Quelques arpents de neige

Tags

Birth of America, England, France, french and indian war, Voltaire, wargames

I learned only recently that the quote “a few acres of snow” comes from Voltaire. He was critical of France’s endeavors in the New World and, with this phrase, dismissed the value of the North American French empire. Previously, I had known the reference only from books on the French and Indian War as well as the name of the boardgame with that same theme.

A Few Acres of Snow is not a game in my collection and not one I’ve ever played. Given that it is out of print, it is unlikely that I ever will play it. When I do consider it, what I think of most is an online argument (witnessed years and years ago) about game design as it differs between table and computer.

When A Few Acres of Snow was released in 2011, cards were beginning to make their appearance in computer wargames. While many of us would have been familiar with a card-driven mechanic, it having shown its face in the 1993 table-top wargame We the People, the phrase “deck-building” would only bring to mind a game like Pokemon or Magic: The Gathering. For any of us who dreamed that ever-more-powerful computers would take us closer to a more realistic depiction of combat, the growing use of cards was a slap in the face. Hexes and combat-resolution tables we may have accepted as a necessary abstraction, but how can I feel like General Patton if my prospects for victory hinge on the card that I draw?

By contrast, table-top gamers were often impressed with innovations that sped-up and simplified gameplay. I’ve praised the designs of games like Twilight Struggle and Fire in the Lake for their ability to streamline the use of game components. This obviously makes playing the game physically easier but it, in many ways, makes for better gameplay than would a more complex solution. Just today, I read some designers commentary on Dominion (released 2008), the game that created this deck-building genre. The design evolved as a way to simplify playing. The adding of cards to your deck substituted for having to track “abilities” across multiple components and then solve math problems in order to take an action. What started out as a “wouldn’t it be cool if everything was on the cards” turned into a system for simplifying play.

For those table-top gamers, innovations like this one made gameplay faster, simpler, and easier to learn. These are huge bonuses when playing involves getting the right people together and having enough time and space to set up and complete a game. The idea of taking this brilliant and popular idea and adapting it for a wargame was a welcomed innovation. For the computer wargamer, we’d wonder why someone would make a French and Indian War game worse by further abstracting combat with the introduction of a mini-game of Gin Rummy.

But enough chatter around a title and what this post isn’t about. My point, here, is to visit what Americans know as The French and Indian War but what, for most of Europe, would have been a lesser front in the Seven Years War. Was Voltaire’s disparagement of North America’s strategic value appropriate? To the likes of Fredrick the Great, it would certainly seem so. To England, who with their victory at Quebec, gained Canada (but would eventually lose the 13 North American colonies who helped obtain that win), it would seem fairly significant. To us Americans, and for that matter anyone else who feels put-upon by American policy, this defeat of France in North America is probably pretty momentous. The book Moment of Battle includes the fight on the Plains of Abraham as half* of one of their 20 battles, although one might accuse this list of being entirely too America-centric.

Easing into that year of miracles, it became clear that the Birth of America II was matched best to the “campaign” scenarios in its library. Despite not having a good sense of the French and Indian War, outside of that covered in War on the Run, I decided to embark on the 1755 Campaign Colonial Faction.

The full length scenario includes strategic decision making.

For a few years now I have wondered. I had such a strong, positive opinion of Birth of America when it came out and such mixed experience when it came to the sequels. Was it the novelty of the engine that made it all seem a little better when it was fresh? At this point, I’m thinking there really is a synergy between the capabilities of this engine and the scope and scale of this war. The game is a combination of a huge map (particularly relative to the transportation technologies of the day) and paltry armies. It is quite possible to hold in your head the status of maybe 3-5 maneuverable units and leaders. The tactical results, while driving the game, remain dwarfed in importance by the operational considerations. Even supply issues, which I’ve struggled with in the past, seem easier to wrap my head around.

Detail and abstraction. Ships are represented by squadron, but are modeled to the individual vessel.

The smaller scale also gives me an appreciation for the representation of naval units, important given that’s how I got here. See the screenshot, above, for an illustration. I have a fleet which consists of two “counters.” One of those counters is called “Windsor,” a 58-gun fourth-rate which saw service during this period. Selecting the unit, however, shows it actually consists of three ships-of-the-line and each is modeled separately. The accompanying counter contains a frigate and several brigs. What we appear to be looking at is a one-for-one representation of the warships present and fighting.

Why didn’t I kick his arse? Ah, yes, Langlade.

While I acknowledge the pluses, my level of satisfaction is decidedly mixed. As I speculated in the shorter scenario, proper enjoyment and success in this game needs to be accompanied by some decent knowledge of the history – and, as I’ve said, I’ve yet to catch up on that end. I’ve wound up frustrated by repeated losses, not quite understanding why I keep losing. Of course, in this, I’m much in the same boat as my historical British counterparts. Digging into sample details (see above), I realize the reason that my 6:1 numerical advantage wound up a massive loss is that I took on French/Indian raider (and “Father of Wisconsin”) Charles Michel de Langlade and his crack wilderness fighters. It’s a testament to the game that these the historical details get right what pure numbers would seem to defy. Does it also mean that casually flirting with this game will always result in frustration. How much worse will it be for me with the likes of Rise of Prussia, where I know next to know historical detail?

*The chapter combines the victory at Quebec with the Battle of Quiberon Bay, two decisive engagements of the Seven Years War taking place on opposite sides of the Atlantic, into a single “moment” under the chapter title Annus Mirabilis (the “wonderful year” of 1759).

Lead the Way

Tags

American Revolutionary War, Birth of America, England, France, french and indian war, New England, ranger, robert rogers

Whenever I’m required to submit a corporate expense report, it always fills me with dread. Have I made math errors? Have I submitted something that the accountants won’t like? Will I be accused of cheating? It all seems quite irrational, and I’ve never really had a problem, but the fear never goes away. I have just found out how much worse it could get.

Somebody got me War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America’s First Frontier as a gift, shortly after it came out in 2011. It has sat on my shelf for, lo, these many years but I have no begun reading it. High time, too.

First, in these times that try men’s souls, we could do worse than be inspired by the heroic deeds of those that came before us. In addition, since leaving off in my reading of Moment of Battle with the chapter on England’s victories in 1759, I’ve been itching to get back into the groove. My recent fascination with the Age of Sail fighting would mesh well with some serious history of the wilderness land war in America. It also informs me just how bad expense report issues can possibly get. Accounting red tape not only can ruin a great man but it is capable of reshaping the destiny of nations.

Robert Rogers was both one of the key personalities driving England’s victory in the French and Indian War and, in many ways, an influence on the American Revolution. I stumbled across an interesting article from some years back talking about how Rogers gets no love from his native* New Hampshire. It is a combination of his having taken the wrong side in the American Revolution and the far-from-PC fame as a tamer of the frontier Indian menace. War on the Run counter-balances this historical short shrift with a very sympathetic telling of his life and deeds, including his problems with debt and reimbursement. In a nutshell, he fronted expenses and salaries for his now-renowned Rogers’ Rangers as well as made promises of future payments. When he later went to the keeper of England’s treasure for compensation, most of his claims were denied – frequently due to insufficient receipts. In battle, his optimistic refusal to concede defeat brought him glory. In his personal finances, the assurance that all would inevitably turn out all right eventually was his undoing.

One source that has never sold Rogers short is the U.S. Army. Last time I was poking around about the Rangers, I came across the Army’s historical connection to Rogers. Roger’s didn’t invent the concept of “Rangers” or “Special Operations” but he brought the concept to the English army of his day (and particularly that portion thereof that became the American army) in its modern form. With his “28 Rules of Ranging,” he formalized and codified the methods he employed to be effective at fighting in the wilderness. These very rules were printed and distributed during the Vietnam War and continue to be used in Ranger training to this day.

War on the Run is written as a scholarly work, citing original source material and extensively footnoted. At the same time, it is an attempt to echo the inspiring storytelling of the 1937 novel Northwest Passage by Kenneth Roberts, which War on the Run author John F. Ross cites as a major inspiration. To do so, he occasionally mixes historically based speculation in with documented events (e.g. “Rogers might have…”). It makes for an enjoyable read while at the same time grounding one solidly in the written records of the time.

A few characterizations stand out for me which I will briefly share. First, my sense of that time is based upon being gradually fed the modern conception of England’s (and then America’s) dealings with the Native Americans. I know in my heart that the indigenous people were the good guys, General Amherst was a monster, and we all are due a reckoning. From this standpoint, the book is a bit unexpected. Rogers, per Ross’ telling, was surprisingly sympathetic to the Indians, at least for a famous Indian killer. His methodologies were adopted from the Indians, of course, but he also gladly recruited and deployed native tribes as part of his force. In one chapter, it is emphasized how much he respected Ottowa chief Pontiac, even has he was called upon to defeat him in battle. Implied is the thought that a greater sensitivity on the part of the English to differences in culture and values might have helped engender a more peaceful co-existence on the North American continent. Telling, Rogers arrives to make war against Pontiac but first sends him a gift of brandy through a French go-between. It was a show of respect for a worthy opponent but also a show of power; a warrior confident enough to be magnanimous to his foes.

The other interesting point I’ll dwell on is Ross’ description of Rogers as the first American celebrity. Robert Rogers was known throughout the colonies (even those far from New England and Upstate New York) and was also well known in England proper. When he was winning victories for King and Country, the press was very positive. When rumors began to fly, stemming largely from those expense report troubles, the press turned against him. Yet, he still commanded recognition in his travels and could, to the end, typically muster sympathy, if not the financial support that he actually required.

A (speculative) scene from the book elaborates on Rogers’ meeting with George Washington. The two were remarkably similar. Approximately the same age, they were both physically imposing and both seasoned veterans of the French and Indian War. Rogers had been stuck in London for years trying to resolve his financial problems and so missed the run-up to revolution in the American sentiment. Returning, to America and seeing the signs of brewing conflict he preferred not to get involve so as to focus on re-establishing his fortunes, which necessarily involved interaction with the British authorities. This all seemed suspicious to those who were dedicated to revolution. Ross also writes that Washington saw in Rogers a potential rival – someone whose force of personality, not to mention demonstrated military skill, matched his own. Washington’s suspicion resulted in Rogers being shunned by the Continental Congress, driving him back to the British army, where he fought the Revolution as the enemy to his birthplace. Yet his loyalty to the crown was much as a means to earn some coin as anything political.

