I somehow missed it when it was first uploaded, but I came across it the other night. There is a user-made campaign Wars of the Roses for Pike and Shot, available for download through the game’s interface. Download it I have.
Recall that the campaign game, provided as a new version for Pike and Shot, is very different from that which is in Field of Glory II. In fact, I would think of the Pike and Shot version more as a battle-generator that allows for the carrying over of losses between battles. Yes, there is a historically-accurate map and it may (or may not) included historically-configured armies – but the actual play of the campaign system could rarely track with the battles of history, nor can it be expected to plausibly explore the deviations from history should things have follow a non-historical path.
I have complained that I don’t like the mechanism as a substitute for a historically-accurate strategic or operational layer. I’ve also complained about a lack of fun. Playing a Pike and Shot campaign sometimes feels like squeezing a balloon. Smaller foes always retreat before my advances while managing to slip armies in where I have none – and so it goes until I slip up and get trapped in a losing battle. I’m sure once one gets the hang of how the AI acts and reacts, beating it becomes much easier. I have yet to put that kind of time into it.
All my mumbling and grumbling aside, the Wars of the Roses download was just what I was looking for over the past few months. I’m not sure how I’ve missed it; it seems to have been up there for at least four years. Whatever shortcomings I bring up, I am still pleased to have a campaign to play with. The campaign system can provide randomly-generated battles with a bit of larger meaning behind them. Besides that, this campaign “stuff” is available to create one’s own random battles using the skirmish system. I’ll point out that the Battle of Wakefield scenario* also was exposed in the Skirmish system, but using it that way seemed to provided only minor variations on the Battle of Wakefield’s order of battle. Wars of the Roses promises to be a much richer system, offering different army setups for the early and later parts of the wars.
What is missing, and what was great about the best of single-battle scenarios (as mentioned below*), is the inclusion of the named nobles and the forces that they brought to each battle. Whether it makes a real difference in the game play, I don’t know. It does add a lot of color to know that THIS is the force of THAT lord or to know that it was Warwick or Somerset who personally turned the tide of battle and won the day. Ideally, I think a Wars of the Roses tactical system would have** the nobility tied to their own force in the design of the command structure. Pike and Shot does not provide that and instead, especially with the larger algorithmically-generated scenarios, gives the feeling of having one, undifferentiated mass of men.
You can observe for yourself in the below screenshot that the campaign-generated armies are a bit vanilla. What has happened to me is that I thought I had cornered the Lancasters in London with a modestly-superior force. My problem is that the campaign interface supplies estimates of the enemy strength, but those estimates are made uncertain through the fog of war. It seemed that the AI had better intelligence than I and, seeing an advantage, initiated an attack. Unlike the AI, I don’t seem to have the option*** to retreat before an ill-advised battle. As the enemy appeared before me, I realized that I was outnumbered by a good 20% margin. Furthermore, the enemy had superiority over me in both mounted units and in devastatingly-effective longbow formations.
My force, partially shown, is a mix of infantry and archers, with two units of horse off the top of the screenshot. It is probably a reasonable army for the period but is missing something big. Where is York and March? Where are the Nevilles?
It goes without saying that adding all that historical color; the regents, the pretenders, the lords and their retinues, has got to be a manual process. Moreover, what made the Wars of the Roses what they were was the intrigue and the betrayals and, to the extent that these factor into a tactical battle, they need to be scripted in. Given the rather on-again-(but mostly)-off-again nature of this protracted conflict, does it really make sense to have a randomly-generated war?
Probably not. But that doesn’t stop us from wanting one.
The “skirmish” mode allows hand selection of forces subject to army composition limits. Furthermore, I’ve managed to reign this in further with alterations to the Pike and Shot files. It may not be perfect, but its something nice to fall back on when I get a itch to fight more of this war.
*It’s a downloadable, user-made scenario that I played shortly after I told you about Towton, St. Albans, and Bosworth. I just didn’t find Wakefield worth talking about.
**I mentioned that I probably would have grabbed GMT’s Men of Iron Battles Tri-pack had I not found satisfaction with Pike and Shot‘s treatment of this war. I note that, indeed, it has a leadership system where each “battle” is lead by a secondary leader. Alas, the price has gone back up. If I see a bargain, I might again try to grab this one.
***Like the AI, however, my own armies will flee in the face of a distinctly superior force attacking them. I’m going to guess that it uses the same algorithm, even if it seems like I (the player) am more likely to get caught out than the AI is.
et tu, Bluto? 