Dotting the Ides and Crossing the Rubicon

Tags

Alea Jacta Est, Cicero, Crusader Kings 3, Europa Universalis, Europa Universalis: Rome, Imperator: Rome, Julius Caesar, Paradox, Pax Romana, Republic of Rome, Roman Republic, shakespeare, wargames

The word Imperium, in Latin, means the political power or authority that is held by an individual. It is also the name of the first book in a trilogy by Robert Harris which follows the career of Marcus Tullius Cicero through historical fiction.

Coincidentally, the Cicero Update is the first major overhaul of the the Paradox game of the ancient world, Imperator: Rome. I’ll return to this and a few other of the more recent developments at the tail end of this post.

But first, the serendipity of all this has made me decide it is time to do another comparative gaming exercise for the ancients PC games. In this, the first of two posts, I’ll focus on the Strategic/Operational level. I’ll take on Operational/Tactical separately so as not to compare olives to pomegranates within these overlapping scopes.

To cut to the chase, what I’m finding is a different answer than what I opined after the first two times.

Before I get into my current explorations, I want to make an honorable mention. Of all the games I’ve played, the one that has come the closest to getting the decline of the Roman Republic right (especially internal politics) is Pax Romana. So close and yet so far.

The Old Republic

Pax Romana was a 2002 title, created by a French company called Galiléa, founded by game designer Philippe Thibaut. Thibaut is the designer for the board game Europa Universalis, a 1993 title. At the end of the 90s, Thibaut worked on the Paradox team that brought the initial iteration of Europa Universalis to life on the PC. Following the completion of EU/EU2, Thibaut separated from Paradox and the turmoil surrounding collapse of Strategy First to develop a PC game based on the Roman Republic.

With the benefit of hindsight, one might see the seeds of Pax Romana‘s ultimate failure from the very beginning. Pax Romana is a computer version of the board game Republic of Rome, published by Avalon Hill in 1990. The game has been described as exemplifying some of the best and some of the worst of board gaming circa 30 years ago. Republic of Rome sports a thick rulebook, often inscrutable as a result of heavy cross referencing and vague specification. Decades of errata and user discussion have resolved most of the issues (and resulted in a reprint in 2009), leaving a game that rates pretty highly among its fans.

The strategic map from Pax Romana. Compare to the EU: Rome screen, below. [www.mobygames.com]

For a board game conversion, some things are easy and some are hard. For graphics, Thibaut had his EU experience, which had built an effective grand-strategy interface (compare the Pax Romana and EU2-era EU:Rome screenshots). Tables, charts, and die rolls all get handled by the computer and tracking the details becomes much easier. You are no longer limited 1-or-2 step armies designated by cardboard counters. Unit strengths, senatorial support, provincial income can all be tallied as fine-grained as desired without any additional computing effort. The resulting complexity growth may even be an advantage. You reach a point where a weak computer AI can derive some advantage simply by accounting for equations that are too complex for a player to follow.

What an AI is going to be disastrous at, however, is the social aspect of a game. Yet it is this, according to many, that is really the key to Republic of Rome gameplay. RoR is a six-player game where each controls a faction within the Roman Republic. Players try to increase their own power and glory with an end-game goal being to claim the role taken by Caesar thereby creating the Roman Empire. At the same time, the players must also cooperate to keep Rome from falling to ruin or being defeated by foreign forces. Over the course of the game it will be necessary to cooperate with some players in order to compete with others. Negotiation is key. The rule book says that anything is on the table, as long as it doesn’t break the rules. Deals can be public or secret with the advantage of public deals being that they are binding.

This sets up an impossible goal for the PC version programmer. The computer is never going to get the human aspects (bluffing, goodwill, etc.) of negotiation right. Furthermore, it is impossible for a computer to “think outside the box.” Negotiation with computer players all-but-requires selecting options from a finite list. Getting this balanced right was going to be difficult to impossible. Add to that the feature creep inevitable in the conversion and you’d begin to doubt that such a game could ever be completed.

Pax Romana was released in pretty rough condition. Several patches improved upon the game, but the economics of fixing a failed release is a losing one. If I recall, the CD also shipped with the hated StarForce copy protection, which I have to believe further hurt its prospects. With the project coming apart economically, a final “unofficial” patch came out of the development team. Even with that patch applied, bugs remain. Furthermore, a comparison between the manual and the gameplay demonstrates there are features of the game that were intended but never implemented. Yet, event in this fragmented state, the vision of the developer can be glimpsed through the fog. Were it all to work, this might have been the ultimate game of the Roman Republic.

But That I Loved Rome More

Back at Paradox, EU had spun off its family of strategy games; Hearts of Iron, Victoria, and Crusader Kings. The success was enough* to create a new-engine version of their line, starting with Europa Universalis III. In 2008, one year after EU3, Paradox released Europa Universalis: Rome. At the time, I was none too pleased with EU3 and, with it, Paradox. I also thought that EU: Rome looked like a cheap grab at more sales by shoehorning Roman uniforms onto the EU3 sprites. What I didn’t realize at the time was that EU: Rome was also a kind of Crusader Kings 1.5. That is, along with taking the EU format back in time it also built upon the Crusader Kings system of dynastic-based play to model the cursus honorum of the Roman Republic.

Caesar’s forces are digging into Gaul for the long haul.

When I played the Punic Wars in EU: Rome, I found it to be a reasonable match for the period, at least at the start. Early on in her fight against Carthage, Rome demonstrated the ability to bounce back from massive losses. Even in the face of total disaster, Rome could raise new legions, build new ships, and appoint new generals so as to continue the fight. EU‘s combined economic/military simulation which allows semi-free construction of armies worked fairly well.

Loading the Roman Civil Wars scenario, though, I find it doesn’t work so well. The scenario opens with Caesar poised to cross the Rubicon, as he should be historically, but with Pompey’s armies across the river defending the “front.” Shortly after starting, I am engaged in three major battles, spread roughly across the southern border of Gaul, pitting similarly-sized armies against each other. While it’s better to win, of course, losers still live to fight another day while winners feel the toll from closely-fought combat. Unlike newer iterations of this series, depleted units do not refit in the field. To bring a damaged unit back to full strength, one must merge it with other units of the same type. Thus, the Roman Civil War quickly turns into an economic war. Caesar uses the economic power and manpower of Gaul to feed the meat grinder while (the AI) Pompey does the same using his territories. It does not feel like an accurate representation of history

The Cast of Die-hards

After the failure of Galiléa, Thibaut began afresh with AgeOD and the creation of the game Birth of America. This was one solution** to the problems of the continuous-time, grand-strategy predecessors. I’ve likened the first generation of EU and Crusader Kings to a computer version of Whack-a-Mole. Run at normal speed, the game grew tedious as one waited for something significant to happen. At high speed, the screen was bombarded by alert messages. Dismissal require quickly hitting the right button on the right message before the next one popped up. Failure to keep up meant you might race by something requiring your attention. Birth of America, to contrast, was implemented as a turn-based game. Orders are given between turns and then executed without any player intervention. The game also added innovative gameplay in terms of leader management and logistics as well as presenting a fresh-looking graphical interface.

In the years that followed, Thibaut had a hand in a number of Birth of America spin-offs.  In 2012, AgeOD took the engine to ancient Rome in the form of Alea Jacta Est, a release did not seem to include the technical involvement of Thibaut.

Caesar prepares to cross the Rubicon.

As I stated at the beginning, when I looked at the game in the contexts of the Pyrrhic War and the Second Punic War, I was not particularly pleased with the Alea Jacta Est treatment (technically via its expansion/add-on The Birth of Rome). I found the game stuck in the dull center between the two ends that fire a gamer’s imagination about the Roman Republic. It abstracts away the strategic decisions and the politics, which Pax Romana tried to capture. It also automates the tactical details of battle. For the Pyrrhic War, the operational control armies in Southern Italy seemed like too little and too constrained to make for an entertaining game. In the Punic War, the operational nature of the game lost the connection with the decisive battles that made the campaign against Hannibal so dramatic.

For the Roman Civil War, the focus of Alea Jacta Est seems far more appropriate. When playing as Caesar or Pompey, I don’t think we want to be distracted by the details of Roman politics. Alea Jacta Est still factors in national morale and the economy, but reduces their management to a handful of major decisions (scripted so as to retain a historical connection) rather than ongoing, attention-demanding simulation. At the same time, the battlefield spans the entire Mediterranean, and so the broad, operational movement of forces is more interesting than in either the previous two examples.

The game starts, as shown in the first screenshot in this section, with Caesar poised to cross the Rubicon. The introductory text stresses the importance of taking Rome. Upon doing so, events are triggered that divide the Roman territories between the two fighting factions along historical lines. As Caesar, you then must decide whether to point your initial thrust west toward Spain or head east toward Egypt and the Levant. Again, the scenario notes helpfully explain this.

Caesar, with the support of a second army, wrests control of Spain from Pompey.

I suspect the key to enjoying this game, much like its Paradox predecessors, lies in learning to ignore what should be ignored. The initial flood of messages as Caesar seizes control of Rome are entertaining and informative. Thirty-to-fifty new messages on each and every turn are considerable less so. What I found was that, a year or so into the scenario, most of the notices have no meaning to me as I play. At the game’s start, I needed to figure out what units are available and get them organized into command structures. After that, while the alerts do involve impacts to morale and logistics, it seems better concentrate on what I am trying to do. I know where my forces are and I kind of know from whence they are threatened. Turns can then move by pretty quickly.

Each turn is one month. During execution, turns are broken down and evaluated day-by-day. Because logistics and other details are taken into account, conquering enemy territory is a multi-turn (i.e. multi-month) prospect. To take a city, a nearby unit must be active (less commanders aren’t always available) and be superior to any enemy armies waiting to defend. After your army moves, and assuming they win any initial battles, they then must lay siege to the enemy-controlled city. After (sometimes) many months of siege, the defenses may be breached allowing an all-out assault on the city. Launching an assault too soon could reap unnecessary losses. Waiting to long means the turns tick by without making any meaningful progress toward scenario victory. After a battle/siege/assault cycle, the attacking army is likely depleted in terms of supplies and fighting power. A turn or two of refitting might be prudent to get them ready for the next operation.

Ignoring the details, as I’ve settled into doing, probably means that I’m mismanaging my logistics; either the economic acquisition of resources or the resupply process. Many a time I’ve spent months looking at an underfed army, waiting for them to refresh themselves, wondering if the reason the process is slow is because I’m not doing it right. yet, most of the time a common sense approach seems to work. Control a connected string off provinces and supplies seem to flow.

It is left to Marc Antony to expel Pompey from Italy and pursue him into Greece.