Ross contrasts the two men. Washington, also, struggled with financial issues. He had to borrow extensively and even had to take loans to travel to New York to be inaugurated (and we made fun of AOC). The difference is that Washington, like the majority of the Founding Fathers, were Old World -style aristocrats. Washington had a social depth, inherent in his background, to fall back upon when his personal fortunes floundered. Whatever his financial difficulties, he was not going to wind up in debtors’ prison. Rogers, on the other hand, clashed with that very aristocracy, who seemed unable to accept that such as he could be successful.

Despite not becoming a part of the American Revolution, in many ways he was an archetype for America’s new man. He was low-born, a Scots-Irish, and his successes were entirely on his own merit. While he did not grow up exactly poor, neither was he rich. In this, he contrasts with the likes of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison and the other wealthy founders. He is the America as it was to become rather than the America that had been.

He is ready to make all the difference.

The other reason that my reading of this book was timely is that I’ve been itching to install Birth of America II and this gives me the motivation to actually do it.

I bought Birth of America, the original, shortly after it was released. It took me a little longer to get to playing it but I was already mesmerized by the descriptions I saw on-line. Remember, this was the first of the AGE engine titles, so everything about it was new and exciting. Graphics-wise, the hand-drawn look provided both a clean user interface as well as lending to the historical flavor. The game is entirely** operational, with strategic decisions being largely made for you and tactical battles resolved automatically. It seemed to hit the sweet spot – entirely manageable and yet rich in detail. In fact, as I commented earlier, the decision to make the series bigger and include more strategic decisions turned off many of the BoA fans.

As I said, after getting very excited about the game and securing myself a copy, I was a little slow to play it. When I finally did start playing, the anticipation seemed to outstrip the experience a little bit. After some time spent trying to figure it all out, I finally felt like a I had a grip on the game and recalling having a fairly enjoyable experience with one of the larger Revolutionary War scenarios. I haven’t played it since. I bought the sequel/upgrade Birth of America II well after it came out. I am almost (but not quite) curious enough to dig out a receipt to get the details. I’m sure I picked it up at a very nice discount but I nevertheless did spring for the CD version. In any case, when I got it I wasn’t really in the mood to take this period on again and so there the game has sat, a physical copy on an actual bookshelf, as the years ticked by.

Clearly, when remaking Birth of America, they took into account lessons from the intervening releases. I see a game that is larger (bigger map), longer (more scenarios), and includes some updates to the rules. I haven’t gone through feature by feature so I can’t speak for how much the upgrade is worth over the original. Based on ancient memories, I don’t see a huge difference between the two versions. I was a little apprehensive that Birth of America II might come loaded down with the features that fans of the original didn’t like but that does not appear to be the case.

If you’ll recall my own back and forth regarding the suitability of this engine for Rome, you know my feelings have been mixed. Much would also apply to this title. In some ways, however, the French and Indian War and this engine may be particularly aligned. The battles in colonial North America were small and, shall I say, irregular, making them unsuited to tactical gaming. Strategically, it is easy to wildly diverge from the historical, as I found during my recent stab at this period in Europa Universalis IV. Reading War on the Run gave me an appreciation for just how wild the frontier wilderness of North America really was. The operational scale of this game might just capture the feel of my reading.

At first glace, the Annus Mirabilis Colonial Faction scenario would seem a little too simplistic to earn too much praise. The scenario is a mere 6 turns long and, as the English, you have only three armies, one of them already besieging Quebec and another named for the very task to which it must be assigned. My first run-through went pretty quickly and I ended up losing on points and not quite understanding why***. In some ways, this is a similar problem to the Gettysburg scenario in AgeOD’s American Civil War – the small scale leaves you little in the way of strategy and puts your prospects for victory at the mercy of the virtual dice. Yet, this time, I take a different view.

Coupling the play with my book learnin’, I see a little more to it. In order to appreciate Annus Mirabilis (and BoA more generally), you likely need to go in with an understanding of the period and about the battles. Perhaps more so than for other iterations in this family, these wars are characterized by vast emptiness populated with only a scattering of small armies. The combination of unit and leader special abilities contrive to flesh out the unique attributes of those armies. To successfully play the game and, perhaps more importantly, to enjoy what the game offers, you need to understand two things. First, know who all these people are and what they did or failed to do. Second, you should understand the details of the game’s systems and how abilities match or clash with your intentions.

So, yes, the 6 turn scenario is a little light. I think, though, it is the only way to get the decisive couple of months into the game historically intact. Without the exact set up of circumstances (mostly miserable British losses) to set things up, the likelyhood of ever having such a decisive victory at exactly the right time seems remote. Perhaps I’ll be back to you with some thoughts on the game performance on a larger scenario.

*Rogers was born in Methuen, MA to immigrant parents (the first American-born sibling in his family). He moved to present-day Dunbarton, NH at the age of 8.

**Different scenarios can have different interactions. For the simpler scenarios, including the Annus Mirabilis scenario pictured in the screenshot, there are no strategic level decisions. It is all about movement, supply, and command.

***I took me quite a while to find a victory screen overview, which was prominent in the Alea Jacta Est series.

Brittany Spears

Tags

England, Europa Universalis, Europa Universalis IV, France, Pike and Shot

My age of sail explorations continue to take some odd turns. Grousing, as I did, about England’s Republican government, I decided to start an EU4 game as England, but all the way at the beginning of the time line, which EU4‘s expansion content has moved back to 1444.

Working with Parliament pays off.

Happily, I found that the standard start date features a more appropriate government mechanism for England. They now have a parliamentary government, a feature that, like the Republican options, I’d also never encountered before. Its mechanism is fairly simple. You are periodically allowed to select a reform from a list but, in order to receive it, you must “compromise” with various members of parliament. Practically speaking, this means agreeing to a number of negative effects that favor a local area over the central government. You can either let the “debate” play out and leave it to (influenced) chance whether you eventually win or lose -or- you can agree to enough tits for tats to push it through immediately. I’m not sure it’s an interesting “mini game,” but it does give England an historical equivalent to that Republican conversion I fought against last game.

As one should expect from a EU4 game beginning in 1444*, the alternate history quickly deviated quite well away from historical fact. In my world, France has been unable to dominate Western Europe. Instead, it is Austria that has spread across the continent and has, in addition to preventing France from consolidating, controls much of what might have been Spain’s territory in the fragmented HRE. The Hapsburgs have also extended their reach into England – despite a fairly conventional War of the Roses, successful succession was shored up by appointing a Hapsburg rather than Tudor. Confusingly enough, he was still named Henry and, even more confusingly, his son (Henry VIII) sired a male heir.

The French Reconquest of Maine was a humiliating defeat for England.

This brought me through to the year 1525. This is a time roughly contemporary with the War of the League of Cambrai. I was dragged into a a war between Brittany and France by virtue of an old alliance with Brittany (which seemed important to help protect my lingering interests on the continent). When France attacked Brittany, I was brought in as Brittany’s only friend.

My strategy was to try dominate the seas (easily done) and then use the resulting strategic flexibility to concentrate all my forces (and a sizeable contingent of mercenaries) onto a subset of the French army. In the farmlands of Eastern Normandy, I almost managed to pull it off. I managed to lure France into a battle wherein I safely outnumbered them. Unfortunately, they were able to hold out until pretty much all of the forces from all of belligerents managed to converge, making the fight nearly equal, manpower-wise.

If you’re a EU4 fan, you’ll know that the battle resolution engine leaves plenty of room for imaginative interpretation, should you be inclined to such an exercise. The “battle” can stretch over many weeks in a process that is displayed as a maneuver of opposing battle lines but may be better interpreted as the operational maneuvers of the various forces as they combine to engage, or evade, the enemy. With a little narrative flair, I figure that France was successful in delaying my superior numbers until such time as reinforcements arrived for the decisive battle. It didn’t help me that France was already adopting the arquebusier as a core infantry unit while England, yet to be transformed by the ideas of the Renaissance, still built her force around the longbow. Wretched leadership didn’t help any either. When the Duke of Brittany arrived he used his royal prerogative to take supreme command of the field and proceeded to lead the allied forces to a rapid defeat.

My Englishman still remember their victory at Agincourt, using their trusty longbows to face the French and their firearms.

While imagining such a battle provides some entertainment, I still dream of being able to experience that battle in all its tactical glory. As it turns out, the random skirmish match-up from Pike and Shot produces a more-or-less plausible version of that battle. I’m imagining this as one of the earlier clashes in the campaign where my moderately-superior English force attempts to trap and annihilate the local French contingent. The French goal is merely to fend of defeat and then wait for their reinforcements. To create my battle, I used pretty basic settings which produced something that I imagine to be close to what EU4 conceived. Also, like in EU4, I lost the battle.

I also lost for the same combination of factors that, I believe, were decisive in EU4. The French, being defenders, had a built in advantage. It is also the case, using Pike and Shot‘s historical forces, that the French were slightly more vigorous adopters of the Renaissance firearms and their formations, making theirs a slightly more “modern” army than what the British could muster. In this, the EU4‘s numbers approximate the field armies of the first couple of decades of the 16th century. Finally, like the Duke of Brittany’s inept leadership, I was done-in by poor tactical decisions (my own, that is). I quickly regretted some ill-considered attacks which left my flanks exposed. I also don’t believe I was using the “longbow” units the correct way.

I’ve commented on the hand-to-hand strength of longbows in the original Field of Glory and so they appear in Pike and Shot as well. For the first half of the battle, I assumed that my English longbowmen were best used as a standoff force against the pike squares; the core of the French army. Later, as desperation drove me to launch those units forward in direct assault, I realized that they were actually quite effective against the French pikes. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake to hold them back as long as I did. Using bows and arrows to engage in a long-range duel with arquebusier and cannon across the battlefield doesn’t seem advisable**. Closing with opposing infantry may have offered as much in the way of protection from ranged fire as it risked in melee attrition.

