Since I didn’t really give my best effort when I played (as detailed in my 83rd post related to Vietnam -see also here for a master index) my first run-through with my newly-aquired Campaign Series: Vietnam, I’ve elected just to play it again. This time I didn’t try to stick to any historical errors and, instead, did my best to beat the scenario. I managed to avoid crashing my transport helicopters through lack of fuel (although I did run two gunships out of gas) and did a better job of getting most of my units engaged before the night began to fall.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/bestplans5.jpg?w=1024)
As you can see in the above screenshot, I lost and I lost big. Thing is, this ratio is remarkably close to the actual causality count from 1963 (Wikipedia puts the KIA at 83 and 18 rather than 85/23*).
What the numbers don’t explain is the beast of a time I had accomplishing anything. This screen you see above is a far sight better than what I achieved in my first round. In this second go-around, I did manage to seize one victory point location and killed several VC units, including a commander. The only way I did that, however, was to mass my entire force so as to concentrate fire on one or two hexes at a time. It was obviously not a winning formula but I saw no other way to even chip away at the enemy strength.
As I spoke of in my previous post, I wondered whether there was a natural imbalance – a favoring of the AI player so as to provide a better challenge for the players of this game. In both tries, I had deliberately left the balance slider at “zero,” hoping that this meant no advantage either way. But is that what it means?
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/bestplans6.jpg?w=966)
To test it out, I played the same scenario for a third time, but taking the side of the Viet Cong. Based on this experience, I do not believe that the play is skewed against the human player in a single-player match. If you look above, you’ll see that this time I won – and big. Bigger, in fact, by a fair margin than my defeat when the roles were reversed.
More importantly, some of what frustrated me as the ARVN player reoccurred, but to my advantage, as the VC player. The ARVN were clearly much less potent on both offense and defense than my VC. Furthermore, the VC had extra actions available to them – three firing impulses from machine guns and the ability to scoot and shoot for the infantry – that the ARVN had not. With fog-of-war turned on, it is hard to say for certain that the computational treatment was symmetrical, but it sure seems that way.
At first, I thought the AI ARVN was going to do better than I had. They seemed to deliver a more rapid attack and one that was better coordinated than my own attempt. This advantage, however, slipped away as the battle wore on, leading to a higher body count in the second game relative to the first. I’m going to venture a guess that the game opening is scripted so that the AI begins with a good attack, taking advantage of the “right” movement paths through the difficult terrain. Once it is left to “figuring out” the best moves, it weakens considerably.
The game did warn me not to play the VC side against the AI.
In some way, I am reminded of my time spent with Vietnam ’65. In that game, as I wrote, the “AI” is almost entirely mindless. AI units spawn on the map and make their way toward their targets. There is no intelligence to their movements but the player, hampered by fog-of-war and a crisis of too much to do with too few assets, cannot take advantage of that.
Likewise, perhaps, will be the experience in Campaign Series: Vietnam where a simple mission (defend then escape) combined with a bit of scripting may provide plenty of challenge for the player, when that player is taking the task of counter-insurgent operations. Campaign Series: Vietnam is not mindless, not even in the way that I apply the term to Vietnam ’65. Nonetheless, a weak AI has always been a hallmark of the Tiller product line. Given a manageable task, the AI (such as it is) might well be up to it.
But back to Ap Bac. Some versions of what went wrong on that battlefield blame the failure on the lack of coordination among the forces. Certainly, the ARVN and their American advisors believed, a priori, that the American-equipped attackers would easily defeat the VC in open battle. Seemingly, this scenario takes the position that it wasn’t just bad generalship – the VC defenders really are considerably tougher than the ARVN attackers.
This leaves me wondering – is this scenario actually built to demonstrate that failure was inevitable, even in the face of the “best laid plans?” Or did I just do it all wrong (two times running, I might add).
Well, if you have three hours to spare, you can watch someone else enjoy the game. A someone, I might add, with a better handle than I on how this game should be played. If you don’t have 3+ hours, I’ll just tell you what happens. He played to a draw. I didn’t watch all three hours either – I jumped through to see a bit here and there – just to get the gist. If I do decide I have three hours, maybe I can watch and learn what I did wrong.
Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles or go forward to the next article, for a look back at the previously scrutinized Operation Starlite.
*I’ve talked before about games’ computation of casualties and what to do with them. For a tactical game, a “casualty” means that a unit/vehicle/man/etc. is taken out of the game for the remainder of the scenario. That could mean death or destruction or it could just mean an injury (or damage) severe enough to prevent further effective engagement. Casualties are also often used to tally a score and determine a win or loss. But what do these numbers mean relative to historical figures? I don’t know.