I’ve yet to complete the scenario and I feel I’m moving too slowly to gain a victory. It took me a year or two to get a reasonable balance of size and number of armies. I made the choice have Caesar, supported by a second army, take Spain. Marc Antony, with his own full army, got the responsibility of running Pompey out of Italy. This he managed to accomplish despite Pompey having the numbers. One saving grace is that, throughout the game, scripts trigger to advance the historical narrative. You’re not left entirely to the mercy of the game engine.

As with the Second Punic War, the game tends bog down in the tedium of the siege process and chasing around enemy nuisance stacks. It fails to tell a story through the iconic battles of the war. This is less of an issue, however, in a war where the iconic battles aren’t quite so iconic.

The Memory of the Living

Returning now to Robert Harris’ Imperium, now on its second reading, wherein I found clear satisfaction to contrast with the mixed results of my gaming. The novel is a thing of beauty that I’ve enjoyed on many different levels.

They basic idea behind the novel is this. Cicero had a slave, Tiro, who accompanied him from the beginning of his political career. Tiro was an accomplished figure in his own right having, for example, developed a shorthand system (features of which are still used today) for recording speeches verbatim. Tiro was eventually freed by Cicero and lived many years after Cicero’s death when, among other occupations, he became a writer and a publisher. He put together the collected works of Cicero and penned at least four books himself. One of those was was a “biography***” of Cicero, which has not survived in any form but is referenced by Plutarch and others. Harris’ book, therefore, pretends to be that biography of Tiro’s. It is divided into “scrolls” rather than chapters and uses Tiro in first-person voice. It is also written in contemporary language.

The first book starts (some background aside) with Cicero’s entry into politics. It features three main events. Cicero’s prosecution of Gaius Verres, the installation of Pompey as supreme Roman commander, and Cicero’s election to Consul. Major events and Cicero’s speeches are preserved in scholarly history so Harris just needs to fill in the blanks with solid historical fiction. In his afterward he writes about his intent: For everything that is in the historical record, those events are accurately described in his novel. Where something is unknown to history, his version is at least plausible. In no case, he hopes, is his version of events refutable by actual, recorded history.

If nothing else, the book it is a great history-lite for those of us who want to understand the life and importance of Cicero, but don’t want to wade through dry history books or difficult-to-read Senate speeches. Also, by placing 2000+ year-old events into current language, the book takes on meaning for our current times.

Both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were marked by a return to classical scholarship. One result is that the structure of the Enlightenment-inspired U.S. government (and that of the several States) was based on the government of Rome in many important ways. It actually took me this second read-through to realize something important about the Roman Senate. The Senate of Rome was not a legislative body; it was an executive body. Its closest relative in modern American might be the small-town New England Board of Selectmen. The Senate of Rome had the power of the executive (typical of an American Governor or a President or, of course, a Board of Selectmen) as well as the power of the purse (usually the House in a bicameral Legislative structure). They did not, however, have the power to make laws; that right was reserved to the people in a method more akin to Constitutional amendments.

That said, Harris’ Cicero has a lot to say that is applicable to modern legistlating, politicking, and electioneering. He also has criticisms for the “Deep State” and the bankruptcy inherent giving free stuff away to win political support. In some of these cases, I wish I knew what were actual Cicero quotations versus fictive speculation; I’d hate to go around quoting Harris and claiming it to be the words of Cicero. In addition to the timeless truths, I also recognize modern personalities in these ancient personae. Despite the massive differences in the surrounding culture, I have in my head a handful of actual people from the local political scene who match very well with the book. Uncannily so, in some cases.

Cicero’s political strategy also makes me yearn for a game like Pax Romana, but one that gets it right. Military service was often critical to political success in Rome, but there were exceptions. Cicero is one. His military service was the bare minimum for a Senator and later in his career he forwent the glory that many politicians sought through military command. In fact, he tried not to leave the city of Rome if at all possible, not wanting to get too far from the halls of power.  The methods and outcomes of chasing and exercising political Imperium can be just as fascinating as Rome’s military campaigns. Pax Romana and its board game ilk tantalize us with the gaming possibilities.

Having reread the book at the same time I started in with Season 2 of Roman Empire: Reign of Blood., I find myself even more disappointing with the latter than I was before. The novel and S2:E1 cover almost exactly the same time frame, with the show focused on Julius Caesar rather than Marcus Cicero. I’m glad I looked at the two side-by-side as it makes it all the more obvious how off the rails the Netflix production has gone. Cicero (and Harris’ Tiro) are witness to the rise of Caesar in politics and the formation of the first triumvirate (not yet extant when Cicero was consul) which closes Episode 1. Harris reveals Caesar’s role to be defining despite also being subtle, conducted behind the scenes. In Roman Empire, the second season is in some ways a little better quality than the first. There is less narrative repetition and more content in the acted-out portions of the show. The accuracy of those reenactments, however, has taken a turn for the worse. On screen we have Caesar leading one of Crassus’ legions to defeat Spartacus. Caesar then resolves the conflict over credit for that victory via a back-alley deal (literally a back alley meeting is portrayed on screen) to divide power between them. One wonders what’s the point of including obviously inaccurate details. Wouldn’t it have been just as easy (and just as dramatic) to be accurate?

To Be Continued

More to come as I continue on with both the Harris trilogy and, with trepidation,the second season of Roman Empire. I’ll also want to look at some of the Operational/Tactical games that cover this same period of warfare.

Beyond that, there are also some games I want to mention. While they fit in with those above, I haven’t played them in this go around. I’ve deliberately left out the various incarnations of Rome: Total War. The newest Rome 2 (already more than six years old) did update the political aspects of the game. Rome (Carthage as well) has three factions with which a Roman player must compete. However, when I’ve decided to dig out a Total War game for a historical experience, I am typically left disappointed. This time, I pass.

For me, the most obvious omission is the “sequel” to EU:Rome, Imperator: Rome. As EU:Rome was a practice run for Crusader Kings II, so Imperator: Rome appears to be a prelude to the release of Crusader Kings III. Imperator adds a new 64-bit component to the Crusader Kings II/EU4/HoI4 engine and, presumably, adds new style and functionality to the previous generation of games. However, like the Crusader Kings II initial release, the Imperator seems to have been pushed out in an unsatisfactory state. The original version prompted many complaints about both bugs and play issues. After some major updates, the buzz is that the game is far more stable and sensible, but still lacks the breadth and depth that one would expect from a Crusader Kings cousin. Someday, I expect to get this but that day is not today. When I do, I fully expect there will be a Roman Civil War scenario**** that will make a nice substitute for my EU:Rome section, above. I hope and expect that my verdict will be better with the newer game.

Following shortly after the release of Paradox’s Imperator: Rome, AgeOD’s challenger Field of Glory: Empires hit the streets. This one had a much better initial reception and I, in fact, have already purchased it but not got in much in the way of play. FoG: Empires is in something of an upgrade to the Alea Jacta Est family, almost seeming to respond to my original criticism of that game. It de-emphisizes the operational/logistics focus of the older series and adds layers both above and below. There is more of the grand strategy of empire building as you must manage the culture and finances of your nation. FoG: Empires also adds the ability to export battles into the Field of Glory II for a tactical resolution. In addition to that, it adds in another feature taken from my above history-of-the-genre.

After Philippe Thibaut was, more or less, forced away from the development of Pax Romana by the various business pressures, he focused on a sequel. Instead of the focusing on the creation of the Roman Empire, moved on to its fall. Great Invasions was in may ways similar to Pax Romana, but the focus was on the many “barbarian” nations that chipped away at Rome’s power. One unique feature was that the rise and collapse of these factions was part and parcel of the game. In nearly any other grand-strategic game, you needed to lead your nation (be it Greece, Rome, or the Visigoths) to world domination and cause it to “stand the test of time.” In Great Invasions, by contrast, the scoring took into account that most of the warring tribes of Europe were destined to fall into obscurity. Similarly, Field of Glory: Empires adapts a version of this natural course of an empire within its game mechanics.

I also note that Field of Glory: Empires ships with a Pyrrhic War scenario in addition to its grand campaign start point. One of these days I’ve really got to compare and contrast it to my earlier ancients lineup. Beyond those two, however, Field of Glory: Empires lacks any focused scenarios. It would surprise me if either the developers or fans don’t, someday soon, create a series of scenarios based upon interesting periods of Roman history. As of yet, though, nothing appears close to available (on the forums, there is a Europa Barbarorum total conversion, a reference to the Total War version of Great Invasions). Were there a Roman Civil War scenario for Field of Glory: Empires, it would be a great comparison to the above. But, alas, there is not.

On the near horizon, newish developer Avalon Digital is about to release a computer version of the Columbia block-game Julius Caesar. Although the game is targeted for release within the next few days, I don’t see myself purchasing it in the very near term. If I had it, it would make a great contrast to Alea Jacta Est. The games are at a nearly identical scale but the block version strips away all the numbers and complexity. In this version of the war you get right down to moving your armies and fighting your battles. Clean and to the point.

Coincidentally, Avalon Digital has a handful of both digital and board games in development, often launching them via Kickstarter campaigns. Among their list of existing products, they sell Pax Romana as a download for just 1 Euro. Besides the problems I mention above, they point out that the game doesn’t work on any system newer than Windows 7. So for anyone wishing to kick the tires on that old title, there is another strike against it.

The board games at the Avalon link are sold through what appears to be a sister company, Wisdom Owl. Philippe Thibaut, via Kickstarter and Wisdom Owl, is taking his Great Invasions into the land of cardboard. I don’t see any listing of the management behind the Avalon and Wisdom Owl effort but something tells me that Thibaut must be a key player.

So much seems to be going on in the penumbra of a dead, 17-year-old game.

*Hearts of Iron II released before EU3. While the first of the “sequels” (not counting the mostly-similar EU/EU2), it was created in parallel with but not on top of the new Clausewitz Engine.

**Pax Romana also attempted to work around the same flaw. While most of the year executed in a continuous-time mode, much the same as EU, election time was different. When it came time to take action in the Senate, you were kicked out of the “real time” mode and into more of a turn-based paradigm.

***In Roman time, a biography was a specific form of literature. While it told the life story of its subject, it was not a scholarly work. It was written for a more mass consumption and typically featured gossip as well as facts. The expression of this biography in contemporary English makes more sense in this context.

****Already, a Punic Wars DLC is on the near horizon and is intended to be offered for no extra charge.

Lame

Tags

Charles of Anjou, Crusader Kings, Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis, Field of Glory, Field of Glory - Unity, Neuchâtel, Paradox, ship combat, Vicky, War of the Sicilian Vespers

Charles the Lame, that is.