Note, I did not try to feed any tactical results back into the EU4 game. Playing Pike and Shot was just a bit of distraction for me after I’d lost the war in the main game. And not only did I lose, but I took on some very extensive debt in order to field those losing armies. This doomed my game to decades of trying to scrape together enough budget surplus to tamp down my stifling interest payments. I also discovered another new-to-me mechanic regarding the management of lands directly under control of the crown. It is possible to give up control of royal holdings in exchange for substantial payment, a sale that also generates support from the church and the merchant class. Likewise, it is possible to seize back private lands in an attempt to restore power to the crown. Alternating back and forth between the two provides one way to generate a fairly significant amount of money on a long time scale. I’m not going to try to comment on the historicalness of such a tactic, except to say it sounds a little crazy but not out of the realm (heh) of possibility. Monarchs, or any government for that matter, have never been beyond selling privileges and then taking them back by fiat. In game, it is a nice way to pull yourself back from a brink created by overspending.

Over all, now that I’ve removed that unfortunate Republic of England from the picture, I’ve not found issues with EU4‘s current (and presumably nearly final) state. I have about 70-80% of the DLCs, not having yet sprung for the latest releases. They are all half price now on Steam in one of their weekend deals. Do I want that Middle East expansion with better training options for armies? Maybe I do. Maybe I do.

*I stumbled across an interesting online debate about the magic of November 11th, 1444. It is the day after the Battle of Varna which both ended the Crusade of Varna’s attempt to expel the Ottoman’s from Europe as well as set up Christendom to fall short of what it would take to prevent the fall of Constantinople. While that’s nice to know, it begs the question as to why EU4 goes back to this date. The suggested answer is that this date allows the Byzantine Empire to be played and perhaps still prevail. Apparently, there is an incredible amount of enthusiasm for restoring the Roman Empire in EU4.

**I do recall, and maybe I even wrote about it, that for quite some time longbows remained a superior alternative to crossbows and early firearms. They were faster and more accurate. The main drawback is that an expert yeoman required a lifetime of training and practice. Firearms, on the other hand, are accessible to the masses.

A Shot at a Pikeless Fight

Tags

England, France, Grand Tactician, Pike and Shot, The Seven Years War, War of the Spanish Succession

Excited by my experience with the Battle of Lepanto mod, I noticed that there are also user-made mods and scenarios for Pike and Shot which will bring me into the 18th Century. At least some of them have been added since the last time I played the game. I downloaded one for the Battle of Blenheim to test whether this game can be reworked to suit the later period.

Marlborough leads the left wing forward.

Even as the file downloaded, I wonder whether I was not just fooling myself. Pike and Shot is a fine game for the period which it covers – why torture it into being something that it is not? The problem is, there doesn’t seem to be much out there for someone interested in the 18th century at a tactical level. This seems odd. The modern wargaming hobby seems to have such foundations in the infantry/horse/cannon armies of the period, leaving one to puzzle why that field is so sparsely populated today.

Granted, Napoleonics and the American Civil War are more than well represented. Where, though, is the equivalent of a Field of Glory or a Pike and Shot (or even and Age of Rifles) once one ventures back in time from the French Revolution? Is the audience just not there for a War of Spanish Succession or a Seven Years’ War? Do the linear, structured battles that make for a nice miniatures setup lose their appeal as things get automated? Or is this just a case that the attempts an “doing” this era have tried but missed?

Oh, my eyes!

To find another attempt at the Battle of Blenheim in my own library, I have to go back to the Shrapnel Games release of Horse and Musket. My version, itself, was something of an enhancement* of the game Dragoon: The Complete Battles of Frederick the Great, which came out in 1998. Note that it debuted the year after Great Battles of Alexander was released. There is an obvious similarity between Dragoon and Great Battles, which is surely no accident, although Dragoon looks a little rough around the edges in comparison.

It may seem strange that I’m going back 20 years, especially since Horse and Musket has gone down its own winding path since that time. The developer of that first set of games (Boku Strategy Games), following a reasonably successful run courtesy of Shrapnel, began work on a new version. Horse and Musket 2 was released as Dragoon: The Prussian War Machine in 2003 and then was followed by Prussia’s Glory. My memory is a little foggy but, as I recollect, the focus in the upgrade was mostly on the graphics. The scenarios mostly matched the original lineup (maybe a handful of additions) and the lackluster AI, along with the nitty-gritty of game play, remained largely the same. It hardly made a strong case for repurchasing a slightly better-looking (albeit still fairly ugly) version of what I already had. I recall reading rumblings about a Horse and Musket 3 and pinned my hopes on that to bring effort the game up to my expectations.

Somewhere in all of this** Boku parted ways with Shrapnel. Matrix Games, in the 2008-2009 time frame, announced that Boku had now partnered with them, presumably to continue work on that next-generation version of Horse and Musket. What came out of Matrix, however, was an H&M 2.1. It repackaged all the scenarios from Version 2 along with another rework*** of the graphics. This was combined with a greatly-expanded scenario editor, opening the door to additional user-made scenarios. The Matrix version is currently sold as Horse and Musket: Volume I.

I passed again on this latest upgrade. First of all, while my gut reaction to playing Mark I of Horse and Musket is the horror of early Windows graphics, one quickly gets used to it. What I really want is not a graphics makeover but better AI, better battle generation tools, and a modern user interface. In short, all the things that Pike and Shot (and Field of Glory II) have done so well. I also resent being offered a third version of a program I payed for 20 years ago (for a price that exceeds what a lot of us paid for Field of Glory II shortly after it came out). I like to support developer efforts but I can’t afford to carry everyone.

Decades on, Frederick seizes objectives at the Battle of Rossbach. Everyone seems overly-eager to put towns to the torch.

I may have only myself to blame but, here, I’m left wondering why I don’t have a decent tactical engine for the 18th Century. Oddly enough, though, maybe I do.

For whatever reason, this period attracts the lone developer. The Horse and Musket saga is a tale of tiny, indie development teams and so it is with The Seven Years War (1756-1763), which sits in my Steam library. According to Steam, the game has been out for nearly five years now. I also recall it spent considerable time in Early Access and I don’t know what was before or after the official “Release Date.” I know I had it on my “Wish List” for a long time and then also kept it, unplayed, in my Steam collection for another stretch. The time has finally come, though, to install and play it.

My hesitancy to buy the game was driven by the online reviews. It now rates as “Mixed” on Steam but it long had pretty positive rankings leaving me to think that much of the negativity is more recent. Even many of the positive reviews, if you actually read through them, have been mixed in their verdict. The positive comments relate to the game’s vision and concept. For the execution, even the most generous reviewers suggest that the game needs some refinement. While I finally bought the game on those positive comments, the “mixed” side kept me from installing and playing.

Having now played the game I can say that the reviews get it exactly right. Before I get into those details, I’ll comment on the game generally, particularly for those not familiar with it.

It should go without saying that a game called The Seven Years War is about the Seven Years War. In many of our minds, that title refers to the war centered around Frederick the Great and in continental Europe. Separately, the concurrent war between the French and Spanish colonists in North America, The French and Indian War, is a separate thing. Most period games cover one theater or the other. This game is intended for both.

One review calls it an attempt to improve upon Total War. I wouldn’t have come up with that thought on my own but, now that I’ve read it, it seems about right. The Seven Years War is an attempt to get right all the things that Total War: Empires got wrong. There is a strategic layer with a series of historically-focused campaigns. A handful of historical battles are included with what appears to be an emphasis on historical accuracy, both in terms of the scope and modeling of battlefield tactics. I see bits and pieces that have me shouting “yes!” There is a siege mini-game that requires the gradual construction of trench works. I notice a naval squadron tacking as it crosses the English Channel. The economic system seems to be designed so as to provide just enough realism to drive the wars, as opposed to simply funding them. These are the things that I would have put into such a game, had it been my own project.

In the end, as I said, those mixed reviews were exactly right. Conceptually, this game is trying to do everything right. It has nearly all the parts**** that would be on my ideal feature list and the developer has put in a valiant effort. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite get there. More unfortunately, the shortfalls are bigger than the game simply lacking “polish.” Some of the pieces that just don’t quite work right are probably because of bad design decisions rather than minor flaws in execution. More importantly, after 5 years and two DLC packs, I’d say holding out hope for some magical fix to come down the pike is unreasonable.

Another reason I decided to install and play this game now was the (then imminent, now achieved) release of the developer’s follow-on Civil War game, currently in Early Access, Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865). It is early access, so while the online chatter is of bugs and other problems, that is to be expected. Even more so than The Seven Years War, positive reviews of The Civil War describe a game that includes in all the details that people like me want in a game. For example, the use of period maps for the strategic and operation interface is brilliant.

I assume the developer hopes that the American Civil War will be a more commercially-viable subject for a game. We may even hope, if Grand Tactician is successful, that it is the first in a series of Grand Tactician games, allowing him to return to the 18th century. We also have to hope that the Early Access phase allows him to pull it all together. He needs to get more than the concept right. He’s also got to compete with the likes of Ultimate General on spit and polish.

Even focusing on The Seven Years War purely as a tactical game, it has plenty of merit. It may even be that this is THE game if you’re interested in the subject; filling in for the likes of Scourge of War. I have not yet purchased the DLC, which adds a battle generator, although I’ll probably pick it up sooner or later. How well it is implemented may be the make-or-break feature for whether this game has a future claim on my gaming time.

Expect to get back to this topic.

*It’s possible that I have the names all mixed up and backwards. The original versions of this series are no longer out there and even simple description of the games are rather hard to come by.

**Once again, my memory is foggy and the online record of all of this is pretty sparse. If I had to guess, I think Horse and Musket 3 was announced as a project with Shrapnel, but then Boku left before work really got underway. It could just as easily be the other way around.

