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Some time ago, I stopped reading from Moment of Battle because the period-focus of my gaming was incompatible with the period that the book was addressing. I was, then, reading the chapter on the Annus Mirabilis, which analyzed two victories of the English over the French in the Seven Years War. Having caught back up with my gaming, I’ve now picked the book back up, too.

I’ve now just read through the next three chapters. They do seem to me to fit nicely as a trio, telling together a coherent mini-story, much as did the four battles which mapped the rise and fall of Rome. This story, despite half of the key battles being land engagements, is of England’s rise to become the ruler of the waves.

At the start of our story, in early 1757, England and France struggled for world domination, it would appear that France had the upper hand. Moment of Battle gives much of the credit for the situation’s reversal to William Pitt (the Elder) and his bold strategy for victory in the Seven Years War. Within two-and-a-half years of having implemented Pitt’s plan, England had taken control of the oceans, seized the French colonial center of Quebec, and made significant gains in India. On the Caribbean front, minor gains were already apparent in 1759. By 1762, however, England would see significant victory there as well. England’s combination of naval power, world trade dominance, and global reach was well on its way to establishing Great Britain as a uniquely powerful world empire.

While Moment of Battle credits Pitt’s grand strategy, it points out a certain incongruity between the ultimate importance of the victories and the factors behind the victories themselves. While the leadership skills of these episodes are acknowledged, in all three of these critical turning points it seems that the results were a forgone conclusion flowing from the strategic situation. These were not desperate battles where “for want of a nail” the tide of history was decided. Britain’s naval victories were the result of a long-term cultural stance that guaranteed that England had a vastly superior navy. Thus these evenly-matched battles (numerically speaking) were really nothing of the sort. On land, the strategic decisions – Montcalm’s decision to even contest the Plains of Abraham rather than wait out a siege or Burgoyne’s decision to drive his army through the wilderness of upstate New York – they determined the outcome before the battles were ever fought.

Obviously, England’s loss at the Battle of Saratoga isn’t quite the story of a march to supremacy that Trafalgar was. Nevertheless, it is the same army that defeated France in the French and Indian War, with many of the same officers now taking sides against each other. Although Moment doesn’t delve into it, it was the cost of the French and Indian War that prompted some of the “unfair” taxation in the first place. It was the training supplied by the first war that created the heroes of the second. Finally, the creation of America had so much impact on French and English relations, the French revolution itself, and the international political situation under which Napoleon faced off against the English. While obviously critical to the future history of America, there is also no doubt that this was a pivotal moment in the history of Western Civilization.

– My own set of miracles.

In case you were wondering, I’m still chipping away at my “French and Indian War” grand campaign in Birth of America II. I feel that I’ve, somewhat, got a grip on the flow of things but that doesn’t mean I was wrong about my concerns going in. In the screenshot above, taken late in 1760, I’ve managed a version of the historical “miracle.” General Wolfe prevailed in the Siege of Quebec in the early fall of 1759 and, after overwintering there, took control of Montreal the next year. Within this Lake Champlain -centered theater, my progress has been relatively historical and, for lack of a better descriptor, intentional. That is to say, my victories feel that they have been the result of planning and the husbandry of available resources. In other theaters, I’m a bit further afield. I managed to miss the opportunity to seize Louisburg on its historical schedule – instead, I tried to besiege that fortress simultaneously with my attack on Quebec, but was thrown back. My situation in the southern colonies is quite the mess – although since I don’t know the history, I don’t know what I’ve got wrong. Similarly, I seem to be taking some ahistorical lumps in the transatlantic trade routes but, well, am I? Maybe I’ve failed to commit certain resources and am reaping what I have sown. Or maybe I’m seeing some plausible variation on what really happened. Ignorance, in this case, is not bliss.

Instead, it is much as I predicted at the outset. My enjoyment and success is enhanced to the extent that I understand the resources, personalities, and twists-of-fate that actually determined the outcome of these military campaigns. Sometimes wargaming works as an introduction to the history that it portrays. The heavily-scripted events of the original Europa Universalis come to mind. In this case, while obviously Birth of America can be used to explore the history of pre-Revolutionary America, we can’t rely on the game to be our teacher.

At the same time, I was looking for alternative treatments of these battles. During this most recent Steam Christmas sale, I decided to purchase all the DLC for The Seven Years War (1756-1763). It wasn’t actually on sale, mind you, but I bought it anyway. One’s judgement becomes a little clouded in the run-up to Christmas. There are two add-ons, with one DLC providing a battle generation capability and six additional historical battles. The package includes two of the North American battles, Carillon and The Plains of Abraham (see below). The other DLC, which I picked up because Steam incentivizes buying “bundles,” adds Sweden as a playable faction.

– Quebec, per the Seven Years War. I see the French have set a fire, as seems to happen.

Seeing that I’m just now reading about the Siege of Quebec, it is that scenario that I broke out first. I took the side of the British, who must assault the French defensive position in order to achieve victory. As I said, the book implies that the British victory was decided once the French committed to open battle. In the game, however, an English victory is by no means assured.