Crusader Kings was the last of the Paradox games that spawned from Europa Universalis. Earlier I was thinking about the release of that engine as it tied into the Civilization and Age of Empires advances, with each pushing the other forward. The original EU release was not too long after Age of Kings and shortly before Civilization III. EU and EU II were barely more than a year apart, making EU almost a paid public beta for EU II.

Following on the heels of the success of EU II, Paradox moved the engine to the Second World War with the release of Hearts of Iron. This was not a mere re-skinning of the EU engine, however. Unlike the EU clock, which ticked through the centuries represented in that game, Hearts of Iron played strategically but simulated hour-by-hour. Thus, operations could be planned so as to coordinate attacks from land, sea, and air, scheduling them all to hit their target at a given H-hour. The series became very successful in its own right and is the most recent of the Paradox games to be reworked as a new version.

The next of the EU spin-offs was Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun. Vicky, as fans like to refer to it, returned to the the massive scale of EU but added in the more complexity to account for the economics of the Victorian era. Rather than simulate a population of a territory as a whole, Vicky breaks down the population into different categories: the wealthy versus the poor, the skilled versus the unskilled, the soldiers versus factory workers, etc. Managing the economy, then, involves managing this detail.

The final (unless you count Stellaris) branching of the the Paradox engine came in the spring of 2004. This game started with the invasion of England by William the Conqueror (in 1066) and lasted until 1452, just before the fall of Constantinople. The focus of the game was less on nation states and more on dynasties. The player has control over a middle-ages noble and his court and must manage the lands and armies to which that noble has title. Those titles can be lost in battle, so maintaining and growing one’s domain requires alliances and warfare. Upon death, titles are redistributed according to the hereditary rules in effect for that place and time (and they can be altered by the player to suit). So another important part of the game was ensuring suitable heirs were present when the current noble shuffles off this mortal coil.

This last bit became a complex and critical part of the game. Too few offspring and you might find your only heir to the throne is wiped out by the plague just as you need him to inherit. Too many heirs and the mighty kingdom you’ve painstaking built up shatters as it is divided among squabbling children. Furthermore, the “stats” for each noble is also hereditary. So “good breeding” became a matter of selecting wives and husbands for your family and was necessary for prevailing in future battles.

It was a game monumental in its scope. While in many ways based on its EU roots, there were several areas of departure. In addition to the need to manage your family, there was considerable less reliance on that historical timeline and the event system that kept things somewhat on track. All it takes is one extra boy being born, and a pivotal succession crisis will never take place.

One more very popular addition was to allow a game completed in Crusader Kings to be exported and used as a starting point for EU II. All of the games in the EU family have been fairly open and modable, granting them a lot of attention both in terms of improvements and also “total conversions.” Shortly after the game started covering different eras, users took an interest in moving a given game-produced world from one product to the next, chronologically. EU games were ported to Vicky, although there is quite a gap between the two. The post-World War I ending of Vicky can be sent on to Hearts of Iron for the WWII, and that game was modded to extend into the Cold War. With one of their Crusader Kings patches, Paradox got in on the action and officially made it possible to continue playing with a CK world in EU II.

While on the topic of mods, one of the most popular for CK was the Game of Thrones conversion. That popularity exploded with the conversion of the novels to the HBO series. I recall reading, back in 2011 or 2012, how Crusader Kings was the best Game of Thrones game available, and it wasn’t even a Game of Thrones game. It seemed ideally suited to model just the sort of politics/warfare/sex battlefields that people love about the show, and that was part of what created the medieval history that we know.

But all was not perfect. The game progressed at essentially two different speeds. Personal interactions could be happening rather frequently whereas realm development took place over years and decades. Speeding the game up meant being innundated with messages about various characters and their interactions within the game. Like EU, CK allowed the player to customize the handling of event notifications. The problem was, even a minor character looking for a suitable wife could be critical to the game. Because character statistics of newborns were based on the statistics of their parents, selective breeding was necessary to create a competent court from which to draw your generals and administrators. I recall, back in the day, likening it to a computerized version of whack-a-mole.

My other huge complaint with the model was the handling of ships. Unlike the other games of the EU pantheon, the handling of ships was abstracted. In the time before sea-going warfare, it made sense not to model ships as combat units. What shipbound fighting existed at the time was very different that what the Age of Sail would bring in the timeframe of EU. The problem with abstracting it entirely way is there were significant factors limiting sail and oar powered shipping, particularly outside of the Mediterranean. I often played my games somewhere on the British Isle, and inevitably at some point the Muslim hoards would sail to my island and attempt to covert me. It was a historical impossibility, but why?

This game, and pretty much all games for that matter, fail to model the effects of currents and prevailing winds on medieval sea travel. In this instance, traversing the points at the tip of Brittany, near Brest, or the south-eastern tip of England, near Dover, might involve waiting patiently for the forces of nature to help you around the bend. If the “you” in this case is a massive fleet sailing from Tripoli for the purposes of conquest, that would provide a point where the invaders are particularly vulnerable to interdiction. For example, the details of the (much later) defeat of the Spanish Armada cannot be fully comprehended without understanding these limitations on sailing routes.

Mercifully, Crusader Kings skipped over the EU III engine and, instead, became (as Crusader Kings II) the first of the games built on the current engine. And while it started its distribution through multiple channels, it eventually became sold exclusively through Steam.

Paradox has long had a reputation for releasing games with initial bugs. Crusader Kings II seemed to live up to that promise. This was a game that I wanted, badly, even before it came out. I was very much into Crusader Kings (I) and saw a promise in the sequel to fix some of the issues I talk about above. But it took some time before I finally pulled the trigger. Even then, I refused to buy through Steam or any of the Steam-like services. I like to own the games I buy, not rent them. I finally found a sale through GamersGate, which offered a DRM-free version and happily began enjoying the new version.

Some months later, however, Paradox announced that they could no longer support the product through GamersGate and I had to move my license to Steam. This caused me to actually get a Steam account, which has grown nearly-uncontrollably ever since. It also started my relationship with Paradox and their DLC model for supporting their games.  It fixes, from the game companies’ standpoint, a long standing issue with game support. When a game requires ongoing maintenance, particularly for new features and other improvements, it is done at an increasingly uncompensated cost. Eventually, the company must release an expansion or a new version to generate the necessary revenue, often frustrating users who can sometimes feel they are being forced to pay for a bug-fix patch. The DLC model, while in some ways exacerbating the situation, may actually make it more palatable by seeking revenue more regularly, but in smaller chunks. In any case, I’ve resigned myself to periodically buying newer content for Crusader Kings and EU, and have been rewarded with not only years of active support, but sometimes game-changing improvements in the features.

DLCs have also been used to expand the chronological scope of the game. Add-ons have extended the starting point backwards some 500 years. A player can start, not just with the Norman domination of England, but back to the viking invasions or further back to reign of Charlemagne.

Charles the Lame

Earlier, I contrasted Crusader Kings with EU particularly in the area of historical fidelity. In the discussed game, I played a scenario and highlighted a particular place where the game (through an invasion of France by the HRE) departed substantially from history.

Continuing on with that game, I also continue to drift away from an actual tracking of historical events. On the other hand, gaming in the same medieval “world” will always mean there are some parallels between what the game creates and analogous situations that really happened.

As before, I am still playing as the Duke of Upper Burgundy, where I have hopes of expanding my power and possibly once again ruling over a Burgundian kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire.

In the real world, from the late 1270s into the early 1280s, the counties that would comprise the Kingdom of Arles, a kingdom of Upper and Lower Burgundy, were under the control of Charles of Anjou. In addition to these titles (the counties of Provence and Forcalquier), Charles I held claim to Anjou and Maine in France. He had been invested by the pope as the King of Sicily, after killing the previous ruler, Manfred (a bastard son at the end of the Hohenstaufen line), at the Battle of Benevento.

The son of Charles I, also Charles (II) and known as Charles the Lame, was at the time Regent of Provence and heir to the titles of Anjou. A plan was hatched between the elder Charles, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph I, and Pope Martin IV. Charles the Lame’s son, Charles Martel would, upon marrying the daughter of Rudolph, receive the title of King of Arles and preside over that historical kingdom. In exchange, Charles I was to back the an inheritance of the title of Emperor to be passed through the House of Habsburg. Finally, the pope’s family would be granted a Kingdom located in northern Italy. Instead, Sicily revolted against Charles’ (I) rule in the War of the Sicilian Vespers and the marriage and the creation of the new kingdoms was never to occur.

That’s a lot of Charleses.

In my world, Sicily is controlled not by the French (as was the case in 1282), but by the Holy Roman Empire. By 1286, a war has begun between two claimants to the title King of Sicily. The conflict has drawn in the Emperor himself, and fighting has spread far enough north to impact my own duchy and, in doing so, drawn my attention.

The year is 1286 and a war has broken out in a Sicily divided over who is to rule them. This may be a chance for my family to press their claims in Italy.

With Sicily in chaos, I have decided to advance an imperial claim on one of the central Italian counties. Unlike in the real world, where the Hapsburgs have begun their ascendancy to pan-European power, in mine Rudoph von Habsburg is a count in Upper Burgundy and my chief administrator. I am married to a princess of the empire, the sister to the predecessor and the cousin to the current Emperor Václav II.

I’ve moved my army into the war torn peninsula, but I am without friends.

I have forgotten a key feature of Crusader Kings II and civil wars. It may seem like a rebellious lord is easy pickings, and making a claim on a pretender’s holding will allow you to pile on to an already winning side. But that’s not quite right. As I have made a claim on a county claimed by both sides in the war, they actually both consider me an enemy. In the above screenshot, while I was biding my time, waiting for the pretender king (whose claim I have challenged) to weaken before I deal with him, I was ambushed by the loyalist armies. The king who is still recognized by the Emperor as the true King of Sicily still believes the title to the usurper’s lands lay with him. I had a chance against one of them, but not both.

The screen above represents one of the major features the Crusader Kings II introduced, and one that has been enhanced since the original release. From the beginning, the EU franchise resolved battles using a pop-up screen where the armies would attrit in “real time” as the strategic clock advanced. Interaction is minimal while the battle was ongoing, with the ability to send reinforcements (if another army is close enough) or retreat from the battle before being forced to by the battle engine. Obviously the timescales don’t quite work, but it provides a workable interface for both the strategic game and individual battles that occur within it.

In Crusader Kings, that battle engine now has considerably more depth. Each fight sees the the units involved divided into three “battles,” as the language of the time would describe them. If there are insufficient sub-units, only two or maybe only one of the battles will be populated. Each battle can be allotted a commander, which will improve performance when fighting. As the enemy forces engage, each wing attacks the corresponding wing of the opposing army and goes through various types of combat. In the previous screenshot, the armies are beginning an engagement in skirmish mode (see the blue bow-and-arrow icons for all six battles). A unit will progress through that skirmishing into an infantry mode. Once one side breaks, the opposing side will have a pursuit phase. As the opponents wings are eliminated, a winning army will engage with multiple-on-one attacks among those forces that remain.