***I have to say, the graphical rework could hardly be considered a “modernization.” The isometric hex representation is very similar to the Tiller family. It’s not as circa-2001 as the Talonsoft stuff, but it is the same general look.

****I’ve not been able to force a fleet engagement yet, so I don’t know exactly how these are resolved. I assume it is abstract and simplified, otherwise I’d be seeing screenshots of the nifty naval tactical UI.

Howl-ong Must We Sing This Song?

Tags

France, Le chant du loup, netflix, Russian, Syrian Civil War, Tom Clancy, Top Gun, u2

It’s easy to pick holes in the plot of Le chant du loup (billed as The Wolf’s Call on Netflix), but why would you want to do that? This French-made military/technical thriller follows in the footstep of Tom Clancy to create a modern variation on the Hunt for Red October theme. It does as well as some and better than most.

The story starts us in Syria where a French special forces unit is being evacuated by submarine. Not to ruin the movie for you, my readers, but the mission succeeds after some harrowing action. It also leaves us with a mystery. During the mission, extraordinarily gifted sonar man Chanteraide (aka “Socks”) identified an unknown contact that his boat’s computers were unable to classify. Even after the mission is over, he wants to solve that mystery.

As we skip ahead some months, we find the world at the brink of war. The Russians have invaded Finnish territory and only France (!) is willing to stand up for NATO and its smaller members against the Russian bear. The plot is a variation of submarine movies that we’ve seen before. It also appears to have lifted a scene or two straight out of Top Gun. Nevertheless, it is a unique enough story to entertain. This is no Michael Bay extravaganza, but there is enough of a budget to present thrills, action, and nice footage of military hardware in action without looking cheesy.

This is a French film, so of course there is a steamy love scene right in the middle of it. Amazingly enough, this too is key to the plot as incongruous as it seemed at the time. Acting and scripting is a lot harder to judge when watching with subtitles. Overall, I’d rate this pretty highly, especially considering it’s a non-Hollywood production on a (for an action/thriller) modest budget. Just for comparison, it cost about 25% less than The Hunt for Red October did (almost 20 years ago). Sadly, it made back (per Wikipedia) under $12 million, barely half of the film’s investment. Compare that to the 10X return on Hunt, to the tune of $300 million. One hopes that the deal with Netflix goes some way to closing that gap.

The film is interesting because it is plausible fiction set amidst the conflicts of the present day. Among that fiction is the willingness of France to use her military in defense of Western Civilization. One suspects some wishful thinking coming from the writers and director. To the American audience, it is difficult to judge whether the portrayal of the French Navy rings true. I’ve read commentary that suggests that it does. Liberties seem to have been taken with rules of engagement but, as I said, it worth it to suspend one’s disbelief and go along for the ride.

Being a “present day” submarine thriller, it presents a view of technology that’s going to be a little different that World War II or 1980s Cold War. The Iranians are shown to have a stealth Frigate. I am guessing that the images of the Sahand, the first of Iran new frigate class, were not available when the movie was being made. That ship (the first of its class) entered service only at the very end on 2018. It also may have been easier to use a French ship to stand in for Irans rather than try to create a CGI model just for this film. In any case, the Iranian ship appears shockingly modern – at least to me.

Also surprising to us fans of the old-school submarine thrillers is the sound of the sonar. We’re used to that moment in every submarine movie when the hunter becomes the hunted. Someone (maybe a surface ship, maybe another submarine) turns on active sonar to locate our heroic crew. The ping of the sonar, signalling the vulnerability of the boat and its crew, is a harrowing moment. In Le chant du loup we are treated to a multi-frequency sonar sweep that sounds almost like music. The submariners call it “the wolf’s call” or “the singing of the wolf” (to translate the original name of the film more literally). Do modern sonars use a computer generated, multi-frequency signal that sounds like what we hear in the film? That I don’t know. In translating the title to be simply The Wolf’s Call, it does seem like something is being lost in the translation. There is an important theme about sound and hearing, about natural gifts and self-sacrifice, that may not be getting all the way through to me just with the subtitles.

As far as I can tell, the only reasonable opportunity to watch this here in the U.S. is on Netflix streaming, where they’ve rebranded this as a “Netflix Original.” Some content labeled as such is pretty darned bad. This one isn’t.

The Installation is Divided into Three Parts

Tags

Bibracte, Field of Glory II, France, Great Battles of Caesar, Julius Caesar, Roman Republic

I’ve always liked Good Old Games, better known as just GOG. I’ve bought quite a few items from them over the years – certainly far more than I’ve played. Their mainstay is resurrecting old games that are no longer compatible with the latest in operating systems and getting them to work. In other cases, they simply repackage a game no longer being sold by the original publisher. Lately, they also seem to be trying to break into the business of publishing new releases, from which I have also taken a bite. Are they distracting themselves from their original and successful model? I try to mostly ignore the newly-developed games which, based entirely on superficial impressions, are of a decidedly lower-quality than their re-releases.

Besides buying old games that I may or may not feel the urge to play anytime soon I am apt (as are others, based on comments) to repurchase games that I already own. I’ve done it to get a reliably up-to-date patch or a pre-configured DOSBox setup. I’ve even done it to avoid the hassle of running off of my old CD. The uniformly positive experiences I’ve had with their games mean I’m willing to toss money at them without scrutinizing what I’m getting and why.

Now let’s move from the general to the specific. If you’ve followed my Great Battles saga from the beginning, you’ll know I was shying away from reinstalling the game because I recalled suffering through stability problems. Having mentioned it online, I was told the the GOG version resolved the issues that the game had. Since then, I repurchased the game through GOG. I’ve been able to install and play the GOG versions of Alexander and Hannibal but it wasn’t until today I tried installing The Great Battles of Caesar. You see where this is going – it didn’t work.

GOG’s business model, apparently, was a successful one. They could acquire the rights to old games (abandonware for nothing and others for a trivial amount, one imagines), and, with only a small, further investment in fixing compatibility issues, get the program running again. They could then sell the games for amounts that we gamers considered trivial and still make good money in the process. Yet a flaw in this model may be becoming apparent. Compatibility with current operating systems isn’t a static measure. Windows has now advanced a few versions since GOG hit the scene and games for which, perhaps, they have already milked the value out of the market now require additional support.

The GOG message boards are littered with complaints about compatibility problems relative to the Great Battles series. Most of them focus on Windows 10, and GOG’s solution has simply been to declare that the game works only up through Windows 8. It does appear to me that compatibility problems are not restricted by operating system. Some purchasers are only able to play Great Battles of Alexander while others do fine with two out of three. I do not run on Windows 10, but I do seem to be in that latter category. When I play the GOG version, some scenarios crash the program on load while others initially run but then go into an error-throwing cycle.

Among the subset of posters who say they’ve found a solution, there is quite a bit of variability. It took me some trial and error to find the method that worked for me. First of all, the best patch for Caesar looks to be what’s available at this fan-made support website (http://www.ianm1.plus.com/). His patches contain what he refers to as the “latest” patch for each game in the series. I’m assuming he means the patch released by the publisher before support for the game was dropped. Applying this patch over the GOG version forces it to ask for the original CD – a step backward. There is a second patch, which he calls a new version, apparently from an enthusiastic player with a hex editor. Among other things, this removes the CD requirement.

On the GOG forum, this patch has mixed results and it certainly did not work well for me. Presumably the 1.1 patch (again concentrating on Caesar) is only fully compatible with the install (production CD) that it was made for. One user who successfully applied all patches explained that it is necessary to contact GOG support and ask them to give you their unmodified installer. Rather than do that, I dug out my Great Battles Collector’s Edition CDs and installed from there. Applying the 1.1 patch and then the “new version” patch resulted in a) some immediate graphic improvements and b) an executable that could load and run the scenarios that crashed under GOG. Again, this was my magic combination; others reported different results.

It is not polite to point.

Of course, it still crashed.

Now, one thing I had noticed after installing this “new version” is that the sounds and animations were all turned off by default. As I’ve said, I actually consider the animations a high point of this game. They’re both oddly aesthetic and help me take in enemy movements. After 2 or 3 crashes, all occurring after animating a large, enemy group move, I figured that maybe that animation was turned off for a reason. I set it all off and was able to complete the Battle of Bibracte without further incident.

Julius Caesar urges his forces forward to meet the Gauls at Bibracte.

Reading, as I was, the GOG forums I noticed posts that have been made after the release of Field of Glory II (FoG2). Although these are the Great Battles fanatics talking, there were a surprising number of posts talking about how FoG2 did not measure up to Great Battles. To an extent, I can see their point. In FoG2, the miniatures roots seem to shine through more. It may be in part due to unit size difference. It may be the different implementation of command and control. It may even have to do be the way the Great Battles battlefields and how they are more restricted.

Great Battles of Caesar, featuring Roman forces, don’t center on the phalanx formation that I found so special in the early iterations. Other unique features, however, do impact game play. In particular, a Roman army needs to make good use of group movement and group attacks. Without it, the lower-level legion commanders (labeled as tribunes in this battle) are allowed command over only two units. Practically speaking, this means that a legion can advance or attack straight ahead on its own, but repositioning or recovering from a heavily-contested fight requires the intervention of a general on par with Caesar.

My battle is nearly won when Gallic reinforcements threaten from my right. Who will break first?

Unfortunately, neither FoG2 nor Great Battles of Caesar enforce the Roman manipular deployment (although in both you can try to enforce it on your own). Great Battles falls short of FoG2 when it comes to scenario and campaign development. Between the modern scenario editing tools, “quick” battles, and the access to scenario scripting (both for play and for automated scenario construction), FoG2 makes a far better game for true sandbox play. In FoG2, it also seems easier to set up a challenging game without feeling entirely like it is “cheating.” Lastly, there are those crashes. Even though I feel like I’ve a handle on these recent crashes, I still want to tiptoe around my Great Battles fights with frequent saves. The current state-of-the-art in game engine technology brings with it an expectation of bug free, crash free game play.

Caesar takes on the Gauls in the linked campaign.

