a test map, with a large flat area so that line-of-sight would not be an issue. The forces (armor only, no resupply) deployed with the player assuming control near sun-up. Both sides have an objective at the center of the map, so that each side must move towards engagement and duke it out.

The map is mostly flat, though I added some hills and canyons for aesthetic purposes. My armor moved towards the objective (that white square with the blue arrow) in column, and met the enemy coming the other way.

Daylight and lack of terrain features meant that that I had knowledge of the location of the approaching enemy force throughout. About 2500 meters, my units began engaging. This was outside of the effective range of the Egyptians, and they did not return fire. This is much more in line with what I’d expect than my previous version of the scenario.

I also noticed another interesting and, to me, unexpected feature of the game. Once the shooting starts, the ongoing combat disrupts the line of sight and, correspondingly, intelligence about the enemy. The black-outline to the southwest of the lead enemy unit is showing that I previously spotted a unit there, but its current location is unknown. Off the scope of this screenshot, the entire tail of the enemy column was lost once the shooting started, even though it was well within range of sight before.

I am continuing to engage the enemy outside of their effective range. To gain further advantage, I’m disengaging part of my line to extend to my left. The red mark is the game’s representation of my friendly fire.

As I am able to bring my tanks into range, the battle continues as I would expect based my experience with the Bir Gifgafa encounter in other games. As a note, I did not try to tweak the parameters to achieve my results. The Soviet data are from the Germany scenario I played earlier and the Israeli guns are using data for the German 75, upon which the French design was based.

I do appear to have flummoxed the AI. In the above screenshot, while I have deployed my units outside of the enemies range in a line, he appears to have trouble coming out of column and, even after several hours and many losses, has yet to close to his own engagement range. But that wasn’t what I am testing. I just want to see if the Israeli range advantage comes through in the modelling, and it does seem to.

I feel the need to press the attack, so I’m ordering my units to close the distance. This increases the damage I’m doing to the enemy (yellow crosses = destroyed Egyptian units), but I’m now taking return fire and own-side losses.

By mid-afternoon, perceiving I have the advantage, I begin to push forward to seize the objective and eliminate the enemy. Once again, I do see the expected behavior. Once I get into the 1500m range, the return fire from the Egyptians becomes effective.

One major difference in this scenario is the speed of the encounter. Whereas all the other models of this battle keep it within an hour or two, we see in this screenshot has it at about 2PM, having been engaged since 10AM. Obviously, there is nothing implausible about a slower pace. If the commanders do not push the engagement, things may well move slowly. In the end, the Egyptian commander surrendered to me right around sunset. And by surrender, I would assume the game means “conceded victory” by withdrawing, as opposed to turning over all his arms and men.

Riffing on Rafah

Another battle that has treatments from multiple games is the taking of the fortress at Rafah in the Gaza strip.

A 1956 U.S. Army map from just before the war shows Rafah, the 1948 Armistice Line, and the surrounding territory.

In the north, the opening move for the Israelis in the 1956 war was to seize the fortress at Rafah. This separated the remaining Gaza forces from Egypt, allowing Israel both to strike West into the Sinai, and to isolate and destroy the remaining forces in Gaza. The fortress complex was defended by the 5th Infantry Brigade, a mix of Egyptian and Palestinian forces.

Although the initial phases of the operation were deep in the Sinai, arguably the entire raison d’être for the invasion was the occupation and pacification of the Gaza strip. Although, in the event, this battle was a complete Israeli victory (less than 10 casualties), it was nevertheless a critical battle in achieving Israeli success.

The battle for Rafah as portrayed in Divided Ground. The 2D view shows the full scope of the battle, with the Israeli’s striking simultaneously from 3 directions.

Divided Ground has this scenario, and it provides an excellent fit for this engine.

Without buying some more books on the subject, I have only hints at the actual timeline of the battle. It appears that the battle started during the night before, as Israeli engineering units infiltrated the enemy lines and cleared the mine fields. The main attack came after daybreak, and consisted of a rapid, mechanized assault on the Egyptian fortifications.

Comparing and contrasting two versions of this scenario is an illuminating exercise. The Divided Ground scenario (a modified version* of the default scenario, again by Alan R. Arvold) is at the upper end of what is appropriate for this engine. The game duration is about 2 hours, beyond which simulating logistics becomes important in a scenario.

The killers awoke before dawn. The sun has yet to come up, and already my assault has made a hole in the Egyptian position.