There is additional detail in the model. I occasionally see special indicators during a fight, like a “shield wall” icon popping up. One presumes that the effectiveness of the unit during the different phases depends, not only on the commander, but on the mix of weaponry in the component units. More and better archers should mean more effective skirmishing, and so forth. As before, you have little interaction once the armies are engaged. But the depth of the battle model is engaging, with an effective user interface to show progress. It is also limits the engagement to that appropriate for a supreme commander. In doing so, it encourages you to control the things that a supreme commander could control – better leaders and a better mix of weaponry – rather than having you micromanage every unit in every battle, Total War -style.

Back to the battle within the context of the game. As the attack started I made an assumption, which turned out to be correct, that the numerical advantage (albeit a slight one) of the Sicilian army would be all it took to tip the odds against me within Crusader Kings II. It seems like it would set up an even battle in FoG(U), with the slight numerical advantage countering any weakness in UI play. In fact, I assumed that the battle would produce the opposite result given the nearly even armies. So much so, I was afraid that the fight wouldn’t even be close and the results would be entirely misaligned with what I saw in the strategic level.

I used the army-building tools to recreate the fight from Crusader Kings. The two armies clash on Turn 4 of the battle.

As the armies moved to contact (screenshot above), my fears seemed to be realized and then some. While I made an effort to keep my lines organized as I moved them forward, the AI charged pell-mell across the open field, hitting my lines piecemeal just as I was moving out of my own encampment. It appeared that I would easily defeat the enemy in detail.

My left wing is utterly collapsing and any hope I have of salvaging the battle on my right seems to have slipped away.

As it turns out, the AI may have been aggressive but was not “too aggressive.” Despite the fact that my lines were better ordered, I was overwhelmed by the enemy assaults.

This is no organized analysis, but there seems to be a clear difference between AI performance in the original version and the Unity version. In the old version I had scenarios where holding back to draw the enemy into assaulting my position would result in running out of turns before the enemy was even engaged. This new AI seems to want to begin killing me as fast as possible. Furthermore, it is effective at doing so.

I stand corrected. The Sicilians have obtained a decisive victory over me and come pretty close to matching the results I saw in the Crusader Kings resolution of the battle.

This was effectively the end of my campaign to gain influence on the Italian peninsula, although I refused to admit it at the time. Like so many commanders before me, I figured that I had weakened the enemy even as he had weakened me, and that one more push would put me back on top. I assembled a second army, this time made mostly of mercenaries, and moved them in for a reprise. The problem remained, however, that I was outnumbered by both sides of the Sicilian Succession War combatants when they were combined and I was again forced to to wait out the enemy, hoping to see him weaken himself. In this case, the enemy was able to wait me out. As funds to pay my mercenary army ran low, an enemy was able to bribe them to flip sides and my next battle, instead of being a nearly even fight, turned into a massacre. So I had to return home, not just a loser, but a broke loser.

A Ship and a Sea to Sail Upon

Fighting up and down Italy doesn’t require much in the way of sea transport, but given the vehemence of my complaining, I had probably better mention that aspect of Crusader Kings II. In this iteration, ships have returned to an explicitly-modeled factor in the game. They are available to be raised in the same way as land armies, based on the counties you control, or hired as mercenaries. Either way, they are terribly expensive.

What it means is that, if there is a sea-transport component to your campaign, you’re going to have to have a lot of extra money set aside before you start. You’ll also want to plan appropriately. Having fleets sitting around idling will mean your treasury quickly runs dry. You’ll want to get your transporting done as rapidly as possible and then release those ships back to wherever they came from.

It still doesn’t model sailing in a realistic detail, but from the games I’ve played so far, it seems to create realistic end results. Sea invasions are huge deals, even over short stretches of ocean. While I usually end up at some point during a game paying the cost to send a Crusader army across the water to the Holy Land, I almost never bring them home again. And I’ve never seen the marauding north-African hordes laying waste to the shores of England and Wales in Crusader Kings II.

Similarly, the frantic dating game into which the original Crusader Kings could descend has been largely fixed. This latest engine (CK II, EU4, and the new Hearts of Iron) has added in a better user interface which is particularly effective when it comes to the decision-making aspects of the game.  A player no longer has to keep their eyes glued on dozens of different factors as time goes by, hoping not to miss a critical event. Instead, many of the decisions are presented as alerts to the player.

Add to that some better browsing tools and, when playing the marriage game, it becomes easier to stay abreast of it all without the frantic effort of the original Crusader Kings. The model for marriages has become more complex as well, meaning that unless you are marrying off a particular enticing child, you’re not going to be able to scour the world for a tall, barrel-chested woman to breed a race of warrior-giants. Furthermore, the “mini-game” of influencing your children’s statistics has become deeper and more multi-dimensional. There are the statistics and there are traits, which each influence the other. These come from not just who the parents are, but also decisions that are made during their upbringing. It is, at the same time, both a more interesting game and one that is no longer critical to overall success or failure.

Charles may have been called lame, but Crusader Kings II is not.

¿Ferdinand y Isadore?

Tags

civil war, Europa Universalis, Europa Universalis IV, Field of Glory, Pike and Shot, ship combat, Spain, War of the Castilian Succession

What a difference a chromosome makes.

Reading a history book, it is often remarkable how unlikely the historical outcome seems to have been, given the odd sequence of events that got us here. So it is with the unification of Spain under, first, Ferdinand and Isabella, and then, under Emperor Charles.

There is a note in the documentation for Pax Renaissance, explaining some of the “wrong” geography on the map cards. One of the explanations is justifying the cities of Toledo and Granada being located in Portugal, which takes up the better part of the Iberian peninsula. The designer explains that it was by no means forgone that Spain would form from a union between Castile and Aragon. Castile and Portugal could have easily been the basis for that empire.

I pondered this as I played another early-Renaissance scenario from Europa Universalis IV.

I EU/EU II, this historical timeline was heavily event driven. Events would triggered by a combination of the current situation and the date, roughly imposing a backdrop of history over your player-driven narrative. In some cases, those events would give the player a choice – do you support the Lancasters or the Yorkists?, for example. But particularly if you were striving for historical fidelity, you could probably follow right along with the history books.

In the latest version of EU, it has become a little more complicated. Yes, there are still the events and triggers, with the appropriate historical choices. But there are also a lot more little choices, and small randomly assigned variations, which potentially could have some real impact. In all, it feels a lot easier to wander away from the history books into an alternate reality.

Again, I thought I’d give EU IV another spin trying to reproduce the conditions that lead to the Charles V -led Holy Roman Empire, this time starting the game in 1444. EU IV has recently updated, obsoleting the Charles V mod that I was looking forward to, so I already started thinking maybe I should just concentrate on the 15th century rather than the 16th.

As soon as I could do so without blatantly violating various treaties, I relaunched the Reconquista for to take Granada from the ruling Moslem Emirate. The war went smoothly, but I only managed to grab about 2/3rds of the territory in the final treaty.

Then came a family squabble. The Trastámaras have their hands in the running of Castile, Aragon, and Navarre, but getting along with the cousins doesn’t seem to be a family trait. I had hoped to bring Navarre closer in to the Castile branch with some strategic marriages and even had some hope of a direct inheritance of the Navarrian crown. Unfortunately, Aragon’s King John (II) had similar ideas (along with, admittedly, a better historical basis for them) and, after a brief civil war within Navarre, he attacked the tiny country with the combined forces of Aragon and its puppet in Naples.

I felt compelled to defend my political and marital alliances in Navarre and was vaguely peeved by the lack of respect from my cousins. A rather destructive but ultimately fruitless war ensued, depleting the manpower of the Iberian peninsula without producing a clear winner.

All of this is to set the stage for what happens next in this alternate reality.

King Henry IV was a terrible king. This was both true in reality and true within the various numbers of the game. His own attack on Granada suffered from a lack of initiative and, rather achieving my own albeit partial victory, the real king fought several wars consisting mostly of cross-border raiding.

Despite rumors of impotence, homosexuality, or possibly both simultaneously, Henry finally managed  to produce a daughter with his second wife, himself at the advanced age of 37. When Henry proclaimed his new daughter to be his heir, it split the Castilian nobles. Or more accurately, the Castilian nobles, who were already split, found a cause to focus upon. A League of Nobles formed out of concern for Portuguese influence (through the personage of Juan Pacheco) in Henry’s court and who were backed by the newly ascendant John II of Aragorn, and they began questioning the legitimacy of Henry’s issue. Being either gay, impotent, or both, it seemed, to them, likely that the child was the offspring of Henry’s best friend Beltrán de la Cueva. She was also (with certainty) a girl. A better heir to the throne would be Henry’s half-brother Alfonso, with whom the League of Nobles happened to hold more influence. Henry initially agreed to this arrangement with the condition that Alfonso marry his own daughter (also Alfonso’s niece, assuming the rumors were not actually true). When Henry reneged on that commitment, Castile descended into civil war with 12-year-old Alfonso being declared ruler of Castile. In addition to being gay and impotent (possibly both), Henry stood accused of abiding Muslims and being something of a peacenik.

In this world, the League of Gentlemen are proposing Lope I of Nebrija as the legitimate heir to Castile. This cannot stand.

Within the game, some very minor variations changed the story in a big way.

I don’t know if the Henry of this world is gay, impotent, or both, but despite being an awful ruler, he has managed to produce a son and heir and named him Felipe. We’ve made arrangements with the cousins in Navarre as well as the Portuguese royal family to solidify our alliances with marriage. Aragon being left out of this arrangement, they propose advancing one Lope of Nebrija to the throne. The game does not supply a backstory, just a name.

The capitol and much of the southern coast joined the League of Nobles in supporting Lope. As the player, I could chose which version of history to champion, but the subtle changes meant I could not follow the historical narrative and back Lope. First, Lope doesn’t sound very regal to me. Sorry, Lope. Second, I had begun investing both practically and emotionally in Felipe in ways that became difficult to turn my back upon. I even had a fantasy that maybe Felipe could, though the marriage arrangements, gain claim to the throne of Navarre as well as Castile. It didn’t seem wise to give that up and back Aragon, with whom I had just been in a nasty war.

The forces of the League outnumbered the royal armies, but were not well coordinated. I was able to maintain a slight edge, locally, in numbers and defeat each rebel army in detail. Towards the end, I had to rely heavily on foreign banks and a large mercenary force, but I was able to prevail. The screenshot (several paragraphs above) shows the rebel armies making their final, pitiful stand as I lay siege to the fortresses in Granada with my main force.