So why am I dwelling on Caesar’s Gallic Wars at all right now? The answer is in Field of Glory II. Whereas the linked campaign in Great Battles of Caesar is the war between Pompey and Caesar, for the campaign in FoG2 you must fight your way through Gaul. As I mentioned above, FoG2 has a superior system for creating a semi-random campaign based upon, potentially, all manner of criteria. So rather than the Great Battles method of playing the historical battles but selecting the order, FoG2 results from one battle can truly feed back into the campaign. Furthermore, the individual battles (different terrain, different forces) can be randomized, adding substantially to replayability.

As the lines clash, the Roman situation starts to look tenuous.

Like the well-designed single-player battles, a well-design campaign can be pretty challenging. To start the campaign, Caesar must meet a larger Gallic force in open battle; there is no initial branching. However, as the Romans, I do get to customize the makeup of my army. I have given Caesar a mixed bag when it comes to the legions he commands. While he has a core of seasoned legions in his center, the remaining forces are either newly-raised or otherwise just mediocre. The lack of quality shows when I start to take a beating on left side of my line. While some parts of my line are clearly superior, others are notably inferior.

When the tide turned, the shift was rapid.

Of course, one unit routing won’t lose you the battle. A whole bunch of units routing certainly will. Despite some weak points in my line, the generally-superior center held up well and I had enough of a lead to make up for weakness on my flanks. When the Gallic reinforcements showed up on my right, it was too little too late. Speaking of compare and contrast, compare the screenshot above with the Great Battles grab of the Roman center. Which one gives the better impression of four Roman legions arrayed against an enemy?

This looks more like Roman legions, all though it is more in appearance than in detail.

I can also divide my experience of the Battle of Bibracte across three different plays. In addition to the Caesar campaign, Field of Glory II has a one-off version of the fight. As you can see in the above screenshot, the way this scenario sets up the Roman attack gives a much better impression of a properly-organized Roman army. The skirmishers lead off and then are able to retreat through the advancing heavy infantry. The tough Roman legions (decent ones this time) are set up hit the enemy line in waves.

The battle is driven by a few key skirmishes. Here I break the primary infantry unit, securing my victory.

In this battle, the FoG2 importance of commanders comes into play, providing a contrast to Great Battles of Caesar with its activation and command limits. The key to the entire battle is a handful of key skirmishes around the map. If I am able to break an enemy strong point – his best troops – I will snowball towards victory. Those critical locations are defined by the troop quality, obviously, but also the location of the enemy generals.

FoG2‘s implementation of leadership bonuses makes for a faster, smoother game. There’s no more fiddling around with a general’s horse to try to get some extra forces into the command radius. Sensibly, the generals simply move with the units they command. It is also less engaging. Generals are simply a buff for a couple of your units with the added feature that they can be a target (a General’s death really hurts morale). I think FoG2 tells less of a “story.” Compare with a Caesar riding off mid-battle to shore up a flank and unexpectedly getting three initiatives, turning the tide of the battle. Is either implementation more historical or “realistic” than the other? I don’t know.

It may also be worth, once again, contrasting the screen grabs between the two engines. Once again, it is clear that Great Battles of Caesar implements the units at a finer grain and with more of a one-to-one relation to the historic order-of-battle. The simplicity is part of what makes FoG2 play smoother and probably also helps with the AI, but have we lost something as well?

Here they come again!

The result from all three battles was roughly the same. Rather than take advantage of my good defensive position, I moved out sharply and engaged. The move paid off when was able to pull irreversibly ahead before enemy reinforcements arrive. Of the three, it was the campaign version that proved the most challenging, even though the end-result matched the other two. Of course, the challenge level has as much to do with difficulty settings and luck of the dice as anything. What I wonder most, going forward, is if Great Battles of Caesar is going to hold up, stability-wise, for the remainder of the scenarios. I also wonder if the user-made battles of the past ages are still out there for download and if they can be played without the dreaded crash.

Timeline of Timelines of Timeline

Tags

CCR, Crusader Kings, Crusader Kings 2, Crusader Kings 3, England, France, Hundred Years War, Led Zeppelin, The Accursed Kings, timeline, timelines

My feeling that the Hundred Years War is under served by PC gaming needed further exploration. My next test was a revisiting of Crusader Kings which, on the face of it, should be a perfect match for this period. However, I was already figuring that wasn’t going to work out in practice. The game obliged me by demonstrating a number of issues.

To get started, I tried returning to an alternate timeline that I had created to explore the rise of the House of Habsburg (but also found useful with regard to the Tour de Nesle affair). You might even recall that I had another coincident timeline which used Crusader Kings‘ features to focus on economics. Alas, these games are lost to the ages as there have been a significant updates to Crusader Kings, incompatible with my saves.

The changes to Crusader Kings II themselves are overshadowed by bigger news on the Crusader Kings front. The base Crusader Kings II game is now free on Steam. The DLC add-ons still will cost you but, if you don’t need those, you can play for free. The purpose of doing this is not exactly generosity on the part of Paradox Entertainment. They are currently hyping Crusader Kings III, planned for release some time in 2020. I look upon this with less enthusiasm as I might, but I’ll save that discussion for later. Instead, let’s get back to a new Hundred Years War campaign, in which I will play as Philip VI of France.

Fortunate Son

I began with the primary Crusader Kings starting point for the Hundred Years War, in 1337. The game starts you off with the proper historic personages and diplomatic structure to begin the conflict between France and England, one that should last until the end of the game, more or less. However, there is nothing that guarantees that the game will follow its historic course. Unlike Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings does not use history-based events to guide the game down a particular path.

As Philip VI, I immediately took a disliking to my son, John the so-called Good. I got wind of several of his plots to kill me and thus accelerate his accession to the kingship. I quickly stamped them out, but this kind of thing hardly endears one to a person. Despite proof of treason, I did not retaliate. Rather, I took the longer view of what would be good for my linage and for my nation. That didn’t mean that I didn’t gloat a little when John was killed while fighting in a grand tournament in Paris. When the time came for Philip to leave this world, it was his grandson who inherited the throne. John had but a single son before his untimely accident, whom he named Ogier.

King Ogier I takes the reins of France, but a 13-year-old is no match for the malevolence of medieval politics.

Ogier is an unlikely name for a king of France and so it seems fitting that he can’t last. The name has particular implications to me. Not least, I can’t help thinking of the Wheel of Time fantasy race of that name. Perhaps above all the newly-created words for the series, Ogier stuck out because the race is such a departure from the classic fantasy setting. Ogier is also the French name (Ogier le Danois) for Danish hero Holger Danske, a legendary knight of Charlemagne. I encountered the name before, while I was playing Legends of Eisenwald and trying to pin down its historical time and place*. Coincidently, I had also just watched the Danish film Flammen & Citronen, a dramatization of the exploits of two members of the World War II resistance group Holger Danske. John the Good must have entertained similar fascinations with history to chose this name for his only son.

The end of the Ogier era before it could even begin.

But as I said, Ogier could not last. While the list of claimants to the throne of France was long, Ogier’s anointed successor was the second son of Philip VI, Philip VII (in the real world he was merely the Duke of Orléans). The only thing standing between Philip and the throne was a weirdly-named, 14-year-old nephew who seemed incapable of controlling the French nobility. Sorry, Ogier. The problem here is that by killing the rightful king of France, Philip developed a reputation for nastiness that would haunt him until his death.

One of the more powerful factions aligned against Ogier and, with his death, now Philip was Blanche, the youngest daughter of King Philip V and the unfaithful Queen Joan. Somehow, my game Blanche managed to escape the nunnery (which confined the real Blanche) and she became the leading figure in a movement to restore the House Capet to the throne, thereby unseating the Valois children. Philip VII was, indeed, a more capable leader than the teenaged Ogier but there were too many powerful lords in Blanche’s corner. Shortly after gaining the throne through the murder of his nephew, Philip was forced to abdicated in favor of Blanche’s husband. Going quietly, he managed to retain the Duchy of Normandy and was granted an influential position on the royal council.

All that is to say that, by the time I find myself in the years beyond the ending of Quand un Roi perd la France, there is no Hundred Years War. France is fractured with a number of powerful interests lined up for the crown, but it is the Holy Roman Empire that seems to be the foreign influence behind the chaos. Unlike Edward and his personal claim to the French throne, the Germans are putting forth puppets and lining up the malcontents behind their proxies. As to Edward III, faced with a weakened France he seems to going the Church route to obtain global influence. In my game, there is no pope at Avignon. Instead, Edward has installed an anti-Pope in the north of England.

Clearly, as far as a strategic or operational treatment of the Hundred Years War goes, Crusader Kings II makes for a pretty poor game. Yet as an engaging historical representation of the times, it may not be doing all that bad. Just as The Accursed Kings tells us that it was some inconsequential intrigue on the part of Robert d’Artois that started a century of warfare, some unpleasant behavior on the part of Prince John seems to have avoided it altogether.

In Great Company

After having re-watched Troy, I got a hankering to re-read Timeline. I didn’t manage to get around to it at the time but now, having read The King without a Kingdom, it seemed like a good idea.

It is a struggle to make the connection between a Montjoie scenario and the novel, but I’ll do it anyway. One of the armies in the novel is commanded by Arnaut de Cervole, also known as l’Archiprêtre (or The Archpriest). Although not an actual priest, he was a minor noble invested with the fief at Vélines and he had also obtained the ecclesiastical office for the same territory. In The King without a Kingdom, we hear from Arnaud de Cervole’s perspective that the election of Pope Innocent VI caused the revocation of his benefice so that it could be redistributed as political payola. The Archbishop of of Bordeaux, who actually undertook the revocation, cited Cervole’s association “with brigands and men of base extraction” as reason to remove him as a representative of the Church.

Cervole had been gaining renown for his abilities in commanding small groups of mercenaries, and particularly for his skill in defeating castle walls during a siege. Through the 1350s, he commanded a group of roughly 80 men. In 1356, his men fought in the Battle of Poitiers. His side lost and he was wounded, but he also managed to marry the rich window of one of his fellow commanders killed during that battle. He also decided the the French king had only a weak hold over the troops under his command and was emboldened to expand his escapades beyond mercenary services into entrepreneurial banditry.