The ME ’67 scenario runs eight turns, the two nights bookmarking the actual day of the battle. Approaching the Egyptian positions and even the initial assaults occur during the night turn, while the bulk of the fighting takes place throughout the day.

So which of these two takes comes closest to getting it right? And by right, do I mean which is more historical? More fun? More instructive?

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. I think many grand-tactical scale war games create scenarios “representative” of battles, rather than trying to nail down the details. Was the battle really fought in a two hour period, start to finish? I doubt it. But the pace of the actual assault may well have been that a two-hour time limit is appropriate.

Examining the two scenarios side-by-side, you can see they model the situation very similarly. The finer grain of the Divided Ground version allows for some additional details. For example, there is an armored car unit, represented as two “stands”, on the board. In the ME ’67 game, these perhaps wouldn’t show up as a separate company in the order of battle.

Divided Ground is more fun, and probably a better all-around way to deal with an engagement like this. While the length of the battle more more accurately captured at the operational level, the pace of the battle is probably not. The player slowly moving his armor through the Rafah fortresses does not strike me as how the battle should be portrayed. This should be an example of using mobile warfare to defeat fixed fortifications, and that doesn’t simulate well using dice rolls comparing attack and defense values. Furthermore, the much of the fun comes from the different equipment between the sides. Israel, unable to get her hands on state-of-the-art Western hardware, mixed and matched to create some unique weaponry. Doesn’t the player want to get hands on this equipment, actually interacting with range and firepower and lethality?

Of course, Divided Ground itself is quite an abstraction. Although I’m moving 3D tanks around the “board,” these are all representative of small units. Each “turn” I get two “shots” from my tank against the enemy, but that represents what? How many of my, say, 5 tanks are engaging with how many rounds? It may be a “better” way to play this battle, but is it in any way optimal?

As an aside, I do notice that I was completely unable to reproduce the historical result of minimal Israeli casualties. I lost a bunch of men and equipment in the approach, including having trucks destroyed with infantry on board. In the ME ’67 version, by contrast, claiming all the victory locations with minimal losses pretty much is necessary for victory.

Playing this in Divided Ground does make me wonder whether I should be buying the revamp, Campaign Series Middle East. After fighting not just the enemy, but software oddities (one turn I watched an Arab truck just go back and forth between two hexes, until in ran out of movement) and operating system glitches, the improvements in the newer version start to look really appealing. However, as some of the online reviews pointed out, you are buying basically a modded up version of a 20-year-old game – in this case a 20-year-old game I’ve already paid for. As was said, it’s the kind of thing you’d expect to find for under $10 on Steam. Even at that price, it may be one of those games that you’d wait for the Steam sale. For $39.99?

Mini Me

To get involved with each vehicle and each shot of the main gun, a player needs to break out Steel Panthers.

The size of the Rafah battle, as portrayed in the previous two engines, exceeds what is appropriate for WinSPMBT. Instead, a scenario explores an engagement that occurred immediately after the victory at Rafah. As the defenses at Rafah began to come apart, Moshe Dayan sent the light tanks (AMX-13s) along the coast to take al-Arish. At roughly the right edge of the the U.S. military map, above, the Israelis ran into prepared Egyptian defenses.

The resulting WinSPMBT scenario looks something like Rafah in miniature. The defensive positions are smaller and the attackers are fewer, and there aren’t 3+ axes of attack to manage.

Rushing the wire. I replayed this scenario half a dozen times, trying to figure out how to get close to the historical outcome.

Nevertheless, the shot-by-shot version of this fight gets a bit tedious, compared to the higher level simulations. It doesn’t help that I find this scenario (called Road to el-Arish) very difficult to play. Completely uncharacteristically for me, I tried the scenario something like six times in a row in an attempt to figure it out. Without success, I might add. What gets me is that, not only did Moshe Dayan crack this nut, again winning the battle with minimal losses, but the player is expected to get an overwhelming victory as well – the instructions say anything less than a 2:1 Israeli point victory should be considered a loss.

Since I don’t know what exactly the answer is, I can only speculate. But I think managing the line-of-sight from potential enemy positions is probably a key, and is something that isn’t easy when it to the ancient UI of WinSPMBT.

*I’m actually not entirely sure which version of the scenario I’m playing, the stock or the revised one. See the notes (albeit for a newer version than the Divided Ground one) for differences between the two.