With the rebellion soundly defeated, the nobility never again questioned the legitimacy of Felipe to inherit the crown of Castile.

Tactics

Recall that one of my goals with EU IV is to integrate with a tactical engine to create what-if battles from the time period. You might also remember that I’ve had some luck with medieval period battles in Field of Glory. This War of the Castilian Succession perhaps could present another opportunity to indulge that impulse, but for a few problems. First, the supporting mods have not kept up with the releases of the EU IV engine, meaning that the integration I was attempting to use earlier is not available. Second, the operational nature of this fight – where I am first achieving local superiority before engaging – means that the battles are never matched. This is a particular problem for Field of Glory.

I speculated that perhaps Field of Glory might lend itself to the same sort of manipulating that I’ve used in Pike and Shot. That is, by editing the army definitions I might cause the randomly-generated battles to conform closer to the battle I wish to model. For example, I might force a cavalry heavy army onto a nation that, historically, wouldn’t have fielded such. I fiddled around with the data files a little bit, but I wasn’t able to get it working. In doing so, however, I found some other files that probably need to be modified as well, so I won’t give up just yet.

Brother against brother, the different noble factions within the Castilian kingdom line up against each other for battle.

The result of my battle was much in line with past experience. As expected, an even matchup (again, it seems to be the only choice in FoG) is going to favor the player. The unit mix, terrain, and other randomly generated components lack the personality that would make it a memorable fight. The AI isn’t terrible but, then again, I never really felt in fear of losing the battle. It wasn’t horrible, but also wasn’t quite worth the effort – doubly so because (at the moment) the results are not actually fed back to the strategic layer. I will say that the results were similar in both games, with solid victories in support of Felipe’s inheritance.

Marriage

Back in the real world, the result was considerably more complicated. After Alfonso was crowned King of Aragon what was called the Farce of Ávila, war continued for four years with neither side gaining a clear victory. Then, at age 14, Alfonso died (circumstance unknown today). His backers intended his crown, such as it was, to pass to his sister (Henry’s half-sister) Isabella, under whose name the civil war could continue. Instead, Isabella agreed to cease hostilities in exchange for being named the rightful heir of Henry.

So it remained until Henry himself died, at the age of 49, in 1474.

With the world preferring to have male monarchs, Alfonso had a decent claim to the throne over Joanna simply by being a boy. That advantage was not shared by Isabella. Upon Henry’s death, those nobles who would be disadvantaged by Isabella’s succession (via her now marriage to her cousin Ferdinand of Aragon) joined with the King of Portugal in supporting the daughter of Henry over his half-sister, perhaps a reasonable succession claim. Assuming, that is, that Henry was not gay, impotent, or both.

Evidence to this day strongly supports the accusations that Joanna (known accordingly as la Beltraneja) was in fact illegitimate. Remember, however, that history is written by the victors – in this case Isabella, whose side ultimately prevailed in the war. It is interesting to cast doubt on the evidence in that the alliance between Isabella and Ferdinand and their subsequent uniting of Spain, the Netherlands, and Austria under Charles V, is one of the defining moments in European history.

Even still, EU4 is driven by events. Despite the fact that Portuguese interests prevailed in the Castilian civil war, the option to bind the Castilian and Aragonese branches of House Trastámara was still presented.

Back in the game, despite my shunning of Lope, the Trastámaras nevertheless arrange a union (screenshot above). As the game went on, it turned out to be a badly managed union. Aragon frequently felt slighted in our arrangement and, each time I fumbled in may kingdom management, England would egg them on to revolt against me. As unpleasant as it was, it gave me a chance to make one more comparison.

More Tactics

Carlos de Toledo leads the Guardia Real against the Aragonese invaders. We expect an easy victory.

One such rebellion occurred in December of 1533. By that time, Spain had adopted combined pike and shot formations and was transitioning to a firearm-based army. This allowed a fairly similar comparison to the match-up played out in Field of Glory, but this time using Pike and Shot solidly within its own period.

My Castilians deploy against the Aragonese, watched over by a ghost of Christmas-that-never-was, Charles V. My horse are deployed on my right, and I’m advancing it to hit the enemy flank.

Right away one can see that the graphics make a big difference. I used randomly generated “hilly” terrain, but the variety and the style gives it much more character than a Field of Glory generated battlefield. Likewise the units. Similar to FoG, the two armies are both minor variations of the same setup, but the style of the units in Pike and Shot just add a little bit more gusto to the whole affair.

I’ve mentioned it before, but the interface for Pike and Shot allows easy tailoring of the army size. I was able to match, with fair precision, the army sizes presented in the EU4 game with only a small amount of fiddling. Of course, outnumbering the enemy by some 3,000 men meant the outcome of the battle was never in question. Even still, the beginning of the fight was a little tense, as I was a little worried that my flanks would start to break before the enemy’s center. Again, while the AI isn’t exactly brilliant in the random match-ups, it seems to be a bit more talented than the Field of Glory AI.

One little hitch I ran across – it is the selection of armies that determines the flags, the names, and the portraits in use. So when I create a Spanish-on-Spanish skirmish, they both use the same Spanish flags. The mini-map (as you can see) shows the two sides in red and white, but the main map it can be difficult to determine which units are on which side. As far as I can tell, this is not configurable in the skirmish interface and would have to be edited in the army file ahead of time.

Something for next time.

Casus Belli

Tags

Europa Universalis, Europa Universalis IV, Here I Stand, new world, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, wargames

As a university student, I signed up for a course called something like “War and Society.” I did not realize that this was PC-speak for an anti-war twist on the study of military history. The professor was one of several recently hired from the local State school, and was pushing a more “current” curriculum within the school of Liberal Arts. I wound up dropping the class pretty quickly, but I held on to both of the assigned texts for the class. They have collected dust on my shelf until now.

Both books were published in the late 70s/ early 80s, and they came at the peak of a post-Vietnam shift towards an anti-war interpretation of history. The instructor hoped to push the culture of an Engineering school – one heavily influenced by military contract research money and direct military interaction in the form of a large ROTC program.

Upon opening the first book, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620, the editorial note seems perfectly aligned with the goal of the course. I was a little nervous about proceeding further, but the attitude of the editor does not quite reflect the attitude of the author. First, the author does not deliberately avoid anything “pro-military” as the lead-in might have suggested. The narrative seems well balanced. Secondly, in an era where the righteousness of one’s cause was all but given, even while wars were apt to bankrupt the perpetrator for little gain, it would seem all the more important and informative to look at the “bigger picture” of fitting the impacts of war into society as a whole.

On the back cover of the book, the review explains “This book … is full of epigrams and bon mots” and indeed it is. The author seems to delight in pushing the envelope with the prowess of his vocabulary and his ability to relate an obscure literary reference to the topic at hand. Relevant works of literature a described only by title and author, and the reader is expected either to know the work already, or perhaps to go off and read it before continuing on with the paragraph, to understand the authors point. In other cases, it is merely the matter of going to a dictionary and looking up a $100 word. When those words and phrases are foreign language puns, and the translation (much less the double meaning) are left to the reader, I begin to wonder what the author is about.

Perhaps the book was never meant to be read casually, as I am now. I bought it for college classroom work, and one might well expect that the college student reads his textbooks with frequent referrals to dictionaries, related literature, and the language of the primary sources. It also seems to be literary style of the 60s and 70s, where even works of entertainment delight in going over the heads of as many of their potential audience as possible, perhaps for the edification of the few remaining who get it. I don’t know. I’m thinking of, for example, the use in films from that time of foreign language conversation without subtitles or translation assuming that the moviegoer knows Italian. I’ll also add that the author is from England, so some of his “epigrams and bon mots” may be a little bit more familiar to readers from his own country.

To the substance of the book, one item that particularly interested in me is the discussion about the recruitment of the lowest soldiers. The pay was actually quite low. By the end of the period, the pay scale for a soldier was a factor of three or more over workers in building construction. This is something that continues to this day. Starting pay for soldiers is at the low end of what is earnable, even by the standard of high-school graduates. It is made up to some extent by the possibility of pension and other benefits. In the Renaissance, rulers also realized the wisdom of caring for ex-soldiers, but often failed to provide the funding to do so. Unlike today, soldiers were expected to provide for pretty much all of their expenses except housing. They had to purchase meals, clothing, and even provide their own weapons and armor (paying for them with payroll deduction if they didn’t already have it). For most of the 16th century, gunners even had to pay for their own gunpowder. This provided a perverse incentive in that arquebusiers were essentially docked in pay each time they fired their weapons in battle. By 1600 this practice, at least, was modified.

Oddly enough, this was also true for mercenary forces. Local forces were traditionally raised by the lords as a duty to King and Country. The Renaissance saw societal change that, for a variety of reasons, made that more and more difficult. The wars of this time period were often fought with mercenaries. One would expect that said mercenaries would require compensation to make up for the lack of King and Country connection, and yet the pay differential was small. Certainly not enough to raise a soldiers pay above subsistence.

Another aspect that sounds familiar today, the manpower for armies came predominantly from the rural parts of nations. Now, at the end of the Medieval period, the world was still predominantly agricultural, so naturally any source of manpower would be predominately rural. However, the books suggests that, even so, the filling of armies was disproportionately from outside of cities and towns. The reasons for it ring true today. The culture of the cities, and the new “desk job” avocations, created a different mindset that didn’t mesh with military service. Armies also require physically fit and competent soldiers. Working in the fields, using tools, and being able to hunt and fight with weapons were considerably less likely to be a part of city life.

The book also delves into the social conflict between the urbanites and the country folk. Those in rural areas (fairly justifiably) felt they were bearing the brunt of the cost of wars, a resentment that could occasionally turn violent. For their part, the urbanites were thriving under the expansion of the economy and looked down upon the peasants as a lesser species. Sometime, this was quite literally – those who were more developed considered the rural poor to be subhuman, and were apt to treat them accordingly.

Shades of today’s politics.

Beyond those particulars, the general theme of the book (as alluded to by the title) is the intersection of soldiering and society. The life of soldiers and how that is distinct from civilian life, the interaction between civilians and soldiers, etc. Chapters are organized around themes, but the information is presented as a narrative, rather than a highly structure form (which might counter my “textbook” thought, above). A critical factor in all of this are that the details are not well documented. In order to get a picture of life at ground level, one must piece together official records with letters and with fictional accounts (plays and books). None present or complete (or necessarily reliable) on their own, but when themes support each other across different sources, it may be safe to extrapolate. In some cases, the author actually walks the user through his lack of data. Paraphrasing, “I made these tables. The numbers probably aren’t very accurate, due to lack of good records, but the trends they paint are.”