In 1357, he was elected leader of the Great Company (Grande Compagnie). He now commanded an army of 2,700+ soldiers and, after the Peace of Brétigny spelled the end to mercenary wages, began funding his now-unemployed army by pillaging the countryside. Enter the Arnaut of the book, who is doing just that. Unfortunately, his fictional location seems to conflict with where he actually was (Burgundy, as per Montjoie) at that time.

But what is that fictional location?

The novel takes place in the vicinity of two medieval towns, Castelgard and La Roque, neither of which actually exist (although the names are generic enough that close matches can be found almost anywhere). A little online searching, however, gave me a like suspect for a historic counterpart to the fictional towns. The real Château de Castelnaud-la-Chapelle seems a possible fill in for Castelgard. The term “Castelnaud” is of the same meaning and same roots as “Neuchâtel,” our great and fictional family from my lost timeline; meaning, essentially, New Castle. Across the Dordogne River from Castelnaud-la-Chapelle  is the rather formidable fortress, Château de Beynac. The etymology of that name is a reference to having survived the attacks of barbarians, which makes it a “rock” of sorts. It is also similar in layout to the fictional La Roque. Worth noting, if you were to go roughly the same distance but the opposite way along the river,  you would come to the village La Roche-Gageac. It is a town built into a cliff face along the Dordogne  river.

This would place the story in Périgord (home of Cardinal Talleyrand!), about 70 km south and west of Périgueux. Correctly, this is right on the border between the French and English holdings during the Hundred Years War. In truth, the real castles changed hands between French and English occupiers during the war, as is discussed regarding the fictional castles in the novel.

After all this research (and not having found anything that referred me back to the novel), I remembered that there was a another location given in the story- not in in the 14th century timeline, but in the present. The students go to “the restored medieval town of Sarlat” for a bit of nightlife, after work. Sarlat is about a 10 km drive from my proposed site and it seems that Crichton’s descriptions of it match the contemporary reality. I also notice that the Wikipedia page for the medieval county of Périgord contains a link describing the province as the location for Timeline. It is referenced (again, in the modern timeline) by it’s current designation, the department bearing the the same name as the river (Dordogne). Unfortunately, the footnote link goes to a dead page in Michael Crichton’s website, which he had created for the book Timeline. I have to wonder if everything that I sought out for myself was exactly explained by the author, had I only read it a few years earlier.

So there it is.

The scenario text introduces us to The Archpriest and his Great Company.

As I mentioned before, as simplistic as it is, the game Montjoie often provides a better feel for the historical timeline than Crusader Kings simply because it does so through a handful of events and some flavor text. In this case, it’s not clear to me how the flavor relates back to the mechanics. There are three factions in this scenario; France, England, and Burgundy. Are one or more of these factions to represent competing compagnies**? Are some or all of them meant to be play as the nation state as depicted? I played as Burgundy and lost. As Burgandy, this is a very difficult scenario. Burgundy is allied with the stronger France and the two must compete to see who can gather up the most points (territory x turns held) with out being allowed to take on each other directly. The French advantage is substantial.

A battle rages as the French and English fight over control in Périgueux.

More than anything else, I come back to Montjoie in this post so I can include the above screenshot. When I was playing the Chevauchée scenario, I couldn’t manage to capture the screen showing the battle animation. With the Grande Compagnies I did take some grabs while the AI players were fighting each other. Not being animated, you don’t get the full effect. Each formation of soldiers is a static rendering, but they independently wiggle and moves around the screen. Arrows fly and, as units meet their maker, they are flicked out of the frame (see the infantry at the top-center of the battle). When killed, they leave behind cartoonish but gory remains. The animations are accompanied by sound effects. In total, it all seems quite silly, which drives one’s impression for the game overall.

I’ll also toss this last bit in here. When the book was published a release of a tie-in PC game quickly followed. That game is generally regarded as pretty bad and, like the film, lost money.

Traveler of Both Time and Space

I’ve read the book before, so the re-reading goes quickly. Timeline follows the path of Crichton’s signature science fiction; anchored just enough in reality that it becomes difficult to figure out where the science ends and the fiction begins. By his own admission, he put more effort into the details of the Medieval history than into the quantum physics. Like Jurassic Park, part of his goal seems to be to emphasize the state-of-the art in Medieval History (or Dinosaur-related scientific thought, if we’re back in Jurassic Park) and the way that popular conception “has it wrong.”

I’m going to break with my usual tradition and fully give away portions of the plot and the ending of the book. I figure that the book has been out a long time; it was published twenty years ago in November, 1999. The movie has been out long enough to have already been viewed and (mercifully) forgotten. Besides that, we’re not talking the great works of literature here. Since I was reading this book for the nth time since I first got it, my experience is one of being fully aware of the plot line. Stop now if you want to read the book unspoiled by me.

Having the plot “spoiled” was actually a help to me given one of my complaints, a problem I had after the first time through. As I’ve said, a Crichton device is to have characters discover key plot points only to have them unable to explain the discovery to the reader, which sets up tension. When it comes, Crichton’s reveal is often disappointing given the setup. However, when one knows all the twists going in, the false tension tends to be considerably less annoying.

Consider one such example from Timeline. One of the students is a physicist named David Stern. He has been chosen to travel back in time but backs out at the last moment for reasons he can’t quite articulate. The first-time reader is eager to learn what Stern seems to have figured out, particularly since he’s a physicist. Is there bad math or science? Turns out, he just suspects that the presentation they were given omitted some information about risks. They did, but it’s only a gut feeling of his. Eventually, he gets the extra details, which mostly seem inconsequential to the plot.

One might expect, based entirely on the subject matter, the book to be a modernization of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (110-years older than Timeline, btw). If any of us has had fantasies about traveling back in time, we probably would hope to use our “present” knowledge to our advantage. The one thing that would make us unique among the vast population of a past age is that we could “predict the future.” But in Timeline, the great moment – the prediction of total eclipse – never comes.

Instead, we have Professor Johnson, who not only has an encyclopedic knowledge of the 14th Century (not too surprising, given his academic position) but is also master of the chemistry and manufacturing of gunpowder (something of a stretch). We have medieval fanatic Andre Marek being able to believably pass himself off as a (time) native, which is part and parcel of that time-travel fantasy. But can we really accept that, because he has “studied” sword combat, archery, and jousting, he will find himself superior to the knights of 1357 – men whose lives have depended upon expert use of arms? I’m not sure I can.

Back to the present and the “quantum physics” plot theme. David Stern’s great eureka moment is that, when the integrity of glass holding tanks is suspect, they should use weather balloons as structural reinforcement. This was another letdown for anyone reading, racing ahead to find out what his big idea was. First of all, given the description of the problem (glass holding tanks are required for perfectly uniform shielding), I’m not sure plopping a weather balloon into the tanks would be a valid solution. But if it was, wouldn’t the facilities engineers have figured it out already? They must have struggled with the structural integrity of giant glass water tanks all along. If a plastic lining could have bought them a factor-of-safety without threatening symmetry, surely someone would have identified it and sold it as a cost saving measure.

My last complaint is something I glossed over in all my previous reads. Throughout the book, Robert Doniger, founder of the time-traveling organization (ITC) and intellectual driver behind the advances (similar to John Hammond from Jurassic Park, but with more science), is portrayed as an unpleasant and unlikable person. In the end, he gets his just desserts. He is sent back to Castelgard in 1348, when the town is being consumed by the Black Death. It is quite the horrible end; one might say an end one “wouldn’t wish upon their worst enemy.” It is also, unlike being eaten by the very Dinosaurs you’ve had resurrected, only brought about by deliberate action by the other characters. So what has Doniger done that is so evil? Frankly, I’m not sure. He impedes the local government from investigating injury and death at his facilities, but he does so to keep his technological advancements moving forward rather than to avoid being held accountable. He did not inform the students of the potential risk of “transcription errors,” which he justifies because the risk is minimal. In this he’s right; injury from the time travel technology is of trivial concern when compared to the risk of having your head lopped off by an angry knight. He also seems to allow or even encourage letting Stern travel using unsafe equipment before forbidding him to do the same. He says he was “joking” at first, but his legal council (Diane Kramer) doesn’t fully believe him. Finally, his “last straw” seems to be that he withheld information about the financial stake ITC has invested in the archeological endeavors.

So are any of these capital offenses? It may be true that all of ITC, the science, and mankind may be better served with Robert Doniger no longer at ITC’s helm, but executution by plague? That seems a bit harsh. Wouldn’t it have been more reasonable to simply cooperate with authorities and have Doniger arrested for his lying to officialdom? It almost seems as though ITC executives Kramer (the lawyer) and Gordon (what was Gordon?) were being set up as sequel villains – people who are willing to kill their boss to keep their technology and their profits alive. Eh, probably not.

I don’t know what it is that draws us to re-read books and re-watch movies. I guess there is something about letting our minds float down a familiar path that is pleasurable. However, this isn’t universal. I know people who re-read books but would never watch a movie a second time (“I’ve already seen it!”). There are people who watch their favorite movies over and over, but wouldn’t waste their time reading a book they’ve “finished.” I like to do both.

*The reference to Charlemagne didn’t help. It was already quite clear that the events of Legends of Eisenwald were supposed to take place well after the time of Charlemagne.

**Also called Tard-Venus or latecomers.

So Many Years Have Gone

Tags

France, Les Revenants, Queen, The Returned, zombie

Finding myself unsatisfied with the partially completed U.S. version of The Returned, I started in with the French version. While The Returned was removed from Netflix streaming, Les Revenants remains available.

At this stage, I am just wrapping up the first season. To a point, the stories track each other nearly identically, so there is little in the way of surprises. Within the first six episodes, while the story remains the same, there are small differences in the details between the two versions and I think many of those differences are enlightening.