– I thought I was winning. I was not.

Having spent more good money on this game I am, of course, compelled to try harder to like it. Do I like it because it comes close or do I hate it because it fails (while coming close) to fulfill its promise?

My first problem is there seems to be a mismatch between the way tactical battles are modeled relative to this smaller size. The British order-of-battle consists of three wings and a reserve, each themselves made up of two front-line regiments and a reserve regiment. The management at a regiment-and-wing level (at the finest, commands can also be at a higher level) feels like there is too little to this battle. I don’t fault the game – while I think it is a little more coarse than the command level of Horse & Musket, it is an appropriate scale for the major battles of the Seven Years War.

I’ll go further and say that the game’s inclusion of the North American theater will pretty much, in this respect, a failure across the board. The Plains of Abraham is a historical scenario precisely because it is one of the largest and most impactful battles of the entire French and Indian War. If even this is already “too small,” what’s that say about every other fight? Furthermore, it is also one of the most conventional of all the battles. Much more typical were the irregular tactics employed by Rangers, Indian tribes, and frontiersmen. To accurately reflect tactics, we need an engine that models ambushes and chaotic meeting engagements in the thickest of wilderness terrain.

Of course, I may simply have expectations set too high. As I mentioned before, one way of looking at this game is as a refinement of the Total War: Empire formula. For that game, as much as the 3D tactical battles dominate the look and feel of the game, it doesn’t pay to get into the nitty gritty of how poorly they might serve as a highly-realistic simulation of period tactics. Perhaps for The Seven Years’ War as well, the tactical engine should be looked upon as something that reproduces the major, and conventional, battles of the war (larger context, this time) decently enough and fills in as a battle-resolution engine otherwise.

This was not, however, the worst of my complaints. My biggest problems were encountered as I struggled with the interface. What I’m finding, as often as not, is that my struggles are because I don’t know how to do what I need to do, even as the game does provide it.

While playing, I had a terrible time understanding what I was doing. One of the worst mix-ups was 90% my own fault, for not having read the manual. Look up to the battle screenshot above. You might see that I’ve caught some advancing French in an overwhelming crossfire. While some of my men are starting to waiver, I’ve got the enemy in a really bad position. Beyond that, fog of war does not show me where the rest of the enemy is deployed. It feels like I’m not doing too badly. As I look at the “dashboard” displays, this seems to confirm my impression. The red (combining the light and dark reds) portion of the bar at the top-center of the screen is dominant. Wearing a “red coat,” I figure that’s a good sign (even though I don’t understand why there is so much pink). Turns out, I was utterly wrong. By the color scheme of this game, “blue” is friendly and “red” is enemy. While that comports with military tradition, it really confused me in this instance. It doesn’t help that I’m actually getting creamed and I can’t see how or why.

Similarly, the controls themselves are both difficult and confusing. Entering commands requires a lot of wrist-mangling fiddling and, as often as not, results in some unintended instructions being issued. Even when the commands have been entered, more-or-less to my satisfaction, there is typically a long and highly-variable delay in execution. While (I must assume) a matter of realism, and welcomed from that angle, the lack of feedback detracts significantly from the experience. Have my orders yet to be delivered? If so, how is that orders-delay calculated? Is the unit in the process of changing formation and realigning? How to tell how well that’s going and when it is going to be complete?

– Maybe I’m not as incompetent as I feel. Switching sides, I too can win easily.

One review (wargamer.com) suggested that the game should be played with the PDF manual open along with the game so that frequent flipping back-and-forth could be employed. Not only is this a difficult and annoying way to play but it can be destabilizing for the game program. Plus, I’m doing this for its entertainment value. Is it really necessary to make me work so hard just to achieve an entry-level enjoyment of this game?

The real prize of the DLC might be, not the additional historical battles or factions, but the battle generator. With the ability to both create and randomly generate battles, it frees someone like me from the restrictions presented by this somewhat narrow historical range. There were only so many major battles from this war that I could refight and, as I can see above, sometimes the historical situation can limit the fun factor. The campaign engine is nice, but it also may be a long while before I get that epic match-up (especially if I’m struggling to play the campaign game properly). Being able to set any army against any other on my choice of terrain, however, might showcase the tactical engine in a way that I’ve not been able to appreciate so far. If nothing else, hand-built battles allow me to tone down the difficulty – if that’s what it takes for me to get something out of the experience.

I’ll probably want to return to this game a few more times in the near future.

Before I wrap up, though I’ll share one more, um, moment from my reading of Moment of Battle. The authors helped put the Nelson quote, which I used to title my earlier Trafalgar post, into a more amusing context. The phrase “England expects that every man will do his duty” was the final message from Nelson’s flagship before the fleet engaged the enemy at Trafalgar. It was a perplexing one at that. Didn’t England already expect every man to do his duty? Wasn’t Nelson’s fleet known for being particularly dutiful? Admiral Collinswood is quoted as having grumbled, “I wish Nelson would stop signaling, we know well enough what to do.”