This is the style of the book. The chapters are divided up into themes, but the narrative walks through the data as opposed to proceeding either chronologically or geographically, as one might expect. This again returns to the style of the book where it seems the author expects from the reader some fairly deep knowledge about the history of the period. One comes away with some interesting insights into the period, but not necessarily with any better overview of the period. The subtitle talks about a span of 170 years of which the book is about. It is about all of these years, and in some ways, none of them. Largely the themes are those which span the course of those nearly two centuries. Occasionally, the progress of time and technology appears if necessary to describe a trend (e.g. X first appeared in France, and then 40 years later was a major factor in Venice), but its the exception rather than the rule.

Ultimately, the theme throughout and his conclusion at the end is that wars had a lot less impact on Renaissance society that you might think. Victory in war rarely (if ever) produced a return on its cost. The impact on society, both culturally and economically, was probably minor compared to the cultural and economic changes caused by the Renaissance itself. Yet for all the rise of the individual and the empowerment of the middles classes, the right of Kings to wage war as they saw fit was generally not challenged. As the author says, with the obvious exception of civil wars, the political impact of Renaissance warfare was minor.

I Can Do No Other

For the game accompanying this book, I chose Here I Stand: Wars of the Reformation 1517-1555. Obviously, it is a considerably shorter time focus that the above book, covering the span of the Renaissance. Similar to the larger era, the much shorter 33 year period is remarkable for just how much happened within that fairly brief time. The European conquest of the New World, the founding of a major new branch of Judeo-Christianity, and the struggle between Christendom and Islam probably top the list.  Unlike the book, the game focuses on capturing that big picture.

The game is, as the box cover advertises, a Card Driven Strategy Game in the lineage of games like We the People and Twilight Struggle. It is designed for and plays best with six players, although it can be played with as few as two. The game and its genre (and I’m not knowledgeable enough to tell the difference) bring a number of novelties to players used to hex-and-counter wargames. In fact, despite spending time in the game moving stacks of generals and armies, in many ways this isn’t really a wargame. I read in one review that, although the rules and interactions in the game are very complex, once one learns it all the game on the board merely becomes a background for the real game – the Diplomacy phase and the potentially infinite negotiations between players.

I’ve never played this game – not even once. I may never play it. I’m fascinated with the period it portrays and extraordinarily impressed by the way it has made the game simple enough to be playable. However, I simply don’t foresee finding a couple of days where with five other like-minded game players, allowing us to play through a game. In fact, we’d probably need to commit to several such sessions as, others’ experience shows, it probably takes a game or two to get the rules down enough so that a successfully completed game is possible. The target for this type of game are players in tabletop-gaming clubs who meet regularly, and can plan to tackle something of this magnitude systematically. And there are plenty of those types – but I’ll never be one of them.

My interest in the game is in its intersection with game design and the implications (or lack thereof) for solo play and/or computer play. Right off, the simple fact that the meta-layer for this game is a version of Diplomacy should probably disqualify Here I Stand from ever becoming a successful computer game. The endless struggle to create a (much simpler) Diplomacy is a story I may come back to, but not a path to go down today. Instead, let us consider what this game could teach us about wargame design. Because, although it is in many ways not a wargame, it also (in many ways) is – but a wargame unlike almost anything we would see on the computer.

I recall an on-line discussion about the need for computer game designers and programmers to learn from the boardgaming world. This game, as a recent highly-rated and popular boardgame, I think offers some lessons in that regard. What could be learned from this design, and what doesn’t apply?

A CyberBoard game of Here I Stand. While the HRE and France are knocking each other around in Metz, England seizes that chance to conquer Scotland.

Any game needs to be abstracted. Even the most realistic of simulations needs abstractions. But boardgames, in particular, require abstraction to avoid forcing the players to crunch through simulation calculations when they’d rather be playing a game. Furthermore, boardgames need to be clever about their abstractions in that they also mesh well into a “UI.” Here I Stand does very well in both respects. Indeed, its popularity and innovativeness might owe more to the latter.

Another similar example is a innovation that Here I Stand introduced to me (whether the innovation was particular to this game, I don’t know). The game uses player cards, which contain control markers. As a player captures key cities/regions, the marker is placed on the board. In doing so, a space on the player card is uncovered, indicating the current victory point level as well as indicating the number of cards drawn at the start of each turn – the latter is a stand-in for economic power in the game. It is a brilliantly simple game mechanic that replaces several different categories of bookkeeping with an intuitive placement of a marker, perhaps serving double or triple duty, on the board.

Very impressive but entirely useless when moving to a computer translation.

Digitally, a programmer probably wants the various states tracked separately from any UI component – so the different information has to be stored more directly anyway. Also, the bookkeeping and calculation that the board game saves the player is of no benefit to the computer. The computer has no complaints about, for example, counting up the number of controlled “keys” before distributing cards at the beginning of each turn. In fact, were I programming it, I would want to recalculate rather than store the information “conveniently,” as the latter opens up the possibility that (due to a bug) the two or three different places where the information is tracked – key control + victory points + cards – may get out of sync. Better just to spend a few cycles to computer from a single storage place.

From the UI angle, the display needs to be simple to look at, but it can be as complicated as necessary behind the curtain. So, for example, my computer might only display the total score for each side and then, when I mouse-hover over a score, it shows the component calculations (in the case the number of key locations controlled) for the score. Similarly the current card allotment. And even though these two are both calculated from the same source, linking them via the UI is entirely unnecessary.

Similarly, the card driven aspect of this game strikes a balance between the historical narrative and playability. In a historical game, presumably one wants the events of the period to surround you as you play. Of course, if all those event simply occur on cue per the calendar, play gets boring in its predictability. One can “randomize” events, but that leaves potentially game changing card draws outside the players control – driving you towards a game too dependent on luck. So the cards in Here I Stand, while forcing some historical context (the mandatory cards), also allow players some control over order, priorities, etc. In fact, in contrast with Twilight Struggle, the “friendly” event cards generally seem desirable to play (they give you more of an advantage than just playing the points). In the earlier game, it seems that events are generally to be avoided, unless specifically part of a multi-card gambit. In any case, the card mechanic puts the game just outside the players ability to fully understand and control, which I would argue is a major factor in what makes players like a game. The perfect game design (at least in some genres) involves balancing the mechanics of that game right in that gray area in a players ability to grasp the mechanics and their interactions. A supremely balanced Card Driven Strategy game is doing just that.

But go to the computer, and complexity starts to disappear. Fanout from an event can all be made more explicit to the player, making it easier to understand more complex interactions. Similarly, large and gamebreaking events can be replaced with smaller ones. 100 cards could easily become 1000s of events, integrated with things like “tech trees,” all in a way that (given some good UI) is easier, not harder, for a player to navigate (see Europa Universalis IV). Point being that the Card Driven mechanic, despite all its positives, is probably not a great choice for computer gaming.

For other features, its clear they simply become irrelevant when translated to the computer. For example, the point-to-point movement system that often seems to go hand-in-hand with the Card Driven Game genre is, when translated to the computer, likely identical to any “area movement” or other representation of a map with regions/countries etc. Internally, a programmer would probably use some version of the node and connection anyway, so that the computer can understand what locations are adjacent, even if the UI shows a more traditional map.

Moving on, there are innovations in Here I Stand that are very meaningful in terms of the board game, but still don’t “translate” well. Take, for instance, the mechanic whereby a nations armies is limited by the number of counters supplied with the game. As described in the manual:

The counters provided with the game for each power are purposely limited to reflect the total manpower of these powers during the period. Units may never be constructed in excess of the counters available.

In the board game context, this is a very innovative way to provide an additional, historical restriction on army size. One might imagine it can get rather complicated, but for a simple illustration, take a look at Hungary, a non-player nation. At the beginning of the game (1517), Hungary is at war with Ottoman Empire. There is an event card that, if played before the Hapsburgs joint the war, beefs up the Hungarian army in Buda by four factors – but only if the remaining counters allow it.

If nothing has happened yet, the Hungarian army is 3-points below their limit. However, because of the counter set, only one of those can be deployed to Buda. If it is played slightly later, and Belgrade has fallen to the Turks, the Hungarians will have lost the one point, meaning they could theoretically accept all 4 new points, accept again, the counter mix only allows three to go to Buda. Reading in between the lines, the Hungarians can (for example) deploy one large army and several smaller ones, but not field three equally-powerful forces. As I said, the permutations can get complicated and one has to trust the designers in creating certain specifics. Assuming they got it right, it is an easy way to apply restrictions with a minimum of off-line accounting.

But would you do that for a computer game? Certain rules aside, the counters in Here I Stand are meant to be “changeable.” That is, there is no difference between a level 6 regular infantry and 6 level 1 infantries, despite the difference in the pictures on the counter. Thus, as a programmer, if I wanted to represent a location having six infantry points, I doubt I’d want to also track the counter sizes (again, certain rules aside). I have some options, of course, but I can’t imagine that my first choice would be managing exactly which counter mix is used to represent the total. If nothing else, it would require more computer opponent logic to decide when to, for example add another level 1 counter versus upgrading an existing level 1 counter to a level 2 versus trading in that existing level 1 counter along with an existing level 2 for a level 4. To much work for a function where the result, most of the time, is exactly the same.

So what if, as a programmer, I’m counting my units in whatever way I’m counting them, and now I want to impose some historical restrictions on total (global and local) army sizes. Again, the “only use the counters supplied in the box” method is probably more complicated than the alternatives. Given the computer’s computation ability, I could be much more explicit about those limits to achieve my historical goal. A common computer game limitation is to have each node where recruitment takes place have it’s own (renewable) limit.

So much for negativity. Indeed I think there are abstractions that suggest a better way of doing things.

One in particular is the exploration and conquest mechanics of the game. This is obviously an improvement over the moving a piece around on a board, with each move having a possibility of revealing a discovery. For this, I’m imagining a boardgame equivalent to something like Civilization and its fog of war, where one moves units every turn, revealing new world information. While I’m sure we could find some good “exploration” mechanics for the board, the fact is in Here I Stand the player does not want to take on the role of Magellan, he is Charles V! Thus we toss our expeditions out into the Atlantic. Maybe they get lost, maybe they pay dividends, but details are beyond our control.

The other mechanic that just plain excites me is the Spring Phase/Winter Phase. Most games ignore the change of seasons.  If the game is more tactical, or even operational, seasonal effects are modifiers – to movement, to combat, to attrition, or whatever. For a strategic level game, it is rare to see a game that handles the annual cycle. Yes, a Europa Univeralis will penalize the player for operating during the wrong season, but ultimately that becomes a choice – do I pay X extra resources to launch my attack now, or wait until mid-March? In reality, particularly in this time period and earlier, the military calendar was driven by the seasonal calendar. It wasn’t a matter of calculating the cost/benefit of a winter campaign – in many cases, it just wasn’t an option. The effects of weather was only part of it. Forcing your agricultural workers to fight during harvest season would have been a good recipe for winning the battle but losing the war (to famine).