One obvious fact up-front is that they are all different actors. In some cases, there is a strong resemblance between the original French actor and the American (mostly) actor chosen for the A&E series. This, however, is the exception, not the rule. What is consistent is that the American actors are, in almost all cases*, much prettier people than the corresponding French actors. It’s not that the French actors are actually ugly – they are probably still better-looking than the population as a whole – its just that they look more “average.” There is something to be said for this. It is strange enough that there is this small town that has its dead returning from the grave. What are the odds that it is also populated by the most beautiful residents this side of Hollywood? On the other hand, we in the U.S. have got pretty used to watching beautiful faces when we zone out in front of the TV for an evening. Is that really so wrong? In any case, to Americans it is probably the French actors that look not quite right, not the overly-beautiful Americans.

Once I got over that, I began to notice other little differences in the story line. In almost every case that nuance added to the story (or took away, given that the American version is the derivative one). As an example, one of the returned, Simon, seeks out the woman he was to marry before he died. After his death, she moved on, at least for the most part. As the series starts up, she is about to marry the chief of the police (a County Sheriff in the American version and a Captain in the Gendarmerie in the French). Said chief attempts to pin murders on Simon, first to keep him away from his fiancee and, later, to justify his shooting the unarmed Simon near (or in, depending on the version) his home. In the American version, finds himself unable to pay for lunch (and the dead, you should know, are always hungry), Simon is guilty of a dine-and-dash. In the French version, Simon viciously assaulted the manager at a diner upon said manager’s refusal to sell him something suitable for the change he has in his pocket. The French crime creates a plausible deniability for our Captain; the known assailant in an assault would, indeed, be a top suspect in another, unsolved, assault. It also poses a question about whether Simon lacks the humanity, after his return, that he had before he died. This is just an example of many small changes, many of which point in this same direction. The French version seems to involve more consistent expression of these themes as well as, honestly, making a little more logical sense.

By Episode 7, however, the two stories depart from each other in major ways. I can no longer hold out the hope that the French series will answer the questions left open by the unfinished American series. It seems clear that, whatever answers are to be had, they will be different between the two. On the original French track it is again this focus on particular themes that would set it apart. The “zombie” genre themes are there; us versus the other and what makes us human and them inhuman seem to be more important in the French. The breakdown of polite society and the survival thereof is also introduced. There also seems to be more importance attached to the meaning of the returns, even if they remain a mystery to the viewer.

Another apparent theme, at least to my American eyes, is the nature of the surveillance State. In both versions, a key plot element is that fact that the police chief has placed surreptitious video cameras in his house to watch his girlfriend/fiancée when he is not home. In the French, version, however, the police also have public cameras throughout the town, manned constantly by police officers. They police can track the comings and goings of anyone they want at any time they want, and yet have trouble finding and catching certain “criminals,” who also happen to be the returned dead. Is this element part of the show because it is normal to have constant surveillance in every small town in France? Or is this a statement about the nature of the police state and its dehumanizing effects? Or is, perhaps, the “eye in the sky” an allegory for something else? Without understand French life in the twenty-teens, I don’t think I can answer that question. Unless it becomes more explicit in Season 2.

With the American version having ended without having gone anywhere particular, it is difficult to compare and contrast. For the most part, the pieces of the French version that A&E left out seem to have detracted from the experience rather than streamlined it. On the other hand, getting away from the more traditional “zombie” aspects of the original should be worth something. Aren’t we all starting to get a little zombied out? Maybe, but let us see where the French series takes us, shall we?

*An exception to the rule that I’ll remark upon is that the “Lena” actress (the present-day Lena) has grown up to be better looking, and better looking than her younger-self. In the A&E version I, at least, found her less so. It seems important to the story that she actually grew up to be beautiful rather than just have that something that her sister says to her. Then again, beauty may be in the eye of the beholder; others may find the American Lena to be more attractive than I did.

You’re Golden

Tags

Battle of Courtrai, Battle of the Golden Spurs, Belgium, Bruges, Field of Glory, Field of Glory - Unity, Flanders, France, Great Privilege, Philip IV, shibboleth, States General, taxation is theft

Wikipedia reminds us not to confuse The Battle of the Golden Spurs (Dutch: Guldensporenslag) with the The Battle of the Spurs. I have been guilty of doing just that.

The Battle of the Golden Spurs, also called the Battle of Courtrai, was a major battle in the ongoing Franco-Flemish conflict of that period. Philip IV, in an attempt to annex the County of Flanders to become a part of, or at least subject to, the Kingdom of France, had managed to divide the Flemish nobles. Through the 1290s, while he was able to get some notable support, the Flemish society had divided into “Lilies” (pro-French) and “Claws” (pro independence factions). In 1297, Philip enlisted the force of arms to invade the county and press his claim. By 1300, he had gained complete administrative control of the county and imprisoned the leader of the independence faction, Guy of Dampierre.

In Flanders, the “middle class” (if you will) had developed a system of self-government backed by the merchant guilds that challenged the authority of any royal claim to the right to rule. The burghers of Flanders were in conflict with Guy of Dampierre over the question of authority and, indeed, it was this split that gave Philip’s claim its legitimacy.

The immediate spark was, as it is so much of the time, over the issue of taxation. After Philip had secured his authority in Flanders, he and his wife payed a visit to Bruges. The “Lilies,” who tended at that point to be of the upper classes, welcomed him in such lavish style that even the royal couple was impressed by the opulence. After Philip left, a tax was levied on the (mostly “Claw”) merchants to fund the event. Peter DeConick, the Dean of the Weavers’ Guild, with appeals to liberty, organized a resistance to the payment of the new taxes.

In a story that seems to repeat itself through history, the tax rebellion drew the attention of the royal Governor, who dispatched a force to garrison Bruges and restore order. The ruling magistrates of Bruges, Lilies, but still jealous of their local control, insisted that the city only admit a token force of French soldiers. Instead, the French entered the city with thousands of armed knights. Wild rumors flew throughout the city. It was said that the French had arrived with ropes to hang any Claws that still remained in the city. It was said that the French were preparing to slaughter every last man woman and child. With the people in terror of what was to come, some of the remaining Claws in the city slipped away and met with DeConcik to tell him of the impending doom.

That night, DeConick returned to the city with a force of men and surprised the garrison guards. Far from preparing for a massacre, the French had been engaged in a celebratory feast that lasted late into the night. The attackers roused the masses from the town and then made their way through the city shouting “shield and friend” (schild en vriend), a phrase which Frenchmen were known for being unable to pronounce. Those who were tripped up by their French accent were killed on the spot. This incident, on the morning of May 18th 1302, was called the Bruges Matins – an allusion to the Sicilian Vespers and the Italian revolt against their own French occupiers.

The battle itself took place when Philip sent forth a French force to put down the rebellion and take vengeance upon its leaders. The rebels in Bruges, meanwhile, managed to bring most of the Flemish towns on board. The nobility of Flanders tended to be more sympathetic to the French rule and few took part in the uprising. The forces of the commoners were, however, far from an untrained rabble. Militias were fielded by the merchant class and were both well-equipped and well-trained. The disparity in the two forces was in cavalry. One contemporary source suggests that there were no more than ten mounted soldiers on the Flemish side of the battle, facing something like 2,500 mounted soldiers for the French.

The Flemish militias deploy behind marshy ground and prepared trenches, ready to meet the French knights.

The Flemish were prepared for the arrival of the French army, having taken the time to select good defensive ground as well as construct obstacles. They forced the French to approach their lines by crossing marshy streams. They also concealed pitfalls with brushwood, causing advancing armored troops, especially the knights, to fall into the water and become trapped by mud and their own heavy armor. Defensive pits were also placed to break up the heavy cavalry charge that ruled the battlefields of the day.

The defensive position of Flanders combined with another factor to produce the outcome, a win for the underdog Flemish rebels. As indicated, the view of the time was that battles were won by a charge of heavily-armored knights. Even against a numerically-superior and well-equipped foe, the heavy horse would carry the day, especially if they were unopposed and allowed the run of the battlefield. Thus, while Philip’s commander, Robert II of Artois**, had a formidable infantry force of his own and while that infantry saw some initial success, he ultimately withdrew his infantry to make way for a charge of his knights. That misplaced confidence was a key to his loss in this battle.

Fighting from the side of Flanders, a suitable representation of this battle is enabled by the new Fog(U) AI. To reproduce the battle’s progress and outcome, it is necessary for the French to ignore the terrain, and press forward with his knights against the prepared Flemish. The old AI would never have done it, but the newly-aggressive AI charges straight into the trap. Predictably, playing as Flanders, I handily won the fight.

I also tried playing from the other side. I surmised that the less aggressive AI of the original Field of Glory would be more suited to the defensive strategy required from Flanders. Playing the scenario in the old version, I did see some of that supported. While the AI wasn’t smart enough to stay put in its strong defensive position, it was hesitant moving forward. That wasn’t enough to gain a victory.

Occasionally aggressiveness and élan is better than smarts, but usually not.

To mollify my curiosity, I tried the scenario one last time, but in FoG(U). I again played as the French, although I gave the computer a slight advantage in the setup screen. I don’t know what that does, although I assume it tilts resolution odds in the computer’s favor. The difference in computer play was clear – the AI charged forwards, engaging the French deep in the mire of the swamp. I also advanced fairly rapidly, not wanting to skew the results too badly. Early on, it seemed that the computer had a points advantage over the original AI by aggressively pressing the attack and forcing me to engage without being able to bring my units into the line as I would have liked. It also may simply have been that I had tipped the game in the AI’s favor with the mathematical advantage. In the end, the Flemish still lost and I think the old AI probably did a little better.

One difficulty in comparing AI apples to oranges is that the new FoG(U) displays the order (as in cohesion, not rank) of units differently. In the original, units did become progressively more disordered by crossing bad terrain, but the degradation was only visible when mousing over a unit to view the details. In the new version, the decline in cohesion is indicated on the main unit display, with additional indicators like “S” and “DD.” It makes the game a little easier to play, but also makes it look like the armies are doing much worse in the new version than in the old.

Pax Renaissance ties the victory in the Battle of the Spurs to the Flemish negotiating position in the Treaty of Athis-sur-Orge to the granting of local control of taxation in Flanders. This impacts the political situation in the late 15th century through the independence of the County of Flanders coupled with the wealth of its trading interests. In particular, the Great Privilege of 1477 codified the control that the representative body (the States* General) had over the affairs. The creation of a “States General of Burgundy” is part of the Republican victory condition for that game.

A sizeable chunk of Europe’s future seems to flow from the outcome of a fairly mid-sized battle.

*States, in this context, means not a State as in a nation or political subdivision thereof. Instead, it is a reference to the “Estates,” the classes of society, traditional though of as clergy, nobility, and commons. In terms of the States General in Flanders, the term State came to mean the representative body for the “Estates” themselves.

**The death of Robert II in battle left his three-year-old grandson, Robert III, disinherited relative to the County of Artois. Maurice Druon proposes that this was a primary cause for the Hundred Years War.

No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Tags

crusades, France, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Ottoman Empire, Pax Renaissance, Spain

I am playing out a game in Pax Renaissance, trying to analyze the end moves. Having just put some thought into the time surrounding the conquest of the Emirate of Granada, it leads me to consider how the various options for fit into a historical narrative (either similar to or departing from actual history.)

For this turn, we are considering the options of the Fuggers. In the late 1480s the Fugger family, while established in Augsburg, were not yet players on the world stage. They had only begun their financial relationship with the Habsburgs, a relationship that would soon see them financing Charles V’s election as emperor. Indeed, the card layout fairly represents the Fugger’s interests at the time, with some market concessions in Germany and some heavy investment in Hungary. The Fuggers actually did, within this same time frame, control copper mining operations in Hungary and mines elsewhere in Silesia and Tirol. Perhaps not enough to actually “control” the throne of Hungary, as in this game, but – well – close enough.

The only empire under control is Hungary. On the other hand, look at all that law prestige accompanied by “vote” operations in both tableaux. No money, though.

By contrast, my rivals (the Medici bank) dominate the Silk and Spice trade from the East with control of the trade routes through the Mediterranean. Despite heavy influence in the courts of the Ottomans and Byzantium (which quite ahistorically has not fallen to the Muslims), they are unable to substantialyl profit from the Silk Road trade, which is no longer fully reaching Europe. The Medici also have their fingers in the court of Portugal, but despite some exploration of the African coast, there is no alternate sea route to the east. The Medici do control the more accessible trade through the Black Sea port of Tana, although it is more difficult to profit from those investments.

Medici (yellow cubes) dominate the trade routes. They also have substantial influence in the Muslim controlled east. But the future is in Republicanism.

In building this powerful position, the Medici let one opportunity slip by.

The Medici have control over Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and Byzantium, in addition to their trade dominance.

Recall that the victory conditions in Pax Renaissance are determined dynamically by the players.  Within the theme of the game, a comet appeared in 1472. Rather than superstitiously dwelling on the portents, astronomer Regiomontanus of Nürnburg (Johannes Müller) used geometry and astronomy to estimate the size and distance of the comet from the earth. He failed by orders of magnitude, but at least he tried.  Gamewise, the Fuggers were able to declare a “Renaissance Victory” which measures the advancement from the Medieval Age to the Early Modern Age by the ascendancy of Republican-ruled nations and city-states. It was largely a defensive move, as the Medici’s have two types of victory within their grasp. Their control of the Ottoman empire gives them a “Holy Victory” (for Islam) and their additional control of Portugal and Byzantium gives them an “Imperial Victory.” Fugger really didn’t have a Renaissance Victory in sight when choosing it, but there is now an opportunity for them in the West.

While the real money is in the spice and silk trade with the Far East, that wealth is largely inaccessible to the merchants of Western Europe.

What Fugger does have some influence over is the clergy on the Iberian peninsula, particularly the zealots of the Office of the Inquisition in Castile and an anti-monarchy faction in Aragon. This can be deployed strategically to substantial advantage. By critiquing the pace and enthusiasm of Castile’s commitment to the reconquista I will provoke a new crusade to be declared charged with wiping out the Muslim occupation once and for all. In doing so, I can force a upheaval in the ruling powers of that nation (and, of course, replacing the Medici people with those loyal to myself). As an added bonus, a crusade will draw in knights from France and Aragon, potentially weakening those powers and making them vulnerable to the inquisitors of Castile and Portugal. Having gained control of Castile, Portugal, and perhaps France or Aragon, I can now go after the monarchs themselves. Shifting the power from those nations’ kings to republics will win me the game.

The Emirate of Grenada is a black mark on the heart of Christendom. It is here I will make my move.

Given the choice between France and Aragon, it is France that presents a weakness. At first glance, they are the strongest of the three empires bordering Castile. However, in additional to co-opting their knights into my crusade, I have another card up my sleeve (almost literally, as we are talking about a card game here). In the north-west corner of the area of French influence, there are several provinces that have eschewed feudalism for centuries. It will be easy enough to provoke conflict between the republican sentiment in Friesland and Groningen and the nobility who see an opportunity to be granted hereditary control over those territories. Such a conflict would also draw in the forces of the French king and, combined with the crusade, leave France open to invading armies.

The Turn of a Friendly Card

That’s quite a tale and I’d like to walk through it again in gameplay terms. Cast in those terms, the Renaissance Victory is active and I already have 3 cards with “Law” prestige. That means to qualify for victory, I simply need to have more republics than my opponent. In this case, neither myself nor enemy control any Republics thus far. So as it stands right now, converting one of my monarchies to a republic will be sufficient to win.

There is one caveat in this. Claiming victory in itself is a move. Each player turn consists of two actions, so in a way one player takes two turns and then the other player takes two turns. If you are able to achieve conditions for victory in one move, you then use your second action of the turn to declare victory. If, on the other hand, it takes two actions to put you into a winning position, you then must allow two turns from your opponent. In a way, it disadvantages the “offensive” player in that “defender” always gets one extra move to stave off defeat. It also means that a victory is often a multi-turn plan that can go wrong any number of ways in the interim.

The Spanish Inquisition card can launch a Crusade.

Considering this, although I only need to convert one empire to a republic, I’m going to target two to give my plan some redundancy. Target number one is Portugal, given that the card in my hand has the ability to capture that empire via a Crusade. Target number two, as I discussed above, is France. If you look at my tableau (the first picture in this article), I have a card for France with the “Siege” operation. With that, I have the ability to weaken the defenses in France to a point where I can invade and capture it. Assuming, of course, that I control an empire from which to invade. Like Portugal.

The Grand Inquisitor card is playable immediately and would transfer Portugal from the Medici tableau to my own. But there is a problem. I don’t need to just control the Portuguese government (and remember, back in the narrative, Portugal and Castile are both represented by the Portugal designation within the game), I need to further be able to unseat the monarchy. I have the means to do so in the form of two “Vote” operations in my tableau, but I can’t win that vote. To be successful with a vote, I need to have a plurality of the concessions bordering the empire where the vote is taking place. Right now, the Medici have the one and only concession. The black pirate blocks a second concession from being place. So while I am entitled to place one concession upon taking control of Portugal, that would require repressing the existing Medici merchant first. Repression costs money and, again looking at that top picture, I don’t have any money.

Therefore, before I consider playing that card I’m going to need to generate some cash. The Trade Fair is out because the Western market doesn’t have money and the Eastern market is completely under the Medici’s control. What I do have is a “Commerce” operation in my Tableau, courtesy of a secret organization of guilds based in Aragon which is anti-monarchist, anti-feudal, and anti-Islamic. The “Revolt of the Brotherhoods,” the event in “The Hidden” one-shot, will never take place in this game (and is anyway some decades in the future), but were they around already it might make sense that these folks would support my own play. If I play that Commerce operation before launching the Crusade, I’ll be able to fund the it properly.

As an action, executing operations is special. Rather than launching a single operation the player, using a single action, can play any or all of their operations within a single tableau (East or West). This obviously opens up the possibility of some complex moves, particularly in the end game when there are a lot of cards on the table. It also means for some complex interactions you have to not only carefully choose which operations to execute, but also the order.

My plan for the turn is to use three operations to pave the way for my use of the Grand Inquisitor for the crusade. First, I get some advantage from the existing Medici influence in Portugal/Castile. With the tax operation, I warn the Grenadians of the impending assault upon them and cause them to tax the Medici merchants to build up their defenses. It costs the Medici all of their remaining money and will make the impending crusade all the more bloody, which I think will be to my advantage. Next, as I suggested, I draw on the Brotherhoods to raise funding for my own army. Finally, the Frisian Freedom card is used to eliminate the rook from Lyon.

That opens up the play for the seizure of Portugal. With this setup, the ensuing battle will see the loss of the two defenders (the rook in Granada and the black pirates), and I will sacrifice the crusading knights from Paris and Valencia, thus preserving the Catholic army in Toledo. The Portugal empire card is transferred from the Medici tableau to my own, eliminating their influence via Elżbieta of Bohemia in the process.  In order to facilitate the republican surge that I intend for the next turn, I will place my concession from the regime change on the border with England, repressing their existing merchant, and set up ready to support a vote.

That repressed merchant may cause problems going forward, as the residual influence of the Medici would try to block my disassembly of the Castile monarchy. Fortunately, I have the Spanish Inquisition and two operational cards to facilitate it. Upon placing the Grand Inquisitor in my tableau, I will deploy the bishop on that card. In the following turn, I can move the bishop to Portugal and pacify the Medici serf. With two inquisitor operations, which I have, I can also move the bishop back, freeing up the Kingdom of Portugal and its armies to pressure France into my camp.

These move are enough for me to set up a win for next turn, but the Medici has a turn to foil my plan. Indeed, they have a path to do so, even though it may not by obvious at first glance. (Actually, it is not obvious at all to you, because my screenshots don’t show my opponents hand, which holds two “one-shot” cards). The secret to saving himself relies, not on countering my moves and blocking my conversion of France and/or Portugal to be a republic. One of those two is enough for me to win and, anyway, there is no means for the Medici to influence either. Instead, he needs to control a Republic of his own, insuring that I need, not one, but at least two republics to claim victory.

But that drama is going to have to wait for another article.