While Pike and Shot Campaigns, I very recently discovered, actually does include wintering rules, the only previous example that springs (heh – no pun intended) to mind is Hammer of the Scots. Here I Stand may have drawn from that system. The game does more than just apply restrictions based on season. Armies must withdraw (and be capable of withdrawing) to fortified areas able to support them. The forced withdrawal is balanced by a Spring deployment step. It nicely (by which I mean simply) models the seasonal raising and dismissing of citizen soldiers, necessary to a campaign of foreign conquest.

Naturally, it is simple and thus abstracted. In the most obvious abstraction, the game’s turns last more than a single year. In fact, the turns are not even a constant over the course of the game ranging (looking quickly) from 3 to 6 year turns. Each turn only has a single Spring/Winter cycle. As a model of history, that could mean one (or more) of several things. Perhaps the idea is that a major offensive wouldn’t be launched every year, year after year. While the turn takes place over, let’s say, 3 years, all the military campaigning takes place within one of those years. Or perhaps its an abstract acknowledgment that some sieges lasted over a winter or, at least, caused a campaign to extend over multiple years. Or maybe it is just a way to keep the game from getting too busy.

So a big shot of realism mitigated by a dose of abstraction. In many ways that describes much about my feelings for Here I Stand.

But I Won’t Do That

I made another try at trying to get Europa Universalis IV to take on the reign of Charles V and the uniting of vast expanses of the world under the Hapsburg name. Once again, I couldn’t get there.

This time I played as Austria and began with Frederick III in control. In the 1492 setup, Austria is in control both of roughly-modern-day Austria as well as the Netherlands. I tried to quickly establish marriage ties with Castile, hoping to come by Spain (this time) through the Netherlands.

Alas, like before, Isabella held on to the throne for decades beyond her real counterpart’s life. Also like before, Isabella married her daughter Juana into the Naples royal family so that, rather than having a future Emperor as a grandson, she had closer ties to Naples. Moving through the 1520s, there is no sign of some of the major historical factors of the time – neither the unions of Castile, Aragon, the Netherlands and Austria, nor the fighting over Italy that served as a proxy war between France and Spain.

Fortunately, a little search magic (that had eluded me before) turns up someone who posted a mod to handle Charles V on Steam. I’m going to have to give that one a go.

Parapiglia Generale

Tags

England, Europa Universalis, Europa Universalis IV, Flodden Field, Italian Wars, Italy, Pike and Shot, War of the League of Cambrai

For the War of the League of Cambrai, the first scenario featured in Pike and Shot is of the Battle of Revenna. The battle was one of the larger field battles of the war and, important to this context, one of the more balanced ones. In it the player commands the Spanish, who have a smaller army defending prepared defenses against the French.

In playing this scenario I lost my first play through and only then read an account of the actual fight. What struck me is how closely my reactions matched that of my historical counterpart. My initial plan was to use my defenses to counter the French numerical superiority. The problem is that well-positioned French artillery were able to strike part of my position (the cavalry) and it became clear that simply waiting out the French attack was a losing stratagem. At that point I initiated an attack with the right wing of my cavalry, mirroring the actual battle. As a result of the artillery damage combined with bad terrain, the force of my attack was blunted, my cavalry began to fail, and my center eventually succumbed to superior numbers. I’m impressed by the scenario design which shoehorns the unsuspecting player into the historical, and failed, strategy. Presumably the “game” is to, knowing what failed, come up with an alternative plan that succeeds.

The Battle of Revenna was notable for the extended artillery duel that preceded the battle and, indeed, forced the eventual outcome. It may have been a first in terms of both the extended use of field artillery and its effectiveness in driving the outcome. Gamewise, that is more interesting to me than trying again and again to “beat” the historical outcome.

The League

I decided to go back to the beginning of the war. Europa Universalis has as one of the (relatively few) stock scenarios a War of the League of Cambrai start.

The war that commenced in 1508 continued the Italian War pattern of pan-European involvement in the struggles for control of Italy. At the outset, both France and Spain were entrenched in Italy, with France controlling Milan and Spain controlling Naples. As part of the fallout from the earlier wars, however, Pope Julius II was displeased with Venetian independence, particularly with regard to the cities of Romagna, recently released from Borgia control. Julius called upon first Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian and then France to dislodge Venice from the area.

During the course of the war, sides were fluid. Treaties and alliances were made and remade as the various rulers attempted to maximize their advantage and control. It is a situation that would tend to push the EUIV diplomatic algorithms beyond their limits.

As such, the opening of the scenario has some notable departures from the historical situation. Earlier in 1508, Maximilian had tried and failed to attack Venice with his armies and had thus entered into a truce. In game terms, this would preclude the League of Cambrai from being formed in December of 1508 with a renewed attack from France and the HRE.The scenario opens with Venice (which I chose to play) at war with both France and Austria, with large armies from both closing in.

Similar to the above, League signatories Castile and the Papal States are not at war with Venice. In fact, Venice is on fairly decent terms with both. Given that they weren’t military involved with the war, this may be a necessary hack to the scenario to make sure that those two powers are able to align with Venice, as happened in July, 1510.

As I began, I moved my Venetian army, united, to deal with the French invaders. Historically, the loss at the Battle of Agnadello is blamed in part on the division of the Venetion forces due to an inability of the commanding Orsini cousins to agree on strategy. Given the almost 4:1 French superiority of numbers, it is hard to imagine that Venice could have done anything other than lose completely, faced with the might of both France and the HRE. Such it was in my game, as I eventually lost all territory except Venice itself, protected from attack by my fleets.

It was at this point that the game completely veered off from the course of history.

Historically, Venice’s adversaries had made a pact before the invasion in which they agreed to a partitioning of the spoils of war. In defeat, Venice was forced to give up the entirety of her Northern Italian territories.

In the game, however, the French merely demanded war reparations in the form of both a lump-sum payment and a monthly tribute. While burdensome, this was well warranted by the scale of the loss and considerably more palatable than the historical result.

By 1513, Venice is at peace, but with army and navy intact. Despite some rather heavy war reparations due France, we are free to pursue our trading ambitions and seem well on our way to overcoming the loss suffered in 1509.

This lead me to a lengthy period of peace in Italy that was completely ahistorical. I shouldn’t say total peace, because the Pope was up to various machinations in Northern Italy, but peace relative the pan-European conflict that the War of the League of Cambrai was turning into at this same time period.

The Peace held on until April, 1516, when the Ottomans declared war over the Venetian administration of Corfu. The War of the League of Cambrai was replaced with a new Crusade.

With less than six months to go before the historical end of the War, my peace was shattered by the Ottoman empire. In an attempt to extend their hold over Greece, they challenged by claim to the Greek island of Corfu. The resulting war was decidedly lopsided. The Ottoman forces were invincible on land, but their navies were quickly dispatched by the Christian coalition, with the huge Venetian galley force being decisive. It took several years, but eventually the Ottoman Empire buckled under the Venetian blockades.

The chickens come home to roost. June 1517, while I am busy putting the squeeze on the Ottomans, Austria (the HRE) decides to once again press their claim for Verona, which (historically) they should have taken back in 1509.

One other fallout from my light peace agreement is that the Austrian claim on Verona was never satisfied. In mid-1517, they again declared war (this would have been after the real war came to a close, so drawing historical parallels is problematic) to make good on their claim.

Dealing with Austria was not so easy as the Ottomans. The continental Turkish holdings (primarily Greece, in this context) was separated from Italy by Hungary and Austria. The Ottomans were unable to bring their considerable land armies to bear against my island holdings. The HRE, by contrast, had land access to all of Italy except Venice itself, making my navy almost totally irrelevant. I did defeat whatever Austrian ships were nearby and, even while still bashing the Turks into submissions, could protect Venice proper. But on the Italian mainland I could only watch as the Austrians took my territories, one by one. Furthermore, in this case, the allies who gladly joined the “Crusade” against the Ottomans demurred when it came to fighting the HRE.

In both cases, balanced land battles were simply not on the plate. In large part, one of my goals in playing this particular scenario was to test out the Total War Battle Mod and this foiled my attempt.

My idea here was to modify the files for “random” scenarios in Pike and Shot, both the campaign version and the skirmish version, and use that to build appropriate armies for EU4 battles. The Total War Battle Mod is supposed to skew the results in EU4 based on a user input descriptor of the off-line tactical battle. I thought my work in Pike and Shot was bearing considerable fruit. I stripped down the army choices in the stock “Pike and Shot” campaign to only those appropriate to the War of the League of Cambrai time period. Then I added back in variants of the armies – no artillery or all-infantry, for example. This allowed me to create roughly armies of my choice, but random on randomly-generated maps. Less successful was the fiddling with the Battle Mod. It may have been working, and I just couldn’t see the results. Suffice to say I’m not quite sure how it is supposed to work.

Snap Back to Reality

In actuality, by March of 1513, Venice had joined with France by entering an agreement to retake Northern Italy and divide it between them. After some initial, rapid advances, the French army was caught by surprise while besieging Novara, in the present-day Piedmont region of Italy.

This battle is included in the stock scenarios for Pike and Shot. The player takes the French side of the battle. The French were alerted to the approach of Swiss Mercenaries, but were caught by surprise by a night march and began the battle unprepared for the Swiss relief force. The French have superior numbers as well as a better mix of infantry, cavalry and artillery. The trick is, and the scenario tells you in the introduction, you are disorganized in the initial deployment. If you simply use your units to fight the nearest enemy, as I did in my first play through, you will lose, just as the French did. The scenario is also a reminder that just because your Landsknechts look the same size as the Swiss pike formations doesn’t mean that they are. Look at the actual count before charging.

The scenario is winnable if you are able to learn a few of these lessons. The French did not have that opportunity. Their loss at Novara forced them to retreat entirely from the Italian peninsula and  inaugurated several years of defeats and left Venice in the lurch.

There’s just no way this is going to turn out well. While I’m holding my own in the initial clash of cavalry, the English infantry is rapidly approach the front lines. When they come up, I’ll be outnumbered more than four to one.

Two of those defeats are portrayed in Pike and Shot via user-created scenarios. The Battle of the Spurs (above screenshot) models the involvement of England in the conflict. Another user-made scenario depicts the Battle of Flodden (below screenshot).

The Battle of Flodden pits the English “second string” against a Scottish army trained to fight in German formations. It was a huge loss for the Scots and, by extension, another in a string of losses for the French cause.

These two battles were historically one-sided fights and, likely for that reason, didn’t make it into the released scenario set. For the Battle of the Spurs the set up is so one-sided, it seems designed almost to illustrate how hopeless the cause was. The French had hoped to out-maneuver and surprise the English, but instead were spotted and wound up facing a foe with combined arms outnumbering their horse four-to-one. In this scenario, the battle starts with this mistake already having been made. The designers notes say it is “very difficult.” You don’t say.

For the Battle of Flodden, the player is given command of the victorious English and is asked to reproduce the landslide victory. This is easier said than done. The English “Bill and Bow” units, the backbone of their army, are no match for the Scottish pike formations. Unfortunately this does not jive with the historical result, nor the scant information I’ve read about the battle thus far. It was perhaps the last battle in England fought between medieval armies (albeit with the support of field artillery). Like Cynocephalae for the ancients, it was also a test of the Scots traditional use of pike formations versus the English use of the bill. Although the Scots had been trained in German-style battle, their pike units were not the equivalent of the Swiss “Keils” or the German Landsknecht. Furthermore, the tactics of the Swiss were less than suitable for the marshy ground from which they made there attack. A contemporary battle report notes that “the English halberdiers decided the whole affair” and the battle is held as an example as the end of the era of pike.

None of this is evident when I play the English in this scenario. I have no doubt there is a “trick” that would allow the player to recreate the historical victory. The usual tricks don’t work. Defeating the Swiss can be a matter of picking a wing and gaining local superiority in numbers. Unfortunately, the number of Scots pike units makes it very difficult to out-maneuver them. There always seems to be a couple more ready to jump ino the breach.

Anyway, back to the war.

Eventually, the French King (Louis XII) died and Francis I succeeded him. Francis formed a new invasion force and moved to regain Milan. In an episode that defies rules of most any period game, the Pope made peace with France and returned control of Milan to Francis, according to his royal claim. However, the Swiss Mercenaries were concerned that they wouldn’t be paid for defending Milan unless they actually defeated the French armies, and refused to give up the fight.

The resulting battle once again pitted the Swiss Infantry against a mixed force of French cavalry and artillery in combination with German Landsknecht in a flashback to Novara. Once again, the Swiss stole a march on the French and began the attack before the French were fully organized. This time (in reality and in the stock scenario in Pike and Shot) the French were victorious. The loss of the battle and the subsequent desertion of the remaining Swiss mercenaries meant the end of the war.

Columbus Took a Poo

Tags

Civilization, Civilization IV, Civilization V, Colonization, Columbus, Empire Deluxe, Europa Universalis, Europa Universalis IV, new world, poo

I remember the first time I ever played Civilization II.

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 recent innovations 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.

Wish me luck.

Pyrrhic Victory

Tags

Alea Jacta Est, Alea Jacta Est: Birth of Rome, ancients, Europa Universalis, Europa Universalis: Rome, Field of Glory, HPS Simulations: Punic Wars, John Tiller, Pyrrhic Wars, Roman Republic

Summer of 2015, I decided to play the Pyrrhic War. This review is taken largely from a Usenet post I made, answering a question about PC games covering the ancients era.

Games Reviewed:

• HPS: Punic Wars
• Field of Glory
• Alea Jacta Est: Birth of Rome
• Europa Universalis: Rome

The first two games seem to have fairly loyal followings, largely for multiplayer. I play games in single player mode only. I tend to rank “immersion” higher than innovative and/or challenging game play.

This exercise started when I tried playing Rome: Total War, and felt the disappointment at the lack of realism and depth. That caused me to begin digging through older games, sure that somewhere, someone must have done better.

HPS battles started off my “comparative gaming” exercise and, despite its shortcomings, ranked as the best available ancients tactics options that I tried.

HPS: Punic Wars

For those unfamiliar, the HPS product line is a series of games based on the work of John Tiller. The look-and-feel of the game series has largely remained unchanged from the 1995 Battleground series debut from Talonsoft, Bulge-Ardennes. I’ve never played that game, but had the second in the series (also 1995), Gettysburg. A big-budget title at the time, the game featured 3D figures (invoking table-top miniatures) and video of live re-enactments to augment the combat resolution. As the series developed, the latter was dropped quickly, while the former de-emphasized over the years. I still remember those muskets crackling in the pop-up window like it was yesterday.

The HPS Ancients series was developed from the core engine, but by developer Paul Bruffell. It is a turned-based, tactical-level treatment of the great battles of Rome, Greece, and Macedonia.

Turn-based hex gaming, which seems to be targeting Play-By-Email for table-top gamers.

The screenshot above looks nice enough, but I find it to be incredibly impractical for actually playing the game. The functional view is one of the 2D zoom levels, shown below with roughly the same section of the battle

The much more functional, but considerably less aesthetic, 2D view.

Not so pretty, but functional.

The modelling of the battle seems pretty good. As far as the product itself, there are lots of scenarios, plus a scenario editor. Each scenario takes a brutally long time to play so you get a whole lot of hours for your money that you’ve spent on a particular HPS module.

On the downside, the scenarios take a brutally long time to play.

A longstanding complaint about first the Battleground series, and then the HPS follows-ups, was ability of the computer opponent. The AI, while not obviously incompetent, probably will not beat you in any of the scenarios (mostly designed for balanced play-by-email).

Playing this scenario, it takes you through several distinct phases. The gameplay starts out OK as you close your army towards the enemy and need only make minor adjustments to your lines. Mostly you move forward using group moves, meaning (for example) you give a single movement order to all of one legion’s principes (10 counters) together. This works until the armies make contact, at which point the group move is useless and you have to give orders counter-by-counter. This isn’t too bad when you’re working on a tactically interesting section of the battlefield. (Can you break his right wing before he punches a hole in your center?) But you pretty much have to visit every counter, every turn, whether you want to or not.

Another complaint about this product is, while the army detail is simulated to a lower level of detail compared to most other games (Example Scale: for legions, one counter represents a maniple), it is still the same mechanics as any other hex-and-counter game. That is, the difference between a roman legion and allied heavy infantry is in the stats of the units. There is no simulation of the manipular system and its unique advantages. Indeed, there is no enforcement (or advantage, as far as I can tell) for keeping your units in the historical formations and combat roles. This is up to you as the player to do for your own satisfaction, often expending a lot of on-screen clicks to do so.

Field of Glory

You’d think, then, that Field of Glory would be a breath of fresh air. Counter representative sizes are bigger (although, I’ll note, they are set by the scenario designer, so it really could be anything) so micromanagement is less. The AI can give a challenge, particularly in scenarios designed for single play – although this too is primarily a play-by-email game.

Field of Glory is a PC game based on the table-top rule set of the same name. The PC game has a large following, perhaps consisting of a significant number of table-top players who want additional remote play opportunities.

Field of Glory looks decent and has a very accessible UI.

These are also the same rules that form the basis for the more recent game Pike and Shot, which is among my favorite new releases. But for some reason FoG doesn’t do it for me.

Similar to my criticism of HPS, there is no game enforcement or advantage to historically-correct formations. In fact, optimal gameplay seems to involve using the larger scale (and thus, greater movement-per-turn) to scurry around to an unexpected attack position.

I also find the unit stats to give some results that don’t match my gut.

Finally, linear combat and hexes just don’t match. The Pike and Shot system, while using the same rules, is based on a square grid system rather than hexagonal. That one little change seems to make a world of difference in how battle lines are modeled.

The advantages of Field of Glory are many. A huge number of scenarios and an active community, especially for multiplayer. The scenario editor is simple enough that you can actually throw together your own. Plus there are army building tools to create balanced, hypothetical match-ups. Most importantly, the battles are fairly quick. Even if a particular scenario model falls flat, you’ve wasted only an evening on it, not a month of your life.

The combined experience with these tactical-level games makes me wonder if the right battle simulation for ancient armies isn’t the “General simulator.” Rather than simulate the board game or tabletop and push all the units around, shouldn’t you sit in the saddle of the consul and give only the appropriate orders?

As the few games for other eras that do this demonstrate, this requires a level of AI (especially friendly AI) that doesn’t exist for ancients.

Alea Jacta Est: Birth of Rome

Enter Birth of Rome, which simulates the operational level and deals with the tactical battles in considerable detail, but outside the control of the player. You can set up the size, quality and makeup of your armies and, through the commander assignments, control its tactics. But once the armies are marching towards each other, there isn’t much micromanagement for a general to do – so why not just have the computer resolve everything. This game answers that question: it’s kind of the worst of all worlds.

A battle occurred. I wasn’t much involved.

Roman Republic games have two interesting aspects. One is the spectacle of massive formations of soldiers colliding and the fascinating rock-paper-scissors that actually played out as the army organization of the different cultures helped to dictate the fates of their nations. For the battles in question, the phalanx vs legion is the obvious, but most ancient battles are characterized by an array of unique units. At the other end is the political aspects of the Roman Republic. Control of the Senate, control of resources, the ability to install consuls, generals or governors. This creates an opportunity to design good games around even a nearly-invincible Rome against the world.

Birth of Rome lands right between these two interesting wings in the dull middle. At the strategic level, all the decision are made by the scenario designer. At the tactical level, all the decisions are made by the computer. Leaving what? A historical account might describe how the Romans, upon hearing of Pyrrhus’ arrival in Italy, mustered 80,000 men and divided them into four armies. Do any of us wish we could micromanage the makeup and lower-level command of the Roman response? I didn’t think so.

Europa Universalis: Rome

EU Rome is a game that I ignored when it came out. It seemed like easy way to capitalize on Rome: Total War’s popularity with their existing engine. But I assumed it would just be the same game as EU2, reworked with different window dressing. I finally picked it up in 2014 when I saw it for a buck or two.

In retrospect, the design was an intermediate version of the Crusader Kings system; improving upon the, at the time existing, Crusader Kings but not yet to the level of the outstanding Crusader Kings II. EU Rome does manage to immerse the player in that interesting strategic top end of the Roman era. In particular, whereas the R:TW family system has little connection with historical politics, EUR does start to capture the feel of it. Once you stray outside the historical bounds of a scenario setup, EUR moves toward the classic 4X gameplay with build queues and constructing the right buildings, a mechanic without much connection to historical reality. But it is slower to silliness than most of its competitors and therefore, in my own Pyrrhic exercise of last summer, actually was the most satisfying attempt to play the Roman Republic.

Honorable Mention: Great Battles of Caesar

When I originally posted this article on-line, some comments were made about the Great Battles series. At the time, I did not expect it to challenge the two tactical games I was playing. One of the comments I made was I thought I had some troubles with stability in the original game. It was mentioned to me that the GOG version had fixed stability issues and compatibility with modern system. I’ve since picked up the GOG version when it went on sale, but I’ve yet to install and play. Maybe next time I get to this era.